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Richard Pervo

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Richard Ivan Pervo (May 11, 1942 – May 19, 2017)[1] was an American biblical scholar, former Episcopal priest, and Fellow of the Westar Institute.[2][3][4] He was best known for his works on the New Testament book of Acts of the Apostles.[5][6] In 2001, Pervo was convicted for possession of child sexual abuse material.[7][8]

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Biography

Pervo was born in Lakewood, Ohio, the son of Ivan Pervo and Elizabeth Kline. He married Karen E. Moreland on April 2, 1967.[9]

Pervo received his undergraduate degree from Concordia Senior College in Fort Wayne, Indiana in 1964. He received a Bachelor of Divinity at the Episcopal Divinity School of Cambridge, Massachusetts, and earned his Th.D. from Harvard University in 1979.[9] A revised version of his dissertation was published in 1987 as Profit with Delight: The Literary Genre of the Acts of the Apostles.[10]

Pervo died of leukemia in St. Paul, Minnesota on May 19, 2017.[1][9][Note 1]

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Career

Pervo taught at Seabury-Western Theological Seminary (1975–1999) and as professor of Classical and Near Eastern Studies at the University of Minnesota (1999–2001). He served as an Episcopal priest until 2003.[3]

A Festschrift in recognition of his scholarship was published posthumously by Mohr Siebeck in late 2017.[11]

Criminal conviction

In February 2001, Pervo was arrested after investigators found thousands of images of child pornography on his work computer at the University of Minnesota.[12] In May he pleaded guilty to five counts of possession and one count of distribution of child pornography. He was sentenced to one year in a state workhouse and eight years probation.[13][14] He formally resigned from the University of Minnesota as of June 2001, having been suspended since his arrest.[15] After serving his sentence he continued to publish theological works as an independent scholar and Fellow of the Westar Institute,[2] and was recognized as an authority on the canonical and non-canonical books of Acts.[16]

Selected works

  • Profit with Delight: The Literary Genre of the Acts of the Apostles (1987) ISBN 978-0800607821
  • Luke's Story of Paul (1990) ISBN 978-0800624057
  • Rethinking the Unity of Luke and Acts (with Mikael C. Parsons) (1993) ISBN 978-0800627508
  • "Romancing an Oft-Neglected Stone: The Pastoral Epistles and The Epistolary Novel" (1994) Journal of the Higher Criticism, 1 (Fall 1994), 25–47.
  • Dating Acts: Between the Evangelists and the Apologists (2006) ISBN 978-0944344736
  • Acts: A Commentary (2008) ISBN 978-0800660451
  • The Mystery of Acts: Unravelling its Story (2008) ISBN 978-1598150124
  • The Making of Paul: Constructions of the Apostle in Early Christianity (2010) ISBN 978-0800696597
  • The Acts of Paul: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (2014) ISBN 978-1625641717
  • The Gospel of Luke (2014) ISBN 978-1598151411
  • The Acts of John (2015) ISBN 978-1598151671
  • The Pastorals and Polycarp (2016) ISBN 978-1598151787
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Notes

  1. The obituary published by the Society of Biblical Literature[3] gives his date of death as May 20, but this is contradicted by the majority of sources.[1][9]

References

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