Gleason Archer Jr. received a PhD in Classics from Harvard University, an LL.B from Suffolk Law School and a Bachelor of Divinity from Princeton Theological Seminary. Early in his career, Archer served as assistant pastor at Park Street Church in Boston. In 1948 he became Professor of Biblical Languages at Fuller Theological Seminary in California and in 1965 Professor of the Old Testament and Semitics at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Illinois, where he later became an emeritus faculty member in 1989. He spent the remainder of his life researching, lecturing and writing.