Morna Dorothy Hooker (born 19 May 1931) is a British theologian and New Testament scholar.
Morna Hooker was born in Beddington on 19 May 1931.[1] She went to Bristol University where she graduated with first class honours in theology, and then earned her MA.[2] She worked for a PhD degree at the University of Manchester, then at the University of Durham.
She became a Research Fellow in Arts at Durham.[3] In 1961 she was elected into a temporary, then permanent lectureship at King's College London.[3] In 1970, she left for a lectureship in Theology at University of Oxford, with a fellowship at Linacre College, Oxford.[3]
She was Lady Margaret's Professor of Divinity within the University of Cambridge from 1976 to 1998,[3] becoming the first woman to hold the Cambridge degree of D.D.,[3] and as of 1998 is Professor Emerita. She holds honorary doctorates from the University of Bristol (1994)[3] and the University of Edinburgh (1997).[4]
She remains a Fellow of Robinson College, having joined the fellowship as a founding Fellow in 1977,[3] and is also a Fellow of King's College London (1979)[3] and an honorary Fellow of Linacre College, Oxford.[5]
Hooker was the first woman to be elected President of the Studiorum Novi Testamenti Societas, an international society of New Testament scholars (1988).[3] She was the first woman to become a joint editor of The Journal of Theological Studies.[3]
She has been an active Methodist local preacher.[2] She has also been Chair of the Wesley House Trustees.[6]
Her scholarly interests lie in early Christian thought in the setting of Jewish biblical inheritance.[6] Her research focuses in particular on the Epistles of Paul and the Gospel according to Mark, as well as on Christology.[2] Her theological standpoint on soteriology is Arminian.[7]
She is the widow of fellow theologian and Methodist minister the Rev. David Stacey, and is sometimes styled Morna Hooker-Stacey.[3]
In 2004 she was awarded the Burkitt Medal for Biblical Studies by the British Academy.[8][9]
