Jeffrey H. Tigay


Jeffrey Howard Tigay is a modern biblical scholar who is best known for the study of Deuteronomy and in his contributions to the Deuteronomy volume of the JPS Torah Commentary.

Early life and education

Jeffrey H. Tigay was born in Detroit in 1941. Educated at Columbia University and gaining his B.A. in 1963, he continued toward rabbinic ordination at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America.
He earned his Ph.D. in Comparative Biblical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies from Yale University.

Career

Tigay taught in the Jewish Studies program at the University of Pennsylvania from 1971 until his retirement in 2010, and is currently the A.M. Ellis Professor of Hebrew and Semitic Languages and Literatures, Emeritus. His The Evolution of the Gilgamesh Epic summarized earlier scholarship and helped establish the notion that the standard Middle Babylonian "late version" of the epic, was in ways an original work of art itself, rather than a collection of earlier anecdotes.

Works