Biographies

Harold W. Attridge
The Lillian Claus Professor of New Testament
Yale Divinity School

Harold Attridge is a leading scholar of Jewish and Greek literature in relation to the New Testament and early Christianity. Prior to joining the Yale faculty, he served as the dean of the faculty of arts and letters at Notre Dame. Attridge currently serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Biblical Literature and has authored six books, including Hebrews: A Commentary on the Epistle to the Hebrews and Eusebius, Early Christianity and Judaism. He has been the recipient of fellowships from the Harvard Society of Fellows, the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Guggenheim Foundation. He holds degrees from Boston College, Cambridge University, and Harvard University.

Allen D. Callahan
Associate Professor of New Testament,
Harvard Divinity School

An ordained Baptist minister, Allen Callahan's areas of interest include Greek and Coptic languages, biblical literature, ancient African Christianity, and African-American biblical interpretation. He has taught at Boston College, Holy Cross College, and Andover-Newton Theological School. Callahan's honors include awards from the Goethe Institute and the Lilly Foundation. He received his B.A. in religion from Princeton University, and his M.A. and Ph.D. in the study of religion from Harvard University.

Elizabeth Clark
John Carlisle Kilgo Professor of Religion and Director of
the Graduate Program in Religion Duke University

An authority in the fields of women in the early church, Professor Clark is the author of numerous articles and eleven books, including Women in the Early Church, and most recently, Augustine on Marriage and Sexuality. She is the past president of the North American Patristic Society, the past president of the American Academy of Religion and the American Society of Church History, the senior editor of Church History, and the co-editor of the Journal of Early Christian Studies. The recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and other honors, Clark was appointed a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1997.

Shaye I.D. Cohen
Samuel Ungerleider Professor of Judaic Studies and Professor of Religious Studies
Brown University

Dr. Cohen is the author or editor of eight books and over fifty articles on the history of Judaism: rabbinic law, Josephus, and early Judaism in relation to Hellenism and early Christianity. Among Cohen's honors and awards are: Croghan Bicentennial Visiting Professor in Religion, Williams College; Louis Jacobs Lecturer, Oxford Center for Post-Graduate Hebrew Studies, Oxford University; and Elected Fellow of the American Academy for Jewish Research. He has also served as Shenkman Professor of Jewish History and Dean of the graduate school at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York. Cohen's publications include Josephus in Galilee and Rome: His Vita and Development as a Historian, and he is currently working on two projects: The Birth of Jewishness and Why Aren't Jewish Women Circumcised? Professor Cohen received his Ph.D. in ancient history from Columbia University.

John Dominic Crossan
Professor Emeritus of Religious Studies
DePaul University

John Dominic Crossan has written eighteen books on the historical Jesus and earliest Christianity. Three of his most recent books, The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant (1991), Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography (1994), and Who Killed Jesus: Exposing the Roots of Anti-Semitism in the Gospel Story of the Death of Jesus (1995), have been national religious bestsellers for a combined total of nineteen months. In March, Harper San Francisco will publish Crossan's next book, The Birth of Christianity. Crossan joined the faculty of DePaul University, Chicago, in 1969 and remained there until 1995. He was co-chair of the Jesus Seminar from 1985 to 1996 as it met in twice-annual meetings to debate the historicity of the life of Jesus in the Gospels. Crossan received a doctorate of divinity from Maynooth College, Ireland, in 1959, and did post-doctoral research at the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome from 1959 to1961 and at the Ecole Biblique in Jerusalem from 1965 to 1967.

Paula Fredriksen
William Goodwin Aurelio Professor of the Appreciation of Scripture
Boston University

Specializing in the history of early Christianity, Paula Fredriksen is author of two books and over a dozen articles on early Christianity. Among her numerous awards and honors are a National Endowment for the Humanities grant for University Professors and a Lady Davis Visiting Professorship of Ancient Christianity at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Her second book, From Jesus to Christ: The Origins of the New Testament Images of Jesus, received the Yale Press Governors' Award for Best Book in 1988. Fredriksen holds a Ph.D. in history of religions, ancient christianity, and Greco-Roman religions from Princeton University and a theology diploma from Oxford University. She served as historical consultant for the BBC production The Lives of Jesus and was a featured speaker and historical consultant for U.S. News and World Report's "The Life and Times of Jesus."

