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Richard Friedman

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Ann and Jay Davis Professor of Jewish Studies Emeritus

Richard Elliott Friedman, is the Ann and Jay Davis Professor of Jewish Studies Emeritus. He was a Visiting Fellow at Cambridge and Oxford and a Senior Fellow at the American Schools of Oriental Research in Jerusalem, and Visiting Professor at the University of Haifa.  He participated in the City of David Project archaeological excavations of biblical Jerusalem. He is also Katzin Professor of Jewish Civilization Emeritus of the University of California, San Diego.



Dr. Friedman earned his Th.D. and Th.M. at Harvard in Hebrew Bible and Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations; M.H.L. at the Jewish Theological Seminary; and B.A. at the University of Miami. He works in Akkadian, Aramaic, Greek, Hebrew, Latin, Ugaritic, French, and German. He was an American Council of Learned Societies Fellow, was elected to membership in The Biblical Colloquium, and was president of the Biblical Colloquium West.



He is the author of The Exile and Biblical Narrative (Harvard Semitic Monographs); Who Wrote the Bible? (Simon and Schuster); The Disappearance of God (Little, Brown); The Hidden Face of God (HarperCollins); The Hidden Book in the Bible (HarperCollins); Commentary on the Torah (HarperCollins); The Bible with Sources Revealed (HarperCollins); The Bible Now (Oxford); and The Exodus (HarperCollins). He is editor of The Creation of Sacred Literature (University of California Press); The Poet and the Historian (Harvard Semitic Studies); The Future of Biblical Studies: The Hebrew Scriptures (Scholars Press); and LeDavid Maskil (Eisenbrauns). His books have been translated into Hebrew, German, Italian, Spanish, Japanese, Polish, Hungarian, Dutch, Portuguese, Czech, Turkish, Russian, and French.



He has been interviewed by CNN’s Larry King and on NPR’s “All Things Considered” and “Morning Edition” and “Radio Times” and “Talk of the Nation.” Articles and citations of his work have appeared in the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, U.S. News & World Report, Time, Newsweek, and other print media.  He was a consultant for the Dreamworks film “The Prince of Egypt,” for Alice Hoffman's The Dovekeepers, for NBC “The Eternal Light,” for A&E “Mysteries of the Bible,” and for A&E “Who Wrote the Bible?,” for PBS “Nova: The People of the Covenant: The Origins of Ancient Israel and the Emergence of Judaism,” for European television's ARTE “The Bible Revealed,” and for PBS “The Kingdom of David.”

Professor Friedman teaches courses in Hebrew, Bible, and Jewish Studies

Education:

PhD, Harvard

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