Stroumsa was born in Paris. His parents were Shoah survivors;his father,born in Salonica,survived Auschwitz thanks to his musical skills and his mother,born in Athens,Bergen-Belsen.[4] Stroumsa grew up in Paris. He studied at the Lycée Voltaire and at the Ecole Normale Israélite Orientale,where he was greatly influenced by its principal,Emmanuel Levinas,who taught him philosophy and Talmud. After briefly studying economics and law at the University of Paris,he moved to Israel. For his B.A. (1969),he studied philosophy and Jewish thought at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. After his military service (1969–1972),he studied for the PhD in the Study of Religion at Harvard University. After the submission of his doctoral dissertation (1978) which dealt with Gnostic mythology,he was appointed a lecturer in the Department of Comparative Religion at the Hebrew University. In 1991 he was appointed to the Martin Buber Chair of Comparative Religion. Stroumsa was the Founding Director of the Center for the Study of Christianity (1999–2005). In 2009 he was appointed Professor of the Study of the Abrahamic Religions at Oxford University and a Fellow of Lady Margaret Hall;he retired in 2013.[5]
Guy Stroumsa's research focuses on the dynamics of encounters between religious traditions and institutions in the Roman Empire and in Late Antiquity,in the Mediterranean and the Middle East. He has studied the crystallization of the Abrahamic traditions in late antiquity,as a background to Islam. He sees Gnosis,Manichaeism and Early Christianity as a unique laboratory for understanding religious transformations in late antiquity. In his doctoral dissertation,Stroumsa studied the development of Gnostic mythology,and demonstrated its roots in Judaism and biblical interpretation. In his studies,Stroumsa seeks to cross traditional interdisciplinary boundaries in order to study religious phenomena from a comparative perspective. This approach permits him to understand the mechanisms behind the religious revolution of Late Antiquity,a period which saw the cessation of a number of widespread aspects of ancient religion (such as blood sacrifice) and the development of new systems,which stand at the basis of Judaism,Christianity and Islam.[9]
Stroumsa also works on the history of scholarship on religion,from early modern times to the twentieth century.
Stroumsa is the author of fourteen books,and the editor or co-editor of some twenty books. He has published more than a hundred and thirty articles.[10]
Works
Books
Stroumsa, Guy G. (1984). Another Seed: Studies in Gnostic Mythology (Nag Hammadi Studies. Vol.24. Leiden: Brill. ISBN9789004074194. OCLC12662703.
——— (1992). Savoir et salut: traditions juives et tentations dualistes dans le christianisme ancien (in French). Paris: Le Cerf.
——— (1996). Hidden Wisdom: Esoteric Traditions and the Roots of Christian Mysticism. Studies in the History of Religions. Vol.70. Leiden: Brill. ISBN9789004105041. OCLC782245274. [revised and augmented paperback edition, 2005] = La sapienza nascosta: Tradizioni esoteriche e radici del misticismo cristiano (in Italian). Rome: Arkeios. 2000. ISBN9788886495493. OCLC801182382.
——— (1999). Barbarian Philosophy: The Religious Revolution of Early Christianity. Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament. Vol.112. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck. ISBN9783161471056.
———; Le Brun, Jacques (1998). Les juifs présentés aux chrétiens: textes de Léon de Modène et de Richard Simon, introduits et commentés (in French). Paris: Belles Lettres.
——— (1999). La formazione dell'identita cristiana (in Italian). Brescia: Morcelliana.
——— (1999). Kanon und Kultur: Zwei Studien zur Hermeneutik des antiken Christentums (in German). Berlin & New York: de Gruyter.)
——— (2005). La fin du sacrifice: Mutations religieuses de l'antiquité tardive. Collège de France (in French). Paris: Odile Jacob. ISBN9782738116345. OCLC936692185. = La fine del sacrificio: Le mutazioni religiose della tarda antichita. Piccola biblioteca Einaudi. N.S. (in Italian). Vol.338. Turin: Einaudi. 2006. ISBN9788806183301. OCLC493729728. = The End of Sacrifice: Religious Transformations of Late Antiquity. Chicago: Chicago University Press. 2009. ISBN9780226777382. OCLC488441585.
——— (2006). Le rire du Christ et autres essais sur le christianisme antique (in French). Paris: Bayard.
——— (2010). A New Science: The Discovery of Religion in the Age of Reason. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. ISBN9780674048607. OCLC456169998.
