Biblical Studies
Subject: Mosaica: Material Methods of Biblical Redaction
Supervisor: Dr. Shimon Gesundheit
Abstract: In my dissertation, I investigate biblical redaction from a material perspective. What did the editors’ desks look like? How did they go about compiling some of history’s most formative texts? It is often presumed that these works were invariably created by scribes who integrated and supplemented earlier sources. Contrary to the prevailing opinion, I contend that various biblical passages were created through a process of literal “cut and paste.” Proto-biblical papyrus scrolls were disassembled and even dissected into small snippets. These patches and sheets were then spliced and pasted together. Other times, texts were expanded by affixing scraps of old papyrus onto fresh sheets and writing new material in the gaps. That these unusual methods were practiced by biblical editors can be established through a systematic investigation of extant redactional errors, finding surprising support in texts ranging from ancient Egypt to nascent America.
Publications:
- Idan Dershowitz, “MORDECAI, SON OF JAIR (HEBREW BIBLE/OLD TESTAMENT),” Encyclopedia of the Bible and its Reception (EBR) 18, De Gruyter (2017; forthcoming)
- Idan Dershowitz, “NAOMI (HEBREW BIBLE/OLD TESTAMENT),” Encyclopedia of the Bible and its Reception (EBR) 18, De Gruyter (2017; forthcoming)
- Idan Dershowitz, “Revealing Nakedness and Concealing Homosexual Intercourse: Legal and Lexical Evolution in Leviticus 18,” Hebrew Bible and Ancient Israel (HeBAI; forthcoming)
- Idan Dershowitz, “Darius II Delays the Festival of Matzot in 418 BCE,” TheTorah.com: A Historical and Contextual Approach (2017): http://thetorah.com/darius-ii-delays-the-festival-of-matzot-in-418-bce/
- Idan Dershowitz, “KENATH,” Encyclopedia of the Bible and its Reception (EBR) 15, De Gruyter (2016 [online], 2017 [print])
- Idan Dershowitz, “KENAZ, BROTHER OF CALEB,” Encyclopedia of the Bible and its Reception (EBR) 15, De Gruyter (2016 [online], 2017 [print])
- Idan Dershowitz, “KENAZ, SON OF ELAH,” Encyclopedia of the Bible and its Reception (EBR) 15, De Gruyter (2016 [online], 2017 [print])
- Idan Dershowitz, “KENAZ, SON OF ELIPHAZ,” Encyclopedia of the Bible and its Reception (EBR) 15, De Gruyter (2016 [online], 2017 [print])
- Idan Dershowitz, “Man of the Land: Unearthing the Original Noah,” Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft (ZAW) 128:3 (2016), 357–373
- Idan Dershowitz, “The Guilt of the Slanderer and the Sotah: Between Certainty and Uncertainty” TheTorah.com: A Historical and Contextual Approach (2015): http://thetorah.com/the-guilt-of-the-slanderer-and-the-sotah/
- Idan Dershowitz, Moshe Koppel, Navot Akiva, and Nachum Dershowitz, “Computerized Source-Criticism of Biblical Texts,” Journal of Biblical Studies (JBL) 134:2 (2015), 253–271
- Idan Dershowitz, “Flowing with Fat and (Bee) Honey: Evidence from Ancient Egypt,” Vetus Testamentum (VT) 64:4 (2014), 665–667
- Idan Dershowitz, Nachum Dershowitz, Tomer Hasid, and Amnon Ta-Shma, “Orthography and Biblical Criticism,” Proceedings of Digital Humanities (DH 2014), Lausanne, Switzerland, 451–453
- Idan Dershowitz, “Computerized Bible Criticism,” Bible and Interpretation (2011): http://www.bibleinterp.com/articles/der358009.shtml
- Moshe Koppel, Navot Akiva, Idan Dershowitz, and Nachum Dershowitz, “Unsupervised Decomposition of a Document into Authorial Components,” Proceedings of the 49th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (2011), 1356–1364
- Navot Akiva, Idan Dershowitz, and Moshe Koppel,“Exploiting Synonym Choice to Identify Components of a Document” (abstract), Israeli Seminar on Computational Linguistics (2010)
- Idan Dershowitz, “A Land Flowing with Fat and Honey,” Vetus Testamentum (VT) 60:2 (2010), 172–176
- Idan Dershowitz, “Simeon and Levi are Brothers,” Megadim 44 (2006), 25–31 (Hebrew)
Presidential Stipend 2014/15
Rothenstreich Stipend 2015/16