Isaac Soon is Assistant Professor of Early Christianity in the Department of Ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern Studies. He is the author of A Disabled Apostle: Impairment and Disability in the Letters of Paul (Oxford University Press, 2023). A graduate of Alphacrucis University College (B.A. in Biblical Studies), Excelsia College (M.Th), the University of Oxford (M.Phil. in New Testament), and Durham University (Ph.D. in Theology and Religion). He received a Durham Doctoral Studentship for his doctoral work and was a finalist for a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship at the University of Oxford in 2021. From 2021–2023 he was Assistant Professor of Religious Studies (New Testament) at Crandall University, in Moncton, New Brunswick.

Research Interests

• Disability, Gender, Enslavement in the Ancient Mediterranean
• Pauline Literature
• Canonical and Apocryphal Gospel Literature
• Anti-Judaism in Early Christianity

Research Areas

• Early Christianity
• Judaism
• New Testament Studies
• Culture and Identity

Projects

Bodies Beyond the ‘Normal’ in Early Christian Literature
The lion’s share of my research centres on embodiment in the ancient Mediterranean world with a focus on early Christian, Jewish, and Graeco-Roman material. My work thus far has focused on intersections between disability and gender with wider cultures of healthcare, medicine, and ideal embodiment. My first monograph analyses circumcision, demonization, and short-stature in the ancient Mediterranean. I have also written a trilogy of articles on “short” figures in the New Testament, each of which interrogates scholarly preconceptions about the bodies and abilities of earlier Christian figures. Three projects that I am currently working on extend the research that I have initiated in this area, turning to themes of enslavement, death, and metamorphosis. A growing segment of my research focuses on the non-normate (“normal”) ways that early Christian texts portray the bodies of key early Christian figures. This project interrogates the notion that early Christian texts conceive of a static and unchanging “ideal body” for its protagonists. My first work in this area was published in the Journal of Biblical Literature that argues that “the short one” in Luke 19 is not in fact Zacchaeus (the oft-called “wee little man”), but that an equally valid way of reading the text is to understand Jesus as the person with short-stature. In this piece I push back against longstanding scholarship that has argued the New Testament contains no physical description of its subject and against the inherit ableism that assumes key figures in the Jesus movement (including Jesus himself) were able-bodied. This is the first study of a book-length work analyzing key figures in early Christian literature and how their bodies depart from established bodily norms.

Books

– A Disabled Apostle: Impairment and Disability in the Letters of Paul (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2023)

Peer-Reviewed Articles

2024
– “Christ’s Cosmetic Hydrotherapy: Blemishes, Wrinkles, and Transformational Waters in Ephesians 5:26-27,”
Biblical Interpretation 1-25: https://doi.org/10.1163/15685152-20240001

– “Before Deception: The Amoral Nature of Ancient Christian Forgery,” Early Christianity 14.4: 429-445. https://www.mohrsiebeck.com/artikel/before-deception-101628ec-2023-0029?no_cache=1

– “The Liminality of the Uncircumcised and Uncircumcisable Jew,” Journal of the Jesus Movement in its Jewish
Setting 10: 5-21. https://www.jjmjs.org/uploads/1/1/9/0/11908749/soon_liminality_of_the_jew.pdf

2023
– “Little James: Μικρός as an Indication of Height or Affection not Comparative Age in Mark 15:40,” New
Testament Studies 69: 462-471. https://doi.org/10.1017/S002868852300019X

– “The Little Messiah: Jesus as τῇ ἡλικίᾳ μικρός in Luke 19:3,” Journal of Biblical Literature 142.1: 151–170. https://doi.org/10.15699/jbl.1421.2023.8

– “A Visual Depiction of Jewish Circumcision at Dura-Europos” Journal for the Study of Judaism 51.1: 129-136. https://doi.org/10.1163/15700631-bja10065

2022
– “Absent in Body, Present in Spirit: Apostolic Iconography in Greek Byzantine New Testament Manuscripts,” Religions 13/7, 574. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel13070574

– “Satan and Circumcision: The Devil as the ἄγγελος πονηρός in Barn 9:4,” Vigiliae Christianae 76: 60-72: https://doi.org/10.1163/15700720-bja10035

2021
– “The Bestial Glans: Gentile Christ Followers and the Monstrous Nudity of Ancient Circumcision,” Journal for the Jesus Movement in its Jewish Setting 8: 90-104. http://www.jjmjs.org/uploads/1/1/9/0/11908749/soon_the_bestial_glans__2_.pdf

– “The Short Apostle: The Stature of Paul in Light of 2 Cor 11:33 and the Acts of Paul and Thecla,” Early Christianity 12.2: 159–178. https://doi.org/10.1628/ec-2021-0013

– “Her Body Healed: IATAI in Mark 5,29,” Novum Testamentum 63/3: 289-303, https://doi.org/10.1163/15685365-12341699

– “Disability and New Testament Studies: Reflections, Trajectories, and Possibilities,” Journal of Disability and Religion 25/4: 374-387: https://doi.org/10.1080/23312521.2021.1911737

2020
– “‘In Strength’ not ‘by Force’: Re-reading the Circumcision of the Uncircumcised ἐν ἰσχύι in 1 Macc. 2.46,” Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha 29.3, 149-167.

2015
– “Paul the Necromancer: Luke’s Use of the Hapax ‘γνώστης’ in Acts 26:3.” Reformed Theological Review 74.2, 109-121.

I am open to supervising students in the areas of biblical studies especially as related to disability, gender, and enslavement in early Christian literature. Please contact me if you’d like to discuss the possibility of studying in our Department.