University of Manitoba - Faculty of Arts - Religion - Heidi Marx
Heidi Marx

Dr. Heidi MarxProfessor of Religion
https://HeidiMarxWolf
https://umanitoba.academia.edu/HeidiMarxWolf

Heidi Marx joined the Department of Religion in 2009. Her research focuses on the history of early Christianity, Late Antique demonology and spiritual taxonomy, and the intersections of medicine, religion and philosophy (in particular Neo-Platonism) in Late Antiquity. Her first book, Spiritual Taxonomies and Ritual Authority: Platonists, Priests, and Gnostics in the Third Century C.E. came out in 2016 with the University Pennsylvania Press, Divinations Series. She is currently writing a biography of the fourth-century female philosopher, Sosipatra of Pergamum, for Oxford University Press’ Women in Antiquity series. She is also preparing a source book on ancient medicine with Kristi Upson-Saia (Occidental College). Additionally, Professors Marx and Upson-Saia are co-founders of the working group for Religion, Medicine, Disability, and Health in Late Antiquity (https://remedhe.com/).

Education

MA/PhD Ancient History, University of California, Santa Barbara (2009)
MA/PhD Medieval Philosophy, Pennsylvania State University (1999)
BA Philosophy Honours, University of Calgary (1993)

Research

History of Early Christianity, History of Ancient Philosophy, Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean World, Greco-Roman Medicine, The Body in Antiquity

Teaching

RLGN 1324 Introduction to World Religions

RLGN 2036 Introduction to Christianity
RLGN 2122 Medicine, Magic, and Miracle in the Ancient World
RLGN 2170 Introduction to the New Testament
RLGN 2180 Theory of Nature
RLGN 2550 History of Early Christian Thought

RLGN 3230 Gender, Sexuality, and the Body in Early Christianity
RLGN 3640 Religions of the Hellenistic and Roman Mediterranean
RLGN 3560 Texts in Original Languages – Coptic


RLGN 4280/7170   Advanced Studies in Christian Origins

Selected Publications

Book

Spiritual Taxonomies and Ritual Authority: Platonists, Priests, and Gnostics in the Third Century CE (Divinations Series, University of Pennsylvania Press, January 2016)

Reviews of Spiritual Taxonomies:
Aaron Johnson for Choice Connect 53.10 (June 2016)
Heidi Wendt for Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2016.10.27
Dylan Burns for Journal of Early Christian Studies 25.3 (Fall 2017): 216
Jeremiah Coogan for Reading Religion: A publication of the American Academy of Religion (October 23, 2017)
David B. Levy for Magic, Witchcraft, and Ritual 12.2 (2017): 216
Marco Zambon for Studia Graeco-Arabica 7 (2017): 360-74.


Articles and Book Chapters

“Philosopher-Priests and Other Ritual Experts in Later Antiquity: Some Additional Reflections,” Gnosis: Journal of Gnostic Studies 3 (2018): 247-254.

*“Living Plants, Dead Animals, and Other Matters: Embryos and Demons in Porphyry of Tyre,” Preternature: Critical and Historical Studies on the Preternatural 7.1 (2018): 1-26.

*“Chapter 24: Religion, Medicine, and Health” in Blackwell’s Companion to Religion in Late Antiquity, Nicholas Baker-Brian, Josef Lossl, ed.s, 511-28, Oxford: John Wiley & Sons, 2018.

*“The Good Doctor: Imperial Physicians and Medical Professionalization in Late Antiquity,” Studia Patristica 81 (2017): 79-90.

Co-authored with Kristi Upson-Saia, “From the Guest Editors” and “The State of the Question: Religion, Medicine, Disability and Health in Late Antiquity.” Journal of Late Antiquity 8.2 (Fall 2015), 253-56; 257-72.
 
“Medicine.” In Late Ancient Knowing, ed. Catherine Chin and Moulie Vidas, 80-98. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2015.
 
“Pythagoras the Theurgist: Porphyry and Iamblichus on the role of ritual in the philosophical life.” In Religious Competition in the Third Century CE: Jews, Christians, and the Greco-Roman World, ed. Jordan D. Rosenblum, Lily Vuong, and Nathaniel DesRosiers, 32-38. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 2014.
 
“A Case Study in the Late Roman Appropriation of the Classical Greek Patrimony: Images of the Ideal Philosopher among Third-Century Platonists.” In Philosophy and the Abrahamic Religions: Scriptural Authority and Theories of Knowledge, ed. Torrance Kirby, Rahim Acar, and Bilal Bas, 57-68. New Castle on Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2012.
 
“A Strange Consensus: Demonological Discourse in Origen, Porphyry and Iamblichus.” In The Rhetoric of Power in Late Antiquity: Religion and Politics in Byzantium, Europe and the Early Islamic World, ed. Elizabeth DePalma Digeser, Robert M. Frakes, and Justin Stephens, 219-38. London: Taurus, 2010.
 
“Third Century Daimonologies and the Via Universalis: Origen, Porphyry and Iamblichus on daimones and other angels.” Studia Patristica 45 (2010): 207-216.
 
“High Priests of the Highest God: Third Century Platonists as Ritual Experts.” Journal of Early Christian Studies18.4 (Winter 2010): 481-513.
 
“Augustine and Meister Eckhart: Amata Notitia and the Birth of the Word” in Philotheos: International Journal for Philosophy and Theology (July 2008).