Biography
Poythress lived on his family farm in Madera, California until he was five years old and later moved with his family to Fresno, California. In 1981, he was ordained as a teaching elder in the Reformed Presbyterian Church, Evangelical Synod, which merged into the Presbyterian Church in America. He married his wife Diane in 1983, and they have two sons, Ransom and Justin.
He earned a B.S. in Mathematics from California Institute of Technology (1966), where he was a Putnam fellow in 1964, and a Ph.D. in mathematics from Harvard University (1970). He studied linguistics and Bible translation at the Summer Institute of Linguistics at the University of Oklahoma in 1971 and 1972, and he enrolled at Westminster Theological Seminary, earning an M.Div. (1974) and a Th.M. in apologetics (1974). He then received an M.Litt. in New Testament from University of Cambridge (1977) and a Th.D. in New Testament from the University of Stellenbosch, Stellenbosch, South Africa (1981).
He taught mathematics at Fresno State College (now California State University, Fresno) for a year after earning his Ph.D. in the subject, and he taught linguistics at the Summer Institute of Linguistics in the summers of 1974, 1975, and 1977. He has taught New Testament at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia since 1976.
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