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John Barclay is Lightfoot Professor of Divinity at Durham University. His research is in the history and thought of early Christianity and early Judaism, with special interest in the ancient Jewish Diaspora and in the letters and theology of Paul. Using tools from the social sciences, he has explored the social formation of early Christianity, the ‘postcolonial’ identity of the Jewish historian Josephus, and the practice and theology of gift (‘grace’) in the work of Paul. He is currently expanding his work on gift to analyse the social dynamics of the Roman economy, and the support networks by which the poor in antiquity survived (if they did), with particular reference to early Judaism and the networks formed by early Christian communities.