Mark Allan Powell is an American New Testament scholar and professional music critic.
Powell was Professor of New Testament at Trinity Lutheran Seminary in Columbus, Ohio until his retirement in 2018. He is editor of the HarperCollins Bible Dictionary and author of more than 100 articles and 35 books on the Bible and religion, including a widely used textbook, Introducing the New Testament (Baker Academic, 2009; 2nd ed., 2018).[citation needed]
Powell has held a number of positions in the academic guild of theological studies. From 1992–1996, he served as co-chair of The Matthew Group, a section of the Society of Biblical Literature devoted to the study of Matthew's Gospel, and from 2000–2006, he served as Chair of The Historical Jesus Section for that same organization. He has also served for many years as editor of the Society of Biblical Literature's dissertation series (Academia Biblica), and he has been on the editorial boards of numerous professional journals, including Catholic Biblical Quarterly, Journal of Biblical Literature, and Word and World. He is one of the founding editors of the Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus.
Powell's primary contributions in the field of biblical/theological studies have been in three areas: the application of modern literary criticism to the Bible, the interpretation of the Gospel of Matthew as a product of early Christian formation developing out of Judaism, and the scholarly appraisal of what can be reliably known about Jesus through the application of traditional historical methodology.
Powell is best known to many students of religion as the author of a few widely used textbooks. His Introducing the New Testament (Baker Academic 2009; 2nd. ed., 2018), is designed to serve as a college textbook for survey courses on the New Testament. It is descriptive in tone, avoiding stands on contentious issues; well illustrated with color reproductions of artwork from various cultures depicting New Testament themes; and "another noteworthy feature, perhaps the most important one, is that the book is filled with hyperlinks to a website (www.IntroducingNT.com)" offering extensive printable material, including hundreds of supplemental essays and bibliographies.[1] Powell's What Is Narrative Criticism? (Fortress Press, 1990) is a standard work for introducing students to modern literary criticism and its application to the Gospels. His Jesus as a Figure in History(Westminster/John Knox, 1998; 2nd ed., 2012) is the standard text for many institutions that feature history courses on Jesus or Christian origins. Another book, Fortress Introduction to the Gospels (Fortress Press, 1998; 2nd ed. 2020) is often used at a graduate level for courses focusing on the distinctive characteristics and theological messages of the four New Testament Gospels.
Powell has also written books in the areas of spiritual formation (Loving Jesus), stewardship (Giving To God), and homiletics (What Do They Hear?: Bridging the Gap between Pulpit and Pew). A set of DVDs called How Lutherans Understand the Bible received widespread use throughout the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and were excerpted for inclusion in the Lutheran Study Bible (Augsburg Fortress). An ecumenical, global scholar, Powell served for many years as a Protestant on the Executive Committee of the Catholic Biblical Association, and taught at seminaries in Estonia, Russia, and Tanzania.
Powell has also worked as a professional music critic, with more than 1000 published reviews in the fields of rock and pop music. The two fields of music criticism and religious scholarship come together in his 1200-page volume Encyclopedia of Contemporary Christian Music (Hendrickson, 2000), a critical survey and analysis of artists in both the religious and mainstream markets who have produced faith-oriented products.
Powell was born in Gainesville, Florida in 1953 and ordained as a minister of the American Lutheran Church (now the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America) in 1980. He married Melissa Curtis Powell in 1995.