Michael Penn is an assistant professor of religion at Mt. Holyoke College in Massachusetts.
His writings include the book Kissing Christians: Ritual, Community, and the Late Ancient Church.[1] He received a Guggenheim Fellowship and other grants for studies of the Syriac Christians and their relationship to Islam.[2] He was quoted in USA Today regarding the veracity of the Gospel of Judas.[3]
Penn's courses at Mt. Holyoke include "What Didn't Make It into the Bible" and "Sex and the Early Church". Penn studied molecular biology and was a debater at Princeton University, then received his Ph.D. from Duke University. He attended Pinewood High School in California, from which he graduated in 1989.