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After a BA degree at Auckland University, New Zealand, Joan completed post-graduate studies at the University of Otago, majoring in New Testament, and then went to the British School of Archaeology in Jerusalem (Kenyon Institute) as Annual Scholar in 1986. She undertook a PhD in early Christian archaeology and Jewish-Christianity at New College, Edinburgh University, and was appointed in 1992 to a position of lecturer (subsequently senior lecturer) at the University of Waikato, New Zealand, in the departments of both Religious Studies and History. In 1995 she won an Irene Levi-Sala Award in Israel’s archaeology, for the book version of her PhD thesis, Christians and the Holy Places (Oxford: Clarendon, 1993, rev. 2003). In 1996-7 she was Visiting Lecturer and Research Associate in Women’s Studies in New Testament at Harvard Divinity School, a position she held in association with a Fulbright Award. She has received various other awards and fellowships, and has also been Honorary Research Fellow in the Departments of History and Jewish Studies at University College London. She remains a Research Associate of Waikato University.

• The New Testament and other early Christian texts within their wider social, historical and cultural contexts, with a special interest in archaeological evidence.
• The historical figures of Jesus of Nazareth, John the Baptist, Judas Iscariot, Paul, Pontius Pilate, Mary Magdalene, and other New Testament persons, both in terms of the ancient evidence and how they have been constructed over time, including in modern literature and film.
• Second Temple Judaism, particularly the Jewish legal schools (Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes, ‘Zealots’) and popular religious movements.
• The Dead Sea Scrolls and the archaeology of Qumran.
• Alexandrian Judaism, Philo of Alexandria, and the ‘Therapeutae’
• Women and gender within early Judaism and Christianity, especially regarding women in leadership roles.
• Jewish-Christianity and early Christian constructions of history and orthodoxy.
• Comparative Graeco-Roman religion and philosophy: literary, epigraphical and archaeological evidence.
• The archaeology and history of Christian holy places and travel to Palestine over the centuries, with special interest in the sites of Golgotha, Gethsemane, Eleona, Nazareth, Capernaum and Bethlehem, as well as historical geography.

Joan’s contextualising approach is multi-disciplinary; she works in literature, language, history and archaeology. Joan has written numerous books and articles in her fields of interest, and is currently completing two large projects. The first is a book with OUP, The Essenes, the Scrolls and the Dead Sea. This reviews the literary evidence for the Essenes, and then focuses contextually on a few key features: the position of the Essenes west of the Dead Sea, their interest in healing and pharmacology, and their endorsement by Herod the Great and his dynasty. Because of the discussion of pharmacology, this project has been supported a Wellcome Research Grant and also by the International Society for the History of Pharmacy. In addition, Joan is writing a commentary (for SBL/Brill) on Philo of Alexandria’s De Vita Contemplativa, supported in part by a grant from the British Academy. She has also worked on subjects outside her primary research areas: on the Elizabethan English traveller and adventurer Henry Timberlake, and the early Danish Unitarian Cecilie Hertz.

Books

• The Englishman, the Moor and the Holy City: The True Adventures of an Elizabethan Traveller (Stroud: Tempus/History Press, 2006).
• Jewish Women Philosophers of First-Century Alexandria - Philo’s ‘Therapeutae’ Reconsidered (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003; paperback edition 2006).
• The Immerser: John the Baptist within Second Temple Judaism (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1997; also published as John the Baptist: A Historical Study (London: SPCK, 1997).
• (with Shimon Gibson) Beneath the Church of the Holy Sepulchre: The Archaeology and Early History of Traditional Golgotha (London: Palestine Exploration Fund, 1994).
• Christians and the Holy Places: The Myth of Jewish Christian Origins (Oxford: Clarendon, 1993, rev. ed. 2003).

Academic articles (since 2008)

