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Contributors
Grant Adamson is a lecturer in the Department of Religious Studies and Classics at the University of Arizona. He did his graduate work at Rice University (MA, PhD) and Brigham Young University (MA). He specializes in early Christianity and the ancient Mediterranean, having published with Acumen/
Terry B. Ball is a professor of ancient scripture at Brigham Young University. He is a former dean of Religious Education and chair of the Department of Ancient Scripture at BYU. Before joining the faculty at BYU, he spent ten years as a seminary and institute teacher in the Church Educational System. He received his BS from BYU in botany and education. His MA is from BYU in ancient Near Eastern studies, and his PhD from BYU in archaeobotany with an emphasis in the ancient Near East. He has taught and traveled extensively in the Holy Land, including teaching at the BYU Jerusalem Center for Near Eastern Studies. In addition to teaching and researching in ancient scripture, he is an active researcher in the field of archaeobotany.
Daniel Becerra is a PhD candidate in Duke University’s graduate program in religion (early Christianity). He holds a master of theological studies from Harvard Divinity School. His primary research interests concern moral formation in late antiquity (ca. second–seventh centuries CE), particularly within Christian ascetic contexts. His most recent published works can be found in the journals Studia Patristica, Studies in the Bible and Antiquity, and The Bulletin of the American Society of Papyrologists.
Daniel L. Belnap is an associate professor in the Department of Ancient Scripture at Brigham Young University. He received graduate degrees in Northwest Semitics from the University of Chicago. He specializes in Hebrew Bible and ancient Near East religion, with interest in ritual studies. He has published one book, Fillets of Fatling and Goblets of God: The Use of Meal Events in the Ritual Imagery in the Ugaritic Mythological and Epic Texts (Gorgias Press, 2008), as well as numerous articles. He also edited By Our Rites of Worship: Latter-day Saint Views of Ritual in Scripture, History, and Practice (RSC/
Lincoln H. Blumell is an associate professor in the Department of Ancient Scripture at Brigham Young University. He holds graduate degrees from the University of Calgary, University of Oxford, and University of Toronto. He specializes in early Christianity and Greek and Coptic papyrology and epigraphy. He has published two books, Lettered Christians: Christians, Letters, and Late Antique Oxyrhynchus (Brill, 2012), Christian Oxyrhyhnchus: Texts, Documents, and Sources (Baylor University Press, 2015), with Thomas A. Wayment, and has a third book in press, Didymus the Blind’s Commentary on the Psalms 26:10–29:2 and 36:1–3 (Brepols, Corpus Christianorum Series Graeca). He is also the author of numerous articles.
Matthew L. Bowen is an assistant professor of religious education at Brigham Young University–Hawaii. He holds a PhD from the Catholic University of America in Washington, DC, in biblical studies. He specializes in scriptural narratology, poetics, and onomastics. He is the author of numerous articles and the recent book Name as Key-Word: Collected Essays on Onomastic Wordplay and the Temple in Mormon Scripture (Interpreter/
David M. Calabro is curator of Eastern Christian and Islamic Manuscripts at the Hill Museum and Manuscript Library at St. John’s University. He received a PhD in Near Eastern languages and civilizations from the University of Chicago. His research focuses on nonverbal communication, ritual, and religious narrative in the Near East. His book Hands Lifted to Heaven: Ritual Gestures in Northwest Semitic Literature and Art is forthcoming from Penn State University Press/
Jason R. Combs is an assistant professor in the Department of Ancient Scripture at Brigham Young University. He holds graduate degrees from Yale Divinity School, Columbia University, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He specializes in the cultural history of early Christianity with particular emphasis on religious experience. He has published articles in academic journals including the Journal of Biblical Literature, Early Christianity, and The Bulletin of the American Society of Papyrologists.
Luke Drake is a doctoral student of ancient Mediterranean religions in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He has a master of theological studies from Harvard Divinity School in New Testament and early Christianity and a BA in English from Brigham Young University.
Mark D. Ellison, associate professor in the BYU Department of Ancient Scripture, earned a PhD in early Christianity and early Christian art from Vanderbilt University and an MA in religious studies (archaeology and the Bible) from the University of South Florida. He researches intersections of early Christian literature, art, and practices, with special attention to early Christian families, worship, and the lived experience of ordinary people in late antiquity. With Professor Robin M. Jensen (University of Notre Dame), he is the coeditor of The Routledge Handbook of Early Christian Art. His dissertation, “Visualizing Christian Marriage in the Roman World,” examines the self-representation of married Christians in late Roman visual art and inscriptions. Before joining the BYU faculty, he worked for Seminaries and Institutes of Religion as a teacher, coordinator, and instructional designer.
