Marion Taylor

Professor of Old Testament, Graduate Director

Marion Taylor grew up in Toronto and began her academic studies at the University of Toronto. Questions about how to negotiate the worlds of faith and the academic study of the Bible pushed her to pursue an MA in Near Eastern Studies and a Master of Divinity degree. Ultimately her journey took her to Yale University, where her interest in the history of the interpretation of the Bible was solidified. Under the direction of Brevard Childs, she wrote her doctoral thesis on the history of Old Testament studies as they developed at Princeton Seminary from 1812 to 1929.

At Yale in a class on apocalyptic literature, Marion met her husband Glen.  Glen was from Calgary, but they returned to Toronto to teach at Wycliffe College. With Glen as residence dean, they lived at the College while raising three children and continuing to teach.

Marion’s interests in the Old Testament are broad. She teaches a variety of courses, including Introduction to the Old Testament, Jeremiah, Psalms, Old Testament Theology, Reading Scripture through the Ages, Bad Boys and Bad Girls in the Bible, the Books of Esther and Ruth, and Women Interpreters of the Bible. Most recently she has focused on forgotten women interpreters of the Bible.

Marion began her search for forgotten women interpreters of the Bible in 2002, when a student asked if she could write a paper on a woman interpreter from the 19th century. This question has taken Marion on the greatest adventure of her life, as she and a team of students and scholars have unearthed the names and writings of hundreds of women throughout history. In 2006 she and Heather Weir co-published a collection of texts from 50 forgotten women interpreters on the stories of women in Genesis:  Let her Speak for Herself: Nineteenth-century Women Writing on Women in Genesis. Marion and Christiana de Groot of Calvin College co-edited Recovering Nineteenth-Century Women Interpreters, a volume of essays published in the SBL's symposium series. Marion's award-winning book, Handbook of Women Biblical Interpreters: a historical and biographical guide (Baker, 2012), provides an exciting new resource for those interested in the forgotten voices of women interpreters of the Bible. Women of War, Women of Woe, a collection of 19th-century women’s writings on the women in Joshua and Judges, co-authored with Christiana de Groot, was published in 2016; and in November 2016, Women in the Story of Jesus: The Gospels through the Eyes of Nineteenth-Century Female Biblical Interpreters, a collection of 19th-century women's writings on the women in the gospels which Marion co-authored with Heather Weir, was published by Eerdmans.

Marion completed a commentary on Ruth and Esther, published in the Fall of 2020 in Zondervan’s Story of God Series. She is very excited that the book that she co-authored with Joy Schroeder, Voices Long Silenced: Women Biblical Interpreters through the Centuries, which features more than 400 women biblical interpreters, was recently published by WestminsterJohn Knox. Marion is currently working on a book on Paul through the eyes of women from the sixteenth to the long nineteenth century.

In her spare time, Marion loves to read, write, and walk her dog at the family cottage in northern Ontario.

• Christiana DeGroot and Marion Ann Taylor, Women of War Women of Woe:Joshua and Judges through the Eyes of Nineteenth-Century Female Biblical Interpreters (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2016) 288 pp.
• Marion Ann Taylor and Heather E. Weir, Women in the Story of Jesus: The Gospels through the Eyes of Nineteenth-Century Female Biblical Interpreters (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2016)
• Interview on WikiGodPod podcast: https://faithstrongtoday.com/markgroleau/marion-taylor.
• "The Gospel of Ruth: an evangelical feminist reading."  Keynote Address at the Canadian Evangelical Theological Association’s 2014 fall regional conference, Wycliffe College, Toronto, on Saturday, October 18, 2014. (video)
• Marion Ann Taylor, ed. Handbook of Women Biblical Interpreters: A Historical and Biographical Guide. Grand Rapids: Baker, 2012. Pp. 592.
• Marion Ann Taylor and Heather E. Weir, Let Her Speak for Herself: Nineteenth-Century Women Writing on Women in Genesis. Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2006. Pp. 495.
• Christiana DeGroot and Marion Ann Taylor, eds. Recovering Nineteenth-Century Women Interpreters of the Bible. SBL Symposium Series Volume 38, ed. Christopher Matthews. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2007. Pp. 265.
• “The Psalms outside the Pulpit: Applications of the Psalms by Women of the Nineteenth Century,” in Herbert W. Bateman IV and D. Brent Sandy, eds. Interpreting the Psalms for Teaching and Preaching. St. Louis, MO: Chalice, 2010. Pp. 219–32, 284–86.
• “Hidden Voices: Toward a More Inclusive History of the Interpretation of the Bible,” in CSBS Bulletin 72 (2012-13) 1-22.
• “Commentary on the Book of Ezekiel,” in Catherine Clark Kroeger and Mary J. Evans, eds. The IVP Women’s Bible Commentary.  Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2002. Pp. 396-421.
• Marion Ann Taylor, The Old Testament in The Old Princeton School. Distinguished Dissertation Series. San Francisco: The Edwin Mellen Press, 1992. Pp. 380.