After serving for over 26 years as the Middle East Director of BEE World Ministries, Dr. Tanner now serves as the Vice President and Academic Dean of the Arab Center for Biblical Studies (www.arableaders.org). He and his wife lived for five years in the Middle East, while he was the Academic Dean and Professor of Hebrew and Old Testament Studies at the Jordan Evangelical Theological Seminary (JETS). Originally from Abilene, Texas in the United States, he graduated from Texas Tech University in 1972 with a B.S. in Industrial Engineering. During his senior year as an engineering student, he received Jesus Christ as his personal savior. Upon graduation from Texas Tech, he served for three years as a chaplain's assistant in the U. S. Army.

Upon completion of his military duties, he went on to earn the ThM (Master of Theology) degree with honors from Dallas Theological Seminary in 1981, majoring in Hebrew and Old Testament studies. In the summer of 1984, he did further studies at the American Institute of Holy Land Studies in Jerusalem (now Jerusalem University College). In 1990 he was awarded the PhD degree in Middle Eastern Studies with a concentration in Hebrew literature and culture from the University of Texas at Austin. His doctoral dissertation was entitled "Textual Patterning in Biblical Hebrew Narrative; A Case Study in Judges 6-8." As a doctoral student, he was chosen to receive the Foreign Language Area Studies Fellowship (FLAS Fellowship) awarded by the United States Dept. of Education.

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