Steven Weitzman | Department of Religious Studies

Abraham M. Ellis Professor of Hebrew and Semitic Languages and LiteraturesElla Darivoff Director of the Katz Center of Advanced Judaic Studies, Religious Studies Undergraduate Chair

wsteve@sas.upenn.edu215 746-1290

222 Cohen Hall

Prof. Steven Weitzman specializes in the Hebrew Bible and the origins of Jewish culture. Recent publications include Surviving Sacrilege: Cultural Persistence in Jewish Antiquity (Harvard University Press, 2005); Religion and the Self in Antiquity (Indiana University Press, 2005); The Jews: A History (Prentice Hall, 2009); and a biography of King Solomon, part of the new “Jewish Lives” series, published by Yale University Press in 2011.

Prof. Weitzman received his Ph.D. from Harvard University after completing his B.A. at UC Berkeley, and spent several years teaching in the Department of Religious Studies at Indiana University where he served as director of its Jewish Studies program for six years. He comes to Penn from Stanford University, where he was Daniel E. Koshland Professor of Jewish Culture and Religion and the director of the Taube Center for Jewish Studies.

Office Hours

By appointment

Research Areas

Hebrew Bible
Ancient Judaism

Books

The FBI and Religion
The Federal Bureau of Investigation has had a long and tortuous relationship with religion over almost the entirety of its existence.
The Origin of the Jews
The Jews have one of the longest continuously recorded histories of any people in the world, but what do we actually know about their origins?
Solomon: The Lure of Wisdom
Tradition has it that King Solomon knew everything there was to know—the mysteries of nature, of love, of God himself—but what do we know of him?
The Jews: A History
The Jews: A History is a comprehensive and accessible text that explores the religious, cultural, social, and economic diversity of the Jewish people and their faith.
Surviving Sacrilege: Cultural Persistence in Jewish Antiquity
In a world of relentless and often violent change, what does it take for a culture to survive?
Religion and the Self in Antiquity
Many recent studies have argued that the self is a modern invention, a concept developed in the last three centuries.
Song and Story in Biblical Narrative: The History of a Literary Convention in Ancient Israel
This book examines a literary form within the Bible that has slipped through the cracks of modern scholarship: the mixing of song and story in biblical narrative.