Alan Taylor Farnes is an independent scholar of New Testament manuscripts whose research primarily focuses on how scribes copied the New Testament text. He was recently awarded a PhD from the University of Birmingham in the UK, specializing in New Testament textual criticism. He holds a graduate degree from Duke University and earned his undergraduate degree from Brigham Young University. His dissertation studied the scribal habits of New Testament scribes, focusing specifically on New Testament manuscripts that are known copies of other known New Testament manuscripts. Alan has presented at international conferences on textual criticism, papyrology, and the Synoptic problem.
Nicholas J. Frederick is an assistant professor in the Department of Ancient Scripture at Brigham Young University. He received his PhD in the history of Christianity from Claremont Graduate University. He is the author of two books, The Bible, Mormon Scripture, and the Rhetoric of Allusivity (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2016) and Joseph Smith’s Seer Stones (Religious Studies Center, 2016). His primary area of study is exploring the intertextual relationship between the Bible and Restoration scripture. He is in the preliminary phrases of writing a third book exploring more broadly the relationship between the New Testament and the Book of Mormon.
John Gee is the William (Bill) Gay Research Professor and senior research fellow at the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship at Brigham Young University. He is a generalist with a specialty in Greco-Roman Egypt and the author of two books and over a hundred articles covering a wide variety of religious, historical, and scriptural topics, including New Testament manuscript history, ancient marriage contracts and document sealing practices, and the New Testament’s use of the Roman legal system. He has served as the editor of a multilingual, peer-reviewed international professional journal and as section chair for the Society of Biblical Literature.
Bryce Gessell is a PhD student in the history and philosophy of science at Duke University. His research is on the mind-body problem, and how discoveries in brain anatomy and physiology influence theories in psychology, both historically and in modern science. His work has appeared in venues like Biology and Philosophy, Philosophy of Science, British Journal for the History of Philosophy, and Teorema. He has an MA degree from Tufts University and a BA degree from Brigham Young University, both in philosophy.
Tyler J. Griffin is an associate teaching professor of ancient scripture at Brigham Young University. He holds degrees in electrical engineering and instructional technology from Utah State University. Prior to coming to BYU, he taught institute for seven years and seminary for eight years before that. Much of his research time is devoted to developing interactive digital learning apps for the New Testament and the Book of Mormon. He has worked with the Church’s Motion Picture Studios to develop a 3D interactive mockup of Jerusalem in the first century. He is also active in researching effective pedagogical techniques and teacher development.
Trevan G. Hatch is the ancient scripture, religious studies, and philosophy specialist in the Harold B. Lee Library at Brigham Young University, and he is also an adjunct instructor in the Department of Ancient Scripture. Trevan earned a BA in history at Brigham Young University, an MA in Jewish studies with an emphasis in rabbinic literature at Baltimore Hebrew University/
Eric D. Huntsman is a professor of ancient scripture at Brigham Young University, where he also directs the Ancient Near Eastern Studies program in the Kennedy Center for International Studies. After majoring in classical Greek and Latin at BYU, he received his MA and PhD in ancient history from the University of Pennsylvania. He taught classics at BYU from 1994 to 2003, where his work focused on women in imperial Rome. Since transferring to the Department of Ancient Scripture, he has published a number of articles and chapters on the New Testament and especially Johannine literature. In addition to his more academic work, he has published widely for a broader Latter-day Saint audience, his most recent book being Becoming the Beloved Disciple: Coming unto Christ through the Gospel of John (Cedar Fort, 2018).
Kent P. Jackson is a professor emeritus of ancient scripture at Brigham Young University. He has a BA in ancient studies from BYU and an MA and PhD in ancient Near Eastern studies from the University of Michigan. He joined the faculty of Brigham Young University in 1980. His research interests include Latter-day Saint scripture, doctrine, and history, with emphasis on the intersection of the restored Church of Jesus Christ and the Bible. He has authored or edited Joseph Smith’s Commentary on the Bible; Joseph Smith’s New Translation of the Bible: Original Manuscripts; The Book of Moses and the Joseph Smith Translation Manuscripts; and The King James Bible and the Restoration. Dr. Jackson is a former associate dean of religion and former associate director of the Brigham Young University Jerusalem Center for Near Eastern Studies.
