Dr. Jeffrey P. García, Associate Professor of Biblical Studies, specializes in the New Testament and its cultural, historical, and geographical setting.

For over a decade, Dr. García was Associate Professor of New Testament and Second Temple Literature at Nyack College/Alliance University. Since 2012, Dr. García has worked with the Center for Holy Lands Studies as a teaching guide in Israel, Jordan, Turkey, and Greece. As a member of the US team excavating El A'raj, Bethsaida in the Gospels, he has spent five seasons digging in one of the most important villages of Jesus’ ministry. Dr. García holds a PhD from NYU, where he studied under the direction of world-renowned Dead Sea Scrolls scholar Dr. Lawrence Schiffman. He also frequently collaborates with distinguished scholar of the Gospels, R. Steven Notley.

Publishing regularly on the Gospels and their ancient Jewish setting, Dr. García has made it a point to not just address the academic world with his work. Consequently, he is committed to engaging a more popular audience with articles and books such as, “Jesus and His Pilgrimage Practices,” “What Can We Learn from Women's Roles on Ancient Synagogues,” and Understanding the Gospels as Ancient Jewish Literature (Jerusalem: Carta, 2018). He is also the author of On Human Nature in Ancient Judaism: Creation, Composition, and Condition (JAJSup 34; Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh; Leiden: Brill, 2020), and co-editor of The Gospels in First-Century Judaea (Leiden: Brill, 2016), as well as a contributor to the Biblical Archaeology Review, Lexham Bible Dictionary (Lexham Press, 2016), and The Routledge Encyclopedia of Ancient Mediterranean Religions (Routledge, 2015).

Currently, he is preparing his next book, Charity and the Gospels in Light of Ancient Judaism (under contract with Fortress Press), Brill’s Online Encyclopedia of the Dead Sea Scrolls, and “Bethsaida (Tsaidan) in Early Rabbinic Literature.”