BAS and Smithsonian to Cosponsor Lectures by Freedman and Cross Honoring Mitchell Dahood

The Biblical Archaeology Society and the Smithsonian Institution will honor the memory of the well-known Biblical scholar Mitchell Dahood by jointly sponsoring lectures by two of the world’s leading scholars in the field of Biblical archaeology, Frank Moore Cross and David Noel Freedman.

Mitchell Dahood died in 1982, at the height of a distinguished academic career at the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome. During his almost 20 years of teaching in Rome, Dahood became one of the world’s leading specialists in ancient Semitic languages, particularly Hebrew and Ugaritic and, toward the end of his life, in Eblaite, the language of the Ebla tablets. Dahood translated, edited and annotated anew publication of the Psalms for the Anchor Bible (see “Mitchell Dahood—In Memoriam,” BAR 08:03).

It is entirely fitting for Professors Cross and Freedman to honor Dahood in these lectures because they are both leading specialists in the text, language and poetry of the Bible.