Jacqueline Vayntrub

Jacqueline Vayntrub is an American scholar of Biblical studies and an associate professor of the Hebrew Bible at Yale Divinity School.^[1] Her work addressees biblical poetry and wisdom literature.^[2][3]

Education and career

Vayntrub earned her MA from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and her PhD from University of Chicago, and before her appointment at Yale, held a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard University and an assistant professorship at Brandeis University.^[4] In 2019–2020, she was a fellow at the Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania.^[5]

Vayntrub founded the Philology in Hebrew Studies program unit at the Society of Biblical Literature, and she is a founding member of Renewed Philology.^[6] She has been series editor of The Library of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Studies, the International Critical Commentary, and an editor of the experimental online journal Metatron.^[7]

Beyond Orality

Her 2019 book Beyond Orality: Biblical Poetry on its Own Terms addressed "how the Hebrew Bible holistically theorizes its own textuality."^[8] In a review for Studies in Relgion, Mark Leuchter praised the book as "a masterclass in the metacriticism of the field of biblical studies."^[9]

Andrew Tobolowsky, writing for the Ancient Jew Review, described the book as "a timely and incisive contribution"^[10]

Bibliography

• Beyond Orality: Biblical Poetry on its Own Terms (Routledge, 2019)
• Philology and Gender. Hebrew Bible and Ancient Israel 8/4 (2019). Co-edited with Laura Quick and Ingrid Lilly.
• “Biblical Hebrew šninɔ: a ‘Cautionary Tale’ of Root Identification.” Co-authored with H. H. Hardy II. Vetus Testamentum 64/2 (2014): 279-283.
• “‘Observe due measure’: The Gezer Inscription and Dividing a Trip around the Sun,” 187-203 in Epigraphy, Philology, and the Hebrew Bible: Methodological Perspectives on the Comparative Study of the Hebrew Bible in Honor of Jo Ann Hackett, ed. Jeremy Hutton and Aaron Rubin. Ancient Near Eastern Monographs Series. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2015.
• “The Book of Proverbs and the Idea of Ancient Israelite Education.” Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 128/1 (2016): 96–114. Honorable mention, Luckens International Prize in Jewish Thought and Culture, 2015.
• “‘To take up a parable’: The History of Translating a Biblical Idiom.” Vetus Testamentum 66/4 (2016): 627-645.
• “Before Authorship: Solomon in Prov. 1:1.” Biblical Interpretation 26 (2018): 182–206.
• “Voice and Presence in the Genesis Apocryphon.” A Genius for Mentorship: A Forum in Honor of Ben Wright on his 65th Birthday. Ancient Jew Review, January 2018.
• “Gender and Philology's Uncommon Sense.” Co-authored with Laura Quick and Ingrid Lilly. Hebrew Bible and Ancient Israel 8/4 (2019): 379–387.
• “Like Father, Like Son: Theorizing Transmission in Biblical and Ancient Near Eastern Literature.” Hebrew Bible and Ancient Israel 7/4 (2018): 500–526.
• “The Age of the Bible and Ancient Near East: Intellectual Developments and Highlights,” 30–38 in The Routledge Handbook of Jewish History and Historiography, ed. Dean Phillip Bell (London: Routledge, 2018).
• “Mashal (Proverb),” 1258–1260 in Encyclopedia of Biblical Reception (EBR). Vol. 17: Lotus-Masrekah, ed. Christine Helmer et al. (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2019)
• “Tamar and her Botanical Image.” Journal of Biblical Literature 139/2 (2020): 301–318.
• “Tyre's Glory and Demise: Totalizing Description in Ezekiel 27.” Catholic Bible Quarterly 82/2 (2020): 214–236.
• “Beauty, Wisdom, and Handiwork in Prov 31:10-31.” Harvard Theological Review 113/1 (2020): 45–62.
• “Ecclesiastes and the Problem of Transmission in Biblical Literature,” in Writing and Scribalism: Authors, Audiences, and Texts in Social Perspective, ed. Mark Leuchter. T&T Clark 2020.
• “Proverbs,” 11–29 in Wiley Blackwell Companion to Wisdom Literature, ed. Samuel Adams and Matthew Goff. Wiley-Blackwell, 2020.
• “Wisdom in Transmission: Rethinking Proverbs and Sirach,” in Sirach and its Contexts: The Pursuit of Wisdom and Human Flourishing, ed. Gregory Goering, Matthew Goff, and Samuel Adams. Journal for the Study of Judaism Supplements (Leiden: Brill, 2021).
• “Ancient Hebrew Literature,” in How Literatures Begin, ed. Denis Feeney and Joel Lande. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2021.
• “Advice: Wisdom, Skill, and Success,” in The Oxford Handbook of Wisdom and The Bible, ed. Will Kynes. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021.