About
I study how cultural patterns of childhood corporal punishment, abandonment, and neglect may have shaped religious texts and traditions. My primary focus is Christianity. In particular, I explore the possibility that widespread corporal punishment and abandonment of children in the Roman Empire, along with norms of punishment in Jewish culture, may have influenced New Testament theology and salvation teachings.
I hold a B.A. in European history, Phi Beta Kappa, from the University of Pennsylvania and an M.D. from the Yale School of Medicine, where I previously served on faculty. I have studied religion since the late 1990s, publishing articles and book chapters, and presenting at scholarly conferences in the United States and Europe (e.g., Society of Biblical Literature, Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, Society for the History of Children and Youth, American Historical Association, Human Behavior and Evolution Society).
My work on Christianity addresses seminal New Testament teachings, such as: (1) The Son submits to the Father’s will and suffers accordingly [e.g., Mark 14:36, Acts 2:23, Romans 8:32]; (2) Human beings are punished for disobedience (Adam) and saved from punishment by obedience (Jesus) [e.g., Romans 5:18-19]; (3) God’s ‘children’ provoke wrath through their disobedience [e.g., Ephesians 2:2-3]; (4) The Father’s wrath is terrifying [Luke 12:4-5].
These and other New Testament teachings thematically parallel actual father-child (especially father-son) interactions in the Roman world, where corporal punishment was normative, widespread, and enacted in a highly patriarchal context characterized by the laws of patria potestas. For example, in Roman society, children (especially sons) suffered corporally according to the will of their fathers, thematically paralleling the New Testament's central theological narrative. Likewise, children were punished for disobedience and saved from punishment by obedience to their fathers, paralleling Paul's salvation teachings. The precision of these and related parallels raises the possibility that endemic childhood experiences may have influenced, or even provided a thematic template for, foundational Christian traditions. In considering the possibility of childhood influences on the New Testament, I also examine first-century Jewish attitudes on childrearing.
Given enduring norms of corporal punishment in the ancient world, the childhood parallels I consider also raise the possibility that New Testament teachings may have resonated with believers and potential converts. Such resonance might have facilitated the spread of Christianity. This possibility is consistent with statements in both the New Testament [1 Thessalonians 1:9-10] and, later, the writings of Augustine, about the role that fear of Paternal wrath played in conversion. I also consider the possibility that endemic corporal punishment in the medieval and modern periods may, as in the earlier period, have contributed to spread and cultural persistence of Christianity.
In addition to my primary focus on Christianity, I have begun to explore specific aspects of other religious traditions and myths, including Judaism and Islam; the karmic-reincarnative traditions (e.g., Hinduism, Buddhism); and the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, a text central to the historically important Eleusinian mystery religion. In each case, I consider the possible influence of cultural patterns of painful and potentially traumatic childhood experiences. Though I focus largely on the specific features of individual religions, understood in their particular socio-historical contexts, this work also affords me the opportunity to speculate broadly about processes that may apply to religion and myth in general.
My work is interdisciplinary, synthesizing insights from Biblical/religious studies, the social historiography of childhood, and several areas of psychology, including the psychology of trauma, memory, and symbolic thought. With respect to Biblical/religious studies, my research fills a gap in traditional scholarship, in that it emphasizes a potentially important yet poorly studied route by which social context may have influenced religious text and tradition. Because I approach many aspects of religion and religious experience (e.g., narrative, salvation teaching, metaphysics, ritual, ethics, personal faith, ecstatic experience, cultural reception) within a unified conceptual framework, my work is relevant to a variety of disciplines.
Beyond its direct scholarly import, this work may have implications for our understanding of current societal and political problems. To the extent that childhood themes may be assimilated to the religious context, it is possible that intense childhood emotions may also be displaced to the arena of religion. Emotions and actions attributed to religious conviction might actually, at a deeper level, represent unwitting reactions to long-past childhood circumstances. For example, corporal punishment may evoke in the child intense anger that may be especially prone to displacement because it cannot be expressed without risking an exacerbation of punishment. My work thus provides a framework for analyzing and possibly addressing root causes of fundamentalist violence.
The best introduction to my work is my article, "The Shaping of New Testament Narrative and Salvation Teaching by Painful Childhood Experience." In addition to its central argument on Christianity, this article includes a detailed exploratory excursus on other religions and myths. My other writings, which focus on specific topics and tend to include more speculative elements, can best be considered in the context of this article.
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