VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY

This is my personal faculty page at Vanderbilt University, where I am Associate Professor of the History of Christianity teaching as a faculty member in The Divinity School, The Graduate Department of Religion, and The Department Classical and Mediterranean Studies... My teaching and research focus on the history of Christianity in the Middle East, Asia, and Africa. In particular, I am interested in historical texts in the Syriac language (a dialect of Aramaic). Although often overlooked, these Syriac sources offer many new perspectives on the history of Christianity. Syriac was the common language of Christianity in the Middle East and Asia for over a thousand years. Syriac literature and networks of Syriac-speaking scholars were often a cultural bridge between Christian and the Islamic cultures. Today perhaps more than twenty thousand manuscripts or fragments in Syriac survive, with a wide range in geographic origin stretching from Turkey and Egypt to western China and South..

Also known as: David A. Michelson