Edwin M. Yamauchi

For the Japanese anthropologist, seeMasao Yamaguchi.

Edwin M. Yamauchi
Born	Edwin Masao Yamauchi Hilo, Hawaii,U.S.
Occupation(s)	Historian, Christian apologist, editor
Years active	Current
Spouse	Kimie Honda Yamauchi
Academic background
Alma mater	University of Hawaii
Academic work
Discipline	Historicity of the Gospels

Edwin Masao Yamauchi(born 1937 inHilo, Hawaii) is aJapanese-Americanhistorian,(Protestant) Christian apologist,editor and academic. He is Professor Emeritus of History atMiami University,where he taught from 1969 until 2005. He is married to Kimie Yamauchi (née Honda).

Education and career

Yamauchi began language studies at theUniversity of Hawaiibut then transferred his candidacy to studying Biblical languages atShelton College,Ringwood, New Jersey, and received his B.A. degree there. He then enrolled in Mediterranean studies for hisMaster of Artsdegree atBrandeis University,and then pursued studies inMandaeanGnostictexts as part of his Ph.D. dissertation at Brandeis University.

At Brandeis he studied under the lateCyrus H. Gordon,and expanded his linguistic studies in ancient near eastern languages, which includedHebrew,Aramaic,Akkadian,Ugaritic,Arabic,Syriac,andCoptic.In all he has immersed himself in 22 different languages.Yamauchi taught for a time at Shelton College, before becoming an assistant professor of history atRutgers University.He then received his professorial appointment atMiami University.

Yamauchi's areas of expertise include: Ancient History, Old Testament, New Testament, Early Church History, Gnosticism, and Biblical Archaeology. He has been awarded eight fellowships, contributed chapters to several books, articles in reference works, and has published 80 essays in 37 scholarly journals. He has been a member and officer of theInstitute for Biblical Research,an organization of scholars devoted to the research of the Bible.

Yamauchi has also contributed essays to various reference works in biblical studies and Christian history, and written commentaries on the books ofEzraandNehemiahin theExpositor's Bible Commentaryseries that was edited byFrank Gaebelein.Yamauchi contributed the notes on Ezra and Nehemiah in the NIV Study Bible.

Other areas where Yamauchi has written include the social and cultural history of first century Christianity, the relevance of the discovery of theDead Sea Scrollsfor New Testament studies, the primary source value ofJosephus' writings, and the role of theMagiin both ancient Persia and in the nativity narrative of the Gospel of Matthew. Yamauchi has written several books and essays on ancientgnosticism.He has been highly critical of scholars, such asRudolf Bultmann,who have used third and fourth century AD Gnostic texts as primary evidence for the existence of pre-Christian gnosticism.

In the 1970s he was a prominent critic of the lateMorton Smith's interpretation of an apocryphal text known as theSecret Gospel of Mark.Yamauchi revisited the corpus of Smith's writings on the topics of the lost gospels and Jesus as a magician-healer in his lengthy essay on magic and miracles (1986). Yamauchi faulted Smith's work on several points. One problem Yamauchi found was Smith's anachronistic use of third, fourth and fifth century AD Greek magical papyri sources in his reinterpretation of Christ as a magus-magician. He argued that Smith's "penchant for parallels with the life of Apollonius by Philostratus" was "historically anachronistic".

Religious beliefs

Though he was raised as a Buddhist,Yamauchi was educated atIolani,an Episcopal school. He was first exposed toevangelicalismin 1952, after being invited to attend Kalihi Union Church by a classmate.In his senior high school year Yamauchi studied at a rural school and worked at a missionary farm known as the Christian Youth Center. He is a founding member of the Oxford Bible Fellowship church inOxford, Ohio.He was a supporter of the Inter Varsity Christian Fellowship throughout his career, and particularly at the campus of Miami University. He has contributed popular articles to periodicals such as theChristianity Todaymagazine on theresurrection of Christand in response to controversial claims made about theDead Sea Scrolls.

Yamauchi was featured in the widely readChristian apologeticworkThe Case for ChristbyLee Strobel.He has given presentations on theEasterstoryto such universities asCornell,Yale,andPrinceton.He has also appeared in various television documentaries concerning the life of Christ. Based on an interview, there is a biographical article inThe Grains of Rice: Cincinnati Chapter Japanese American Citizens League,September 2001.

