معرفی
Matthew Thiessen is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at McMaster University, specializing in the rise of Christianity within its early Jewish context. His research interrogates ethnicity, identity construction, and ritual purity in the Gospels, Pauline letters, and Second Temple literature.
Education:
- Bachelor of Religious Studies, Tyndale University College & Seminary, Toronto
- Master of Arts in Biblical Studies, Trinity Western University, Langley
- Master of Studies in Religion, Duke University, Durham
- PhD in New Testament, Duke University, Durham
Research Interests: Thiessen’s work centers on how early Christianity emerged from Judaism, with particular attention to Paul’s mission to the Gentiles, Jesus’s observance of Jewish law, and ancient discourses on ritual impurity. He explores how ethnic identities were negotiated in antiquity and how these negotiations shaped religious boundaries.
Publications Trajectory: Across his monographs—Contesting Conversion (2011), Paul and the Gentile Problem (2016), Jesus and the Forces of Death (2020), and A Jewish Paul (2023)—Thiessen traces a consistent argument: Jesus and Paul operated within Judaism rather than against it, challenging later supersessionist readings. His edited volumes further expand on Jewish-Christian interactions and the construction of the “other” in antiquity.
Teaching: He teaches a wide range of courses including “Who was Jesus?”, “The Birth of Christianity”, “Apocalypse Then and Now”, and “Ethnicity, Race, and Religion”, demonstrating his commitment to integrating historical-critical scholarship with contemporary questions of identity.
Affiliations: Beyond McMaster, Thiessen collaborates with scholars from Duke, Yale, and international institutions, and his work is widely cited in both academic and popular forums, including multiple Wikipedia pages and reference works.
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