Joan E. Taylor

Joan Taylor

Joan Taylor is a historian of Jesus, the Bible, early Christianity, the Dead Sea Scrolls and Second Temple Judaism, with special expertise in archaeology, women and gender, and the work of Philo of Alexandria. She is also a novelist. Taylor is the Professor of Christian Origins and Second Temple Judaism at King's College London.

Academic career

After a BA degree at Auckland University, New Zealand. Joan completed a three year post-graduate degree in Divinity at the University of Otago, and then went to the British School of Archaeology in Jerusalem (Kenyon Institute) as Annual Scholar in 1986. She undertook a PhD in early Christian archaeology and Jewish-Christianity at New College, Edinburgh University, as a Commonwealth Scholar.

In 1990 she accompanied her husband, human rights lawyer Paul Hunt, to Geneva and then to the Gambia, returning to New Zealand in 1992. She was lecturer, subsequently senior lecturer, at the University of Waikato, New Zealand, in the departments of both Religious Studies and History. In 1995 she won an Irene Levi-Sala prize in archaeology for the book version of her PhD thesis, Christians and the Holy Places (Oxford: Clarendon, 1993, rev. 2003). In 1996-7 she was Visiting Lecturer and Research Associate in Women’s Studies in New Testament at Harvard Divinity School, a position she held in association with a Fulbright Award. She joined the staff of King's College London, Department of Theology and Religious Studies, in 2009, and in 2012 became Professor of Christian Origins and Second Temple Judaism.[1]

Research

The Therapeutae

Taylor travelled to Egypt in 1999 to research the area surrounding Lake Mareotis where the Therapeutae lived according to Philo of Alexandria.[2] Later, she published her archaeological findings beside her textual analysis of Philo's De Vita Contemplativa in her Jewish Women Philosophers of First-Century Alexandria: Philo's 'Therapeutae' Reconsidered. Taylor challenged the belief that the Therapeutae was an Essenic community [3] and showed that the Mareotic community belonged to the Alexandrian milieu with its Jewish Diaspora community. She argued that the best historical context to Philo's Contemp. is the bitter hostilities between the Jews and the Greeks of Alexandria.[4] She also managed to discover the location of the community at a low hill, in the ridge which was called "the Strip."[5] Her findings were welcomed in scholarship.[6] Pieter W. van der Horst found her discovery and analysis thorough and convincing, which makes a shift in our understanding of the context of this group.[7] The prominent Second Temple scholar John J. Collins also accepted the "richly documented" conclusions of Taylor.[8] Yet, he shared van der Horst's reluctance to agree with Taylor's suggestion that the Therapeutae were associated with the extreme allegorizers in Philo's (Migr.Ab. 89-93) due to Philo's sympathy toward the Therapeutae. Her study also proposed a new view of first century Jewish women since the Therapeutrides (Θεραπευτρίδες) were highly educated philosophers. This view further supported the contribution of feminist observations to historical investigation, according to Annewies van den Hoek of Harvard Divinity School.[9]

John the Baptist

Taylor's ground-breaking work on John the Baptist situated John within the context of Second Temple Judaism and argued that his baptism should be understood in line with forms of immersion for ritual purity known at the time.[10][11] John's baptism rid the body of ritual impurity after the inner being had been cleansed by repentance, action and forgiveness, preparing people for the eschatological arrival of a coming figure. In her careful analysis of issues surrounding the traditions of the Baptist like purification, she showed that John's baptism should not be understood through the duality of outer symbolism and inner repentance, as John Dominic Crossan stated earlier, but outer and inner purity.[12] The significance of the book, as Bruce Chilton puts it, is in treating the tradition of the Baptist in its own historical context, not under the shadow of New Testament Christology.[13] Her analysis instilled scholarly debates of the relationship between Qumran and John the Baptist as well as formative Christianity with a spectrum of opinions over her findings.[14]

Archaeology

Since her PhD and early work on the archaeology of Christian holy sites, Taylor has ranged from studying the archaeology of the goddess Asherah to questions of archaeology and historical geography (in Eusebius' Onomasticon, and particularly to the excavations of Qumran and the Qumran Caves, particularly contributing to discussion of the relationship between literary and archaeological evidence for understanding the past (in On Pliny, the Essene Location and Kh. Qumran).

Literature

Joan Taylor is a writer of narrative history, novels and poetry (sometimes using her mother’s maiden name of Norlev). Her first novel, Conversations with Mr. Prain, was published by Melville House Publishing in New York, and Hardie Grant in Melbourne, in 2006, and republished by Melville House. Her second novel, kissing Bowie, was published by Seventh Rainbow, London, in 2013.

Media

Joan frequently works in media as historical/editorial consultant, presenter and interviewee, as well as a discussion panellist. Her documentary appearances include:

Jesus and Brian

Taylor organised an international conference focusing on the new hermeneutic of reception exegesis, by considering the historical Jesus through the lens of Monty Python’s Life of Brian in June 2014,[23] involving the participation of John Cleese and Terry Jones, who were interviewed as part of the event. [24] The papers are published in a book edited by Taylor, Jesus and Brian: Exploring the Historical Jesus and his Times via Monty Python's Life of Brian.

Books

Author

Editor and contributor

Literary work

References

  1. ↑ "university profile". King's College London.
  2. ↑ Contemp. III.21
  3. ↑ Cf. Emil Schürer, 1979, A History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ, Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
  4. ↑ Taylor (2003:53)
  5. ↑ Taylor (2003:81)
  6. ↑ Adam Kamesar, The Classical Review, Vol. 55, No. 2 (Oct., 2005), pp. 596-597. See also Jorunn Okland, Journal of Biblical Literature, Vol. 124, No. 2 (Summer, 2005), pp. 378-381
  7. ↑ Gnomon, 76. Bd., H. 7 (2004), pp. 634-635
  8. ↑ Dead Sea Discoveries, Vol. 12, No. 2 (2005), pp. 220-223
  9. ↑ The Journal of Religion, Vol. 86, No. 1 (January 2006), pp. 146-149
  10. ↑ Yamasaki, Gary (1998). John the Baptist in Life and Death: Audience-Oriented Criticism of Matthew's Narrative. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic. pp. 28–29. ISBN 1-85075-916-2.
  11. ↑ Taylor, J. E., 1997, The Immerser: John the Baptist Within Second Temple Judaism, London: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company
  12. ↑ ibid. p.69
  13. ↑ Reviewed Work: The Immerser: John the Baptist within Second Temple Judaism by Joan E. Taylor, The Jewish Quarterly Review Vol. 90, No. 3/4 (Jan. - Apr., 2000), pp. 447-450
  14. ↑ See James H. Charlesworth review: Dead Sea Discoveries Vol. 8, No. 2, Qumran and Rabbinic Judaism (2001), pp. 208-211. See also Paula Fredriksen Journal of Jewish Studies 50.1 (1999) 160-161
  15. ↑ "The Last Days Of Jesus". Channel 5.
  16. ↑ "In the Footsteps of St Peter". BBC One.
  17. ↑ "Finding Jesus". CNN.
  18. ↑ "The Big Questions". BBC.
  19. ↑ "Searching for Exile: The Debate". BBC.
  20. ↑ "The Mystery of Mary Magdalene". BBC.
  21. ↑ "Follow the Star". BBC.
  22. ↑ "The Story of Jesus". Big Book Media.
  23. ↑ "Jesus and Brian conference". King's College London.
  24. ↑ "Completely Different Brianology". Marginalia.
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