About David Bivin David Bivin, 62, is founder and director of Jerusalem Perspective, an independent Christian ministry in Jerusalem, Israel. Known affectionately as "JP," Jerusalem Perspective disseminates the results of David's research, and the research of his colleagues.  To accomplish its aims, Jerusalem Perspective utilizes print, online, audio and video formats.  David is a member of the Jerusalem School of Synoptic Research, a think tank made up of Jewish and Christian scholars dedicated to better understanding the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke). In the early 1980s, before the School became a legal entity, he coined its name. For most of the years since 1985, when the School was registered in Israel as a nonprofit research institute, David served as the School's director and chairman of its Executive Board. A native of Cleveland, Oklahoma, U.S.A., David has lived in Israel since 1963, when he came to Jerusalem on a Rotary Foundation Fellowship to do postgraduate work at the Hebrew University. He remained at the Hebrew University until 1969 studying Jewish history and literature under professors Menahem Stern, David Flusser, Shmuel Safrai and Yechezkel Kutscher, and archaeology under professors Yigael Yadin, Yohanan Aharoni and Michael Avi-Yonah. During those six years, and for many years afterwards, he also studied privately with Jerusalem scholar-pastor Robert L. Lindsey. During the years 1970 to 1981 David directed the Hebrew Language Division of the American Ulpan, and the Modern Hebrew Department of the Institute of Holy Land Studies (later renamed Jerusalem University College) on Mt. Zion. He is author of the video language course Aleph-Bet: A Beginner's Introduction to Reading and Writing Hebrew, and co-author with Robert Goldfarb of Fluent Biblical and Modern Hebrew, a home-study language program. In 1982 David coauthored Understanding the Difficult Words of Jesus.  This was the first attempt to write a non-scholarly account of the pioneering work of Robert Lindsey, David Flusser and their students in Jerusalem. The book has now been translated into German, French, Japanese, Spanish, Portuguese and Polish.  For twelve years (1987-1999) David published Jerusalem Perspective, a print magazine that presented the life and teachings of Jesus in their original cultural and linguistic settings. Active in Israeli life, David served as a sergeant in an Israeli army reserve infantry unit from 1974 to 1991. He is a member of Jerusalem's Narkis Street Congregation, where he served as an elder under the pastorate of the late Dr. Lindsey. He and his wife Josa (nee Keosababian), a native Californian, met and were married at the Narkis Street Congregation in 1969. Their son, Natan, was born in Jerusalem in 1970.  Today, the Bivins live in the village of Maoz Zion, near Jerusalem.