Michael Goulder

Who was Michael Goulder?

Michael Douglas Goulder was a British Biblical scholar who spent most of his academic life at the University of Birmingham where he retired as Professor of Biblical Studies in 1994. He was perhaps best known for his contributions to the Synoptic Problem, and specifically the Farrer hypothesis, which postulates Markan priority but dispenses with the Q document, suggesting instead that Luke knew Matthew. Goulder was also associated with the theory that the evangelists were highly creative authors, and that Matthew and Luke had only minimal source material. In recent years, he wrote widely on a theory of Christian origins that sees a fundamental opposition between Paul the Apostle on one side and the Jerusalem Christians Peter and James, Jesus' brother, on the other. This has been seen as reviving a hypothesis proposed by Ferdinand Christian Baur of the Tübingen school.

Goulder was an unusual Biblical scholar in that he had expertise in both testaments. He published extensively over a twenty-year period on a variety of Old Testament topics, but especially the Psalms. His works in this area aimed among other things to discover the historical contexts in which individual psalms were used in worship, employing comparisons with the traditions behind other parts of the Hebrew Bible such as the Pentateuch. Despite some scholarly criticisms of his conclusions, Goulder has been described as "a renowned leader in the study of the Hebrew Psalter".