This exhibition closed January 6, 2008.

Distinguished Lecturer Series
Speaker Biographies

Martin G. Abegg, Jr, Ph.D.
Dr. Abegg is Associate Professor of Biblical Studies, Chair of the Religious Studies Department, and Director of the Master of Arts in Biblical Studies Program at Trinity Western University (TWU) in Langley, British Columbia, Canada. He also serves as co-director (with Peter Flint) of the Dead Sea Scrolls Institute at TWU. Dr. Abegg received Ph.D. from Hebrew Union University in Cincinnati, Ohio. He is a specialist in the Hebrew Bible, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the Syriac tradition. He is co-editor of The Dead Sea Scrolls Bible with Peter Flint and Eugene Ulrich. It is the first publication representing all of the biblical materials from the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Esther Chazon, Ph.D.
Dr. Chazon serves as the Director of the Orion Center for the Study of the Dead Sea Scrolls and Associated Literature at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel. She is a lecturer at The Hebrew University in the areas of the Dead Sea Scrolls, Literature of the Second Temple Period, Development of Jewish Liturgy. She earned her Ph.D. at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Her publications include, "A Liturgical Document from Qumran and Its Implications: "Words of the Luminaries" (4QDibHam)"; "Is Divrei ha-me'orot a Sectarian Prayer?" in The Dead Sea Scrolls: Forty Years of Research (Magnes Press, 1992).

John J. Collins, Ph.D.
Dr. Collins is Holmes Professor of Old Testament Criticism and Interpretation at Yale University. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard University. His more recent books include a commentary on Introduction to the Hebrew Bible (Fortress, 2004), Does the Bible Justify Violence? (Fortress, 2004), Jewish Cult and Hellenistic Culture (E. J. Brill, 2005), Encounters with Biblical Theology (Fortress, 2005), and The Bible after Babel: Historical Criticism in a Postmodern Age (Eerdmans, 2005). He has served as editor of the Journal of Biblical Literature, as president of the Catholic Biblical Association (1997), and as president of the Society of Biblical Literature (2002). Dr. Collins is co-editor of The Encyclopedia of Apocalypticism (Continuum, 1998) and is currently editor of the Supplement Series to the Journal for the Study of Judaism (E. J. Brill) and of the journal Dead Sea Discoveries.

Sidnie White Crawford, Ph.D.
Dr. Crawford received her Ph.D. from Harvard. Her areas of scholarly expertise are in the Dead Sea Scrolls and textual criticism of the Hebrew Bible. She is a member of the international publication team for the Dead Sea Scrolls, and is responsible for editing 14 manuscripts from the Qumran collection. She has written extensively on various aspects of the Dead Sea Scrolls, including the rewritten bible texts and the role of women in the Qumran community. She is one of the general editors of the The Oxford Hebrew Bible, which will result in an eclectic critical edition of every book of the Hebrew Bible. Dr. Crawford is contributing the volume on Deuteronomy for the series The Bible at Qumran, to be published by E. J. Brill. She is President of the W. F. Albright Institute of Archaeology in Jerusalem.

Peter W. Flint, Ph.D.
Dr. Flint is Professor of Religious Studies and Co-director of the Dead Sea Scrolls Institute at Trinity Western University (TWU) in Lagley, British Columbia, Canada. He received his Ph.D. in Old Testament and Second Temple Judaism from the University of Notre Dame and is the author of numerous studies on the Dead Sea Scrolls, including the critically acclaimed The Dead Sea Psalms Scrolls and the Book of Psalms (E. J. Brill, 1997), co-author of the widely-read Dead Sea Scrolls Bible (San Francisco, CA: Harper, 1999), and editor of the major two-volume collection The Dead Sea Scrolls After Fifty Years: A Comprehensive Assessment (E. J. Brill, 1998-1999). Dr. Flint serves as a general editor of one series on the Old Testament: The Formation and Interpretation of Old Testament Literature (E. J. Brill), as well as three series on the Dead Sea Scrolls. He has also edited over 25 Dead Sea Scrolls for three volumes in the internationally acclaimed series Discoveries in the Judaean Desert (Oxford University Press).

