Blake Hartung

Blake Hartung is an Assistant Teaching Professor of Religious Studies and History at Arizona State University. Broadly speaking, his research focuses on religious literatures and cultures in the Middle East in late antiquity (third through seventh centuries C.E.), with a special emphasis on the Syriac Christian tradition. He is the author of a monograph entitled Imagining the Death of Jesus in Fourth Century Mesopotamia: A Study of Ephrem of Nisibis (Brill, 2023). He was also the lead translator for a co-authored volume of the songs of Ephrem of Nisibis (307-373 CE), published by Catholic University of America Press. His other research interests include the relationship between religion and political culture and manuscripts/book production in the ancient world, all of which informs his classes on ancient history at ASU. 

He has participated in a collaborative effort to digitize and catalogue thousands of manuscripts from the Vatican Library and held a postdoctoral fellowship in Eastern Christian Manuscript Studies at the Hill Museum and Manuscript Library (2019). He has also worked for several seasons on late Roman/Byzantine period archaeological excavations of the ancient city of Abila (northern Jordan).