Jo Ann Hackett

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Jo Ann Hackett
Born (1949-08-14) August 14, 1949 (age 74)
Louisville, Kentucky, USA
NationalityAmerican
Education

Jo Ann Hackett (born August 14, 1949) is an American scholar of the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) and of Biblical Hebrew and other ancient Northwest Semitic languages such as Phoenician, Punic, and Aramaic.

Contents

Early life and education

Hackett was born in Louisville, Kentucky, and grew up in Jeffersonville, Indiana. She graduated from Jeffersonville High School in 1966. She received her B.A. in Mathematics from DePauw University, 1970; her M.A. in Religious Studies from Indiana University, 1975; and her Ph.D in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations from Harvard University, 1980.

Career

Hackett began her teaching career as an assistant professor of Religious Studies at Occidental College, Los Angeles. She taught at Indiana University, where she received tenure in 1990. The same year, she moved to Harvard University, as Professor of the Practice of Biblical Hebrew and Northwest Semitic Epigraphy and Director of the Program in Biblical Hebrew. She remained at Harvard until 2009, when she became Professor of Biblical Studies in the Department of Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. She retired from teaching in 2018, as Professor Emerita. She has also taught at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and at the Weston School of Theology in Cambridge, MA.

Scholarship

Hackett's first book presented a philological analysis of a long ancient inscription found at the site of Deir ʕAllā in Jordan, an inscription that featured the biblical character Balaam. [1] She also wrote several articles about the inscription, and has written extensively about related ancient Northwest Semitic dialects such as Biblical Hebrew, Phoenician, and Ugaritic, also co-editing a book on Northwest Semitic epigraphy in honor of her Doktorvater, Frank Moore Cross. [2] She is the author of a popular textbook, A Basic Introduction to Biblical Hebrew. [3] Hackett was also among the first scholars to write about the Hebrew Bible from a feminist perspective, with such articles as “In the Days of Jael: Reclaiming the History of Women in Ancient Israel,” [4] “Rehabilitating Hagar: Fragments of an Epic Pattern,” [5] and “Can a Sexist Model Liberate Us?” [6] In addition to many other articles on the Hebrew Bible, she has contributed the introduction and notes to the biblical book of Numbers in the HarperCollins Study Bible, [7] and the introduction and notes to the books of Books of Samuel in the Women's Bible Commentary. [8] She served for many years on the executive council of the Society of Biblical Literature, on the board of the American Schools of Oriental Research, and as an editor of the series Harvard Semitic Studies and of several academic journals.

Honors and awards

In 1996–97, Hackett was the Hugh Pilkington Research Fellow in Biblical Studies at Christ Church, Oxford University. In 2002, she was a Fellow at the Israel Institute for Advanced Studies. In 2006, she received the Everett S. Mendelsohn Excellence in Mentoring Award from Harvard University. [9] She was presented with a Festschrift in 2015, Epigraphy, Philology, and the Hebrew Bible: Methodological Perspectives on Philological and Comparative Study of the Hebrew Bible in Honor of Jo Ann Hackett [10] included contributions from Gary A. Rendsburg and F. W. Dobbs-Allsopp. In 2016 she was inducted into the Johns Hopkins University Society of Scholars. [11]

Related Research Articles

The Canaanite languages, sometimes referred to as Canaanite dialects, are one of three subgroups of the Northwest Semitic languages, the others being Aramaic and Amorite. These closely related languages originate in the Levant and Mesopotamia, and were spoken by the ancient Semitic-speaking peoples of an area encompassing what is today Israel, Jordan, the Sinai Peninsula, Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, as well as some areas of southwestern Turkey (Anatolia), western and southern Iraq (Mesopotamia) and the northwestern corner of Saudi Arabia. The Canaanites are broadly defined to include the Hebrews, Amalekites, Ammonites, Amorites, Edomites, Ekronites, Hyksos, Phoenicians, Moabites and Suteans.

Cyrus Herzl Gordon was an American scholar of Near Eastern cultures and ancient languages.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Deir Alla</span> City in Balqa Governorate, Jordan

Northwest Semitic is a division of the Semitic languages comprising the indigenous languages of the Levant. It emerged from Proto-Semitic in the Early Bronze Age. It is first attested in proper names identified as Amorite in the Middle Bronze Age. The oldest coherent texts are in Ugaritic, dating to the Late Bronze Age, which by the time of the Bronze Age collapse are joined by Old Aramaic, and by the Iron Age by Sutean and the Canaanite languages.

Jimmy Jack McBee Roberts, known as J. J. M. Roberts, is William Henry Green Professor of Old Testament Literature (Emeritus) at Princeton Theological Seminary in Princeton, New Jersey. A member of the Churches of Christ, Roberts attended Abilene Christian University before pursuing doctoral work at Harvard University.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Frank Moore Cross</span> American scholar and academic

Frank Moore Cross Jr. (1921–2012) was the Hancock Professor of Hebrew and Other Oriental Languages Emeritus at Harvard University, notable for his work in the interpretation of the Dead Sea Scrolls, his 1973 magnum opusCanaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic, and his work in Northwest Semitic epigraphy. Many of his essays on the latter topic have since been collected in Leaves from an Epigrapher's Notebook.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Deir Alla Inscription</span>

The Deir 'Alla Inscription, known as KAI 312, was discovered during a 1967 excavation in Deir 'Alla, Jordan. It is currently at the Jordan Archaeological Museum. It is written in a peculiar Northwest Semitic dialect, and has provoked much debate among scholars and had a strong impact on the study of Canaanite and Aramaic inscriptions. The excavation revealed a multiple-chamber structure that had been destroyed by an earthquake during the Persian period, on the wall of which was written a story relating visions of Bal'am, son of Be'or, a "seer of the gods", who may be the same Balaam mentioned in Numbers 22–24 and in other passages of the Bible. The Deir Alla inscription describes Bal'am in a manner which differs from that given in the Book of Numbers. Bal'am's god is associated with the goddess Ashtar, a god named Shgr, and "Shaddayin". It also features the word "Elohin", taken to mean "gods" in the plural rather than the Hebrew deity.

