Degree(s)

PhD Semitics and Biblical Studies (Yeshiva University)

Research interests

I’m working on the history of the alphabet, crossing lines of Near Eastern history, linguistics, writing systems, Mediterranean studies, and the history of Arabia.

Teaching Interests

At Cambridge I do not teach. I have taught broadly in the fields of Biblical, Near Eastern, and ancient Jewish studies.

Awards and prizes

Visiting Scholar, Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies, Oxford University (2022)

Lady Davis Visiting Professor, Hebrew University of Jerusalem (2015)

NEH Fellowship, Albright Institute for Archaeological Research, Jerusalem (2016)

Research fellow, Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem (2015-2016)

Publications

Esther in Ancient Jewish Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014).

Unbinding Isaac: The Significance of the Akedah for Modern Jewish Thought (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press/Jewish Publication Society, 2020).

Moshe Bar-Asher, Studies in Classical Hebrew (trans. and ed. Aaron Koller; Studia Judaica 71; Berlin: De Gruyter, 2013).

The Ancient Hebrew Semantic Field of Cutting Tools: A Philological, Archaeological, and Semantic Study (Catholic Biblical Quarterly Monograph Series 49; Washington, DC: Catholic Biblical Association of America, 2012).

Studies in Mishnaic Hebrew and Related Dialects: Proceedings of the Yale Symposium, May 2014 (ed. Elitzur Bar-Asher Siegal and Aaron Koller; The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Semitic, Biblical, and Jewish Studies: Festschrift for Richard Steiner (with Mordechai Z. Cohen and Adina Moshavi; Jerusalem and New York: Bialik and Yeshiva University Press, 2020).

Selected articles

“Pornography or theology? The legal background, psychological reality, and theological import of Ezekiel 16,” Catholic Biblical Quarterly 79 (2017), 402-421.

“The Self-Referential Coda in the Mishnah and the Egyptian-Israelite Literary Tradition of Wisdom,” Journal of Ancient Judaism 8 (2017), 2-25.

“The Diffusion of the Alphabet in the Second Millennium BCE: On the Movements of Scribal Ideas from Egypt to the Levant, Mesopotamia, and Yemen,” Journal of Ancient Egyptian Interconnections 20 (2018), 1-14.

“Four Dimensions of Linguistic Variation: Aramaic Dialects in and Around Qumran,” in The Dead Sea Scrolls in Context (ed. Armin Lange, Emanuel Tov, and Matthias Weigold; Supplements to Vetus Testamentum 140; Leiden: Brill, 2010), 1.199-213.

“The Social and Geographic Origins of Mishnaic Hebrew,” in Studies in Mishnaic Hebrew and Related Dialects: Proceedings of the Yale Symposium, May 2014 (ed. Elitzur Bar-Asher Siegal and Aaron Koller; The Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Yale University, 2017), 149-173.

“Tree and Wood, Polysemy and Vagueness: Detangling the branches of the Hebrew word עץ,” in Semitic, Biblical, and Jewish Studies: Festschrift for Richard Steiner (ed. Mordechai Z. Cohen, Aaron Koller, and Adina Moshavi; Bialik and Yeshiva University Press, 2020), 164*-181*.

“Hebrew and Aramaic in Contact,” in A Companion to Ancient Near Eastern Languages (ed. Rebecca Hasselbach-Andee; Blackwell, 2020), 439-455.

“The Linguistic Revolution of the Alphabet, and Implications for Ancient Hebrew Scribal Training,” in Biblical and Rabbinic Hebrew: New Perspectives in Philology and Linguistics (ed. Aaron D. Hornkohl and Geoffrey Khan; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021), 1-27.

Other interests

Hiking and museums with family; basketball, football (the American kind!), tennis, and baseball; manuscripts