Background

David R. Edwards (Ph.D., Florida State University) specializes in ancient Mediterranean religions, history, literature, languages, and culture, and teaches introductory and survey courses in religious studies such as Introduction to World Religions, Introduction to New Testament, and Introduction to Old Testament. His teaching engages students in the course content in a variety of ways including textual analysis, creative writing, film and media, historical methods, anthropology and ritual, literary approaches, and reader response.

His first book, In the Court of the Gentiles: Narrative, Exemplarity, and Scriptural Adaptation in the Court-Tales of Flavius Josephus (Brill, 2023), explores how the ancient Jewish historian Josephus adapts the scriptural stories of Joseph and Esther in surprising and subversive ways as models for fresh accounts about more recent figures while situating this compositional practice within the context of Greco-Roman literary culture by adopting the scholarly framework of exemplary discourses. It furthermore shows how ancient Jews, as an ethno-religious minority, were able to appropriate imperial forms of discourse and conventions of historiography to counter Greco-Roman claims of cultural superiority.

He is currently writing a second book, titled An Orientation to Josephus for Biblical Studies, which is under contract with Oxford University Press. Its impetus lies in the immense influence that Josephus’ writings have exerted upon modern study of the Bible; indeed, research shows that Josephus’ works were among the most read and reprinted in the Renaissance and in colonial and republican America. The project aims to introduce a wider range of readers to the responsible use of Josephus as a frequently cited resource on a range of topics, including: the biblical canon, the biblical text, biblical interpretation, early Judaism, and the New Testament. Addressing the use Josephus as a source on these topics will also aid in correcting the concomitant spread of distorted views of Jews and Judaism, an especially urgent matter in relation to incidences of anti-Semitism.

RECENT Publications

• “Diagnosing Decline: Greco-Roman Rhetoric about the Middle and Late Roman Republic as Inspiration for Josephus’ Interpretation of the Book of Judges.” Journal for the Study of Judaism (forthcoming). 

• “The Dilemma of King David: Reading Josephus' Antiquities against the Grain through the Lens of Greco-Roman Tyrant Typologies.” Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha (forthcoming). 

• “The Theme of Stasis in Antiquities: Josephus’ Political Philosophy and Periodization of History.” Pages 177–194 in Peace and War in Josephus. Edited by Viktor Kókai-Nagy and Ádám Vér. Deuterocanonical and Cognate Literature Studies 52. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2023.

Courses Taught

• Introduction to World Religions (REL 1300)

• Introduction to New Testament (REL 2240)

• Introduction to Old Testament (REL 2210)