Frank F. Judd Jr. is an associate professor of ancient scripture at Brigham Young University. He received a PhD in New Testament from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His scholarly interests include the New Testament, archaeology and historical geography of the Bible, and Latter-day Saint interpretation of scripture. He has authored or edited How the New Testament Came to Be, The Essential New Testament Companion, and The Ministry of Peter, the Chief Apostle. Dr. Judd has served at the BYU Jerusalem Center for Near Eastern Studies multiple times, both as a teacher and most recently as associate director.
D. Jill Kirby is an assistant professor of religious studies at Edgewood College in Madison, Wisconsin. She holds a PhD from the Catholic University of America. Her current research interests include early Christian apocalyptic literature, especially the book of Revelation, and reception history of apocalyptic literature in the English/
Seth S. Larsen is an instructor in the Seminaries and Institutes program of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He holds a BA from BYU in Ancient Near Eastern Studies with an emphasis in the Greek New Testament. During this time, he learned Greek and studied the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and John, as well as many gnostic and early Christian texts in the Greek language. He is currently writing a master’s thesis for a graduate degree in Religious Education. During his graduate studies he has written on baptism in the first two centuries.
Jared W. Ludlow is a professor in the Department of Ancient Scripture at Brigham Young University. Before 2006, he spent six years teaching religion and history at BYU–Hawaii. He received his bachelor’s degree from BYU in Near Eastern studies, his master’s degree from UC–Berkeley in biblical Hebrew, and his PhD in Near Eastern religions from UC–Berkeley and the Graduate Theological Union. His primary research interests are in ancient Judaism and early Christianity.
Jan J. Martin is an assistant professor in the Department of Ancient Scripture at Brigham Young University. She holds a graduate degree from BYU and two additional graduate degrees from the University of York, UK. She specializes in sixteenth-century English Bible translation and has a particular interest in the development of the language of English theology. She has published several articles on William Tyndale and his influence on the developing text of the English Bible.
Joshua M. Matson is a PhD candidate in religions of western antiquity at Florida State University, a teacher at the Tallahassee Institute of Religion, and a research associate with the Scripta Qumranica Electronica project. He holds an MA in biblical studies from Trinity Western University and a BA in ancient Near Eastern studies from Brigham Young University. His research focuses on the Dead Sea Scrolls; he specializes in materially and textually reconstructing fragmentary manuscripts. His most recent publications include “The Fourth Gospel and Expectations of the Jewish Messiah,” in Thou Art the Christ, the Son of the Living God: The Person and Work of Jesus in the New Testament, and “Where the World, Babel, and Zion Meet: Redefining the Mormon People at the 1964–65 Mormon Pavilion,” in the Journal of Mormon History (2018).
Daniel O. McClellan is a scripture translation supervisor for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and a PhD student in theology and religion at the University of Exeter. He has graduate degrees from the University of Oxford and from Trinity Western University. His research focuses on cognitive linguistics, the cognitive science of religion, and the conceptualization of deity in the Bible. His most recent publications can be found in the Journal of Biblical Literature, Biblical Interpretation, and Method Today: Redescribing Approaches to the Study of Religion (Equinox, 2018).
Robert L. Millet is a professor emeritus of ancient scripture, Brigham Young University. During his three decades of teaching at BYU, Dr. Millet served as chair of the Department of Ancient Scripture, dean of Religious Education, and Richard L. Evans Professor of Religious Understanding. He is the author or editor of more than seventy books and 190 articles, book chapters, and reviews. Dr. Millet has codirected the Latter-day Saint–evangelical theological dialogue since 2000 and has been engaged in similar dialogues with the Church of the Nazarene and Community of Christ. He and his wife, Shauna, have six children and twelve grandchildren and reside in Orem, Utah.
George A. Pierce is an assistant professor in the Department of Ancient Scripture at Brigham Young University with a joint appointment to the BYU Jerusalem Center for Near Eastern Studies. He holds graduate degrees from Wheaton College, the University of York (UK), and the University of California, Los Angeles. He specializes in the archaeology of the southern Levant, historical geography of the Holy Land, and computer applications in archaeology. He has published on historical geography and regional settlement patterns of the Dothan Valley, biblical Negev, western Galilee, southern Philistia, and the central coastal plain of Israel.
