Hoffmann's Marcion was the first work after Harnack (1924) to call into question the patristic testimony concerning the ""arch-heretic."" In his work, Hoffmann challenged the conventional wisdom concerning the date, sources, and accuracy of reports on Marcion through careful and critical examination of patristic evidence. In Hoffmann's view, Marcion was the creator of the two-part canon. Theologically, his attempts to elevate Paul above the gospels ensured the enduring role of Paul in the history of the early church. Contrary to early views that Marcion was a gnostic, Hoffmann argued that Marcion was a man from an ""earlier time"" who demonstrates in his theology the living controversies of the early period: whether the Old Testament should be accepted or rejected; whether the God of the Old Testament and the God of the gospel are the same deity; and finally, whether the revelation of God represented in the teaching and person of Jesus Christ is definitive for the church.
Following graduation from Harvard Divinity School and the University of Oxford, R. Joseph Hoffmann (PhD, Oxford) was tutor in Greek at Keble College and senior scholar at St. Cross College, Oxford, and Wissenschaftlicher Assistent in patristics and classical studies at the University of Heidelberg.
He began his teaching career at the University of Michigan as assistant professor of Near Eastern studies where he developed the undergraduate and graduate program in Christian origins. From 1991 to 1999, he was senior lecturer in New Testament and church history at Westminster College, Oxford. Hoffmann has also taught at the American University of Beirut and Wells College, where he was Campbell Professor of Religion and Human Values until 2006 and Distinguished Scholar at Goddard College in 2009. He has held visiting positions at universities in Africa (Malawi, Zimbabwe, and Botswana), the Middle East, the Pacific (Australia and Papua New Guinea), and South Asia, most recently as visiting professor of history at LUMS in Lahore, Pakistan and as professor of historical linguistics at the Graduate University of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing. He is professor of liberal arts at the American University of Central Asia.
Hoffmann has focused on the controversial aspects of Christian origins, with special reference to early heresies, gnosticism, and the pagan philosophical critiques of the Christian movement. He has edited and translated the ancient pagan critiques of Celsus (1987), Porphyry (1994) and Julian the Apostate (2004). His most recent books include an edited volume entitled Just War and Jihad: Violence in Judaism, Christianity and Islam (2006) and Sources of the Jesus Tradition (2010).
