One question, before people read your writing is why should I listen to you? Is this source reliable? While there are many ways for people to prove themselves reliable, two ways I would like to highlight here are my education and academic work experience. For my ministry experience, see this page under Spiritual Direction.
Education:
- PhD student in the Graduate Program in Religion: Duke University
- Expected graduation: May 2027
- Positions: Research Assistant to Laura Lieber (Fall 2022-Spring 2023), Preceptor for Introduction to Church History (current)
- MDiv: Princeton Theological Seminary
- Graduated: May 2022
- Certificate in Christian-Jewish Relations
- Awards: Bishop Epiphanius al-Maqari Memorial Award for excellence in the study of Christianity and Egypt, Henry Snyder Gehman Award in Old Testament for excellence in Hebrew Scriptures, Promise for Ministry Award, Seminary Fellowship, and Presidential Scholarship
- Positions: Preceptor for Introduction to Biblical Hebrew (Fall 2021-Spring 2022), Research Assistant to Kenneth Appold (Summer 2021), Founder and Facilitator of the Patristic Greek Reading Table (Fall 2019-Spring 2020)
- Thesis: Heavenly Ranks: Angelology in Bar Hebraeus and Thomas Aquinas
- An exploration of ideas about angels and the interpretation of Pseudo-Dionysius in two 13th century contemporaries – the Syriac writing Gregory Bar Hebraeus and the Latin author Thomas Aquinas.
- AB in Linguistics and Classics (minor: neuroscience): Bryn Mawr College
- Graduated 2018, magna cum laude
- Departmental honors in both Linguistics and Classics
- Study Abroad:Paris IV, Paris III, and Paris VIII, through CUPA Paris program, Fall 2016
- Awards: The Katherine Stains Prize in Greek for Excellence in Greek Literature, honorable mention for The Katherine Fullerton Gerould Award for Creative Writing
- Positions: I worked a lot in college, but nothing that sounds particularly interesting for an academic profile. I was the President of our Intervarsity Chapter, though, and did a lot of theatre.
- Theses: Finding Borders in Genesis: Defining Jewish and Christian Community through Late Antique Biblical Exegesis andThe Shape of Eta: Evolutionary Phonology and the Development of Attic Greek [ε:]
- Finding Borders explores how three fourth/fifth century sources solve the interpretive issues in Genesis 6:1-4, and compares their exegetical strategies as well as how their solutions help them find meaning in these obscure passages. For Christian sources, I analyze the Syriac author Ephrem the Syrian and the Greek Patriarch John Chrysostom. For my Jewish source, I use Genesis Rabbah.
- The Shape of Eta uses an evolutionary phonology approach to understanding the changings in pronunciation in the Greek letter eta.
Contributions to Other Academic Projects
Beth Mardutho, the Syriac Institute where I was a summer intern in digital humanities during the lockdown in summer 2020. I contributed to the Simtho Syriac Thesaurus, created George Kiraz’s website , and generally spent a lot of time rubbing my eyes and complaining about too much screen time. I also parsed thousands of Syriac words to serve as training data for an AI.
The Austrian Academy of Sciences (Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften) needed people to do word analysis for the HunaynNet Project. I went on to parse all 16,400 words of the Syriac translation of Galen’s Simple Drugs VI. It was one of the most painstaking tasks I have ever done.
I am also an annotations editor for Gorgias Press’s Antioch Bible Series, which is a new edition and translation of the Syriac Bible (Peshitta). For this project, I found and vocalized the significant variants in Leviticus, Ezekiel, and Judges.
I am a member of the Purity Culture Research Collective and the Society for Biblical Literature.