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About Paula Fredriksen

Paula Fredriksen (born January 6, 1951, Kingston, Rhode Island) is an American historian and scholar of early Christianity. She held the position of William Goodwin Aurelio Professor of Scripture at Boston University from 1990 to 2010. Now emerita, she has been a distinguished visiting professor in the Department of Comparative Religion at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, since 2009.

Fredriksen specializes in the history of Christianity, tracing its development from its roots in an apocalyptic, messianic sect within Second Temple Judaism to its evolution into an extension of the Late Roman imperial government and its strengthening in the post-Roman West, from the 1st to the 7th centuries CE. She works to reconstruct the many ways that various ancient Mediterranean peoples—pagans, Jews and Christians—interacted with the many special social agents (e.g., high Gods, apocalyptic forces, heavenly bodies, godlings, spirits, and divine humans) that populated both the ancient flat-disced Earth and geocentric universe.

Fredriksen served as an historical consultant and featured speaker in many media, including for the BBC production The Lives of Jesus (1996) and for U.S. News & World Report's "The Life and Times of Jesus". Fredriksen's book From Jesus to Christ: The Origins of the Early Images of Jesus served as a template for the Frontline documentary From Jesus to Christ: The First Christians.

Paula Fredriksen writes about History, Bible, Jews, Critique, interprétation, Criticism, interpretation, and Church history. Their best-known work is Augustine and the Jews.

On FindMyTBR we track 4 books by Paula Fredriksen, 4 of them confirmed as audiobooks on Spotify or Apple Books — including Ancient Christianities: The First Five Hundred Years, From Jesus to Christ : The Origins of the New Testament Images of Christ, Second Edition, and Paul : The Pagans' Apostle. Full availability across Spotify, Apple Books, Audible, and Amazon is below.