David Noel Freedman, Ph.D.
Dr. Freedman holds the endowed chair in Hebrew Biblical Studies at the University of California, San Diego. He has made numerous outstanding and creative contributions which illuminate and preserve a world heritage—the Hebrew Bible. As the general editor of several distinguished series, including the Anchor Bible Series (1956-), Eerdman's Critical Commentaries (2000-), and The Bible in Its World (2000-), and as the editor and author of numerous other award-winning volumes, including the Eerdman's Dictionary of the Bible (2000), Freedman has produced over 330 scholarly books. As editor of the Leningrad Codex: A Facsimile Edition (1998), Freedman orchestrated the process by which this beautiful codex—the oldest complete and most important extant manuscript of the Hebrew Bible in the world—became available to the public.

Russell Fuller, Ph.D.
Dr. Fuller is professor of Hebrew Bible in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies at the University of San Diego. He holds a Ph.D. from Harvard University in Hebrew Bible. Dr. Fuller is a member of the international team of editors of the Dead Sea Scrolls. His edition of the Minor Prophets manuscripts from Cave 4 has appeared in the publication series Discoveries in the Judean Desert. He has recently completed a manuscript on the text and interpretation of the Minor Prophets at Qumran. Dr. Fuller is both a contributing editor and an associate editor for The Oxford Hebrew Bible. He is a member of the Society of Biblical Literature and a founding member of the Biblical Colloquium West. He is serving as a consultant for the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibition at the San Diego Natural History Museum.

David Goodblatt, Ph.D.
Dr. Goodblatt holds the Endowed Chair in Judaic Studies at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). He earned his Ph.D. from Brown University and specializes in the history of the Jewish people, Judaism and the Middle East in the millennium preceding the rise of Islam. His publications include Rabbinic Instruction in Sasanian Babylonia (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1974); The Monarchic Principle: Studies in Jewish Self-government in Antiquity (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1994); Historical Perspectives: From the Hasmoneans to Bar Kokhba in Light of the Dead Sea Scrolls (co-edited with A. Pinnick and D.R. Schwartz, Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2001); and "The Political and Social History of the Jewish Community of Palestine 235-634," The Cambridge History of Judaism Volume 4: The Late Roman-Rabbinic Period (in press). Dr. Goodblatt is currently researching aspects of ancient Jewish nationalism.

Risa Levitt Kohn, Ph.D
Dr. Levitt Kohn is the curator of the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibition. She is also the Director of the Jewish Studies Program at San Diego State University (SDSU) and an Associate Professor of Hebrew Bible and Judaism in SDSU’s Religious Studies department. She was the first to earn a doctorate in ancient history and Hebrew Bible from the University of California, San Diego. She is the past president of the Society of Biblical Literature (SBL), Pacific Coast Region, and serves as the Chair of the SBL's Committee for the Status of Women in the Profession. Levitt Kohn's publications include A New Heart and a New Soul: Ezekiel, the Exile and the Torah (Sheffield Academic Press). She has lectured extensively on subjects including the world of the Hebrew Bible, Jewish and Christian Origins and Judaism. She has also served as Scholar-in-Residence for the Biblical Archaeology Society Travel/Study Program and was recently honored with a national Regional Scholar Award from the Society of Biblical Literature. She is currently working with Dr. Rebecca Moore on The True Vine: How the First Jews and Christians Read the Bible, to be published later this year by Roman and Littlefield.

