Alan F. Segal

Professor of religion and Jewish Studies, Barnard College, Columbia University

Alan F. Segal is professor of religion and Ingeborg Rennert Professor of Jewish Studies at Barnard College, Columbia University. When appointed, the "On Faith" panelist was Columbia 's youngest full professor in the humanities. He served as chair of the Department between 1981-1984 and occasionally thereafter. Prior to Columbia, Segal taught at Princeton University for six years starting in 1974 and at the University of Toronto, where he was given a tenured position. While living in Israel on a 1977-78 Guggenheim Fellowship, he lectured at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Tel Aviv University, and Bar Ilan University. In addition to the Guggenheim, he has been awarded fellowships from the Woodrow Wilson Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Annenberg Institute. In 1988, at the Jubilee Celebration in Cambridge England, he was the first Jewish member of the Studiorum Novi Testamenti Societas to address the society. He is a member of the American Society for the Study of Religion and the American Theological Association. Segal holds degrees from Amherst College, Brandeis University, Hebrew Union College -- Jewish Institute of Religion , and Yale University , where he earned his doctorate. His studies have included English literature, psychology, anthropology, comparative religion, Judaica, Christian origins, and Rabbinics. His books include, Two Powers in Heaven (2002), Rebecca's Children: Judaism and Christianity in the Roman World (1986), The Other Judaisms of Late Antiquity (1987) and Paul the Convert: The Apostasy and Apostolate of Saul the Pharisee (1992) and Life After Death: A History of the Afterlife in Western Religion (2004). Close.