John J. Collins

An Irish-born biblical scholar who has spent most of his career in the United States, latterly at Yale Divinity School. His subject is Second Temple Judaism, apocalyptic literature and the Dead Sea Scrolls, and The Apocalyptic Imagination is still a standard account of how that body of writing operates.

Collins writes for students and general readers as well as for specialists, which is less common in the field than it should be, and his introductions to the Hebrew Bible are assigned widely. He has served as president of the Society of Biblical Literature.