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Department of Theology and Religion

Current students

Dr Lutz Doering

Personal web page

Reader in New Testament and Ancient Judaism in the Department of Theology and Religion

(email at lutz.doering@durham.ac.uk)

Born and raised in Germany, I read Theology and Jewish Studies at Erlangen, Jerusalem, and Heidelberg. After postgraduate research at Göttingen, the École Biblique et Archéologique Française, and the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, I gained my doctoral degree from the University of Göttingen in 1998, with a thesis on Sabbath law and practice in Ancient Judaism and the New Testament. After teaching and research appointments in New Testament at the Universities of Göttingen (1993–96) and Jena (1999–2003), I became Lecturer in New Testament and Early Christianity at King’s College London (2004–2009). In September 2009 I arrived at Durham as Reader in New Testament and Ancient Judaism.

My research is situated at the interface of Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity, studying their texts and histories both in their own right and in their interrelation. The focus of my work is on the Synoptic Gospels and Jesus, the Pseudepigrapha and the Dead Sea Scrolls, Law and festivals in Ancient Judaism and their reception in Early Christianity, as well as Ancient Jewish and Christian letter writing. My new monograph, Ancient Jewish Letters and the Beginnings of Christian Epistolography, has just appeared. My current project is a commentary on the Tosefta tractate Shabbat, for which I was awarded an AHRC Research Fellowship in 2011/12. A major comprehensive study of Jewish religion in the Graeco-Roman period is also planned.

PhD theses I am supervising or have recently supervised cover a range of topics in these areas: e.g., healing in Jewish texts from the 3rd and 2nd centuries BCE; non-Yahadic texts in the Qumran library; the Similitudes of Enoch and the Book of Revelation; discipleship and slavery in the synoptic gospels; and the relationship between Moses and Jesus in the gospel of Matthew. I am happy to discuss potential research proposals with applicants for PhD study.

My undergraduate and graduate teaching similarly moves between Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity. I co-ordinate and contribute to the first-year Introduction to the New Testament and co-teach the second-year module ‘Seers and Sages’. On the Masters level, my course The Dead Sea Scrolls and the New Testament lays the foundations for a thorough understanding of the texts from Qumran as well as a reasoned reference to them in the study of the New Testament.

In the academic year 2012/13 I lead the subtheme Calendars and Festivals: Identity, Culture and Experience, supported by the Institute of Advanced Study as part of its annual theme 'Time'. In this context, I co-organise a series of public lectures on Calendars and Festivals with Dr Clare Stancliffe and a conference on The Construction of Time in Antiquity (3-4 March 2013) with Dr Jonathan Ben-Dov, Haifa University and IAS Fellow. 

I serve on the editorial board of the Journal for New Testament Studies and on the advisory board of the monograph series Contributions to Biblical Exegesis and Theology (Leuven: Peeters). I contribute to the project Rechtsgeschichtlicher Kommentar zum Neuen Testament and am part of the international team preparing a new translation of, and commentary on, Philo of Alexandria, De vita Mosis, led by Prof. René Bloch (University of Berne). I am also a member of the Enoch Seminar and serve on its advisory board.

Publications

Books: authored

Books: edited

Books: sections

  • Doering, Lutz. (2010). Sabbath and Festivals. In The Oxford Handbook of Jewish Daily Life in Roman Palestine. Hezser, Catherine Oxford: Oxford University Press. 566-586.

Edited works: contributions

  • Doering, Lutz. (2013). Divorce: New Testament. In Encyclopedia of the Bible and its Reception. Allison, D. C.,, Leppin, V., Seow, C.-L., Spieckermann, H., Walfish, B. D. & Ziolkowski, E. Berlin: De Gruyter. 6: 993-995.
  • Doering, Lutz. (2013). Sabbath. In Enyclopedia of Ancient History. Bagnall, R.,, Brodersen, K.,, Champion, C.B., Erskine, A. & Huebner, S.R. Wiley-Blackwell. 5988–5990.

Essays in edited volumes

Journal papers: academic

  • Doering, Lutz. (2002). Jub 50,6–13 als Schlussabschnitt des Jubiläenbuchs – Nachtrag aus Qumran oder ursprünglicher Bestandteil des Werks? Revue de Qumran 20(79): 359–387.
  • Doering, Lutz. (2002). Schwerpunkte und Tendenzen der neueren Petrus-Forschung. Berliner Theologische Zeitschrift 19(2): 203–223.

Supervises