David Brakke

David Brakke is the Joe R. Engle Chair in the History of Christianity and Professor of History.  He received the B.A. in English from the University of Virginia (1983), M.Div. from Harvard University (1986), and Ph.D. in religious studies from Yale University (1992).  He taught for nineteen years in the Department of Religious Studies at Indiana University, where he was department chair from 2006 to 2011.

Professor Brakke studies and teaches the history and literature of ancient Christianity from its origins through the fifth century, with special interests in asceticism, monasticism, "Gnosticism," biblical interpretation, and Egyptian Christianity.  In Athanasius and the Politics of Asceticism (Oxford UP 1995; Johns Hopkins UP 1998), he examined the social and political dimensions of a bishop's ascetic teachings, and Demons and the Making of the Monk: Spiritual Combat in Early Christianity (Harvard UP 2006) explores the role of evil forces in the formation of the monk as a virtuous self and as a social role.  His latest monograph, The Gnostics: Myth, Ritual, and Diversity in Early Christianity (Harvard UP 2010), argues for a social and cultural approach to the definition of "Gnosticism" and to the question of "orthodoxy" and "heresy" in the era before Constantine.  It was named a Choice Outstanding Academic Title for 2011.  He has also edited and translated early Christian texts, most recently Evagrius of Pontus's Talking Back: A Monastic Handbook for Combating Demons (Liturgical Press 2009), and he has co-edited several scholarly volumes, including Religion and the Self in Antiquity (Indiana UP 2005) and Shifting Cultural Frontiers in Late Antiquity (Ashgate 2012).

Professor Brakke's research has received support from the American Council of Learned Societies, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.

He is currently a member of an international team of scholars that is producing the first unified critical edition and translation of the works of Shenoute of Atripe (ca.348-465), the leader of a large monastic community in Upper Egypt and the greatest native writer of Coptic.  He is also beginning work on a monograph on scriptural practices and canon formation in early Christian communities and a commentary on the Gospel of Judas.

Professor Brakke is the editor of the Journal of Early Christian Studies, which is sponsored by the North American Patristics Society and published by Johns Hopkins University Press, and the president-elect of the International Association for Coptic Studies.