J. Albert Harrill (Ph.D., University of Chicago), is Professor Emeritus of History and Classics.  His scholarship examines early Christianity in its Greco-Roman context, which includes ancient Judaism. His primary research focus has been on social and cultural history. 

Previously, he was a professor of religious studies at Indiana University, Bloomington (2002–2012), where he also directed the Program in Ancient Studies, and earlier taught at Boston University, DePaul University, and Creighton University.  He has held guest professorships at Williams College as Croghan Bicentennial Visiting Professor in Biblical and Early Christian Studies (2015), and at the University of Chicago Divinity School as Visiting Professor of New Testament and Early Christian Literature (2012). He was an Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellow at the Universities of Bonn and Münster, both in Germany. His teaching, a career spanning over three decades, garnered awards by peers and students alike.

Harrill has published widely, on New Testament and other early Christian literature, the history of religions (Greco-Roman era), and problems in modern biblical interpretation. His first book, The Manumission of Slaves in Early Christianity (Mohr Siebeck, 1995), examines the first known pieces of Christian literature that address the liberation of slaves to understand how churches functioned socially within the Roman Empire. His second book, Slaves in the New Testament: Literary, Social, and Moral Dimensions (Fortress Press, 2006), shows how ancient Roman ideologies of slavery shaped the thinking of the early Christians, with attention to the history of biblical interpretation on slavery in antebellum America.  His third book, Paul the Apostle: His Life and Legacy in Their Roman Context (Cambridge University Press, 2012), challenges contemporary notions of Paul in traditional biographies. 

He is currently at work on a new, historical-critical commentary on Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians for the Anchor Yale Bible series (Yale University Press).