David M. Gunn

Gunn studied at the University of Melbourne, the University of Otago, and Newcastle University.

He has served as a professor of Religious Studies at the University of Sheffield and at Columbia Theological Seminary.

In collaboration with biblical scholar David J. A. Clines, Gunn made the University of Sheffield a leading institution in literary readings of the final form of the biblical text. Followers of this approach are sometimes referred to as the "Sheffield school".^[2] According to Ken Stone, Gunn's 1978 work, The Story of King David: Genre and Interpretation, has become "one of the most influential early attempts at a 'literary' approach to the Hebrew Bible."^[3]

Gunn has enjoyed a successful association with Danna Nolan Fewell, with whom he has co-authored several articles and three books: Compromising Redemption: Relating Characters in the Book of Ruth; Gender, Power, and Promise: The Subject of the Bible's First Story; and Narrative in the Hebrew Bible. Fewell and Gunn represent a postmodern literary approach to biblical literature.^[4][5]