April DeConick
Isla Carroll and Percy E. Turner
Professor of Religious Studies

adeconick@rice.edu
(713) 348-4995
http://www.aprildeconick.com/

April D. DeConick is the Isla Carroll and Percy E. Turner Professor of Biblical Studies. She is a historian of early Jewish and Christian thought. What fascinates her is mapping the many ways that the Jesus tradition emerges across the literature, traditions that have left behind echoes of bitter controversies and competing memories. She has a deep love for exploring the various expressions of ante-Nicene mysticism, including the spirituality of classic Gnostic thinkers. Her work has been called “revisionist,” challenging us to seek answers beyond the conventional.

She is the author of Seek to See Him: Ascent and Vision Mysticism in the Gospel of Thomas (Brill, 1996); Voices of the Mystics: Early Christian Discourse in the Gospels of John, Thomas and Other Ancient Christian Literature (T&T Clark, 2001); Recovering the Original Gospel of Thomas: A History of the Gospel and Its Growth (T&T Clark, 2005); The Original Gospel of Thomas in Translation: With a Commentary and New English Translation of the Complete Gospel (T&T Clark, 2006). She has recently edited a volume of papers, Paradise Now: Essays on Early Jewish and Christian Mysticism (Society of Biblical Literature, 2006) and co-edited Thomasine Traditions in Antiquity: The Social and Cultural World of the Gospel of Thomas (Brill, 2005).

She just completed a book on the Gospel of Judas, the first to seriously challenge the interpretation and translation published by National Geographic (2006). Her book is entitled The Thirteenth Apostle: What the Gospel of Judas Really Says (London: Continuum, 2007). She is currently writing a book on Gnostic Spirituality, and editing a volume on mysticism in the New Testament Gospels for the New Testament Mysticism Project.

She is an active member of the Society of Biblical Literature where she serves as co-Chair of the New Testament Mysticism Project. She also organized and chaired for many years the Early Jewish and Christian Mysticism Group. She is affiliated with the North American Patristics Society, and the International Association for Coptic Studies as well.