Professor David Chalcraft

Head of Department, Chair in Biblical Studies

BA, MLitt, PhD

Email address: D.Chalcraft@sheffield.ac.uk

Telephone: +44 (0) 114 222 0515

Department address: Department of Biblical Studies, 45 Victoria Street, Sheffield S3 7QB

Biography

Professor David Chalcraft is a graduate of the Department of Biblical Studies here at Sheffield (1985) and progressed to postgraduate studies at the University of Oxford where he worked on Max Weber's Protestant Ethic under the famous sociologist Bryan R. Wilson.

David gained his PhD from the University of Derby: "Reading Max Weber and Developing Weberian Sociology with specific Reference to Ancient Biblical Social Worlds".

Research interests

David's research marries biblical studies with the social sciences; approaching sociological writings from a hermeneutical and textual perspective as well as being concerned with the nature of biblical literacy within the social sciences themselves.

His research utilises sociological concepts, methods and theories within biblical studies in order to advance both historical and literary concerns with the ancient biblical social and narrative worlds, and to explore the reception of biblical texts and ideas in a variety of historical settings, theorising their meaning and use especially in late modernity and in postcolonial contexts.

Selected publications

• Sectarianism in Early Judaism: Sociological Advances (editor; London: Equinox, 2007);
• ‘Towards a Sociology of Bible Promise Box Use’, in C.A. Evans and H.D. Zacharias (ed.), Jewish and Christian Scripture as Artefact and Canon (Continuum/T&T Clark, 2009), pp. 280-297;
• ‘Is Sociology also among the Social Sciences? Some Personal Reflections on Sociological Approaches in Biblical Studies’, in Emanuel Pfoh (ed.), Anthropology and the Bible (Piscataway: Gorgias Press, 2010), pp. 37-75;
• ‘Is an Historical Comparative Sociology of (ancient Jewish) Sects Possible’, in Sacha Stern (ed), Sects and Sectarianism in Jewish History (Leiden, Brill, 2011) pp. 235-86.

Other professional activities

Professor Chalcraft is on the editoral board of Max Weber Studies (which he co-founded in 2000) and edits the Rethinking Classical Sociology series for Ashgate.

He also convenes the Sociology and the Bible Research Group in European Association of Biblical Studies.