Candida Moss
Candida R. Moss (born 26 November 1978) is an English public intellectual, journalist, New Testament scholar and historian of Christianity, who is 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 and martyrdom in early Christianity. Early life and education. Born in 1978 in London, England, Moss attended Hanford School and The Godolphin and Latymer School. She graduated from Worcester College, Oxford, in 2000 with a B.A.(Hons) in theology. In 2002 she received  an M.A.R. in Biblical studies from Yale Divinity School. In 2006, Moss graduated from Yale University with an M.A. and an M.Phil in religious studies, followed by a PhD in religious studies in 2008. Moss is a kidney transplant recipient. In April 2018 she married Justin Foa, president and CEO of international insurance brokerage Foa & Son. Academic career. 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. She is Roman Catholic. 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 influential books on martyrdom. Her first, "The Other Christs: Imitating Jesus in Ancient Christian Ideologies of Martyrdom", was the recipient of the 2011 John Templeton Award for Theological Promise. 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. In 2013 her book "The Myth of Persecution: How Early Christians Invented a Story of Martyrdom" was published, in which she 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". Additionally, she maintains that the Roman authorities did not actively seek out or target Christians and that only for a brief period of no more than twelve years in the first three centuries of Christian history were Christians prosecuted by order of a Roman emperor. In a review of  her first two books published in 2013 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." In August 2017 Moss joined the faculty of the Department of Theology and Religion at the University of Birmingham as Edward Cadbury Professor of Theology. She is a research associate at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World at New York University. Moss is a public intellectual and advocate for public academic scholarship. Her writing has been praised for its "readability, clarity...creativity, thoughtfulness, and  wit." She is a columnist for "The Daily Beast" and has contributed to the "Los Angeles Times", "Politico", "The New York Times", BBC Online, BBC Radio 4's In Our Time,CNN.com, "The Washington Post", "HuffPost", "The Chronicle of Higher Education", and "Times Higher Education." She served as papal news contributor for CBS News, an academic consultant to the television series "The Bible", and as a frequent contributor to the National Geographic Channel, History Channel, Travel Channel, and Smithsonian Channel. Honours. Among other marks of distinction, Moss received the Charlotte W. Newcombe Award from the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation , the John Templeton Award for Theological Promise from the John Templeton Foundation, and a NEH Summer Seminar Grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. In 2015 she was shortlisted for the Hiett Prize and a Religion Newswriters Association award. In 2016 her co-authored book "Reconceiving Infertility" was shortlisted for the American Academy of Religion 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. She was elected a member of Studiorum Novi Testamenti Societas in 2013. Candida Moss