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Sarah Schwarz

Assistant Professor

My scholarship seeks to challenge the perceived boundaries between Jew, Christian, and “Pagan,” as well as between Bible and parabiblical, and between “religion” and “magic” in late antiquity. My work thus far has emphasized the interconnected nature of Judaism and Christianity in the formative period, and brings the study of ancient sources together with current theoretical debates in the study of religion. The spirit of my work to date has been to challenge the categories that have historically defined the study of religion (e.g, traditionally separated fields such as the study of Judaism and Christianity, the fields of Hebrew Bible and New Testament, scholarship on so-called “pagan” religions vs. those that survive in some form until today, work on biblical texts that are authoritative for some communities vs. work on those that are no longer (or were never) part of canonical collections, and especially research into those practices that can be described as “magical” as opposed to those understood (from whatever perspective) as “religious”), and ideally to open up new questions (and even better, answers!) by seeing our data in new ways.

Fields

Religions of the Roman Empire, especially Early Christianity and Early Judaism
Biblical and Quasi-biblical Literature
Religion and Magic
Demonology
Apocalyptic Literature

Regular Classes

RE 111 Introduction to the Hebrew Bible
RE 112 Introduction to the New Testament
RE 120 Introduction to Judaism
RE 200 West in Time: Life After Death (with Peter Wright)
RE 205 Gnosticism
RE 213 Apocalypse
RE 300 Religion and Magic
RE 300 The Imagined Bible
RE 300 Ritual and Judaism
RE 405 Thesis Preparation
RE 406 Senior Thesis

Education

    Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania, 2005
    B. A., Brown University, 1995, Phi Beta Kappa

    Papers & Publications

    Schwarz

This is the Department of Religion