Tom de Bruin is an interdisciplinary scholar of ancient Judaism and early Christianity. He is currently Assistant Professor of New Testament and Early Judaism at Radboud University. He worked as a Senior Lecturer in New Testament Exegesis and Early 
Christian Literature at Newbold College of Higher Education, and before that as independent researcher at Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society.
Currently De Bruin is particularly interested in applying critical Fan Studies to early Christian writings. His second monograph Fanfiction and Early Christian Writings: Apocrypha, Pseudepigrapha, and Canon is under contract with T&T Clark/Bloomsbury.
De Bruin’s historical research has focussed on embodied ethics, that is the way the body, ethics and the supernatural co-exist in ancient Judaism and early Christianity, as evidenced in the Hebrew Bible, New Testament, Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, Dead Sea Scrolls, New Testament Apocrypha, and Apostolic Fathers.
Early Christian and ancient Jewish views of demons, Satan, and other forces of evil were the topic of his Ph.D. thesis: The Great Controversy: The Individual’s Struggle Between Good and Evil in the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs and in their Jewish and Christian Context. A revised version of this work was published by Vandenhoek & Ruprecht in 2015.
De Bruin is the treasurer of the British New Testament Society, general editor of the Journal for Interdisciplinary Biblical Studies and editor/webmaster of the European Adventist Society of Theology and Religious Studies. He was formerly a pastor and administrator for the Seventh-day Adventist Church.
You can find more information about De Bruin (and his work) on Academia.edu, and Twitter.
Curriculum vitae
- 2013 — Ph.D. New Testament and early Christian literature, Leiden University
- 2008 — M.A. Biblical Studies: New Testament (distinction), University of Wales Lampeter
- 2006 — Licence Theology, University of Wales Lampeter
- 2005 — Propedeuse Religious Studies, Universiteit van Amsterdam
- 2004 — B.Sc. Computing Science, Rijksuniversiteit Groningen
- 1979 — Born in Cape Town, South Africa
Download a full CV here.
Selected Publications
- “In Defence of New Testament Satanologies: A Response to Farrar and Williams.” Journal for the Study of the New Testament 44.3 (2022): 435–451.
- “The Haunting of Jesus: Reading Mark Through the Gothic Mode.” Journal for Interdisciplinary Biblical Studies 3.2 (2021): 63–86.
- “Joseph the Good and Delicate Man. Masculinity in The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs.” Lectio Difficilior, no. 1 (2020).
- “Manifesting Evil: Demons and Physical Monstrosity in the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs.” Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha 29 (2019): 132–45.
- “Nostalgia, Novelty, and the Subversion of Authority in ‘The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs.’” Transformative Works and Cultures 31 (2019).
- The Great Controversy: The Individual’s Struggle between Good and Evil in the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs and in Their Jewish and Christian Contexts. Novum Testamentum et Orbis Antiquus 106. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2015.