129. The Early Christian World — A Conversation with Laura Nasralla

In the past few decades, scholarship on the New Testament has opened up exciting new ways of understanding the context of the early followers of Jesus and has enabled new interpretations of the texts they wrote. 

One of the leading scholars advancing our knowledge of early Christianity is Laura Nasrallah, a professor at Yale who specializes in New Testament texts and archaeology. In this conversation, Zach Davis and Terryl Givens visited Laura in her New Haven office to discuss topics like the role of women in the early Christian church, how to discern God’s hand in the messy complexity of history, and New Testament practices like speaking in tongues and baptism for the dead. 

Laura Nasrallah is a Professor of New Testament Criticism and Interpretation at Yale University. Her research and teaching engage issues of gender, race, colonialism, status, and power and bring together New Testament and early Christian literature with the archaeological remains of the Mediterranean world. She is the author of the book Archaeology and the Letters of Paul.