Professor of Hebrew Bible and Ancient Judaism

The School congratulates William Tooman on his promotion to Professor of Hebrew Bible and Ancient Judaism.

Prof Tooman’s research focuses on reading and writing practices in Jewish antiquity (to c. 250 ce).  There is no apparent reason to assume that modern and ancient reading and writing are identical. Discovering ancient practices is not straightforward, because modern readers have no access to intuitions from ancient cultures.

Prof Tooman’s research proceeds along two parallel tracks: pursuit of ancient analogues for ancient Jewish reading and writing (from ancient Egypt, ancient Mesopotamia, Classical Greece, and Late Antique Judaism), and inductive inquiry into the nature of the writings they left behind.

See also TEXTURE, a joint Harvard-St Andrews research network (co-principal investigators D. Andrew Teeter and William A. Tooman). It works toward a better comprehension of the full array of literary features that give shape and texture to the documents of ancient Judaism.