K. K. Yeo

K. K. Yeo
Born	1960 (age 63–64) Borneo Malaysia
Occupation	New Testament scholar
Known for	Cross-cultural hermeneutics
Academic background
Alma mater	Northwestern University, Garrett–Evangelical Theological Seminary, St. Paul Bible College
Academic work
Institutions	Garrett–Evangelical Theological Seminary, International Leadership Group, Alliance Bible Seminary

K. K. Yeo
Traditional Chinese	楊克勤
Simplified Chinese	杨克勤
Transcriptions Standard Mandarin Hanyu Pinyin Yang Keqin

K. K. Yeo or YEO Khiok-Khng (simplified Chinese: 杨克勤; traditional Chinese: 楊克勤; pinyin: Yang Keqin, born 1960), is a Malaysian-born Chinese American scholar of the New Testament. He is known for his work in cross-cultural hermeneutics.

Biography

An ethnic Chinese, Yeo was born and raised in a small coastal village called Kampong Teriso in Borneo Sarawak (three years before Sarawak joined the federation of Malaysia on 16 September 1963). His father fled Chaozhou China in 1937 because of civil war and the Second Sino-Japanese War. Facing the vicissitudes of a life in a world of terror and violence, he turned to Confucian ethics and Pauline theology.

He attended Chinese primary schools in Kuching, and became a follower of Christ in an Anglican high school (St. Thomas’ Secondary School, founded in 1848). He identifies his background as “a diasporic Chinese, a hybrid Chinese Christian identity” in multi-cultural Malaysia that shapes his interests in the critical engagement between the Bible and cultures.

Yeo completed a BA in Biblical and Theological Studies from St. Paul Bible College in 1987, an MDiv from Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary in 1990, and a PhD in New Testament, Classical and Rhetorical Studies at Northwestern University under Robert L. Jewett (2013–2020), Reginald E. Allen (1931–2007), and Michael Leff (1941–2010) in 1992.

Career: Theologian, educator, academic

Teaching and mentoring

Yeo was a professor of New Testament at Alliance Bible Seminary in Hong Kong from 1992 to 1996, before becoming Harry R. Kendall Professor of New Testament at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary, where he has taught since July 1996. He has lectured widely in Asia, Israel/Palestine, and the US, serving the global church by preparing academic, ecclesial, and community leaders.

Yeo is an affiliate faculty member at the Department of Asian Languages and Cultures at Northwestern University Evanston (since 2015), and a Distinguished Visiting Professor at Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China (since 2012), a visiting professor of Peking University, Peking Normal University, Huaqiao University and Fudan University in China (since 2006). He currently serves as one of the international consultants at Christian Art Center, Peking Normal University, Beijing (since 2015); a dissertation mentor of the PhD and MTh programs at Australian College of Theology (since 2018). He was the academic director of the International Leadership Group (ILG) at Peking University (2005–2016), mentoring the MA in Christian Studies and PhD in Biblical Studies programs, matriculating almost one thousand graduates at Peking University. He also served on the graduate school faculty of Northwestern University, Evanston (1997–2008) for the joint Garrett-Northwestern PhD program.

Research and cross-cultural hermeneutics

Inducted as elected member of Studiorum Novi Testamenti Societas (SNTS: Society of New Testament Studies) in 1999, Yeo is also a full member of the Society of Biblical Literature (since 1987) and the Chicago Society of Biblical Research (since 1996). He has served numerous societies, journals, and institutions as an academic committee member, research fellow, and advisory consultant.

Yeo is best known for his work advocating for cross-cultural biblical hermeneutics, as found in his dissertation, later published as Rhetorical Interaction in 1 Corinthians 8 and 10: A Formal Analysis with Implications for a Cross-Cultural, Chinese Hermeneutic and his second English book, What Has Jerusalem to Do with Beijing: Biblical Interpretation from a Chinese Perspective. His approach includes the comparison and contrast of biblical and Chinese classical texts, in order to look for similar and unique themes or events as points of mutual critical engagement—"reading the Bible culturally and reading classical cultural texts biblically.”

Collaboration and majority world theologies

Early in his career in 1994, Yeo and Philip P. Chia co-founded a Chinese-English peer-reviewed theological journal, Jian Dao: A Journal of Bible and Theology, and its two series: the Jian Dao Dissertation Series; Bible and Hermeneutic series.

While working with university colleagues in China, Yeo has co-edited with Liang Hui at Zhejiang University (Hangzhou) a 21-volume series called “The Biblical Library 圣经图书馆,” published by East China Normal University Press (2009–2018)—besides co-supervising PhD dissertations at Zhejiang University. Yeo served as the executive editor, with the series editor Zhao Dunhua of Peking University, of a 15-volume series called the “Peking University Christian Cultures Series 北京大学基督文化研究系列” (2005–2018).

Along with Gene L. Green and Stephen T. Pardue, Yeo is also a series editor of the six-volume "Majority World Theology" series, published by Langham Publishing, and republished in omnibus edition through IVP Academic, which offers examples of six theological loci (Christology, Trinity, pneumatology, ecclesiology, soteriology, and eschatology) explored from a variety of global perspectives.

