Rendsburg

  • Gary A. Rendsburg
  • Rendsburg, Gary A.
  • Distinguished Professor of Jewish Studies and History; Blanche and Irving Laurie Chair in Jewish History
  • Schools: Ph.D., M.A. New York University; B.A., University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
  • Office Address: 12 College Avenue, Bildner Center
  • Phone Number: 848-932-1628
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Online Mini-Course:  "The Bible and History"

Almost three thousand years ago, a small group of ancient Israelite literati wrote the major narrative that spans the biblical books of Genesis through Kings, creating what may be called the world's first history.  The narrative focuses on the people of Israel, but because the history of Israel constantly intersected with the surrounding countries, the Bible gives us a veritable tour of the ancient Near East.  Great powers such as Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, and Persia, and lesser powers such as the Philistines and the Phoenicians, all make an appearance in the Bible's pages.

Professor Gary Rendsburg, the Blanche and Irving Laurie Chair in Jewish History at Rutgers University, presents both the evidence from the Bible and the wealth of archaeological data, with an eye to evaluating these two sources and to determining the manner in which they inform each other. 

The course is brought to you by the Allen and Joan Bildner Center for the Study of Jewish Life at Rutgers University, and is made possible by a generous benefaction from Mr. Gene Hoffman of Short Hills, N.J.

The course uses the Canvas platform, to which you will be directed upon registration. 

Total viewing time is a tad under three hours, simply follow this link in order to register:

The Bible and History with Professor Gary A. Rendsburg 

Map of the Kingdom of Ugarit, c. 1300 B.C.E.

Kudos to my student Noam Aharon (Rutgers, B.A. 2023, Geography, summa cum laude) for producing this excellent map  of the kingdom of Ugarit, c. 1300 B.C.E.

Click to view map

Noam hereby grants permission for the gratis use of the map for non-commercial purposes, though credit should be duly noted.

For commercial use, please contact me (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.) or Noam (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.)

See also this list of bibliographic references

Click here for further details

2023 Ugarit map final thumbnailjpg  Ugaritic Map References thumbnail

 

Recently Published Book (2019)

How the Bible Is Written  (Hendrickson)

HowTheBibleIsWritten Cover thumbnail

Research Interests

  • The literature of the Bible
  • The history of ancient Israel
  • The historical development of the Hebrew language
  • The relationship between ancient Egypt and ancient Israel
  • Dead Sea Scrolls
  • Post-Biblical Judaism
  • Medieval Hebrew manuscripts

Courses Taught

  • Introduction to the Bible I
  • Introduction to the Bible II
  • Introduction to Ancient Judaism
  • Jewish History (Ancient and Medieval)
  • Women in the Bible
  • Biblical Hebrew I
  • Biblical Hebrew II
  • Readings in Biblical Hebrew Prose
  • Readings in Biblical Hebrew Poetry
  • The Dead Sea Scrolls
  • Scroll Down: Classical Jewish Texts, from Parchment to the Internet
  • How Do We Know This (Honors College Interdisciplinary Seminar)
  • Touching History: The World of Medieval Manuscripts
  • Egypt and the Bible
  • How Did the Bible Reach Us
  • The English Bible
  • Jews in the World of Islam
  • Ancient Egypt
  • Hieroglyphic Egyptian
  • Aramaic
  • Ugaritic

Publications:

 

Books Authored

Books Edited

Festschrift in Honor of Gary A. Rendsburg

 

 

Major Interview conducted by John Bergsma (Franciscan University)

Herewith a long (almost three hours) interview conducted by my colleague John Bergsma (St. Paul Center, Franciscan University, Steubenville, Ohio) (Aug 2025) - Watch the video here

Books Authored

  1. The Redaction of Genesis (Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1986) (reprinted, with a new Foreword, 2014).
  2. Diglossia in Ancient Hebrew (American Oriental Series 72; New Haven: American Oriental Society, 1990).
  3. Linguistic Evidence for the Northern Origin of Selected Psalms (Society of Biblical Literature Monograph Series 43; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1990).
  4. The Bible and the Ancient Near East, co-authored with Cyrus H. Gordon (New York: W. W. Norton, 1997).
  5. Israelian Hebrew in the Book of Kings (Occasional Publications of the Department of Near Eastern Studies and the Program of Jewish Studies, Cornell University 5; Bethesda, MD: CDL Press, 2002).
  6. Solomon’s Vineyard: Literary and Linguistic Studies in the Song of Songs, co-authored with Scott B. Noegel (SBL Ancient Israel and Its Literature; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2009 / Leiden: Brill, 2009).
    See book description
  7. How the Bible Is Written (Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson Publishers, 2019). 

