Daphna Arbel is a professor emerita of biblical/early Jewish literature working particularly in the areas of Near Eastern and biblical literature/mythology, gender/feminist criticism, early Jewish “mysticism,” and the discursive history of ancient women. She has published widely in these areas, including: Forming Femininity in Antiquity: Eve, Gender, and Ideologies in the Greek Life of Adam and Eve (Oxford University Press, 2012); Beholders of Divine Secrets: Myth and Mysticism in the Hekhalot and Merkavah Literature (SUNY Press, 2003); and ‘And So They Went Out’: The Lives of Adam and Eve as Cultural Transformative Story (with J. R. C. Cousland and D. Neufeld; T&T Clark, 2010). Professor Arbel is currently working on her new monograph, entitled ‘The Most Beautiful Woman’: On Femininities in the Song of Songs and Beyond (funded by SSHRC).
Roger Beck is a professor emeritus at the University of Toronto. Mithraism has been his major research interest, as well as ancient astrology and narrative fiction. Among his many publications are Planetary Gods and Planetary Orders in the Mysteries of Mithras (Brill, 1988); Beck on Mithraism: Collected Works with New Essays (Ashgate, 2004); The Religion of the Mithras Cult in the Roman Empire (Oxford University Press, 2006); and A Brief History of Ancient Astrology (Blackwell, 2007).
Carly Daniel-Hughes is associate professor of religion at Concordia University. She is author of The Salvation of the Flesh in Tertullian of Carthage: Dressing for the Resurrection (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011); coeditor of Dressing Judeans and Christians in Antiquity, with Kristi Upson-Saia and Alicia Batten (Ashgate, 2014), and The Bloomsbury Reader in Religion, Gender and Sexuality, with Donald Boisvert (Bloomsbury, 2016). Her current research examines responses to death, grief, and violence in the Roman Empire and contemporary contexts.
David L. Eastman is associate professor of religion at Ohio Wesleyan University. He is the author of two books, Paul the Martyr: The Cult of the Apostle in the Latin West (SBL Press, 2011) and The Ancient Martyrdom Accounts of Peter and Paul (SBL Press, 2015), as well as numerous articles and chapters on the apostolic traditions and the cult of the saints. He is a contributor to the Society of Biblical Literature’s Bible Odyssey website and the project director of the online project Mapping the Martyrs. He also serves as the book review editor for the Journal of Early Christian Studies and is coeditor of a new monograph series from The Penn State University Press entitled Inventing Christianity.
Troels Engberg-Pedersen is professor emeritus of New Testament at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark. He has authored numerous books and articles on ancient philosophy and the New Testament, including Aristotle’s Theory of Moral Insight (Clarendon, 1983), The Stoic Theory of Oikeiosis: Moral Development and Social Interaction in Early Stoic Philosophy (Aarhus University Press, 1990), and two books on Paul and Stoicism: Paul and the Stoics (Westminster John Knox, 2000) and Cosmology and Self in the Apostle Paul: The Material Spirit (Oxford University Press, 2010). His new book, John and Philosophy: A New Reading of the Fourth Gospel (Oxford University Press), is forthcoming in early 2017, as is an edited book, From Stoicism to Platonism: The Development of Philosophy 100 BCE–100 CE (Cambridge University Press).
Frances Flannery is professor of Judaism and Hebrew Bible at James Madison University (Harrisonburg, VA) and director of the Center for the Interdisciplinary Study of Terrorism and Peace. She has researched and presented extensively on dreams in antiquity, including on the Asklepios cult and the healing function of dreams. Her publications on the topic include Dreamers, Scribes, and Priests: Jewish Dreams in the Hellenistic and Roman Eras (Brill, 2004); “Dreams in the Ancient Mediterranean World” (Routledge Encyclopedia of Ancient Mediterranean Religions; Routledge, 2015); “Dreams in Second Temple Judaism” (Encyclopedia of the Bible and Its Reception, Volume D; de Gruyter, 2011); and “Dream and Vision Reports” (Dictionary of Early Judaism; Eerdmans, 2009).
Valerie M. Hope is a senior lecturer in classical studies at the Open University (UK). She is the author of Constructing Identity: The Funerary Monuments of Aquileia, Mainz and Nîmes (Archaeopress, 2001); Death in Ancient Rome: A Sourcebook (Routledge, 2007); and Roman Death (Continuum, 2009); and articles on the commemoration of Roman soldiers and gladiators, as well as Roman mourning rituals. She also coedited Memory and Mourning: Studies on Roman Death (Oxbow, 2011).
Sarah Iles Johnston is the Arts & Humanities Distinguished Professor of Religion and professor of classics and comparative studies at Ohio State University. Her many publications include Restless Dead: Encounters Between the Living and the Dead in Ancient Greece (University of California Press, 1999); Ritual Texts for the Afterlife: Orpheus and the Bacchic Gold Tablets (coauthored with Fritz Graf; Routledge, 2013); and the edited volume Religions of the Ancient World: A Guide (Belknap, 2004).
