Joel Baden

 
 
B.A. Yale University, 1999 (Judaic Studies)
M.A. University of Chicago, 2002 (Northwest Semitics)
Ph.D. Harvard University, 2007 (Hebrew Bible)

Prof. Joel Baden is a specialist in the Pentateuch, Biblical Hebrew, and disability theory in biblical studies.  He is the author of the books J, E, and the Redaction of the Pentateuch (Mohr Siebeck, 2009); The Composition of the Pentateuch: Renewing the Documentary Hypothesis (Yale University Press, 2012); The Promise to the Patriarchs (Oxford University Press, 2013); The Historical David: The Real Life of an Invented Hero (HarperOne, 2013); and the co-editor of the volume The Strata of the Priestly Writings: Contemporary Debate and Future Directions (TVZ, 2009).

Prof. Baden has published numerous articles and essays on individual pentateuchal texts, critical methodology, and Biblical Hebrew in The Journal of Biblical Literature, Vetus Testamentum, Catholic Biblical Quarterly, Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft, Biblica, and Hebrew Studies, as well as in various edited volumes.   Future projects include commentaries on Deuteronomy (IECOT) and Exodus (Anchor).

Quote

The Pentateuch, by its very composite nature, encodes a basic respect for all the different voices that make up a culture, be it the ancient culture from which the text emerged—that is, those who effected this combination and the audience for whom it was intended—or the subsequent cultures of those readers who claim the Pentateuch as a central text of the scriptural canon.  To read the Pentateuch with its composite nature in mind is both to closely identify and understand its individual components and to value the fact that all of those voices are equally fundamental to the final form.

- The Promise to the Patriarchs, 156–57.