Julia Rhyder is a specialist of the Hebrew Bible, with a particular interest in ritual texts and the history of the Israelite cult. She combines detailed philological analysis and the methods of historical criticism with the use of anthropological and social theories to illuminate the biblical text, including ritual theory, memory studies, postcolonial theory, and discourse analysis.

Rhyder’s first book, Centralizing the Cult: The Holiness Legislation in Leviticus 17–26 (Mohr Siebeck, 2019), was awarded the 2021 Manfred Lautenschlaeger Award for Theological Promise. She has since co-edited several volumes, including Text and Ritual in the Pentateuch: A Systematic and Comparative Approach (Penn State University Press, 2021) and Authorship and the Hebrew Bible (Mohr Siebeck, 2022). In 2021, Julia Rhyder was honored with the David Noel Freedman Award for Excellence and Creativity in Hebrew Bible Scholarship.

Rhyder is currently working on a monograph that explores key texts of the Hebrew Bible and broader Second Temple writings that describe festivals that commemorate warfare. She is also authoring a commentary on the biblical book of Amos.

Website: https://scholar.harvard.edu/juliarhyder

Publications can be found at academia.edu.

Research Interests:

• ritual texts of the Hebrew Bible and Second Temple traditions
• ancient Syro-Palestinian history, especially the history of the ancient Israelite cult
• the compositional history of the Pentateuch, especially the Priestly traditions
• comparative readings of the Hebrew Bible
• biblical law
• warfare and memory
• reception history
• postcolonialism