Andrew C. Skinner was a professor of ancient scripture at Brigham Young University when this was written. Born and raised in Colorado, he earned his BA degree in history from the University of Colorado. He then earned an MA degree from the Iliff School of Theology in Jewish studies and a ThM degree from Harvard in biblical Hebrew. He did graduate work at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He earned a PhD from the University of Denver in Near Eastern and European history specializing in Judaism. 

Skinner taught for four years at Ricks College and has filled three assignments at the BYU Jerusalem Center for Near Eastern Studies, where he served as a faculty member and taught Near Eastern studies. He has served as director of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship, dean of Religious Education, and chair of the Department of Ancient Scripture. He is the author or coauthor of over one hundred publications, including Jerusalem: The Eternal City; New Testament Apostles Testify of Christ; Discoveries in the Judaean Desert: The Unidentified Fragments from Qumran Cave 4 (an analysis of all the unidentified Hebrew and Aramaic Dead Sea Scroll texts); Scriptural Parables for the Latter Days; and Gethsemane.

He served a full time mission for the LDS Church from 1970 to 1972 in the California Central Mission and served as branch president at the Missionary Training Center in Provo. He has also served as a bishop in Colorado and Utah and as a member of the Correlation Evaluation Committee of the Church.