Mark D. Given earned a PhD in Religious Studies from The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and joined the faculty of Missouri State University in 1998. He primarily teaches both undergraduate and graduate course in the area of biblical studies, while also teaching courses on theories of religion and religion and science. He served as the program director of MSU's Religious Studies graduate program for many years. He is the author of Paul's True Rhetoric: Ambiguity, Cunning, and Deception in Greece and Rome (Trinity Press International 2001), and the editor of and contributor to Paul's Unbound: Other Perspectives on the Apostle (SBL Press 2022).