A podcast from The Other Matthew Miller
Every week the Jewish world reads the same parsha. Every week, one guest who spent years — a whole dissertation — on it.
Premieres with Parshat Breishit בראשית · Oct 10, 2026
One parsha, one dissertation, every week. Follows the Israel reading calendar.
The Image of God in the Garden of Eden
Catherine L. McDowell · Harvard University, 2009
What 'image and likeness' meant to people who made cult statues
Babel's Tower Translated: Genesis 11 and Ancient Jewish Interpretation
Phillip Michael Sherman · Emory University, 2008
The Tower of Babel and every way ancient Jews retold it
Sign of the Covenant: Circumcision in the Priestly Tradition
David A. Bernat · Brandeis University, 2002
Brit milah and the covenant of Genesis 17
Bound by the Bible: Jews, Christians and the Sacrifice of Isaac
Edward Kessler · University of Cambridge (PhD)
The Akedah read by rabbis and church fathers, side by side
Bible and Midrash: The Story of 'The Wooing of Rebekah' (Gen 24)
Lieve M. Teugels · KU Leuven, 1994
Rebecca at the well, in the Torah and in the Midrash
Edom, Israel's Brother and Antagonist
Bert Dicou, 1994
Esau becomes Edom: the brother who became the enemy
The Epic of the Patriarch: The Jacob Cycle and the Narrative Traditions of Canaan and Israel
Ronald S. Hendel · Harvard University, 1985
Jacob's ladder and the epic roots of the Jacob stories
The Narrative of Rape in Genesis 34: Interpreting Dinah's Silence
Caroline Blyth · University of Edinburgh, 2008
Giving Dinah her voice back
Judah and Tamar (Genesis 38) in Ancient Jewish Exegesis
Esther Marie Menn · University of Chicago, 1995
Tamar, Judah and the Midrash
Conversion in Joseph and Aseneth
Randall D. Chesnutt · Duke University, 1986
Who was Asenat, Joseph's Egyptian wife? (Gen 41:45)
The Figure of Joseph in Post-Biblical Jewish Literature
Maren R. Niehoff · University of Oxford, 1989
Joseph in Philo, Josephus and Bereshit Rabbah
Genesis 49 in its Literary and Historical Context
Raymond de Hoop · Theological University Kampen, 1998
Jacob's deathbed blessings, tribe by tribe
Let the Daughters Live! The Literary Architecture of Exodus 1–2
Jopie Siebert-Hommes · University of Amsterdam, 1993
The midwives, Yocheved, Miriam and Pharaoh's daughter
I Appeared as El Shaddai: Exploring the Mountain Motif as an Element for the Equation Between Yahweh and El Shaddai
Aleksander Krogevoll · University of St. Michael's College, University of Toronto, 2022
'I appeared as El Shaddai': the God of the patriarchs and the God of the Exodus
PhD, Bar-Ilan (1978); author of Pesach Dorot and the JPS Commentary on the Haggadah
Joseph Tabory · Bar-Ilan University, 1978
How the Pesach of Egypt became the Seder
The Song of the Sea: The Date of Composition and Influence of Exodus 15:1–21
Brian D. Russell · Union Theological Seminary & PSCE, Richmond
Az yashir: how old is the Song of the Sea?
Der Dekalog als Verfassung des Gottesvolkes (The Decalogue as the Constitution of God's People)
Dominik Markl, SJ, 2007
The Ten Commandments as Israel's constitution
Rewriting the Torah: Literary Revision in Deuteronomy and the Holiness Legislation
Jeffrey Stackert · Brandeis University, 2006
How later Torah laws rewrote Mishpatim
'He Kept the Measurements in His Memory as a Treasure': The Role of the Tabernacle Text in Religious Experience
Amy Cooper Robertson · Emory University, 2010
Why the Torah gives us the Mishkan's measurements twice
The Urim and Thummim: A Means of Revelation in Ancient Israel
Cornelis Van Dam · Theological University Kampen, 1986
What were the Urim and Tumim?
