Markus Zehnder

I am a native of Switzerland, beautifully located right in the heart of Europe.

I got my theological education at the University of Basel.

After the completion of my studies, I was ordained in the Reformed Church of Basel, and I served as a vicar for one year. Then I went back to university to pursue a doctoral project at the intersection of Old Testament and Semitics. Since I had to work halftime besides writing my dissertation, it took five years to get the rather lengthy (700 pages) piece completed (“Wegmetaphorik im Alten Testament”).

Fortunately, I found a part-time teaching position at a small seminary in Switzerland right away. A few months later, I was offered a generous grant by the Swiss National Science Foundation to pursue post-doctoral research. Therefore, I left Switzerland and did research at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem for two years, and thereafter at the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at Harvard University for one year.

The post-doctoral research ended in a second book, only 613 pages long. While the first book had a linguistic focus, the second book (Habilitationsschrift) was about a socio-historical topic, the dealing with foreigners in the Hebrew Bible and in Assyrian texts (“Umgang mit Fremden in Israel und Assyrien”). The topic of foreigners/migration has since remained high on my list of interests. That I have become a migrant myself since I left Switzerland for Jerusalem has contributed to this.

After my stay at Harvard, I lived and taught in a number of various European countries, with the longest amount of time spent in Norway. In the summer of 2016 I moved to Biola in the greater LA area, and I am thoroughly enjoying the Californian climate.