Isthmia / Corinth
1994 National Endowment for the Humanities award for archaeology in Greece.
אמת · אור
Buck Creek · Jerusalem · Washington
Jerry A. Pattengale
Historian · Educator · Founding Scholar, Museum of the Bible
Ancient historian. Classroom builder. One of two founding scholars of a 430,000-square-foot museum three blocks from the Capitol. The trench and the lectern are two rooms of the same house.
“The dream needs to be stronger than the struggle.”
- 2024Sagamore of the Wabash
- 2021Three Telly Awards
- 2020United Nations address
- 2017Museum of the Bible opens
- 2014Inaugural University Professor
- 1994NEH · Isthmia / Corinth
Two rooms of the same house
The classroom and the trench
He came out of a family of ten in Buck Creek, Indiana, finished high school at sixteen, and was homeless before a church-backed scholarship put him in a college classroom. He studied ancient history under Edwin Yamauchi, languages and the land in Jerusalem, and spent a career building the rooms where other people meet the evidence: Scriptorium, Indiana Wesleyan University, the Green Scholars Initiative, Museum of the Bible.
Sagamore of the Wabash, 2024. NEH at Isthmia, 1994. Three Tellys. Inaugural University Professor at IWU. United Nations, 2020. One of two founding scholars of Museum of the Bible.
Read the life
1974
Sixteen
High-school graduate. Homeless. Buck Creek, Indiana.
1977
Jerusalem
Semester at Jerusalem University College / Institute of Holy Land Studies.
1993
Doctorate
Ph.D. in Ancient History under Edwin Yamauchi, Miami University.
2017
The museum
Museum of the Bible opens in Washington. He was a founding scholar.
The field
Languages, sites, manuscripts
Wadi Natrun
Mid-1990s co-director of Odyssey in Egypt at ancient Scetis — early Christian monastic ground, not Qumran.
Jerusalem
Holy Land study, Barkay, Ketef Hinnom context, and educator-support of the Temple Mount Sifting Project.
Museum of the Bible
430,000 square feet. Founding scholar. Education director. Then senior advisor.
With Scott Carroll he helped put the museum in motion in 2010. Official figures: eight levels, more than $500 million in construction and property, opened 17 November 2017, three blocks from the Capitol. He built the Green Scholars Initiative and ran Education through opening day.
The museum chapterThe classroom
Purpose-guided education
Coined at Indiana Wesleyan University in 1997. Student success needs a humanities frame and faculty ownership — not only advising mechanics. In 2014 he became the first University Professor in IWU’s history.
Teaching & IWUThe library · from 2020
New books, still arriving
Publisher covers where we could obtain them. Each published title links to Amazon, as on his earlier site. The full 2020-forward list — including forthcoming volumes — is on the books page.
The Story of the Bible
August 25, 2026 · Global Publishing Partners
Author
Biblical narratives as windows into real worlds: leaders, prophets, shepherds, queens, and exiles, in the cities, deserts, and villages they inhabited. The first of a three-book Museum of the Bible series.
View on Amazon
The Gospels: A Historical and Cultural Journey
November 2025 · Global Publishing Partners
Author
The life of Jesus presented through history, art, and the plain claim of the Gospels — written to be held, seen, and read, not merely assigned.
View on Amazon
Habits of Hope
November 2024 · IVP Academic
Co-editor · with Todd Ream and Christopher J. Devers
Educational Practices for a Weary World. An IVP volume on the practices that keep Christian colleges honest, hopeful, and intellectually serious.
View on Amazon
The World’s Greatest Book: The Story of How the Bible Came to Be · 2nd edition
June 2023 · Tyndale House
Co-author · with Lawrence H. Schiffman
With Lawrence H. Schiffman, a history of the Bible’s making, copying, and translation — first issued with Worthy in 2017, revised for Tyndale in 2023.
View on Amazon
The New Book of Christian Martyrs
April 2023 · Tyndale House
Co-author · with Johnnie Moore
With Johnnie Moore, a successor to Foxe: martyr stories from the first century to the present. The book prompted the TBN special Heroes of the Faith.
Prompted the 60-minute on-camera film Heroes of the Faith
View on Amazon
Public Intellectuals and the Common Good
January 2021 · IVP Academic
Co-editor · with Todd Ream and Christopher J. Devers
Edited with Todd Ream and Christopher J. Devers. Pattengale spoke on Capitol Hill in 2022 from this book’s argument: scholarship in public is a form of neighbor-love.
View on AmazonHonors
Sagamore of the Wabash, and everything under it
- 2024Sagamore of the WabashHighest civilian honor of the State of Indiana, Gov. Eric Holcomb, December 2024
- 2026FOX Nation series ranked #1David: King of Israel — four-part series; historian consultant and on-screen contributor
- 2022Capitol Hill addressSpoke on Public Intellectuals and the Common Good
- 2021National Press Club Vivian AwardService on the membership committee, December 2021
- 2021Three Telly AwardsInexplicable (TBN), 2021
- 2021–22Outstanding Alumni / World ChangerIndiana Wesleyan University
- 2020United Nations address14 February 2020, New York — Plan of Action to Safeguard Religious Sites
- 2018–19Lilly Fellows Book Award finalistThe State of the Evangelical Mind — one of three Lilly finalists in the IVP higher-education series
בראשית
“The dream needs to be stronger than the struggle.”