Robyn Walsh
Robyn Faith Walsh is Associate Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity at the University of Miami and Gabelli Senior Scholar. She is the author of The Origins of Early Christian Literature (Cambridge University Press) and has published widely on early Christian texts in their Greco‑Roman context.
Presenter at
Bible & Archaeology Fest XXIX, November 7th and 8th, 2026
Books Without Texts: Literacy, Status, and Authority in Early Christian Art
Why are books everywhere in early Christian art—when the Bible says almost nothing about them? Books, scrolls, and codices function as elite Roman status symbols—and early Christian art adopts them aggressively to project authority, education, and legitimacy, often independent of biblical narrative. In this presentation, Dr. Walsh will review the evolution of these images and their implications for our understandings of Christian iconography.
February Bible & Archaeology Fest 2024
Rediscovering Lost Diaspora Communities in Spain
Recent reevaluations of archaeological data in Spain suggest that there is a great deal of evidence for the late antique Jewish diaspora that has been largely obscured, ignored, or forgotten, in part due to the social and political upheaval that country faced in the twentieth century. This presentation will present several concrete case studies demonstrating these communities have been hidden in plain sight, calling for a further reevaluation of our extant evidence.
