Rev Dr Bruno Clifton OP
Vice-Regent of Studies, Director of Studies for Visiting Students, Moderator, Official Fellow, Lector
Fr Bruno is Vice-Regent of Blackfriars Hall and Director of Blackfriars’ Visiting Students programme. He is an Associate Member of the Faculty of Theology and Religion. He also teaches Scripture and Biblical Languages.
Fr Bruno completed his Licence in Sacred Scripture at the Pontifical Biblical Institute in 2014 (under the supervision of Prof Peter Dubovsky and Prof Dominik Markl) and his Doctorate at the University of Cambridge in 2018 (under the supervision of Dr Nathan MacDonald). His doctoral work took a socio-anthropological approach to the Book of Judges that argued for an identity-preference for family as the texts’ social background prior to comparable allegiances to tribe or nation.
His research interests include the socio-cultural contextualization of biblical texts, in particular the Hebrew Bible’s Former Prophets, and the contribution of critical biblical scholarship to theology. He is interested in the methodology of biblical interpretation, how it might provide a rigorous and historically informed foundation for using the Bible in questions of theology and religion, taking account of archaeological and epigraphical data.
Fr Bruno co-leads the Lagrange Project for Scripture and Historical Theology with Blackfriars research Fellow Phillip Lasater
Books:
- 2022 – Family and Identity in the Book of Judges. Leiden: Brill: Schöningh.
Peer-Reviewed Articles:
- 2026 “Have You Called Us Here to dispossess us? (Judg 14:15): Settlement Rivalry and Samson’s Riddle Challenge” VT 76 314–335
- 2023 – “A Stranger in my Own Land: can a Sojourner Belong to the Household?” The Biblical Annals 13 367-383
- 2021 – “Discerning the Literal Sense: Bringing Together Biblical Scholarship and Dogmatic Theology” NV 19 251-67
- 2014 – “What if Israel was God’s stubborn and rebellious son?” ZAR 20 115-126
For further details visit Fr Bruno’s Academia page.
Email: vice.regent@bfriars.ox.ac.uk