Jeffrey A. Keiser is a course lecturer in Bible and Western Culture at McGill University (Montreal, QC) and adjunct professor of religious studies at St. Michael’s College, Vermont. His research focuses on Greek hero cult and the letters of Paul. He is the coeditor of Essays on Mysticism and Phenomenology (ARC 35, 2007) and author of several articles on early Christianity.
Hugo Lundhaug is professor of biblical reception and early Christian literature at the University of Oslo, Faculty of Theology. He has published books and articles on Coptic texts and manuscripts, Egyptian monasticism, cognitive theory, and new philology, including Images of Rebirth: Cognitive Poetics and Transformational Soteriology in the Gospel of Philip and the Exegesis on the Soul (Brill, 2010), and, together with Lance Jenott, The Monastic Origins of the Nag Hammadi Codices (Mohr Siebeck, 2015). He is currently the principal investigator of the ERC-funded research project New Contexts for Old Texts: Unorthodox Texts and Monastic Manuscript Culture in Fourth- and Fifth-Century Egypt (NEWCONT).
Stéphanie Machabée is a doctoral student in ancient Christianity at Yale University, where her research focuses on the social history of the ancient Mediterranean world, with special attention given to the topics of gender, motherhood, and martyrdom in ancient Christian materials. Her interest in material culture also extends to cultural heritage preservation and management, especially in conflict zones. She was recently an archaeological assistant in Egypt and a fellow at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC.
Gregory Nagy is the Francis Jones Professor of Classical Greek Literature and professor of comparative literature at Harvard University, and also the director of Harvard University’s Center for Hellenic Studies in Washington, DC. He is a leading authority on Homeric and related literature. In addition to his numerous publications and awards, he has also been at the fore of digital publishing in the humanities, spearheading the many Online Publication endeavors of the Center for Hellenic Studies.
Bradley N. Rice is a doctoral candidate in New Testament and early Christianity at McGill University, where his research centers on Christian Apocrypha. He is a founding member of the North American Society for the Study of Christian Apocryphal Literature (NASSCAL) as well as developer/coeditor of the bibliographic project e-Clavis: Christian Apocrypha. He has authored several articles on early Christian language and literature, and previously served as associate editor of the Contexticon of New Testament Language.
Eliza Rosenberg is an adjunct professor of religion at Eastern Kentucky University, where she teaches in New Testament and related areas. She was advised by Ellen Aitken at McGill University, where she received her PhD in 2015. Her work focuses on slavery and women in the New Testament and its reception.
Angela Standhartinger is professor of New Testament studies at Philipps-Universität Marburg (Germany). Her research focuses on Jewish Hellenistic literature, Paul and the deutero-Pauline letters, and meals in their Greco-Roman contexts. She has coedited “Eine gewöhnliche und harmlose Speise”? Von den Entwicklungen frühchristlicher Abendmahlstraditionen (Kohlhammer, 2008) and written several articles on the origin of the Eucharist and the cultural context of early Christian banqueting, including the Saturnalia, civic banquets and mass feedings, women’s roles in banquets and early Easter traditions, and meal discourses among early Christian apologists.
Frederick S. Tappenden is a faculty lecturer at McGill University, where he teaches in the areas of New Testament and Christian origins. His research focuses on Paul and the reception of Paul in the opening centuries of the Common Era. He is the author of Resurrection in Paul: Cognition, Metaphor, and Transformation (SBL Press, 2016), coeditor of the forthcoming Cognitive Science in Biblical Interpretation (Sheffield Phoenix), and author of several articles on resurrection in early Christianity and ancient Judaism.
Katharina Waldner is the chair of religious studies at the University of Erfurt, which she has held since 2009. She studied classics and archaeology at Zurich and Berlin (FU) and was previously an assistant professor in classics and religious studies at Berlin, Munich, and Erfurt. Her research fields include: ancient Greek religion, mystery cults and individuality, and early Christianity in its cultural contexts. She is coeditor of the forthcoming volume Burial Rituals, Ideas of Afterlife, and the Individual in the Hellenistic World and the Roman Empire (Stuttgart: Frank Steiner Verlag).
Meredith Warren is lecturer in biblical and religious studies at the University of Sheffield, where she leads the Embodied Religion research theme. She primarily researches the symbolic role of food, eating, and the sense of taste in the religions of antiquity. Her first book, My Flesh is Meat Indeed: A Nonsacramental Reading of John 6:51–58 (Fortress, 2015), examined the interplay of eating and divinification in the Gospel of John and ancient Greek novels. Her forthcoming monograph, Hierophagy: Transformational Eating in Ancient Literature, explores how taste and eating allow access to other worlds.