——— (2015). The Making of the Abrahamic Religions in Late Antiquity. Oxford Studies in the Abrahamic Religions. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN9780198738862. OCLC918104079.
——— (2016). The Scriptural Universe of Ancient Christianity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. ISBN9780674545137. OCLC946907364.
——— (2017). Religions d'Abraham: histoires croisees (in French). Geneva: Labor et Fides.
With Sarah Stroumsa, Eine dreifältige Schnur: über Judentum, Christentum und Islam in Geschichte und Wissenschaft (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2020).
The Idea of Semitic Monotheism: The Rise and Fall of a Scholarly Myth (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021)
As editor
With Sh. Shaked and D. Shulman: Gilgul: Transformations, Revolutions and Permanence in the History of Religions, in Honor of R. J. Z. Werblowsky (Suppl. to Numen 50; Leiden: Brill, 1987)
With Sh. Shaked and I. Gruenwald: Messiah and Christos: Studies in the Jewish Origins of Christianity, presented to David Flusser at the Occasion of his Seventy Fifth Birthday (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1992)
With O. Limor: Contra Judaeos: Ancient and Medieval Polemics Between Christians and Jews (Texts and Studies in Medieval and Early Modern Judaism: Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck; 1995)
With H. G. Kippenberg: Secrecy and Concealment: Studies in the History of Mediterranean and Near Eastern Religions (Studies in the History of Religions 65; Leiden: Brill, 1995)
Shlomo Pines, Studies in the History of Religion (The Collected Works of Shlomo Piines, volume IV; Jerusalem: Magnes, 1996), edited by Guy G. Stroumsa
With G. Stanton: Tolerance and Intolerance in Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; 1998; Paperback edition, Cambridge, 2008)
With A. Kofsky: Sharing the Sacred: Religious Contacts and Conflicts in the Holy Land, 1st.-15th century (Jerusalem: Ben Zvi; 1998)
With A. Baumgarten and J. Assmann, Soul, Self, Body in Religious Experience: Studies in the History of Religions (Leiden: Brill, 1998)
With D. Shulman: Dream Cultures: Explorations in the Comparative History of Dreaming (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999)
With J. Assmann, Transforming the Inner Self in Ancient Religions (Leiden: Brill, 1999)
With D. Shulman, Self and Self Transformation in the History of Religions (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001; Paperback edition, Oxford, 2002)
With Jan Assmann, Archiv für Religionsgeschichte 3 (2002), "Das 17. Jahrhundert und die Ursprünge der Religionsgeschichte" (Munich, Leipzig: Saur)
With M. Finkelberg, Homer, the Bible, and Beyond: Literary and Religious Canons in the Ancient World (Jerusalem Studies in Religion and Culture, 2; Leiden, Boston: Brill, 2003)
With O. Limor, Christians and Christianity in the Holy Land: From the Origins to the Latin Kingdoms (Turnhout: Brepols, 2006)
Gershom Scholem and Morton Smith: Correspondence, 1945-1982 (Jerusalem Studies in Religion and Culture; Leiden: Brill, 2008)
With Markus Bockmuehl, Paradise in Antiquity: Jewish and Christian Views (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010)
with R. Bonfil, O. Irshai and R. Talgam, eds., Jews of Byzantium: Dialectics of Minority and Majority Cultures (Jerusalem Studies in Religion and Culture: Leiden: Brill, 2011)
with Adam Silverstein and Moshe Blidstein, The Oxford Handbook of the Abrahamic Religions (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015)
Dynamics of Monotheism in Late Antiquity (Oxford University Press, 2025).
Stroumsa is also the author of about 160 scholarly articles. Many of these articles can be found online on Guy Stroumsa's personal page on academia.edu
↑ See Jacques Stroumsa, Violinist in Auschwitz: From Salonica to Jerusalem, 1913-1967 (Constance: Hartung-Gorre Verlag, 1996), originally written in French: Tu choisiras la vie: violoniste a Quachwitz (Paris: Le Cerf, 1998).
↑ In 2018, he was, together with Professor Sarah Stroumsa, the recipient of the Leopold Lucas Prize. In 2020, he was awarded the Rothschild Prize. Guy Stroumsa CVArchived 2011-12-29 at the Wayback Machine , Stroumsa homepage at Hebrew University site
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