NEWS PROVIDED BY
The Foundation for Pentecostal Scholarship
March 22, 2023

TULSA, Okla., March 22, 2023 /Christian Newswire/ -- The Foundation for Pentecostal Scholarship (TFFPS) has conferred its annual "Awards of Excellence." TFFPS co-founder and president, Robert W. Graves, announced the awards during the 2023 Conference of the Society for Pentecostal Studies convening at Oral Roberts University. One book award, two article awards, and one lifetime achievement award were conferred.

Timothy Laurito, an Assemblies of God pastor and educator, received the 2023 book award for Speaking in Tongues: A Multidisciplinary Defense. Dr. Laurito presents a five-pronged defense of glossolalia through Lukan theology, Pauline theology, Practical theology, Social Science and Historical perspectives. The book is published by Wipf and Stock Publishers (126 pp, $20.00 pb).

Receiving the 2023 article awards were Dr. Rebecca Basdeo Hill for "Dismembering Israel: The Downward Spiral of the Abuse of Women in the Book of Judges" and Dr. Matthias Wenk, "The Kingdom of Peace in Luke-Acts and What Glossolalia Has to Do with It," both published in the Journal of Pentecostal Theology.

This year the Foundation conferred its first Lifetime Achievement Award to physicist-theologian Paul Elbert. He worked mainly in interpretive methods and narrative-rhetorical backgrounds with respect to Luke-Acts, including Greco-Roman education and the fulfillment of prophecy theme. He was a member of the Steering Committee for the Formation of the Luke-Acts Section within the Society of Biblical Literature and a member of the New Testament Section within the Tyndale Fellowship for Biblical and Theological Research. He served as chairperson of the charismatic themes in Luke-Acts five-year dialogue within the Evangelical Theological Society and served on the editorial board of the Asian Journal of Pentecostal Studies. He was the founding editor of the Journal for Biblical and Pneumatological Research.

Elbert served as editor of two festschrifts for American Old Testament scholars, Essays on Apostolic Themes (in honor of Howard Ervin) and Faces of Renewal (in honor of Stanley Horton); his writings have appeared in Theologische Zeitschrift, Catholic Biblical Quarterly, Journal of Biblical Literature, Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft, Journal of Theological Studies, Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, Evangelical Quarterly, Trinity Journal, Refleks: Med Karismatisk Kristendom i Fokus, Pneuma: The Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies, and the Journal of Pentecostal Theology. His essays have been recently compiled and published in Essays in Biblical Studies and Luke's Rhetorical Compositions; The Lukan Gift of the Holy Spirit was published as a monograph. He is also the author of Pastoral Letter to Theo: An Introduction to Interpretation and Women's Ministries.

The Foundation for Pentecostal Scholarship was formed in 2005 with the singular goal of advancing biblical scholarship within the global Pentecostal family. "In supporting the convergence of the flame of Spirit and the flame of knowledge," commented Graves, "we hope to help advance today's move of the Holy Spirit throughout the world.

"We also encourage the publishing of Pentecostal scholarship by recognizing the best works of Pentecostal biblical or academic scholarship, by seeking out essays, theses, dissertations, conference papers, foreign publications, and out-of-print works worthy of wider circulation and assisting their authors in procuring it, and by subsidizing the publication, promotion, or dissemination of academic works that advance the Pentecostal faith."

More information about the foundation is available at its Web site: www.tffps.org.

SOURCE The Foundation for Pentecostal Scholarship

CONTACT: Robert Graves, 678-773-5556