Frederic C. Putnam

Hello! Welcome to my author’s page on amazon.

I’ve been teaching graduate, post-graduate, and undergraduate courses in biblical languages (Classical/Biblical Hebrew, Koiné Greek) and biblical interpretation since 1984. While homeschooling our daughters, I also taught high-school seminars in Shakespeare, poetry, literature, and philosophy, and Greek. Since 2012 I’ve been teaching seminars in biblical studies (including Hebrew and Greek), as well as in philosophy, literature, and poetry at the Templeton Honors College at Eastern University.

After writing a monthly column for Eternity magazine in the 1980s, I have published reference works and textbooks on Hebrew, a commentary on the book of Proverbs, and reviews and articles in biblical interpretation; I recently finished “Working with Biblical Hebrew Poetry”, the second half of Basics of Hebrew Discourse, which I co-authored with Matthew Patton (Zondervan, 2019). I am now working on several projects, including a work on the Bible’s use of metaphors.

I was ordained to the ministry of teaching in 1985 (Presbyterian Church in America), and preach and speak regularly at various churches and schools (my biggest compliment is when parents tell me that their young children don’t want me to stop). My wife, Emilie, and I have three daughters and six grandchildren.

I enjoy reading and discussing poems, military history, philosophy—especially the writings of Josef Pieper—and literature, and firmly believe that The Count of Monte Cristo is the greatest novel yet written. I also enjoy baking, listening to and making music—singing (but no solos!), and playing tuba, recorder, hand drum, timbrel, and finger cymbals, canoeing, and camping.

I was born in Peterborough, NH, grew up in East Woodstock, CT, and have lived in Pennsylvania since 1970—in other words, a transplanted New England farmer. I know that Guernseys give the best milk and that hills are made of granite; I am also pretty sure that I heve yet to see a real winter in Pennsylvania.