Dr. Lyons joined the faculty of CIU’s Seminary and School of Counseling in 2022 and teaches Old Testament and Hebrew courses. He is a fellow of the Center for Pastor Theologians and a member of the Evangelical Theological Society. Before coming to Columbia, he served for over a decade in pastoral ministry at a Presbyterian church (EPC) in Cincinnati, Ohio, while also serving as an adjunct professor at Hebrew Union College, Xavier University, and the University of Cincinnati. Dr. Lyons and his wife are joyfully raising five energetic children.

Education

• PhD, Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion
• MPhil, Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion
• MDiv, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary
• BA, Cedarville University

Selected Publications

Articles and Book Chapters

• “A Famine Motif in the Book of Amos: Amos 8:11–14 and Ancient Near Eastern Innovations of Hunger, Drought, and Famine.” Bulletin for Biblical Research 33 (2023): 136–61. 
• “Bodies of Hunger: Hunger as an Indicator of Social Instability in the Bible and Ramesside Egypt.” In The Body: Lived, Cultured, and Adorned. Essays on Dress and the Body in the Bible and Ancient Near East in Honor of Nili S. Fox. Edited by Kristine H. Garroway, Christine E. Palmer, and Angela Roskop Erisman. Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press, 2022.
• “Requests for Food-provisions in RS 94.2523 and RS 94.2530: Reconsidering PAD.MEŠ as Metal Ingots.” Altorientalische Forschungen 46 (2019):15–21. 
• “Review of A Covenant with Death: Death in the Iron Age II and Its Rhetorical Uses in Proto-Isaiah, by Christopher B. Hays. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2015. xx+445.” Near Eastern Archeological Society Bulletin 2016. 
• “Holiness.” Edited by John D. Barry and Lazarus Wentz. The Lexham Bible Dictionary. Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2012–.

Presentations

• “The Famine of the Word of God in Amos 8:11–13: Innovations of Famine in the Ancient Near East.” Evangelical Theological Society, Annual Meeting, November 16, 2020, Providence, RI (Online).
• “Late Bronze–Early Iron Age Texts and the Hebrew Bible in Light of Modern Anthropological Indicators of Famine.” Society of Biblical Literature, Annual Meeting, November 17, 2018, Denver.

Recent Blog Articles

• “The Book of Ruth: Hoping in God’s Loyal Love.” The Center for Pastor Theologians. November 10, 2022. www.pastortheologians.com/articles/2022/11/10/hoping-in-gods-loyal-love.
• “Go to Funerals.” For the Church. April 12, 2022. ftc.co/resource-library/blog-entries/go-to-funerals/.