Jason Robert Combs

Bio:
Jason Robert Combs is an assistant professor of Ancient Scripture and affiliate faculty of Ancient Near Eastern Studies at Brigham Young University. He joined the BYU faculty in 2016 after working as a lecturer at High Point University, Guilford College, and UNC-Greensboro in North Carolina. Combs earned his bachelor’s degree in Near Eastern Studies from BYU. He holds master's degrees in biblical studies from Yale Divinity School and in classics from Columbia University. He earned his PhD in religious studies with an emphasis on the history of early Christianity from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Courses Taught:
New Testament, Hebrew Bible / Old Testament, Book of Mormon, Birth of Christianity, World Religions, Ancient Near Eastern Studies Senior Seminar

Areas of Expertise:
New Testament, Second Temple Judaism, History of Christianity (1st–4th centuries CE), New Testament Apocrypha

Languages:
Classical Greek (reading), Latin (reading), Biblical Hebrew (reading), Syriac (reading), German (reading and beginning conversational), French (reading), Italian (reading), Spanish (conversational and reading)

Selection of Recent Academic Research:
“Shepherd of Hermas and the Christian Experience of Non-Christian Epiphany” in Experiencing the Shepherd of Hermas, ed. Angela Kim Harkins and Harry O. Maier, Ekstasis: Religious Experience from Antiquity to the Middle Ages (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2022), 153–169.

“Christian Anti-Sabbath Polemic and the Textual Transmission of Luke 4:16 and 23:56,” TC: A Journal of Biblical Textual Criticism 26 (2021): 29–46.

“The Polemical Origin of Luke 6.5D: Dating Codex Bezae’s Sabbath-Worker Agraphon,” Journal for the Study of the New Testament 42 (2019): 162–184.

Selection of Recent Writings for Latter-day Saints:

Ancient Christians: An Introduction for Latter-day Saints (Provo, UT: Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship, forthcoming 2022). - Coedited with Mark D. Ellison, Catherine Gines Taylor, and Kristian S. Heal.

“Noncanonical Gospels” in New Testament History, Culture, and Society: A Background to the Texts of the New Testament, ed. Lincoln H. Blumell (Provo, UT: BYU Religious Studies Center, 2019), 322–340.

“‘Christ’ after the Apostles: The Humanity and Divinity of the Savior in the Second Century” in “Thou Art the Christ, the Son of the Living God”: The Person and Work of Jesus in the New Testament — Sperry Symposium 2018, ed. Eric Huntsman, Lincoln Blumell, and Tyler Griffin (Provo, UT: BYU Religious Studies Center, 2018), 303–334.

“From King Ahaz’s Sign to Christ Jesus: The ‘Fulfillment’ of Isaiah 7:14” in Prophets and Prophecies of the Old Testament: Text and Context — Sperry Symposium 2017, ed. Aaron Schade, Brian Hauglid, and Kerry Muhlestein (Provo, UT: BYU Religious Studies Center, 2017), 95–122.