James S. Ackerman :::
James S. Ackerman
Graduated in 1951
Inducted in 1996
A 1951 graduate, James S. Ackerman, Th.D. has taught Religious Studies at Indiana University
in Bloomington since 1969, establishing IU as one of the leading centers in the world for the
literary study of the Bible. Dr. Ackerman's field of expertise is Hebrew Bible, or the Old
Testament, a field that has required him to work with ancient Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Aramaic,
Ugaritic, Akkadian, and Arabic texts, in addition to modern French and German. He has developed
four-week seminars for more than 650 high school teachers and college professors from across the
country, helping them incorporate the Bible and related modern literature into their curriculum. He
has authored and edited more than one dozen books and articles and helped secure grants and
fellowships for the study and advancement of the literary study of the Bible. Named as one of the
four top teachers at IU, he has also received four separate teaching awards. Alongside teaching,
community service has played an integral role in Dr. Ackerman's professional career. He is the 1995
recipient of the W. George Pinnel Award for outstanding service to Indiana University and a
Distinguished Service Award winner on the Bloomington campus. He received a bachelor's degree
in English from Northwestern University, earned an Exchange fellowship to Hamburg University in
Germany in 1956, received an M.Div. from the Union Theological Seminary in New York and a Th.D.
from the Harvard University Divinity School in 1966.