Seth Sanders
Trained in Bible, Semitic languages and comparative religion at Harvard, Hebrew University, and Johns Hopkins, I study the role of texts in creating political identities and religious experience in ancient Israel and early Judaism.
My first book, The Invention of Hebrew (awarded the Frank Moore Cross prize from the American Schools of Oriental Research and a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award) argues that Hebrew was the first successful vernacular literature, which helped create ancient Israel and the Bible as both historical and imaginative possibilities. My second book, Textual Production and Religious Experience: The Transformation of Scribal Cultures in Judea and Babylonia (f/c from Brill) explores the cultures that created the Hebrew Bible and Dead Sea Scrolls via their material life and mythical heroes.
I am currently working on two book projects: the first is on the composition of the Pentateuch and its place in the history of ancient Hebrew literature. The second is on the origins and nature of early Jewish biblical interpretation. I also serve as editor-in-chief of the Journal of Ancient Near Eastern Religions.
I have participated in a series of international collaborative projects, each resulting in a volume: Cuneiform in Canaan (with Wayne Horowitz and Takayoshi Oshima), Margins of Writing, Origins of Cultures, and Ancient Jewish Sciences and the History of Knowledge in Second Temple Literature (with Jonathan Ben-Dov).
Supervisors: Kyle McCarter
Address: 300 Summit St
Hartford, CT 06106
My first book, The Invention of Hebrew (awarded the Frank Moore Cross prize from the American Schools of Oriental Research and a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award) argues that Hebrew was the first successful vernacular literature, which helped create ancient Israel and the Bible as both historical and imaginative possibilities. My second book, Textual Production and Religious Experience: The Transformation of Scribal Cultures in Judea and Babylonia (f/c from Brill) explores the cultures that created the Hebrew Bible and Dead Sea Scrolls via their material life and mythical heroes.
I am currently working on two book projects: the first is on the composition of the Pentateuch and its place in the history of ancient Hebrew literature. The second is on the origins and nature of early Jewish biblical interpretation. I also serve as editor-in-chief of the Journal of Ancient Near Eastern Religions.
I have participated in a series of international collaborative projects, each resulting in a volume: Cuneiform in Canaan (with Wayne Horowitz and Takayoshi Oshima), Margins of Writing, Origins of Cultures, and Ancient Jewish Sciences and the History of Knowledge in Second Temple Literature (with Jonathan Ben-Dov).
Supervisors: Kyle McCarter
Address: 300 Summit St
Hartford, CT 06106
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"While biblical Hebrew is naturally treated as a subject for linguistic and philological study, Sanders treats it as a political entity, too: in The Invention of Hebrew, he explores how language and especially its written form were employed in the creation of an imagined community – a nation – in the course of ancient Israel's history. Through this approach, he shows how the writing of Hebrew, and eventually the writing of the Hebrew Bible, brought Israel into being as a polity." --Eva von Dassow, University of Minnesota
"While biblical Hebrew is naturally treated as a subject for linguistic and philological study, Sanders treats it as a political entity, too: in The Invention of Hebrew, he explores how language and especially its written form were employed in the creation of an imagined community – a nation – in the course of ancient Israel's history. Through this approach, he shows how the writing of Hebrew, and eventually the writing of the Hebrew Bible, brought Israel into being as a polity." --Eva von Dassow, University of Minnesota