Bio
Richard Elliott Friedman earned his doctorate at 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. He is now the Ann and Jay Davis Professor of Jewish Studies at the University of Georgia and is the Katzin Professor of Jewish Civilization Emeritus of the University of California, San Diego.
His books have been translated into Hebrew, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Japanese, Polish, Hungarian, Dutch, Portuguese, Czech, Turkish, Korean, and French. Who Wrote the Bible? has sold over 250,000 copies, was a Book-of-the-Month Club selection, a New York Times Editors’ selection, and was the subject of a three-hour television special. The Disappearance of God (published in paperback as The Hidden Face of God) was named among the “Best Books of 1995” by Publishers Weekly. The Hidden Book in the Bible was named among the “Best Books of 1998” by Publishers Weekly. It was a selection of the Book-of-the-Month Club, History Book Club, Quality Paperbacks Book Club, and Jewish Book Club. His Commentary on the Torah, with his new translation of the Five Books of Moses, was named among Commentary Magazine Best Jewish Books of 2001. His The Bible with Sources Revealed was a National Jewish Book Award Finalist of 2005.
His newest book is The Bible Now, co-authored with Shawna Dolansky and published by Oxford Press. It relates the Bible to the controversial issues of our day: homosexuality, abortion, women’s status, capital punishment, and the earth.
He has also authored sixty-five articles.
He has been interviewed by CNN’s Larry King and on NPR’s “All Things Considered” and “Morning Edition” and “Radio Times” and “Talk of the Nation” by Robert Siegal, Ray Suarez, and Derek McGinty. Articles and citations of his work have appeared in the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, U.S. News & World Report, Time, New York Daily News, Newsweek, Commentary, Commonweal, The Atlantic Monthly, The Forward, Moment, The Jerusalem Post, Maariv, and Haaretz.
He was a consultant for the Dreamworks film “The Prince of Egypt”; for NBC “The Eternal Light”; for A&E, PBS, and “Nova.”
He was an American Council of Learned Societies Fellow. He was elected to membership in The Biblical Colloquium. He was President of the Biblical Colloquium West. He received three awards for Outstanding Teaching at the University of California.
He has lectured at the National Cathedral in Washington, DC. and at Yale; Harvard; Princeton; Cambridge; The Hebrew University, Jerusalem; UCLA; University of California, Berkeley; University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; UNC Asheville; UNC Greensboro; University of Judaism; Ohio State; Cal Tech; University of Miami; University of Nebraska, Omaha; University of Nevada; University of Hartford; Arizona State University; Knox College; McMaster University; Creighton University; Texas A&M University; University of Florida; the American Schools of Oriental Research, Jerusalem; the World Congress of Jewish Studies, Jerusalem; Jewish Theological Seminary; UC Riverside; UC Davis; UC Santa Barbara; UC Santa Cruz; Linfield College; Wright State University; San Diego State University; Siegal College; Society of Biblical Literature; Association for Jewish Studies; Temple University, Philadelphia, Marking the 200th Anniversary of the United States Constitution.
He has given over two hundred lectures at non-academic institutions around the United States.
Languages:
Ancient: Akkadian, Aramaic, Greek, Hebrew, Latin, Phoenician, Ugaritic
Modern: French, German, Hebrew
Curriculum Vitae:
Pdf version