Candida Moss

Candida R. Moss (born 26 November 1978) is an English public intellectual, journalist, New Testament scholar and historian of Christianity, and as of 2017, the Edward Cadbury Professor of Theology in the Department of Theology and Religion at the University of Birmingham.

A graduate of Oxford and Yale universities, Moss specialises in the study of the New Testament, with a focus on the subject of martyrdom in early Christianity, as well as other topics from the New Testament and early Church History.

She is the winner of a number of awards relating to her research and writing.

Moss was born on 26 November 1978 in London, England.

She graduated from Oxford University in 2000 with a B.A. in theology, a degree taken with Honors at Worcester College.

In 2002, she received a Master of Arts in Religion (M.A.R.) in Biblical studies from Yale Divinity School.

Moss graduated from Yale University in 2006 with an M.A. and an M.Phil in New Testament, following this by a PhD in the same field in 2008.

Her doctoral advisor was Adela Yarbro Collins.

In addition, in 2007 she received the Charlotte W. Newcombe Award from the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation, and an NEH Summer Seminar Grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

In 2023 Moss was named a recipient of the Status of Women in the Profession Mentor Award from the Society of Biblical Literature she also received a grant from the Catholic Biblical Association for a project on "Enslaved Literate Workers and Christian Book Culture."

She was the recipient of The John Templeton Award of Theological Promise in 2011, which cited her 2010 OUP book, The Other Christs: Imitating Jesus in Ancient Christian Ideologies of Martyrdom.

Moss received the John Templeton Award for Theological Promise in 2011, and was elected a member of Studiorum Novi Testamenti Societas in 2013.

Moss began her career at the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana, and became a full professor there in 2012, four years after receiving her PhD from Yale.

Her 2012 book, Ancient Christian Martyrdom, argued that post-Enlightenment bias against martyrdom had led scholars to think of martyrdom as a phenomenon that spread from one region of the Roman empire to another; against this, Moss argues that martyrdom developed differently in different contexts.

Her controversial 2013 book, The Myth of Persecution: How Early Christians Invented a Story of Martyrdom, argues that the stories of early Christian martyrdom "have been altered ... edited and shaped by later generations of Christians" and none of them are "completely historically accurate"; she additionally maintains that the Roman authorities did not actively seek out or target Christians and that in the first three centuries of Christian history, Christians were only prosecuted by order of a Roman emperor for a brief period (no more than twelve years).

In a review published in 2013 focusing on her first two books, Edinburgh classicist Lucy Grig wrote that "Candida Moss has swiftly established herself as one of the most interesting and original scholars working on early Christian martyrdom."

According to a report “Updated Science-wide Author Databases of Standardized Citation Indicators,” released by the global information analytics company Elsevier on October 4, 2023, Moss is among the 2% most cited science authors in the world.

Moss is a columnist for The Daily Beast, and she has contributed to the BBC Radio 4's In Our Time, as well as to the Los Angeles Times, Politico, The New York Times, BBC Online, CNN.com, The Washington Post, HuffPost, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and the Times Higher Education Supplement.

In January 2015, Moss and her coauthor Joel Baden were the first to reveal the Hobby Lobby smuggling scandal to the public when they wrote about the company's import of illicitly obtained cuneiform tablets for the Daily Beast.

Moss has served as papal news contributor for CBS News, an academic consultant to the television series The Bible, and as a contributor to the National Geographic Explorer, as well as for the History, Travel, and Smithsonian Channels.

Moss is an advocate for public academic scholarship.

In a 2022 article for data-based website Academic Influence Moss topped the list of the ten most influential women in religious studies in that last ten years.

In 2015 she was shortlisted for the Hiett Prize and a Religion Newswriters Association award, and was shortlisted in 2016 for her co-authored book, Reconceiving Infertility, by the American Academy of Religion for its Book Prize for Textual Studies.

As of August 2017, Moss had joined the faculty of the Department of Theology and Religion at the University of Birmingham as Edward Cadbury Professor of Theology.

She is also a research associate at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World at New York University.

Moss has specialized in the study of martyrdom, ancient medicine and the New Testament, early Christian ideas about the resurrection of Jesus's physical body, and enslaved literate workers in the ancient world.

Moss has written three books on martyrdom.

Her writing has been praised for its "readability, clarity...creativity, thoughtfulness, and wit."

In 2017 her co-authored book Bible Nation: The United States of Hobby Lobby was selected as a Publishers Weekly 2017 Best Book in Religion.

In April 2018 she married Justin Foa, president and CEO of international insurance brokerage company Foa & Son.

Moss is a kidney transplant recipient.

She is a Roman Catholic.