Peter Machinist#
| Membership Number: | 5872 |
| Membership type: | FOREIGN |
| Section: | PHILOSOPHY, THEOLOGY & RELIGIOUS STUDIES |
| Elected: | 2021 |
| Main Country of Residence: | UNITED STATES |
| Homepage(s): |
Present and Previous Positions
- 1991 - present Hancock Professor of Hebrew and Other Oriental Languages in the Dept. of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, Harvard University, and a member of the faculty of the Harvard Divinity School. (1992 - 2016)
- Visiting Professor, Pontifical Biblical Institute, Rome, Italy, fall, 2018
- Faculty, Advanced Seminar in the Humanities on Literature and Culture in the Ancient Mediterranean, Venice International University and the University of Venice, Venice, Italy, fall, 2016, spring, 2018, and spring, 2019
- 2013 - 2014 Gastprofessor, Münchner Zentrum für Antike Welten, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Germany
- Spring, 2003 Lady Davis Visiting Professor of Biblical History, Depts. of Jewish History and Bible
- 1986 - 1990 University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
- 1977 - 1986 University of Arizona, Tucson
- 1971 - 1977 Case Western Reserve University
- 1970 - 1971 Yale University Divinity School
- 1969 Connecticut College
Fields of Scholarship
- Interconnections in ancient Near Eastern history
- Ancient Mesopotamian studies
- Biblical studies (especially Hebrew Bible) and ancient Syro-Palestinian history
- Hebrew, Akkadian, and other ancient Semitic languages
Honours and Awards
- Received A.B. from Harvard University summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa (Senior Sixteen)
- 1966 - 1971 Woodrow Wilson Fellowship (1966-67) and Danforth Graduate Fellowship for graduate study
- 1981 Lady Davis Post-Doctoral Fellow, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
- 1984 - 1985 Fellow, Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin (Germany)
- 1984 Co-winner of first Biblical Archaeology Society Award for Most Significant Article on the Bible and Archaeology (for “Assyria and Its Image in the First Isaiah”)
- April, 1995 Haskell Lectures, Oberlin College on “Politics as Literature: The Impact of Ideology in Ancient Israel and Mesopotamia.”
- 2008 - 2009 Victor and Sylvia Blank Fellow and Visiting Scholar, Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies, Oxford University (Great Britain)
- April, 2009 Doctor honoris causa, Theologische Fakultät, Universität Zürich, Switzerland
- Festschrift: Literature as Politics, Politics as Literature. Essays on the Ancient Near East in Honor of Peter Machinist, edited by David S. Vanderhooft and Abraham Winitzer (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2013), xxii + 562 pages
