Biography
Aaron Koller is a Bye-Fellow at Gonville & Caius and an associated researcher at the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies. He is professor of Near Eastern Studies at Yeshiva University, where he studies Semitic languages. He is the author of Unbinding Isaac: The Significance of the Akedah for Modern Jewish Thought (JPS/University of Nebraska Press, 2020) and Esther in Ancient Jewish Thought (Cambridge University Press, 2014), among other books, and the editor of five more. Aaron has previously served as a visiting professor at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and held research fellowships at the Albright Institute for Archaeological Research and the Hartman Institute.
Research
Historical linguistics; Semitics; writing systems; Middle East
Publications
“The Linguistic Revolution of the Alphabet, and Implications for Ancient Hebrew Scribal Training,” in Biblical and Rabbinic Hebrew: New Perspectives in Philology and Linguistics (ed. Aaron D. Hornkohl and Geoffrey Khan; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021), 1-27.
“The Diffusion of the Alphabet in the Second Millennium BCE: On the Movements of Scribal Ideas from Egypt to the Levant, Mesopotamia, and Yemen,” Journal of Ancient Egyptian Interconnections 20 (2018), 1-14.
“Hebrew and Aramaic in Contact,” in A Companion to Ancient Near Eastern Languages (ed. Rebecca Hasselbach-Andee; Blackwell, 2020), 439-455.
“לבוא ולהיכנס: Synchronic and Diachronic Aspects of the Semantics of ‘Coming’ and ‘Going’ in Ancient Hebrew,” Lešonénu 75 (2013), 149-164 [Hebrew].
Books Authored
The Ancient Hebrew Semantic Field of Cutting Tools: A Philological, Archaeological, and Semantic Study (Catholic Biblical Quarterly Monograph Series 49; Washington, DC: Catholic Biblical Association of America, 2012).
Esther in Ancient Jewish Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014).
Unbinding Isaac: The Significance of the Akedah for Modern Jewish Thought (Lincoln: Jewish Publication Society and University of Nebraska Press, 2020).
Aramaic texts from Qumran (co-authored with Moshe J. Bernstein and Edward Cook; under contract with the Society of Biblical Literature for publication in the series Writings from the Ancient World).
Books Edited
Talmuda de-Eretz Israel: Archaeology and the Rabbis in Late Antique Palestine (ed. Steven Fine and Aaron Koller; Studia Judaica 73; Berlin: De Gruyter, 2014).
Moshe Bar-Asher, Studies in Classical Hebrew (trans. and ed. Aaron Koller; Studia Judaica 71; Berlin: De Gruyter, 2013).
Studies in Mishnaic Hebrew and Related Dialects: Proceedings of the Yale Symposium, May 2014 (ed. Elitzur Bar-Asher Siegal and Aaron Koller; The Hebrew University of Jerusalem in collaboration with The Program in Judaic Studies, Yale University, 2017).
Iran and Israel: From Cyrus the Great to the Islamic Republic (with Daniel Tsadik; YU Center for Israel Studies; Eugene, Oregon: Wipf and Stock, 2019).
Semitic, Biblical, and Jewish Studies: Festschrift for Richard Steiner (with Mordechai Z. Cohen and Adina Moshavi; Jerusalem and New York: Bialik and Yeshiva University Press, 2020).
Articles in Peer-Reviewed Journals
“Sex or power? The crime of the single girl in Deuteronomy 22,” Zeitschrift für altorientalische und biblische Rechtsgeschichte 16 (2010), 279-296.
“Diachronic change and synchronic readings: Midrashim on stative verbs and participles,” Journal of Semitic Studies 57 (2012), 265-294.
“The Exile of Kish: Syntax and History in Esther 2:5-6,” Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 37 (2012), 45-56.
“Ancient Hebrew מעצד and Gezer עצד,” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 72 (2013), 179-193.
