Dr. Barry J. Beitzel '60

After graduation from MHS, Barry earned both his Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts Degrees from Bob Jones University. He did graduate work in Semitic Languages at the Fuller Theological Seminary and studied General Linguistics at the University of Pennsylvania. He earned a Doctor of Philosophy Degree at The Dropsie University. Barry has done post-doctoral research in Ancient Near Eastern Geography at L'Universite de Liege, Belgium, and in addition, he has engaged in archaeological work in eastern Syria under the auspices of UCLA. His professional work has taken him to Western Asia and the Mediterranean world on more than two dozen occasions.

Barry has been Professor of Old Testament and Semitic Languages at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Illinois since 1983. His body of work in his profession has gained him national and international recognition, and he is regarded as a leader in his profession.

His accomplishments are numerous. Besides the papers he has read before various professional societies, Dr. Beitzel has a large number of publications to his credit. Among them are The Moody Atlas of Bible Lands and Biblica, the Bible Atlas: A Social and Historical Journey Through the Lands of the Bible. He has contributed to other works, including Orient and Occident; Biblical and Near Eastern Studies; Major Cities of the Bible, and Near Eastern Geography. Barry has also contributed articles to a variety of Bible Dictionaries and his serial publications appear in National Geographic; Biblical Archaeologist, and Biblical Archaeology Review, to name a few. Maps created or supervised by Beitzel appear in numerous Bibles, and he often serves as cartographic consultant to the National Geographic Society and the Biblical Archaeology Society. Some of his maps have won awards in American Congress on Surveying and Mapping map design competitions and are now on permanent display in the Library of Congress. A new volume of his The New Moody Atlas of the Bible was released in worldwide co-editions in October, 2009. This volume won several awards, one of which was the ECPA 2010 Christian Books Award, Medallion of Excellence, in the Bible Study and Reference category.

Dr. Beitzel belongs to a wide number of professional organizations, among them The American Schools of Oriental Research, The Association of American Geographers, The National Association of Professors of Hebrew, The Evangelical Theological Society, and The Society of Biblical Literature. He continues to teach, conduct research, write and serve as a consultant in his chosen profession.

Barry and his wife, Carol, have been married since 1964 and live in Gurnee, Illinois. They have two sons, one daughter and seven grandchildren.


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