Select bibliography

• Africa and Africans in Antiquity(editor; East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2001;ISBN0-87013-507-4
• Africa and the Bible(Grand Rapids: Baker, 2004).ISBN0-8010-2686-5
• Archaeology and the Bible(withDonald J. Wiseman) (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1979).ISBN0-310-38341-2
• The Archaeology of New Testament Cities in Western Asia Minor(Grand Rapids: Baker, 1980).ISBN0-8010-9915-3
• "A Secret Gospel of Jesus as 'Magus'? A Review of the Recent Works of Morton Smith,"Christian Scholar's Review,4/3 (1975): 238–251.
• Chronos, Kairos, Christos: Nativity and Chronological Studies Presented to Jack Finegan(co-edited with Jerry Vardaman) (Winona Lake: Eisenbruans, 1989).ISBN0-931464-50-1
• Composition and Cooroboration in Classical and Biblical Studies(Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing, 1966).
• "The Descent of Ishtar, The Fall of Sophia, and the Jewish Roots of Gnosticism,"Tyndale Bulletin,29 (1978): 143–175.
• Foes From The Northern Frontier(Grand Rapids: Baker, 1982).ISBN0-8010-9918-8
• Gnostic Ethics and Mandaean Origins(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1970).
• Greece and Babylon(Grand Rapids: Baker, 1967).
• Harper's World of the New Testament(San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1981).ISBN0-06-069708-3
• "Immanuel Velikovsky's Catastrophic History,"Journal of the American Scientific Affiliation,25/4 (December 1973): 134–139.
• "Jewish Gnosticism? The Prologue of John, Mandaean Parallels and the Trimorphic Protennoia," inStudies in Gnosticism and Hellenistic Religions,R. van den Broekand M. J. Vermaseren, eds. (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1981): 467–497.
• "Josephus and the Scriptures"Fides et Historia,13/1 (Fall 1980): 42–63.
• "Magic or Miracle? Diseases, Demons and Exorcisms," inGospel Perspectives Vol. 6: The Miracles of Jesus,David Wenham and Craig Blomberg, eds. (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1986): 89–183.
• Mandaic Incantation Texts(New Haven: American Oriental Society, 1967).
• Peoples of the Old Testament World,(co-edited with Alfred J. Hoerth and Gerald L. Mattingly) (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1994)ISBN0-8010-4383-2
• Persia and the Bible(Grand Rapids: Baker, 1990).ISBN0-8010-9899-8
• Pre-Christian Gnosticism: A Survey of the Proposed Evidences(Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1973)ISBN0-8028-3429-9(Revised edition, Grand Rapids: Baker, 1983)ISBN0-8010-9919-6
• "Pre-Christian Gnosticism in the Nag Hammadi Texts?"Church History,48 (1979): 129–141.
• "The Present Status of Mandaean Studies,"Journal of Near Eastern Studies,25 (1966): 88–96.
• The Stones and The Scriptures(Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1972)ISBN0-87981-002-5
• The Story of the Church(with Robert G. Clouse and Richard V. Pierard) (Chicago: Moody Press, 2002)ISBN0-8024-2481-3
• "Tammuz and the Bible,"Journal of Biblical Literature,84 (1965): 283–290.
• Two Kingdoms: The Church and Culture Through the Ages(with Robert G. Clouse and Richard V. Pierard) (Chicago: Moody Press, 1993).ISBN0-8024-8590-1
• Ramm's View of Scripture... at Best a CompromiseinThe Outlook,Vol. 5, Issue 4, 1955.
• Is Theistic Evolution in Accord with the Christian Conception of the Origin of Things?inThe Outlook,Vol. 11, Issue 8, 1962.
• Problems of Radiocarbon Dating and of Cultural Diffusion in Pre-history,inJournal of the American Scientific Affiliation,(March 1975): 25-31

Reviews

• Molefi K. Asante, "Africa and Africans in Antiquity (review)",Research in African Literatures,34/3, (Fall 2003): pp. 178–182.
• Grant LeMarquand, Africa and the Bible,Anglican Theological Review,Fall 2005

References

• John D. Wineland, Ed.,The Light of Discovery: Studies in Honor of Edwin M. YamauchiArchived2013-03-09 at theWayback Machine,Pickwick Publications, 2007.

External links

• Retirement from Miami University
• "Easter: Myth, Hallucination, or History?"
• Pre-Christian Gnosticism, the New Testament and Nag Hammadi in recent debate by Edwin M. Yamauchi
• "The Gnostics and History"Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society.
• Akhenaton, Moses and monotheism by Edwin M. Yamauchi