Meredith J.C. Warren (b.1982), scholar

Meredith J.C. Warren (b.1982) is a Canadian scholar, at Sheffield University, Sheffield, United Kingdom. Warren (1982) completed her degrees (BA (2004), MA (2006), PhD(2013) at McGill University and from 2013–2015 held a postdoctoral position at the University of Ottawa funded by the Fonds de Recherche du Québec — Société et Culture. She has taught classes on women in early Judaism and Christianity, Koine Greek, ancient Mediterranean religions, and the early church. Meredith’s primary research interests lie in the cultural and theological interactions among the religions of ancient Mediterranean, especially early Judaism and Christianity. In particular, Meredith is interested in how shared cultural understandings of food and eating play a role in ancient narratives, including the Pseudepigrapha, Hellenistic romance novels, and the Gospels. Meredith’s doctoral work, recently published as My Flesh is Meat Indeed: A Nonsacramental Reading of John 6:51–58 (Fortress 2015), investigates how the Gospel of John makes use of Jewish, Christian, Greek, and Roman attitudes about sacrifice, divinity, and the consumption of human flesh in order to make claims about Jesus’ divinity. Her current book project, titled Hierophagy: Transformational Eating in Ancient Literature, examines how characters in literature are transformed by eating otherworldly food. An article emerging from this research, “My Heart Poured Forth Understanding: 4 Ezra’s Fiery Cup as Hierophagic Consumption,” is forthcoming at the journal Studies in Religion.

Works

Books

• My Flesh is Meat Indeed: A Nonsacramental Reading of John 6:51–58 (2015 Warren), book

Articles in edited volumes

• A Robe Like Lightning: Clothing Changes and Identification in Joseph and Aseneth. Pages 137-153 in Dressing Judeans and Christians in Antiquity. Alicia Batten, Carly Daniel-Hughes, and Kristi Upson-Saia eds. Farnham, Surrey; Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2014.
• “Equal to God: Jesus’ Crucifixion and Sacrificial Scheintod” in Frederick S. Tappenden and Carly Daniel-Hughes, eds., Coming Back to Life: The Permeability of Past and Present, Mortality and Immortality, Death and Life in the Ancient Mediterranean. Montreal, QC: McGill University Library and Archives, expected 2015 (17 pages).
• “Tastes from Beyond: Persephone's Pomegranate and Otherworldly Consumption in Antiquity” in Taste and the Ancient Senses (The Senses in Antiquity; Kelli C. Rudolph, ed; Acumen Press, expected 2016).

Articles in journals (selected - max.10)

• “My Heart Poured Forth Understanding: 4 Ezra's Fiery Cup as Hierophagic Consumption,” Studies in Religion/Sciences Religieuses, 44.3 (2015): 320–333. [1]
• "My OTP: Harry Potter Fanfiction and the Old Testament Pseudepigrapha," Scriptura, 8.1 (2006): 53–66.

Online Articles (selected - max.10)

• Students Think Better with Thinking Pieces: Why You Should Consider Using Low-Stakes Writing Assignments in Your Class (with Shayna Sheinfeld) in Ancient Jew Review. [2]