Scholar of ancient Jewish literature and history of reception

My work outside digital humanities tools for manuscript study focuses on how literary expressions of theological ideas were received and reconceived over the centuries. In other words, I work on texts in the Hebrew Bible, Old Testaments (plural), and writings on the margins of authority and canonicity. I study how they were composed from earlier traditions and received by later authors and communities. The marginal literature in particular casts light on the emergence of our concepts of “Scripture” and “Interpretation.” Colleagues in the field who know the work of my teachers, James C. VanderKam, James L. Kugel, and John J. Collins, will see their influence on all my work.

I am particularly interested in the Book of Jubilees, a Hebrew work from the mid-second century before the common era that was authoritative for several communities but rejected in the rabbinic Jewish tradition. It stands out as a lengthy, well-developed, and well-preserved exemplar of one understanding of Judaism in the wake of the Maccabean Revolt. It demonstrates the shaping of Jewish literary traditions, and its influence evidences a traditional authority parallel to scripture.

My dissertation, directed by James C. VanderKam, was thoroughly revised into my first book, The Subversion of the Apocalypses in the Book of Jubilees. I argue that Jubilees uses the literary features that mark apocalypses (angels, judgment), but uses them to confront and reject the theological claims typically made about them (angelic evil and interference, deferred judgment).

Most of my publications other than digital humanities (listed below) fall into three categories: introductory surveys of Jubilees, how Jubilees uses its sources, and how Jubilees is used in later sources. The tertiary articles are in Early Jewish Literature: An Introduction and Reader (Eerdmans 2017), The Blackwell Companion to the Old Testament Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha (forthcoming), and Textual History of the Bible (Brill 2019). The articles on how Jubilees uses its sources for legal exegesis and response to the theological implications of apocalyptic literature have appeared in Testing and Temptation in Early Jewish and Christian Literature (2020), Journal for the Study of Judaism (2015), The Fallen Angels Traditions (2014), God, Grace, and Creation (2010), and Henoch (2006). The articles on the influence of Jubilees on the Dead Sea Scrolls and New Testament have appeared in Catholic Biblical Quarterly (2015), and A Teacher for All Generations: Essays in Honor of James C. VanderKam (2012).

See my Curriculum Vitae for complete citation information. Several works are available on Humanities Commons. I am moving away from Academia.edu; no content is available there that is not also available on Humanities Commons.

Society of Biblical Literature

Eight presentations, most recently, “Three Priorities for Digitally-Enabled Research and Teaching in Manuscripts of Biblical Literature,” July 2019 (abstract, paper)

Editorial Board, SBL Text-Critical Studies Monograph Series

Catholic Biblical Association

Seven presentations, most recently, “Priestly Eschatology in Testament of Moses and Malachi” (Washington, D.C., onsite 2024)

Elected member of four committees