Richard Ivan Pervo (May 11, 1942 – May 19, 2017)^[1] was an American biblical scholar, former Episcopal priest, and Fellow of the Westar Institute.^[2][3][4] He was best known for his works on the New Testament book of Acts of the Apostles.^[5][6] In 2001, Pervo was convicted for possession of child sexual abuse material.^[7][8]

Biography

Pervo was born in Lakewood, Ohio, the son of Ivan Pervo and Elizabeth Kline. He married Karen E. Moreland on April 2, 1967.^[9]

Pervo received his undergraduate degree from Concordia Senior College in Fort Wayne, Indiana in 1964. He received a Bachelor of Divinity at the Episcopal Divinity School of Cambridge, Massachusetts, and earned his Th.D. from Harvard University in 1979.^[9] A revised version of his dissertation was published in 1987 as Profit with Delight: The Literary Genre of the Acts of the Apostles.^[10]

Pervo died of leukemia in St. Paul, Minnesota on May 19, 2017.^{[1][9][Note 1]}

Career

Pervo taught at Seabury-Western Theological Seminary (1975–1999) and as professor of Classical and Near Eastern Studies at the University of Minnesota (1999–2001). He served as an Episcopalian priest until 2003.^[3]

A Festschrift in recognition of his scholarship was published posthumously by Mohr Siebeck in late 2017.^[11]

Criminal conviction

In February 2001, Pervo was arrested after investigators found thousands of images of child pornography on his work computer at the University of Minnesota.^[12] In May he pleaded guilty to five counts of possession and one count of distribution of child pornography. He was sentenced to one year in a state workhouse and eight years probation.^[13][14] He formally resigned from the University of Minnesota as of June 2001, having been suspended since his arrest.^[15] After serving his sentence he continued to publish theological works as an independent scholar and Fellow of the Westar Institute,^[2] and was recognized as an authority on the canonical and non-canonical books of Acts.^[16]

Selected works

• Profit with Delight: The Literary Genre of the Acts of the Apostles (1987) ISBN 978-0800607821
• Luke's Story of Paul (1990) ISBN 978-0800624057
• Rethinking the Unity of Luke and Acts (with Mikael C. Parsons) (1993) ISBN 978-0800627508
• "Romancing an Oft-Neglected Stone: The Pastoral Epistles and The Epistolary Novel" (1994) Journal of the Higher Criticism, 1 (Fall 1994), 25-47.
• Dating Acts: Between the Evangelists and the Apologists (2006) ISBN 978-0944344736
• Acts: A Commentary (2008) ISBN 978-0800660451
• The Mystery of Acts: Unravelling its Story (2008) ISBN 978-1598150124
• The Making of Paul: Constructions of the Apostle in Early Christianity (2010) ISBN 978-0800696597
• The Acts of Paul: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (2014) ISBN 978-1625641717
• The Gospel of Luke (2014) ISBN 978-1598151411
• The Acts of John (2015) ISBN 978-1598151671
• The Pastorals and Polycarp (2016) ISBN 978-1598151787