About Me
I am a researcher passionate about literature and culture in the ancient world. I have a modest expertise in ancient Christianity and Judaism within their broader Mediterranean and Near Eastern milieus. In my official capacities, I currently hold two positions: I am Associate Professor in New Testament Studies at MF Norwegian School of Theology, Religion and Society in Oslo. I am also principal investigator of “The Ancient Fable Tradition and Early Christian Literature,” a project funded by the German Research Foundation at the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz, where I am currently based.
My research and teaching competencies span a range of areas: the Hebrew Bible, Hellenistic Judaism, Classical literature, the New Testament, early Christian literature, and their reception through to today. My studies and professional life have taken me from Los Angeles to Jerusalem to Boston to Berlin to South Bend to London, and now to Mainz… with many pit stops along the way.
On any given day you’ll find me researching something obscure and ancient (ie. fascinating), sharing my enthusiasm with a class of students, sorting out some confounded text on a scrap of papyrus, relearning a dead language I’ve forgotten,…and catching up on email.
My graduate training includes a Master’s degree from Harvard, a Fulbright fellowship at Humboldt University of Berlin, and a PhD from Notre Dame. I have held professional appointments at Azusa Pacific, Notre Dame, the University of Durham, and presently at the University of Mainz and MF in Oslo.
In my research, I am particularly interested in exploring ancient literature and material culture by and about the marginal and liminal, including ancient fables, popular biographies, and media about foreign peoples, animals, children, and slaves. To the jubilation of some and dismay of others, I consider early Christians and their writings among such literature and research them from this context. I have recently completed, for example, the first comprehensive study comparing the “parables” of Jesus with the ancient fable tradition, which you can read more about on the “books” page.
In addition to my ongoing work on the Semitic, Hellenistic, and Roman fable tradition, I have begun two more substantial research projects. The first addresses the “Synoptic Problem” of the Gospels from the context of other marginal literature that have similar relationships in the ancient world. The second project puts ancient Judaism and Christianity into dialogue with Animal Studies—a field that decenters the human to interrogate how animals and notions of animality intersect with various concepts. What can ancient practices concerning animals and discussions about them vis-à-vis humans tell us about issues such as disability, race, ecology, slavery, mental illness, criminal justice, posthumanism, ethics, and the understanding of divine and human nature, for example. More than you might think!
In my free time I am a trivia junkie and am generally obsessed with learning, the more obscure the knowledge the better (yes, I would like to know that random fact that you share at parties). When I am not working furiously to produce scholarship, teach, or meet one deadline or another, I love to travel, experience new cultures, and get enough exercise for the name “Dr. Strong” to be appropriate rather than ironic. I aspire to be the ideal blend of stereotypes about an academic and a Californian.