Sin at Sinai: Early Judaism Encounters Exodus 32
Pekka Lindqvist · Åbo Akademi University, 2008
The Golden Calf and how Jewish tradition handled Aaron
The Sabbath in the Pentateuch: An Exegetical and Theological Study
Mathilde Frey · Andrews University
'Do not kindle fire on Shabbat' and the Sabbath across the Torah
Dissertation to be announced
The 'Grammar' of Sacrifice
Naphtali S. Meshel · Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2009
The korbanot as a language with its own grammar
Studien zur Bedeutung der Opfer im Alten Testament (blood and burning rites)
Christian A. Eberhart
What the burning of the olah actually meant
Food and Identity in Early Rabbinic Judaism
Jordan D. Rosenblum
Kashrut and who we are
Purity, Body, and Self in Early Rabbinic Literature
Mira Balberg · Stanford University
Tzara'at in the Mishnah: the body as text
Menstrual Purity: Rabbinic and Christian Reconstructions of Biblical Gender
Charlotte Elisheva Fonrobert · Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley
Niddah from Vayikra 15 to the Talmud
The Impact of Yom Kippur on Early Christianity
Daniel Stökl Ben Ezra · Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2002
The scapegoat, the High Priest and Yom Kippur's long shadow
The Love of Neighbour in Ancient Judaism: The Reception of Leviticus 19:18
Kengo Akiyama · University of Edinburgh, 2015
V'ahavta l'rei'acha kamocha — before Hillel and Akiva
Head of All Years: Astronomy and Calendars at Qumran
Jonathan Ben-Dov · Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2005
The moadim and the calendar wars of Second Temple Judaism
The Jubilee from Leviticus to Qumran
John S. Bergsma · University of Notre Dame, 2004
Shmita, yovel and the dream of release
A Purposeful Process of Paternal Punishment: Leviticus 26 as Read in Chronicles, Jubilees, the Words of the Luminaries and the Damascus Document
Zachary Levine · New York University, 2018
The tochacha of Bechukotai as a road map to teshuvah
Dissertation to be announced
The ritual of the suspected adulteress (Sotah) in Tannaic literature
Ishay Rosen-Zvi · Tel Aviv University, 2004
The Sotah ritual that the rabbis invented
Denying Her Voice: The Figure of Miriam in Ancient Jewish Literature
Hanna Tervanotko · University of Helsinki / University of Vienna, 2013
Miriam, Moses and the Cushite woman
Dissertation to be announced
PhD thesis on divine destruction narratives in the Hebrew Bible and Mesopotamia (incl. Korah)
Jonathan Woods · University of St Andrews
When the earth opened its mouth
The Archaeology of Purity (ritual purity in Eretz Israel, 164 BCE–400 CE)
Yonatan Adler · Bar-Ilan University, 2011
Red heifer, corpse impurity and what archaeology shows people actually did
The Balaam Text from Deir 'Alla
Jo Ann Hackett · Harvard University, 1980
Bilam outside the Torah: the Deir 'Alla inscription
Sacred Slaughter: The Discourse of Priestly Violence as Refracted Through the Zeal of Phinehas
Yonatan S. Miller · Harvard University, 2015
Pinchas's zeal and the priesthood of peace
Vows in the Old Testament and the Ancient Near East
Tony W. Cartledge · Duke University, 1989
Nedarim: what a vow meant, and who could annul it (Num 30)
Homicide in the Biblical World
Pamela Barmash · Harvard University
The arei miklat: cities of refuge
Dissertation to be announced
Deuteronomy and the Meaning of 'Monotheism'
Nathan MacDonald · Durham University, 2001
What does Shema Yisrael actually claim?
Tangled Up in Text: Tefillin in the Graeco-Roman World
Yehudah B. Cohn · University of Oxford (DPhil), 2007
Tefillin (Devarim 11:18) and the ancient world
Deuteronomy and the Hermeneutics of Legal Innovation
Bernard M. Levinson · Brandeis University
One place of worship: how Devarim reinvented the law
The King as Exemplar: Deuteronomy's Kingship Law and the Psalms
Jamie A. Grant
The law of the king and the ideal king
The View of Women Found in the Deuteronomic Family Laws
Carolyn Pressler · Princeton Theological Seminary, 1991
Women in the family laws of Ki Teitzei
Deuteronomium 28 und die adê zur Thronfolgeregelung Asarhaddons
Hans Ulrich Steymans · University of Vienna, 1995
The tochacha and an Assyrian loyalty oath
Dissertation to be announced
The Book within the Book: Writing in Deuteronomy
Jean-Pierre Sonnet, SJ · Indiana University, 1996
Moses writes the Torah: the book inside the book
The Provenance of Deuteronomy 32
Paul Sanders · Theological University Kampen, 1996
How old is Ha'azinu?
Dissertation to be announced
Featured dissertations are subject to change as guests are confirmed.
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