Pamela Barmash

Pamela Barmash

Professor of Hebrew Bible and Biblical Hebrew
Professor of Religious Studies (by courtesy)
Director of Undergraduate Studies for Jewish, Islamic, and Middle Eastern Studies​
Study Abroad Advisor for Jewish, Islamic, and Middle Eastern Studies

PhD, Harvard University
research interests:
  • Hebrew Bible
  • Law and Justice
  • History of Law
  • Law and Literature
  • Religions of the Ancient Near East
  • History of Scriptural Interpretation
  • History and Memory
  • Rabbinic Judaism and Contemporary Halakhah (Jewish Law)
  • Linguistic and Literary Development of the Hebrew Language

contact info:

mailing address:

  • MSC 1121-107-113
    Washington University
    One Brookings Drive
    St. Louis, MO 63130-4899

Pamela Barmash has published widely on biblical and ancient Near Eastern law and on history and memory.

Professor Barmash received her B.A. from Yale, rabbinic ordination from the Jewish Theological Seminary, and Ph.D. from Harvard. In her academic scholarship, she addresses issues of law and justice in her book Homicide in the Biblical World (2005, Cambridge University Press) and in her edited volume The Oxford Handbook of Biblical Law (2019, Oxford University Press). In The Laws of Hammurabi: At the Confluence of Royal and Scribal Tradition (2020, Oxford University Press), Dr. Barmash analyzes how the scribe of the Laws of Hammurabi advanced beyond earlier scribes in composing statutes that manifest systematization and implicit legal principles, and inserted the Laws of Hammurabi into the form of a royal inscription, shrewdly reshaping the genre. She also pursues research in history and memory: in Exodus in the Jewish Experience: Echoes and Reverberations (2015, Lexington Books, edited with W. David Nelson), she shows how Jews have transformed the story of the Exodus and the celebration of Passover to meet changing needs and concerns. With Mark W. Hamilton, she has edited In the Shadow of Empire: Israel and Judah in the Long Sixth Century BCE (2021, Society of Biblical Literature Press), a book that highlights how the transition from one empire to another in antiquity influenced how communities remember and imagine themselves. In her rabbinic writing, she is the author of teshuvot (rabbinic responsa) on contemporary issues in Judaism, and she has published an anthology of contemporary responsa, Modern Responsa: An Anthology of Ethical and Ritual Decisions (2024, Jewish Publication Society).


Professor Barmash is writing two books, a volume on Jerusalem in the religious imagination of the Bible and a commentary on Exodus for the commentary series Old Testament Library.

 

Professor Barmash teaches courses at Washington University on modern perspectives on the Bible, law and justice, mythology, the problem of evil, traditional Scriptural interpretation, and biblical and ancient Jewish history, culture, and religion.

Selected Publications

Homicide in the Biblical World (2005, Cambridge University Press)

Exodus in the Jewish Experience: Echoes and Reverberations (2015, Lexington Books, edited with W. David Nelson)

The Oxford Handbook of Biblical Law (2019, Oxford University Press)

The Laws of Hammurabi: At the Confluence of Royal and Scribal Tradition (2020, Oxford University Press)

In the Shadow of Empire: Israel and Judah in the Long Sixth Century BCE (2021, Society of Biblical Literature Press, edited with Mark W. Hamilton)

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The Laws of Hammurabi: At the Confluence of Royal & Scribal Traditions

The Laws of Hammurabi: At the Confluence of Royal & Scribal Traditions

Pamela Barmash

Among the best-known and most esteemed people known from antiquity is the Babylonian king Hammurabi. His fame and reputation are due to the collection of laws written under his patronage. This book offers an innovative interpretation of the Laws of Hammurabi.

Exodus in the Jewish Experience: Echoes and Reverberations

Exodus in the Jewish Experience: Echoes and Reverberations

Pamela Barmash

This volume investigates how the Exodus has been, and continues to be, a crucial source of identity for both Jews and Judaism. It explores how the Exodus has functioned as the primary model from which Jews have created theological meaning and historical self-understanding. It probes how and why the Exodus has continued to be vital to Jews throughout the unfolding of the Jewish experience. As an interdisciplinary work, it incorporates contributions from a range of Jewish Studies scholars in order to explore the Exodus from a variety of vantage points. It addresses such topics as: the Jewish reception of the biblical text of Exodus; the progressive unfolding of the Exodus in the Jewish interpretive tradition; the religious expression of the Exodus as ritual in Judaism; and the Exodus as an ongoing lens of self-understanding for both the State of Israel and contemporary Judaism. The essays are guided by a common goal: to render comprehensible how the re-envisioning of Exodus throughout the unfolding of the Jewish experience has enabled it to function for thousands of years as the central motif for the Jewish people.