Ronald S. Hendel at BAR and Bio***

Bible Scholarship Scholars
tomgaston

This post contains a bio of Hendel and links to his many articles published at BAR where he serves on BAR’s Editorial Advisory Board. He is particularly helpful for historical-critical questions about the development of biblical traditions

Ronald S. Hendel is a prominent American Hebrew Bible scholar, biblical philologist, and textual critic, best known for his work on Genesis, ancient Hebrew, the textual history of the Hebrew Bible, and the relationship between biblical literature and the cultures of the ancient Near East.

He is Norma and Sam Dabby Professor Emeritus of Hebrew Bible and Jewish Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, where he taught from 1999 until his retirement. His Ph.D. is from Harvard University (1985) in Biblical History and Northwest Semitic Philology.

What kind of scholar is he?

Hendel is firmly within the critical/historical academic study of the Bible rather than confessional biblical scholarship. His approach combines several disciplines:

  • Textual criticism — reconstructing the history of the biblical text and assessing variant manuscripts and versions.
  • Hebrew linguistics and philology — examining the development and usage of biblical Hebrew.
  • Comparative mythology — comparing biblical traditions with ancient Near Eastern literature.
  • History of religions — examining biblical religion within its ancient cultural environment.
  • Literary criticism — analyzing the composition and literary development of biblical texts.
  • Cultural memory — studying how traditions about figures such as Abraham and the Exodus functioned as remembered or constructed history.

That combination makes him particularly useful for the kinds of historical-critical questions about the development of biblical traditions you have been asking.

His major areas of contribution

1. Genesis

Genesis is probably the area for which Hendel is best known.

His 1998 The Text of Genesis 1–11: Textual Studies and Critical Edition was an important study of the textual history of the opening chapters of Genesis. One notable feature is his argument for taking the Septuagint seriously as evidence for an earlier Hebrew textual form, rather than automatically treating differences from the Masoretic Text as merely translator’s alterations. Oxford describes this as a position contrary to much previous scholarship.

More recently, he published:

Ronald Hendel, Genesis 1–11: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (Anchor Yale Bible, 2024).

Yale describes this as the culmination of more than thirty years of his research on Genesis and emphasizes its treatment of textual versions, archaeological and ancient Near Eastern evidence, compositional history, cosmology, literary structure, and the interpretive history of Genesis.

2. The age and development of the Hebrew Bible

His 2018 book with Jan Joosten,

** How Old Is the Hebrew Bible? A Linguistic, Textual, and Historical Study,**

addresses one of the major questions in contemporary Hebrew Bible scholarship: How far back can we date the different literary and linguistic layers of the Hebrew Bible?

Rather than trying to assign one date to “the Hebrew Bible,” Hendel and Joosten examine its oldest and youngest literary layers, using linguistic, textual, and historical evidence.

3. Textual criticism of the Hebrew Bible

This is another particularly important part of his career.

Hendel is the general editor of The Hebrew Bible: A Critical Edition (HBCE), a major scholarly project intended to produce a new critical edition of the Hebrew Bible. The project takes seriously the evidence of the Dead Sea Scrolls, Septuagint, Samaritan Pentateuch, Masoretic Text, and other ancient witnesses.

Links to his work at BAS

Noah and the Genesis Flood – That page contains summaries of the four articles below. PDFs of the articles are in the Christianity/BAS directory in Dropbox.

Articles at BAS Library

The Shapira Scrolls: The Case for Forgery – Hendel believes the Scrolls are forgeries.

The Kitchen Debate – Three Scholars Discuss a Major New Book on History and the Bible by Kenneth A. Kitchen: On the Reliability of the Old Testament

Exodus – PDF is in his directory

Combine the Best from Each Tradition

The Secret Code Hoax

Finding Historical Memories in the Patriarchal Narratives

When God Acts Immorally

When the Sons of God Cavorted with the Daughters of Men – PDF is in his directory

Departments

Parsing the Divine Name

How Old Is the Hebrew Bible?

Biblical Views: Biblical Scholarship at Risk

Biblical Views: The Bible and Religious Violence

Biblical Views: Noah, Enoch and the Flood: The Bible Meets Hollywood

Biblical Views: Critical Biblical Scholarship—What’s the Use?

Biblical Views: The Pharaoh, the Bible and Liberation (Square)

Biblical Views: Farewell to SBL

Biblical Views: Giants at Jericho – PDF is in his directory

Biblical Views: Forgers and Scholars—Unlikely Bedfellows

Biblical Views: Dishing Dirt – PDF is in his directory

Biblical Views: Them Dry Bones

Biblical Views: Is There a Biblical Archaeology?

Genesis and the Cathedrals ***

Dating Creation

Twenty Years That Have Passed – Biblical scholarship has changed drastically and not much at all in the last twenty years.

Amending Marriage

Eve Ate the Apple – Or did she?

The Ten Commandments and the Courthouse – But let’s imagine what it would be like if the decision had gone the other way or, even more imaginatively, if the courts adopted the Ten Commandments as the law of the land. What would life be like in America? 

Was There a Temple in Jerusalem?

The Search for Noah’s Flood

What Difference Does a Century Make?

That Old Time Religion

It Ain’t Necessarily So

The Birth of the Canon

The Empire of David—or Not?

Of Doubt, Gadflies and Minimalists

King David Loves Bathsheba

Of Sacred Leopards and Abominable Pigs

Where Is Mount Sinai?

Teaching Creation in Kansas

Going Around in Circles

Our Bodies, Our Bibles

Getting Back to the Garden of Eden

Restoration Project: The Hebrew Bible

The Law in the Gospel

The Plain Sense of Scripture

Knocking on Heaven’s Gate

Videos

The Exodus and Cultural Memory – The Exodus is a focus of cultural memory in the Hebrew Bible—it recalls how Israel came into being as a people and nation. This presentation argues that this is the function of the Exodus story from the beginning. As the historical and archaeological evidence indicate, the story does not refer to actual events. Rather it is a cultural memory that effected the coalescence of a group of highland villages into a people and nation. How this story arose and why the early Israelites adopted this memory are key questions, which find coherent answers in the relationship between Canaan and the Egyptian Empire during the Late Bronze Age. By fusing historical and fictional memories, the story, in a sense, created the conditions for the birth of Israel as a people.

The Exodus and Cultural Memory – Ancient Israel’s Exodus from Egypt, rather than being a single, momentous event that can be confirmed through archaeology, should be viewed as a deep-seated cultural memory that allowed disparate groups of highland villagers and escaped Canaanite slaves to coalesce into a single people. How this story arose and why the early Israelites adopted this memory are key questions, which find coherent answers in the relationship between Canaan and the Egyptian empire of the Late Bronze Age. By fusing historical and fictional memories, the story created the necessary social context for the birth of Israel as a people.

Book Reviews

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