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Richard C. Steiner is a Semitist and a scholar of Northwest Semitic languages, Jewish Studies, and Near Eastern texts. His work has focused on texts from as early as the Egyptian Pyramid texts to as late as medieval biblical interpretation. He is now retired from his position as professor of Semitics at the Bernard Revel Graduate School of Yeshiva University in New York City.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Christopher Rollston</span> American philologist

Prof. Christopher A. Rollston is a scholar of the ancient Near East, specializing in Hebrew Bible, Greek New Testament, Old Testament Apocrypha, Northwest Semitic literature, epigraphy and paleography.

Choon-Leong Seow, known as C. L. Seow, is a distinguished biblical scholar, semitist, epigrapher, and historian of Near Eastern religion, currently as Vanderbilt, Buffington, Cupples Chair in Divinity and Distinguished Professor of Hebrew Bible at Vanderbilt University. An expert in wisdom literature, Seow has written widely in the field of biblical studies.

Michael Patrick O'Connor was an American scholar of the Ancient Near East and a poet. With the field of ANE studies he was a linguist of Semitic languages, with a focus on biblical Hebrew and biblical poetry.

F. W. "Chip" Dobbs-Allsopp is a biblical scholar, epigrapher, and literary theorist. Currently professor of Old Testament, or Hebrew Bible, at Princeton Theological Seminary, he has taught and written extensively on Semitic languages, the origins of alphabetic writing, biblical poetry, poetics, and literary criticism.

Aaron David Rubin is an American linguistics researcher. He is currently the Ann and Jay Davis Professor of Jewish Studies at The University of Georgia. From 2004 to 2023 he was Malvin and Lea Bank Professor of Classics & Ancient Mediterranean Studies, Jewish Studies, and Linguistics at Penn State University. His main area of study is the Semitic language family, focusing on Hebrew, Arabic, Aramaic, and the modern languages of Southern Arabia, especially Mehri and Jibbali. He has also worked extensively on non-Semitic Jewish languages, as well as on Hebrew and Jewish manuscripts. At Penn State, he has taught numerous language courses, as well lecture courses on the Bible, Jewish and Ancient Near Eastern literature, and the history of writing systems. He received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2016.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Canaanite and Aramaic inscriptions</span> Inscriptions in the ancient Canaanite and Aramaic languages

The Canaanite and Aramaic inscriptions, also known as Northwest Semitic inscriptions, are the primary extra-Biblical source for understanding of the society and history of the ancient Phoenicians, Hebrews and Arameans. Semitic inscriptions may occur on stone slabs, pottery ostraca, ornaments, and range from simple names to full texts. The older inscriptions form a Canaanite–Aramaic dialect continuum, exemplified by writings which scholars have struggled to fit into either category, such as the Stele of Zakkur and the Deir Alla Inscription.

Giovanni Garbini was an Italian Orientalist and Semitist. His biblical studies revealed historical omissions and helped scholars to interpret the biblical narrative in the larger context of the history of the ancient Near East. He worked as a university lecturer in the Istituto Universitario Orientale in Naples, at the Scuola Normale in Pisa and finally in Sapienza in Rome until his retirement. He was a member of the Lincean Academy since 1990, and a member of the Leone Caetani foundation for Islamic studies.

Jacqueline Vayntrub is an American scholar of Biblical studies and an associate professor of the Hebrew Bible at Yale Divinity School. Vayntrub earned her MA from Hebrew University of Jerusalem and her PhD from University of Chicago, and before her appointment at Yale, held a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard University and an assistant professorship at Brandeis University. In 2019–2020, she was a fellow at the Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania.

References

  1. ↑ The Balaam Text from Deir Alla (Chico, Calif.: Scholars Press, 1984).
  2. ↑ An Eye for Form: Paleographic Essays in Honor of Frank Moore Cross. Co-editor with Walter Aufrecht (Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 2014).
  3. ↑ A Basic Introduction to Biblical Hebrew (Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson Publishers; 2nd printing, October 2010).
  4. ↑ “In the Days of Jael: Reclaiming the History of Women in Ancient Israel,” Immaculate and Powerful: The Female in Sacred Image and Social Reality, Clarissa Atkinson, Constance Buchanan, and Margaret Miles, ed. (Boston: Beacon, 1985) 15–38;
  5. ↑ “Rehabilitating Hagar: Fragments of an Epic Pattern,” Gender and Difference in Ancient Israel, Peggy Day, ed. (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1989) 12–27
  6. ↑ “Can a Sexist Model Liberate Us? Ancient Near Eastern ‘Fertility’ Goddesses,” Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 5 (1989): 65–76
  7. ↑ The HarperCollins Study Bible: New Revised Standard Version (New York: HarperCollins, 1993).
  8. ↑ "1st and 2nd Samuel," Women’s Bible Commentary (20th-anniversary edition; Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 2012) 150–163.
  9. ↑ "Previous Recipients of the Everett S. Mendelsohn Excellence in Mentoring Award"
  10. ↑ Epigraphy, Philology, and the Hebrew Bible: Methodological Perspectives on Philological and Comparative Study of the Hebrew Bible in Honor of Jo Ann Hackett, edited by Jeremy M. Hutton and Aaron D. Rubin (Atlanta: SBL Press, 2015).
  11. ↑ "Johns Hopkins inducts 16 new members into Society of Scholars" April 12, 2016
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