Holland Lee Hendrix
President of the Faculty
Union Theological Seminary

A specialist in the archaeological and social world of the apostle Paul, Holland Lee Hendrix is currently president of the faculty and the Henry Sloan Coffin Professor of Divinity at Union Theological Seminary in New York City. He has previously taught at MIT, the Harvard Divinity School, Haverford College, and Barnard College, where he also served as acting associate dean of the faculty. President Hendrix received his bachelor of arts degrees from Columbia University and both his master of divinity and master of sacred theology from Union. In 1984, he received the degree of doctor of theology from the Harvard Divinity School. He is the author of numerous articles on Christianity and the general editor (with Helmut Koester) of Archaeological Resources for New Testament Studies, published by Trinity Press International.

Helmut Koester
John H. Morison Professor of New Testament Studies and Winn
Professor of Ecclesiastical History Harvard Divinity School

A leading authority on the Gospels in early Christianity, Helmut Koester has served as editor of the Harvard Theological Review since 1975. A former president of the Society of Biblical Literature, Koester is also a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Among his numerous publications are books and articles in both German and English, including Trajectories Through Early Christianity (with James M. Robinson). His two-volume Introduction to the New Testament and Ancient Christian Gospels are seminal works in the field. Koester studied at the University of Marburg where he received his doctorate in 1954; he was ordained to the Lutheran ministry in 1956, and began teaching at Harvard Divinity School two years later.

Wayne A. Meeks
Woolsey Professor of Biblical Studies
Yale University

One of the foremost authorities on the social world of the Apostle Paul, Wayne A. Meeks has wide expertise in the origins of Christianity and in the interpretation of the New Testament. His books include: The Origins of Christian Morality and The First Urban Christians. Among his numerous honors are the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship, the National Endowment for the Humanities Senior Fellowship, and the Kent Fellowship. An ordained minister in the Presbyterian church, Meeks served as a campus minister in Memphis, Tennessee and at Yale, and has taught at Dartmouth College and Indiana University. At Yale since 1969, Meeks served intermittently as chairman of the department of religious studies from 1972 to 1983, and he was director of the division of the humanities from 1988 to 1991. Meeks was president of the Society of Biblical Literature in 1985, holds an honorary doctorate from the University of Uppsala, and is Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy. Meeks earned his Ph.D. in New Testament studies from Yale University.

Eric Meyers
Professor of Religion and Archaeology
Duke University

Eric M. Meyers is one of the leading archaeologists of the early Jewish and Christian period of Israel's history. He is currently professor of religion and archaeology at Duke - University. Meyers has served as the president of the American Schools of Oriental Research and of the Annenberg Research Institute, and he edited the five volume Oxford Encyclopedia of Archaeology in the Near-East. His books include Archaeology, The Rabbis, and Early Christianity and, with his wife Carol L. Meyers, the Anchor Bible Commentary on the Prophets Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi. He has participated in excavations in Israel at Masada; and he directed excavations at Meiron, Kherbet Shema, and Sepphoris. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in the field of archaeology and biblical studies.

Elaine H. Pagels
The Harrington Spear Paine Foundation Professor of Religion
Princeton University

Elaine Pagels is the author of numerous articles and five books and is well known for her work in translating the Nag Hammadi Library. Pagels is the author of The Gnostic Gospels, which received the National Book Critics Circle Award and The National Book Award and has been published in ten foreign languages. The recipient of the MacArthur Prize, she has also received awards from the Rockefeller Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton.

L. Michael White

One of the nation's foremost religion scholars, L. Michael White has a special interest in the social world of early Christians and Jews in the Greco-Roman period. His forthcoming book, Images of Jesus: The Shape of the Gospels and the Making of Tradition, deals extensively with the development of the gospels in early Christian history. White's distinguished career includes academic appointments at Yale University, Oberlin College, and University of Texas at Austin, where he currently serves as professor of classics and director of the religious studies program. White has published six books and over thirty articles and book reviews on Christianity and has received numerous awards and honors, including two National Endowment for the Humanities research fellowships. He is active as a program leader in the Society of Biblical Literature and is currently series editor for the Archaeology and Biblical Studies Series. He has served on the editorial boards of The Journal of Early Christian Studies and Biblical Archaeologist. White has served on archaeological excavations in Israel and also has done extensive field research in Italy, Greece, and Turkey. He received his Ph.D. and master of divinity degrees from Yale University.