Laura Nasrallah
Laura Nasrallah’s research and teaching bring together New Testament and ancient Christian literature with the archaeological remains of the Mediterranean world, and often engage issues of colonialism, gender, race, status, and power.
Ancient Christians and the Power of Curses: Magic, Aesthetics, and Justice (Cambridge University Press, 2024) uses twentieth- and twenty-first century art—particularly the poetry, paintings, and sculpture of contemporary Black artists—as theoretical frameworks for understanding ritual objects and practices from the ancient Mediterranean world. The book shows that aspects of the writings of Paul and his co-writers, Justin, Clement, Julius Africanus, and John Chrysostom are best understood in relation to curses (defixiones), apotropaic practices (such as amulets), the use of unknown symbols (charaktēres) and so-called nonsense language (voces magicae), and the song and incantation traditions of antiquity. The rituals and ritual objects of Christ-followers and their contemporaries are aesthetic interventions that assume that (the) god(s) are available, that human language can be transcended whether through speaking in tongues or other means, that matter itself has power, and that justice can be pursued.
Archaeology and the Letters of Paul (Oxford University Press, 2019; paperback, 2021) focuses on reconstructing the social, economic, and religious contexts of those whom Paul and his co-writers addressed, focusing on case studies in specific cities and regions. It argues for a clear and different methodology in the use of archaeology in biblical studies, and its chapters attend to the themes of slavery, travel and hospitality, grief, poverty and abundance, as well as Paul’s pseudepigraphical and cultic afterlife. Christian Responses to Roman Art and Architecture: The Second-Century Church Amid the Spaces of Empire (Cambridge University Press, 2010) argues that early Christian writings such as those of Justin, Tatian, Athenagoras, and Clement are best understood when read in tandem with the archaeological remains of the Roman world and in relation to the so-called Second Sophistic. These contexts clarify the nature and stakes of their arguments about justice, piety, paideia, and the divine image(s). Her first book, An Ecstasy of Folly: Prophecy and Authority in Early Christianity, focuses on 1 Corinthians and on materials from the second- and third-century controversies over prophecy and the nature of the soul, especially those connected with so-called Montanism.
She is also co-editor, with Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, of Prejudice and Christian Beginnings: Investigating Race, Gender, and Ethnicity in Early Christian Studies (Fortress Press, 2009); with Charalambos Bakirtzis and Steven J. Friesen, of From Roman to Early Christian Thessalonikē: Studies in Religion and Archaeology (Harvard University Press, 2010), and, with AnneMarie Luijendijk and Charalambos Bakirtzis, of From Roman to Early Christian Cyprus: Studies in Religion and Archaeology (Mohr Siebeck, 2020). In 2014, she conducted the online course module Early Christianity: The Letters of Paul, offered through HarvardX/edX. Materials from that course can be found on her Letters of Paul website.
Longer term projects include a commentary on 1 Corinthians for the Hermeneia series; a short book titled The Letters of Paul: A Love/Hate Story; and projects on ancestral fault, inheritance, reparations, and justice, as well as on envy and its consequences.
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Books
Monographs
- Ancient Christians and the Power of Curses: Magic, Aesthetics, and Justice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming (2024).
- Archaeology and the Letters of Paul. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019.
- Christian Responses to Roman Art and Architecture: The Second-Century Church Amid the Spaces of Empire. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010.
- “An Ecstasy of Folly”: Prophecy and Authority in Early Christianity. Harvard Theological Studies no. 52. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003.
Co-edited volumes
- From Roman to Early Christian Cyprus: Religion and Archaeology. Co-editor with AnneMarie Luijendijk and Charalambos Bakirtzis. WUNT 437. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2020.
- Prejudice and Christian Beginnings: Investigating Race, Gender, and Ethnicity in Early Christian Studies. Co-editor with Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2009.
- From Roman to Early Christian Thessalonikē: Studies in Religion and Archaeology. Co-editor with Charalambos Bakirtzis and Steven J. Friesen. Harvard Theological Studies 64; Cambridge,MA: Harvard University Press, 2010.
