Dr Ryan Collman

Associate Supervisor
Email: rdc38@cam.ac.uk

Ryan is an Associate Supervisor at Westcott House. His areas of expertise include:

• The Apostle Paul
• Circumcision in the Ancient Mediterranean
• Reading the New Testament within Judaism

Originally from Florida, Ryan moved to Scotland in 2015 to pursue an MTh in Biblical Studies at the University of Edinburgh. He completed his PhD in New Testament at the University of Edinburgh in 2021. He was awarded a Manfred Lautenschlaeger Award for Theological Promise (2023) for his book, The Apostle to the Foreskin (de Gruyter, 2023).

Ryan’s primary research interests focus on reading the New Testament as Jewish literature, specifically reading Paul’s letters within Judaism. Beyond that, he is interested in the emerging Paul within Paganism movement, ethnicity and gender in the New Testament, disability and medicine in the ancient Mediterranean, and exploring how the Bible has been used to promote Judeophobia in the Christian tradition.

Ryan is Chair of the Paul Seminar, British New Testament Society and serves as a committee member on the Paul within Judaism programme, Society of Biblical Literature.

Outside of academic interests, Ryan spends most of his free time cooking.

Publications

The Apostle to the Foreskin: Circumcision in the Letters of Paul BZNW 259 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2023).

‘Paul among Pagan Penises’ in Paul within Paganism, edited by Alexander Chantziantoniou, Paula Fredriksen, and Stephen L. Young (Minneapolis: Fortress, forthcoming 2025).

‘The Ideal Penis in the Bible and its Reception’ in the T&T Clark Handbook of Sexualities in the Bible and its Reception, edited by Christopher Greenough and Caroline Blyth (London: T&T Clark, forthcoming).

‘St Paul of the Thorns: A Note on Disability, Visual Exegesis, and 2 Cor 12:7b–10,’ Journal for Interdisciplinary Biblical Studies 5.3 (2024): 61–71. (co-authored with Grace Emmett.)

‘(Un)Making a Theological Mountain Out of a Cardiological Mohel: Heart-Circumcision in Paul’s Epistles,’ Journal for the Study of the Jesus Movement in its Jewish Setting 10 (2023): 89–105.

‘For who has known the mind of the Apostle? Paul, The Law, and His Syngeneis in the Messiah’ in Paul within Judaism, ed. Michael F. Bird, et al., WUNT 507 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2023), 147–60.

‘Beware the Dogs! The Phallic Epithet in Phil 3.2,’ New Testament Studies 67 (2021): 105–20.

‘Just A Flesh Wound?: Reassessing Paul’s Supposed Indifference Toward Circumcision and Foreskin in 1 Cor 7:19, Gal 5:6, and 6:15,’ Journal for the Study of the Jesus Movement in its Jewish Setting 8 (2021): 30–52.