My Ph.D. is in Judaism and Christianity in the Greco-Roman World. My first book focused on the writings of the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus. I’ve published articles and chapters on other ancient Jewish and Christian texts. So how the hell did I get to Religion and American politics?

It’s a fair question. But there really is a logic to my research trajectory. A crucial question in my first book focused on how Jews appropriated their own sacred textual tradition, especially Torah, within the context of the Roman world. More specifically, how did they interpret Torah’s proscriptions of cult images while living in a Roman world saturated with statues? What reading strategies did they employ that enabled them to reconfigure Jewish “iconophobia” in a way that would be compatible with Roman customs and values?

My work on the reception of biblical traditions in the ancient world anticipated my current project.  But the more immediate trigger was the Republican primaries during the 2012 presidential campaign, during which I began to notice the extent to which the Bible was a pervasive protagonist in the presidential drama playing out on the campaign trail. Why? And to what end? Is this a conservative thing, a consequence of the marriage of the Republican Party and the Religious Right? Or is there something deeper going on here? The more I pondered these questions, the more enticing they became. And I soon realized that there was a fascinating, and relatively underexplored, body of data just waiting to be placed under the microscope.

So here I am.