Candida R. Moss (born 26 November 1978) is an English public intellectual, journalist, New Testament scholar and historian of Christianity, and as of 2017, the Edward Cadbury Professor of Theology in the Department of Theology and Religion at the University of Birmingham. A graduate of Oxford and Yale universities, Moss specialises in the study of the New Testament, with a focus on the subject of martyrdom in early Christianity, as well as other topics from the New Testament and early Church History. She is the winner of a number of awards relating to her research and writing.

Early life and education
Moss was born on 26 November 1978 in London, England.  She graduated from Oxford University in 2000 with a B.A. in theology, a degree taken with Honors at Worcester College. In 2002, she received a Master of Arts in Religion (M.A.R.) in Biblical studies from Yale Divinity School. Moss graduated from Yale University in 2006 with an M.A. and an M.Phil in New Testament, following this by a PhD in the same field in 2008. Her doctoral advisor was Adela Yarbro Collins.

Career

Appointments
Moss began her career at the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana, and became a full professor there in 2012, four years after receiving her PhD from Yale. As of August 2017, Moss had joined the faculty of the Department of Theology and Religion at the University of Birmingham as Edward Cadbury Professor of Theology. She is also a research associate at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World at New York University.

Research focus
Moss has specialized in the study of martyrdom, ancient medicine and the New Testament, early Christian ideas about the resurrection of Jesus's physical body, and enslaved literate workers in the ancient world.

Moss has written three books on martyrdom. Her writing has been praised for its "readability, clarity...creativity, thoughtfulness, and wit." She was the recipient of The John Templeton Award of Theological Promise in 2011, which cited her 2010 OUP book, The Other Christs: Imitating Jesus in Ancient Christian Ideologies of Martyrdom. Her 2012 book, Ancient Christian Martyrdom, argued that post-Enlightenment bias against martyrdom had led scholars to think of martyrdom as a phenomenon that spread from one region of the Roman empire to another; against this, Moss argues that martyrdom developed differently in different contexts. Her controversial 2013 book, The Myth of Persecution: How Early Christians Invented a Story of Martyrdom, argues that the stories of early Christian martyrdom "have been altered ... edited and shaped by later generations of Christians" and none of them are "completely historically accurate"; she additionally maintains that the Roman authorities did not actively seek out or target Christians and that in the first three centuries of Christian history, Christians were only prosecuted by order of a Roman emperor for a brief period (no more than twelve years).  In a review published in 2013 focusing on her first two books, Edinburgh classicist Lucy Grig wrote that "Candida Moss has swiftly established herself as one of the most interesting and original scholars working on early Christian martyrdom."

Other activities
Moss is a columnist for The Daily Beast, and she has contributed to the BBC Radio 4's In Our Time, as well as to the Los Angeles Times, Politico, The New York Times, BBC Online, CNN.com, The Washington Post, HuffPost, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and the Times Higher Education Supplement.

Moss has served as papal news contributor for CBS News, an academic consultant to the television series The Bible, and as a contributor to the National Geographic Explorer,as well as for the History, Travel, and Smithsonian Channels.

Moss is an advocate for public academic scholarship. In a 2022 article for data-based website Academic Influence Moss topped the list of the ten most influential women in religious studies in that last ten years.

Honours
Moss received the John Templeton Award for Theological Promise in 2011, and was elected a member of Studiorum Novi Testamenti Societas in 2013. In 2015 she was shortlisted for the Hiett Prize and a Religion Newswriters Association award, and was shortlisted in 2016 for her co-authored book, Reconceiving Infertility, by the American Academy of Religion for its Book Prize for Textual Studies. In 2017 her co-authored book Bible Nation: The United States of Hobby Lobby was selected as a Publishers Weekly 2017 Best Book in Religion. In addition, in 2007 she received the Charlotte W. Newcombe Award from the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation, and an NEH Summer Seminar Grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Personal life
In April 2018 she married Justin Foa, president and CEO of international insurance brokerage company Foa & Son. Moss is a kidney transplant recipient.

Selected works

Thesis

Books

Edited volumes

Peer-reviewed journal articles
 "The Secretary: Enslaved Workers, Stenography, and the Production of Early Christian Literature,"  The Journal of Theological Studies 74 (2023): 20-56. 
 "Reading Between the Lines: Looking for the Contributions of Enslaved Literate Laborers in a Second Century Text," Studies in Late Antiquity 5 (2021): 432-52
 "Infant Exposure and the Rhetoric of Cannibalism, Incest, and Martyrdom in the Early Church," Journal of Early Christian Studies 29:3 (2021): 341-396.
 "Fashioning Mark: Early Christian Discussions about the Scribe and Status of the Second Gospel,” New Testament Studies 67:2 (2021): 181-204.
 Co-authored with Liane M. Feldman. "The New Jerusalem: Wealth, Ancient Building Projects, and Revelation 21-22,” New Testament Studies 66:3 (2020): 351-66.
 “Dying to Live Forever: Identity and Virtue in the Resurrection of the Bodies of the Martyrs,” Irish Theological Quarterly 84:2 (2019): 155-174.
 "A Note on the Death of Judas in Papias,” New Testament Studies 65:3 (2019): 388-97.
 "The Marks of the Nails: Scars, Wounds, and the Resurrection of Jesus in John,” Early Christianity 8:1 (2017): 48-68
 "Nailing Down and Tying Up: Lessons in Intertextual Impossibility from the Martyrdom of Polycarp,” Vigiliae Christianae 67:2 (2013): 117-136.
 “Christly Possession and Weakened Bodies: A Reconsideration of the Function of Paul's Thorn in the Flesh (2 Cor. 12:7-10),” Journal of Religion Disability and Health 16:4 (2012): 319-333.
 “The Discourse of Voluntary Martyrdom: Ancient and Modern,” Church History 81:3 (2012): 531-551. 
 Co-Authopred with Jeffrey Stackert “The Devastation of Darkness: Disability in Exodus 10:21-23, 27, and the Intensification of the Plagues,”  Journal of Religion 92:3 (2012): 362-372.
 Co-authored with Joel S. Baden. “1 Thess 4:13-18 in Rabbinic Perspective,”  New Testament Studies 58 (2012): 1-16.
 “Blurred Vision and Ethical Confusion: The Rhetorical Function of Matt 6:22-23,” Catholic Biblical Quarterly 73:4 (2011): 757-76.
 Co-authored with Joel S. Baden. “The Origin and Interpretation of sara ‘at in Leviticus 13-14,” Journal of Biblical Literature 130:4 (2011): 643-661.
 “Heavenly Healing: Eschatological Cleansing and the Resurrection of the Dead in the Early Church,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 79:3 (2011) 1-27.
 “The Man with the Flow of Power: Porous Bodies in Mark 5:25-34,” Journal of Biblical Literature 129:3 (2010): 507-519.
 “On the Dating of Polycarp: Rethinking the Place of the Martyrdom of Polycarp in the History of Christianity,” Early Christianity 1:4 (2010): 539-574.
 “The Transfiguration: An Exercise in Markan Accommodation,” Biblical Interpretation 12:4(2004): 69-89.

See also
Barrett Foa

References

External links
 Official website
 University of Birmingham Webpage
 Daily Beast Columns
 Atlantic Articles

1978 births
Living people
New Testament scholars
University of Notre Dame faculty
Yale Divinity School alumni
Female biblical scholars
Women classical scholars
Alumni of the University of Oxford
Women Christian theologians
Academics of the University of Birmingham