James D. Moore is a philologist and social historian of the ancient Near East and ancient Mediterranean. In addition to his OSU post, where he is also affiliated faculty in the department of History, he was Chargé de Conférence at the École Pratique des Hautes Études (2023–2024), and a collaborator on the ERC project SLaVEgents: Enslaved persons in the making of societies and cultures in Western Eurasia and North Africa, 1000 BCE - 300 CE (2023–2028). His is creator and co-director (with Ahmad al-Jallad) of the OSU Digital Lab for Ancient Textual Objects (DLATO; dlato.osu.edu) and project manager on the Online Corpus of the Inscriptions of Ancient North Arabia (OCIANA; ociana.osu.edu). He currently serves on the NESA department’s Graduate Student Committee and is the co-advisor for the Department of Classic’s graduate student major, Classics and Ancient Near Eastern Studies (CANE).

He publishes broadly in ancient Near Eastern studies, has edited hundreds of new Northwest Semitic textual objects (in Aramaic, Phoenician, and Hebrew), written on ancient Hebrew and Aramaic literatures and their Akkadian influences, and publishes frequently on social history and scribal culture. He advocates for the incorporation of digital resources in the study of languages and culture.

He teaches Near Eastern Languages, Hebrew Bible, ancient historical courses, and digital database building.

Professor Moore welcomes graduate student applications related to the philological and social-historical research in which he is engaged, including, the interactions between the Phoenician Mediterranean market economy and the Achaemenid imperial Aramaic administration or interpreting the Hebrew Bible and other Northwest Semitic literatures through the lens of ancient documentary sources. His wider interests include the Dead Sea Scrolls, Syriac, Archaeology, and Comparative Semitics. All his students will also be trained in how to build digital research environments (in SQL). Please email him directly with inquiries about his research.

 

Books

• New Aramaic Papyri from Elephantine in Berlin, Brill 2022.
• Literary Depictions of the Scribal Profession in The Story of Ahiqar and Jeremiah 36, de Gruyter 2021.
• Leviticus according to the Syriac Peshitta Version with English Translation, Gorgias 2015.

 

Recent Articles and Contributions

• “Les papyrus sémitiques et moyen‑perse du cabinet du Corpus inscriptionum semiticarum,” Comptes rendus AIBL (2021/2) (2023): 581–614.
• “Traces of Administrative Reform in the Hebrew and Aramaic Epigraphs of the Al-Yahudu and Related Tablets,” NABU 2023/1: 66–69. 
• “AIBL-CIS de Ricci 2: A New Jewish and Aramaic Religious Text from Egypt Dating between the Early 2nd and Early 4th Centuries ce,” DSD 30 (2023): 1–23. 
• “New Phoenician and Aramaic Labels and Ostraca from Excavations at Syene and Elephantine between 2010–2015,” Semitica 64 (2022): 71–130.
• “The Aramaic and Hebrew Epigraphs on the Tablets in and around Iahūd,” in Judaeans by the Waters of Babylon, 371–382, ISLET 2022.
• “Teaching Digital Editions of the Bible and Ancient Sources: A Reflection,” H2D 3/1 (2021), 
• “'Ahikariana': New Readings of Berlin P. 13446 and Developments in Ahiqar Research,” in Elephantine in Context, 237–264, Mohr Siebeck 2021.
• “Who Gave You a Decree? Anonymity as a Narrative Technique in Ezra 5:3, 9 in Light of Persian Period Decrees and Administrative Sources,” JBL 140 (2021): 69–89.