About Michael Kelly
After a brief career in cardiology research, Mike began his study of Hebrew and text linguistics in 1991 under Alan Groves at Westminster Seminary. With his background in the sciences, Mike was captivated by his Hebrew studies on the convergence of technology and linguistics.
From 1992 to 1997 he served as the technological administrator at the Westminster Hebrew Institute (re-named the J. Alan Groves Center for Advanced Biblical Research in December 2006) and worked on the early stages of the Hebrew morphology from 1992-1998.
Mike continued working with Professor Groves when he joined the faculty at Westminster Seminary. From 1999 to 2016, he taught Old Testament at the Seminary. During that time, he supervised the Hebrew instruction at the seminary, and designed technology-assisted resources for beginning students in Biblical Hebrew.
As students advanced, the Morphology became increasingly important for grammatical and exegetical work – for example quickly checking verbal stems of morphemes encountered in the text, and using observations from the Morphology to ask questions of standard English Bible translations. Exercises such as finding all “disjunctive waw’s” in a particular book (Jonah), using a feature for which the Morphology was crucial, demonstrated to students the exegetical payoff of the linguistic work that underlies the Groves Center’s work.
In subsequent years he has worked with Biblica (the International Bible Society) and as the Director of Personnel and Training at an international humanitarian agency in the Philadelphia area. In 2010, he and two former colleagues edited a volume of essays in memory of their friend and colleague Alan Groves, Eyes to See, Ears to Hear, for which he wrote the preface; it can be found here. He and his wife live in Philadelphia and have three adult children.