Rolf Johan Furuli is a professor emeritus in Semitic languages at the University of Oslo; he retired in 2011. Furuli started his studies of New Babylonian chronology in 1984. He became a magister artium in 1995 and doctor artium in 2005. Based on his studies, Furuli has defended the religious views of Jehovah's Witnesses while a member of the denomination, including their view that Jerusalem was destroyed by the Babylonians in 607 BC rather than the broadly recognised dating of its destruction in 587 BC. In a 2004 issue of Journal for the Study of the Old Testament, Lester L. Grabbe, professor of Hebrew Bible and Early Judaism at the University of Hull, said of Furuli's study: "Once again we have an amateur who wants to rewrite scholarship.... F. shows little evidence of having put his theories to the test with specialists in Mesopotamian astronomy and Persian history." In 2005, Furuli defended his doctoral thesis suggesting a new understanding of verbal system of Classical Hebrew. In a review of the thesis, professor Elisabeth R. Hayes of Wolfson College, Oxford, wrote: "While not all will agree with Furuli's conclusions regarding the status of the wayyiqtol as an imperfective form, his well-argued thesis contributes towards advancing methodology in Hebrew scholarship." He has translated a number of documents from Semitic languages and Sumerian into Norwegian. In 2020, Furuli published a book entitled My Beloved Religion – and the Governing Body in which he maintains that the denomination's core doctrines and interpretations of biblical chronology are correct, but challenges the authority of the Jehovah's Witnesses' leadership. Subsequently, he was disfellowshipped from the denomination.
1999 – The Role of Theology and Bias in Bible Translation with a special look at the New World Translation of Jehovah's Witnesses
2000 – Modern models and the study of dead languages Motskrift NTNU, Trondheim pp. 83–86
2001 – The study of new religious movements with a stress on the mental health of Jehovah's Witnesses Tidsskrift for Norsk Psykologforening, 2, pp. 123–128.
2001 – Gilgamesh and Atrahasis two Babylonian Heroes
2002 – Science and Bible translation – "Christianizing" and "mythologizing" of the Hebrew text of the Bible
2002 – The NWT's translation of the Hebrew verbal system with particular stress on waw consecutive, in Tony Byatt and Hal Fleming's Your Word is Truth—The Fiftieth Anniversary of the New World Translation
2003 – Assyrian, Babylonian, Egyptian, and Persian Chronology Compared with the Chronology of the Bible, Volume 1: Persian Chronology and the Length of the Babylonian Exile of the Jews
2005 – The verbal System of Classical Hebrew An Attempt to Distinguish Between Semantic and Pragmatic Factors in L. Ezard and J. Retsø Current Issues in the Analysis of Semitic Grammar and Lexicon I pp. 205–31.
2006 – A New Understanding of the Verbal System of Classical Hebrew – An attempt to distinguish between pragmatic and semantic factors
2006 – Sumerian Writings
2007 –The Neo-Babylonian Chronology and the Cuneiform Tablet VAT 4956 in Forschung-Bibel-Artefakte. pp. XIV-XVIII
2007 – Assyrian, Babylonian, Egyptian, and Persian Chronology Compared with the Chronology of the Bible, Volume 2: Assyrian, Babylonian and Egyptian Chronology
2008 – Assyrian, Babylonian, Egyptian, and Persian Chronology Compared with the Chronology of the Bible, Volume 1: Persian Chronology and the Length of the Babylonian Exile of the Jews, revised edition
2009 – How do Jehovah's Witnesses think? A Witness describes the faith, in H.K. Ringnes and H.K. Sødal, eds Jehovahs Witnesses An interdisciplinary Study
2011 – The Role of Theology and Bias in Bible Translation With a Special Look at the New World Translation of Jehovah’s Witnesses, Second edition, Stavern, Norway: Awatu Publishers.
2012 – Assyrian, Babylonian, Egyptian, and Persian Chronology Compared with the Chronology of the Bible, Volume 1: Persian Chronology and the Length of the Babylonian Exile of the Jews, Second edition
2012 – Assyrian, Babylonian, Egyptian, and Persian Chronology Compared with the Chronology of the Bible, Volume 2: Assyrian, Babylonian and Egyptian Chronology, Second edition
2017 – When Was the Book of Daniel Written? A Philological, Linguistic, and Historical approach
2018 – The Tetragram – Its history, Its use in the new Testament, and its pronunciation, Part One
2018 – Are Jehovah's Witnesses False Prophets?: A Thorough Investigation with Rebuttal, William Kelly and Rolf Furuli
2019 – Can We Trust the Bible? With Focus on the Creation Account, the Worldwide Flood, and the Prophecies
2020 – The fallacy of prophetic perfect – With translation of verses from the Prophets
2020 – My Beloved Religion — and the Governing Body
