Joan Taylor

Joan Taylor is author of numerous books on the subject of early Jewish and Christian literature, history and archaeology. Her latest book is Boy Jesus: Growing Up Judaean in Turbulent Times (SPCK/Zondervan, 2025).

https://spckpublishing.co.uk/the-boyhood-of-jesus

https://zondervanacademic.com/products/boy-jesus

Background
After a BA degree at Auckland University, New Zealand, Joan completed post-graduate studies at the University of Otago, majoring in New Testament, and then went to the British School of Archaeology in Jerusalem (Kenyon Institute) as Annual Scholar in 1986. She undertook a PhD in early Christian history and archaeology at New College, Edinburgh University, and was appointed in 1992 to a position of lecturer (subsequently senior lecturer) at the University of Waikato, New Zealand, in the departments of both Religious Studies and History. In 1995 she won an Irene Levi-Sala Award in Israel’s archaeology, for the book version of her PhD thesis, Christians and the Holy Places (Oxford: Clarendon, 1993, rev. 2003). In 1996-7 she was Visiting Lecturer and Research Associate in Women’s Studies in New Testament at Harvard Divinity School, a position she held in association with a Fulbright Award. She has also been Honorary Research Fellow in the Departments of History and Jewish Studies at University College London. As has taught at King’s College London since 2009 and been Professor of Christian Origins and Second Temple Judaism since 2011. She retired from teaching at the end of 2024 and became Professor Emerita at King's. She is also Honorary Professor in the Institute of Religion and Public Inquity at Australian Catholic University, Melbourne, Australia.

Joan’s approach is multi-disciplinary; she works in literature, language, history, art and archaeology.

- Biblical Studies and the history of Israel-Palestine.
- The New Testament and other early Christian texts within their wider social, historical and cultural contexts, with a special interest in archaeological evidence.
- The historical figures of Jesus of Nazareth, John the Baptist, Judas Iscariot, Paul, Pontius Pilate, Mary Magdalene, and other New Testament persons, both in terms of the ancient evidence and how they have been constructed over time, including in modern literature and film.
- Second Temple Judaism, particularly the Jewish legal schools (Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes, ‘Zealots’) and popular religious movements.
- The Dead Sea Scrolls and the archaeology of Qumran.
- Alexandrian Judaism, Philo of Alexandria, and the ‘Therapeutae’
- Women and gender within early Judaism and Christianity, especially regarding women in leadership roles.
- Jewish-Christianity and early Christian constructions of history and orthodoxy.
- Comparative Graeco-Roman religion and philosophy: literary, epigraphical and archaeological evidence.
- The archaeology and history of Christian holy places and travel to Palestine over the centuries, with special interest in the sites of Golgotha, Gethsemane, -
- Eleona, Nazareth, Capernaum and Bethlehem, as well as historical geography.
- Reception exegesis: using creative artefacts to reflect on texts and history.