Craig L. Blomberg

Craig L. Blomberg (b. 1955) is an American New Testament scholar, longtime Distinguished Professor of New Testament at Denver Seminary. He earned a BA at Augustana College, an MA at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, and a PhD at the University of Aberdeen under I. Howard Marshall, with a dissertation on the parables. His scholarship combines historical-critical method with an evangelical conviction that the Gospels are substantially reliable historical sources. His best-known monograph, The Historical Reliability of the Gospels (1987; expanded 2007), surveys redaction, form, and source criticism to argue that scholarly tools, properly used, support rather than undermine Gospel trustworthiness. Subsequent works extended this case to John (The Historical Reliability of John's Gospel) and to broader questions of canon and inerrancy (Can We Still Believe the Bible?). Blomberg has also written widely on parables, Jesus and money, and New Testament introduction. He is a frequent contributor to evangelical apologetics, often cited alongside scholars such as N. T. Wright, Darrell Bock, and Richard Bauckham. Critics from more skeptical historical-critical quarters—e.g., Bart D. Ehrman and Dale C. Allison—dispute his confidence in Gospel historicity and his harmonizing tendencies, while some conservative evangelicals (notably Norman Geisler) once criticized him for granting too much to genre flexibility in Matthew. Blomberg occupies a moderate evangelical middle position between strict inerrantism and skeptical historiography.