Holger Gzella


Holger Gzella is a German Roman Catholic theologian and Semitist.

Education

Gzella was born in Dortmund. He studied Classics, Philosophy, and Ancient history at the University of Oxford from 1993 to 1997, where he became an Ireland and Craven Scholar in Classics. He won, among other awards, the Chancellor’s Prize for Latin Verse Composition, the Gaisford Prize for Greek Prose Composition, and the Chancellor’s Prize for Latin Prose Composition. From 1997 to 1999, he studied Catholic theology and Ancient Near Eastern studies at the University of Münster, followed by biblical and oriental languages at the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome from 1999 to 2002. He was a scholarship holder of the episcopal study foundation Cusanuswerk.

Career and research

From 2003 to 2004, he held the chair of Oriental Philology at the University of Erlangen–Nuremberg. He received his Ph.D. in Old Testament studies in 2001 from the University of Münster, and completed his Habilitation in Semitic studies in 2004 at the University of Heidelberg. Subsequently, he was Professor of Hebrew and Aramaic at the Dutch Leiden University from 2005 to 2019. Since 2019, he has been Professor of Old Testament Theology at the LMU Munich.
Gzella's research focuses on the historical grammar and lexicography of Hebrew and Aramaic, Semitic philology and epigraphy, with an emphasis on the languages of Syria-Palestine, the history of Hebrew and Aramaic from their beginnings to the early Islamic period, international traditions of knowledge in the writings of the Old Testament, the history and culture of the Achaemenid period, Septuagint studies, Qumran studies, multilingualism in antiquity, especially language and cultural contact in the Hellenistic and Roman Near East, and the history of scholarship. For his research on the historical grammar of Hebrew, he was supported from 2022–2024 by the Opus Magnum programme of the Volkswagen Foundation.

Memberships

Publications (selection)

Monographs

Lebenszeit und Ewigkeit. Studien zur Eschatologie und Anthropologie des Septuaginta-Psalters. Berlin 2002, ISBN 3-8257-0286-3. Cosmic Battle and Political Conflict. Studies in Verbal Syntax and Contextual Interpretation of Daniel 8.. Editrice Pontificio Istituto Biblico, Rome 2003, ISBN 978-88-7653-350-1.Tempus, Aspekt und Modalität im Reichsaramäischen.. Harrasowitz, Wiesbaden 2004, ISBN 3-447-05094-2. Google Books preview.A Cultural History of Aramaic. From the Beginnings to the Advent of Islam. Leiden 2015, ISBN 978-90-04-28509-5.
  • * Revised English edition: Aramäisch. Weltsprache des Altertums. Eine Kulturgeschichte von den neuassyrischen Königen bis zur Entstehung des Islams. C.H. Beck, Munich 2023, 2nd revised edition 2025, ISBN 978-3-406-79348-6, review.

Edited volumes

Sprachen aus der Welt des Alten Testaments. Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt 2009, ISBN 978-3-534-21621-5.
  • * Revised English edition: Languages from the World of the Bible. De Gruyter, Berlin 2012, ISBN 978-1-934078-61-7.Aramäisches Wörterbuch.. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 2016, ISBN 978-3-17-013514-7.
  • * English edition: Aramaic Dictionary. William B. Eerdmans, Grand Rapids 2018, ISBN 978-0-8028-7281-4.