Education

  • Ph.D., M.A., Near Eastern and Judaic Studies, Brandeis University
  • M.A., Historical Geography of Ancient Israel, Jerusalem University College
  • B.A., Religion, George Fox University

Research

  • Hebrew Bible
  • Northwest Semitics
  • Second Temple Judaism
  • Social and Cultural History of Ancient Israel
  • Inner-biblical and Early Jewish Interpretation
  • Sociolinguistics of Classical Hebrew Language

Courses

Undergraduate
  • Jerusalem, the Holy City (Ancient Near East 10W)
  • Ancient Israelite Religion (Ancient Near East 135)
  • Bible and Apocrypha (Jewish Studies M150A)
  • Dead Sea Scrolls & Early Judaism (Jewish Studies 170)
  • Early History of the Jewish People (Jewish Studies M182A)
Graduate
  • Studies in Hebrew Biblical Literature (Hebrew 220)
    • Selected Topics:  Genesis, Exodus, Deuteronomy, DtrH, Psalms, Hosea, Amos, Inner-Biblical Interpretation
  • Studies in Second Temple Literature (Hebrew 225)
    • Selected Topics:  Chronicles, Ezra-Nehemiah, Dead Sea Scrolls
  • Northwest Semitic Inscriptions (Sem 230)
  • Ugaritic (Sem 220)
  • History of Hebrew Language (Heb 210)

