The Legend of Judas Cyriacus and the Construction of Religious Identity in Late Antique Palestine

Dr. Alexey Somov is a biblical scholar whose research focuses on the interpretation of the New Testament in its Jewish and Greco-Roman historical context, early Jewish literature, Christian origins, biblical reception, and ancient religious traditions.

He received his PhD from Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam in 2014, following theological studies at St. Philaret’s Orthodox Christian Institute in Moscow and Princeton Theological Seminary in the United States. His academic work combines New Testament exegesis, historical investigation, cognitive approaches to biblical interpretation, and the study of Jewish and Christian literature from antiquity.

Dr. Somov has taught New Testament and biblical subjects at St. Philaret’s Institute in Moscow. His teaching and research encompass Pauline theology, Johannine literature, the Synoptic Gospels, Acts, early Judaism, Old Testament pseudepigrapha, and the historical development of biblical interpretation.

He has also worked with the Institute for Bible Translation on exegetical and translation projects, contributing to the interpretation and rendering of biblical texts into minority languages. His research has examined the role of cultural concepts, religious metaphors and linguistic interpretation in Bible translation.

His monograph, Representations of the Afterlife in Luke-Acts (Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2017), investigates ancient understandings of resurrection, immortality, the abode of the dead, and eschatological imagery in the Gospel of Luke and Acts of the Apostles.

More recently, his research has addressed the Martyrdom of St. Judas Cyriacus, Jewish-Christian relations, religious identity, and the representation of Hebrew and Jewish traditions in late antique Christian hagiography.

His work provides historical and textual perspectives on religious identity formation, cultural interaction and the representation of Judaism within early Christian literature.

The legend of Judas Cyriacus belongs to the wider literary and religious world of late antique Christianity, particularly traditions associated with the discovery of the True Cross, conversion, martyrdom and the relationship between Jewish and Christian identities.

These traditions provide an important setting for examining how religious narratives express communal boundaries, competing religious claims and understandings of sacred history.

Dr. Somov’s documented research includes the Martyrdom of St. Judas Cyriacus and its relationship to Judaism, as well as the use of Hebrew or pseudo-Hebrew expressions in New Testament apocrypha and late antique Christian hagiography.

In a research presentation at the University of Regensburg on 27 May 2026, he examined Hebrew-language elements and their religious and literary functions in several ancient Christian texts, including traditions associated with Judas Cyriacus.

This documented research provides useful background to the subject of his proposed January 2027 conference presentation.

Editorial note: This section is independent scholarly background, not an approved conference abstract or a statement of the speaker’s future conclusions. No specific conclusion about the January presentation is attributed to the speaker pending an official abstract.