Louis Jonker

Louis Jonker teaches Old Testament/Hebrew Bible in the Faculty of Theology of Stellenbosch University in South Africa. He specialises in biblical hermeneutics and biblical literature that originated in the late Persian and early Hellenistic periods (ca. 400–300 BCE). He has done extensive research on the books Chronicles and Ezra-Nehemiah, and he tries to correlate the growth of these books with the formation, editing, and finalisation of other biblical corpora in the same period (especially, the Pentateuch and the book Ezekiel). He has published widely on these topics, including the monograph Defining All-Israel in Chronicles. Multi-levelled Identity Negotiation in Late Persian-period Yehud published by Mohr Siebeck in the FAT series in 2016, and I & II Chronicles published by Westminster John Knox in the Old Testament Library series in March 2026. He has been a fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (Bonn) on several occasions since 2000, and he is the recipient of the Georg Forster Award from the same foundation for the period 2024-2026. He is married to Anita, and has two adult sons and daughters-in-law.