I am a historian whose work centers on the New Testament and early Christianity. My current research focuses on practices of Gospel reading and on the social history of early Christianity (especially questions of enslavement and empire). As a teacher, I invite students to creative encounter with the New Testament in light of its manifold contexts, from the ancient Mediterranean to global reading communities today.
I received my PhD in Christianity and Judaism in Antiquity from the University of Notre Dame (2020). Prior to coming to JST as Assistant Professor of New Testament in 2022, I was a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow in the Faculty of Theology and Religion at the University of Oxford (2020–2022).
My award-winning first book Eusebius the Evangelist (Oxford University Press, 2023) demonstrates how the fourth-century scholar Eusebius of Caesarea employed emerging technologies to create new possibilities for reading the Gospels according to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. For over a thousand years and in more than a dozen languages, the “Eusebian apparatus” shaped Gospel reading in the Middle East, North Africa, Central Asia, and Europe. This neglected history is central to the formation of a “New Testament” and to the reception of the Gospels.
My current project, tentatively titled The Invention of Gospel Literature, investigates how early readers deployed bibliographic categories to understand Gospel texts. The project locates Christians thinkers within the wider intellectual milieu of the second- and third-century Mediterranean world, offering a narrative that transcends disciplinary boundaries between religion and classics.
I am an affiliated faculty member of the Department of Sacred Texts and Their Interpretation (GTU), the Richard S. Dinner Center for Jewish Studies (GTU), and the Ancient History and Mediterranean Archaeology graduate program (UC–Berkeley).
- Gospel Literature
- Paul in Context
- Mark from the Margins
- New Testament Research Methods (Lukan Travel Narrative)
- Apocalypse, Empire, and Hope
- Eusebius the Evangelist: Rewriting the Fourfold Gospel in Late Antiquity. Cultures of Reading in the Ancient Mediterranean. New York: Oxford University Press, 2023. Awarded the 2022 Manfred Lautenschlaeger Award for Theological Promise (Heidelberg) and the 2023 Alexander-Böhlig-Preis (Berlin).
- “Doubled Recycling: The Gospel according to Mark in Late Ancient Catena Commentary.” TC: A Journal of Biblical Textual Criticism 28 (2023): 149–165.
- “Reading (in) a Quadriform Cosmos: Gospel Books and the Early Christian Bibliographic Imagination.” Journal of Early Christian Studies 31, no. 1 (2023): 85–103. Awarded the 2021 Paul J. Achtemeier Award for New Testament Scholarship.
- “Rethinking Adoptionism: An Argument for Dismantling a Dubious Category.” Scottish Journal of Theology 76, no. 1 (2023): 31–43.
- “Meddling with the Gospel: Celsus, Early Christian Textuality, and the Politics of Reading.” Novum Testamentum 65, no. 3 (2023): 400–422.
- “Ordering Gospel Textuality in the Second Century,” co-authored with Jacob A. Rodriguez. Journal of Theological Studies 74, no. 1 (2023): 57–102.
- “The Ways that Parted in the Library: The Gospels according to Matthew and according to the Hebrews in Late Ancient Heresiology.” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 74, no. 3 (2023): 473–490. Awarded the 2021 Eusebius Prize.
- “Misusing Books: Material Texts and Lived Religion in the Roman Mediterranean.” Religion in the Roman Empire 8, no. 3 (2022): 301–316.
- “Gospel as Recipe Book: Nonlinear Reading and Practical Texts in Late Antiquity.” Early Christianity 12, no. 1 (2021): 40–60.
- “Transforming Textuality: Porphyry, Eusebius, and Late Ancient Tables of Contents.” Studies in Late Antiquity 5, no. 1 (2021): 6–27.
- “Divine Truth, Presence, and Power: The Christian Book in Fourth-Century Roman North Africa.” Journal of Late Antiquity 11, no. 2 (2018): 375–395.
- “Mapping the Fourfold Gospel: Textual Geography in the Eusebian Apparatus,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 25, no. 3 (2017): 337–357.