Ask Candida Moss ’02 M.A.R. ’08 Ph.D. which epiphanic experience led her to become a scholar and historian, and her answer may surprise you.
“In England we have religious studies in high school,” explains Moss. “I was taking an exegesis class on the Gospel of John and the first day we read John 8 in which Jesus calls the Jews the ‘sons of the devil.’ As a Catholic who was not, at the time, especially biblically conversant, I was horrified. Did other people know this was in the Bible? I was convinced that this had to be wrong and I wanted to find out why it was in the Bible. I suppose I was sold on the importance of historical criticism from the beginning.”
Today, Moss is a professor of New Testament and Early Christianity at the University of Notre Dame and no stranger to the controversial topics posed by religious history and biblical literature. One of these topics—amputation in the Bible—brought Moss to YDS on Sept. 25 to deliver a lecture entitled “The Righteous Amputees: Salvation & the Sinful Body in Mark 9.”
Moss, who is currently on writing sabbatical from University of Notre Dame, is no stranger to Yale. After earning a B.A. in Theology from the University of Oxford in 2000, Moss matriculated in YDS, receiving a M.A.R. in Biblical Studies in 2002. She continued her studies at Yale University, graduating with a M.A. and M.Phil. in religious studies in 2004, followed by a Ph.D. in religious studies in 2008.
Moss’s lecture focused on the much-disputed passage of Mark 9: 43-49, where Jesus says, “If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life maimed than to have two hands and to go to hell to the unquenchable fire.”
While most scholars have assumed that these references to disability and amputation are “fleshy metaphors,” Moss countered that the author intended the passage literally, believing that the act of amputation was not only salvific in this life, but also in the life to come.
“The form of amputation that was endorsed by Mark was an act of virtue and courage,” says Moss. She further noted how this contrasts contemporary understandings of amputation as a disability.
Members of the YDS community who attended found the lecture to be both informative and challenging.
Sarah Stewart ’15 M.Div. appreciated Moss’s call to engage “the salvific, if shocking, demands of Scripture.”
“Dr. Moss’ refreshingly elegant argument urges readers to grapple with the healing possibilities of reading sacred texts for the whole of what they actually say,” says Stewart.
Countering inaccurate assumptions about both sacred texts and early Christian history is a key component of Moss’s scholarship.
It’s also why Moss frequently contributes to news sites like CNN, The Daily Beast, CBS, and Huffington Post to offer her perspective on current issues like the destruction of Christian holy sites in Iraq or Pope Francis’s social teaching.
“I think it is incumbent upon scholars to voice their concerns when they see history being misrepresented and misused,” says Moss.
One of these misrepresentations is the subject of Moss’ most recent work, Reconceiving Infertility, a book she co-authored with YDS Professor of Hebrew Bible Joel Baden and forthcoming from Princeton University Press.
“Reconceiving Infertility is really an attempt to take a fresh look childlessness in the Bible,” says Moss. “We all know the command to be fruitful and multiply and the stories of the matriarchs getting pregnant late in life, but the Bible has a lot more to say than just ‘pray about it.’ Not every biblical author thinks that childbearing is necessarily a good thing or that family is about biology.”
According to Moss, the book does focus on understanding the “biblical texts in their historical context, but it also utilizes the insights of disability studies, gender studies, and sociological studies of infertility.”
In addition to academic circles, she hopes this book with attract readership from broader audiences as well.
“Studies demonstrate that infertility affects people from all walks of life and is a problem for women, particularly, everywhere. We hope to provide resources for those who deal with this issue in their personal lives, medical profession, or congregations.”
Moss is also author of The Other Christs: Imitating Jesus in Ancient Christian Ideologies of Martyrdom (Oxford, 2010), for which she was awarded the 2011 John Templeton Award for Theological Promise; Ancient Christian Martyrdom: Diverse Practices, Theologies and Traditions (Anchor Yale Bible, 2012); and The Myth of Persecution: How Early Christians Invented a Story of Martyrdom (HarperOne, 2013), which was a finalist for the Religion Newswriters Association Award. Together with Jeremy Schipper, she co-edited Disability Studies and Biblical Literature (Palgrave, 2011).
Much of Moss’s scholarship concerns Christian martyrdom, an interest Moss says she developed during her time as a YDS student in the “Martyrs and Martyrdom” course with Buckingham Professor of New Testament Criticism and Interpretation Adela Collins.
In reflecting on her former student, Collins now says she considers Moss the foremost modern expert on the topic of martyrdom.
“In scholarly circles Dr. Moss has made two major contributions,” says Collins. “She has shown that the martyrs have been portrayed not only as imitators of Christ but also as Christ figures. In addition she has persuaded many that the history of martyrdom cannot be written in a unified, linear fashion. Rather, traditions about the martyrs developed in various ways in a number of different geographical and cultural contexts.”
Moss is hopeful that her works will have a profound and lasting impact on audience, ranging from the academy to the pew.
“If there is a unifying theme to my work it’s my interest in questioning assumptions about the kinds of bodies that matter and lives that are worth living,” says Moss. “If there is one thing I would like to show, it is that putting aside these assumptions makes us better readers of the Bible.”
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