Effective September 1, 2024.

Marshall Cunningham studies the Hebrew Bible and the ancient Near East with a focus on how communities — ancient and modern — come to envision and define themselves in the wake of major geographical, political, and cultural changes. He employs a multidisciplinary approach that combines the traditional tools of the historical-critical paradigm of Biblical Studies with a theoretical framework developed from the critical study of religion and the Social Sciences. He uses that approach to consider issues like individual and group identity, social and textual authority, and community-creation. His current research project, Reconstructing Judeanness: Homelands, Diasporas, and the Production of Judean Identity in the 6th and 5th Centuries BCE, applies insights from fields of trauma, diaspora, and ethnicity studies to evidence from Egypt, Babylonia, Samaria, and Judea in order to address the question of what it meant to be “Judean” after the fall of the kingdom of Judah.

As a teacher, Prof. Cunningham focuses on themes of identity formation, the use rhetoric and narrative, and the persuasive power of authoritative literature in both ancient and contemporary contexts. He offers courses that seek to make sense of ancient literature like the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament in light of the cultural, political, and religious contexts in which they were produced. He is interested in thinking about the processes that determine whether texts and ideas become (or do not become) authoritative for subsequent communities and the range of factors that can play a role in that outcome. He also teaches in the Core and pursues broader theoretical questions about religion — both its practice and its study.

Prof. Cunningham is the Ancient Near East Editor for the journal Religion Compass. He serves on the Advisory Board for the Israelite Religion in its Ancient Contexts and Literature and History of the Persian Period Sections of the National Conference for the Society of Biblical Literature.