Rendsburg

Lectures, Interviews & Podcasts

Online Video Lectures (April 2020 – during the COVID-19 epidemic)


Haggadah		   The Haggadah through the Ages

Ancient Toileting Practices		   Ancient Toileting Practices

Isaac Newton		   Isaac Newton and the Great Plague of 1665-1666

Maimonides

  Maimonides, Guide for the Perplexed, Copenhagen Manuscript,

  written in Barcelona during the Great Plague of 1348-1349

 

Public Lectures

In general, see my YouTube channel, though see also the links and details below:

  • "Unlikely Heroes: Women as Israel," delivered at Brigham Young University, March 7, 2007.
  • "Light from Egypt on the Exodus Story," delivered at Brigham Young University, March 8, 2007.
  • "Scroll Down: Classical Jewish Texts on the Internet," delivered at the University of Birmingham, October 22, 2012.
  • "Moses the Magician," delivered at the conference "Out of Egypt: Israel's Exodus between Text and Memory, History and Imagination," University of California - San Diego, June 3, 2013 - Click on "Myth and Memory" -- see the third lecture there, with links for the video, handout and the images
  • "Septuagint, Synagogue and Symbiosis: The Jews of Hellenistic Egypt," delivered at Lanier Theological Library (Houston), January 16, 2015
    See seminar program for "January 16, 2015 – Historical and Archaeological Evidence for the Jewish Diaspora After 722 B.C." -- my lecture commences at 2:08:50 and continues through 2:39:40.
    See the pdf version of the PowerPoint presentation.
    Or one can access my lecture, independently of the others at the seminar, via YouTube.
  • "The Dead Sea Scrolls: The Texts and their Significance for Early Judaism and Early Christianity," delivered at Colgate University, February 18, 2015
    See the pdf version of the PowerPoint presentation.
  • "The Psalms as Hymns in the Temple of Jerusalem: At Passover and throughout the Year," delivered on consecutive days at Brigham Young University and Utah State University, March 30-31, 2015, in conjunction with the colloquium on "Passion and Passover: Jesus and the Temple."
  • “Sacred Space in Judaism after the Temple,” at the conference entitled “Sacred Space, Sacred Thread,” University of Southern California, November 2016 – my presentation comprises the first 25 minutes of this YouTube video.
  • “The Future of American Jewish Bible Translation,” my 30-minute contribution to the panel discussion included in the one-day symposium, sponsored by the Jewish Publication Society of America, and held at the National Museum of American Jewish History, on April 30, 2017.  This is an audio file only, with a few images. The pdf file of the handout, which will help you follow along.
  • "Chiasmus in the Book of Genesis," at the "Chiasmus Jubilee Conference," Brigham Young University, August 16, 2017.  My apologies for the unevenness of the PowerPoint images projected on the screen.  They were all perfect in my version, but somehow did not transfer well on the podium computer.  Among other issues, note that the prime symbol does not appear, but rather displays as an empty little box.  For a pdf version of the PowerPoint, click here.  For the handout, click here.
  • “Goodly Treasures New and Old: A Lecture on the Song of Songs,” held at the Library of Congress, October 30, 2017.  For the pdf version of the PowerPoint presentation which accompanied my lecture, click here.  For the handout, a translation of the Song of Songs (produced jointly by Scott Noegel and myself, and included in our co-authored book, Solomon’s Vineyard), click here.  For a transcription of the lecture, click here.
  • "Scroll Down: Classical Jewish Texts, from Parchment to Internet," Allen and Joan Bildner Center for the Study of Jewish Life, Rutgers University, December 4, 2017.  This lecture was not recorded, but a number of people asked me to make the PowerPoint available at my website, which I do so here, in pdf format.  Once you have downloaded the pdf file, in theory, you should be able to click on the embedded links, in order to access the various websites which include descriptions and digital images of the manuscripts (Bible, Dead Sea Scrolls, Ben Sira, Mishna, Talmudim, Targumim, Maimonides, etc.) presented during the lecture. In practice, however, I note that some links do not work in such fashion, so that you will need to copy-and-paste the link into the browser.
  • “From the Depths of Antiquity: An Ancient Torah Scroll Sheet from the Book of Exodus Newly Acquired by the Library of Congress,” lecture at the Library of Congress, May 23, 2018.  For the pdf version of the PowerPoint presentation which accompanied my lecture, click here. For a transcription of the lecture, click here.
  • “The Book of Genesis as a Product of the United Monarchy,” delivered at Lanier Theological Library (Houston), September 14, 2018.  My lecture was part of a larger seminar, “Recent Evidence for Israel's United Kingdom,” with seven speakers on the panel.  The entire program is available here.
  • “Jews in Medieval England,” presented at Congregation Oheb Shalom, South Orange, N.J., February 2018.  For the pdf version of the PowerPoint presentation which accompanied my lecture, click here.
  • “Jews in Arabia,” presented at Congregation Oheb Shalom, South Orange, N.J., January 2019.  For the pdf version of the PowerPoint presentation which accompanied my lecture, click here.
  • " How the Bible Is Written" (audio recording), presented at the Pontificio Istituto Biblico (P.I.B.) = Pontifical Biblical Institute (P.B.I.), Rome, February 2019.  For the pdf version of the handout, by which one can follow the lecture, click here.  For the flyer advertising the lecture, with full details (date, time, place, etc.), click here.

  • Mandelbaum House Lectures, University of Sydney, March-April 2019:

    > "The First Diasporas: Egypt and Babylonia," the 12th Annual Alan Crown Memorial Lecture, presented at Mandelbaum House, University of Sydney, 28 March 2019.  Also available at my Facebook page.  For the pdf version of the PowerPoint presentation, by which one can more easily follow the lecture, click here.

