Paula Fredriksen


Paula F. Fredriksen is an American historian and scholar of religious studies. She held the position of William Goodwin Aurelio Professor of the Appreciation of Scripture at Boston University through 2010 and is now the William Goodwin Aurelio Chair Emerita of the Appreciation of Scripture.
She served as historical consultant for the BBC production The Lives of Jesus and for U.S. News and World Report 's "The Life and Times of Jesus" and was featured speaker in the Frontline documentary From Jesus to Christ: The First Christians, based heavily on her book From Jesus to Christ: The Origins of the New Testament Images of Jesus.

Early life

Fredriksen earned her B.A. degree with Phi Beta Kappa in Religion and History in 1973 from the Wellesley College and a year later got a diploma in theology from Oxford University. In 1979, she earned a Ph.D. in the history of religion from Princeton University and until 1980 was the Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at Stanford University.

Career

Early career

Fredriksen began her career as a lecturer at the Department of Religion of Princeton University in 1978. From 1979 to 1980 she was a faculty member at the Department of Religious Studies at Stanford University. She relocated to the University of California, Berkeley, where from 1980 to 1986 she was an assistant professor at the Department of History and from 1986 to 1989 worked as an associate professor at the Department of Religious Studies, of Pittsburgh University.

Later career

Fredriksen is a scholar of the historical Jesus. She sides with those who portray him as an apocalyptic preacher in the tradition of prophets before him and apostles after him.
In addition to the historical Jesus, Fredriksen is also interested in the social history of Christianity from its beginnings to the fall of the Roman Empire. She has published two books on St. Augustine, both focused on his attitudes towards Jews and Judaism. In contrast to other historians of Christian anti-Semitism, she regards Augustine as having a more enlightened, indeed revolutionary, attitude towards Jews and Judaism than many of his other Christian contemporaries.
One of the editors of her book From Jesus to Christ: The Origins of the New Testament Images of Jesus was the New Testament scholar E.P. Sanders. Along with Geza Vermes, she is often regarded as one of the most influential scholars interested in replacing Jesus within a Jewish context.
She has held that much of the scholarship regarding Jesus from the 19th and 20th centuries has an anti-Judaic bias, a theme explored in her book Jesus, Judaism, and Christian anti-Judaism: Reading the New Testament after the Holocaust.
Her book From Jesus to Christ, received the Yale Press Governors' Award. Her book Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews: A Jewish Life and the Emergence of Christianity won a National Jewish Book Award.
She was an outspoken critic of the film The Passion of the Christ, and edited a full-length book anthology of essays critiquing the film.
Fredriksen was named Distinguished Visiting Professor at Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 2009 and, in April 2013, elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. In 2017, Prof. Fredriksen received an honorary Doctorate of Theology from Lund University in Sweden.

Personal life

Fredriksen is married to Alfred I. Tauber, professor of philosophy emeritus and Zoltan Kohn Professor of Medicine emeritus at Boston University. She is also a convert to Judaism.

Books