Quick Facts
Biography
Ellen José van Wolde (born 1954) is a Dutch biblical scholar. She is Full Professor of Old Testament Exegesis and Source Texts of Judaism at Radboud University Nijmegen.
Van Wolde studied at the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome, and the University of Bologna. In 2005 she was elected member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2011, she became a Knight of the Order of the Netherlands Lion.
Van Wolde is known for her view that in the Genesis creation narrative, the Hebrew verb bara does not mean "to create" but to "spatially separate", and that "the traditional view of God the Creator" is now untenable, since "the Earth was already there when he created humans and animals."
In 2009 her book Reframing Biblical Studies. When Language and Text Meet Culture, Cognition, and Context was published in which she explained her method of analysis.
Some recent papers
- Wolde, E.J. van (2013), One Bow or Another. A study of the bow in Gen 9: 8-17, Vetus Testamentum, 63, pp. 124-149;
- Wolde, E.J. van (2012), Outcry, Knowledge, and Judgment in Genesis 18-19, In D. Lipton (Ed.), Universalism and Particularism at Sodom and Gomorrah. Essays in Memory of Ron Pirson (pp. 71-100), Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature;
- Wolde, E.J. van & R.C. Rezetko (2011), Semantics and the Semantics of bara: a Rejoinder to the Arguments Advanced by B. Becking and M. Korpel, The Journal of Hebrew Scriptures 11(9);
- Wolde, E.J. van (2008), Sentiments as Culturally Constructed Emotions. Anger and Love in the Hebrew Bible, Biblical Interpretation. A Journal of Contemporary Approaches 16, pp. 1-24.