Dana M. Pike is a professor of ancient scripture and ancient Near Eastern studies at Brigham Young University. He earned a BS degree in archaeology from BYU and a PhD in Hebrew Bible and ancient Near Eastern studies from the University of Pennsylvania. Since coming to BYU over two decades ago, Pike has taught two years at the BYU Jerusalem Center, has worked as one of the international editors of the Dead Sea Scrolls (coeditor of DJD XXXIII), and has researched and published on the Bible, the scrolls, and the Book of Mormon. He teaches courses on the Old Testament, the New Testament, and the history and culture of ancient Israel. He is currently serving as department chair of ancient scripture. He is a coauthor of Jehovah and the World of the Old Testament (Deseret Book, 2009).
Noel B. Reynolds, a professor emeritus of political science at Brigham Young University, received both graduate degrees from Harvard University. While his academic research, publication, and teaching has mainly focused on topics in legal philosophy, he has also taught and published extensively on religious topics. He served as an editor for Macmillan’s Encyclopedia of Mormonism and has published multiple edited volumes and has written numerous articles on the Book of Mormon and other topics of interest to Latter-day Saints, including most recently “The Gospel according to Mormon,” in the Scottish Journal of Theology. He was also the producer of The Dead Sea Scrolls Electronic Edition, published in 2005 by Brill. He served many years as president or director of FARMS both before and after it became a research institute of BYU.
David Rolph Seely is a professor of ancient scripture at Brigham Young University. He earned his undergraduate degree in Greek and an MA in classics from BYU and a PhD from the University of Michigan in ancient and biblical studies. He is a member of the international team of scholars that translated and published the Dead Sea Scrolls and published, together with Professor Moshe Weinfeld, the Barkhi Nafshi hymns from Qumran. He has coauthored Jehovah and the World of the Old Testament with Richard Neitzel Holzapfel and Dana M. Pike and Solomon’s Temple in Myth and History with William J. Hamblin.
Avram R. Shannon is an assistant professor of ancient scripture at Brigham Young University. He earned a MSt in Jewish studies from the University of Oxford and a PhD in Near Eastern languages and cultures from Ohio State University. He specializes in early rabbinic literature and ancient Mediterranean religions. He has published articles on the definition of ritual in ancient Judaism and on the comparison of Jewish Midrash with the Joseph Smith Translation.
Andrew C. Skinner is a professor of ancient scripture and ancient Near Eastern studies at Brigham Young University. A former dean of Religious Education (2000–2006) and founding executive director of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship at BYU (2006–8), he served as chair of the Department of Ancient Scripture and as Richard L. Evans Professor of Religious Understanding (2010–13). In addition, he has taught several times at BYU’s Jerusalem Center for Near Eastern Studies and served as its academic director. He is a member of the Dead Sea Scroll Foundation advisory board and of the international group reediting and retranslating the scrolls. He is the author or coauthor of twenty-one books, including The Savior’s Final Week and To Become Like God, as well as over two hundred articles on religious and historical topics in journals, encyclopedias, and edited volumes. He is also the editor or coeditor of seven volumes. Dr. Skinner holds academic degrees from the University of Colorado, Iliff School of Theology, Harvard University, and the University of Denver and pursued graduate studies at Hebrew University in Jerusalem.
Andrew C. Smith earned his PhD from Claremont Graduate University, specializing in Qur’anic studies and comparative scriptural studies. He is particularly interested in the study of ritual within scripture. His doctoral dissertation dealt with prostration in the Hebrew Bible/
Julie M. Smith graduated from the University of Texas at Austin with a BA in English and from the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, CA, with an MA in biblical studies. She is on the executive board of the Mormon Theology Seminar and on the steering committee for the BYU New Testament Commentary, for which she is writing an article on the Gospel of Mark. She is the author of Search, Ponder, and Pray: A Guide to the Gospels and the editor of and contributor to As Iron Sharpens Iron: Listening to the Various Voices of Scripture and Apocalypse: Reading Revelation 21–22. She also blogs for Times & Seasons, where she is the book review editor.
Kristin H. South is a member of the History Department at The Waterford School in Sandy, Utah. She has earned graduate degrees from Yale University in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations and in archaeology from Brigham Young University. Since 1998, she has participated in excavations at Fag el Gamus, an early Christian site in Egypt, with the BYU Egypt Excavation Project and she regularly publishes finds of archaeological textiles from that site. She has also excavated at other Roman and Byzantine sites in Jordan and Syria, and has completed conservation and analysis of museum collections of archaeological textiles.
