Rate My Professor William Adler

William Adler is the Distinguished University Professor of Religious Studies in the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at North Carolina State University, where he began teaching in 1984. He earned a Ph.D. in Early Christianity and Judaism from the University of Pennsylvania in 1982, an M.Div. in Early Christianity from Yale University in 1975, and a B.A. in Classics from Franklin and Marshall College in 1972. His distinguished career includes numerous prestigious visiting appointments, such as Fulbright Visiting Lecturer at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (1984–85), Distinguished Visiting Research Scholar at the University of Adelaide (1996), Visiting Guest Professor at Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena (2005), Fellow at the Center for Advanced Judaic Studies in Philadelphia (2007–08), Visiting Scholar at the University of Basel (2008 and 2011) and Freie Universität Berlin (Spring 2015 and Summer 2017), Fellow at Dumbarton Oaks (2022–23), and Distinguished Fellow at the Faculty of Humanities, Hebrew University of Jerusalem (2025–26). Adler was appointed Distinguished University Professor in 2013 and received the Alumni Distinguished Undergraduate Professor Award and the Alexander Quarles Holladay Medal for Excellence from North Carolina State University in 2009. Other honors include the Academy of Outstanding Teachers and CHASS Outstanding Teaching Award in 2007, NEH Fellowship for College Teachers (1998–99), Dumbarton Oaks Research Fellowship (1994–95), and CHASS Distinguished Literary Publication Award (1991).

Adler’s research specializations encompass ancient Christianity, Judaism, Byzantine chronography, biblical apocrypha and pseudepigrapha, the Jewish apocalyptic heritage, and primordial history in Christian chronography. Since 2008, he has been preparing a critical edition of the Palaea Historica for Corpus Christianorum, Series Apocryphorum. His major publications include Time Immemorial: Archaic History in Christian Chronography from Julius Africanus to George Synkellos (Dumbarton Oaks, 1989); The Jewish Apocalyptic Heritage in Early Christianity (co-edited with James Vanderkam, Fortress, 1996); The Chronography of George Synkellos: A Byzantine Chronicle of Universal History from the Creation (co-authored with Paul Tuffin, Oxford University Press, 2002); Iulius Africanus, Chronographiae: The Extant Fragments (co-translated with Martin Wallraff, de Gruyter, 2007); editor of The Cambridge History of Religions in the Ancient World, Volume 2 (Cambridge University Press, 2013); and co-editor of The Embroidered Bible: Studies in Biblical Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha in Honour of Michael E. Stone (Brill, 2018). He has contributed extensively to scholarly encyclopedias and journals, including recent articles on Byzantine chronicles, periodization, and early Christian texts. Adler is partially retired as of Fall 2025, teaching only in spring terms.