Thomas Blanton

Thomas R. Blanton IV is a Visiting Assistant Professor at John Carroll University. His teaching and research focus on early Christianity in its Judaic and Greco-Roman contexts. He is the author of A Spiritual Economy: Gift Exchange in the Letters of Paul of Tarsus (Yale University Press, 2017), coeditor (with Agnes Choi and Jinyu Liu) of Taxation, Economy, and Revolt in Ancient Rome, Galilee, and Egypt (London: Routledge, 2022), and cochair of the Early Christianity and the Ancient Economy program unit at the Society of Biblical Literature from 2017 to 2022. He is currently writing a monograph entitled The Circumcision of Abraham: Modeling Ritual from Genesis to the Letters of Paul for the Anchor Yale Bible Reference Library.

Selected Courses

• TRS 1100: Exploring the Bible
• TRS 2120: New Testament
• TRS 3240/5240: Origins of Christianity
• TRS 4100/5100: Scripture and Revelation

Selected Publications

• “Wealth, Poverty, Economy.” Pages 296–319 in The Oxford Handbook of the Synoptic Gospels. Edited by Stephen P. Ahearne-Kroll. London: Oxford University Press, 2023.
• “Manual Labor and Sustenance.” Pages 103–22 in The T&T Clark Handbook to the Historical Paul. Edited by Ryan S. Schellenberg and Heidi Wendt. London: T&T Clark, 2022.
• “The Expressive Prepuce: Philo’s Defense of Judaic Circumcision in Greek and Roman Contexts.” Studia Philonica Annual 31 (2019)
• Thomas R. Blanton IV and Raymond Pickett, eds. Paul and Economics: A Handbook. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2017.
• Thomas R. Blanton IV and David B. Hollander. “Household Economics in the New Testament.” In The Oxford Handbook of Households in the Biblical World: Households in Ancient Israel, Early Judaism, and Early Christianity. Edited by John T. Fitzgerald, Carol Meyers, Eric M. Meyers, and Chris de Wet. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Forthcoming.