Jason BeDuhn

Jason BeDuhn is Professor of Religious Studies, and former chair of the Department of Humanities, Arts, and Religion (2000-2004) at Northern Arizona University. He holds a Ph.D. in the Comparative Study of Religion from Indiana University (1995), an M.T.S. in New Testament and Early Christianity from Harvard Divinity School (1988), and a B.A. in Religious Studies from the University of Illinois (1985).His areas of research include Biblical Studies, Ancient Christianities, Manichaeism, Religions of West Asia in Late Antiquity, ritual and self-forming practices, and method and theory in the study of religion and history. He is the author of The Manichaean Body in Discipline and Ritual (The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000), recipient of the American Academy of Religion’s “Best First Book” Award in the category of History of Religions, and of Truth in Translation: Accuracy and Bias in English Translations of the New Testament (University Press of America, 2003), a controversial critique of doctrinal bias in contemporary Bible translations. The first two volumes of his trilogy, Augustine’s Manichaean Dilemma, have appeared from the University of Pennsylvania Press (2010 and 2013).  His reconstruction of the contents of the earliest Christian Bible, dating to the second century, has been published as The First New Testament: Marcion's Scriptural Canon (Polebridge 2013). Dr. BeDuhn is a former Guggenheim Fellow, and National Humanities Center Fellow, and currently engaged in a collaborative project to edit and translate an ancient Coptic Manichaean manuscript with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities.