Faculty Directory
Angela Kim Harkins
Associate Professor of New Testament
Angela Kim Harkins
Ph.D.
Contact
Simboli Hall 323
Telephone: 617-552-6512
Email: angela.harkins@bc.edu
ORCID 0000-0002-1105-4165
Education
- B.A. Hons., Loyola University, Chicago
- M.A., University of Notre Dame
- Ph.D. University of Notre Dame
- S.T.L. Boston College STM
Research Interests
Second Temple Judaism and early Christianity with a special focus on the Thanksgiving Hymns (Hebr. Hodayot) and the Dead Sea Scrolls, Shepherd of Hermas, Odes of Solomon; psalms, prayers, and hymns; apocalypticism; deuterocanonical studies; apocrypha and pseudepigrapha; topics related to the study of Judaism and Christianity in antiquity; rituals of mourning, religious experience, emotion studies, performance studies, gender studies, post-colonial studies, cognitive historiography, critical spatiality.
Expertise
- New Testament
- Old Testament
- Biblical Studies
- Spirituality Studies
Profile
Dr. Angela Kim Harkins was born in Seoul, Korea and grew up in the northwest side of Chicago, Illinois. She completed her undergraduate (B.A. Hons., 1994, Theo and Phil) at Loyola University, Chicago and went on to complete a M.A. degree in the Department of Theology at the University of Notre Dame with a concentration in biblical languages in 1997. In 1997-1998 she studied at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Israel under Professor Emanuel Tov with funding from a Fulbright fellowship, an exciting year that coincided with the fiftieth anniversary of the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls. She returned to Notre Dame to begin her Ph.D. studies in the Christianity and Judaism in Antiquity area, with a minor in Syriac exegesis and Liturgical Studies. She wrote her dissertation on the Thanksgiving Hymns (Hebr. Hodayot) from Qumran under Professor J. VanderKam (2003).
Dr. Harkins comes to the BC STM most recently from England where she held a Marie Curie International Incoming Fellowship at the University of Birmingham (309,235 Euros) to undertake research on religious experience in the Dead Sea Scrolls. Prior to this fellowship, Dr. Harkins was a tenured Associate Professor in the Religious Studies Department and a member of the Judaic Studies faculty at Fairfield University (Fairfield, CT), where she was awarded the Distinguished Teaching Award by the College of Arts and Sciences in 2011. She has been an Associate Professor at the Boston College School of Theology and Ministry since 2015.
Dr. Angela Harkins is an active member of the Society of Biblical Literature (member since 1997) and served two terms as chair of the Religious Experience in Antiquity section. She currently co-chairs the Prayer in Antiquity section and the Qumran and Dead Sea Scrolls program unit of the International Society of Biblical Literature. She has also been a member of the Catholic Biblical Association since 1997. Dr. Harkins is a past board member of the Lilly National Network, an organization whose mission is to strengthen the quality and character of church-related institutions of higher learning in America (2014-2017), and she currently serves on the board of Collegium: A Colloquy on Faith and the Intellectual Life (2018-2021). Dr. Harkins was a pre-tenure fellow at Wabash Center for Teaching Theology and Religion in 2010-2011, and this academic year, she is project director of a Wabash Peer-Mentoring Cluster Grant (2018-2019).
Dr. Harkins has published extensively on the topic of prayers, emotions, and religious experience in early Jewish and Christian texts. She is currently working on a long-term project on religious experience and the early Christian text known as the Shepherd of Hermas.
Selected Publications
Books (Monographs and Co-edited Volumes)
2015 Religious Experience and the Dead Sea Scrolls. Edited by Angela Kim Harkins and Mladen Popoviç. Dead Sea Discoveries 22.3.
2014 The Watchers in Jewish and Christian Traditions. Edited by Angela Kim Harkins, Kelley Coblentz Bautch, John Endres, S.J. Minneapolis: Fortress Press.
2014 The Fallen Angels Traditions: Second Temple Developments and Reception History. Edited by Angela Kim Harkins, Kelley Coblentz Bautch and John Endres, S.J. CBQMS 53. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic Biblical Association.
2012 A Teacher for All Generations: Essays in Honor of James C. VanderKam. 2 Vols. Edited by Eric F. Mason (gen. editor); Vol. 1 edited by Samuel Thomas, Alison Schofield, and Eugene C. Ulrich; Vol. 2 edited by Kelley Coblentz Bautch, Angela Kim Harkins and Daniel Machiela. Supplements to the Journal for the Study of Judaism 153. Leiden: Brill.
2012 Reading with an ‘I’ to the Heavens: Looking at the Qumran Hodayot through the Lens of Visionary Traditions. Ekstasis: Religious Experience from Antiquity to the Medieval Period 3; Berlin: de Gruyter Press. Published in paperback in 2018.
Articles and Essays
2019 “Hymnody and Psalmody.” Angela Kim Harkins and Brian P. Dunkle, S.J. Pages 610-626. The Oxford Handbook on Early Christian Ritual. Edited by Risto Uro, Juliette J. Day, Richard E. Demaris, and Rikard Roitto. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
2019 “Hodayot.” Pages 314-317 in T&T Clark Companion to the Dead Sea Scrolls. Edited by George J. Brooke and Charlotte Hempel. London: T&T Clark, 2019.
2018 “5.2.3 Syriac [Enoch> The Book of the Watchers]” in Textual History of the Bible. General editor, Armin Lange. Vol. 2, Deutero-Canonical Scriptures. Edited by Matthias Henze and Kelley Coblentz Bautch. Leiden: Brill.
2018 "Ritualizing Jesus' Grief at Gethsemane." Journal for the Study of the New Testament 41.2 (2018): 177-203.
2018 “Another Look at the Cave 1 Hodayot: Was CH I Materially Part of the Scroll 1QHodayota?” Dead Sea Discoveries 25 (2018): 185-216.
2018 “Daniel.” Pages 772-794 in The Paulist Biblical Commentary. Edited by José Enrique Aguilar Chiu, Richard J. Clifford, SJ, C.J. Dempsey, OP, Eileen M. Schuller, OSU, Thomas D. Stegman, SJ, Ronald D. Witherup, PSS. Paulist Press.
2018 “Hodayot.” Pages 450-58 in Early Jewish Literature: An Anthology. Volume 2: Wisdom Literature and Legal Texts, Apocalyptic Literature, Psalms, Hymns, and Prayers,Testamentary Literature. Edited by Brad Embry, Ronald Herms and Archie T. Wright. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans.
2017 “The Function of Prayers of Ritual Mourning in the Second Temple Period.” Pages 80-101 in Functions of Psalms and Prayers in the Late Second Temple Period. Edited by Mika S. Pajunen and Jeremy Penner. BZAW 486. Berlin: De Gruyter Press.
2017 "How Should We Feel about the Teacher of Righteousness?" Pages 493-514 in Is There a Text in This Cave? Studies in the Textuality of the Dead Sea Scrolls in Honour of George J. Brooke. Edited by Ariel Feldman, Maria Cioata, and Charlotte Hempel. Leiden: Brill.
2017 “Job in the Ancient Versions and the Pseudepigrapha.” Pages 13-33 in A Companion to Job in the Middle Ages. Edited by Franklin T. Harkins and Aaron Canty. Brill Companions to the Christian Tradition 73. Leiden: Brill.
2017 “The Holy Spirit and the New Testament in Light of Second Temple Judaism.” Pages 73-83 in The Holy Spirit: Setting the World on Fire. Edited by R. Lennan and N. Pineda-Madrid. Paulist Press.
2016 “The Pro-social Role of Grief in Ezra’s Penitential Prayer.” Biblical Interpretation vol. 24, nos. 4-5 (2016): 466-491.
2016 “The Odes of Solomon as Solomonic Pseudepigrapha.” Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha 25.4 (2016): 247-273.
2016 “Ritual Mourning in Daniel’s Interpretation of Jeremiah’s Prophecy.” The Journal of Cognitive Historiography 2.1 (2015): 14-33.
2016 “The Garden Space in Odes of Solomon 11 and the Reinvigoration of Memories about Paradise.” Pages 1-33 in Biblical & Qur’ānic Traditions in the Middle East. Edited by Cornelia Horn and Sidney Griffith. Eastern Mediterranean Texts and Contexts Series 2. Warwick, R.I.: Abelian Academic Press.
2015 “The Emotional Re-Experiencing of the Hortatory Narratives found in the Admonition Section of the Damascus Document.” Dead Sea Discoveries 22.3 (2015): 285-307.
2015 “A Phenomenological Study of Penitential Elements and Their Strategic Arousal of Emotion in the Qumran Hodayot (1QH cols. 1[?]-8).” Ancient Jewish Prayers and Emotions: A Study of the Emotions Associated with Prayer in the Jewish and Related Literature of the Second Temple Period. Edited by Renate Egger-Wenzel and Stefan C. Reif. DCLS 26. Berlin: de Gruyter.