Books Edited

  1. Co-Editor, The Bible World: Essays in Honor of Cyrus H. Gordon (New York: Ktav, 1980).
  2. Co-Editor, Eblaitica: Essays on the Ebla Archives and Eblaite Language, Vol. 1 (Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1987).
  3. Co-Editor, Eblaitica: Essays on the Ebla Archives and Eblaite Language, Vol. 2 (Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1990).
  4. Co-Editor, Eblaitica: Essays on the Ebla Archives and Eblaite Language, Vol. 3 (Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1992).
  5. Co-Editor, Eblaitica: Essays on the Ebla Archives and Eblaite Language, Vol. 4 (Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 2002).
  6. Associate Editor, Encyclopedia of Hebrew Language and Linguistics, 4 vols. (Leiden: Brill, 2013)
  7. Co-Editor, “Did I Not Bring Israel Out of Egypt?”: Biblical, Archaeological, and Egyptological Perspectives on the Exodus Narratives (Bulletin for Biblical Research Supplement 13; Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 2016).
  8. Co-Editor, Le-maʿan Ziony: Essays in Honor of Ziony Zevit (Eugene, Ore.: Cascade Books, 2017).
  9. Co-Editor:  James S. Diamond, Scribal Secrets: Extraordinary Texts in the Torah and Their Implications (Eugene, Ore.: Pickwick, 2019).
  10. Sub-Editor, Thanksgiving Hymns and Related Documents (The Princeton Dead Sea Scrolls Project, vol. 5A; Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2022).
  11. Co-Editor, Rethinking the Composition of the Pentateuch (Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 2026).

 

Digital Humanities Projects

  • https://www.bensira.org/ – co-developed with Jacob Binstein, launched December 2013, presents the manuscript tradition of the book of Ben Sira, from Qumran, Masada, and the Cairo Geniza.
  • http://jts-ms-r1622-1.org/ – co-developed with Joshua Blachorsky (with the assistance of Jacob Binstein), launched May 2015, presents the images and transcriptions of JTS MS R1622.1, one of the most important (albeit incomplete) extant Mishna manuscripts.
  • http://johannes-obadiah.org/ – co-developed with Peter Shamah (with the assistance of Jacob Binstein), launched August 2018, presents the documents (all from the Cairo Geniza) relating to the life of Johannes of Oppido = Obadiah the Proselyte, Catholic monk who converted to Judaism in 1102 C.E.

 

TheTorah.com Articles

Links to Other Online Articles

Genesis

The Great Courses

I have had the honor and privilege of producing two courses for The Great Courses program (formerly known as The Teaching Company), located in Chantilly, VA. The first course, "The Book of Genesis," was released in May 2006, while the second course, "The Dead Sea Scrolls," was released in March 2010.

Both courses consist of a series of 24 lectures, and are available in either video (DVD) or audio (CD or download) format.


The Great Courses: Book of Genesis


The Great Courses: Dead Sea Scrolls

The latter course is also available via the Wondrium (formerly Great Courses Plus) streaming service, Access the course here. 

For an article on The Great Courses, which appeared in The New York Times in March 2015, Click here to access the article.

image gordonInterview With Cyrus H. Gordon (1908-2001), conducted in 1998

Interview with Cyrus H. Gordon (1998) at YouTube

During academic year 1997-1998, I had the privilege of serving as Visiting Fellow at the Center for Advanced Judaic Studies (CAJS) at the University of Pennsylvania. The theme for the year was “Text, Artifact, and Image: Revealing Ancient Israelite Religion,” with about twenty scholars in the interrelated fields of biblical studies, ancient Near Eastern studies, and archaeology of the Land of Israel gathered in Philadelphia for fruitful discussion.

See the volume Text, Artifact, and Image: Revealing Ancient Israelite Religion, edited by Gary Beckman and Theodore J. Lewis (Brown Judaic Studies 346; Providence: Brown Judaic Studies, 2006), which emerged from that academic year and from the conference held in April 1998.

In light of Cyrus Gordon’s long and enduring relationship with both Dropsie College (the forerunner of CAJS) and the University of Pennsylvania, I proposed to the Center to invite the grand master to Philadelphia for several days, where he could participate in a seminar, see the new facility, and sit for a two-hour interview. The Center leadership endorsed the proposal, and thus it was that Professor Gordon visited the Center in February 1998.

A little additional background: Cyrus Gordon was born in Philadelphia in 1908, grew up in the city, and received his primary, secondary, and university education there. Gordon earned his B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Pennsylvania (Ph.D., 1930), under the tutelage of Professor James Montgomery. All the while, he took courses at Dropsie College with Professor Max Margolis; and then Gordon returned to Dropsie to serve as Professor of Assyriology and Egyptology during the years 1946-1956. He described all of this in his engaging memoir, A Scholar’s Odyssey (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2000), which won the National Jewish Book Award for that year. Also of interest is his book The Pennsylvania Tradition of Semitics (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1986).

On February 3, 1998, as Professor Gordon approached his 90th birthday, I conducted the interview with him, with all the CAJS fellows and several invited guests present in the room. It is my honor now to make this interview available to a larger audience via YouTube.

A transcription of the complete two-hour interview, created by Peter Shamah, with light annotations by Peter and myself, is available. Click here to access the transcript.. The pdf file includes an Index of Persons Named and an Index of Places Named, and it is fully searchable.

Cyrus Gordon on Game Show To Tell The TruthAnd for something really fun, see here, for when Cyrus Gordon appeared on the game show "To Tell the Truth" in 1974, per the listing here.