Gary Alan Rendsburg was born in Baltimore, Maryland, on February 13, 1954. His parents were both immigrants from Germany: His mother, born in Berlin, had escaped to Manchester in 1939 as part of the Kindertransport program, and had come to the United States in 1947. His father, who had been deported from his native Hamburg to Auschwitz in 1943, later to Theresienstadt and Buchenwald, came to the United States in 1946. The family moved to New Jersey in 1963, and it is there that Gary considers home.
Though he was exposed to Hebrew and the Hebrew Bible in a traditional (Conservative) Hebrew School setting, and he continued learning beyond his Bar Mitzvah, his first passion in school was English literature. In high school he was also a fanatical reader of the New York Times (something he still very much enjoys), and so on the advice of a guidance counselor, he went to college at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (1971–1975), where he majored in both English and Journalism.
At the University of North Carolina, his mentor was the distinguished Chaucer scholar Norman Eliason (1907–1991), whom Gary credits with introducing him to the philological method. While studying Chaucer, Shakespeare, Spencer, Marlowe, and other Middle and Early Modern English authors with Prof. Eliason, Gary recognized that many of the obscure or archaic English words in these texts had cognates in German, a language he knew from his parents (and which he continued to study at university). This sparked a linguistic awakening; an interest in comparative linguistics was added to his love of literature, and the foundations of his later career were laid.
During his college years, he was also able to take courses in Biblical and Jewish Studies both at UNC and at nearby Duke University, where he was influenced especially by Eric Meyers. For a while he harbored aspirations of becoming a Professor of English Literature, but by his senior year he had made the decision to switch to Biblical Studies. Following the advice of Prof. Meyers, he applied to graduate school at New York University, where Cyrus Gordon (1908–2001) had recently joined the faculty.
Gary spent five years at NYU (1975–1980), in the Department of Hebrew Studies, where he absorbed everything that Prof. Gordon had to offer. With Gordon, whom Gary has called “an unsurpassed master of the Hebrew language and a teacher of boundless energy”,1 he studied not only Hebrew language and Hebrew Bible, but also Ugaritic, Aramaic, Egyptian, Akkadian, and more. He inherited Gordon’s deep respect for the previous generation, revering scholars like Max Margolis (1866–1932), James Montgomery (1866–1949), and Flinders Petrie (1853–1942). During his graduate years he also benefitted greatly from frequent meetings with Harry Orlinsky (1908–1992), of nearby Hebrew Union College, from whom he learned much about the Masorah. Later in his career he would find other illustrious mentors, including H.J. Polotsky (1905–1991), Wolf Leslau (1906–2006), Shelomo Morag (1926–1999), Jonas Greenfield (1926–1995), and Joshua Blau (1919–2020), among others, and he loves to recount stories about the great masters of the past.
Curiosity about some non-standard forms found in the Hebrew Bible—first noticed in a graduate seminar on Ecclesiastes—led to his doctoral dissertation, “Evidence for Spoken Hebrew in Biblical Times”, which later became the foundation for his second book, Diglossia in Biblical Hebrew (1990). Gary himself has said that the overarching theme of his career has been the nexus of language and literature, and this is evident already in his dissertation.
Upon graduation in 1980, Gary began teaching at Canisius College, in Buffalo, NY, where he remained until 1986. He proved himself to be a prolific writer even at this early stage of his career. During his six years at Canisius, 18 articles and book chapters appeared, as did a Festschrift for Cyrus Gordon that he co-edited.2 But most noteworthy from this time was the publication of his first book, The Redaction of Genesis (1986), in which Gary applied his background in literary criticism to Genesis. While so many biblical scholars in modern times are concerned with pulling apart the text of the Torah in order to identify the alleged source documents, Gary has always been much more focused on dealing with the canonical text as it has come down to us. His first book outlines the ingenious literary and linguistic structure to be found within Genesis, a topic about which he has subsequently written in numerous other works.
