David Bernhard Brakke (born 1961) is an American New Testament scholar and historian of Christianity.
He is Professor and Engle Chair in the History of Christianity at the Ohio State University.
[1][2] He was a visiting assistant professor at Concordia College from 1992 to 1993, and joined the faculty at Indiana University, Bloomington in 1993, where he was awarded a Mellon Fellow in the Humanities and recognized as Indiana University Outstanding Junior Faculty.
[2][3] His The Gnostics: Myth, Ritual, and Diversity in Early Christianity (Harvard University Press, 2010) argues that the contested categories of "Gnosticism," "orthodoxy," and "heresy" in the era before Constantine the Great should be approached through a social and cultural lens.
[3] On February 15-17, 2023, a conference on "New Approaches to Asceticism in Late Antiquity" was held in his honor at Louisiana State University (LSU), cosponsored by LSU and University of Michigan faculty and attended by over two dozen colleagues.