2015 “Praying for Understanding.” Pages 29-30 in Forty Futures. A Special 40th anniversary themed edition of Biblical Archaeology Review. Washington, D.C.: Biblical Archaeology Society.
2014 “A Fitting Inheritance for Job’s Daughters in the Testament of Job.” Henoch 36.1 (2014): 64-85.
2014 “Elements of the Fallen Angels Traditions in the Qumran Hodayot.” Pages 8-24 in The Fallen Angels Traditions: Second Temple Developments and Reception History. Edited by A.K. Harkins, K. Coblentz Bautch, and J.C. Endres, S.J. CBQMS 53. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic Biblical Association.
2014 “Cultivating Empathy and Mindfulness: Religious Praxis.” Pages 275-88 in Becoming Beholders: Cultivating Sacramental Imagination and Actions in College Classrooms. Edited by Thomas Landy and Karen Eifler. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press.
2013 Critical Introduction and notes to the Thanksgiving Hymns (Hodayot). Pages 2018-2094 in Outside the Bible: Ancient Jewish Writings Related to Scripture. Edited by Louis H. Feldman, James L. Kugel, and Lawrence H. Schiffman. The Jewish Publication Society/University of Nebraska Press.
2012 “Religious Experience through the Lens of Critical Spatiality: A Look at Embodiment Language in Prayers and Hymns.” Pages 223-242 in Experientia, Volume 2: Moving from Text to Experience. Edited by Colleen Shantz and Rodney Werline. Atlanta: SBL Press.
2012 “Who is the Teacher of the Teacher Hymns? Re-examining the Teacher Hymns Hypothesis Fifty Years Later.” Pages 449-467 in A Teacher for All Generations: Essays in Honor of James C. VanderKam. General editor Eric Mason; Vol. 1 edited by Samuel Thomas and Alison Schofield, and Eugene C. Ulrich; Supplements of the Journal for the Study of Judaism 153. Leiden: Brill.
2011 “The Performative Reading of the Hodayot: The Arousal of Emotions and the Exegetical Generation of Texts.” Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha 21.1 (2011): 55-71.
2010 “Reading the Qumran Hodayot in Light of the Traditions Associated with Enoch.” Henoch 32.2 (2010): 359-400.
2010 “A New Proposal for Thinking about 1QHa Sixty Years after its Discovery.” Pages 101-134 in Qumran Cave 1 Revisited: Texts from Cave 1 Sixty Years after Their Discovery. Proceedings of the Sixth Meeting of the International Organization of Qumran Studies in Ljubljana. Edited by Daniel K. Falk, Sarianna Metso, Donald W. Parry and Eibert J. C. Tigchelaar. STDJ 91. Leiden: Brill.
2010 “Biblical and Historical Perspectives on ‘the People of God’.” Pages 319-339 in Transforming Relations: Essays on Jews and Christians throughout History in Honor of Michael A. Signer. Edited by Franklin T. Harkins. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press.
2008 “The Community Hymns Classification: A Proposal for Further Differentiation.” Dead Sea Discoveries 15 (2008): 121-54.
2006 “Theological Attitudes towards the Scriptural Text: Lessons from the Syriac Exegetical Tradition and Qumran.” Theological Studies 67.3 (2006): 498-516.
2005 “Observations on the Editorial Shaping of the So-called Community Hymns in 1QHa and 4Q427 (4QHa).” Dead Sea Discoveries 12.3 (2005): 233-56.
2003 Kim, Angela Y. “Authorizing Interpretation in Poetic Compositions in the Dead Sea Scrolls and Later Jewish and Christian Traditions.” Dead Sea Discoveries 10.1 (2003): 26-58.
2002 Kim, Angela Y. “A Study of the Textual Alignment of the Tabernacle Sections of 4Q365 (fragments 8a-b, 9a-b i, 9b ii, 12a i, 12b iii).” Textus: Studies of the Hebrew University Bible Project 21 (2002): 45-69.
2001 Kim, Angela Y. “Cain and Abel in the Light of Envy: A Study in the History of the Interpretation of Envy in Genesis 4:1-16.” The Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha 12.1 (2001): 65-84.
2000 Kim, Angela Y. “Signs of Exegetical Techniques in Ephrem’s Homily on Our Lord.” Hugoye: Journal of Syriac Studies. January, 2000. [http://syrcom.cua.edu/Hugoye].