Richard E. Averbeck (PhD, Annenberg Research Institute, Dropsie College) is Director of the PhD in Theological Studies and Professor of Old Testament and Semitic Languages at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. Richard (Dick) has been teaching for 36 years in graduate theological education, the last 22 and up to the present at TEDS, and previously at Grace Theological Seminary and Dallas Theological Seminary. In 1987 he received his PhD in ancient Near Eastern Studies and Biblical Hebrew at the Dropsie College for Hebrew and Cognate Learning (now known as the Annenberg School of Judaica at the University of Pennsylvania) for his work on the Gudea Cylinders, a long Sumerian temple building hymn (from about 2100 BC). He has published numerous articles in the fields of ancient Near Eastern Studies, especially Sumer and Sumerian literature, the relationship between ancient Near Eastern Studies and the Old Testament, and the Old Testament Law, especially the ritual law and priestly theology of the Old Testament. He is the main editor and a contributor to Life and Culture in the Ancient Near East (Bethesda, Maryland: CDL Press, 2003). Richard lives in Pleasant Prairie, Wisconsin, with his wife of 42 years, Melinda. They have two grown sons and two grandsons.