Hindy Najman (MA and PhD Harvard, NELC) is the Oriel and Laing Professor of the Interpretation of Holy Scripture and a fellow at Oriel College. She is the director and founder of the Centre for the Study of the Bible in Oriel College. In the University of Oxford, she is a member of the Faculty of Theology and Religion, the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, and member of the Sub-faculty Classics. Prior to her joining the faculty in Oxford, she has held posts at the University of Notre Dame, University of Toronto, and Yale University. Her areas of research are entanglement of Ancient Culture; Reading Practices in Jewish Antiquity; Comparative Philology; Performance; Formation of the Self and the Subject; Collection and Canon; Authority and Author Function; Biblical Figures and Exemplarity; Practices of Pseudepigraphy and Pseudonymous Attribution; Revelation; Diaspora and Exile; Trauma Studies; and Nature and Law.
Her major publications include Losing the Temple and Recovering the Future: An Analysis of 4 Ezra. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014; Past Renewals: Interpretive Authority, Renewed Revelation, and the Quest for Perfection. Supplements to the Journal for the Study of Judaism 53. Leiden: Brill, 2010.; Seconding Sinai: The Development of Mosaic Discourse in Second Temple Judaism. Supplements to the Journal for the Study of Judaism 77. Leiden: Brill, 2003. Reissued in paperback by the Society of Biblical Literature in April 2009. She has published over 50 articles and has edited 18 volumes. She is currently associate editor for the Journal of Biblical Literature; the thematic issues editor for Dead Sea Discoveries and an associate editor for the Journal for the Study of Judaism Supplement Series and on the editorial board for the Journal for the Study of Judaism. She is currently completing a volume for Oxford University Press entitled: Vitality of Scripture: Reading Practices in Ancient Judaism.
Professor Hindy Najman is currently collaborating with Jan Dietrich on a comparative project on paradigms in ancient Judaism and a research seminar in 2024 entitled Metaphysics and Epistemology in the Hebrew Bible.