Guy Stroumsa

Guy Stroumsa was born in 1948 in Paris

Stroumsa was born in Paris in 1948 and grew up there. His parents were Holocaust survivors. His father, born in Thessaloniki, survived Auschwitz, and his mother, born in Athens, survived Bergen-Belsen.

He studied at a Jewish school whose principal, Emmanuel Levinas, taught him philosophy and Talmud. After a short period studying economics and law at the University of Paris, he moved to Israel. He earned a B.A. in philosophy and Jewish thought at the Hebrew University in 1969.

After military service, he completed a PhD in the study of religion at Harvard University in 1978, with a dissertation on Gnostic mythology. He then became a lecturer in comparative religion at the Hebrew University. In 1991 he received the Martin Buber Chair, and he was the founding director of the Center for the Study of Christianity from 1999 to 2005.

In 2009 he was appointed Professor of the Study of the Abrahamic Religions at Oxford and a Fellow of Lady Margaret Hall, retiring in 2013. His research deals with encounters between religions in the Roman Empire and Late Antiquity. He is married to Professor Sarah Stroumsa, and they have 2 daughters.