Monday, February 14, 2011

Sad News: Alan F. Segal

SAD NEWS: ALAN F. SEGAL: I received a note this morning from Gabriele Boccaccini reporting that Alan Segal passed away peacefully yesterday afternoon. I can only add my agreement to Gabriele's comments:
Alan's premature death is very sad news for all of us who had the privilege of knowing him and being his close friends, and is a great loss for the entire community of specialists in Second Temple Judaism and Christian Origins. May his memory be a blessing.

Our thoughts are with his family.
I met Alan in 1991 at a Divine Mediator Figures Group session at the Society of Biblical Literature conference. At that time his best-known work was Two Powers in Heaven. He also presented a major paper at my 1998 St. Andrews conference on the origins of the worship of Jesus. He has since made many other important contributions to the study of ancient Judaism and early Christianity, has been a co-member of the steering committee for the SBL Early Jewish and Christian Mysticism Group, and was one of the major voices in the field. There is a short Wikipedia entry about him here.

May his memory be for a blessing.

UPDATE: James McGrath has links to Google preview pages of Professor Segal's books.

UPDATE: April DeConick has a long post in honor of Professor Segal.

UPDATE: Here is his Barnard College faculty profile page (via the Agade list). Note also his article in the recently noted Festschrift for Rachel Elior, With Letters of Light (final entry, which must be one of his last publications).

UPDATE (15 February): Larry Hurtado has a tribute.

UPDATE: Jared Calaway has a tribute as well. Jared was Alan's last doctoral student. Also, Mark Goodacre links to other brief notices.

UPDATE (16 February): More here.