Background

JP O'Connor is the Associate Professor of New Testament at Northwest University. He is also a Research Fellow at the University of the Free State in Bloemfontein, South Africa. He is an alum of NU, where he completed his BA in Biblical Literature. After serving for two years at a church plant in Lakewood Washington he went on to earn his MDiv. and PhD from Princeton Theological Seminary. His research and teaching interests include morality and ethics within the literature of Second Temple Judaism. His published dissertation, The Moral Life according to Mark (Bloomsbury/T&T Clark, 2022) considers the moral nature of the first life of Jesus in contrast to a longstanding scholarly consensus about Mark and “ethics.” His second book, The Last Shall Be First: Divine Judgment in the Gospel of Mark (Baylor University Press, 2024) considers the rhetoric of judgment in Mark's Gospel and its interplay with justice for “little ones.” His third book, An Anatomy of the Early Church: An Introduction is forthcoming with Baker Academic in 2026.

He loves coffee, running, playing chess, and spending time with his family. Please reach out to connect!

Recent Publications

“‘Spiritual Blindness’ in the Bartimaeus Pericope (Mark 10:46–52): Toward Decentering Ableist Readings.” Biblical Interpretation 32.1 (2024): 52–70.

“Between Imagination and Practice: Pauline Theology and Burying the Dead at Corinth.” Novum Testamentum 66.1 (2023): 58–79.

“Void of Ethics No More: The Gospel of Mark and New Testament Ethics.” Currents in Biblical Research 20 (2022): 165­–85.

“Moral Accountability According to Mark.” Catholic Biblical Quarterly 83.4 (2021): 599–618.

“The Devil will Flee: James 4:7, the Jesus Tradition, and the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs.” Journal of Biblical Literature 138 (2019): 883–97.

“Genesis 2:7 in Conversation: The Exegesis of Paul, Philo, and the Hodayot.” Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft 110 (2019): 84–103.

“Satan and Sitis: The Significance of Clothing Changes in the Testament of Job.” Journal for the Study of Pseudepigrapha 26.4 (2017): 305–19.

Research and Teaching Interests

Synoptic Gospels; Paul; Second Temple Judaism; New Testament Ethics; Apocalyptic Literature and Theology

For more about his research and publications, see his CV.