Angela Kim Harkins is a Professor of New Testament and Professor Ordinaria at Boston College School of Theology and Ministry. [1]
Harkins was born in Seoul, South Korea and grew up in the northwest side of Chicago, Illinois. She completed her undergraduate (B.A. Hons., 1994, Theology major and Philosophy minor) at Loyola University, Chicago and went on to complete a M.A. degree in the Department of Theology at the University of Notre Dame, concentrating on biblical languages. She studied at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Israel, 1997-98, with funding from a Fulbright fellowship, a year that coincided with the fiftieth anniversary of the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls. She returned to Notre Dame to begin her PhD studies in Christianity and Judaism, where she also minored in Syriac exegesis and liturgical theology. Her dissertation on the Qumran Hodayot, Signs of editorial shaping of the Hodayot collection: a redactional analysis of 1QHa-b and 4QHa-f (2003) was later published as a series of articles. [2]
Harkins was a tenured Associate Professor in the Religious Studies Department and a member of the Judaic Studies faculty at Fairfield University in Connecticut, where she was awarded the Distinguished Teaching Award by the College of Arts and Sciences in 2011. She then held a Marie Curie International Incoming Fellowship at the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom to undertake research on religious experience at Qumran. Following that fellowship, she joined the Boston College School of Theology and Ministry as an Associate Professor of the New Testament and an Ordinary Professor in their Ecclesiastical Faculty. [1] She was promoted to the rank of full Professor in 2023.
Harkins is an active member of the Society of Biblical Literature and is the co-chair of the Prayer in Antiquity program unit. She has also served as chair of the Religious Experience in Antiquity section. She also serves on the steering committee of the Qumran and Dead Sea Scrolls program unit of the International Society of Biblical Literature. In 2022, Harkins will have completed her second term on the Status of Women in the Profession Committee of the SBL. In 2022, she began a term on the Professional Conduct Committee of the SBL. Harkins has been a member of the Catholic Biblical Association since 2004 (assoc. 1997). She is currently the chair of the Professional Conduct Committee of the CBA and has served as chair of the Program Committee. Harkins is a past board member of the Lilly National Network Board, an organization whose mission is to strengthen the quality and character of church-related institutions of higher learning in America. [1] She currently sits on the board of Collegium: A Colloquy of Faith and Intellectual Life.
In 2022, Harkins became the lead editor of the Journal of Ancient Judaism , a position that she shares with Jonathan Klawans (Boston University). The founding editors of this journal are Maxine Grossman, Alex Jassen, and Armin Lange. The Journal of Ancient Judaism is now published in Leiden by Brill.
Harkins is interested in prayer in the Second Temple and early Christian periods, the instrumental role of emotion in reading and ritual experiences, and the history of interpretation of scripture by both Jewish and Christian communities. Much of her scholarship has focused on the Qumran prayer collection known as the Hodayot (the Thanksgiving Hymns), but other texts of interest include the so-called penitential prayers from the Second Temple period; the Dead Sea Scrolls and Pseudepigrapha; the New Testament; and the Psalms and Odes of Solomon. Her interests also extend to Jewish and Christian relations in antiquity and in the modern period. Harkins is a Christian Leaders Initiative Fellow (2012-13), appointed by the American Jewish Committee and the Shalom Hartman Institute (Jerusalem). Harkins is currently working on a long term project on the early Christian work known as the Shepherd of Hermas. Her recent book on the Shepherd is entitled: An Embodied Reading of the Shepherd of Hermas: The Book of Visions and Its Role in Moral Formation, Sheffield: Equinox, 2023.
The Essenes were a mystic Jewish sect during the Second Temple period that flourished from the 2nd century BCE to the 1st century CE.
Midrash is expansive Jewish Biblical exegesis using a rabbinic mode of interpretation prominent in the Talmud. The word itself means "textual interpretation", "study", or "exegesis", derived from the root verb darash (דָּרַשׁ), which means "resort to, seek, seek with care, enquire, require", forms of which appear frequently in the Hebrew Bible.
The Dead Sea Scrolls, also called the Qumran Caves Scrolls, are a set of ancient Jewish manuscripts from the Second Temple period. They were discovered over a period of 10 years, between 1946 and 1956, at the Qumran Caves near Ein Feshkha in the West Bank, on the northern shore of the Dead Sea. Dating from the 3rd century BCE to the 1st century CE, the Dead Sea Scrolls are considered to be a keystone in the history of archaeology with great historical, religious, and linguistic significance because they include the oldest surviving manuscripts of entire books later included in the biblical canons, along with extra-biblical and deuterocanonical manuscripts that preserve evidence of the diversity of religious thought in late Second Temple Judaism. At the same time, they cast new light on the emergence of Christianity and of Rabbinic Judaism. Almost all of the 15,000 scrolls and scroll fragments are held in the Shrine of the Book at the Israel Museum, located in the city of Jerusalem. The Israeli government's custody of the Dead Sea Scrolls is disputed by Jordan and the Palestinian Authority on territorial, legal, and humanitarian grounds — they were mostly discovered following the Jordanian annexation of the West Bank and were acquired by Israel after Jordan lost the 1967 Arab–Israeli War — whilst Israel's claims are primarily based on historical and religious grounds, given their significance in Jewish history and in the heritage of Judaism.
The Shepherd of Hermas, sometimes just called The Shepherd, is a Christian literary work of the late first half of the second century, considered a valuable book by many Christians, and considered canonical scripture by some of the early Church fathers such as Irenaeus. The Shepherd was popular amongst Christians in the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th centuries. It is found in the Codex Sinaiticus.
