I study the Hebrew Bible, its poetics and its history, being particularly interested in narrative. I disentangle texts, techniques, and genres as a material philologist, historian, and literary critic, working with traditional biblical criticism alongside narratology and critical theory. Currently, I am digging inwards into biblical and ancient Jewish scriptures and literatures to shed light on the genesis of the novel, circling at the moment around the book of Esther.
In another direction, I am a comparatist looking outwards, studying literary culture on the margins of the cosmopolitan world of the Persian and Hellenistic Middle East and Eastern Mediterranean, when the Hebrew Bible took a shape we are familiar with. In this way, I explore how Jews brought biblical texts into a flourishing node of world literature. Beyond the Hebrew Bible, I am also a specialist in Demotic and in Late and Graceo-Roman period Egypt.
Inwards and outwards, seeking a center and also moving away from it, at Berkeley you will find me following the eddies in the stream (W. Benjamin) of ancient Middle Eastern literature.
Before coming to Cal in July 2026, I was a researcher on the ERC Advanced Grant project "Demotic Egyptian Papyri and the Formation of the Hebrew Bible" (DEMBIB) at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.
My teaching interests include surveys and literary approaches to the Hebrew Bible, and Ancient Israel/Judea in its Middle Eastern context. I also teach more generally on ancient Middle Eastern and Eastern Mediterranean literature, culture, religion, and magic, and on Ancient Egypt. At Berkeley, I am interested in training graduate students in advanced Biblical Hebrew, Northwest Semitics, and the philology and history of the Hebrew Bible and ancient Jewish literature. More generally, I am looking forward to working with and learning alongside students who seek a strong linguistic, paleographic, and philological grounding in the study of Levantine and Eastern Mediterranean cultures from the Bronze Age to the age of Rome. If any this is of interest to you, please be in touch!
Fall 2026 Office Hours
Please check back in August. You can always email me to set up a time to meet.
Recent Courses
MELC 34 - Hebrew Bible in Translation: Disentangling Scripture, Discovering Literature (Fall 2026)
Select Publications
Ruly Stories, Unruly Plots: A Poetics of Storytelling of the Judean and Demotic Novella (forthcoming with Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis)
The Routledge Handbook of Ancient Egypt and the Hebrew Bible, co-edited with Bernd Schipper and Robert Kade, forthcoming
"The Style of the Opening of the Novella: Beginning a Story in Judean and Egyptian Narrative," forthcoming in Hebrew Bible and Ancient Israel 15:3
"Finding God in Nineveh: Mapping a Motif in Judean and Egyptian Literature," forthcoming in Journal of Near Eastern Studies 25:2
"Esther as Novella," in Helge Bezold and Kristin Joachimsen, eds., Esther: Themes and Issues (2025, Equinox Themes and Issues in Biblical Studies)
"Mouvance and the Art of Fiction in Performance in Manuscripts of a Demotic Novella," Manuscripts and Text Cultures 2:2, pp. 168-200, 2023
Hebrew Bible, ancient Jewish literature, literary approaches to the Hebrew Bible, Demotic, Ancient Egypt and the Hebrew Bible, history of the novel, material philology, literary theory, narratology, poetics, world literature
