Richard S. Ascough is a Professor of Religious Studies and Associate Dean (Teaching & Learning) in the Faculty of Arts and Science at Queen’s University (Kingston, Ontario, Canada). He has published widely on the social dynamics of early Christ groups as well as Greek and Roman associations. His most recent book is 1 and 2 Thessalonians: Encountering the Christ Group at Thessalonike (2014).
Agnes Choi is an Associate Professor of New Testament at Pacific Lutheran University (Tacoma, Washington, USA). She has published on women interpreters of the Bible and is currently working on ancient mobility, the economy of Galilee in the Roman period, and the development of the early Jesus movement in that context.
Richard E. DeMaris is a Senior Research Professor at Valparaiso University (Valparaiso, Indiana, USA). He has published extensively on ritual in the ancient Mediterranean world. Among his books are The New Testament in Its Ritual World and Understanding the Social World of the New Testament (co-edited with Dietmar Neufeld).
Nicola Hayward is completing a PhD in New Testament and Early Christianity at McGill University (Montreal, Quebec, Canada). She is an Adjunct Lecturer at the Vancouver School of Theology, British Columbia, Canada. Her forthcoming dissertation topic is titled, “The Use of Funerary Art for Commemorating Social Identity: The Case of the Via Latina’s Samaritan Woman.”
Jason T. Lamoreaux has taught at various universities and is currently an Adjunct Professor at Texas Christian University (Fort Worth, Texas, USA). He is the author of Ritual, Women, and Philippi: Reimagining the Early Philippian Community (2013), and is a music critic and recording artist.
Steven C. Muir is a Professor of Religious Studies at Concordia University of Edmonton (Edmonton, Alberta, Canada). He is Director of the Concordia Institute for Christian Studies and Society and has published several articles in New Testament and Classics. He co-edited Healing in Religion and Society from Hippocrates to the Puritans with J. Kevin Coyle (1999).
Jonathan Schwiebert is an Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Lenoir-Rhyne University (Hickory, North Carolina, USA). His scholarly contributions include a monograph on the meal ritual in the Didache (Knowledge and the Coming Kingdom, 2008) and several papers and articles using ritual theory to illuminate early Christian meal and baptismal practices.
Hal Taussig is Professor at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College (Wyncote, Pennsylvania, USA) and has recently retired from Union Theological Seminary in New York. He has authored fourteen books, including In the Beginning Was the Meal: Social Experimentation and Early Christian Identity (2009) and A New New Testament: A Bible for the 21st Century Combining Traditional and Newly Discovered Texts (2013).
Erin K. Vearncombe is a faculty member at Princeton University (Princeton, New Jersey, USA), teaching in Princeton’s Freshman Seminar series, the Princeton Writing Program, and the Freshman Scholars Institute. She has published articles and essays on dress, gender, and realities of social life in the ancient Mediterranean world. Her book, What Would Jesus Wear? Dress in the Synoptic Gospels, is forthcoming.
Ritva H. Williams is an independent scholar and Pastor of St. Stephen’s Lutheran Church in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, USA. She is the author of Stewards, Prophets, Keepers of the Word: Leadership in the Early Church (2006), The Bible’s Importance for the Church Today (2009), and numerous articles and essays.