Stephen Davis
Professor of Religious Studies
A.B., Princeton University;
M.Div., Duke University,
The Divinity School;
M.A., M.Phil., Ph.D., Yale University
Stephen Davis is Professor of Religious Studies, specializing in the history of Christianity in late antiquity. He offers courses on the social and theological history of ancient Christianity from its beginnings to the seventh century, with a special focus on the latter half of this period. His areas of teaching and research include the study of women and gender, pilgrimage and the cult of the saints, the history of biblical interpretation and canon formation, Egyptian Christianity, the Arabic Christian theological tradition, early Christian art and material culture, and the application of anthropological, sociological, and literary methods in the study of historical texts. Prior to coming to Yale, he served as academic dean and professor of New Testament and early church history at the Evangelical Theological Seminary in Cairo (ETSC), the official Arabic-language seminary of the Coptic Evangelical (Presbyterian) Church, Synod of the Nile.
In addition to a number of academic articles, he is also the sole author of three books:
- The Cult of St. Thecla: A Tradition of Women's Piety in Late Antiquity (Oxford University Press, 2001);
- The Early Coptic Papacy: The Egyptian Church and Its Leadership in Late Antiquity (American University in Cairo Press, 2004);
- Coptic Christology in Practice: Incarnation and Divine Participation in Late Antique and Medieval Egypt (Oxford University Press, 2008).
The most recent of these publications was completed under the auspices of an Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellowship in Germany, at the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster, Institut für Ägyptologie und Koptologie.
Among his current projects, he has begun research on a new book for Yale University Press, provisionally entitled Memories of a Young Jesus, a study of infancy gospel traditions and early Christian cultural memory. On the side, he enjoys editing and translating unpublished Arabic Christian manuscripts. Finally, he also serves as Executive Director of the Yale Monastic Archaeology Project (YMAP). In that capacity, he remains engaged in the excavation and conservation of early Christian monastic sites in both Upper and Lower Egypt. For the results of ongoing work at the White Monastery near Sohag and the Monastery of John the Little in the Wadi al-Natrun, see the Yale Egyptological Institute website at http://www.yale.edu/egyptology/ae.htm.
