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Dr David Shepherd

Professor in Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, Trinity College Senior Lecture and Director, Trinity Centre for Biblical Studies

e: shepherd@tcd.ie

t: +353 1 8964796

Academic Qualifications

BA, Ancient Semitic Languages (Sask) and PhD Divinity (Edin)

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Following appointments in Canada and the UK, David Shepherd took up the post of Associate Professor and is now the Professor of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament in the Loyola Institute in 2013 and has served as the director of the Trinity Centre for Biblical Studies since its founding in 2016. He now holds the position of Senior Lecture in Trinity College since 2021. David is co-chair of the 'Bible and Visual Culture' programme unit of the International Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature, Secretary of the Society for Old Testament Studies (UK and Ireland) and co-editor of the Journal for the Study of the Old Testament (Sage). His research interests include:

  • The Hebrew Bible/Old Testament in its literary and theological contexts (esp. Joshua-2 Kings, Ezra-Nehemiah and Job)
  • The interpretation of the HB/OT in antiquity (esp. in Aramaic traditions within and beyond the Second Temple Period)
  • New Testament narrative (esp. John and Acts)
  • The reception of the Bible in visual culture (esp. in the early twentieth century)

In addition to a variety of other publications, he is the author of Targum and Translation (Brill, 2004) and The Bible on Silent Film (CUP, 2013), co-author of Ezra & Nehemiah (Eerdmans, 2018), editor of Images of the Word (SBL, 2008) and The Silents of Jesus in the Cinema (2016) and he co-adapted Bertolt Brecht's The David Fragments for the stage in 2017 (Beckett [Dublin] and Greenwood [London]).

His current projects are both focused on David: one is a volume on Bertolt Brecht's 'David Fragments' (in collaboration with Dr. Nicholas Johnson) and the other is on David and the problem of bloodguilt in the books of Samuel.

RESEARCH