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HISTORIAN/THEOLOGIAN TO LECTURE ON HOW THE HEBREW BIBLE BECAME WHAT IT IS MAY 7 AT UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGO

The Numbers Game: How the Hebrew Bible Became What It Is is the topic of the Faculty Research Lecture to be given by historian and theologian David Noel Freedman at 4 p.m. May 7 at the University of California, San Diego. The event is free and open to the public.

Freedman, a UCSD professor of history and Judaic Studies and holder of the Endowed Chair in Hebrew Biblical Studies, was selected as the 2001 Faculty Research Lecturer by the San Diego Division of the Academic Senate of the University of California.

Freedman has written and edited more than 300 books. He has edited journals, including The Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, The Biblical Archaeologist, and The Journal of Biblical Literature, and has served as series editor for Doubleday’s Anchor Bible, whose commentaries, monographs, and biblical encyclopedia constitute a foremost reference tool on the Bible.

“His scholarship has always been aimed at both specialist and layman,” according to Freedman’s colleagues, Judaic Studies professors William H. C. Propp and Thomas E. Levy. “In what must be the most over-worked field of human inquiry, Freedman stands apart for his ability to ask new questions … Often controversial, he stands less at the center and more at the fore-front of his field.”

Freedman received a bachelor’s degree from UCLA, a bachelor of theology degree from Princeton Theological Seminary, and a doctorate in Semitic Languages and Literature from Johns Hopkins University. He has been on the UCSD faculty since 1987.

Freedman’s May 7 lecture will be given in Robinson Auditorium of UCSD’s Graduate School of International Relations and Pacific Studies.