Annette Yoshiko Reed

Krister Stendahl Professor of Divinity and Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity

Education

BA, McGill University
MTS, Harvard Divinity School
MA, PhD, Princeton University

Profile

Annette Yoshiko Reed joined the Harvard Divinity School faculty in July 2022, having taught previously at New York University as a professor in the Skirball Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies (2017-22), as well as in the Departments of Religious Studies at the University of Pennsylvania (2007-17) and McMaster University (2003-07). Her research spans Second Temple Judaism, early Christianity, and Jewish/Christian relations in Late Antiquity, with a special concern for bringing ancient examples to bear on the theorization of identity and difference. Specific areas of focus include apocalypses, demonology, and the shaping of the biblical past by so-called “Old Testament Pseudepigrapha” and “New Testament Apocrypha.” Her historiographical interests also stretch to nineteeth-century scholarship on these topics by Jewish and Christian scholars.

Reed’s books include Fallen Angels and the History of Judaism and Christianity, Jewish-Christianity and the History of Judaism, and Demons, Angels, and Writing in Ancient Judaism. She has also co-authored and co-edited multiple volumes, including The Ways That Never Parted with Adam H. Becker, Jews and Christians in the Roman Empire with Natalie Dohrmann, Enoch from Antiquity to the Middle Ages with John C. Reeves, and Rediscovering Enoch? The Antediluvian Past in the 15th and 19th Centuries with Ariel Hessayon and Gabriele Boccaccini. In much of her work, she has reconsidered the intertwined histories of Jews and Christians through the lens of marginalized writings such as 1 Enoch and the Pseudo-Clementine literature. She is currently working on a book on forgetting, considering the creative cultural power of overwriting, fragmentation, and erasure by reflecting on the reception of the Second Temple Jewish past.

Reed’s teaching and research seek to connect Biblical Studies, Patristics, Jewish Studies, and Religious Studies in conversation with research in Classics and Rabbinic. She is on the editorial board of the Mohr Siebeck book series "Texts and Studies in Ancient Judaism" (TSAJ) and a series editor of the Brill series, "Studia in Veteris Testamenti Pseudepigrapha" (SVTP) as well as the Program Unit Chair of the “Jewish Christianity/Christian Judaism” section at the Society of Biblical Literature. She is a fellow of the American Academy of Jewish Research.