Bernard Levinson
Berman Family Chair of Jewish Studies and Hebrew Bible
Professor of Classical and Near Eastern Studies
Affiliated Professor of Law
University of Minnesota

Bernard M. Levinson serves as Professor of Classical and Near Eastern Studies and of Law at the University of Minnesota, where he holds the Berman Family Chair in Jewish Studies and Hebrew Bible. His research focuses on biblical and cuneiform law, textual reinterpretation in the Second Temple period, and the relation of the Bible to Western intellectual history. Additional research interests include constitutional theory, the history of interpretation, and literary approaches to biblical studies. The interdisciplinary significance of his work has been recognized with appointments to the Institute for Advanced Study (1997); the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin (2007); the National Humanities Center (2010), and the Israel Institute for Advanced Studies in Jerusalem, where he co-directed an international research team of eight scholars. 

Selected Publications

Deuteronomy and the Hermeneutics of Legal Innovation (1997)

“The Right Chorale”: Studies in Biblical Law and Interpretation (2008)

Legal Revision and Religious Renewal in Ancient Israel (2008)

A More Perfect Torah: At the Intersection of Philology and Hermeneutics in Deuteronomy and the Temple Scroll (2013)

Co-editor, The Formation of the Pentateuch: Bridging the Academic Discourses of Europe, Israel, and North America (Mohr Siebeck 2016).