Jeffrey Cross
216 Pillsbury Dr SE
Minneapolis,
MN
55455
I seek in my research to situate the Dead Sea Scrolls and Second Temple Judaism within their broader Mediterranean and Near Eastern Contexts. My current work is focused on Jewish scribal and compositional practices in the Dead Sea Scrolls, with special attention to integrating literary, compositional, and material approaches to the manuscripts. My first book, provisionally entitled Out of Many, One: Scribal Composition, Rewriting, and Literary Artistry in the Qumran Cave 1 Rule Scroll (1QS-1QSa-1QSb), will offer a new interpretation of the famous Cave 1 Rule Scroll that understands its three constituent texts as a single composite work rather than three distinct compositions.
In the longer term, I am working on a research project that will reevaluate the concept of determinism in the Hebrew Bible and Second Temple texts, where it occurs. Scholars have typically treated determinism in an undifferentiated fashion that assimilates a wide variety of texts (e.g. Daniel, Jubilees, The Community Rule) into a single conceptual framework. In contrast, I problematize determinism as a scholarly category in an effort to demonstrate the creative and highly variegated ways that Jewish authors understood the complex interplay of divine sovereignty and human agency in the world. In service of this goal, I examine the rootedness in post-Reformation scholarship of determinism as a uniform conceptual category, illustrating its historical contingency and anachronistic application to ancient texts. By contextualizing the Jewish texts at issue within the intellectual and cultural history of the eastern Mediterranean, I achieve greater conceptual clarity in analyzing the variety of ancient views that have been obscured by determinism as a modern scholarly construct.
Educational Background
- Ph.D.: Classical and Near Eastern Religions and Cultures, University of Minnesota, 2024
- M.A.: Classical and Near Eastern Studies , University of Minnesota, 2017
- B.A.: University Scholars (Classics concentration), Baylor University, 2014
Specialties
- Second Temple Judaism
- Dead Sea Scrolls
- Deuterocanonical Literature and Jewish Pseudepigrapha
- Hebrew Bible and Biblical Interpretation
- Early Christianity and its Relationship to Judaism
- Intercultural Encounters, Race, and Ethnicity in the Ancient Mediterranean
- Philosophical Discourses of the Ancient Mediterranean
- Scribal Cultures of the Ancient Mediterranean
- Papyrology and Manuscript Studies