In 1986, Gary accepted a position at Cornell University, though, thanks to a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, he spent the 1986–1987 academic year in Israel, with an affiliation at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. It was there that he realized that many of the atypical grammatical and lexical forms found in the Hebrew Bible occur in stories set in the northern kingdom of Israel, leading him to a new and fruitful area of research. Focused investigation on what he identified as the northern dialect of Biblical Hebrew, which he has also called Israelian Hebrew (borrowing a term coined by H.L. Ginsburg), led to his third book, Linguistic Evidence for the Northern Origin of Selected Psalms (1990), as well as at least 15 focused articles on the subject of Israelian Hebrew between the years of 1988 and 2021, most notably “A Comprehensive Guide to Israelian Hebrew: Grammar and Lexicon” and “Northern Hebrew through Time: From the Song of Deborah to the Mishnah”.3
In addition to the abovementioned book on the northern origin of selected Psalms, his 18 years at Cornell (1986–2004) saw the publication of nearly 100 articles and book chapters, a fourth book (The Bible and the Ancient Near East, co-authored with Cyrus Gordon), and four co-edited volumes in the series Eblaitica: Essays on the Eblaite Archives and Eblaite Language (1987–2002). He also spent time researching and teaching at several other prestigious institutions. In the spring of 1993 he served once again as a Visiting Professor at the Hebrew University, and during the 1996–1997 academic year he held a Fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania’s Center of Advanced Judaic Studies, where he also taught a course on the history of the Hebrew language; Aaron Rubin, one of the editors of this volume, was an undergraduate student in that class. During the 2001–2002 academic year he was Visiting Professor of Jewish Studies at Colgate University; and on five occasions between 1991 and 2003 he taught at Binghamton University, on top of his responsibilities at Cornell. At Cornell he also supervised seven doctoral students, including Scott Noegel (Ph.D. 1995), who contributed to this volume. Another contributor to this volume, Christian Brady, studied with Gary as an undergraduate at Cornell.
In 2004, after an absence of more than three decades, he moved back to his native New Jersey, where he became the inaugural holder of the Blanche and Irving Laurie Professor of Jewish History at Rutgers University. Amazingly, his productivity at Rutgers has only continued to increase. Since 2004 he has published close to 100 articles and book chapters (bring his total to over 200), plus another two books and four co-edited volumes, and another book (a two-volume commentary on 1 Samuel) is currently in press. At Rutgers, he has also advised three M.A. students, including Vincent Beiler, one of the editors of this volume. Gary’s most recent book, How the Bible Is Written, is the culmination of four decades of research and thought. Though the book is rich with linguistic details, the numerous references to classic English literature scattered throughout the book are a wonderful reminder of his literary background.
Looking at his list of publications, one is impressed not only with the sheer volume of scholarly books, articles, book chapters, review essays, and more that Gary has produced over the last 43 years, but also with the scope and breadth of their content (not to mention his marvelous clarity of style). His subjects related to Hebrew and the Hebrew Bible include, among others, literary criticism; linguistic studies of particular Hebrew grammatical or lexical forms; discussions of word-play and other literary devices such as Janus parallelism, alliteration, and code-switching; literary and historical connections between Israel and Egypt; Hebrew and Northwest Semitic epigraphy; the Dead Sea Scrolls; Rabbinic Hebrew; Targum; and medieval Hebrew manuscripts. He has also written numerous articles on Ugaritic, Eblaite, Sabaic (Old South Arabian), and Aramaic, as well as on the decipherment of Linear A. He has contributed articles for numerous handbooks and encyclopedias, including 16 articles for the important Encyclopedia of Hebrew Language and Linguistics (2013), a project for which he was also an associate editor.
In addition to his writing and teaching, Gary has had an exceptionally active career as a lecturer. Besides having lectured at Oxford, Cambridge, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Harvard, UCLA, and more than fifty other universities in the US, Europe, Israel, Japan, and Australia, and besides having delivered dozens of papers at academic conferences, he has also “crossed over” into the public arena. For example, he has given several public lectures at the Smithsonian Institution and the Library of Congress, he has done five lectures for One Day University since 2021, and he has spoken at a great many synagogues and church groups around the country. He has also produced two popular sets of lectures for the Teaching Company’s Great Courses series, one on Genesis (2006) and one on the Dead Sea Scrolls (2010). Several times he has even led adult study tours in Israel, Egypt, and the UK.
