Sung Min Park

Dr. Sung Min Park is a scholar who integrates biblical studies and historical sociolinguistics in his research. He received his Ph.D. from McMaster Divinity College and has analyzed the multilingual environment, code-switching, linguistic ideology, and social identity in early Christianity—especially in the Book of Acts and the Gospel of John—as well as the broader sociolinguistic ecology of the Greco-Roman world. His monograph, The Prestige Language of Christianity in the Book of Acts, was published in 2025 by Brill as part of the Linguistic Biblical Studies series, offering a sustained historical sociolinguistic approach to the biblical text.

Dr. Park has collaborated with historical sociolinguists on a range of interdisciplinary publication projects. His journal article, “Sacred Language Ideology for Nomina Sacra between the Second and Fifth Centuries CE,” was published in the Journal of Historical Sociolinguistics (De Gruyter), and his book chapter, “Rethinking the Language Policy for the Eastern Provinces of the First-century Roman Empire,” was published in Language Ideology, Language Policy, and Practices (Peter Lang, 2024). He regularly presents his research at international conferences such as SBL, ETS, HiSoN, NARNiHS, and LSA. His work continues to explore the intersection of language ideology, prestige language, indexicality, multilingualism, and theories of social identity in the interpretation of biblical texts.

Dr. Park currently serves as a Research Fellow at McMaster Divinity College, where he focuses on research and writing. He is co-authoring Historical Sociolinguistics for Biblical Studies (forthcoming in 2026 from T&T Clark, in the Linguistics for the New Testament Greek series) and co-editing Sociolinguistics and the New Testament (Brill, 2026), both in collaboration with Stanley E. Porter. He is also contributing two chapters to the Handbook of Sociolinguistics for Biblical Studies, edited by Jonathan M. Watt and Xue Xiaxia (T&T Clark, Linguistics for the New Testament Greek series, 2026).