Lester L. Grabbe is a retired American scholar and Emeritus Professor of Hebrew Bible and Early Judaism at the University of Hull, England.
As an historian of ancient Judaism, he has authored several standard treatments. He founded and convenes the European Seminar on Methodology in Israel’s History, and publishes the proceedings in the sub-series European Seminar in Historical Methodology. Before retirement, he established and taught for several years a module, Anti-Semitism and the Holocaust, and another module, Religious Sectarianism in History and the Modern World.
An alumnus of Claremont Graduate University, he was a student of William H. Brownlee and frequent guest on both Viking Radio and Radio Humberside to discuss such topics as: the Ten Commandments, the Jewish festivals, the 4th of July, and Nostradamus and the millennium. Grabbe delivered the 2008 Brownlee Memorial Lecture on the topic: Exit David and Solomon? The Current Debate on the History of Ancient Israel.
At age sixty-five, Grabbe was presented with a Festschrift, a memorial book, by editors Philip Davies and Diana Edelman, containing a collection of thirty essays by his colleagues and friends, offering “reflections on the practice and theory of history writing, on the current controversies and topics of major interest”. The essays show Grabbe’s influence on the field of biblical studies and history.
