Eric Scherbenske (PhD, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) teaches a variety of courses related to early Christianity and its ancient Greek and Roman context in the Humanities Department at the Eastman School of Music (such as FWS 121: The Many Stories of Jesus, Greek and Roman Mythology, and others).
As a scholar of early Christianity, Eric studies early Christian manuscripts as embodiments of material culture, shaped and produced by various social, theological, and historical forces. His first book, Canonizing Paul: Ancient Editorial Practice and the Corpus Paulinum (winner of the biennial North American Patristics Society Best First Book Prize), explored the role of editorial practices by investigating how early editors selected, arranged, altered, and prefaced St. Paul’s letters. This study showed how editorial practices left their mark on early collections of these letters and, further, how such practices were deeply, sometimes inextricably, linked with interpretation.
His next book project, Origen, Scholia, and Scripture in the Late Ancient Archetype of Codex von der Goltz (Gregory-Aland 1739), continues exploring manuscript production and early Christian theology. Like the material investigated in Canonizing Paul, marginal notes and prefaces also figure prominently in his research on the tenth-century manuscript, Codex von der Goltz—a text that engaged the ambivalent legacy of the brilliant, but divisive, theologian Origen (ca. 185-251).
Eric’s research has appeared in peer-reviewed articles such as Studia Patristica and Vigiliae Christianae and has been presented at various national and international conferences.
