Candida Moss

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CALL FOR PAPERS Society of Biblical Literature - Annual Meeting 2026 The Slavery, Resistance and Freedom Section will host an open session and invite papers dealing with any aspect of Mediterranean or West Asian slavery and their intersection with biblical, early Christian, or early Jewish literature. We are particularly interested in new contributions to scholarship that further our understanding of how enslaved and formerly enslaved persons navigated intersectional social, economic, and/or religious identities, as well as contributions that explore how the condition of slavery affected families, kinship, and relationality. Submit your paper via the QR code below, or at https://shorturl.at/bEYpe

🚨 Please share 🚨

If you’re going to SBL in Denver this fall, consider submitting a paper for the Slavery, Resistance, and Freedom open call!

We’d love to hear your work

Join us on March 18th @fordham.edu for a talk with Candida Moss @candidamoss.bsky.social on her latest book!
RSVP here: www.catacombsociety.org/events/

Not to brag but Sarah's partner in crime for the museum is my kid :)

Friends, I am hiring this year! My team is amazing. Watch this space for the ad as soon as it works its way through the HR labyrinth! If you want to know what my team is all about, ask @drewjakeprof.bsky.social, @chancebonar.bsky.social, @davidaustinwalsh.bsky.social, or @kkaelin.bsky.social!

Need distractions from the horrors? Read this amazing article by Kassie Miller on menstrual suppression in Imperial Rome www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Hugo Lundhaug, Oslo “Total Devotion to the Storyworld: The Role of Apocrypha in Egyptian Monasteries” RSVP: nasscalworkshop@gmail.com

Please join us on February 6 at noon (EST) for the first First Friday Workshop of the new semester!

“It was winter and it was snowing”

χειμὼν δὲ ἦν καὶ ὑπένειφεν…

#Thucydides

I support this so much.

A New Translation of Contra Celsum — ANCIENT JEW REVIEW A forum in celebration of Robin Darling Young and Joseph Wilson Trigg’s The Contra Celsum of Origen:  English Translation and Facing Greek text (Washington and Cambridge: Harvard University…

Catch up on the latest posts from AJR: the full #forum on the new translation of Origen's Contra Celsum is now available:

Andrew Mark Henry Wins 2026 Marty E. Marty Award - AAR The American Academy of Religion is pleased to announce that Dr. Andrew Mark Henry is the winner of the 2026  Martin E. Marty Award for the Public Understanding of Religion. Dr. Henry is the creator a...

The AAR has awarded the 2026 Martin Marty Award for the Public Understanding of Religion to @andrewmarkhenry.bsky.social of Religion for Breakfast fame. Never has an award been so richly deserved!

aarweb.org/news/andrew-...

And you didn’t even come say hi? I see how it is 😂

Kirk Ormand, Ralph Rosen, and Julianne accept the outreach award

Candida Moss accepts the outreach award at the SCS

Lexie Henning accepting the outreach award

Congrats to all @scsclassics.bsky.social outreach award winners last night! Outreach sustains our field and grows our community to include everyone interested in the ancient world. Can’t thank @candidamoss.bsky.social, Anne Groton, @lexie-henning.bsky.social, & @tastinghistory.bsky.social enough.

Thank you so much Shaily!

When I checked in at registration I was asked “like Candida Moss the biblical scholar?” And I said “yes other people’s parents had dictionaries and did not make this mistake”

Ancient narratives bent on survival True to its title, Storylife offers a series of analogies between Homeric epic and life science. We are told that “like DNA itself … Homeric Greek

Storylife in the TLS

www.the-tls.com/classics/gre...

We also hope you'll join us on March 18 in person at Fordham University for a lecture with Candida Moss (@candidamoss.bsky.social) on "Who Wrote Your Bible? Enslaved Scribes and the Material History of Scripture"!

NASSCAL North American Society for the Study of Christian Apocryphal Literature

So many of my recent pieces for National Geographic would have suffered were it not for my ability to link to the amazing resources supplied by @nasscal.bsky.social. If you are interested in early Christian literature you must check out this invaluable site.

www.nasscal.com

Half way through my Christmas present. God’s Gohostwriters by @candidamoss.bsky.social. Brilliant so far!

Thank you!

Possibly, but I think we'd need better evidence that Christians were celebrating the birth of Jesus on Dec. 25th in the early third century for that to make sense.

Was Biblical villain King Herod really a murderous tyrant? The Roman-backed ruler grew increasingly paranoid and murderous during his reign.

And FINALLY what do we know about Herod the Great? Adam Marshak, author of The Many Faces of Herod the great, and classicist Tim Whitmarsh weigh in.

www.nationalgeographic.com/history/arti...

Is there historical evidence for the Star of Bethlehem? Theologians, historians and astronomers have debated the Biblical story for centuries.

What was the Star of Bethlehem and do we have historical evidence for it?

www.nationalgeographic.com/history/arti...

Featuring astrophysicist Grant Matthews and Bible scholar @zafulotus.bsky.social

The calculation theory is probably right. But this was a fascinating example of how an academic hypothesis, when well received, crystallizes into something much more solid and comes to be received as a fact. 6/6

All of which is to say that the scholarly argument is less airtight than I had previously thought and Duchesne himself was pretty cautious. His theory (known popularly as the calculation theory) did not eliminate the birthday of Sol Invictus from the reasons for the date of Christmas. 5/6

"Therefore our Lord was conceived on the eighth day of the kalends of April in the month of March, which is the day of the passion of the Lord and of his conception. For on the day that he was conceived on the same he suffered"

After Duchesne's death a late antique homily was discovered that does explicitly articulate the conception/Easter argument, but it is a much later and its origins are a bit unclear. Maybe it reflects earlier thought and practice. Again H/T Talley's Origins of the Liturgical Year. 4/6

"This explanation would be the more readily received if we could find it fully stated in some author. unfortunately we know of no text containing it, and we are therefore compelled to put it forward as an hypothesis, but it is an hypothesis which falls in with what we may call the recognized methods in such matters." "I would not venture to say in regard to the 25th of December, that the coincidence of the Sol novas exercised no direct or indirect influence on the ecclesiastical decisions arrived at in regard to the matter."

This argument (or, better, hypothesis) was first advanced by Louis Duchesne, but Duchesne knew there was a problem. No early Christian authors *say* that the date of Christmas is related to the date of Easter/the conception. So Duchesne summarizes in the following way (H/T Thomas Talley) 3/6

How December 25 Became Christmas Discover how December 25 became the date for Christmas. Explore the biblical silence, early Christian debates, pagan influences, and the theological link between Jesus’ birth and death that shaped thi...

Most scholars will say that the date of Christmas was calculated from the presumed date of Jesus's conception, which in turn was calculated from the date of his death (for a great summary see @praxeas.bsky.social 's piece for BAR here): www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/people...) 2/6

Was Christmas moved to eclipse Rome's Saturnalia festival? Ancient scribes often calculated Christ’s birth as falling in early spring.

I didn't want to write this piece on Christmas stealing from pagan festivals because I have always thought that was a myth. BUT in researching it I realized something interesting 1/6

www.nationalgeographic.com/history/arti...

featuring: @praxeas.bsky.social @zafulotus.bsky.social

Were there three Nativity wise men—or twelve? Early Christian sources differ on how many Magi visited the infant Jesus, and whether they were kings at all.

How many Magi were there and were they descended from Seth? Check out this piece that draws on essential work by @brentlandau.bsky.social and @evandeneykel.bsky.social ial

www.nationalgeographic.com/history/arti...