“On Texts, Contexts, and Countertexts: Review of Jacob L. Wright, David, King of Israel, and Caleb in Biblical Memory,” Prooftexts 35 (2015 [actually published 2017]), 328-344.
“Pornography or theology? The legal background, psychological reality, and theological import of Ezekiel 16,” Catholic Biblical Quarterly 79 (2017), 402-421.
“The Self-Referential Coda in the Mishnah and the Egyptian-Israelite Literary Tradition of Wisdom,” Journal of Ancient Judaism 8 (2017), 2-25.
Articles in Edited Volumes
“The kos in the Levant: Thoughts on its distribution, function, and spread from the Late Bronze through to the Iron Age II,” in The Ancient Near East in the 12th-10th Centuries BCE, Culture and History (ed. Gershon Galil, Ayelet Gilboa, Aren M. Maeir, and Dan’el Kahn; Alter Orient und Altes Testament 392; Münster: Ugarit-Verlag, 2012), 269-290.
“The Aramaic texts and Hebrew and Aramaic languages at Qumran: the North American contributions” (co-authored with Moshe J. Bernstein) in The Dead Sea Scrolls in Scholarly Perspective: A History of Its Research (ed. Devorah Dimant with the assistance of Ingo Kottsieper; STDJ 99; Leiden: Brill, 2012), 155-195.
“What can be learned from ‘taggin’? On Persian words for ‘crown’ in Jewish Aramaic,” in Shoshanat Yaakov: Ancient Jewish and Iranian Studies in Honor of Professor Yaakov Elman (ed. Shai Secunda and Steven Fine; Leiden: Brill, 2012), 237-245.
“Negotiating empire: Jewish life and Jewish theology under the Achaemenids,” in Iran and Israel: From Cyrus the Great to the Islamic Republic (ed. Daniel Tsadik and Aaron Koller; YU Center for Israel Studies; Eugene, Oregon: Wipf and Stock, 2019), 3-23.
“Tree and Wood, Polysemy and Vagueness: Detangling the branches of the Hebrew word עץ,” in Semitic, Biblical, and Jewish Studies: Festschrift for Richard Steiner (ed. Mordechai Z. Cohen, Aaron Koller, and Adina Moshavi; Bialik and Yeshiva University Press, 2020), 164*-181*.
“Richard Steiner: An Appreciation” (with Adina Moshavi and Mordechai Z. Cohen), in Semitic, Biblical, and Jewish Studies: Festschrift for Richard Steiner (ed. Mordechai Z. Cohen, Aaron Koller, and Adina Moshavi; Bialik and Yeshiva University Press, 2020), 7*-14*.
“Thrones and Crowns: on the Regalia of the West Semitic Monarchy,” in The Throne in Art and Archaeology from the Dawn of the Ancient Near East until the Late Medieval Period (ed. Liat Naeh and Dana Brostowsky Gilboa; Vienna: Institute for Oriental and European Archaeology of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, 2020), 123-134.
“Aramaic of the Jewish Targumim,” in Textual History of the Bible (ed. Armin Lange with Emanuel Tov, Matthias Henze, and Russell Fuller; Leiden: Brill, forthcoming, 2022?).
“Reconstructing the Jewish Aramaic Library of the Persian Period,” in a Festschrift (2022).
“Reptiles, Insects, and other Creepy Crawly Things: Folk Categories and the Ancient Hebrew Lexeme שרץ,” in a Festschrift (2022?).
“Textualization and Oralization in Early Near Eastern and Aegean Writing,” in Textualization (ed. Rachel Zelnick-Abramo, Margalit Finkelberg, and Donna Shalev; Leiden: Brill, forthcoming).
“Early Rabbinic Aramaic: Dialects and Manuscripts,” forthcoming in a Festschrift.
“The Akedah in a Different Voice,” forthcoming in a Festschrift.
“Further Contributions to the History of Alphabetical Order,” forthcoming in a Festschrift.
