Prof. Dr. Idan Dershowitz

CV & Main Focus of Research

Born 1982. Undergraduate and graduate training at the Hebrew University, following several years of yeshiva study. Elected in 2017 to the Harvard Society of Fellows. Currently Chair of Hebrew Bible and Its Exegesis at the University of Potsdam.
Dershowitz’s work has appeared in JBL, VT, ZAW, and the New York Times, and his forthcoming book on the material redaction of the Hebrew Bible will be published by Mohr Siebeck in early 2021. He is currently studying the composition history of Deuteronomy.

Professional affiliations:

Society of Biblical Literature (SBL)
International Association of Egyptologists (IAE)

Selected Publications                                      

Books
The Dismembered Bible: Cutting and Pasting Scripture in Antiquity (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2021; forthcoming)

Articles, etc.
“MORDECAI, SON OF JAIR (HEBREW BIBLE/OLD TESTAMENT),” Encyclopedia of the Bible and its Reception(EBR) 18, De Gruyter (2020; forthcoming) 

“NAOMI (HEBREW BIBLE/OLD TESTAMENT),” Encyclopedia of the Bible and its Reception (EBR) 18, De Gruyter (2020; forthcoming)

“Four Unidentified Fragments from 4QJoba (4Q99),” Revue de Qumrân (RevQ) 32:1 (2020), with Rebekka Luther

“Response to: ‘Was There Ever an Implicit Acceptance of Male Homosexual Intercourse in Leviticus 18?’ by George M. Hollenback,” Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft (ZAW) 131:4 (2019)

“The Secret History of Leviticus,” The New York Times (2018)

“Revealing Nakedness and Concealing Homosexual Intercourse: Legal and Lexical Evolution in Leviticus 18,” Hebrew Bible and Ancient Israel (HeBAI) 6:4 (2017)

“Darius II Delays the Festival of Matzot in 418 BCE,” TheTorah.com: A Historical and Contextual Approach (2017)

“KENATH,” Encyclopedia of the Bible and Its Reception (EBR) 15, De Gruyter (2016 [online], 2017 [print])

“KENAZ, BROTHER OF CALEB,” Encyclopedia of the Bible and Its Reception (EBR) 15, De Gruyter (2016 [online], 2017 [print])

“KENAZ, SON OF ELAH,” Encyclopedia of the Bible and Its Reception (EBR) 15, De Gruyter (2016 [online], 2017 [print])

“KENAZ, SON OF ELIPHAZ,” Encyclopedia of the Bible and Its Reception (EBR) 15, De Gruyter (2016 [online], 2017 [print]) 

“Man of the Land: Unearthing the Original Noah,” Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft (ZAW) 128:3 (2016): 357–373

“The Guilt of the Slanderer and the Sotah: Between Certainty and Uncertainty,” TheTorah.com: A Historical and Contextual Approach (2015)

"Computerized Source Criticism of Biblical Texts," Journal of Biblical Literature 134:2 (2015), with Moshe Koppel, Navot Akiva, and Nachum Dershowitz

“Flowing with Fat and (Bee) Honey,” Vetus Testamentum (VT) 64:4 (2014)

“Unsupervised Decomposition of a Document into Authorial Components,” Proceedings of the 49th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (2011): 1356–1364, with Moshe Koppel, Navot Akiva, and Nachum Dershowitz.

“A Land Flowing with Fat and Honey,” Vetus Testamentum (VT) 60:2 (2010): 172–176