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Jennifer Quigley

Assistant Professor of New Testament

Dr. Jennifer Quigley is Assistant Professor of New Testament at Vanderbilt Divinity School. Her research lies at the intersections of theology and economics in New Testament and early Christian texts. She has interests in archaeology and material culture, and her research and teaching are influenced by feminist and materialist approaches to the study of religion. Her first book, Divine Accounting: Theo-economics in Early Christianity, asks: how did early Christ-followers use financial language to articulate and imagine their relationship to the divine, and how does this language compare to the broader social-religious contexts of the ancient Mediterranean? Looking at lease agreements, sale contracts, and a variety of material culture evidence, she demonstrates that in antiquity, people took seriously the possibility of entering into financial relationships with the gods.

Quigley hopes her research into New Testament and early Christian texts offers a complex picture of the diverse ways in which early Christians use financial language to think about their relationships with God and with fellow humans, and that this work has implications for contemporary conversations about what and who is valued. Her second book project, tentatively titled “The Gendered Economy of Early Christianity,” will explore the diverse ways in which the theological imaginary is entangled with both gender and the economy in the New Testament and early Christian literature.

Quigley is an ordained elder in the United Methodist Church, and worked in university chaplaincy for nine years before beginning her full-time teaching career. She previously held a Louisville Institute Postdoctoral Fellowship at Drew University Theological School and served as Visiting Assistant Professor at Huron at Western. 

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS

Divine Accounting: Theo-Economics in Early Christianity. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2021.

and Laura S. Nasrallah. “Cost and Abundance in Roman Philippi: The Letter to the Philippians in its Context.” In Philippi, From colonia augusta to communitas christiana: Religion and Society in Transition. Edited by Steven J. Friesen, Daniel N. Schowalter, and Michalis Lychounas. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2022. 

“Class-ifying the Gods: The Christ Commodity in Philippians 3.” In The Struggle Over Class: Socioeconomic Analysis of Ancient Jewish and Christian Texts. Writings from the Graeco-Roman World Supplement Series. Edited by Steven J. Friesen, G. Anthony Keddie, and Michael Flexsenhar III. Atlanta: SBL Press, 2021. 

“Gods and Markets: New Materialism, Divine-Human Economies, and the Letter to the Philippians.” The Bible and Critical Theory 16.2 (2020).