Chip Hardy
Associate Professor of Divinity
Beeson Divinity School
Old Testament
 Divinity Hall
chip.hardy@samford.edu
205-726-2072

Chip Hardy joined the faculty of Beeson Divinity School in 2024 after serving for more than a dozen years at graduate and undergraduate institutions in North Carolina and Louisiana. He is an accomplished teacher and researcher in Semitic languages, biblical interpretation and ancient Near Eastern studies. His academic work investigates how ancient Yahweh followers communicated their faith and experienced God through their foundational Hebrew and Aramaic Scriptures and in what ways contemporary believers can learn from these ancient texts. He hopes to encourage the Christian church not to fear but to embrace the unwieldy realities reflected in the Old Testament and to embody our faith in the world. Hardy is the author of numerous volumes, book chapters, and articles. He is an ordained Baptist minister. Chip is married to Amy, and they have two sons.

Education

  • PhD, Northwest Semitic Philology, The University of Chicago
  • MA, Northwest Semitic Philology, The University of Chicago
  • MDiv, Biblical & Theological Studies, Southern Seminary
  • BA, Mathematics, The University of Oklahoma

Books

Selected Articles and Chapters

  • “Language & Text of the Hebrew Bible,” in H. H. Hardy II and M. Daniel Carroll R., eds. The State of Old Testament Studies: A Survey of Recent Research, Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2024.
  • “Pronominal Gender Parallelism as a Poetic Device in Biblical Hebrew,” in H. H. Hardy II, Joseph Lam, and Eric Reymond, eds. “Like ʾIlu Are You Wise”: Studies in Northwest Semitic Languages and Literatures in Honor of Dennis G. Pardee. Chicago: Oriental Institute, 2022, pp. 225–37.
  • “The Table of Grammar: תארקל as Test Case,” Journal for Semitics 29.2 (2020): 1–16.
  • “Daily Life in Old Testament Israel,” in J. Daniel Hays and J. Scott Duvall, eds. The Baker Illustrated Bible Background Commentary. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2020, pp. 37–41.
  • “A Holistic Biblical Cosmology,” Southeastern Theological Review 10.2 (Fall 2019): 1–3.
  • “Whence Come Direct Object Markers in Northwest Semitic?” Journal of Semitic Studies 61.2 (2016): 299–318.
  • “Hebrew Adverbialization, Aramaic Language Contact, and mpny ʾšr in Exodus 19:18,” in Aaron Butts, ed. Studies in Semitic Language Contact, Studies in Semitic Languages and Linguistics, Leiden: Brill, 2015, pp. 33–51.
  • “Biblical Hebrew šninɔ: A ‘Cautionary Tale’ of Root Identification,” Vetus Testamentum 64.2 (2014): 279–283.
  • “Another Look at Biblical Hebrew bɔmɔ ‘High Place’,” Vetus Testamentum 62.2 (2012): 175–188.
  • “A Revised Reading of a Nabataean Inscription from Umm al-Jimāl,” Journal of Semitic Studies 55 (2010): 385–389.
  • “Two New Inscriptions from Zincirli and its Environs,” Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 356 (2009): 73–80.

Academic Presentations and Lectures

  • “Accounting for the Countability of NPs in the Grammar and Lexicon of Biblical Hebrew,” Middle Eastern Linguistics & Philology Seminar, University of Cambridge, November 13, 2023.
  • “Jonah’s Journey into the Afterlife,” Tyndale Fellowship, Hertfordshire, UK, July 2023.
  • “The Uncountable ʾɔdɔm: Delineating Noun Classes in Biblical Hebrew,” Society of Biblical Literature, Denver, November 2022.
  • “What is God’s Heart after? Preposition Function and Meaning in 1 Samuel 13:14,” Southeastern Seminary PhD Symposium, April 16, 2020.
  • “Understanding Genesis through Leah’s eyes,” Society for Women in Scholarship, SEBTS, May 3, 2019.
  • “Contact Onomastics,” Tyndale House, Cambridge, England, March 2019.
  • “Exegetical Word Studies: Understanding Genesis through Leah’s ‘weak’ eyes,” Evangelical Theological Society, Denver, 2018.
  • “The Archaeology and Genealogy of Grammar: liqraʾt as a Test Case,” Society of Biblical Literature, Boston, November 2017.
  • Invited Review Panel: Fuller and Choi, Invitation to Biblical Hebrew Syntax, San Antonio, Evangelical
  • Theological Society, November 17, 2016.
  • “On Language Variation and Grammatical Change in Ancient Hebrew: There and ‘back’ Again,” Society of Biblical Literature, San Diego, November 2014.
  • “Mapping Semantic Change on the Lexical-Grammatical Interface: From ‘back’ to ‘after’ and Beyond,”
  • Society of Biblical Literature, San Francisco, November 2011.
  • “The Kuttamuwa Stele: Text, Dialect & Relevance,” The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Louisville, Kentucky, October 2010.
  • “The Tell Fekheriyeh Stele: Dialect, Word Order, and Scribal Symbiosis,” Society of Biblical Literature, New Orleans, Louisiana, November 2009.
  • “Whence Come Object Markers in Northwest Semitic?” North American Conference on Afroasiatic Linguistics 37, Albuquerque, New Mexico, March 2009.

Blog Posts and Journal Entries

Involvement

  • Society of Biblical Literature
  • Institute for Biblical Research
  • Tyndale Fellowship
  • Evangelical Theological Society