Jack Pearl Lewis (March 13, 1919 – July 24, 2018) was an American Bible scholar affiliated with the Churches of Christ.
After graduation from Midlothian High School in 1936, Lewis entered Abilene Christian College (now University) where he majored in Bible and Greek.
[8] In September 1944, Lewis entered the Harvard Divinity School where he studied under some of the following scholars at Harvard: Robert H. Pfeiffer (Old Testament), Edwin Broome (Hebrew), Arthur Nock (History of Religion), Dean Willard Sperry (Preaching and Ministry), Henry Cadbury (New Testament), Harry AustryhnWolfson (Judaism), and George LaPiana and George H. Williams (Church History).
He earned the Bachelor of Sacred Theology degree in 1947 and immediately began a Ph.D. program in New Testament with Harvard University.
His work involved intensive study of Hebrew, and he sat under Sheldon Blank, Elias Epstein, and Samuel Sandmel.
In 2004 in celebration of the 400th anniversary of the King James Version, at the invitation of the American Bible Society and its Eugene A. Nida Institute for Biblical Scholarship, Lewis presented a paper on the history of the printing of the KJV.
[27] Lewis taught a variety of courses in the Old and New Testament and a number of his books grew out of these classes: A Study of the Interpretation of Noah and the Flood in Jewish and Christian Literature[28] (published version of his dissertation at Hebrew Union), Historical Backgrounds to Bible People,[29] Historical Backgrounds of Bible History,[30] a two-volume commentary on The Gospel According to Matthew,[31] The Minor Prophets,[32] Exegesis of Difficult Passages,[33] and Hebrew Wisdom and Poetry.
[42] In 1967 and 1968, Lewis received a fellowship grant from the American Schools of Oriental Research to study as a Thayer Fellow in Jerusalem.
In 1968, he received the Twentieth Century Christian Education award in recognition of his "scholarly research, profound writing, and inspirational teaching".