Greetings! My name is Benjamin Giffone; I wear several vocational hats, including pastor, missionary, chaplain, church music leader, and seminary professor.
This website includes both my academic writings and my occasional thoughts on culture, biblical studies, worship & liturgy, sports, politics, and pretty much everything else. [I, not any organization or institution with which I am associated, am solely responsible for the content of this site.]
Teaching | Education | Research | Ministry | Missions | Personal
Teaching
I currently teach in the MTh/PhD program in Old Testament a seminary in South Asia (name withheld for security reasons).
I served on the faculty of LCC International University in Klaipėda, Lithuania, from 2014–2022. From 2017 to 2021 I also served as the inaugural director of the Center for Faith and Human Flourishing.
I have also taught courses at other institutions, including Cairn University, Eastern University, the Evangelical Bible Institute (Lithuania), Zaporizhzhia Bible Seminary (Ukraine), and Baptist Theological Seminary (Singapore).
Education
I took undergraduate (2006) and master’s (2009) degrees in Biblical Studies from Cairn University (formerly Philadelphia Biblical University), with a brief stop at Westminster Theological Seminary along the way.
From 2011 through 2014, I completed a graduate program in Old Testament at Stellenbosch University under the supervision of Louis C. Jonker, receiving my Master of Theology (MTh) degree in 2012 and my PhD in 2014.
I have been a research associate in the Department of Old and New Testament at Stellenbosch’s Faculty of Theology since 2014, and I continue to receive research funding from the South African Department of Higher Education and Training through this affiliation. [There are no theological restrictions or other stipulations on my research as a condition of this funding.]
My current research project is a biblical theology of the imago Dei in comparative perspective. I also have a study on the book of Numbers in preparation.
A monograph based on my dissertation was published by Bloomsbury T&T Clark in the LHBOTS series in 2016. For this monograph I was a recipient of the 2021 Manfred Lautenschlaeger Award for Theological Promise.
My second monograph, Storymaking, Textual Development, and Varying Cultic Centralizations: Gathering and Fitting Unhewn Stones (FAT II/142, Mohr Siebeck, 2023), focused on the portraits of Northern Israelite and Benjaminite cultic sites, in comparison to the laws of the Pentateuch pertaining to cultic centralization.
My third book, My Salvation Is Close At Hand: Isaiah 56–66 for the Church After Christendom (Wipf & Stock, 2025), commends the study of this third section of Isaiah to a modern Western audience (endorsements).
My fourth book, A House Divided: Technology, Worship, and Healing the Church After COVID (Libertarian Christian Institute Press, 2025), offers a perspective on the technologizing of worship and discipleship before and during the COVID-19 pandemic, and evaluates the church’s handling of the pandemic (endorsements).
My articles have been published in international journals such as Vetus Testamentum, Biblische Zeitschrift, Scandinavian Journal of Old Testament, European Journal of Theology, and Neotestamentica. I have also written on the textual history of the OT and its implications for Christian theology, the NT’s use of the OT, and role of technology in the church and society.
Click here to see my Curriculum Vitae.
Ministry
I am a teaching elder (pastor) in the Presbytery of the Alleghenies of the Evangelical Presbyterian Church, transferring in 2022. I have served at several churches, currently as transitional pastor at Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Erie, PA. I also worked as a part-time hospice chaplain in Western PA for a year-and-a-half.
During college, seminary and grad school, I served as part-time music director at three different churches in Eastern PA, most recently at Lansdale Presbyterian Church from 2011 to 2014.
In 2018 I was ordained as a minister by the Heritage Presbytery of ECO: A Covenant Order of Evangelical Presbyterians. In addition to my ministry as a teacher of the scriptures at LCC, I served part-time as pastorinis bendradarbis (pastoral associate) at the Klaipėda Free Christian Church (2020–2022).
Personal
I’m a native North Jerseyan transplanted (twice) to Pennsylvania…lived in Eastern Europe for six years…Old Testament professor, ordained minister, liturgist…husband to Corrie…father to Daniel and Elizabeth…eldest sibling to three, uncle to six….I enjoy reading about history and economics, and watching and playing most sports.
From 2008 to 2014, I played all manner of instruments with three moody, broody Italian brothers in a band called The No Longer (click here and here if you don’t believe me).
Most importantly, I’m a sinner, loved by God for Jesus’s sake, learning to find my identity in Christ alone and to live by the Holy Spirit.
think hard, think well 