Jeffrey H. Tigay
Jeffrey H. Tigay is Emeritus Abraham M. Ellis Professor of Hebrew and Semitic Languages and Literatures in the Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. Tigay received a BA in ancient history from Columbia University, a Masters of Hebrew Literature and Rabbinical Ordination from the Jewish Theological Seminary, and a PhD in comparative biblical and ancient Near Eastern Studies from Yale. Tigay is the author or coeditor of numerous books, including The Evolution of the Gilgamesh Epic (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1982; reprinted by Bolchazy-Carducci Publishers, 2002), Empirical Models for Biblical Criticism (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1985), You Shall Have No Other Gods: Israelite Religion in the Light of Hebrew Inscriptions (Harvard Semitic Studies/Scholars Press, 1986), coeditor with Jodah Goldin and Barry L. Eichler of Studies in Midrash and Related Literature (Jewish Publication Society, 1988), The Jewish Publication Society Torah Commentary: Deuteronomy (Jewish Publication Society,1996), and numerous scholarly articles and reviews.
Books by Jeffrey H. Tigay
The Evolution of the Gilgamesh Epic
- 5467
- 978-0-86516-546-5
The Epic of Gilgamesh is one of the world's oldest known epics—it predates Homer by several centuries and is recognized as seminal to the cultural history of the Ancient Near East. Interpretation and decipherment of the story of Gilgamesh—fragmentary and contradictory as its several variants are—has been a monumental scholarly task, spanning more than a century . . . until Jeffrey Tigay teased out the epic's evolution. In this volume, Tigay traces the development of the composition of The Gilgamesh Epic over nearly two millennia and through the several languages in which it has been transmitted. The result is a study both comprehensive in breadth and impressive in methodology. The author breaks from his scholarly predecessors in relying on documented textual evidence rather than on critical analysis and hypotheses.
