Meet the Faculty

J. Albert Harrill

• Professor, Department of Religious Studies
• Adjunct Professor, Department of History
• Adjunct Professor, Jewish Studies Program
• Adjunct Professor, Department of Classical Studies
  

Education

• Ph.D. at University of Chicago, 1993

Contact Information

Background

• Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellowship. Münster, Germany (2002-2003)
• National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Stipend (1999)
• Former Director, Ancient Studies Program, College of Arts and Sciences

My training and background are in New Testament, early Christianity, and Roman social history. My interest in these areas began when I was an undergraduate religious studies major in the context of a large state university, with foundational work in primary source languages, classical civilization, and comparative religion. My graduate work emphasized interdisciplinary research in New Testament, patristics, and classical studies, fields that traditionally have not been combined.

My overarching research agenda is to reconstruct the Hellenistic Jewish and Greco-Roman environment of early Christianity in order to interpret the New Testament writings in their ancient context. I approach the New Testament less from the idea of canon and more from the wider historical perspective of classical culture and Roman imperial society. Unlike other scholars who separate early Christianity from classical culture and compare the two "social worlds" to see how they are alike and how they differ, I study early Christianity as fully a part of and implicated in the Greco-Roman world. Slavery is a case study in this larger research endeavor.

As a biblical scholar, I can contribute to modern moral debates since I study ancient slaves, marginalized people in antiquity, and do social history that aims at recovering knowledge about those groups pushed to the margins of society, people often overlooked by scholars writing the military, political, or intellectual history of the ancient world. The example of slavery indicates the problematic complexity of appeals to the Bible in contemporary moral debate. At least indirectly, my work can be a resource for those who wish to understand Christianity's role in oppressive social practices and Christian movements to reform religious thought and praxis.

For more information please check out my personal homepage.

Research Interests

• New Testament studies
• Early Christian social history
• Ancient Mediterranean religions
• Early Judaism

Courses Recently Taught

• Intro to the New Testament
• Paul and His Interpreters
• Judaism in the Making
• Jesus and the Gospels
• Ancient Mediterranean Religions

Publication Highlights

Books

Slaves in the New Testament: Literary, Social and Moral Dimensions. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2006.

The Manumission of Slaves in Early Christianity. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1995. Reprinted in paperback edition, 1998.

Articles

“The Psychology of Slaves in the Gospel Parables: A Case Study in Social History.”  Biblische Zeitschrift 55 (2011): in press.

“Divine Judgment against Ananias and Sapphira (Acts 5:1–11): A Stock Scene of Perjury and Death.” Journal of Biblical Literature 130 (2011): in press.

“Paul and Empire: Studying Roman Identity after the Cultural Turn.”  Early Christianity 2 (2011): in press.

"The Cannibalistic Language in the Fourth Gospel and the Greco-Roman Polemics of Factionalism (John 6:52-66)." Journal of Biblical Literature 127 (2008): 133-158.

"The Slave Still Appears: A Historiographical Response to Jennifer Glancy." Biblical Interpretation 15 (2007): 212–221.

"Servile Functionaries or Priestly Leaders? Roman Domestic Religion, Narrative Intertextuality, and Pliny's Reference to Christian Slave Ministrae (Ep. 10,96,8)." Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft 97 (2006): 111-130.

"The Metaphor of Slavery in the Writings of Tertullian." Studia Patristica 41 (2006):385–390.

"The Apostle Paul on the Slave Self: An Interpretation of Romans 7." In Seeking the Self in Ancient Religion, edited by David Brakke, Steven Weitzman, and Michael Satlow (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005), 51-69.

"The Domestic Enemy: A Moral Polarity of Household Slaves in Early Christian Apologies and Martyrdoms." In Early Christian Families in Context: An Interdisciplinary Dialogue, edited by David Balch and Carolyn Osiek (Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans, 2003), 231-254.

"Paul and Slavery." In Paul in the Greco-Roman World: A Handbook, edited by J. Paul Sampley (Harrisburg, Penn.: Trinity Press International, 2003), 575-607.

"Coming of Age and Putting on Christ: The Toga Virilis Ceremony, its Paraenesis, and Paul's Language of Baptism in Galatians." Novum Testamentum 44 (2002): 251-77.

"The Influence of Roman Contract Law on Early Baptismal Formulae (Tertullian, Ad martyras 3)." Studia Patristica 36 (2001): 275-82.

"Invective against Paul (2 Cor 10:10), the Physiognomics of the Ancient Slave Body, and the Greco-Roman Rhetoric of Manhood." In Antiquity and Humanity: Essays on Ancient Religion and Philosophy Presented to Hans Dieter Betz on his Seventieth Birthday, edited by Adela Yarbro Collins and Margaret M. Mitchell (Tbingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2001), 189-213.

"The Use of the New Testament in the American Slave Controversy: A Case History in the Hermeneutical Tension between Biblical Interpretation and Christian Moral Debate." Religion and American Culture 10 (2000): 149-86.

"The Dramatic Function of the Running Slave Rhoda (Acts 12.12-16): A Piece of Greco-Roman Comedy." New Testament Studies 46 (2000): 150-57.

"Using the Roman Jurists to Interpret Philemon: A Response to Peter Lampe." Zeitschrift fr die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft 90 (1999): 135-38.

"The Vice of Slave Dealers in Greco-Roman Society: The Use of a Topos in 1 Timothy 1:10." Journal of Biblical Literature 118 (1999): 97-122.

"Ignatius, Ad Polycarp. 4.3 and the Corporate Manumission of Christian Slaves." In Christianity and Society: The Social World of Early Christianity, edited by Everett Ferguson (New York: Garland, 1999), 279-314.

"Stoic Conflagration Physics and the Eschatological Destruction of 'the Ignorant and Unstable' in 2 Peter." In Stoicism in Early Christianity, edited by Tuomas Rasimus, Ismo Dunderberg, and Troels Engberg-Pedersen. In Press.

Encyclopedia and Reference Works

Articles in: Encyclopedia of the Bible and its Reception; The New Interpreters Dictionary of the Bible; Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart; Dictionary of New Testament Background; Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible