John Huddlestun

Associate Professor of Religious Studies

EDUCATION

  • Ph.D. in Biblical (Hebrew Bible) and Near Eastern Studies, University of Michigan
  • M.A. in Biblical and Near Eastern Studies, University of Michigan
  • B.Mus. in Music History/Literature and Performance, The Ohio State University

RESEARCH INTERESTS

  • Ancient Israel and Egypt
  • Historiography and royal ideology in the Hebrew Bible and ancient Near East
  • Identity formation and the other in the Hebrew Bible
  • Method and theory in comparative studies

COURSES TAUGHT

  • RELS 101: Approaches to Religious Studies
  • RELS 117: Premodern History of Religions
  • RELS 120: Religion, Art, and Culture
  • RELS 201: Hebrew Bible: History and Interpretation
  • RELS 202: New Testament: History and Interpretation
  • RELS 225: The Jewish Tradition
  • RELS 210: Theories of Religion
  • RELS 223: Religions of the Ancient Near East
  • RELS 310: Sacred Texts (Creation and Cosmos in the Ancient Middle East)
  • RELS 360: Myth, Ritual, & Symbol
  • RELS 375: History of Religions (Prophecy and Divination in Ancient Near Middle East)
  • RELS 405: Senior Seminar: The Problem of Theodicy (in Hebrew Bible and Ancient Middle East)
  • RELS 450: Senior Seminar: Prophets, Messiahs and Their Followers

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS

  • “Historiography” in Oxford Handbook on Ancient Egypt and the Hebrew Bible, ed. Susan Hollis (in preparation)
  • Ancient Egypt and the Hebrew Bible (book in preparation, under contract with Oxford University Press)
  • “The First Isaiah: A Literary Polymath between Egypt and Assyria?” (chapter in preparation for edited volume)
  • “Ancient Egypt and Israel: History, Culture, and the Biblical Text” in The Blackwell Companion to Ancient Israel, ed. Susan Niditch (Wiley Blackwell, 2016), pp. 47-66.
  • “The Plagues of Egypt” (2020), “Was Moses’ Name Egyptian?” (2016), and “Akhenaten and Monotheism” (2015) -- articles online at Society of Biblical Literature website BibleOdyssey.org
  • “Redactors, Rationalists, and (Bloodied) Rivers: Some Comments on the First Biblical Plague.”  In Literature as Politics, Politics as Literature: Essays on the Ancient Neat East in Honor of Peter Machinist (Eisenbrauns, 2013), pp. 207-221.
  • “Nahum” in The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Books of the Bible, ed. Michael D. Coogan (Oxford, 2011), vol 2, pp. 100-110.
  • “Nahum, Nineveh, and the Nile: The Description of Thebes in Nahum 3:8-9,” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 62.2 (April 2003), pp. 97-110.
  • “Divestiture, Deception, and Demotion: The Garment Motif in Genesis 37-39,” Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 98 (2002), pp. 47-62.
  • “Unveiling the Versions: The Tactics of Tamar in Genesis 38:15,” Journal of the Hebrew Scriptures, vol. 3/article 7 (2001).