He studied at the Lycée Voltaire and at the Ecole Normale Israélite Orientale, where he was greatly influenced by its principal, Emmanuel Levinas, who taught him philosophy and Talmud.

After the submission of his doctoral dissertation (1978) which dealt with Gnostic mythology, he was appointed a lecturer in the Department of Comparative Religion at the Hebrew University.

[5] He has held Visiting Professorship in a number of universities in Europe and the United States, and has been a Fellow, among other institutions, of Dumbarton Oaks, the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin, and the Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies.

[6][7] He is married to Professor Sarah Stroumsa, a scholar of Islamic and Jewish medieval philosophy and theology, who served for four years as the Rector of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

[8] Guy Stroumsa's research focuses on the dynamics of encounters between religious traditions and institutions in the Roman Empire and in Late Antiquity, in the Mediterranean and the Middle East.

He sees Gnosis, Manichaeism and Early Christianity as a unique laboratory for understanding religious transformations in late antiquity.

This approach permits him to understand the mechanisms behind the religious revolution of Late Antiquity, a period which saw the cessation of a number of widespread aspects of ancient religion (such as blood sacrifice) and the development of new systems, which stand at the basis of Judaism, Christianity and Islam.