Brad Boswell is a visiting assistant professor in the Department of Classics and Philosophy and teaches in the Core Texts Program. He came to Samford from Princeton University, where he was a visiting researcher. Before that, he received his PhD from Duke University’s graduate program in Religion in Early Christianity. He earned a Master of Theological Studies from Boston College and received his undergraduate degree from Union University.
Brad’s research explores the reception of the classical heritage in early Christian thought and how ancient paradigms enabled, constrained and otherwise conditioned religious dialogue and expression in the late antique era. His first book (The Narrative Conflict of Traditions in the Late Antique World: Cyril versus Julian) uses the polemical response of a fifth-century Christian bishop to a philosophically trained pagan Roman Emperor to explore the contours of disagreement between an early Christian and a proponent of one of the strongest religious and philosophical alternatives on offer. His second book project, The Physics of Resurrection: Natural Philosophy and Doctrine in Early Christian Thought, will turn to internal development within the Christian tradition. It will map the relationships between the ancient world’s scientific paradigms for embodiment, physics and material transformation and early Christian theological claims about the transformative future event of bodily resurrection.
Brad taught historical theology, biblical studies, Greek and church history courses at Duke Divinity School and loves forming students for the ongoing work of the Christian intellectual tradition. He and his wife, Erin, have four daughters.
Degrees and Certifications
- BA, Christian Ethics; BA, Economics, Union University
- MTS, Boston College
- MA, Religious Studies, Duke University
- PhD, Religious Studies (Early Christianity), Duke University
Publications
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The Narrative Conflict of Traditions in the Late Antique World, Cambridge University Press (2025)
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“Ranking Pagans: Augustine on Pagans and their Knowledge in the City of God 1–10” (forthcoming in 2025 with Augustinian Studies)
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“Emperor Julian and Polemical Exemplarity in Against the Galileans: Solomon and John the Evangelist,” Vigiliae Christianae (2025)
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“Julian the Apostate and the Πίστις of Abraham,” Classical Quarterly 73.1, 2023
- “Henrik Ibsen, Emperor Julian, and the Crisis of Faith in Modernity” (with Matthew Crawford and Anna Stavrakopoulou), Classical Receptions Journal 15.2, 2023, 151–171
- “Moses the Hellenic Sage: Re-reading Julian’s Against the Galileans,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 30.2, 2022, 245-274
- “Goats, Gods, and the Mystery of Christ: Exegesis and Narrative Conflict between Julian and Cyril,” Studia Patristica 129, 2021, 51-69
