Emanuel Tov has been intimately involved with the Dead Sea Scrolls for many decades, and from 1991, he was appointed Editor-in-Chief of the Dead Sea Scrolls Publication Project.
23 Facts About Emanuel Tov
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Emanuel Tov was born in Amsterdam, the Netherlands on 15 September 1941, during the Nazi German occupation.
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Emanuel Tov studied at Boerhaaveschool and then at Kohnstamm School, in South Amsterdam.
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At the age of 12, Emanuel Tov started studying Latin and Greek language at the Spinoza Lyceum, where he met his future wife Lika Aa.
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Emanuel Tov spent a year in Israel at Machon L'Madrichei Chutz La'Aretz, studying for leadership in the youth movement Habonim.
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Emanuel Tov sang in the choir and learned to play the flute.
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In October 1961, Emanuel Tov decided to return to Israel to study at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
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Emanuel Tov's dissertation, written under the guidance of Professors Shemaryahu Talmon of the Hebrew University and Frank Moore Cross of Harvard University, was submitted to the Hebrew University in 1973 as "The Septuagint Translation of Jeremiah and Baruch", earned him a PhD from the Hebrew University.
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Emanuel Tov stayed at Institutes for Advanced Studies at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, NIAS, Annenberg in the US, Oxford Centre for Postgraduate Hebrew Studies and the Lichtenberg Kolleg in Germany.
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Emanuel Tov was one of the editors of the Hebrew University Bible Project.
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Emanuel Tov is a member of the editorial board of the journals Dead Sea Discoveries and the Journal of Jewish Studies, and served on the Academic committee of the Magnes Press.
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Emanuel Tov is the co-founder and chairman of the Dead Sea Scrolls Foundation, a Member of the Academic Committee of the Orion Center for the Study of the Dead Sea Scrolls, and Senior Associate Fellow and an Honorary Fellow of the Oxford Centre for Postgraduate Hebrew Studies.
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Emanuel Tov published an electronic edition of all the extra-biblical Qumran scrolls and a six-volume printed edition of the scrolls meant for the general public.
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Emanuel Tov created electronic editions of the Hebrew and Greek Bible.
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Subsequently, the focus of Emanuel Tov's interest moved to the importance of the Septuagint for biblical scholarship, both for textual and literary criticism.
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Emanuel Tov believes that the analysis of early witnesses such as the Septuagint enriches our exegesis and helps us in understanding the last stages of the development of the biblical literature in specific books.
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Emanuel Tov described the socio-religious background of some groups of the Judean Desert scrolls.
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Ten years after Emanuel Tov published this group of documents, he realized that these texts do not reflect a single non-biblical rewritten Pentateuch composition, but a cluster of biblical texts that included many exegetical elements.
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In studies primarily carried out in the 2010s, Emanuel Tov focused on the special textual status of the Torah.
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Emanuel Tov dealt with various aspects of the Qumran scrolls, but his most central publications pertain to the Qumran scribes.
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Since 1986, Emanuel Tov has suggested the division of the Qumran scrolls into two groups distinguished by external features.
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Emanuel Tov believes that the examination of the Bible and Dead Sea Scrolls needs to be aided by computer-assisted research and that therefore databases and computer programs need to be developed.
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Emanuel Tov supervised the electronic encoding of the Leningrad Codex in the 1980s.