Gaye Strathearn is an associate professor in the Department of Ancient Scripture at Brigham Young University. She earned a BA in physical therapy from the University of Queensland, a BA and MA in Near Eastern studies from BYU, and a PhD in religion with an emphasis on the New Testament from Claremont Graduate University. She has published He Will Give You Rest: Christ’s Invitation and Promise with Richard Neitzel Holzapfel (Deseret Book, 2010), edited six volumes, and written more than thirty articles or book chapters for Latter-day Saint audiences on a variety of New Testament topics.
Catherine Gines Taylor is the Hugh W. Nibley Fellow at the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship at Brigham Young University. Dr. Taylor specializes in late antique Christian art history and iconography. She holds graduate degrees from BYU and the University of Manchester. Her research interests focus on the interdisciplinary study of art, scripture, lay piety, patronage, and patristic texts. More specifically, her research centers on images of women in early Christian contexts. Her monograph, Late Antique Images of the Virgin Annunciate Spinning, was published by Brill in 2018. Other publications include “The Pignatta Sarcophagus: late antique iconography and the memorial culture of salvation” (Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2015); “Burial Threads: A Late Antique Textile and the Iconography of the Virgin Annunciate Spinning” (Oxbow, 2015). Dr. Taylor’s current research investigates the typologies of Susanna and Wisdom on sarcophagi and other funerary monuments.
Michael R. Trotter is a doctoral student of Christianity in antiquity at the Department of Theological Studies at Saint Louis University. He holds undergraduate and graduate degrees from Brigham Young University in ancient Near Eastern studies and classics with an emphasis in early Christianity. He specializes in early Christian understandings of the devil, New Testament textual criticism, and Greek papyrology. His coauthored publications include “P.Oxy. LXIV 4405: An Early Witness to a System of Textual Division at Oxyrhynchus” (Journal of Juristic Papyrology, 2016) and “Three New Fragments from the J. Rendel Harris Collection (Birmingham)” (Analecta Papyrologica, 2016). He was also a key contributor to Didymus the Blind’s Commentary on Psalms 26:10–29:2 and 36:1–3 (Brepols, 2019).
Thomas A. Wayment is a professor of classical studies at Brigham Young University. He earned a PhD in New Testament Studies from the Claremont Graduate School. Since that time he has been employed at Brigham Young University, where previously served as a professor of ancient scripture and publications director of the Religious Studies Center. He has published widely on New Testament topics, and his current research focuses on the textual foundations of Christianity.
John W. Welch is the Robert K. Thomas Professor of Law in the J. Reuben Clark Law School at Brigham Young University, where he teaches legal courses on biblical law, Greek and Roman law, and law in the New Testament and Book of Mormon. He holds graduate degrees from BYU and Duke. He served as editor-in-chief of BYU Studies from 1991 to 2018 and has authored or edited several books, including Chiasmus in Antiquity (Gerstenberg, 1981), Masada and the World of the New Testament (BYU Studies, 1997), Charting the New Testament (FARMS, 2002), and The Sermon on the Mount in the Light of the Temple (Ashgate, 2009). His wide-ranging publications include works on the early Christian interpretations of the parable of the good Samaritan, fear and magic in the trial of Jesus, and textual relations between the Sermon on the Mount and the Didache. He is an author and editor in the BYU New Testament Commentary.
Anita Cramer Wells received her bachelor’s degree in Near Eastern Studies from BYU, where she studied biblical Hebrew and worked as a researcher for FARMS. She received a master’s degree in library and information science from Drexel University, teaches early-morning seminary, and volunteers as an editor for Book of Mormon Central. Her published works on scripture include “Bare Record: The Nephite Archivist, The Record of Records, and the Book of Mormon Provenance” (Interpreter, 2017) and the children’s book Nephi, Nephi, The Scriptures Are True! (Deseret Book, 2004).
Erik O. Yingling researches Christian ritual, art, and phenomenology. He is a PhD student at Stanford University in art history, holding degrees from Yale and BYU, where he studied Christian liturgy and the ancient Near East. Some of his publications include “The Ghost in the Glass: Reflecting on Reflections and the Death Mask of Leland Stanford Jr.,” in Faults and Traces: Some Stanford Ghost Stories (Cantor Center for the Visual Arts, 2016); “A New Coptic Epitaph from the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology” (Bulletin of the American Society of Papyrologists, 2016, with Lincoln H. Blumell); and “Singing with the Savior: Reconstructing the Ritual Ring-dance in the Gospel of the Savior” (Apocrypha, 2013).
