Professor Becker's research interests include Jewish-Christian relations in Late Antiquity, the social and intellectual history of the Syriac (Christian Aramaic) tradition, and the missionary encounter in the nineteenth century. In his work he attempts to combine a traditional philological engagement with ancient texts and the critical approach offered by the current theoretical conversation in religious studies. His book, Fear of God and the Beginning of Wisdom: The School of Nisibis and the Development of Christian Scholastic Culture in Late Antique Mesopotamia (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006), is a history of the East Syrian (i.e. Syriac “Nestorian” Christian) school movement with a focus on the reception of Greek philosophical and patristic thought in Mesopotamia in the sixth century CE. He has also published an annotated translation of some of the most important East Syrian school sources. His 2015 book, Revival and Awakening: American Evangelical Missionaries and the Origins of Assyrian Nationalism, addresses the interaction between American Evangelical missionaries and the indigenous Christian community of upper Mesopotamia in the nineteenth and early twentieth century and the secular ethnic nationalism that resulted from this encounter. He is the ongoing editor of the series of translations with commentary of the Persian Martyr Acts. His most recent book is a critical edition and translation of a large part of the corpus of Syriac poetical homilies attributed to the fifth century Isaac of Antioch (forthcoming in 2022 in the Society of Biblical Literature's series, Writings from the Greco-Roman World). His current project is a study of Syriac poetry in Late Antiquity, with a focus on moral exhortation as a response to the discontents and perceived failures of Christianization. In recent years he has also turned his attention to the study of the Talmud.
Prof. Becker's background is in philology and history of religions in antiquity, but he regularly teaches courses on secularism, social theoretical approaches to religion, and Christian theology. His undergraduate lecture courses include "Engaging Early Christian Theology," "Virgins, Martyrs, Monks, and Saints," "Introduction to the New Testament," "Martyrdom: Ancient and Modern," and "Utopias and Dystopias." He enjoys reading Latin, Greek, and Syriac sources with students. His recent graduate courses have been a seminar on Augustine's Confessions and the Classics Department's survey of Greek prose literature.
