Professor Jeffrey H. Tigay's recently published commentary on Deuteronomy is a milestone in the long, distinguished history of University of Pennsylvania Hebrew Bible scholarship as well as in American Jewish scholarship. It is also a testament to the unusual collection of materials that Penn can offer to its Bible scholars.

"Tigay is a leading figure among scholars of the Hebrew Bible in the context of the Ancient Near East," said David Noel Freedman, professor of Hebrew Biblical Studies at the University of California-San Diego and editor-in-chief of Doubleday's Anchor Bible series. "With the new Deuteronomy commentary, he claims an honored place among eminent and distinguished practitioners of this fine art associated with the University of Pennsylvania."

Penn scholars have written commentaries on 9 of the 24 books of the Hebrew Bible, including Tigay's "Deuteronomy," which came out in June and is the fifth and final volume of the "Jewish Publication Society Torah Commentary."

"The new commentary on Deuteronomy is undoubtedly the best one-volume commentary in English (and maybe in any language) now available to the reader, and will continue to hold that place for years to come," Freedman said.

Tigay, who is Ellis Professor of Hebrew and Semitic Languages and Literatures and Chairman of the Jewish Studies Program at Penn, has written extensively on Deuteronomy.

"It is the most reflective and intellectual book of the Torah," he said. "It not only teaches monotheism and prohibits idolatry, but explains the reasons for these teachings and demands and demonstrates the truth behind them.

"It is the source of the idea that a sacred book should be at the heart of religion (an idea now shared by Judaism, Christianity, and Islam), and that the entire populace, not just the clergy or an elite class, should be schooled in that book.

"It is the most passionate book of the Torah and introduces that emotion into the relationship between God and Israel by speaking of their mutual love. It teaches a less anthropomorphic conception of God than do the earlier books of the Torah and it seeks to spiritualize religion by freeing it from excessive dependence on sacrifice and priesthood.

"It is also the book that most fully develops the Torah's humanitarian concern for the poor and disadvantaged -- debtors, indentured servants, escaped slaves, resident foreigners, orphans, widows, animals, and even criminals."

Tigay's commentary -- and that of the other Penn Hebrew Bible scholars -- benefited from access to an enormous wealth of materials at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology.

"One of the special features of the Pennsylvania tradition has been the investigation and application of extensive Akkadian and Assyro-Babylonian materials to the biblical texts," Freedman said, "and in this respect Tigay has demonstrated his unsurpassed mastery of the subject matter and his equal skill in analyzing and interpreting the biblical text."

Tigay depended on the scholars as well as the artifacts at the University Museum to help him with his understanding of the biblical texts.

"The materials referred to by Freedman are written on stone and clay tablets, and are found in several museums throughout the world," said Tigay. "Our museum has one of the largest collections.

"Since most of what I used has been previously published (such as an ancient Sumerian law book), I wouldn't have had to come to the museum to use it. But my presence at Penn has made it much easier for me to consult with colleagues in the museum about the interpretation of these texts and to ask them for references about various topics."

Tigay noted that Penn's museum also has what may be the largest collection of archaeological artifacts from ancient Israel outside of Israel itself, and being here made it easier for him to study them. For example, at one point in writing the commentary, in order to understand one of the laws in Deuteronomy, Tigay needed to know how much each of the two pieces of ancient millstone sets weighed; though several descriptions and pictures of millstones have been published, nobody had ever published their weight. So the museum staff weighed the millstone sets in the museum's collection for him.

Tigay also pointed out that although Egyptological materials are not quite as important as Assyro-Babylonian ones for writing about most books of the Bible, they were often valuable to him, as was access to Penn's Egyptologists and Assyriologists from the department of Asian and Middle Eastern studies.

In 1995, The University gave Tigay its Lindback Award for distinguished teaching. A graduate of Columbia University with a B.A. in History, he holds a Master of Hebrew Literature degree from the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, where he was also ordained as a rabbi in 1968. He received his Ph.D. in Near Eastern Languages and Literatures from Yale University in 1971.

The other Penn scholars who are part of the tradition of Hebrew Bible scholarship are Morris Jastrow Jr., who taught at Penn in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and wrote commentaries on the Song of Songs, Job and Ecclesiastes; James A. Montgomery, who taught here in the first several decades of the 20th century and wrote commentaries on Daniel and Kings; E.A. Speiser, who taught here from the '20s into the '60s and wrote the commentary on Genesis in Doubleday's Anchor Bible series; and Moshe Greenberg, who trained here in the '40s and '50s, stayed on to teach through the '60s, and wrote a commentary on Exodus and, in the Anchor Bible series, on Ezekiel.

"Without meaning to sound 'boosterish,' there is probably no place in the world that combines as broad a constellation of experts and as large a collection of ancient texts and artifacts that are valuable for Biblical scholarship as there are at Penn," Tigay said. "This helps to explain why so many commentaries have been written here."

Those interested in purchasing the Deuteronomy commentary and/or the other four volumes, should call the Jewish Publication Society at 800-234-3151.

Return to Compass Features for October 1, 1996