Oliver Glanz is a professor of Old Testament at the SDA Theological Seminary at Andrews University. He is the son of a Dutch mother, who had to flee from Indonesia during the post-WWII independence wars, and of a German father, who escaped the Russian-occupied “zone” of eastern Germany. Oliver grew up in Bavaria and studied Theology and Philosophy at different universities (Seminar Schloss Bogenhofen, Universität Erlangen, Free University of Amsterdam, Leiden University). He received his graduate degrees at the Free University of Amsterdam (interdisciplinary PhD in Old Testament/Hermeneutics/Linguistics, MA in Philosophy) and is an active member of the Eep Talstra Center of Bible and Computing.
He is married to Karen, a Brazilian with a Japanese mother and a Portuguese father, who immigrated to the Netherlands during the Brazilian economic collapse in the early 1990ies. Karen and Oliver have two girls Migdali (12) and Yonati (9).
Oliver is involved in several international research projects that work with ancient Bible-related texts (Dead Sea Scrolls, Codex Leningradensis, Tischendorf, etc.) seeking to digitize and linguistically analyze them. In 2014 he won the Digital Humanities Awards with his team.
Presently he is working on a commentary on Jeremiah and Lamentations for the new SDA Bible Commentary. He is an endurance athlete doing ultra-marathons (50mi, 100k, 100mi). But his foremost passion is high-altitude alpinism. He has solo climbed several 4000m peaks in the alps and did a winter ascend (solo) to the summit of the Matterhorn in 2018.
Current favorite book: “When the Gods are silent” by Cornelis Miskotte
Current favorite album: “Thanks for the Dance” by Leonard Cohen post-mortum
Current favorite running shoe: “One 2.5” by Altra Running
Current favorite food: “Sieglinde potatoes with avocado crème” by Karen Rodrigues
Current favorite dream: “Denali” by Alaska