About

Maria Doerfler is an Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Yale University, specializing in Late Antiquity. Her work focuses on the interpretation of authoritative texts, including law, philosophical writings, and scripture from the second through sixth centuries C.E., with particular emphasis on how contexts of personal or communal crisis influence exegesis. She has authored the monograph 'Jephthah’s Daughter, Sarah’s Son: The Death of Children in Late Antiquity,' which received the American Academy of Religion’s Best First Book in the History of Religions Prize. Her most recent publication, 'Death and the Afterlife in Syriac Christianity: Creating Social Identity and Emotional Communities,' is published by the University of Cambridge Press. Doerfler is engaged in projects exploring the intersection of law and sacred histories, as well as migration and ritual in late antiquity. She serves as a McDonald Distinguished Senior Fellow at Emory University's Center for Law and Religion and is an editor for publications including Church History and the Review of Biblical Literature. Her academic background includes a Ph.D. in Early Christianity from Duke University, a J.D. from UCLA, and a B.A. in political science from Princeton University.

Research topics

• History
• Art
• Classics
• Literature
• Philosophy
• Political Science
• Psychology
• Genealogy
• Archaeology
• Geography
• Theology
• Ancient history
• Law
• Linguistics
• Psychoanalysis

Selected publications

• Ambrose

  2025-02-04

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  Abstract Known as “Philo Christianus” among scholars, Ambrose of Milan has long been acknowledged as Philo’s most enthusiastic disciple in late antiquity. Traces of Philo appear with particular prominence in Ambrose’s five so-called “Philonic treatises,” in his letters, and, more sporadically, throughout the rest of his oeuvre. Beginning with its sixteenth-century origins, this chapter traces the vibrant history of scholarship surrounding, on the one hand, Ambrose’s role as witness to Philo’s writings, and, on the other, Ambrose as Philo’s adaptor. In addition to providing a brief introduction to Hervé Savon’s and Enzo Lucchesi’s seminal monographs, it attends particularly to recent trends in the scholarship of Ambrose’s use of Philo, including those focusing on exegetical strategies, on Philo in Ambrose’s epistolary corpus, and the role of gender in both authors.

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• Imagining the Death of Jesus in Fourth-Century Mesopotamia. By Blake Hartung. Supplements to <i>Vigiliae Christianae</i> 181. Leiden: Brill, 2023. xi + 257 pp. $134 Hardback.

  Church History · 2025-06-01

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• East of Nicaea

  Religion and Theology · 2025-12-15

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  Abstract A commonly asserted dogma of Nicene reception has been the creed’s early and enthusiastic incorporation into the theology of Syriac Christianity’s most famous representative, Ephrem of Nisibis. The latter’s oeuvre indeed directs considerable intellectual firepower against those that sought to subordinate the Son to the Father. Recent scholarship, however, has noted Ephrem’s own ambivalence about aspects of the Nicene Creed, including the famous “homoousios.” This article considers the evidence of the so-called “Hymns on Nisibis” ( Carmina Nisibena ), in light of the apparent schism between subordinationists and pro-Nicenes in Edessa. The Hymns showcase Ephrem’s theological commitments to be consistent with those of his other work, most notably the Hymns on Faith , while providing glimpses at his efforts to effect reconciliation among Edessene Christians – even at the risk of valorizing aspects of opposing factions’ views.

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• Death and the Afterlife in Syriac Christianity

  Cambridge University Press eBooks · 2025-12-17

  book1st authorCorresponding

  In late antiquity as in the present age, death left its mark on the lives of families, communities, and societies. Syriac funerary hymns provide important insights into the social, emotional, funerary ritual histories of early Christian communities. Maria Doerfler here explores this body of largely ignored literature that has been attributed to Ephrem the Syrian. Different parts of the collection focus on individuals from a variety of social and ecclesiastical backgrounds: women and children, clergy and ascetics, as well as those who fell victim to natural disasters. The hymns provide insights not only into Syriac Christian ideas about death and the afterlife, but also into their existence, beliefs, and practices more broadly. Through engagement with different theoretical lenses, Doerfler uses instances of personal and communal crisis to elucidate historical and philosophical patterns among late antique Christians, addressing, inter alia, their responses to pandemics, understanding of wealth, and forging communal bonds that transcended death.

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• Are You My Stranger? Developing a Biblical Pedagogy of Migration in Syriac Christian Sources

  Journal of Early Christian History · 2024-05-03 · 1 citations

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• Christianity and Roman Law

  Oxford University Press eBooks · 2023-11-20 · 2 citations

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  Abstract Christians’ relationship with the laws of the Roman Empire evolved considerably throughout the opening centuries of the Common Era. From a religious minority who sought to carve out space for itself within the empire’s laws, Christians increasingly attracted the attention of Roman government officials and, from the third century onward, its lawmakers. With the rise of Constantine and subsequent Christian emperors, Christians moved further toward the center of the empire’s legislative and judicial activities, with bishops, for example, formally assuming the role of arbiters vis-à-vis their communities and claiming legal privileges for themselves and other Christian elites. Roman law in turn came to shape the Christian theological imagination as well, contributing both to Christians’ views of the Last Judgment and to definitions of orthodoxy and heresy. The fifth-century Theodosian Code bears witness both to the innovations precipitated by the ascendancy of Christianity—including Christians’ relationships with other religious communities—and to the continuities with earlier phases of Roman law and policy. This chapter traces these developments with particular attention to three discursive threads: that of Christian writings as witnesses to Roman law, that of Christian leaders as deeply engaged with the production and execution of Roman law, and that of the relationship of Roman law with the laws of nature and scripture.

