About
From January, 1991 through May, 2016 I taught at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. I began as academic staff but eventually transitioned to tenured faculty, achieving the rank of Professor by retirement in May, 2016.
I taught undergraduate courses in beginning and intermediate Biblical Hebrew, introductory courses in Hebrew Bible and Early Christian Literature, Prophets of the Bible, History-telling in the Bible, Jewish Literature of the Greco-Roman Period, The Gospels, and Pauline Christianity.
In our graduate program in Hebrew Bible I taught year-long studies on the Hebrew books of the Pentateuch, Isaiah, Ezekiel, and Job, Advanced Hebrew Grammar and Composition, Syriac Language and Literature, and graduate seminars on The Book of the Twelve, Philology and Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible, and Jewish Hellenistic Literature.
I continue to guide the work of dissertators and serve on dissertation defense committees. In the fall of 2017 I will join the Minister of Faith Formation at Wayzata Community Church, Rustin Comer (Ph.D. candidate in theology at Claremont Graduate University) in offering a full curriculum of biblical and theological courses in the church’s adult education program.
From January, 2010 through May, 2014 I served as chair of the Department of Hebrew and Semitic Studies, overseeing the transfer of its program of modern Hebrew into the Jewish Studies Program and the merger of the program in Hebrew Bible with Classics to form a Department of Classical and Near Eastern studies. Education
Ph.D., University of Wisconsin-Madison: August 27, 1989
M.A., University of Wisconsin-Madison: December 22, 1985
M.Div., Bethel Theological Seminary, St. Paul, MN: May 28, 1977
B.A., Bethel College, St. Paul, MN: May 27, 1973 Publications
Books
Joel: Scope, Genres, and Meaning. Critical Studies in the Hebrew Bible. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2015.
Prophetic Literature: From Oracles to Books. Oxford: Blackwell-Wiley Academic Publishers, 2012.
LXX-Isaiah as Translation and Interpretation: The Strategies of the Translator of the Septuagint of Isaiah. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2008. (N.B. this book was the subject of a two-and-a-half hour panel review at the annual meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature in Boston, November, 2008.)
Seeking out the Wisdom of the Ancients (Fs. Michael V. Fox). Lead editor, with Kelvin Friebel and Dennis Magary. Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2005.
Articles and Book Chapters
“Writing a Commentary on the Life of the Text.” Vetus Testamentum 67:1 (2017) 105-28.
“What is the ‘Text’ in Textual Criticism?” Vetus Testamentum 66:3 (2016) 603-626.
“Prophecy in the Ancient World.” The Routledge Dictionary of Ancient Mediterranean Religions, Routledge Press, 2015.
“The Fate of Joel in the Redaction of the Twelve.” Currents in Biblical Research 13:2 (2015), 152-174.
Co-authorship with Leonard J. Greenspoon, Hugh G. M. Williamson, Florian Wilk, Rodrigo F. de Sousa, and J. Ross Wagner, “Interpreting the Sealed Book,” Journal of Septuagint and Cognate Studies 47 (2014) 17-47. Based on a panel discussion of Wagner’s Reading the Sealed Book (Baylor, 2014).
“Confirming Coherence in Joel 3 with Cognitive Grammar.” Zeitschrift für die alttestamentiliche Wissenschaft 125 (2013), 578-592.
“The Problem of Time in the Book of Joel.” Journal of Biblical Literature 132:1 (2013), 77-95.
“The Use of βουλή in LXX-Isaiah.” In The Old Greek of Isaiah: Issues and Perspectives, edited by Arie van der Kooij and Michael van der Meer. Leuven: Peeters, 2010.
“What’s in a Name? Contemporization and Toponyms in LXX-Isa.” In Seeking out the Wisdom of the Ancients (see above).
“Isaiah 7:14-16 through the Eyes of the Septuagint.” Ephemerides Theologicae Lovanienses 79 (2003), 1-19.
“Economic Plunder as a Leitmotif in LXX-Isaiah.” Biblica 83:3 (2002), 375-91.
“Matthew 27.51-54 Reconsidered: Its Role in the Passion Narrative, Meaning, and Origin.” New Testament Studies 48:1 (2002), 30-47.
“Exegesis and Theology in the LXX: Isaiah v 26-30.” Vetus Testamentum 43 (1993), 102-11.
“Εσχατος and Eschatology in LXX-Isa.” Bulletin of the International Organization for Septuagint and Cognate Studies 25 (1992), 18-27.
Book reviews
Collin Toffelmire, A Discourse and Register Analysis of the Prophetic Book of Joel (Brill, 2016). JHS, forthcoming.
Frank Shaw, The Earliest Non-Mystical Jewish Use of Ιαω (Peeters, 2015). Henoch 37:2 (2015) 1-3.
Timothy M. Law, When God Spoke Greek (Oxford, 2013). Interpretation 70 (2016), 344-45.
Ross Wagner, Reading the Sealed Book (Mohr Siebeck, 2014). Theologische Literaturzeitung, 139:6 (2014), 721-23.
John J. Collins, Introduction to the Hebrew Bible (Fortress). Hebrew Studies 46 (2005), 392-94.
Joseph Blenkinsopp, Isaiah 40-55: A New Translation With Introduction And Commentary. Hebrew Studies 44 (2003), 257-261.
Israel Knohl, The Messiah before Jesus. Hebrew Studies 42 (2001), 367-71. Blog Posts
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Hello world!
(Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible,
2017-05-02)
Projects
Current book project:
A Commentary on the Old Greek and the Peshiṭta of Isaiah 1-20.
Pending project:
A Commentary on the Old Greek and the Peshiṭta of Isaiah 21-39.
I have accepted editorship of Isaiah 1-39 in
The Hebrew Bible: A Critical Edition, Scholars Press (formerly
The Oxford Hebrew Bible).
http://ohb.berkeley.edu
Invited book chapter: “OG-Isaiah as a Witness to the Composition of the Book of Isaiah.” This will appear in a volume of essays tentatively entitled,
How Did Isaiah Become a Book? Todd Hibbard and Jacob Stromberg, eds. (publisher’s contract in process).
