Henk Jan de Jonge (°1943) is emeritus Professor of New Testament exegesis and Early Christian Literature at the University of Leiden. He held the chair from 1991 to 2006. Previously, he was assistant professor of New Testament studies at Amsterdam University (1970-1984) and Leiden (1985-1990) and had an endowed chair for the history of Biblical studies in early modern times at Leiden (1987-1991).
After his graduation in Classics at Leiden (1969), his earliest research focused on the textual transmission of the early Christian, Greek pseudepigraphon the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs. He succeeded in establishing the genealogy of all Greek manuscripts and ancient versions of this work. This paved the way for its new critical edition in 1978 (ed. M. de Jonge). His articles on the subject were collected in a volume of Studies on the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, published in 1975 (ed. M. de Jonge).
De Jonge’s doctoral research and several of his later publications centered on the New Testament edition of Erasmus of Rotterdam (1516), and especially on the controversy this edition provoked with a Spanish critic, Diego López de Zuñiga. His Ph.D. dissertation (1983) included a critical edition of Erasmus’ first Apologia against Zuñiga (1521). De Jonge keeps stressing the point that, for Erasmus and his contemporaries, the main component of his New Testament edition was not the first printed edition of the Greek text which it contained, but Erasmus’ new Latin translation.
In the context of lively, sometimes heated theological debates in ecclesiastical circles in the Netherlands, De Jonge contributed several publications on such thorny issues as the resurrection of Jesus, the atonement brought about by Jesus’ death and resurrection, and the tradition-historical origins of the belief in Jesus’ Second Coming.
The Jonge’s more recent research (2001-) centers on various aspects of the history of early Christian ritual: the rise of the Sunday as the Christian feast-day, the socio-historical backgrounds of the early Christian gathering, and especially the origins and early development of the Eucharist or Lord’s Supper.
De Jonge has been a member of the editorial board of the quarterly Novum Testamentum and of the monograph series “Supplements to Novum Testamentum” for almost thirty years (1978-2007). During more than ten years he was editorial secretary and managing editor of both the journal and the monograph series (1978-1988). He is editor of the series “Studia in Veteris Testamenti Pseudepigrapha” and “Pseudepigrapa Veteris Testamenti Graece”, both published by Brill (1996-). He is also a member of the editorial board of the critical edition of the Opera Omnia of Erasmus (1977-), published under the auspices of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences; member of the Editorial Board of the Collected Works of Erasmus in English, published by Toronto University Press (1984-); and supervisory editor of The Correspondence of Joseph Scaliger (2008-2012; eds P. Botley & D. van Miert).
De Jonge has served the Faculty of Theology of Leiden University as Dean during five years (1994-1996; 2002-2005). In 2001, he was one of the two presidents who chaired the fiftieth Colloquium Biblicum Lovaniense. From 2012 to 2013 he was President of the international Society for New Testament Studies, during its annual meetings at Leuven and Perth. In his presidential address, delivered at Leuven, he argued that the book of Acts agrees with the gospel of Luke in dating Jesus’ Ascension at the end of the Sunday of Jesus’ resurrection, not on the 40th day after Easter.
De Jonge’s latest publication is his critical edition of five apologetic writings of Erasmus against the attacks of his Spanish opponents Zuñiga and Carranza; this volume was published in February 2015.