Professor Michael L. Satlow specializes in Early Judaism, with a particular interest in social history.  He has written extensively on issues of gender, sexuality, and marriage among Jews in antiquity.  He also has broader research interests in Jewish history, methodology and theory in religious studies, and Late Antiquity generally.  His latest book is entitled How the Bible Became Holy.

I am now writing a book tentative titled, No One is Immortal: The Spiritual World of Late Antiquity.  I direct Inscriptions of Israel/Palestine, The Rabbinic Citation Network, and Judaic Studies: State of the Field. 

2016-  Funding for Inscriptions of Israel/Palestine from the Goldhirsh-Yellin Foundation

2007-8 Co-recipient (with John Bodel) of Salomon Faculty Research Grant for development of a Center of Digital Epigraphy

2005-6 Recipient of Salomon Faculty Research Grant for work on "Inscriptions from the Land of Israel"

2003-4 Recipient of a Scholarly Technology Group grant for work on "Inscriptions from the Land of Israel"

1998- Corresponding Fellow, Rennert Center for Jerusalem Studies, Bar-Ilan University, Israel

Books

Strength to Strength: Essays in Honor of Shaye J. D. Cohen (editor; Brown Judaic Studies, 2018)

Judaism and the Economy: A Sourcebook (editor; Routledge, 2018)

How the Bible Became Holy (Yale University Press, 2014; also translated in French and Italian)

The Gift in Antiquity (editor; Wiley-Blackwell, 2013)

Creating Judaism: History, Religion, Practice (Columbia University Press, 2006)

Religion and the Self in Antiquity (co-editor; Indiana University Press)

Jewish Marriage in Antiquity (Princeton University Press, 2001)

Tasting the Dish: Rabbinic Rhetorics of Sexuality (Brown Judaic Studies, 1995)

Selected Recent Essays

"Josephus's Knowledge of Scripture," Journal of Ancient Judaism 11 (2020): 385-417

"Ben Sira" (commentary), in Jonathan Klawans and Lawrence Wills, The Jewish Annotated Apocrypha (New York: Oxford University Press, 2020)

“Jewish Time in Early Nineteenth Century America: A Study of Moses Lopez’s Calendar,” American Jewish Archives Journal 65 (2013):1-29

“Jew or Judaean?” in Carolyn Johnson Hodge, Saul M. Olyan, Daniel Ullucci, and Emma Wasserman, eds., “The One Who Sows Bountifully”: Essays in Honor of Stanley K. Stowers (BJS 356; Providence: Brown Judaic Studies, 2013), 165-175

“From Salve to Weapon: Torah Study, Masculinity, and the Babylonian Talmud,” in P. H. Cullum and Katherine J. Lewis, eds., Religious Men and Masculine Identity in the Middle Ages (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2013), pp. 16-27

“Narratives or Sources? Active Learning and the Teaching of Ancient Jewish History and Texts,” Teaching Theology and Religion 15 (2012): 48-60

“Jewish In-Laws, the View from Antiquity,” in C. Badel and C. Settipani, ed., Les strategies familailes dans l‘antiquité tardive (Paris: de Boccard, 2012), 265-277

“Tradition: The Power of Constraint,” in The Cambridge Companion to Religious Studies, edited by Robert Orsi (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011), pp. 130-150

“‘Fruit and the Fruit of Fruit’: Charity and Piety among Jews in Late Antique Palestine,” Jewish Quarterly Review 100 (2010): 244-277

“Two Copies of a Printed Early American Jewish Calendar in Providence,” Rhode Island Jewish Historical Notes 15 (2009): 416-427

“Philo on Human Perfection,” Journal of Theological Studies 59 (2008): 500-519

“Theophrastus’s Jewish Philosophers,” Journal of Jewish Studies 59 (2008): 1-20

“Beyond Influence: Toward a New Historiographic Paradigm,” in Jewish Literatures and Cultures: Context and Intertext, edited by Yaron Eliav and Anita Norwich (Brown Judaic Studies; Providence: Brown University, 2008), pp. 37-53

“Defining Judaism: Accounting for ‘Religions’ in the Study of Religion,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 74:4 (2006): 837-60

1997-98: American Council of Learned Societies Fellowship

2007: John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship

2007: Cogut Faculty Fellowship

2012-13:  Fulbright Senior Scholar

2012-13: Seymour Gitin Distinguished Professorship, W. F. Albright Institute

2020-21:  Cogut Faculty Fellowship

2020-21:  NEH Public Scholars Fellowship

I teach both graduate and undergraduate students in a wide range of topics in early Judaism, Judaism, comparative religions and history, and digital humanities. I am involved directly in graduate advising and training. I also regularly teach adult education classes.