• ‘The Nazoraeans as a ‘Sect’ in ‘Sectarian Judaism? A Reconsideration of the Current View via the Narrative of Acts and the Meaning of Hairesis,’ in Sacha Stern (ed.), Sects and Sectarianism in Jewish History (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 87-118
• ‘Women, Children and Celibate Men in the Serekh Texts,’ Harvard Theological Review 104.2 (2011), 171-90.
• 'The Classical Sources on the Essenes and the Scrolls Communities’, in The Oxford Handbook of the Dead Sea Scrolls, ed. Timothy Lim and John J. Collins (Oxford University Press, 2010), 173-199.
• ‘The Name Iskarioth (Iscariot)’, Journal of Biblical Literature 129 (2010), 369-85.
• ‘Dio on the Essene Landscape,’ in Charlotte Hempel (ed.), The Dead Sea Scrolls: Texts and Context (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 467-86.
• ‘Alexandria’, in the Encyclopaedia of the Bible and its Reception, ed. Hans-Josef Klauck, vol. 1 (Walter de Gruyter, 2009).
• ‘Therapeutae’ in The Dictionary of Early Judaism, ed. John J. Collins and Daniel. C. Harlow (Eerdmans).
• ‘John the Baptist’, in The Dictionary of Early Judaism, ed. John J. Collins and Daniel. C. Harlow (Eerdmans).
• ‘The Dead Sea in Western Travellers’ Accounts from the Byzantine to the Modern Period,’ Strata 27 (2009), 9-30.
• ‘”Roots, Remedies and Properties of Stones”: The Essenes and Dead Sea Pharmacology,’ Journal of Jewish Studies 60 (2009), 226-44.
• ‘On Pliny, the Essene Location and Kh. Qumran,’ Dead Sea Discoveries 16 (2009), 129-49.
• with Shimon Gibson, ‘Roads and Passes Round Qumran,’ Palestine Exploration Quarterly (2008), 225-7.

General articles (since 2008)

• ‘L’extraordinaire “lac Asphaltite” - des auteurs anciens,’ Archéo-Thema, May 2009, 20-27.
• ‘The Nea Church: Were the Temple Treasures Hidden Here?’ Biblical Archaeology Review 34/1 (January/February 2008), 50-59, 82.

Undergraduate modules

• 4AAT1006 New Testament: Gospels and Letters
  
• 5AAT2201 The World of Jesus
  
• 6AAT3101 Introduction to the Dead Sea Scrolls
• 6AAT3201 Jesus in Context: The Study of the Historical Jesus
  

Postgraduate modules

• 7AATC230 Passion: History, Text & Representation
  
• 7AATC232 The Bible & Archaeology
  

Joan is also the Chair of the Department of Theology & Religious Studies Departmental Teaching Committee.

Joan welcomes enquiries from students wishing to undertake research towards a PhD in any of her fields of expertise, and seeks to promote inter-disciplinary and contextualising approaches.

Media appearances

• Presenter for two-part documentary about the historical Jesus, screened on BBC1 over the Easter weekend 2011.
• July, interview for ‘Unmasking the Pagan Christ’, David Brady Productions, Canada.
• Interviewee, ‘In Search of Jesus’ Tomb’ screened April 6th, 2009, National Geographic Channel.
• Art Nouveau magazine interview, July 2008,
• Adviser and interviewee in Jerusalem, ‘Who Was Jesus?’, by Renegade Pictures for the Discovery Channel, first screened April 5th, 2009.
• Researcher and interviewee for Leila Sansour’s film, ‘On the Road to Bethlehem’.
• Interviewee for BBC Radio 4 documentary on St. Helena, ‘The World’s First Archaeologist’.

Conference papers & public presentations

• 2010 Oxford University, Aram Conference, ‘Astrology in Philo of Alexandria’s De Vita Contemplativa’.
• 2010 King’s College London, Theology Seminar, ‘Jesus the Judean, Paul the Jew?: On Using Terms in Studying the Historical Jesus and the Earliest Church’.
• 2009 Westminster Cathedral, Council for Christians and Jews, London: ‘Jesus the Jew’.
• 2009 University of Birmingham, Theology Dept. Research Seminar: ‘The Dead Sea Scrolls: The Genizah Theory Revisited’.
• 2009 Society of Biblical Literature annual meeting, New Orleans, ‘The Dead Sea Scrolls: The Genizah Theory Revisited’.
• Society of Biblical Literature Annual Meeting: ‘Philo of Alexandria Commentary, De Vita Contemplativa’, special session.
• 2008 University College London, Dept. of Hebrew and Jewish Studies, ‘Sects and Sectarianism in Jewish History’ conference: ‘The Hairesis of the Nazoraeans’.
• 2007 University of Birmingham conference, ‘The Dead Sea Scrolls: Texts and Context’: ‘Dio - According to Synesius – on the Essene Landscape’.
• 2007 Anglo-Israel Archaeological Society and Palestine Exploration Fund, British Museum, ‘Qumran Connected’.
• 2006-7 University of Oxford, Oriental Studies; Sheffield University, Dept. of Biblical Studies and University of Melbourne, seminars: ‘Philo of Alexandria on the Essenes’.
• 2006 University of Birmingham, Centre for Muslim-Christian Relations: ‘Henry Timberlake’s Travels to Jerusalem’.