Simon J Gathercole

Simon Gathercole is a British New Testament scholar, an elder at Eden Baptist Church in Cambridge, and Senior Lecturer in New Testament Studies and Director of Studies at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge University. He was formerly Senior Lecturer in New Testament at the University of Aberdeen, Scotland for seven years. Gathercole received a MA at Cambridge, and later completed a MTh and PhD under James D. G. Dunn at the University of Durham,.

Gathercole is particularly well known for his nuanced critique of the so-called New Perspective on Paul. Recently, in a substantial critique of N.T. Wright's Paul and the Faithfulness of God, Gathercole not only demonstrated his acclaimed knowledge of Second Temple Judaism; he also offered valid, nuanced and substantial criticisms of Wright's views on justification in Paul.

His monograph Where is Boasting? (2002) was an examination of the theme of boasting in early Judaism and in Romans 1-5 against the backdrop of final judgement. This study also critically examined the strengths and weaknesses of the New Perspective on Paul. One significant weakness in the work of NPP scholars (particularly the work of Dunn and N.T. Wright) addressed by Gathercole is the virtually complete absence of engagement with Old Testament and Rabbinical literature where there is an explicit interplay between eschatology and Torah observance. His work The Pre-existent Son (2006) deals with the Christologies of the New Testament, specifically with regard to the notion of pre-existence within the Synoptic gospels. Going against James Dunn's Christology in the Making (1987), Gathercole argues that "the basic point that all four Gospels share the idea of preexistence is a valid one." In 2012 one New Testament blog reported that this work is recommended reading in at least some parts of Germany. Gathercole's most recent monograph The Composition of the Gospel of Thomas addresses two central questions in the current research on the Gospel of Thomas, namely, what its original language was and which early Christian works influenced it. At present, theories of Thomas as a Semitic work abound. Gathercole dismantles these approaches, arguing instead that Thomas is a piece of Greek literature, and that the matter of Thomas's original language is connected with an even more controversial question: that of the relationship between Thomas and the canonical New Testament. Gathercole develops a newly refined approach to how Thomas is influenced by the Synoptic gospels. Gathercole dedicated this monograph to his Durham PhD supervisor James D.G. Dunn.

From 2007 until 2013, Gathercole served as editor of the Journal for the Study of the New Testament.