Walter Kaiser

A graduate of Wheaton College (1951-58), Kaiser majored in Bible, minored in Greek and philosophy, and completed his graduate study in the Old Testament under Frank Newberg (Hebrew), Arthur Holmes, Kenneth Kantzer, and Berkeley Mickelson.

After graduating from Wheaton Graduate School in 1958, Kaiser taught full-time at Wheaton College. During the summer months he pursued further graduate studies in Old Testament and ancient history at Brandeis University, where his mentors included Benjamin Mazar, Samuel Noah Kramer, Harry Orlinsky, and Cyrus H. Gordon. His course of study at Brandeis included Middle and Late Egyptian hieroglyphics, Ugaritic, Homeric Greek, biblical Hebrew, Old Babylonian cuneiform, Assyrian cuneiform, and the history and archeology of the ancient Near Eastern empires.

In the late fall of 1963, Kaiser was asked to teach a class at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School when the instructor, Wilbur Smith, suddenly took ill. In 1964 Kaiser began a two-year term of teaching at both Trinity and Wheaton. In the fall of 1966 he joined the Trinity faculty on a full-time basis. While pursuing graduate studies at Brandeis, Kaiser became professor and chairman of the Old Testament department at Trinity. He completed his Ph.D. dissertation in 1973.

In 1980 Kaiser assumed the responsibilities of vice president and academic dean of Trinity and continued in that office until June of 1992. In the fall of 1993 he accepted and invitation from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary to serve as the first Colman M. Mockler Distinguished Professor of Old Testament. He taught during the fall semester, and lived on his Wisconsin farm and spoke around the world the remaining eight months of the year. In the summer of 1997 Kaiser assumed the presidency of Gordon-Conwell while retaining the Mockler chair. Kaiser retired from the presidency of Gordon-Conwell on July 1, 2006 and is President Emeritus and Distinguished Professor of Old Testament and Ethics at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in Hamilton, MA.