Thomas B. Slater

Thomas Bowie Slater, the son of the late Thomas Jefferson & Thelma Bowie Slater, is Professor Emeritus of Theology (New Testament emphasis) in the McAfee School of Theology, Mercer University. Slater is a native of Magnolia, AR, but he has lived in Dallas, TX, El Paso, TX, Little Rock, AR, Athens, GA, London, England and Snellville, GA. His favorite places are Magnolia, Little Rock and London. His parents, public school teachers in Arkansas for over three decades each, were the first college graduates in their respective families.

Slater is the fourth generation to live in Magnolia, AR and attend King's Hill AME Church on his father's side. His paternal great-grandfathers, Stephen Chappel and Emp Slater, were among the founders of King's Hill late in the 19th century.

Slater, a 1970 honor graduate of Magnolia's Walker High School and a 1974 honor graduate of Arkansas Polytechnic College in Journalism, dreamed of a career in the news media. At Arkansas Tech, he edited the campus newspaper and was twice selected to "Who's Who in American Universities and Colleges." Slater was also a summer intern at the "Texarkana Gazette" newspaper in Texarkana, USA, and a "stringer" for the "Arkansas Democrat" newspaper, a statewide paper based in Little Rock. He originally planned a career in political reporting, but answered the call to the Christian ministry in 1973. With the help of Dr. Tom Wilson, his philosophy professor and a graduate of Princeton Theological Seminary, Slater decided to enroll in Perkins School of Theology at Southern Methodist University.

At Perkins, Slater found a love for the New Testament and early Christianity and took multiple courses with Professors William Farmer, Victor Furnish, William Babcock and Harold Attridge. After completing his Master of Theology (MTh) degree in 1978 (the equivalent to an MDiv), Slater immediately enrolled in the Doctor of Ministry (DMin) program, majoring in Christian Education and minoring in Biblical Studies. He received his DMin in 1981. His major professors were Richard Murray (Christian Education) and Harold Attridge (Biblical Studies). Slater has said that he majored in Christian Education because there was a need in the Black Church for Christian educators. While at Perkins, Slater became the first black American student to win the C. C. Selecman Award in New Testament Greek for a paper on Matthew 4:1-11 and he also published his first article in the Journal of Biblical Literature ("Notes on Matthew's Structure," 1980).

After consulting with Bill Farmer and George Howard, Slater enrolled in King's College London, a college within the University of London, to pursue a PhD in Biblical Studies. Prof. Graham Stanton supervised his work which resulted in a thesis on the social impact of the images of Christ in John's Apocalypse. It was eventually published in the JSNT Supplement Series 178 as "Christ and Community" (now the Library of New Testament Studies, Bloombury T&T Clark). He described his time with Prof. Stanton as "the most pleasant stressful experience of my life." He also credits Dr. Robert M. Berchman, then a visiting fellow at the University of Virginia, for helping him to understand and appreciate second temple Judaism, Greco-Roman religions and philosophies and early Christian philosophical theology.

Slater has published six books, edited a festschrift for Alan Culpepper in Review & Expositor and over 40 scholarly articles in every area of New Testament studies, but he is best known for his work in Jewish and Christian apocalyptic literature from approximately 165 BCE to 150 CE. He was drawn to this literature for two reasons. First of all, this literature derived from communities under duress. Second, apocalyptic literature communicates in strong images, a key feature of African American rhetoric for centuries. Notably, most of Slater's publications have been dedicated to persons who have helped him along his journey. They include members of his family, mentors, close friends and even his students.

His work in apocalyptic literature led to extensive original research on the Son of Man topic. He argues that scholarly literature has not seen the distinction both Jewish and Christian writers made between "son of man" as a generic expression to denote humans (e.g., Ezek 3:1; Dan 10:11, 19; 1 Enoch 6:1) and "one like a son of man" (or similar expressions) as descriptions of heavenly beings in human form (e.g., Ezek 1:26; Dan 10:16-18; 4 Ezra 13:3; T. Abr. 2:3). He then argues that the generic son of man sayings in the synoptic gospels reflect the generic tradition; the eschatological sayings, the tradition of heavenly beings in human-likeness.

Slater has also taught in a variety of educational institutions: Shorter College, an AME school in N. Little Rock, AR; Birkbeck College, the University of London; the University of Georgia (with a dual appointment in Religion and African American Studies), the oldest public university in the US; and Mercer University, a private institution. Slater has also been a campus minister at Mountain View and El Centro Community Colleges in Dallas, TX, and been pastor of Connor Chapel AME Church and Mark's Chapel UMC, both in Little Rock, AR; St. Mary's CME Church in Elberton, GA and St. Paul CME Church in Athens, GA. He has also been an associate pastor in St. James AME Church in Dallas, TX, and Chelsea Methodist Church in London, England.

An avid golfer, his favorite golfers are Miss Se Ri Pak, a member of the LPGA Hall of Fame, and Mr. Eldrick "Tiger" Woods, a member of the World Golf Hall of Fame. Slater has participated in amateur golf tours for over 20 years and has won seven tournaments. He is an even more avid fan of science fiction, especially the works of the late Ursula Leguin. As a child, he spent hours reading DC comics. He is a self-described "Trekkie" and loved both versions of "The 4400," "Babylon 5," both versions of "Battlestar Galactica," "Eureka," "LaBrea" and both versions of "Quantum Leap" as well as the "Star Wars" movies.

He resides in Snellville, GA., and has one daughter, one son-in-law and one grandson. He also has five additional children who "adopted" him as their second father.