Blake A. Jurgens, PhD, is a book editor and humanities scholar based out of Grand Rapids, Michigan, specializing in academic and adult nonfiction.
He started his career as an editorial assistant with the Princeton Theological Seminary Dead Sea Scrolls Project. Then he branched off into freelance editorial work for academic presses, including Baker Academic, Eerdmans, Penn State University Press, and Society of Biblical Literature Press.
More recently, Blake has also helped a number of individual authors cultivate their manuscripts for publication through author coaching, substantive editing, copy editing and proofreading, fact checking, and manuscript critique. He has a particular interest in working on manuscripts dealing with philosophical, theological, and general inspirational topics.
Blake received his BA in philosophy and classics from Calvin University, his MDiv from Princeton Theological Seminary, and his PhD in religious studies from Florida State University, specializing in ancient religion and history. Blake has taught on religion topics at the university level for several years, and his research has been published by academic presses and peer-reviewed journals. Blake was a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Munich in 2013–4 and is proficient in several ancient languages (e.g., Akkadian, Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Syriac, Ethiopic) as well as German and French.