Mary Chilton Callaway

Mary Chilton Callaway joined the Theology Department in 1980 to teach the languages, literature, and history of the Hebrew Bible. She retired after the 2023-2024 academic year. Among graduate seminars she taught are Literary Criticism and the Bible, Second Temple Midrash, and History of Interpretation. In Fordham College, she taught Ancient Literature in the Honors Program for many years, reading the Bible in the context of other literature of the Mediterranean world. She served twice as department chair.

Callaway is an active member of the Columbia University Hebrew Bible Seminar. She served two terms on the General Board of Examining Chaplains of the Episcopal Church and was on the international design team to create the Bible studies for Lambeth Conference.

Ph.D. - Columbia University, 1979
B.A. - St. John's College, Annapolis, 1968

Theory and practice of reception history

Early Jewish exegesis

The Book of Jeremiah

Books

Jeremiah Through the Centuries, Blackwell Bible Commentary Series (Wiley-Blackwell, 2020)

Recent Publications

“Medieval Reception of the Prophets,” in The Oxford Handbook of the Prophets (Oxford University Press, November 2015)

“Seduced by Method: History and Jeremiah 20,” Jeremiah Invented: Constructions and Deconstructions of Jeremiah, ed. Else Holt and Carolyn Sharp (T & T. Clark, 2015)

“Reading Jeremiah 4:27 with Some Help from Gadamer,” in Jeremiah (Dis)placed, ed. Carolyn Sharp and Else Holt (T. & T. Clark, 2011)

“Peering Inside Jeremiah: How Early English Culture Still Influences the Way We Read Jeremiah” Jeremiah (Dis)placed

“The Lamenting Prophet and the Modern Self: On the Origins of Contemporary Readings of Jeremiah” in Prophetic Speech, ed. John Kaltner and Louis Stulman (Sheffield Academic Press, 2004)