Christopher A. Rollston

Born in Michigan, Dr. Christopher Rollston is Professor of Northwest Semitic Languages and Literatures at George Washington University (Dept. of Classical and Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations). He earned his MA and Ph.D. from The Johns Hopkins University in Hebrew Bible, Dead Sea Scrolls, ancient Northwest Semitic Languages and Literatures, and Second Temple Jewish Literature.

Professor Rollston works in around a dozen ancient languages and dialects, including Hebrew, Aramaic, Phoenician, Ugaritic, Akkadian, Sahidic Coptic, Hellenistic Greek and Classical Latin. Among his research and writing foci are Scribal Education in Ancient Israel, Writing and Literacy in Ancient Israel, Wisdom Literature in the Ancient Near East, Kingship in the Hebrew Bible and the Ancient Near East, Prophetic Texts of the First Temple Period, Inscriptions from the First and Second Temple Period, New Testament & and Early Christianity, and the Rise of Islam. Rollston is a member of Phi Beta Kappa (Johns Hopkins University).

He has served as an Epigraphic Consultant for National Geographic (Washington, DC). Several years ago, he testified in Jerusalem in the Israeli Epigraphic Forgery Trial, as an expert witness for the prosecution. The National Endowment for the Humanities, the Society of Biblical Literature, and the American Schools of Oriental Research have funded his research.

Rollston has lectured widely in venues such as Yale University, the University of Helsinki, Hebrew University (Israel), Vanderbilt University, Brown University, Tel Aviv University, Catholic University of America, the University of Michigan, Duke University, Emory University, and DePaul University School of Law. He has conducted research and excavated throughout the Middle East, particularly Israel, Jordan,Lebanon, and Syria.

Rollston's new volume is entitled "Enemies and Friends of the State: Ancient Prophecy in Context" (Penn State University Press, Eisenbrauns imprint, 2018). Rollston's earlier monograph "Writing and Literacy in Ancient Israel" was selected (2011) by the American Schools of Oriental Research for the prestigious "Frank Moore Cross Prize" as the most substantial volume in the field of Northwest Semitic Epigraphy. Previously, Rollston edited a New Testament volume entitled "The Gospels according to Michael Goulder: A North American Response."

He has a forthcoming monograph entitled "Forging History in the Ancient World of the Bible & the Modern World of Biblical Studies" (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishers). And he is beginning research for a monograph on "Royal Assassination in the Hebrew Bible and the Ancient Near East."

Dr. Rollston is the co-editor (with Dr. Eric H. Cline) of the Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, the editor of Maarav, and a member of the Council of the Society of Biblical Literature. He has published more than one hundred articles and reviews in a number of academic venues, including the Journal of Biblical Literature, Journal of the American Oriental Society, Near Eastern Archaeology, Israel Exploration Journal, the Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, and the journal Tel Aviv. He has also published in the Huffington Post and Archaeology Magazine. Some of his recent articles have been on the 'Isaiah' Bulla, the Early History of the Devil (ha-satan), the Qeiyafa Ostracon, the Tel Zayit Abecedary, Pejorative Personal Names in Ancient Texts, and the Talpiyot ("Jesus Family") Tombs.

He has taught at the undergraduate, master's, and Ph.D. levels, across the canonical corpus of the Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament Apocrypha, and the Greek New Testament. After completing his Ph.D., Rollston held two consecutive post-doctoral fellowships at the Johns Hopkins University, Department of Near Eastern Studies, and for about a decade, he was the Toyozo Nakarai Professor of Old Testament and Semitic Languages at Emmanuel. In the past, he has also held Visiting Professorships at Tel Aviv University and George Washington University.

Beyond the classroom, Dr. Rollston enjoys foreign travel, antique furniture restoration, African art, Indian art, swimming, and bicycling.