Donald W. Parry is a professor of the Hebrew Bible and the Dead Sea Scrolls, Brigham Young University, and holds the Abraham O. Smoot Professorship. As a BYU professor, Parry teaches students how to read and translate the Hebrew Bible and Dead Sea Scrolls, including the more difficult biblical works, such as the book of Isaiah.
Parry has authored or edited more than forty books and written more than one-hundred articles, which have appeared in encyclopedias, various journals, conference proceedings, and other venues. He was written widely on the books of Isaiah, for both scholarly and general audiences. Many of his publications deal with the Isaiah Dead Sea Scrolls, including his recently published Exploring the Isaiah Scrolls and Their Textual Variants (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2020, 509 + pages, including 5 appendices), which deals with all of the Dead Sea Scrolls copies of Isaiah. He has also published works on the books of Samuel, ancient temples and their significance, and various topics dealing with the Hebrew Bible. For the scholarly community, Parry treats various topics, such as paleography, lexical meanings, orthography, ancient scribal practices, textual affiliations, and corpus-based examination of linguistic features.
While most of his books are directed to the academic community—scholars, universities, and libraries—many are written for the Latter-day Saint community. These include:
175 Temple Symbols and Their Meanings(Deseret Book)
Angels: Agents of Love, Light, and Power(Deseret Book)
Understanding Isaiah (Deseret Book)
A New Translation of Isaiah: Based on Ancient Texts and Scrolls (FAIR)
Search Diligently the Words of Isaiah (RSC and Deseret Book)
Parry has been a member of the International Team of Translators of the Dead Sea Scrolls since 1994; he also served as a member of the board of directors of the Dead Sea Scrolls Foundation, Jerusalem, Israel (2012–2024). His professional memberships and affiliations include the International Organization for the Study of the Old Testament, Society of Biblical Literature, National Association for Professors of Hebrew, and American Academy of Religion.