Thomas E. Levy, Ph.D.
Dr. Levy is professor of Anthropology and Judaic Studies and holds the Norma Kershaw Endowed Chair in the Archaeology of Ancient Israel and Neighboring Lands at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). Formerly the assistant director of the W. F. Albright Institute of Archaeological Research and the Nelson Glueck School of Biblical Archaeology of the Hebrew Union College, Jerusalem, Dr. Levy joined the UCSD faculty in 1992. He has served as Chair of the Department of Anthropology and Director of the Judaic Studies Program. He has directed and been the principal investigator of a number of multi-year excavation projects in the Middle East, including Shiqmim, Gilat, and Nahal Tillah in the Negev desert of Israel and the Jabal Hamrat Fidan project in southern Jordan. Levy's current research focuses primarily on the Iron Age in southern Jordan and investigating the processes that led to the rise of the kingdom of Edom.

Jodi Magness, Ph.D.
Dr. Magness serves as the Kenan Distinguished Professor for Teaching Excellence in Early Judaism in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She received her Ph.D. in Classical Archaeology from the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Magness' book The Archaeology of Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2002) won the 2003 Biblical Archaeology Society's award for Best Popular Book in Archaeology in 2001-2002 and was selected as an Outstanding Academic Book for 2003 by Choice Magazine. Dr. Magness' other books are The Archaeology of the Early Islamic Settlement in Palestine (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2003); Debating Qumran: Collected Essays on Its Archaeology (Leuven: Peeters, 2004); Hesed ve-Emet, Studies in Honor of Ernest S. Frerichs (co-edited with S. Gitin; Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1998); and Jerusalem Ceramic Chronology Circa 200-800 C.E. (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1993). Her research interests, which focus on Palestine in the Roman, Byzantine, and early Islamic periods, include ancient pottery, ancient synagogues, Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the Roman army in the East. Dr. Magness has participated in 20 different excavations in Israel and Greece, and currently co-directs excavations in the late Roman fort at Yotvata, Israel (since 2003).

Eric M. Meyers, Ph.D.
Dr. Meyers, the Bernice and Morton Lerner Professor of Judaic Studies at Duke University, directs the Graduate Program in Religion. He earned his Ph.D. from Harvard University specializing in Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, archaeology of the ancient Near East, and Jewish history of the Greco-Roman period. Dr. Meyers has authored or co-authored nine books, edited many others, and is published widely in the fields of Hebrew Bible, biblical archaeology, and Second Temple Judaism. Among his publications in Hebrew Bible are two Anchor Bible commentaries with Carol L. Meyers, Haggai-Zechariah 1-8 (1987) and Zechariah 9-14 (1993). He served as editor-in-chief of the five-volume work published by Oxford University Press The Oxford Encyclopedia of Archaeology in the Near East (1997), and is co-author of the Cambridge Companion to the Bible by Cambridge University Press, 1997. He also served as president of the American Schools of Oriental Research from 1990-1997. Dr. Meyers has directed or co-directed digs in Israel and Italy for more than 30 years.

Carol Newsom, Ph.D
Dr. Newsom is a native of Birmingham, Alabama. She received her Ph.D. in 1982 from Harvard University's Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations. In 2006, she was awarded a Doctor of Divinity degree, honoris causa, from her alma mater, Birmingham-Southern College. Since 1980, Dr. Newsom has taught the Hebrew Bible at the Candler School of Theology and the Graduate Division of Religion at Emory University. In 2005, she was named to be a Charles Howard Candler Distinguished Professor at Emory University in recognition of excellence in research and teaching. She has been a member of the international team of translators of the Dead Sea Scrolls since the mid-1980s and was the first woman to be named to this team. She worked on editing and translating the Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice, the Apocryphon of Joshua, and other texts. Her most recent book is The Self as Symbolic Space: Constructing Identity and Community in the Dead Sea Scrolls (Brill, 2004).

Shalom Paul, Ph.D.
Dr. Shalom Paul, Chairperson of the Dead Sea Scrolls foundation and is a former chair of the Bible Department of Hebrew University, Jerusalem and is a much sought-after lecturer throughout North America, Europe, and Asia, with the unique skill to make the ancient Bible world come alive. He was editor of the Encyclopedia Judaica’s Bible section and has written six books and over forty articles on nature and scientific exploration from a biblical perspective including The Bible & Archaeology.

