Peter Lanfer

Prof. Lanfer's love of ancient manuscripts began as undergraduate religion major at Dartmouth (B.A. 1998), where he wrote a thesis on biblical interpretation in apocalyptic Judaism and early Christianity with Professors Susan Ackerman and Ehud Benor. He completed his graduate studies at Yale (M.A.R. 2004) and UCLA (Ph.D. 2010). Prof. Lanfer's work examines the cultural role of sacred literature in the dynamic expressions of Jewish and Christian communities in the Greek and Roman empires. He is currently exploring the theological challenges presented by morally suspect texts in the Hebrew Bible in his forthcoming manuscript Reading Sacredness in the Badly Behaving Bible. Prof. Lanfer teaches courses on Jewish and Christian histories and literatures including the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament, the Dead Sea Scrolls, Jewish and Christian Pseudepigrapha, Rabbinic literature, Jewish magic and mysticism, apocalyptic and messianic movements in antiquity, as well as the archaeology and history of Jerusalem and Israel.