The Book of Giants is an apocryphal Jewish book which expands upon the Genesis narrative of the Hebrew Bible, in a similar manner to the Book of Enoch. Together with this latter work, the Book of Giants "stands as an attempt to explain how it was that wickedness had become so widespread and muscular before the flood; in so doing, it also supplies the reason why God was more than justified in sending that flood." The text's composition has been dated to before the 2nd century BC.
Lawrence Harvey Schiffman is a professor at New York University ; he was formerly Vice-Provost of Undergraduate Education at Yeshiva University and Professor of Jewish Studies. He had previously been Chair of New York University's Skirball Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies and served as the Ethel and Irvin A. Edelman Professor in Hebrew and Judaic Studies at New York University (NYU). He is currently the Judge Abraham Lieberman Professor of Hebrew and Judaic Studies at New York University and Director of the Global Institute for Advanced Research in Jewish Studies. He is a specialist in the Dead Sea Scrolls, Judaism in Late Antiquity, the history of Jewish law, and Talmudic literature.
Géza Vermes, was a British academic, Biblical scholar, and Judaist of Jewish–Hungarian descent—one who also served as a Roman Catholic priest in his youth—and scholar specialized in the field of the history of religion, particularly ancient Judaism and early Christianity. He is best known for his complete translation of the Dead Sea Scrolls into English; his research focused on the Dead Sea Scrolls and other Ancient Hebrew writings in Aramaic such as the Targumim, and on the life and religion of Jesus. Vermes was one of the most important voices in contemporary Jesus research, and he has been described as the greatest Jesus scholar of his time. Vermes' written work on Jesus focuses principally on the Jewishness of the historical Jesus, as seen in the broader context of the narrative scope of Jewish history and theology, while questioning and challenging the basis of the Christian doctrine on Jesus.
John Strugnell became, at 23, the youngest member of the team of scholars led by Roland de Vaux, formed in 1954 to edit the Dead Sea Scrolls in Jerusalem. He was studying Oriental languages at Jesus College, Oxford when Sir Godfrey Rolles Driver, a lecturer in Semitic philology, nominated him to join the Scrolls editorial team.
Jonathan G Campbell was a Senior Lecturer in Biblical Studies & Early Judaism in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies at the University of Bristol in Bristol, United Kingdom. He retired in 2017.
Discoveries in the Judaean Desert (DJD) is the official 40-volume publication that serves as the editio princeps for the Dead Sea Scrolls. It is published by Oxford University Press.
The Enoch Seminar is an academic group of international specialists in Second Temple Judaism and the origins of Christianity who share information about their work in the field and biennially meet to discuss topics of common interest. The group is supported by the Department of Near Eastern Studies of the University of Michigan and the Michigan Center for Early Christian Studies, the group gathers about 200 university professors from more than fifteen countries.
Loren T. Stuckenbruck is an historian of early Christianity and Second Temple Judaism, currently professor of New Testament at the University of Munich, in Germany. His work has exerted a significant impact on the field.
4QInstruction,, also known as Sapiential Work A or Secret of the Way Things Are, is a Hebrew text among the Dead Sea Scrolls classified as wisdom literature. It is authored by a spiritual expert, directed towards a beginner. The author addresses how to deal with business and money issues in a godly manner, public affairs, leadership, marriage, children, and family, and how to live life righteously among secular society. There is some consensus that it dates to the third century BCE.
Michael Edward Stone is a professor emeritus of Armenian Studies and of Comparative Religion at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His research deals with Armenian studies and with Jewish literature and thought of the Second Temple period. He is also a published poet.
Eva Mroczek is a North American scholar of ancient Judaism, in particular the texts of the Hebrew Bible, Dead Sea Scrolls, and Apocrypha, and Jewish readers' and writers' engagement with these texts. She is the author of The Literary Imagination in Jewish Antiquity (2016).
Carol Ann Newsom is an American biblical scholar, historian of ancient Judaism, and literary critic. She is the Charles Howard Candler Professor Emerita of Old Testament at the Candler School of Theology and a former senior fellow at the Center for the Study of Law and Religion at Emory University. She is a leading expert on the Dead Sea Scrolls, Wisdom literature, and the Book of Daniel.
Eileen Marie Schuller is a professor at the Faculty of Social Sciences at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. Schuller is an official editor of the Dead Sea Scrolls. She teaches undergraduate and graduate studies in the Biblical field. Over a span of 30 years, her involvement in the publication of the Dead Sea Scrolls has led to numerous contributions in authenticating the discoveries found in the caves near the Ancient Qumran settlement.
Virginia Burrus is an American scholar of Late Antiquity and expert on gender, sexuality and religion. She is currently the Bishop W. Earl Ledden Professor of Religion and director of graduate studies at Syracuse University.
Hanna Tervanotko is a Finnish-born Canadian historian of religion. She is an assistant professor in the Department of Religious Studies at McMaster University in Ontario, Canada. Her research focuses on the Second Temple era and her research interests include women in antiquity, Qumran, Dead Sea Scrolls, and Jewish interpretation of scripture. She is affiliated with the Centre of Excellence "Changes in Sacred Texts and Traditions" (CSTT) at the University of Helsinki.
Kristin Mimi Lieve Leen De Troyer is an Old Testament scholar, theologian, writer and an (honorary) professor who has taught at different universities such as the University of Salzburg, the University of St Andrews, and Claremont School of Theology. She is the author of many scholarly books and articles, an editor of several academic series, and a professor and researcher of the Hebrew Bible, the Septuagint, Judaism and the Dead Sea Scrolls. Since the beginning of 2021, she serves as the Secretary of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts.