Jonas C. Greenfield

Who was Jonas C. Greenfield?

Jonas Carl Greenfield was a scholar of Semitic languages, who published in the fields of Semitic Epigraphy, Aramaic Studies and Qumran Studies.

Greenfield studied at Yale, receiving a Master of Arts in 1951 and his doctorate in 1956. He taught at Brandeis University, University of California, Los Angeles, the University of California, Berkeley, and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In 1990 he became Caspar Levias Professor of Ancient Semitic Languages at the Hebrew University.

He was a member of the committee of translators of the Ketuvim for the New JPS Translation of the Tanakh.

In 1995 a festschrift was published in his honor, Solving Riddles and Untying Knots. Biblical, Epigraphic, and Semitic Studies in Honor of Jonas C. Greenfield. In 2000 the American Oriental Society established a prize to honor his memory, the "Jonas C. Greenfield Prize For Younger Semitists". The Orion Center for the Study of the Dead Sea Scrolls and Associated Literature, Hebrew University, Jerusalem, has held the Jonas C. Greenfield Scholars’ Seminar since 1999. Israel Exploration Journal 45 no. 2-3 61-200 was issued as the "Jonas C. Greenfield Memorial Volume."