Scholarship and Biography

DAVID WRIGHT, Professor of Bible and Ancient Near East, offers courses on Hebrew Bible; biblical and Near Eastern ritual, law, and history; and Northwest Semitic languages (Aramaic, Ugaritic, Northwest Semitic dialects) as well as courses on comparative Semitic linguistics and Hittite. His research specialties are Near Eastern and biblical ritual and law in comparative perspective. He is author of Inventing God's Law: How the Covenant Code of the Bible Used and Revised the Laws of Hammurabi (Oxford University Press, 2009). Wright is also author of The Disposal of Impurity: Elimination Rites in the Bible and in Hittite and Mesopotamian Literature (Scholars Press, 1987) and Ritual in Narrative: The Dynamics of Feasting, Mourning, and Retaliation Rites in the Ugaritic Tale of Aqhat (Eisenbrauns, 2001). He was also chief editor of Pomegranates and Golden Bells: Studies in Biblical, Jewish and Near Eastern Ritual, Law, and Literature in Honor of Jacob Milgrom (Eisenbrauns, 1995).

Honors

National Resource Fellowship (for Arabic and Hebrew)
United States Department of Education (United States, Washington D.C.) - ED , 1980-1983
Fulbright Scholar Research Award (Israel)
Fulbright Association (United States, Washington D.C.), 1989-1990
Marver and Sheva Bernstein Faculty Fellowship
Brandeis University (United States, Waltham), 1994-1995
Conference session reviewing D. P. Wright, Inventing God's Law, annual meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature, San Francisco, November 21, 2011 (4 reviewers with response)
Society of Biblical Literature (United States, Atlanta) - SBL, 2011
Asher Achinstein Lecturer
Johns Hopkins University (United States, Baltimore) - JHU, March 13, 2013

Organizational Affiliations

Professor Emeritus of Bible and the Ancient Near East, Department of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies, Brandeis University

Education

University of California, Berkeley
Ph.D.
University of California, Berkeley
M.A.
University of Utah
B.A.