News from Our Members
Recent Publications:
Ryan C. Chester, Independent Scholar: Hypothesis as Theory: The Golden Bough and the Obstinate Nostrums in Religious Studies and the Humanities. In A Century of James Frazer’s The Golden Bough: Shaking the Tree, Breaking the Bough. Edited by Stephanie Lynn Budin and Caroline J. Tully. London: Routledge, 2025.
Lee M. Fields, Mid-Atlantic Christian University: “I + 1: Comprehensible L2 Input for Second Semester Biblical Hebrew Students” with “Tools for Hebrew Learning I + 1 Handouts.” Hebrew Higher Education 26 (2024): 59–82, 83–97. https://naphhebrew.org/hhe-26-2024.
Zev Garber, Los Angeles Valley College (em.): multiple reviews in CBQ and JES. Editor and contributor, IGGERET Bulletin.
Mayer I. Gruber, Professor Emeritus, Ben-Gurion University: Book co-edited: Gruber, Mayer I., Jonathan Yogev, Daniel Sivan, Loren T. Stuckenbruck, and Eliyahu Assis. 2023. The Shamir, the Letters, the Writing, and the Tablets (Mishnah Avot 5:6): Studies in Honor of Professor Shamir Yona. Jerusalem: Ostracon Press, 346* + 356 pp. (Hebrew and English sections); article published in Shamir Yona Festschrift: Gruber, Mayer I. 2023. “New Light on Job 21: 24 from Semitic Philology and Modern Physiology.” In The Shamir, the Letters, the Writing, and the Tablets (Mishnah Avot 5:6): Studies in Honor of Professor Shamir Yona. Edited by Mayer I. Gruber, Jonathan Yogev, Daniel Sivan, Loren T. Stuckenbruck, and Eliyahu Assis. Jerusalem: Ostracon Press, pp. 19-21 (in Hebrew). Published book review: Review of Mózes Salamon, The Path of Moses: A Scholarly Essay on the Case of Women in Religious Faith, translated, annotated, and introduced by Julia Schwartzmann, in Review of Rabbinic Judaism 27 (2024), pp. 215-234.
Gary A. Rendsburg, Rutgers University: “The Original Wordle,” Textual Cultures 16 (2023): 275‒282; “A Complete Old Torah Scroll (Nicholson Ms. 37) Held by Fisher Library, University of Sydney,” Australian Biblical Review 71 (2023): 15‒54 (co-authored with five others); “A Hebrew Poem from the Pen of Edward Burdon (c.1540–1588), Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Dedicated to Queen Elizabeth I,” Sundial 19 (February 2024): 12‒13 (co-authored with Aaron D. Rubin); “Notes on the Hebrew Names of the Planets, as Transmitted by Epiphanius of Salamis,” Journal of Ancient Judaism 15 (2024): 415–439; “CCC MS 133: A Singular Treasure in Our Library,” Sundial 20 (August 2024): 12‒13 (co-authored with Aaron D. Rubin); “Jews in Arabia,” Biblical Archaeology Review 50:3 (Fall 2024): 32‒37.
Eric D, Reymond, Yale Divinity School: Co-Author with Frédérique Rey, A Critical Edition of the Hebrew Manuscripts of Ben Sira with Translations and Philological Notes, JSJSup 217 (Leiden: Brill, 2024).
Yael Segalovitz, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev: How Close Reading Made Us: The Transnational Legacies of Close Reading (SUNY, 2024). The book traces the global circulation of the New Critical practice of close reading from the US to Brazil and Israel, examining its impact on modernist production in all three locations. In the chapters dedicated to the Israeli and Hebrew adaptations of close reading, Segalovitz follows scholars of the Tel Aviv School of Poetics and Semiotics (principally Benjamin Harshav, Menakhem Perry, and Meir Sternberg) as they astutely reconceptualize the American "close reading" into "kriah tzmuda" (reading from close by) and "kriah maximalit" (maximalist reading). How Close Reading Made Us then explores these concepts' influence on A. B. Yehoshua's modernist engagements with William Faulkner's oeuvre, and on the prose fiction of Yehuda Amichai.
David E. S. Stein, independent scholar: “The Situating Noun in Ancient Hebrew: A New Understanding of אִישׁ.” Journal of Language, Culture, and Religion 5/2 (2024). Dallas International University: diu.edu/jlcr/volume-5-number-2/ or purl.org/scholar/situat-noun-heb; “Linguistic Analysis behind Innovative Renderings of אִישׁ in a Newly Published Translation.” The Bible Translator 75/2 (2024): 140–63. doi:10.1177/20516770241251704; “Corrigenda: Changes made to the RJPS Tanakh translation on Sefaria, relative to the first printing,” Jewish Publication Society, purl.org/jps/rjps-correx; “Angels by Another Name: How ‘Agency Metonymy’ Precludes God’s Embodiment.” In Theology of the Hebrew Bible, Volume 2: Texts, Readers, and Their Worlds, edited by Soo Kim Sweeney, David Frankel, and Marvin A. Sweeney, 245–65. Resources for Biblical Study 107. SBL Press, 2024.
Research in Progress, Recent Promotions or Change in Position
Zev Garber, Los Angeles Valley College (em.): Editor and Contributor with Kenneth Hanson, Jewish Studies and the Fourth Gospel (Cambridge Scholars Publishers, forthcoming)). He completed his tenure as Book Review Editor, JES; and he accepted an invitation to join the Editorial Board of Old Testament Abstracts (OTA) primarily to serve as an abstractor.
Gary A. Rendsburg, Rutgers University, has completed his commentary on 1 Samuel for the JPS ible Commentary Series, with publication expected in late 2025, and he continues to make progress on a new dictionary of the Ugaritic language.
David E. S. Stein, independent scholar, continues to research the semantics and pragmatics of the noun אִישׁ in ancient Hebrew, as manifested in “Commentary on Translation Choices in THE JPS TANAKH (RJPS),” an ongoing companion to RJPS on Sefaria.org, explaining selected instances, purl.org/scholar/rjps-comm; in “Isaiah 66:13—A Solution to the Puzzle.” Poster presented at the Society of Biblical Literature Global Virtual Meeting, April 2024, purl.org/scholar/Isa.66.13; and in “Explaining the Preference for הָאִישׁ as a Label.” Paper presented at the Society of Biblical Literature annual meeting, November 2024, purl.org/scholar/sbl24.