Paula Fredriksen

Paula Fredriksen (born January 6, 1951, Kingston, Rhode Island) is an American historian and scholar of early Christianity.

Fredriksen studied for a double B.A. in Religion and History at Wellesley College, from which she graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1973.

After a year of formal theological study at St. Hilda's College, she received a diploma in theology from Oxford University in 1974.

Fredriksen began her career as a lecturer at the Department of Religion of Princeton University in 1978.

Fredriksen earned her Ph.D. in the History of Religion from Princeton University in 1979.

From 1979 to 1980, she was an Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in the Religion Department at Stanford University.

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 in the department of history and, from 1986 to 1989, worked as an associate professor in the department of religious studies of the University of Pittsburgh.

Both Wellesley College (in 1989) and Princeton University (in 2000) deemed Fredriksen a “distinguished alumna.”

She held the position of William Goodwin Aurelio Professor of Scripture at Boston University from 1990 to 2010.

From 1990 to 2010, Fredriksen was the William Goodwin Aurelio Professor of Scripture at Boston University.

Fredriksen served as an historical consultant and featured speaker in many media, including for the BBC production The Lives of Jesus (1996) and for U.S. News & World Report's "The Life and Times of Jesus".

Fredriksen's book From Jesus to Christ: The Origins of the Early Images of Jesus served as a template for the Frontline documentary From Jesus to Christ: The First Christians.

She holds honorary doctorates from Iona College (2008), Lund University in Sweden (2017), and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (2018).

Fredriksen views ancient Christianity from two vantage points: that of late Second Temple Judaism (roughly 200 BCE to 70 CE) and that of the late Latin West (especially from the late fourth to the mid-fifth century CE).

For the entire spread of these centuries, Fredriksen says, the vast majority of people worshiped their own particular gods—a great variety of cults and customs lumped together by scholarly convention as "paganism."

Fredriksen emphasizes that different forms of Judaism developed within the larger matrix of Graeco-Roman paganism; and that different forms of Christianity developed within different types of Judaism and of paganism.

Context affects content: all these cultures mutually influenced each other.

Late Second Temple Judaism, whether in the Jewish homeland or in the Diaspora, provided the cradle of the early Christ-movements.

Two figures dominate their development and thus Fredriksen's research of the period: that of Jesus of Nazareth, and that of his apostle, Paul.

Despite the many cultural and social differences distinguishing Jesus and Paul—language (Aramaic/Greek), location (Jewish territories and Jerusalem/Diaspora) and audiences (Jews/pagans)—these two men stood united in a single conviction.

Both taught that the God of Israel would overwhelm evil, raise the dead, and establish his reign of eternal peace and justice, within their own lifetimes.

In short, in line with the work of Albert Schweitzer (for Jesus and for Paul) and of Krister Stendahl (for Paul), Fredriksen holds that both Jesus and Paul Were apocalyptic thinkers.

In From Jesus to Christ, Fredriksen explored the images of Jesus presented in Paul's letters and in the four gospels as these altered and adjusted once the movement spread abroad in the Diaspora and outgrew its own foundational prophecy: “The Kingdom of God is at hand!” (Mark 1.15).

In Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews, she concentrated instead on reconstructing the historical figure himself.

Turning to the chronology of John's gospel (wherein Jesus has a three-year mission, centered in Jerusalem) rather than that of Mark, Matthew and Luke (which locate Jesus primarily in Galilee, with a single, and fatal, trip to Jerusalem), Fredriksen answered the question why Jesus was crucified but his followers were not.

Pilate and the chief priests were familiar with Jesus' apocalyptic message—God, not human armies, would establish his Kingdom—and so knew that Jesus was, in every practical way, politically and militarily harmless.

But on what proved to be his final trip to the city for Passover, crowds in the pilgrim-swollen city began proclaiming Jesus as messiah.

This was cause for alarm for, as Josephus wrote, it was "on these festive occasions that sedition is most apt to break out."

Working in concert with the temple police (John 18.3), Pilate arrested Jesus and crucified him as "King of the Jews," disabusing the crowds of their enthusiasm.

It was the crowds, not Jesus himself, Fredriksen concludes, who threatened the city's stability.

This theory explains as well why the original community could resettle permanently in Jerusalem, largely without incident, for the remaining four decades of the city's lifetime.

Fredriksen's many articles on Paul and his cameo appearances in her books on Jesus and on Augustine come together in her book Paul: The Pagans' Apostle. Fredriksen explains there that Paul lived in a world full of gods.

Now emerita, she has been distinguished visiting professor in the Department of Comparative Religion at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, since 2009.

Fredriksen specializes in the history of Christianity in that developmental arc from its stirrings in an apocalyptic messianic sect within Second Temple Judaism to its transformation into an arm of Late Roman imperial government and its empowerment in the post-Roman West (1st through 7th centuries).

She works to reconstruct the many ways that various ancient Mediterranean peoples – pagans, Jews and Christians – interacted with the many special social agents (e.g. high gods, apocalyptic forces, heavenly bodies, godlings, spirits, and divine humans) that populated both the ancient flat-disced Earth and geo-centric universe.

Fredriksen was named distinguished visiting professor in the Department of Comparative Religion at Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 2009.

Fredriksen was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2013.

Paula Fredriksen is a former Catholic who converted to Judaism and was one of Mel Gibson's acerbic critics when he released his film The Passion of the Christ.

In April 2013, she was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences (AAAS).