Dr Emily J. Gathergood

researching the body, gender, and sexuality in early Jewish and Christian writings

Research Fellow - Centre for Philosophy, Theology & Religion, University of Nottingham


My UKRI AHRC-funded doctoral thesis, The Midwifery of God (2022), explores the intersections of divinity and maternity in early Jewish and Christian writings. 

The research breaks new ground in the interdisciplinary field of Body Studies as the first extensive investigation of divine midwifery in early Jewish and Christian writings. I examine a diverse selection of canonical and apocryphal childbearing narratives which evoke the paradigmatic Genesis story of Eve’s painful parturition and destabilise traditional aetiological application of her corporeal judgement to all women. Through close intertextual analysis of seven previously understudied texts, I elucidate a common liberative motif of divine deliverance from maternal morbidity and mortality. My central thesis is that these subversive works imagine the eschatological repeal of woman’s ‘curse’ of difficult childbearing and conceptualise God in feminine terms as the heavenly Midwife who physiologically delivers labouring women. By participating in the myth-making of divine midwifery, early Jews and Christians constructed the maternal body as a gendered site of divine judgements and therapies. The research reconfigures established scholarly accounts of early Jewish and Christian salvation, which skew towards the generic and androcentric, by reckoning with neglected gynocentric constructions of divine justice and healthcare. The findings also contribute more broadly to destabilising the purchase of the ancient curse narrative that continues to shape the ideological construction of women in the contemporary world. 

The research won The Manfred Lautenschlaeger Award for Theological Promise 2023 (University of Heidelberg), a global first book prize across all subdisciplines of Theology and Religious Studies. The revised monograph will be published by Oxford University Press in 2025. 

Three works-in-progress will extend my research interest in divinity and maternity:

(i) on ancient Mediterranean religious attitudes to maternal mortality; 

(ii) on the midwifery of Jesus in early magical incantations; and 

(iii) on Mary's divine reproductive enslavement.

A further complementary strand of my research is on the interrelations of God, the body, gender, and ethnicity in early Jewish and Christian circumcision discourse. My book chapter on the Pauline letter to the Ephesians in Judeophobia and the New Testament: Texts and Contexts, ed. Sarah E. Rollens et al. (Eerdmans, 2025) explores the sociological implications of christological renegotiation of the ethnic estrangement of Jews and gentiles (non-Jews) marked by their divergent penis habits.

I have also published on the materiality of early Christian manuscripts  in the leading journal New Testament Studies: ‘Papyrus 32 (Titus) as a multi-text codex: a new reconstruction,’ NTS 59 (2013): 588-606.

My public scholarship includes an article on Mary's childbearing in the Ascension of Isaiah for Ancient Jew Review, an article on the need for the church to address gender-based violence in The Church Times, and a collaborative series of mini-films contextualising the Bible: Bibledex. 


Research Presentations

Upcoming:

Panellist on ‘The New Testament Within Judaism,’ The Enoch Seminar: Second Temple Judaism and Early Christian Origins (University of Michigan Centre for Early Christian Studies), 7-9 January 2025

Biblical Studies Research Seminar, School of Divinity, University of Edinburgh, 28 February 2025 

Previous:

‘Early Christian Childbearing,’ Health Humanities Workshop, University of Nottingham, Apr 2024

‘The Midwifery of God: Tokological Deliverance in Early Jewish and Christian Reconceptions of Genesis 3.16,’ International Centre for Biblical Interpretation, University of Gloucester, Feb 2024

‘Mary’s Burning Bush: Divine Epiphany Meets Divine Midwifery in the Protevangelium of James,’ Society of Biblical Literature Annual Meeting, Nov 2023

‘Divine Midwifery in Antiquity and Today,’ Health Humanities Working Group, Universities of Nottingham and Adelaide, Oct 2023

‘Wombful of Grace: Divine and Maternal Embodiment in Early Christian Apocrypha,’ Durham University New Testament and Patristics Research Seminar, May 2023

‘Hierophagic Ritual Technology in Early Christianity,’ Manfred Lautenschlaeger Award Colloquium, University of Heidelberg, Apr 2023

‘The Afterbirth of Genesis 3:16: Early Jewish and Christian Re(con)ceptions of the Maternal Curse,’ University of Aberdeen Biblical Studies Research Seminar, Feb 2023

‘Deliver Her from Evil: Messianic Midwifery in the Syriac Apocalypse of Baruch (2 Baruch) 72–74,’ Society of Biblical Literature Annual Meeting, Nov 2022

‘Your Faith has Delivered You: Divine Midwifery and Perinatal Discipleship in Early Christian Apocrypha,’ LMU Munich NT Colloquium, June 2022

‘Gendered Fluids of Salvation: The Father’s Seminal Lactation and the Virgin’s Masculine Maternity in the Odes of Solomon 19,’ North American Patristics Society Annual Meeting, May 2022 

‘Call the Midwife! Apostolic Birthing and Childless Discipleship in the Apocryphal Acts of Andrew,’ University of Nottingham Theology Seminar, Feb 2022 

Discussant, ‘Studies in Second Temple Judaism: A Global Enterprise,’ Enoch Seminar/Frankel Institute for Advanced Judaic Studies, Jan 2022 

‘Deus misereatur mei: childbearing, salvation, and religious competition for women's devotion in the Acts of Andrew,’ Society of Biblical Literature Annual Meeting (San Antonio, TX), 20-23 Nov 2021

‘She will be delivered: the "tokological" salvation of Eve in the Greek Life of Adam and Eve and 1 Timothy,’ British New Testament Society Conference (St. Andrews), 19-21 Aug 2021

‘The Problems and Promise of Interpreting 1 Timothy 2:8–15,’  Denver Seminary Graduate Seminar, Mar 2021 


Service

Editorial Board Member, Journal for the Study of the New Testament (2024-) 

Reviewer for Journal of the American Academy of Religion and Journal of Interdisciplinary Biblical Studies (2023-)

Steering Committee, ‘Healthcare and Disability in the Ancient World’ Program Unit, Society of Biblical Literature (2024-)

Chair, Biblical Research Seminar, University of Nottingham (2021-2023)

Curriculum redevelopment team for Theology and Religion undergraduate courses (2024)

Cohost of virtual/in-person writing groups for the British Academy ECR Network (2024)

Cohost of DiviniTea (fortnightly departmental social) (2023-2024)

ReMeDHe Writing Retreat organiser (2023-2024)

Developer of EDI policy adopted by the editorial board of the journal New Testament Studies (2022)

'Writing Abstracts for Biblical Research' graduate workshop organiser (2022)

Co-chair, Second Temple Early Careers Academy Conference, New Testament Session (2021)

COVID-19 Emergency Volunteer Responder, Royal Voluntary Service (UK) (2020-2021)


Teaching


Contact

Email: emily.gathergood@nottingham.ac.uk

Bluesky: EmilyGathergood

Linkedin: EmilyGathergood 

Hcommons: EmilyGathergood