Dr. Mark A. Chancey
Dr. Chancey assumed the chairmanship of the Department of Religious Studies at SMU in January of 2008. He attended the University of Georgia, where he earned a B.A. in Political Science with a minor in Religion (1990) and a M.A. in Religion (1992). He entered Duke University's Graduate Program in Religion in 1993, where he focused on New Testament studies and early Judaism. While at Duke, he participated in excavations in Israel at Sepphoris, an important ancient city three miles from Nazareth. He earned his Ph.D. from Duke in 1999 and joined the faculty of SMU in 2000. His research interests include the Gospels, the Historical Jesus, archaeology and the Bible, and the political and social history of Palestine during the Roman period. His book, The Myth of a Gentile Galilee (Cambridge University Press, 2002), integrates archaeological and literary evidence to demonstrate that first-century C.E. Galilee was overwhelmingly Jewish. He is also the author of a forthcoming monograph, entitled “Greco-Roman Culture and the Galilee of Jesus” (also Cambridge University Press).