Emanuel Tov
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Emanuel Tov (Hebrew: עמנואל טוב; born September 1941, Amsterdam) is a Dutch-Israeli Bible scholar and, since 1986, has been a Professor in the Department of the Bible at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He is a respected textual critic and has published widely on the Qumran biblical texts and their history. Appointed to the editorial team working on the Dead Sea scrolls in 1984, in 1990 Tov replaced John Strugnell as the editor-in-chief of the international group of scholars working on the Scrolls.
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[edit] Early life
Tov was born Menne Toff in Amsterdam in 1941, son of Juda Toff (b. 1914, murdered at Ebensee, Mathausen, 16 March 1945) and Toos Toff (b. 1915, murdered at Birkenau, Auschwitz, 29 November 1944). Hidden as a child during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands, he was raised after the war by his aunt and uncle. His childhood experiences strongly influenced his later life, and for many years he avoided academic contacts with Germany.
His interest in the Dead Sea Scrolls began as a 13 year old in the Netherlands, when he bought a book on the Scrolls by Adam van der Woude, with whom he would work fifty years later. On a visit to England a year later he purchased another book on the Scrolls by John Marco Allegro which further fired his enthusiasm for the subject.
After emigrating to Israel in 1961, Tov commenced his academic studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, taking his B.A. degree in Bible and Greek literature in 1964, and his M.A. degree in Bible in 1967. Here his interest in the Scrolls was encouraged by his lecturers, who included Shemaryahu Talmon and Yehezkel Kutscher. Between 1967 and 1969 he studied at the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Literatures at Harvard University, where his studies began to focus on the Dead Sea Scrolls more seriously. In a private tutorial with Frank Moore Cross Tov was allowed to read several unpublished fragments from the Book of Samuel. While at Harvard Tov also studied under Professor John Strugnell, who was later to be appointed as editor-in-chief of the Dead Sea Scrolls Publication Project, and under whom Tov would work on the Scrolls.
Tov was awarded a Ph.D at the Hebrew University in 1973 for his thesis on the Septuagint translation of the Book of Jeremiah.
[edit] Later career
Between 1982 and 1988 Tov gave a series of lectures at Oxford University in the UK on the Septuagint. Between 1989 and 1990, together with Professor M. Weinfeld, he convened a research group on the Dead Sea Scrolls at the Institute for Advanced Studies of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and during 1990-91 he was a Fellow at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Studies. In 2000 he was a Fellow at the Center for Jewish Studies at Harvard University.
In 1990 Tov was given the J. L. Magnes chair in Bible. He also served as a teaching fellow at Harvard University and as a guest professor at the University of Pennsylvania and Dropsie University in Philadelphia. He also lectured at the University of Stellenbosch (South Africa), Sydney University, the Vrije Universiteit (in his native Amsterdam), and Uppsala University.
Also in 1990 the Israel Antiquities Authority and the International Committee publishing the Dead Sea Scrolls appointed Tov as the editor-in-chief of the Dead Sea Scrolls Publication Project. He was in charge of a team of about sixty international academics which was involved in the preparation for publication of the Dead Sea Scrolls in the Discoveries in the Judaean Desert series, published by Oxford University Press. Under Tov's efficient and respected leadership thirty volumes rapidly appeared between 1992 and 2003, including an overall concordance. Professor Tov participated in a news conference announcing the completion of the publication project in November 2001 in New York.
Professor Tov serves on several academic boards and has participated in numerous international conferences. He also organized and co-organized three conferences: the Second International Congress on the Bible and the Computer (Jerusalem, 1988); the Summer Session of the Qumran Research Group, Institute for Advanced Studies, Hebrew University, [1994]; and The Dead Sea Scrolls: Fifty Years After Their Discovery (Jerusalem 1997).
[edit] Select Publications
- A Classified Bibliography of Lexical and Grammatical Studies of the Language of the Septuagint and its Revisions, Emanuel Tov, Academon, Jerusalem 1982.
- Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible, Emanuel Tov, Fortress, 1992; 2e, 2001.
- Companion volume to the Dead Sea Scrolls, microfiche edition Edited by Emanuel Tov, with the collaboration of Stephen J. Pfann. Brill, 1995.
- The Text-critical use of the Septuagint in Biblical Research, Emanuel Tov, Simor, 1997.
- A Concordance to the Septuagint and the other Greek versions of the Old Testament (including the Apocryphal books) Edwin Hatch and Henry A. Redpath, assisted by other scholars. Introductory essay by Robert A. Kraft and Emanuel Tov. Baker Books, 1998.
- The Greek and Hebrew Bible : collected essays on the Septuagint, Emanuel Tov, Brill, 1999.
- The Text from the Judaean Desert: Indices and an Introduction to the Discoveries in the Judaean Desert Series, Emanuel Tov, DJD XXXIX. Oxford: Clarendon, 2002.
- The Bible As Book: The Hebrew Bible and the Judaean Desert Discoveries, Edward D. Herbert and Emanuel Tov (eds.), Oak Knoll Press, 2002.
[edit] References
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