Prof. Glen L. Thompson is Academic Dean and Professor of New Testament and Historical Theology at Asia Lutheran Seminary in Hong Kong. A graduate of Wisconsin Lutheran Seminary, he served as a Lutheran pastor before enrolling in Columbia University where he earned M.A., M.Phil. and Ph.D. degrees (1990) in ancient history. Since that time Dr. Thompson has served in numerous academic and administrative positions, including ten years as Professor of History at Wisconsin Lutheran College, before accepting his current position in Hong Kong in 2012.
Dr. Thompson’s early research interests focused on the intersection of the Roman Empire and the early Christian church. His doctoral thesis did pioneering work on the the earliest surviving papal letters from the post-Constantinian period, the first fruits of which appeared in 2015 as The Correspondence of Pope Julius I (Catholic University of America Press, 2015). He also developed a scholarly website on the early church, www.fourthcentury.com, which continues to serve some 10,000 users per month. In the past decade, together with Dr. Mark Wilson, he has developed the Anatolian Road project, and innovative venture that combines GPS technology, aerial photography, and examination of on-the-ground remains to more accurately map the Roman Road system of Anatolia, and the routes of St. Paul in particular.
During the past two decades, since his first teaching visits to Hong Kong, Dr. Thompson has increasingly delved also into the history of the earliest Christian presence in China, the Tang-era Jingjiao. While initially evaluating the history of scholarship on this mission church, he has increasingly been involved with developing critical texts and a reference system for the surviving Chinese documents of the period that can serve as a basis for future scholarly discussion.