Dr. Paul received his Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania and he holds an Honorary Doctorate from the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York. In 1990 he was honored with the Humanist Award from the Melton Center at Ohio State University, and in 1992 he received the Abraham Zechariah Shkop Prize for the Best Publication in Biblical Studies from Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

James A. Sanders, Ph.D.
Dr. Sanders is Professor Emeritus of the Claremont School of Theology and founder of the Ancient Biblical Manuscript Center. He was the Elizabeth Hay Bechtel Professor of Intertestamental and Biblical Studies at the School of Theology, Claremont, and Professor of Religion at Claremont Graduate School. Dr. Sanders is past president of the Society of Biblical Literature, a member of Studiorum Novi Testamenti Societas, the International Organization for Septuagint and Cognate Studies, the International Organization for Targumic and Cognate Studies, and other scholarly societies. He is the only American member of the United Bible Society's Hebrew Old Testament Text Critical Project. His book, Torah and Canon, launched in 1972 a new subdiscipline of biblical study called Canonical Criticism.

Lawrence H. Schiffman, Ph.D.
Dr. Schiffman is the Ethel and Irvin A. Edelman Professor of Hebrew and Judaic Studies at New York University. Dr. Schiffman received his Ph.D. in Near Eastern and Judaic studies from Brandeis University. His major interests include the Dead Sea Scrolls; Jewish religious, political, and social history in late antiquity; and the history of Jewish law and Talmudic literature. His publications include Reclaiming the Dead Sea Scrolls (Philadelphia, PA: Jewish Publication Society, 1994); From Text to Tradition: A History of Judaism in Second Temple and Rabbinic Times (Hoboken, NJ: Ktav, 1989); Who Was a Jew? Rabbinic and Halakhic Perspectives on the Jewish-Christian Schism (Hoboken, NJ: Ktav, 1985); and Sectarian Law in the Dead Sea Scrolls, Courts, Testimony, and the Penal Code (California: Scholars Press, 1983). Dr. Schiffman's affiliations include the editorial team of Dead Sea Scrolls; Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies, NYU; Columbia University Seminar for the Study of the Hebrew Bible; vice president of the Association for Jewish Studies; board member of the World Union of Jewish Studies; and the Society for Biblical Literature (Qumran section).

William M. Schniedewind, Ph.D.
Dr. Schniedewind is Chair of Ancient Eastern Mediterranean Studies and Professor of Biblical Studies and Northwest Semitic Languages at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). His primary area of research is the problems of orality and textuality in ancient Israel, particularly as it relates to the writing and canonization of the Hebrew Bible. Dr. Schniedewind’s recent papers include a lecture for UCLA’s Center for Jewish Studies entitled, “When the Torah Became a Text,” and a paper to be presented this summer in Cambridge, England entitled, “Writing in the Priestly and Deuteronomic Theology.” Dr. Schniedewind’s research has culminated in a forthcoming book, How the Bible Became a Book: The Textualization of Ancient Israel (Cambridge University Press, February 2004). Additionally, Dr. Schniedewind has co-authored a teaching grammar of Ugaritic with Dr. Joel H. Hunt (Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, CA), A Primer for Ugaritic Language, Literature, and Culture (forthcoming, Cambridge University Press). Currently, Dr. Schniedewind is writing a commentary on the Book of Chronicles for Cambridge University Press’ new commentary series.

Emanuel Tov, Ph.D.
Dr. Tov has been the J. L. Magnes Professor of Bible, Department of Bible, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, since 1990 and is editor-in-chief of the Dead Sea Scrolls Publication Project. He has served as a teaching fellow at Harvard University and as a guest professor at the University of Pennsylvania and Dropsie University in Philadelphia, as well as at the Universities of Stellenbosch (South Africa), Macquarie (Sydney), Sydney University, the Vrije Universiteit (Amsterdam), and Uppsala University. In 1989-1990, together with Prof. M. Weinfeld, he convened a research group on the Qumran scrolls at the Institute for Advanced Studies of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Dr. Tov has received several research awards, among them the Warburg Award of the Hebrew University for 1969-1971, a Lady Davis Fellowship for study at Oxford University in 1974-1975, a Wexler Fellowship from the Penn-Israel Foundation in 1980-1981, and the Humboldt Research Prize, Germany (1999-2004). In September 2003, he was awarded the Ubbo Emmius Medal by the University of Groningen.

