Dr Meredith Warren
School of English
Senior Lecturer in Biblical and Religious Studies, Director of the Sheffield Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies.


+44 114 222 0502
Full contact details
School of English
Jessop West
1 Upper Hanover Street
Sheffield
S3 7RA
- Profile
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I am Senior Lecturer in Biblical and Religious Studies and the Director of the Sheffield Institute for Interdisciplinary Studies. I am a Metis citizen, originally from Canada; I moved to Sheffield in 2015. Currently my research areas include gender; the senses; anti-Semitism; and apocalyptic literature.
- Research interests
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My primary research interests include the use of food and the sense of taste in biblical texts, especially in the New Testament and non-canonical literature. I have published on eating flesh and drinking blood in the Gospel of John, the use of wine libations in the Book of Revelation, and the ingesting of honeycomb in Joseph and Aseneth. I just co-authored the first textbook dedicated to Jewish and Christian Women in the Ancient Mediterranean, which was published by Routledge in 2022.
My most recent monograph, Food and Transformation in Ancient Mediterranean Literature, identifies and defines a new genre in ancient texts that I term hierophagy, a specific type of transformational eating where other-worldly things are consumed and which cause the eater to become associated with the heavenly realm. My first book, My Flesh Is Meat Indeed: A Nonsacramental Reading of John 6:51–58, examined Jesus’ commandment to consume his flesh and blood in the context of fictional accounts of human sacrifice.
My current research investigates the use of ‘taste’ in metaphors for death in ancient Jewish, Christian, and other literature.
I am the Director of the Sheffield Centre for Interdisciplinary Biblical Studies; I also edit the SCIBS book series published with Sheffield Phoenix Press, and am co-editor in chief of the Journal for Interdisciplinary Biblical Studies.
- Publications
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Books
- View this article in WRRO
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- Jewish and Christian Women in the Ancient Mediterranean. Routledge. View this article in WRRO
Edited books
Journal articles
- Book reviews. Modern Believing, 64(2), 163-226.
- Mary Magdalene and the dangers of white feminism. Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus: Jesus in History, Culture and Media, 20(3), 179-191.
- Invisibility, erasure, and a Jewish tombstone in Roman Britain. Journal of Ancient Judaism. View this article in WRRO
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- Confronting Judeophobia in the classroom. Journal for Interdisciplinary Biblical Studies, 2(1), 81-106. View this article in WRRO
- The Cup of God’s Wrath: Libation and Early Christian Meal Practice in Revelation. Religions, 9(12), 413-413. View this article in WRRO
- Tasting the Little Scroll: A Sensory Analysis of Divine Interaction in Revelation 10.8-10. Journal for the Study of the New Testament, 40(1), 101-119. View this article in WRRO
- Teaching with Technology: Using Digital Humanities to Engage Student Learning. Journal for Teaching Theology and Religion, 19(3), 309-319. View this article in WRRO
- My heart poured forth understanding’: 4 Ezra’s Fiery Cup as Hierophagic Consumption. Studies in Religion/Sciences Religieuses September, 3(44), 321-333. View this article in WRRO
Chapters
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- Domestic Spaces In Koltun-Fromm N & Kessler G (Ed.), A Companion to Late Ancient Jews and Judaism: Third Century BCE To Seventh Century CE (pp. 405-424). Wiley-Blackwell View this article in WRRO
- View this article in WRRO
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- Tastes from beyond: Persephone's pomegranate and otherworldly consumption in antiquity, Taste and the Ancient Senses (pp. 104-119). View this article in WRRO
- View this article in WRRO
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Website content
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- Research group
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I welcome PhD applicants who are interested in researching embodiment in biblical and/or ancient texts; any aspect of early Judaism and/or early Christianity; the Book of Revelation; the Gospel of John; sensory theory; the Bible and science fiction; or other projects engaging with biblical or classical literature in its ancient or contemporary contexts.
- Teaching activities
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Undergraduate:
- LIT113 Foundations in Literary Study: Biblical and Classical Sources in English
- LIT272 Good Books: Intertextual Approaches to Literature and the Bible
- EGH31007: The End of the World
MA:
- The Sacred and the Sexual: Gender, Sex, and the Bible