Walters, Brent S

Lecturer AY-B, Humanities

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Education

Master of Arts, Boston University, Early Church History, 1986
Bachelor of Arts, San Jose State University, Philosophy, 1980

Bio

Brent Walters has amassed one of the largest private libraries in the country concerning the ante-Nicene era and Second Temple period; its holdings number are over 20,000 volumes. Some works in this collection date from the dawn of printing, while others are editio princeps of early patristic literature. The scope of the library is limited to a thousand years, roughly 500 BCE to 500 CE, the age of Socrates through the rise of Christianity under the Roman Empire. Walters has traveled throughout the United States and Europe to gather these resources, and he is frequently featured in the press. He first attracted the mainstream media in January 1993 when a cover story appeared in the San Jose Mercury News. Knight-Ridder syndicated the article, and it was republished in numerous newspapers around the country.

He hosted a popular television show that was broadcasted on over two hundred stations throughout the country and on thousands of cable systems around the world. The series first aired in August 1993 and retained high ratings for three years. At that time he was interviewed in the Christian Science Monitor and began writing an occasional column for the Mercury. The feature was entitled Origins of Belief, and it continued for eight years while he taught at the university. Walters founded the Centre for Early Christian Studies, authored two books, and conducted seminars primarily in the Bay Area during this period. The local press continued to conduct interviews with him, and to date he has appeared in over two hundred newspapers, magazines, and books.

KGO radio was number one in its market for thirty consecutive years when Walters was hired to host GodTalk in March 2008; the show ran for six successful years, garnered thousands of listeners, and aired roughly 300 broadcasts. He took to the Internet in 2015, and this resulted in additional seminars and the founding of a college. He maintained his position at the university and outlined his efforts with Didache.com in January of that year; its primary subject matter remains early Jewish and Christian history and literature. The library continues to grow and is currently housed in a large estate constructed in 1868. Hundreds of volumes and excerpts from this collection have been scanned for preservation and distribution.

Brent Walters has been the director of the Centre for Early Christian Studies since 1996 and curator of the Ante-Nicene Archive since 1980. He has lectured continually at San Jose State University since 1992, and for the Religious Studies, Liberal Studies, Humanities, and History departments he has instructed: Bible History and Literature, Church History, Catholic and Protestant Tradition, Death, Dying, and Religion, Topics in the Bible, Senior Seminar, Introduction to Liberal Education, and Writing in the Humanities (100W). Off campus he teaches Koine Greek, early Christian literature, church history, and courses on Greco-Roman history and culture. He is currently archiving a vast on-line library consisting of thousands of out-of-print journal articles.