Dr. John Derek, a renowned scholar and author on Jesus and Christianity, will be presenting the course “From Historical Jesus to Written Gospels” in our department this semester.
Dr. Derek completed his PhD in Ancient History at Macquarie University in 2001, focusing on the emergence of Christianity within its Jewish and Graeco-Roman contexts. He has since continued to write, teach, and conduct research on the origins of Christianity in the Roman Empire, contributing to both academic and public discourse. To date, he has authored 15 books, two of which have been adapted into TV documentaries, with a third set to be released in March 2018.
In 2017-18, Dr. Derek served as a Visiting Academic in the Faculty of Classics at Oxford University, UK, and has also held teaching and research positions at Macquarie University. Since 2011, he has been teaching the semester-long course From Historical Jesus to Written Gospels at the University of Sydney’s Department of Hebrew, Biblical, and Jewish Studies. The course focuses on the historiographical study of Jesus in the Roman East.
“It is a true privilege,” Dr. Derek says, “to teach within such a distinguished department of one of our nation’s leading universities about a figure who holds such immense significance in Western history.”
