Tom de Bruin (he/they) is an interdisciplinary scholar of ancient Judaism and early Christianity. He is currently Assistant Professor of New Testament and Early Judaism at Radboud University. They worked as a Senior Lecturer in New Testament Exegesis and Early Christian Literature at Newbold College of Higher Education, and before that as independent researcher at Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society.
Currently De Bruin is particularly interested in applying critical Fan Studies to early Christian writings. His second monograph Fanfiction and Early Christian Writings: Apocrypha, Pseudepigrapha and Canon was published by Bloomsbury T&T Clark in 2024.
De Bruin’s historical research has focussed on embodied ethics, that is the way the body, ethics and the supernatural co-exist in ancient Judaism and early Christianity, as evidenced in the Hebrew Bible, New Testament, Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, Dead Sea Scrolls, New Testament Apocrypha, and Apostolic Fathers.
Early Christian and ancient Jewish views of demons, Satan, and other forces of evil were the topic of their Ph.D. thesis: The Great Controversy: The Individual’s Struggle Between Good and Evil in the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs and in their Jewish and Christian Context. A revised version of this work was published by Vandenhoek & Ruprecht in 2015.
De Bruin is the treasurer of the British New Testament Society and general editor of the Journal for Interdisciplinary Biblical Studies. He was formerly a pastor and administrator for the Seventh-day Adventist Church.
You can find more information about De Bruin (and their work) on Academia.edu, and Twitter.
Curriculum vitae
- 2013 — Ph.D. New Testament and early Christian literature, Leiden University
- 2008 — M.A. Biblical Studies: New Testament (distinction), University of Wales Lampeter
- 2006 — Licence Theology, University of Wales Lampeter
- 2005 — Propedeuse Religious Studies, Universiteit van Amsterdam
- 2004 — B.Sc. Computing Science, Rijksuniversiteit Groningen
- 1979 — Born in Cape Town, South Africa
Download a full CV here.
Selected Publications
- Fan Fiction and Early Christian Writings: Apocrypha, Pseudepigrapha and Canon. Scriptural Traces: Critical Perspectives on the Reception and Influence of the Bible 33/Library of New Testament Studies 673. London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark.
- My Body Made Me Do It: Noninvasive Possession in early Christianity.” Ideas of Possession: Interdisciplinary and Transcultural Perspectives. Edited by Nicole Bauer and Andrew Doole. Oxford: Oxford University Press: 73–85.
- “Tower of Babel.” Biblical Themes in Science Fiction. Edited by Nicole L. Tilford and Kelly J. Murphy. Bible and Its Reception 6. Atlanta: SBL Press: 35–56.
- In Defence of New Testament Satanologies: A Response to Farrar and Williams.” Journal for the Study of the New Testament 44.3 (2022): 435–451.
- “The Haunting of Jesus: Reading Mark Through the Gothic Mode.” Journal for Interdisciplinary Biblical Studies 3.2 (2021): 63–86.
- “Manifesting Evil: Demons and Physical Monstrosity in the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs.” Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha 29 (2019): 132–45.
- “Nostalgia, Novelty, and the Subversion of Authority in ‘The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs.’” Transformative Works and Cultures 31 (2019).