Zlatko Plese received his PhD in Classics at Yale University, where he specialized in ancient philosophy and medicine, early Christianity, Hellenistic rhetoric and hermeneutics, and Coptic language. He taught at various universities in Croatia and the US, including Yale University and Wesleyan University, and is now associate professor of Ancient Mediterranean religions (Greco-Roman world and early Christianity) at UNC-Chapel Hill.

Profesor Plese has published articles on the history of the interpretation of Plato's Timaeus in the early Roman Empire, "Gnosticism," Coptic homiletics, and Baroque historiography among South Slavs. His most recent book is The Poetics of the Gnostic Universe, a narratological and philosophical study of the Apocryphon of John, a firsthand and fully developed version of the classic "Gnostic" myth (Leiden: Brill, 2005). At present, Professor Plese's research proceeds in three complementary areas: Platonism of the Imperial period, "Gnosticism," and ancient rhetoric. In Gnosticism, he examines the literary structure, rhetorical techniques, and the underlying world model of Gnostic myth; in Platonism, he focuses on the Middle Platonists and their development and refinement of Plato's root metaphors and heuristic analogies; in rhetoric, he concentrates on the impact of rhetorical theory of "issues" (staseis) on early Christian scriptural exegesis. Professor Plese is also one of the editors of the Discourses of Apa Shenoute, the most important Coptic writer and an important source of information about the organization and operations of coenobitic monasteries in fourth/fifth century Egypt.