Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity
About
Current research interests:
Forger is a scholar of Second Temple Judaism and the New Testament, with an additional focus on early Jewish-Christian relations. Though later polemics suggest that Jews and Christians differentiated themselves based on their views of God's body, her work complicates this picture by analyzing how first-century Jews envisioned God in bodily form or humans as divine. She is also interested in the intersection of embodiment theory and the senses, as well as in questions of where, how, and when the ways parted between Jews and Christians, and how scriptural hermeneutics impacted, complicated, impinged upon, and fortified those separations.
Selected Publications
(2023). "Christianity and Antisemitism." In The Routledge History of Antisemitism. Edited by Mark Weitzman, Robert J. Williams and James Wald, co-authored with Susannah Heschel.
"The Eye, the Sense of Sight, and Seeing God? Reflections on God's (In)visibility considering Early Jewish Christian Relations." Ancient Jew Review. Sept 28, 2022.
"The Pharisees in Modern Scholarship." In The Pharisees and their History of Interpretation. Edited by Amy-Jill Levine and Joseph Sievers, co-authored with Susannah Heschel, 2021.
“Jesus as God's Word(s): Aurality, Epistemology, and Embodiment in the Gospel of John," Journal for the Study of the New Testament 42.3 (2020): 274–302.
“God Made Manifest: Josephus, Idolatry, and Divine Images in Flavian Rome.” Journal for the Study of Judaism 51 (2020): 231-260.
“Parchment Packages in the Jewish Jesus Class: Pedagogical Practices in the Digital Age.” Ancient Jew Review. August 26, 2020.
"Divine Embodiment in Philo of Alexandria." Journal for the Study of Judaism 49.2 (2018): 223–262.
"Interpreting the Syrophoenician Woman to Construct Jewish-Christian Fault Lines: John Chrysostom and the Pseudo-Clementine Homilist in Chrono-Locational Perspective," Journal of the Jesus Movement in its Jewish Setting 3 (2016): 132–166.
Current courses:
JUDAIC 218-011
Humanities Topics in Judaism
MIDEAST 236-001
Introduction to the New Testament
RELIGION 236-001
Introduction to the New Testament