    > “Septuagint, Synagogue, and Symbiosis:  The Jews of Hellenistic Egypt,” 4 April 2019.  Also available at my Facebook page.  For the pdf version of the PowerPoint presentation, by which one can more easily follow the lecture, click here.

    > “The Jews of Arabia,” 7 April 2019.  Unfortunately, this lecture was not recorded.  Nonetheless, for the pdf version of the PowerPoint presentation, click here.

    > “England as the Custodian of the Jewish Past,” 14 April 2019.  Also available at my Facebook page.  For the pdf version of the PowerPoint presentation, by which one can more easily follow the lecture, click here.  For the pdf version of the handout, click here.

  • "How the Bible Is Written," Fellowship for Biblical Studies, Sydney, Australia, held at Moore Theological College, 5 April 2019.  The handout is the same one used at my Pontifical Biblical Institute (Rome) talk (see above), though I covered much less material on this occasion, given the shorter time frame.
  • "How the Bible Is Written: Genesis 29," Tyndale House, Cambridge, 12 July 2019.  For the Hebrew text of Genesis 29, click here.  For my English translation used during the lecture, click here.

  • “Classical Jewish Texts, from Parchment to Internet,” University of Arizona, April 12, 2021, Shaol & Louis Pozez Memorial Lecture (2021).

  • “The Greatest Bible Ever Written: Kennicott no. 1, La Coruña, Spain, 1476," Flint Institute of Arts, July 14, 2021, Sheppy Dog Fund Lecture.

  • “In Search of Ancient Israel: The Historical Roots of the Biblical Narrative,” Siegal Lifelong Learning Program, Case Western Reserve University, August 25, 2021.

  • “England as the Custodian of the Jewish Past” – three-part lecture series for the Orange County Jewish Community Scholar Program (https://occsp.net/, December 2021

    See here for three recordings:

    a.       The Bodleian Library, University of Oxford (Dec 5, 2021)  – link

    b.       The Cairo Geniza, Discovery and Documents (Dec 12, 2021) – link

    c.       The British Library and the John Rylands Library (Dec 19, 2021) – link

  • “The Significance of Ugaritic for the Study of the Bible,” the Sixth Annual Edward Ullendorff Memorial Lecture, delivered at the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies, University of Oxford, February 2022, available here: https://vimeo.com/680384679
  • "The Bible in Our Hands," The Bishop's School, La Jolla, Calif., April 27, 2022.  For the pdf version of the PowerPoint, see here.
  • "The Spread of Phoenician Writing Culture to Ancient Greece," Getty Villa, Los Angeles, May 25, 2022 (made available with kind permission granted by the Getty Museum).  For the pdf version of the PowerPoint, see here.
  • “The Dead Sea Scrolls at 75:  The Texts, Their Contexts, and the Coalescence of Jewish and Christian Scholarship,” Oxford Interfaith Forum (held at Magdalen College, University of Oxford), July 2023) – link
  • "Jews along the Silk Road," David Patterson Lecture, Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies, University of Oxford (held at the Clarendon Institute, University of Oxford), June 5, 2025 - link 
  • "New Light on Judaism and Christianity from the Dead Sea Scrolls," Museum of the Bible (Washington, D.C.), January 25, 2026 - link

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) - link

ON SCRIPT INTERVIEW

Many thanks to my colleagues Mark Janzen (Louisiana College) and Chris McKinney (Gesher Media) for this fine 48-minute podcast interview, on the Exodus narrative in the Bible, posted on July 28, 2021.

https://onscript.study/five-views-on-the-exodus-pt-3-gary-rendsburg/

ISRAEL BIBLE CENTER INTERVIEW

For a long interview, lasting 1 hour and 40 mins., conducted by Isaiah Gruber of the Israel Bible Center, discussing the full range of my teaching, research, and publications, conducted on November 4, 2018, follow the links below.

A description and preview of the interview may be found here:

https://israelbiblecenter.com/roundtable-talks/bible-language-ancient-israel/

For more on the Israel Bible Center, its faculty, its programs, its academic partnerships, and more, go to:  https://israelbiblecenter.com/.

The eight individual links range from 5:35 (the shortest) to 16:53 (the longest):

Many thanks to Isaiah Gruber for his initiative and for conducting the interview, and to the Israel Bible Center for permission to post the interview at my website.

ASOR Podcast

http://asorblog.org/?p=7240

Friends of ASOR Podcast: Gary Rendsburg, “Best of Times, Worst of Times”

posted April 25, 2014

Listen to ASOR’s own Ancient Near East Today editor, Alex Joffe, talk with Prof. Gary Rendsburg (Rutgers University), about the state of biblical archaeology and the study of the humanities.

Foreigncy Podcast

https://www.buzzsprout.com/156019/2795281-israelian-hebrew

This is a lengthy podcast interview (I hour 33 mins), conducted by Alex Sorin of https://foreigncy.us/, regarding my work on Biblical Hebrew dialects, including Israelian Hebrew – though many additional topics are discussed as well.

Between the Lines Podcast

“Between the Lines” podcast, hosted by Simon Eder (London): 

https://jewishquest.org/podcast/between-the-lines-35-behar/

This segment (which runs 33 minutes) allowed me to share with the audience the work of the brilliant scholar Mary Douglas (1921–2007), with special attention to her structural analysis of the book of Leviticus.

https://jewishquest.org/podcast/between-the-lines-48-ekev/

This segment (which runs 22 minutes) allowed me to share with the audience some thoughts about food, agriculture, and the environment in ancient Israel.