Eugene Ulrich, Ph.L.
Dr. Ulrich is John A. O'Brien Professor of Theology at the University of Notre Dame. Dr. Ulrich earned his Ph.L. from Loyola University. He teaches and writes in the areas of the Hebrew Scriptures, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the Septuagint. A member of the translation teams of both the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible and the New American Bible, he recently co-authored The Dead Sea Scrolls Bible. Dr. Ulrich is one of the three general editors of the Scrolls International Publication Project and chief editor of the Biblical Scrolls. Having published five volumes of critical editions of the biblical scrolls in Discoveries in the Judaean Desert from Oxford University Press, he was an area editor for Oxford's Encyclopedia of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Dr. Ulrich was given the Award Medal of the University of Helsinki in 1997 and appointed to the Grinfield Lecturership at the University of Oxford for 1998-2000. A recipient of a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship and several grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, he was twice elected as President of the International Organization for Septuagint and Cognate Studies and was invited as a fellow of the Institute for Advanced Studies at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem. Recently, Dr. Ulrich was elected as president of the Catholic Biblical Association and as a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

James C. Vanderkam, Ph.D.
Dr. VanderKam is John A. O'Brien Professor of Hebrew Scriptures at the University of Notre Dame. Dr. VanderKam earned his Ph. D. from Harvard. His areas of scholarly interest are the history and literature of Early Judaism and the Hebrew Scriptures. His research in the last decade has focused on the Dead Sea Scrolls, and he is a member of the editorial committee that is preparing the editions of the remaining unpublished scrolls. Dr. VanderKam has edited ten volumes in the official series Discoveries in the Judaean Desert and several others are in process. He is one of the two editors-in-chief of the Encyclopedia of the Dead Sea Scrolls (2000). His prize-winning book, The Dead Sea Scrolls Today (1994), has been translated into six languages. His most recent books are a collection of his essays entitled From Revelation to Canon: Studies in the Hebrew Bible and Second Temple Literature (2000), An Introduction to Early Judaism (2001), and The Book of Jubilees (2001). He serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of Biblical Literature and Vetus Testamentum, is an editor of Dead Sea Discoveries, writes the book review notes for Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha, and is on the editorial boards of several series.

Olga Vasilyeva, Ph.D.
Dr. Vasilyeva is curator of the Hebrew Manuscript collections at the Russian National Library in St. Petersburg, Russia, and is responsible for the manuscripts on display at the San Diego Natural History Museum's Dead Sea Scrolls exhibition. She holds advanced degrees from the University of Sofia, Bulgaria and the Leningrad State University. She specializes in the history of Oriental manuscripts and has published over 60 articles, five of which are devoted to the Hebrew Manuscripts of the Russian National Library.

Bruce Zuckerman, Ph.D.
Dr. Zuckerman is professor of Hebrew Bible, School of Religion at the University of Southern California (USC). He received his Ph.D. in Ancient Near Eastern Languages from Yale University and was subsequently an associate of the Harvard Semitic Museum before joining the USC faculty in 1980. He is also a partner of West Semitic Research, director of the West Semitic Research Project and the Inscriptifact Project, and director of the USC Archaeological Research Collection. Dr. Zuckerman has published a book on the biblical text of Job, Job the Silent (New York, NY: Oxford Press, 1991), as well as numerous articles on ancient texts from biblical times. His photographs have been featured in many scholarly publications as well as in a number of popular venues. Dr. Zuckerman specializes in documenting inscriptions from the biblical world, including the Dead Sea Scrolls, using the highest quality photographic and digital technologies.

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