About

Giovanni Bazzana is the Frothingham Professor of the History of Religion and Professor of New Testament and Early Christian Studies at Harvard Divinity School. His research and teaching focus chiefly on the critical study of the early Christ movement and early Christianity within the contexts of Second Temple Judaism, ancient Mediterranean history, religions, and material cultures. Bazzana’s work centers on gospels and apocalypses, both canonical and non-canonical, analyzing these texts in relation to broader social, political, and economic developments in the Mediterranean from the Hellenistic period to Late Antiquity. His scholarship emphasizes the influence of present concerns on the understanding of antiquity, aiming to interrogate ancient texts and practices while acknowledging their contemporary relevance. Bazzana has a secondary interest in papyrology, which is reflected in his first book, 'Kingdom of Bureaucracy: The Political Theology of Village Scribes in the Sayings Gospel Q' (2015). His latest book, 'Having the Spirit of Christ: Spirit Possession and Exorcism in the Early Christ Groups' (Yale 2020), explores the role of possession and exorcism in early Christian writings, using a comparative lens that includes ethnographies of possession cross-culturally. His research projects include studies on apocalyptic literature and its influence on contemporary culture and political discourse, as well as an investigation into the economic thought and practices of early Christian groups, utilizing papyrological sources and theories of the ancient economy to address modern ethical and socio-political challenges.

Research topics

• Sociology
• Art
• Philosophy
• Computer Science
• Mathematics
• Environmental science
• Physics
• Geography
• Thermodynamics
• Epistemology
• Mechanical engineering
• Engineering
• History
• Theology
• Literature
• Aesthetics
• Meteorology

Selected publications

• 23 The Universality of Spirit Possession Revisited

  McGill-Queen's University Press eBooks · 2025-04-07

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• Jesus Remembered in the Fourth Gospel and Second-Century Traditions A:

  SBL Press eBooks · 2024-10-04

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• “As If by Love Possessed”

  2024-09-03

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  Abstract In the Acts of Thomas the portrayal of the demons encountered by the apostle Thomas on his missionary travels through India is quite unusual among those preserved in apocryphal acts of the early centuries. The text seems to have a particular interest in the personality of these demons and in their ambiguous interactions with humanity. Special attention is given to the portrayal of demons in both the Greek and Syriac versions of the text, and to the significance of how the Acts of Thomas attests to a trajectory of transformation in early Christian demonology from Jewish concepts of the Second Temple period to Late Antique systematizations.

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• Divine Kingdom:

  SBL Press eBooks · 2023-07-14

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• HTR volume 116 issue 3 Cover and Front matter

  Harvard Theological Review · 2023-07-01

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• THE LANGUAGE OF VIOLENCE IN THE SAYINGS GOSPEL Q AN INITIAL EXAMINATION

  Peeters Publishers eBooks · 2022-10-18

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• Negotiating the Experience of Possession in Hermas’s Shepherd

  2022-05-23 · 1 citations

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• HTR volume 114 issue 4 Cover and Front matter

  Harvard Theological Review · 2021-10-01

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• The Dawn of Christianity: People and Gods in a Time of Magic and Miracles by Robert Knapp

  Magic, ritual, and witchcraft · 2021-01-01

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  Reviewed by: The Dawn of Christianity: People and Gods in a Time of Magic and Miracles by Robert Knapp Giovanni B. Bazzana Keywords Early Christianity, the Christ movement, polytheism, monotheism, Judaism, history of Christianity, the Mediterranean region robert knapp. The Dawn of Christianity: People and Gods in a Time of Magic and Miracles. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2017. Pp. xvi + 303. Robert Knapp boldly tackles an ambitious goal: describing the context and the emergence of the religious movement that will later be called "Christianity" in the period around the turn of the eras. Knapp sees the Christ movement as establishing a new relationship between humans and the supernatural realm. The ultimate goal of this book's analysis is to elucidate why and how, in a radically conservative context, people made such a change. This very readable book can be divided in two parts of roughly equal size. In the first half (Chapters 1 to 6) Knapp describes the socio-religious contexts for the emergence of the Christ movement. Throughout the Mediterranean region a few basic elements shaping the relationship between humans and gods were shared: an acknowledgement of divine superior power over human affairs and the development of individual and communitarian strategies designed to appease and minimize the unpredictability of the gods' actions. In the first half of the book, however, the Jewish and the "polytheist" strategies are presented separately. The religious history of the Jewish people is described in great detail beginning with the exile and leading up to the introduction of the "sects" (Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes, and so on) which is largely indebted to Josephus and Philo. Throughout these centuries, Knapp emphasizes a few trajectories shaping Judaism (besides the turn toward monotheism). On the one hand, the observance of dietary and purity prescriptions became more widespread even in everyday life, as attested by material remains. On the other hand, average Jews grew more and more disaffected with the Temple and began to orient themselves toward a more "internalized" religiosity to the detriment of the authority of the priesthood. "Polytheist" religion is described in the long Chapter 5 which surveys a broad array of conservative, local, and communitarian sets of practices and beliefs. Knapp identifies two notable changes in this scenario. First, the emergence in Hellenistic times of philosophical schools whose focus is specifically on ethics, thus providing an important corrective for the lack of a moral system in polytheist religion. [End Page 421] Second, religious associations provided an important space for practices and discussions alongside the established spheres of civic and family religion. The second half of the book (Chapters 7 to 11) describes the trajectory of the Christ movement from Jesus to the second century CE. Interestingly, the figure of Jesus is briefly presented in Chapter 7 after a series of other messiahs and charismatics (mostly drawn from Josephus) who appeared and met unlucky ends over the first centuries BCE and CE. Knapp argues that the Christ movement fit well within the trajectories of internalization and moralization that he had sketched out beforehand both for Judaism and polytheist religions. Hostility, however, was generated in both camps by the claim of divine sonship on the part of Jesus and his followers (for the Jews) and by the exclusivist requirement to abandon sacrifices and other similar traditional practices (for the polytheists). In Chapter 10 Knapp maintains that the Christ movement's success depended largely on the miracles and magical acts performed by its missionaries. Such acts were, in the eyes of Mediterranean audiences, indistinguishable from the services provided by magicians and other performers of powerful deeds throughout the entire area in the period under consideration. The last chapter of the book sketches the changes that shaped Christianity under the double crisis produced by the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE and the realization that the end of the world was not coming as immediately as expected. Christianity moved sharply away from Judaism and, at the same time, took on more and more "polytheistic" features, both (but in significantly different terms) among the elites and at the popular level. The book is well-written and carefully put together, with a rich complement of seven maps and forty-nine...

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• HTR volume 114 issue 3 Cover and Front matter

  Harvard Theological Review · 2021-07-01

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Frequent coauthors

• David Hempton

  Norwegian University of Science and Technology

  355 shared

• Mayra Rivera

  Edmonds Community College

  355 shared

• Faye Bodley-Dangelo

  New York University Press

  355 shared

• Francis X. Clooney

  Episcopal Divinity School

  355 shared

• Matthew Hass

  Cambridge University Press

  309 shared

• James Given

  British Horseracing Authority

  302 shared

• Jon Levenson

  259 shared

• Thomas Whittaker

  Harvard University Press

  249 shared