Margaret M. Mitchell
Dean and Shailer Mathews Professor of New Testament and Early Christian Literature
M.A., Ph.D. (University of Chicago)
Margaret M. Mitchell is a literary historian of ancient Christianity. Her research and teaching span a range of topics in New Testament and early Christian writings up through the end of the fourth century. She analyzes how the earliest Christians literally wrote their way into history, developing a literary and religious culture that was deeply embedded in Hellenistic Judaism and the wider Greco-Roman world, while also proclaiming its distinctiveness from each. Special interests include the Pauline letters (both in their inaugural moments and in the history of their effects), the poetics and politics of ancient biblical interpretation, and the intersection of text, image, and artifact in the fashioning of early Christian culture.
Prof. Mitchell is the author of four books: Paul and the Rhetoric of Reconciliation (1991); The Heavenly Trumpet: John Chrysostom and the Art of Pauline Interpretation (2000); The "Belly-Myther" of Endor: Interpretations of 1 Kingdoms 28 in the Early Church (with Rowan A. Greer, 2007), and Paul, the Corinthians and the Birth of Christian Hermeneutics (2010). She is also the co-editor, with Frances M. Young, of The Cambridge History of Christianity, Volume 1: Origins to Constantine (2006). Recent articles include "The Poetics and Politics of Christian Baptism in the Abercius Monument" (2011), "The Continuing Problem of Particularity and Universality within the corpus Paulinum: Chrysostom on Romans 16:3" (2011) and "Peter's 'Hypocrisy' and Paul's: Two 'Hypocrites' at the Foundation of Earliest Christianity?" (2012).
Prof. Mitchell's current projects include a volume of translations of occasional sermons by John Chrysostom on Pauline passages (for the Writings From the Greco-Roman World series) and a commentary on 2 Corinthians.