Together with Gene L. Green, Yeo co-edits the "Crosscurrents in Majority World and Minority Theology" series published by Cascade Books, which offers theological loci such as land, migration, identity, which are prominent in the majority world but often find no place in North Atlantic discussions.

Yeo also co-edits with Melanie Baffes the "Contrapuntal Readings of the Bible in World Christianity" series, published by Pickwick Publications, which celebrates biblical interpretations that engage in contextual theology while taking part in the polyphonic conversation that is global Christianity.

Seven volumes in the series have been published:

(1) Text and Context: Vernacular Approaches to the Bible in Global Christianity, edited by Melanie Baffes

(2) What Has Jerusalem to Do with Beijing? Biblical Interpretation from a Chinese Perspective, second edition, by K. K. Yeo

(3) Chinese Biblical Anthropology: Persons and Ideas in the Old Testament and in Modern Chinese Literature, by Cao Jian

(4) The Cambridge Dictionary of Christianity, two-volume set, edited by Daniel Patte

(5) Cross-Textual Reading of Ecclesiastes with the Analects: In Search of Political Wisdom in a Disordered World, by Elaine Goh

(6) An Ethic of Hospitality: The Pilgrim Motif in Hebrews and the Refugee Problem in Kenya, by Emily Choge

(7) The Diffused Story of Footwashing in John 13: A Textual Study of Bible Reception in Late Imperial China, by Yanrong Chen.

Yeo has edited The Oxford Handbook of the Bible in China (900+ pages and 43 images), as he collaborated with 48 authors writing 47 chapters on the translation, expression, interpretation, and reception of the Bible in China. In the introduction chapter, “Creative Transformation, the Bible, and China,” he writes: “The Handbook displays the significant role of the Bible over thirteen centuries of Chinese history and Chinese cultures to a degree that cannot be erased. The Handbook might well provoke a twenty-first-century question: How will the ways that the world has invested the Bible in China come to be reciprocated through the export of a culturally enlivened Chinese Bible to invest in creative transformations across the world beyond the Middle Kingdom?”

Publishing and world Christianity

Yeo’s recent works have a special emphasis on the tasks of building nations, transforming local communities, fulfilling the ideals of culture, saving individuals from chaos, meaninglessness, injustice, and moving them toward shalom and beauty. To that end he has launched two new e-publications:

(1) Since 2018 Yeo has co-edited (with Jili Sun of Northwestern University) an online series in Chinese called ars et canonica 艺术与经典, an imprint of BeholdCreation on Smashwords. Nine titles have been published thus far to promote Christian aesthetics.

(2) Yeo collaborates with Justin T. T. Tan (director of the Centre for the Study of Chinese Christianity and senior lecturer at Melbourne School of Theology, Australia), an online series in Chinese called the Shenzhou Biblical Commentary 神州圣经释义, as they encourage emerging Chinese scholars to write Bible commentaries.

Since 2020 Yeo serves as the Vice-president of Global Faculty Initiative (GFI) (Terence C. Halliday serves as the President and, together with Donald Hay, co-convenors) “to promote the integration of Christian faith and academic disciplines by bringing theologians into conversation with scholars across the spectrum of faculties in research universities worldwide.”

Honors

Yeo was awarded the John Wesley Fellowship (1991–1993) and the Dempster Fellowship (1990–1992) for his doctoral research in classical Greco-Roman literature and New Testament studies, and the work as later published as Rhetorical Interaction in 1 Corinthians 8 and 10 (E. J. Brill, 1995).

Yeo was also awarded research grants from the following groups: (1) AAR Small Grant on “Eschatology of Three-Self Churches and Utopianism of Cultural Revolution” (1998); (2) Lilly Faculty Fellowship by the Association of Theological Schools) on “Pauline Eschatology and Millenarian Hope: Interaction between Three-Self Churches and Maoist Utopianism, and its Implications to the Church Today Facing the End and Beginning of the Millennia” (1999–2000); (3) Society of Biblical Literature Research Grant and Technology Grant Award on “Pauline Eschatology and Millenarian Hope” (1999); (4) the Henry Luce III Fellows in Theology on “Nationalism, Ethnicity, and Freedom: A Confucianist-Pauline Hermeneutic of Pistis (in Galatians) and Chung-shu 忠恕 (in Analects)” (2003–2004); (5) Summer Stipend Program, Louisville Institute on project: “The Wisdom of James and Zhuangzi: Toward a Chinese-American Christian Spirituality and Theology” (2008).

Yeo was inducted into several academic honors societies, including Studiorum Novi Testamenti Societas (1999) and Delta Epsilon Chi honor society of The Association for Biblical Higher Education (2007). With Wang Xiaochao, he was appointed honorably as the co-director of the Center for Classical Greco-Roman Philosophy and Religious Studies, Institute for Ethics and Religious Studies (IERS), Tsinghua University, Beijing (2015–2020), and now the distinguished classical studies expert and professor 国际人材引智计划下的特聘的古典家专家、教授under the “School-level 111 Base” International Talent Introduction Program at Beijing Minzu University (2018–2023).