Paul Joyce completed doctoral studies at Oxford University, where he was Kennicott Hebrew Fellow. His first post was as Lecturer and subsequently Director of Studies at Ripon College Cuddesdon, a Theological College of the Church of England. He then moved to the University of Birmingham as a Lecturer and subsequently to Oxford, where he was University Lecturer in Old Testament and Fellow of St Peter’s College. He was appointed as Samuel Davidson Professor of Old Testament/Hebrew Bible at King’s in 2012.

Paul Joyce served as Chair of the Oxford Theology Faculty Board 2008 - 2011 and as Head of Department at King’s 2013 - 2017. He was President of the Society for Old Testament Study for its centennial year of 2017. He was appointed Professor Emeritus upon retirement from King’s in 2025.

Research interests

• Prophecy in Ancient Israel, and especially the books of Ezekiel and Amos
• Lament, and especially the book of Lamentations
• The Exilic Age of Ancient Israel
• The Reception of the Bible in Judaism and Christianity
• Psychological Interpretation of the Bible

Professor Joyce is not currently taking on new PhD students.

Expertise and public engagement

Professor Joyce is involved in public engagement (and consultancy) on the Bible in the modern world, Christian-Jewish and Christian-Muslim Relations, and migration and hospitality in biblical and intercultural contexts.

Selected publications

Divine Initiative and Human Response in Ezekiel, JSOT Supplement Series, 51 (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1989).

‘Lamentations and the Grief Process: A Psychological Reading’, in Biblical Interpretation: A Journal of Contemporary Approaches, 1/3 (1993), 304-320.

Ezekiel: A Commentary, Library of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Studies, 482 (New York and London: T&T Clark / Continuum, 2007; paperback, 2009).

With Diana Lipton, Lamentations through the Centuries, Wiley-Blackwell Bible Commentaries (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013).

‘Hope, Denial, and the Integration of Loss: Reading Lamentations in the Wake of Trauma’, in Alexandra Grund-Wittenberg and Maike Schult (eds), Readings of Trauma: Hermeneutical Perspectives on Biblical and Modern Trauma Narratives, Studies in Cultural Contexts of the Bible, 15 (Leiden: Brill Schöningh, 2025), 251-266.

King's College London, Samuel Davidson, and the Scope of Biblical Studies Lecture

Hebrew Alphabet sung to Mozart