M. David Litwa

M. David Litwa is an American scholar of ancient Mediterranean religions and early Christianity. His research examines deification in early Christian thought, the gospels in Greco-Roman literary contexts, and alternative Christian movements in the second and third centuries. He served as Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Religion and Critical Inquiry at Australian Catholic University in Melbourne, then joined New Testament Abstracts at Boston College as a writer and editor.^[1]

He is the author of several monographs including Iesus Deus (2014), How the Gospels Became History (2019), and The Evil Creator (2021).^{[2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9]}

Litwa completed a B.A. in philosophy at Grove City College in 2000, an M.Div. at Emory University in 2006, and a Th.M. at Duke University in 2009. He earned a Ph.D. in Religious Studies at the University of Virginia in 2013.^[1]

He has taught courses in religion and classics at the University of Virginia, the College of William and Mary, and Virginia Tech.^[10] From 2017 to 2023 he served as Senior Research Fellow in Biblical and Early Christian Studies at the Institute for Religion and Critical Inquiry in Melbourne.^[2] At Boston College he works on New Testament Abstracts, co-publishing recent issues with the editorial team.^[3][11][12]

Litwa's early work on deification argued that Paul's soteriology includes transformative participation in the divine life.^[13] In Iesus Deus he traced how early Christians depicted Jesus with traits of Mediterranean gods, framing divinization within Greco-Roman religious idioms.^[14] How the Gospels Became History analyzes gospel narrative techniques that present mythic episodes as credible history, a study that one reviewer said "nicely blends readability with complexity."^[4][15]

His work on transformation, which he calls "becoming angels and demons," situates Christian angelification within wider ancient philosophies of self-transformation.^[5] In The Evil Creator he reconstructs how some early Christians, including Marcionites and other alternative groups, read scripture to portray the creator as morally compromised.^[6] In a widely cited article he argues that the Beloved Disciple in the Fourth Gospel is a "purely literary character" used for authentication, not a historical eyewitness.^[16]

Reviewers have described his scholarship as "skillful historical and philological inquiry" and "nicely blends readability with complexity," noting both its accessibility and methodological ambition.^[17][15]

Alan Kirk described Litwa’s How the Gospels Became History as a ‘original and thought-provoking’ study that soundly demonstrates cultural narratives as a factor in the gospel tradition. However, Kirk finds that this does not support Litwa’s conclusion that the gospels are myths historicized, noting the realistic historical complexion the gospels provide and Litwa’s lack of engagement with the Synoptic problem.^[18]

• We Are Being Transformed: Deification in Paul's Soteriology, Berlin, De Gruyter, 2012^[13]
• Iesus Deus: The Early Christian Depiction of Jesus as a Mediterranean God, Minneapolis, Fortress Press, 2014^[14]
• How the Gospels Became History: Jesus and Mediterranean Myths, New Haven, Yale University Press, 2019^[4]
• Posthuman Transformation in Ancient Mediterranean Thought: Becoming Angels and Demons, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2021^[5]
• The Evil Creator: Origins of an Early Christian Idea, New York, Oxford University Press, 2021^[6]
• Found Christianities: Remaking the World of the Second Century CE, London, Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2022^[7]
• Carpocrates, Marcellina, and Epiphanes: Three Early Christian Teachers of Alexandria and Rome, London, Routledge, 2022^[8]
• The Naassenes: Exploring an Early Christian Identity, London, Routledge, 2024^[2]
• Simon of Samaria and the Simonians: Contours of an Early Christian Movement, London, Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2024^[9]

• Deification (Christianity)
• Divinization (Christian)
• Gnosticism
• New Testament Studies