Professor Lawrence Wills Named a Finalist for the 46th Annual PROSE Awards
The Association of American Publishers announced finalists and winners honoring scholarly works published in 2021.
The Association of American Publishers (AAP) recently unveiled the finalists and category winners for the 46th Annual PROSE Awards honoring scholarly works published in 2021. Visiting Professor of Religious Studies & Theology Lawrence Wills was among 106 finalists honored this year.
Wills’ book, Introduction to the Apocrypha: Jewish Books in Christian Bibles, is one of three titles highlighted in the PROSE Awards’ Theology & Religious Studies category.
“I am grateful to receive this honor,” he said. “When scholars write books it is often for a select group of other scholars. This book was intended for a larger audience, and this award means that seems to have worked.”
Introduction to the Apocrypha explores religious texts that have been intensely debated for eons. The Apocrypha are a set of books received by the early Church as part of the Greek version of the Old Testament. Though Judaism and Protestantism do not recognize these works as being divinely inspired, the Roman Catholic Church and various Orthodox religions consider them biblical canon.
“These deuterocanonical texts have always been considered important, but there were so many interesting issues that were ignored—often by scholars,” Wills said. “I thought of this book as: ‘What you didn’t know about the Apocrypha.’”
Wills’ book, Introduction to the Apocrypha: Jewish Books in Christian Bibles, is one of three titles highlighted in the PROSE Awards’ Theology & Religious Studies category.
Wills acknowledges his Stonehill colleagues, many of whom he has known since graduate school, played a role in his book’s success.
“I have learned so much from collaboration with them over the years,” he said. “The Religious Studies & Theology department has emphasized the study of Catholicism and other religions in a social context, and so my interest in the social world of the Apocrypha fits right in.”
Professor Nathaniel DesRosiers, chair of the department of Religious Studies & Theology, believes Wills’ AAP recognition is well-deserved.
“All his work and not just the current book, is impeccably well-researched and thoughtfully presented,” DesRosiers said. “He makes even the abstract accessible. He is perhaps the most generous person that I know in my field, and it seems that everyone has benefitted from his advice and scholarly insights.”