I
am a historian of early Christianity and religious cultures of
late antiquity. I have taught at the University
of California, Riverside; Scripps
College; Harvard
Divinity School; and Boston
University. As of June 1, 2019, I am a Senior Fellow at
the Center
for the Study of World Religions at Harvard Divinity
School. On this site you can find information about my
publications, teaching, and ongoing research.
You
can contact me at: andrew [at] andrewjacobs [dot] org
You
can find me on BluesSky: @drewjakeprof.bsky.social
You
can find me on Instagram: @drewjakeprof
You
can find me on Twitter: @drewjakeprof
You
can find me at the Humanities Commons: https://hcommons.org/members/drewjake/
PUBLICATIONS
New!
Gospel
Thrillers: Conspiracy, Fiction, and the Vulnerable Bible (Cambridge
University Press, 2023)
(purchase
link); and visit the companion website
here.
The Garb of Being:
Embodiment and the Pursuit of Holiness in Late Ancient
Christianity,
co-edited with Georgia Frank and Susan R. Holman (Fordham
University Press, 2019) (purchase
link)
Epiphanius of Cyprus: A
Cultural Biography of Late Antiquity, Christianity in
Late Antiquity (University of California Press, 2016) (purchase
link)
WINNER: 2017
Philip Schaff Prize from the American Society of Church
History
Christ Circumcised: A Study in
Early Christian History and Difference,
Divinations (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012) (purchase
link)
Remains of the Jews: The Holy
Land and Christian Empire in Late Antiquity,
Divinations (Stanford University Press, 2004) (purchase
link)
Christianity in Late
Antiquity, 300-450 CE: A Reader,
co-edited with Bart D. Ehrman (Oxford University Press, 2003) (purchase
link)
The Passion of Perpetua and Felicitas in Late Antiquity,
ed. L. Stephanie Cobb with translations by L. Stephanie Cobb and
Andrew S. Jacobs (University of California Press, 2021) (purchase
link)
For other works, click on the Humanities Commons link above; for
my complete curriculum vitae, click here.
CURRENT
RESEARCH
Ex-Jews:
Conversion in Late Antiquity
This study explores narratives
of Jews converting to Christianity in the first seven Christian
centuries to ask how and why "conversion" becomes a distinctive
way of understanding religious identities and boundaries, for
ancients and for modern scholars. Engaging with a variety of
literary and social genres—law, hagiography, history, dialogues,
sermons, and letters—this book argues that particular shifts in
the way the human person came to be defined—in terms of the
will, the self, and the very notion of "identity"—made possible
something called "religion" as a discrete and bounded category,
maintained and policed through narratives of conversion. In the
context of a Christian Roman empire, the conversion of Jews
became a paradigmatic site for imagining these new ways of
being.
The
Life of Thecla: Apocryphal Expansion in the Fifth Century
In the late fifth century, an
anonymous man of letters working at the shrine of Hagia Thekla
wrote a two-volume work dedicated to Saint Thecla, the legendary
companion of Saint Paul: the Life and Miracles of Thecla.
In this translation and introduction to the Life, I
outline the literary contours of this peculiar expansion of the
much more famous Acts of Thecla as a window into how
Christian apocryphal texts continued to be read and reimagined
in late antiquity. This volume is scheduled to appear in the Early
Christian Apocrypha series of the North American Society
for the Study of Christian Apocryphal Literature.
Elements:
Religion in Late Antiquity (editor)
This
series from Cambridge University Press takes a holistic
and comparative approach to what is typically categorized as
“religion” in roughly 100-800 C.E. throughout the Mediterranean
and Near East. Individual volumes, ca. 20,000 – 30,000 words in
length, will address one of three major categories of topics:
Frameworks (modern and ancient); Sources (texts, objects, and
spaces); and People (authorities and outsiders). They will serve
as points of entry on an array of topics for students and
scholars of late ancient religious worlds at all levels.
Ideally, they will also advance the higher-order questions and
debates that have emerged from the broadening of horizons in the
study of late antiquity in recent years. Volumes will aim to
identify the particular themes that characterize religion in
late antiquity and will often cross traditional disciplinary
lines. The series will, thus, be composed of contributions from
classical studies, Early Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, among
other fields. Collaborative volumes by scholars who work in
different fields are therefore especially encouraged. Published
online and available as print-on-demand paperbacks, the series
can accommodate graphic elements such as images, charts, and
tables.
Translations
You can also find on this
website a series of translations of Greek and Latin texts I have
found useful in my teaching and research. Click here
to find texts about pilgrimage, ritual, conversion, and
embodiment.
TEACHING
For more than twenty years I
have taught a variety of courses at the undergraduate and
graduate level. Because I believe that university instruction is
a collaborative endeavor, I make all of my course syllabi
publicly available. I encourage all to browse, borrow, and make
what use you can of my instructional efforts.
A catalogue of my past courses is available here.
ASSOCIATIONS
I coordinate two professional meetings focused on new
scholarship in early Christianity and late antiquity. If you
are interested in attending either meeting, or being put on
the email list to be kept apprised of meetings and topics,
please contact me: andrew [at] andrewjacobs [dot] org.
Boston Area Patristics
Group (Patristica Bostoniensia). Founded in the
1970s to give Boston-area scholars the opportunity share and
discuss new works-in-progress, meets monthly during the
academic year. Local scholars at all career stages, as well as
those temporarily in the area for various reasons, are warmly
welcomed.
Models
of Piety in Late Antiquity. Founded in the 1990s
as part of the Institute for Antiquity and Christianity at the
Claremont Graduate University, Models of Piety is now an
independent, annual meeting of scholars dedicated to the
exploration of late ancient religious life. We meet in
conjunction with the annual meeting of the Society of Biblical
Literature/American Academy of Religion to discuss primary
sources, works-in-progress, and recent publications led by new
volunteers every year.
background image:
Paris Coislin 299, Doctrina Jacobi Nuper Baptizati
incipit |
