Ben F. Meyer

Benjamin Franklin Meyer (1927–1995) was a theologian and scholar of religion. Born in November 1927 in Chicago, Illinois, he studied with the Jesuits, his studies taking him to California, Strasbourg, Göttingen, and Rome, where he received his doctorate from the Pontifical Gregorian University in 1965. He taught briefly at Alma College and at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley before joining the faculty at McMaster University in 1969, where he taught in the religious studies department until 1992. Meyer's areas of specialization included the historical Jesus, and the hermeneutics of Bernard Lonergan. He authored several important monographs over his 30-year career. He died on 28 December 1995 in Les Verrières, Switzerland.

Meyer's works deeply influenced major scholars, such as Bruce Chilton, N. T. Wright, John P. Meier and Ben Witherington III.