Carol A. Newsom
Charles Howard Candler Professor Emerita of Old Testament
Degrees
PhD, Harvard University, 1982
MTS, Harvard Divinity School, 1975
AB, Birmingham-Southern College, 1971
Dr. Carol A. Newsom is the Charles Howard Candler Professor Emerita of Old Testament at Candler. Newsom came to Candler in 1980, only the second woman to hold a tenure-track position. In 2005, she became a C.H. Candler Professor, a university-based endowed chair.
Newsom’s research focuses on the Dead Sea Scrolls, the biblical wisdom tradition, the book of Daniel, and apocalyptic literature. She has written and edited 13 books and scores of articles, book chapters, translations, encyclopedia articles and reviews. She co-edited the acclaimed Women’s Bible Commentary (Westminster John Knox, 3rd ed., 2012), now in its third edition, which explores the implications of and challenges long-held assumptions about the Bible’s portrayal of women and other marginalized groups.
Newsom holds honorary doctoral degrees from the University of Copenhagen, Birmingham-Southern College, and Virginia Theological Seminary in recognition of her academic work, most notably her scholarship in Old Testament theology and her innovative work in transcribing, translating and providing commentary on the Dead Sea Scrolls.
She has received several prestigious research fellowships, including grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Henry Luce Foundation, and has won several awards for excellence in teaching and mentoring, including Emory University’s highest award for teaching, the Emory Williams Distinguished Teaching Award.
A frequent lecturer, Newsom also sits on multiple editorial boards. She served as president of the Society of Biblical Literature and is currently serving on the Early Judaism and Its Literature Series editorial board. She is also an honorary member of the British Society for Old Testament Study. She was the director of Emory’s Graduate Division of Religion from 2012-14. In 2016, Newsom was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She also served as a member of the Emory University Presidential Search Committee during the 2015-2016 year.
BOOKS
Rhetoric and Hermeneutics: Approaches to Text, Tradition and Social Construction in Biblical and Second Temple Literature: Selected Essays, Mohr Siebeck, 2019
Translator, 1QHodayota with Incorporation of 1QHodayotb and 4QHodayota-f. Clarendon Press, 2009
Co-editor, The New Oxford Annotated Bible. Oxford University Press, 2018
Daniel: A Commentary. Westminster John Knox Press, 2014
Co-editor, The Women’s Bible Commentary: Twentieth Anniversary Edition. Westminster John Knox Press, 2012
The Self as Symbolic Space: Constructing Identity and Community at Qumran. Brill, 2004
The Book of Job: A Contest of Moral Imaginations. Oxford University Press, 2003
Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice: A Critical Edition. Scholars Press, 1985
CHAPTERS AND ARTICLES
“Evil in the Hebrew Bible: The Case of the Wisdom Literature,” in Evil, Oxford University Press, 2019
“Predeterminism and Moral Agency in the Hodayot,” in The Religious Worldviews Reflected in the Dead Sea Scrolls: Proceedings of the Fourteenth International Symposium of the Orion Center for the Study of the Dead Sea Scrolls and Associated Literature: Studies on the Texts of the Desert of Judah, vol. 127, Brill, 2018
“Jigsaw Puzzles, Paper Doll Chains…and Computers: Material Reconstruction of the Dead Sea Scrolls.” The Bulletin, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, May 01, 2017
“‘Resistance is Futile!’: The Ironies of Danielic Resistance to Empire.” Interpretation: A Journal of Bible and Theology, Sage, March 29, 2017
“Job.” New Interpreter’s Bible, Vol. IV, Abingdon Press, 1996
Fellow, American Academy of Arts and Sciences
Fellow, Fox Center for Humanistic Inquiry, 2010-2011
Luce Faculty Fellowship, 2010-2011
Emory Williams Distinguished Teaching Award, Emory University
Woolford B. Baker Service Award, Michael C. Carlos Museum, Emory University
Society of Biblical Literature Outstanding Service in Mentoring Award
National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship, 2002-2003
American Theological Association Fellowship, 1994-1995
Emory University Research Committee Award, 1994-1995
American Council of Learned Societies Research Fellowship, 1988-1989