It is not surprising, given his early love of English literature, that Gary is an Anglophile. Between 2010 and 2018, he made six research trips (of between one and three months) to the UK, five of which were spent mainly in Oxford. On two of these occasions, while resident at his beloved Yarnton Manor, he had the good fortune to have as a neighbor Malachi Beit-Arié (1937–), perhaps the world’s leading authority on Hebrew manuscripts. From Beit-Arié, who became another senior mentor, and from his many hours spent with the collections at the Bodleian and Cambridge University Libraries, Gary developed a great appreciation for the Hebrew manuscript tradition. Just as he venerates the great academics of the immediately preceding generations, he came to revere the medieval authors and scribes who kept the Hebrew literary tradition alive. This interest in manuscripts led to yet another topic of scholarly research, which has resulted not only in several recent articles, but also to a foray into the area of digital humanities. Between 2013 and 2018, he helped create three websites that focus on digitized manuscripts. The first contains images, transcriptions, and translations, of all the known Hebrew manuscripts of the apocryphal Book of Ben Sira.4 The second website provides images and transcriptions of an important 12th-century manuscript of the Mishnah, which is held by the Jewish Theological Seminary of America.5 The third brings together all known manuscripts—from five different libraries—relating to a remarkable 12th-century convert to Judaism, Johannes of Oppido.6 Among these manuscripts are the earliest known examples of Hebrew prayers set to Gregorian chant, complete with musical notation. There are very few websites like these for Hebrew manuscripts.
We have mentioned Gary’s respect for older generations, but we should also note the great efforts he makes to forge connections with contemporary and younger scholars. Among his published works, we note that he has written with sixteen different co-authors, and worked with another dozen co-editors. The editors of this volume can personally attest to his great talents as a teacher, as well as to the generosity and care he shows as a mentor.
As we write this, in the spring of 2023, Gary is nearing the end of a sabbatical year, during which he spent four months in Israel, a month in Provence, and two months in Rome. This extended journey abroad was preceded by a residence at the Getty Villa in Los Angeles for three months in the spring of 2022 (not to mention three months at the University of Sydney in 2019, his third stint there as a visiting professor since 2004), and will be followed by a month at Yarnton Manor in Oxford in the summer of 2023. During his travels he takes frequent historical and archeological fieldtrips with his wife Melissa, which he often documents with well-annotated photographs in Facebook posts. Somehow, among all of this activity, not to mention all the cycling he loves to do when the weather allows, and the time he spends with his three grown children and five grandchildren, Gary finds the time to teach, lecture, and write at an astonishing pace. In 2022 alone he delivered 32 lectures, wrote six articles and four book reviews, and finished his massive two-volume commentary on 1 Samuel. As he nears the age of 70, Gary shows no signs of slowing down—the opposite, in fact—and we wait impatiently for the scholarship that he will produce in the decades to come.
The 25 authors who have contributed to the present volume each have a personal connection to Gary. Several have been students, several have been co-authors or co-editors, and all are close colleagues. No cohesive volume could cover the breadth of Gary’s scholarship, and so we have limited our scope to Hebrew and the Hebrew literary tradition. We offer this volume as a gesture of our affection, our gratitude, and our great admiration of his scholarship.
Aaron Rubin and Vincent Beiler
Gary A. Rendsburg, Diglossia in Biblical Hebrew (New Haven: American Oriental Society, 1990), p. ix.
Gary Rendsburg, Ruth Adler, Milton Arfa, and Nathan H. Winter, The Bible World: Essays in Honor of Cyrus H. Gordon (New York: Ktav, 1980).
Gary A. Rendsburg, “A Comprehensive Guide to Israelian Hebrew: Grammar and Lexicon,” Orient 38 (2003), pp. 5–35; idem, “Northern Hebrew through Time: From the Song of Deborah to the Mishnah,” in Cynthia L. Miller-Naudé and Ziony Zevit (eds.), Diachrony in Biblical Hebrew (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2012), pp. 339–359. Many more of his articles include some discussion of Israelian Hebrew.