James R. Edwards is an American New Testament scholar and minister of the Presbyterian Church.

In 1997 he joined the faculty at Whitworth University

Whitworth University

Whitworth University is a private Christian liberal arts college located in Spokane, Washington, United States, that offers Bachelor's and Master's degrees in a variety of academic disciplines. It is affiliated with the Presbyterian Church...

, Spokane where he is currently Bruner-Welch Professor of Theology. In 2009 he advanced a "controversial" theory that the synoptic Gospels

Synoptic Gospels

The gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke are known as the Synoptic Gospels because they include many of the same stories, often in the same sequence, and sometimes exactly the same wording. This degree of parallelism in content, narrative arrangement, language, and sentence structures can only be...

 are partly dependent on the Gospel of the Hebrews

Gospel of the Hebrews

The Gospel of the Hebrews , commonly shortened from the Gospel according to the Hebrews or simply called the Hebrew Gospel, is a hypothesised lost gospel preserved in fragments within the writings of the Church Fathers....

. Edwards also rejects the modern division, by Schneemelcher and others, of the Jewish-Christian Gospels

Jewish-Christian Gospels

Jewish-Christian Gospels are non-canonical Gospels used by various Jewish Christian groups that were declared heretical by other members of the Early Church. They are mentioned by Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Eusebius, Epiphanius and Jerome...

' fragments into three or more separate lost Gospels.

Works

• Gospel of Luke Pillar New Testament Commentary Series (Eerdmans).
• The Hebrew Gospel and the Development of the Synoptic Tradition (Eerdmans, 2009)
• Is Jesus the Only Savior? (Eerdmans, 2005)
• The Divine Intruder (NavPress, 2000).

Commentaries

• Commentary on Hebrews in Renovare Study Bible (Harper, 2005)
• Commentary on Romans in New Interpreter's Study Bible (Abingdon, 2003)
• Commentary on The Gospel of Mark, PNTC (Eerdmans, 2002)
• Commentary on Romans, NIBC (Hendrickson's 1992).