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Richard Friedman

Professor Emeritus

Katzin Professor of Jewish Civilization

Hebrew and Comparative Literature

Hebrew Bible; Near Eastern Languages and Literatures

Richard Elliott Friedman is the Ann & Jay Davis Professor of Jewish Studies at the University of Georgia. He received his doctorate from Harvard in Hebrew Bible. He was a Visiting Fellow at Cambridge and Oxford; and a Senior Fellow of the American Schools of Oriental Research in Jerusalem. He participated in the City of David Project archaeological excavations of biblical Jerusalem. His books have been translated into Hebrew, German, Italian, Spanish, Japanese, French, Dutch, Czech, Polish, Portuguese, Turkish, Korean, and Hungarian. He teaches, writes, and lectures on the Hebrew Bible, the languages and civilizations of the ancient Near East, and comparative religion and culture. He works in Akkadian, Aramaic, Greek, Hebrew, Latin, Phoenician, Ugaritic, French, and German. He has been interviewed on CNN (Larry King), NPR ("All Things Considered," "Morning Edition" "Radio Times") and other radio and television networks. Articles, reviews, and treatments of his work have appeared in the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, U.S. News & World Report, Newsweek, Time, Commentary, The Atlantic Monthly, Iowa Review, The Forward, Moment, The Jerusalem Post, Maariv, and Haaretz, and other print media. He has been a consultant for television and film (Dreamworks, NBC, A&E, NOVA, ARTE, PBS).

Publications

  • A Festschrift was published in his honor: Sacred History, Sacred Literature: Essays on Ancient Israel, the Bible, and Religion in Honor of R. E. Friedman on His 60th Birthday, Edited by Shawna Dolansky (Eisenbrauns, 2008).

  • The Bible with Sources Revealed. San Francisco: HarperCollins, 2004.

  • The Hidden Book in the Bible. San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1998; London: Profile, 1999; Poland: Da Capo, 2000; Hungary: Gold Book, 2002.

  • Le-David Maskil, co-editor. Biblical and Judaic Studies from the University of California, San Diego; (Indiana: Eisenbrauns, 2002).

  • Commentary on the Torah. San Francisco: HarperCollins, 2001.

  • The Hidden Face of God (paperback edition of The Disappearance of God). San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1997.

  • The Disappearance of God. Boston and New York: Little, Brown, 1995; Brazil: Imago; The Netherlands: Ten Have; Japan: Shoeisha; Tel Aviv: Zmora Bitan; Prague: Argo.

  • Who Wrote the Bible? First edition. New York: Summit/Simon and Schuster, 1987; Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall; London: Cape/Random House UK; New York:  Harper & Row; Vienna: Zsolnay; Barcelona: Martinez Roca; Turin: Bollati  Boringhieri; Japan: Kai Sei Sha; Germany: Gustav Lübbe Verlag, 1991; Tel Aviv:  Zmora Bitan/Dvir, 1995; Germany: Anaconda, 2007. Second edition. San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1996; Paris: Editions Exergue, 1998; Istanbul: Kabalci, 2005.

  • The Future of Biblical Studies: The Hebrew Scriptures (co-editor). Semeia Studies. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1987.

  • The Poet and the Historian (editor). Harvard Semitic Studies. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1983.

  • The Creation of Sacred Literature (editor). Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981.

  • The Exile and Biblical Narrative. Harvard Semitic Monographs. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1981.

  • Ph.D., Harvard University