Professor Joachim Schaper

Biography

Joachim Schaper studied Theology, Philosophy and Assyriology at Tübingen and Theology at Cambridge. He earned his doctorate with a thesis on Eschatology in the Greek Psalter and proceeded to a Habilitation at Tübingen, devoting his Habilitationsschrift to the history of the priesthood in ancient Israel. He was a Research Fellow at Clare College, University of Cambridge, taught as a Privatdozent in Old Testament at the University of Tübingen from 1999 to 2005 and was, in 2002, awarded a Heisenberg Fellowship by the DFG. In February 2000, he was ordained to the ministry in the Lutheran Church. In 2005 he came to Aberdeen as a Reader in Old Testament, was appointed to a Personal Chair in 2006, and translated to the Chair of Hebrew and Semitic Languages (established in 1673) in 2012. Professor Schaper was the President of the I.O.S.O.T. in the years 2016-2019 and the President of its 23rd congress, held at the University of Aberdeen in August 2019.

His main research interests include Deuteronomy, exilic and post-exilic prophecy, the Psalms, and the Wisdom of Solomon, a commentary on which he is currently preparing for the series Herders Theologischer Kommentar zum Alten Testament. He takes great interest in the Septuagint.

Professor Schaper is a co-editor, with Dr James Carleton Paget, of the New Cambridge History of the Bible, vol. I: From the Beginnings to 600 (one of the CHOICE Outstanding Academic Titles of 2013) and a co-editor of Forschungen zur Religion und Literatur des Alten und Neuen Testaments, founded by Hermann Gunkel and published by V & R. 

Central among his long-term projects are a commentary on the book of Leviticus for the International Critical Commentary series and a history of ancient Israel.