Professor Rollston was educated as an historian and philologist of the ancient Near East, with the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament), Northwest Semitic epigraphy, textual criticism, Syro-Palestinian archaeology, the Old Testament Apocrypha, and the Dead Sea Scrolls as his strongest emphases. He works in more than a dozen ancient and modern languages, especially the biblical languages (Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek), as well as Ugaritic, Phoenician, Akkadian, Ammonite, and Moabite. He was a full-time faculty member in the Dept. of Near Eastern Studies at Johns Hopkins University for two years (as a Post-Doctoral Fellow of Northwest Semitic), where students consistently noted his strong teaching abilities. He is currently the Toyozo Nakarai Professor of Old Testament and Semitic Studies at Emmanuel School of Religion, a graduate seminary of the Stone-Campbell Movement. Dr. Rollston is a member of Phi Beta Kappa. He has conducted research at museums and collections in the Middle East (including Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria), Europe, and North America. He has participated as a staff member in archaeological excavations at Tell Umm el-Marra (Syria) and Tel Megiddo (Israel). His research has received funding from several organizations, especially the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Society of Biblical Literature and the Dorot Foundation.
Dr. Rollston is
active in the academic guilds of biblical and ancient Near
Eastern studies. He presents papers on a regular basis at
meetings of the Society of Biblical Literature and the American
Schools of Oriental Research. He has delivered lectures at
various institutions, including Vanderbilt University, Columbia
University, the University of Tennessee, and the University of
Judaism. He was invited to participate in, and fully funded for,
Princeton’s Symposium on the “Talpiyot Tomb” in January 2008
(Jerusalem, Israel). He has also been invited to participate in,
and fully funded for, Duke University’s symposium entitled
“Archaeology, Politics, and the Media” to be held in April 2009. He is the co-chair of the “Ancient Inscriptions”
session of the American Schools of Oriental Research (with
Annalisa Azzoni of Vanderbilt University) and he is the chair of
the “Palaeography Session” of the Society of Biblical
Literature. Dr. Rollston is a member of the American Schools of
Oriental Research “Committee on Publications.” He is the editor
of MAARAV, a specialized
journal publishing articles in the field of Northwest Semitic
languages and literature. He served as the guest editor for two
recent sequential issues of the Bulletin of the American Schools
of Oriental Research, namely
BASOR
344 (2006) and BASOR 345 (2007), both of which were devoted to
the subject of epigraphy. He holds membership in several learned
societies, including, the
Society of
Biblical Literature, the
Catholic Biblical Association, the
American Schools of Oriental
Research, and
Israel
Exploration Society. During January of 2007 Rollston
testified as a Palaeographic Expert in Israel as part of the
Epigraphic Forgery Trial (this was done at the behest of the
District Attorney of Jerusalem). |
Dr.
Ramsaran
Contact the Dean’s Office at Emmanuel: DeanOffice@esr.edu or (423)461-1520
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