Tryggve Mettinger

Tryggve Mettinger (born 1940 in Helsingborg, dead 2023) is a retired professor of Hebrew Bible, at Lund University, Sweden, where he taught from 1978 to 2003.

Life and work
Between 1960 and 1978, Mettinger studied various subjects, such as Semitics, Egyptology, Assyriology, and Comparative Literature, at the Universities of Lund and Copenhagen. He later earned his doctorate in 1971, worked as docent (Reader) of Old Testament exegesis, and subsequently was appointed professor at Lund University, a capacity in which he served until his retirement in 2003. He has had visiting professor positions in the U.S., Israel, the Netherlands, and South Africa. He was awarded the Thuréus prize (humanities) 2008 by the Kungl. Vetenskaps-Societeten in Uppsala. Between 1978 and 2003, he was one of the editors of the monograph series Coniectanea Biblica, Old Testament Series. Mettinger served as an expert consultant for the official Swedish Bible translation committee, whose work led to the creation of the Bibel 2000 translation. He is a member of various learned societies, such as the Royal Swedish Academy of Letters, History and Antiquities, Stockholm and the (British) Society for Old Testament Study (honorary member). He has also been a guest lecturer at many universities and delivered papers at many conferences devoted to Old Testament study, Assyriology and Comparative Religion. He has described his epistemological attitude towards studying religious texts using the following words: "I try to draw a line [of demarcation] between what I believe I know as a scholar and what I know I believe as a Christian."

In 2011, the Festschrift Enigmas and Images was published in his honor. That volume also includes an almost complete bibliography of Mettinger's publications up to that point. Previously, another Festschrift dedicated to him was also published as a volume of Svensk Exegetisk Årsbok. In 2015, a volume collecting a number of his scholarly essays was published by Eisenbrauns under the title Reports from a Scholar's Life; the book also includes an English language version of Mettinger's farewell lecture when leaving his professorship at Lund University (a lecture that has given the book its title) — summarizing much of his scholarly career. The lecture can also be read online.