Books

Articles

  1. “The Source Citations of Manasseh: King Manasseh in History and Homily,” Vetus Testamentum 91 (1991), pp. 450-61.
  2. “Letting Your ‘Yes’ be ‘No’ in Ancient Israel: A Study of the Asseverative לא and לאה in Hebrew,” co-authored with Daniel Sivan, Journal of Semitic Studies 38 (1993), pp. 209-226.
  3. “History and Interpretation: The Religion of Ahab and Manasseh in the Book of Kings,” Catholic Biblical Quarterly 55 (1993), pp. 640-661.
  4. “King and Priest in the Book of Chronicles and the Duality of Qumran Messianism,” Journal of Jewish Studies 94 (1994), pp. 71-78.
  5. “Textual Criticism and Theological Interpretation: a pro-Temple Tendenz in the Greek Text of Samuel-Kings,” Harvard Theological Review 87 (1994), pp. 107-116.
  6. “History or Homily: Toward Understanding the Chronicler’s Purpose,” in Proceedings of the Eleventh World Congress of Jewish Studies: Division A: The Bible and Its World. Jerusalem, 1994, pp. 91-97.
  7. “Are We His People? Biblical Interpretation During Crisis,” Biblica 77 (1995), pp. 540-550.
  8. “A Qumran Fragment of the Ancient ‘Prayer of Manasseh’?” Zeitschrift für die Alttestamentlische Wissenschaft 108 (1996), pp. 105-7.
  9. “The Problem with Kings: Recent Study of the Deuteronomistic History,” Religious Studies Review 22 (1996), pp. 22-27.
  10. “The Tel Dan Stele: New Light on Aramaic and Jehu’s Revolt,” Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 302 (1996), pp. 75-90.
  11. “Prophets and Prophecy in the Books of Chronicles,” in The Chronicler as Historian (eds. M. Patrick Graham, and Kenneth G. Hoglund; JSOTSS, 238; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1997), pp. 204-224.
  12. “The Dialect of the Elisha-Elijah Narratives: A Case Study in Northern Hebrew,” co-authored with Daniel Sivan, Jewish Quarterly Review 137 (1997), pp. 303-337.
  13. “The Geopolitical History of Philistine Gath,” Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research309 (1998), pp. 69-77.
  14. “Structural Aspects of Qumran Messianism in the Damascus Document,” in The Provo International Conference on the Dead Sea Scrolls New Text, Reformulated Issues, and Technological Innovations(Leiden: Brill, 1998), pp. 523-536.
  15. “The Davidic Dynasty and Biblical Interpretation in the Qumran Community,” in The Dead Sea Scrolls Fifty Years after their Discovery—Proceedings of the Jerusalem Congress, July 20-25, 1997, eds. Larry Schiffman, Emanuel Tov, and James C. VanderKam (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society), pp. 82-91.
  16. “Qumran Hebrew as an Antilanguage,” Journal of Biblical Literature 118 (1999), pp. 235-252.
  17. “The Chronicler as an Interpreter of Scripture,” in Chronicles as Literature (eds. Pat Graham and Steven McKenzie; JSOTSS, 263; Sheffield: JSOT, 1999), pp. 158-180.
  18. “Orality and Literacy in Ancient Israel,” Religious Studies Review 26/4 (2000), pp. 327-332.
  19. “Sociolinguistic Reflections on the Letter of a ‘Literate’ Soldier (Lachish 3),” Zeitschrift für Althbraistik13 (2000), pp. 157-167.
  20. “Language Ideology in Qumran Hebrew,” Symposium Volume of the Beersheva Conference on the Language of the Dead Sea Scrolls (November 1998), (Leiden, Brill, 2000), pp. 245-255.
  21. “A Possible Reconstruction of the Name of Hazael’s Father in the Tel Dan Inscription,” (co-authored with Bruce Zuckerman), Israel Exploration Journal 51 (2001), pp. 88-91.
  22. “The Rise of the Aramaean States,” in Mesopotamia and the Bible: Comparative Explorations (M. Chevalas and K. L. Younger, Jr., eds.; Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic Press, 2002), pp. 276-87
  23. “The Evolution of Name Theology,” in The Chronicler as Theologian: Essays in Honor of Ralph Klein(Sheffield Academic Press, 2003), 228-39.
  24. “Explaining God’s Name in Exodus 3,” “Basel und Bibel”.Collected Communications to the XVIIth congress of the International rganization for the Study of the Old Testament, Basel 2001 (M. Augustin, H. M. Niemann , eds.; Beiträge zur Erforschung des Alten Testaments und des antiken Judentums, 51; Frankfurt: Peter Lang 2004), pp. 13-18.
  25. “Prolegomena for the Sociolinguistics of Classical Hebrew,” Journal of Hebrew Scriptures 5 (2004), Article 6.
  26. “Steps and Missteps in the Linguistic Dating of Biblical Hebrew,” Hebrew Studies 46 (2005), 377-84.
  27. “Problems in the Paleographic Dating of Early Hebrew Inscriptions,” in The Bible and Radiocarbon Dating – Archaeology, Text and Science, edited by T. Levy and T. Hingham (Equinox, 2005).
  28. “Aramaic, the Death of Written Hebrew, and Language Shift in the Persian Period,” in Margins of Writing: Origins of Cultures (S. Sanders, ed.; Oriental Institute Seminars 2; Chicago, 2006), 135–152.
  29. “In Search of Gibeah and Proper Method in Historical Geography,” “I Will Speak the Riddles of Ancient Times”: Archaelogical and Historical Studies in Honor of Amihai Mazar on the Occasion of His Sixtieth Birthday (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2006) 711–22.
  30. “La thèse d’une écriture à l’époque royale,” in Le Monde de la Bible (2006) 22–27.
  31. “The Way of the Word: Textualization in Isaiah 55:6-11,” in Bringing the Hidden to Light: the Process of Interpretation. Studies in Honor of Stephen A. Geller (K. Kravitz and D. Sharon, eds.; Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2007), 237–48.
  32. “The Textualization of Torah in Jeremiah 8:8,” in Was ist ein Text? Edited by L. Morenz and S. Schorch (BZAW, 362; Berlin: de Gruyter, 2007), pp. 93–107.
  33. “Excavating the Text of 1 Kings 9: In Search of the Gates of Solomon,” in Historical Biblical Archaeology and the Future, edited by Thomas E. Levy (Equinox, 2010) pp. 245–53.
  34. “Calling God Names: an Innerbiblical Approach to the Tetragrammaton,” in Scriptural Exegesis: the Shapes of Culture and the Religious Imagination; Essays in Honour of Michael Fishbane. Edited by Deborah A. Green and Laura S. Lieber (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), pp. 74–86.
  35. “The Siloam Tunnel Inscription: Historical and Linguistic Perspectives,” co-authored with Gary Rendsburg, Israel Exploration Journal 60 (2010), pp. 188–203.
  36. “Writing and Book Production,” chapter 3 in New Cambridge History of the Bible: From the Beginnings to 600 (J. Paget and J. Schaper, eds.; Cambridge University Press, 2013), pp. 47–62.
  37. “Prophets in the Early Monarchy,” in Enemies and Friends of the State: Ancient Prophecy in Context(Eisenbrauns: Winona Lake, 2015), pp. .
  38. “Scripturalization in Ancient Israel,” in Contextualizing Israel’s Sacred Writings: Ancient Literacy, Orality, and Literary Production, edited by B. Schmidt (Atlanta: SBL Press, 2015), pp. 301–17.
  39. “The Linguistics of Writing Systems and the Gap in the Hebrew Scribal Tradition,” in Proceedings of the World Congress of Jewish Studies (Jerusalem, July 2013).
  40. “The Legacy of the New Kingdom in Early Israel,” in Fuzzy Boundaries: Festschrift für Antonio Loprieno (Hamburg, 2015), pp. 761-67.

Additional Books

  • A Social History of Hebrew: From Its Origins Through the Rabbinic Period, Yale University Press, 2013.
  • Society and the Promise to David: A Reception History of 2 Samuel 7:1-17, Oxford University Press, 1999.
  • The Word of God in Transition: From Prophet to Exegete in the Second Temple Period (JSOTSS, 197. Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1995)
  • Editor, The Tel El-Amarna Correspondence, Volume 1, by Anson F. Rainey. Leiden: Brill, 2015.