Ziony Zevit
Distinguished Professor of Biblical Literature and Northwest Semitic Languages, American Jewish University

Ziony Zevit (b. 1942) joined the faculty of the American Jewish University in 1974 and has remained at that university—formerly known as the University of Judaism—throughout his career. He retired from the AJU in 2022. In 2022-23, he served the E. S. Frerichs Annual Professor at the W. F. Albright Institute for Archaeological and Biblical Research and also Visiting Prof. of Bible at the Rothberg Graduate School of the Hebrew University in 2022. Early in his career he taught at the University of Haifa and the University of the Negev; later he held visiting positions at UCLA, USC, HUC (LA), UC San Diego, and The Claremont School of Theology.

In 1987, he was designated the first Avraham Biran Fellow in Biblical Archaeology at HUC in Jerusalem. In later years he received fellowships from the ACLS, Rockefeller Foundation, University of Pennsylvania Center for Advanced Judaic Studies, Lady Davis Trust, NIH, and the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation. He was elected to the American Academy for Jewish Research in 2003 and awarded the Frank M. Cross Award by the American Schools of Oriental Research for substantial publications in Near Eastern and Eastern Mediterranean epigraphy, texts, and traditions, in 2004.

Zevit has served on the editorial board of Shofar, Moed, Catholic Biblical Quarterly, Bulletin of the American Schools for Oriental Research, Hebrew Annual Review and Hebrew Studies. An active member of the National Association of Professors of Hebrew, he served on the executive council, and edited NAPH’s journal, Hebrew Studies from 1998-2005. From 2009-2011 he served as president. In 2017, he was honored with a Festschrift, Le-ma‘an Ziony: Essays in Honor of Ziony Zevit, edited by Frederick E. Greenspahn and Gary A. Rensdburg.

 

Selected Publications

The Religions of Ancient Israel (2001)

“Dating Ruth: Legal, Linguistic, and Historical Observations” (2005)

“Israel’s Royal Cult in Its Ancient Near Eastern Kulturkreis” (2006)

“Text Traditions, Archaeology, and Anthropology: Uncertainties in Determining the Populations of Judah and Yehud from ca. 734 to ca. 400 BCE (2007)

“Jesus Stories, Jewish Liturgy, and Some Evolving Theologues Until ca. 200 CE: Stimuli and Responses” (2011)

Diachrony in Biblical Hebrew (co-edited volume, 2012)

What Really Happened in the Garden of Eden? (2013)

“Yehezkel Kaufmann: Observations about His Major Ideas in the Past, Almost Present, and the Immediate Future” (2017)