Dr. Lamar E. Cooper, Sr. Executive Vice President & Provost The Criswell College

Since 1997, Dr. Lamar E. Cooper, Sr. has served as Executive Vice President and Provost at Criswell College in Dallas, Texas. He joined the College faculty in 1978 as Professor of Hebrew and Old Testament and was appointed the first Dean of the Graduate Program in 1980. In 1989 he was elected Associate Director of the, then, Christian Life Commission (now Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission) joining Dr. Richard Land who had just been elected as Executive Director. In 1995 Lamar was elected Vice President of Academic Affairs and the Dean of the Faculty at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Kansas City, Missouri, where he served until he returned to The Criswell College in April 1997.

In his first tour of duty at the College he started the archeological program that linked the college with Hebrew University of Jerusalem and traveled extensively in the Middle East compiling a catalogue of archaeological photographs used by the College in its biblical backgrounds classes. Most recently he has been on the staff of the Qumran Plateau Excavations working with Dr. Randall Price, Oren Gutfeld and Yaakov Kalman. His writing includes the New American Commentary vol. 17 Ezekiel, published by Broadman and Holman, contributor to The Criswell Study Bible, Believer’s Study Bible and Baptist Study Bible and soon to be published Apologetics Study Bible. He was an exegetical consultant for the NavPress translation of The Message done by Eugene Peterson. He has written more than a dozen Sunday school quarterlies for Lifeway and has published more than 90 articles in periodicals and scholarly journals. In addition he also has served as pastor of churches in Louisiana and Texas for more than twenty years.