Dunn was born on 21 October 1939 in
Birmingham, England. He had the following degrees: •
Bachelor of Science (BSc) in economics and statistics at
University of Glasgow,
second class honours, 1961. •
Bachelor of Divinity (BD) at University of Glasgow, 1964, with distinction. He retired in 2003, For 2002, Dunn was the President of the
Studiorum Novi Testamenti Societas, an international body for New Testament study. Only three other British scholars had been made President of the body in the preceding 25 years. In 2006 he became a Fellow of the
British Academy. In 2005 a
Festschrift was published dedicated to Dunn, comprising articles by 27 New Testament scholars, examining
early Christian communities and their beliefs about the
Holy Spirit in Christianity. In 2009 another
Festschrift was dedicated to Dunn for his 70th birthday, consisting of two forewords by
N. T. Wright and Richard B. Hays and 17 articles all written by his former students who went on to have successful careers in either academic and ministerial fields around the world. Dunn was especially associated with the
New Perspective on Paul, along with
N. T. Wright,
Krister Stendahl, and
E. P. Sanders. Dunn took up Sanders' project of redefining Palestinian Judaism in order to correct the Christian view of Judaism as a religion of
works-righteousness. In his
Parting of the Ways, Dunn highlighted four pillars of first-century Judaism as monotheism, election and land, Torah and Temple. One of the most important differences from Sanders is that Dunn perceives a fundamental coherence and consistency to
Paul's thought. He furthermore criticizes Sanders' understanding of the term
justification, arguing that Sanders' understanding suffers from an "individualizing exegesis". Dunn also played an important role in Pentecostal-non-Pentecostal dialogue. His doctoral dissertation on Pentecostalism was later published as the influential
Baptism in the Holy Spirit in 1970. Pentecostals' response to Dunn provided an entry point for Pentecostalism in academia and formed the genesis of Pentecostal scholarship. Dunn provides the greatest intellectual conversation partner for Pentecostal scholarship to this day and his work continues to serve as a spokesman for non-Pentecostal viewpoints on the
Day of Pentecost in academia and for evangelical community at large. Dunn also studied the
origins of Christianity with special consideration for the oral traditions of early Christian communities, as well as with social memory theory. ==Works==