Born in
Dover, Missouri, Anderson earned degrees from the
College of the Pacific and
Pacific School of Religion. In 1939, he was
ordained to the ministry of the (then) Methodist Church. He served
Methodist churches in California, and later
Congregational churches in both Connecticut and New York. In 1945 he received the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy at
Yale, where he specialized in Old Testament studies. He received honorary degrees from the Pacific School of Religion, the University of the Pacific, and
Colgate University. He taught at Colgate University in New York, the
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the
Colgate Rochester Divinity School,
Drew University, (where he served as Dean of the Theological School for nine years), and finally as a Professor of Old Testament Theology at
Princeton Theological Seminary, where he was Professor of Old Testament Theology Emeritus. In retirement, he continued to teach into the early 1990s at
Boston University School of Theology. He died on December 26, 2007, in
Santa Cruz, California. ==Selected works==