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• Bishops and Friends: History and Legal Interpretation in Recent<i>Amicus Curiae</i>Briefs before the Supreme Court

  Journal of Law and Religion · 2023-01-01

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract With the rise of originalism as an interpretive strategy, history has come to play an increasingly prominent role in the reasoning and methodology of the United States Supreme Court. That development has, by necessity, also shaped the approach to constitutional interpretation taken by other parties, including the large and growing number of groups who file amicus curiae briefs. When the amici in question are religious entities, this article suggests, this “historical turn” at times takes the shape of narrating aspects of a tradition’s sacred history for the benefit of both the Court and other, lay audiences. This article examines three recent amicus briefs by one of the most consistent and prolific religious amici, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. Across these briefs, this author traces the construction and deployment of history—both Catholic and American—as a middle term for negotiating the relationship between the US Constitution and its interpretation, on the one hand, and the interests and priorities of the religious tradition, on the other.

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• Emotional Communities and the Loss of an Individual

  2022-08-19 · 10 citations

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  Penthos (grief or mourning) is one of the best explored emotions in the realm of Byzantine studies. Beginning with Irénée Hausherr, penthos and its practical instantiations in weeping, sorrow and acts of contrition have been located squarely at the centre of the Christian practices of repentance and compunction for humanity’s sin. This ‘joyful grief’ appears as a central element in the path towards the individual’s spiritual transformation, so much so that contemporary scholars have occasionally argued that this alone constituted true grief in the Christian imagination. Yet Byzantines did not reserve their grief for wholly spiritual matters; a separate but equally significant tradition of penthos surrounds a manifestation more of this world, namely, that of grief over the loss of a loved one. Such was the case particularly when a death was perceived as ‘untimely’, as in the case of children who failed to outlive their parents. Byzantine writers wrestled with the question of whether grief at another’s death was indeed justified even when the departed was very young. In the process, Byzantine authors drew upon biblical exemplars of grieving parents, or indeed ascribed grief to parents not obviously so depicted, to model appropriate responses to death and bereavement for families as well as churches at large. By calling on Sarah and Abraham, Jephthah and his household, Eve and Adam, David, Job, and their respective female counterparts, Byzantine writers crafted an affective tapestry of mourning and consolation in the face of infant and childhood mortality.

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• Biblische Frauenfiguren in der Spätantike

  2022-01-26

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  Bibeltexte und biblische Gestalten spielen in den Schriften der Kirchenväter eine wichtige Rolle. Dabei stehen meist die großen Männer im Zentrum des Interesses. Dennoch kommen auch die biblischen Frauen, von Sara und Hagar bis Maria, nicht zu kurz. Sie sind Mütter, Prophetinnen, Lehrerinnen und vieles mehr. Sie dienen den männlichen Autoren als Beispiele und Vorbilder für die Frauen ihrer Zeit. Die gesellschaftlichen Rollenbilder und die sich entwickelnden Strukturen der Kirche prägen den Blick auf die biblischen Frauen, und die Exegeten passen sie den herrschenden Vorstellungen und Idealen an. Die Beiträge in diesem Band zeigen, wie biblische Frauen im soziokulturellen Kontext der Spätantike präsentiert und interpretiert wurden.

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• The Churches are Empty, the Priests are Silent

  Religion in the Roman Empire · 2022-01-01

  article1st authorCorresponding

  The necrosima, a collection of 85 Syriac funerary hymns ascribed to Ephrem the Syrian, encompasses poetry in a variety of metres, commemorating Christians of all ages, genders, social stations, and professional backgrounds. Four of the madrāshê, moreover, distinguish themselves by attending to death on a broader communal scale, namely in the context of pandemic and plague. In both form and context of preservation, these hymns were manifestly part of a communitys ritual repertoire. At the same time, however, they witness to periods in which ordinary ritual pathways had broken down. In the midst of sickness and bereavement, the hymns suggest, churches stood empty, clergy mourned the loss of their brothers, even burials had ceased in light of deaths relentless onslaught. This article seeks to examine contexts of disaster as spaces for reconfiguring communities ritual practices in late antiquity, including the recovery of different models for engaging the divine.

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Frequent coauthors

• Miyako Demura

  1 shared

• Thomas Durand

  1 shared

• H. Spacagna

  1 shared

• Eva Synek

  1 shared

• John Dayton

  1 shared

• K.S. Bhat

  1 shared

• Arianna Rotondo

  University of Bari Aldo Moro

  1 shared

• Anneliese Felber

  1 shared

Awards & honors

• American Academy of Religion’s Best First Book in the Histor…