Lester L. Grabbe

Lester Lee Grabbe
Born	(1945-11-05) November 5, 1945
Education	University of Hull
Alma mater	Ambassador College (MA), Claremont Graduate University (PhD)

Lester L. Grabbe (born November 5, 1945) is an American-born scholar of Jewish history and the Hebrew Bible. His main areas of focus have been the history of ancient Israel and the Second Temple period. He serves as professor of religion at the University of Hull, England, teaching on the Hebrew Bible and Early Judaism, although he has since taken emeritus status. He is among the most distinguished and prolific historians of ancient Judaism, and is the author of several standard treatments for both students and scholars of the topic. He founded and convenes the European Seminar on Methodology in Israel's History, and published the proceedings in the sub-series "European Seminar in Historical Methodology" from 1997 to 2018.

Life

Grabbe was born in Texas in 1945. He studied at Ambassador College in Pasadena, a Bible college where he earned his bachelor's and MA. He learned Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic there. He then attended the School of Theology at Claremont Graduate University (CGU), where he earned his PhD, specializing in the Old Testament and expanding into other ancient languages including Ugaritic, Akkadian, and Coptic. At CGU, he was a student of William H. Brownlee. He earned a Doctor of Divinity (DD) at the University of Hull in Kingston upon Hull, UK, and became a professor of religion there where he spent the majority of his career. He took emeritus status at some point in the 2010s.

Grabbe delivered the 2008 Brownlee Memorial Lecture at CGU on the topic Exit David and Solomon? The Current Debate on the History of Ancient Israel. He is a frequent guest on both Viking Radio and BBC Radio Humberside.

A festschrift was published in Grabbe's honor in 2010 for his 65th birthday. Philip Davies and Diana Edelman edited the collection, offering "reflections on the practice and theory of history writing, on the current controversies and topics of major interest". The thirty included essays by his colleagues and friends also attest to Grabbe's influence on the field of biblical studies and history.

Selected works

Grabbe has published a huge number of works, including books, journal articles, and chapters of larger commentaries. He has also served as editor on many scholarly article and essay collections.

Works as author

• (an adaptation of Grabbe's thesis)
• (An edition which combined both volumes was published in 1994.)

Works as an editor

• (Review Archived 2021-04-25 at the Wayback Machine)
• (a posthumous festschrift for Peter R. Ackroyd)

Festschrift

External links

• Lester L. Grabbe's articles on hull.academia.edu
• Works on WorldCat