He received the Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the University of California, Berkeley. His research thus far has focused primarily on the Hebrew Bible, treating it as a literary artifact within the context of both the ancient Mediterranean world and the literary and intellectual history of the West. He is the author most notably of Biblical Narrative and the Death of the Rhapsode; he has also written articles on biblical Hebrew, biblical law, and Israelite religion, not to mention Homer and literary theory. His current book project, The Archaeology of Ancient Israelite Knowledge, is an analysis of Israel’s religious traditions informed by Foucault’s investigations into the history of systems of thought.