Ziony Zevit, Distinguished Professor of Biblical Literature and Northwest Semitic Languages, joined the faculty of American Jewish University in 1974.

He earned his Ph.D. at UC Berkeley, but also spent time studying at UCLA, the Hebrew University, University of Michigan, and the University of Vienna.

Prior to joining AJU’s faculty, Dr. Zevit taught at the University of Haifa, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and U.C. Berkeley.

Since joining the faculty, he has held visiting professorships at Univ. of Pennsylvania, UCLA, USC, UCSD, and the Hebrew University.

Dr. Zevit has participated in archaeological excavations at Tel Lachish and Tel Dan and regularly visits ongoing excavations in Israel at least once a year to keep up.

In 1987, he was designated the first Avraham Biran Fellow in Biblical Archaeology at the Nelson Glueck School of Biblical Archaeology in Jerusalem.

He has been awarded fellowships by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Lady Davis Fellowship Trust, and the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation.

In 2003 he was elected a life member of the American Academy for Jewish Research; in 2004, he was awarded the Frank Moore Cross Award by the American Schools of Oriental Research for substantial publications in Near Eastern and Eastern Mediterranean epigraphy, texts, and traditions; in 2013, he was appointed Visiting Distinguished Professor at the Albright Institute of Biblical and Archaeological Research in Jerusalem, and that same year, his fourth authored book, What Really Happened in the Garden of Eden? was published. In 2017, his fourth edited volume, Subtle Citation, Allusion, and Translation in the Bible was published, bringing his total of publications to 140.

In 2017, twenty-six of his colleagues from around the world published a volume of essays in his honor. Their essays covered the three disciplines within which Zevit conducts research: Bible, Hebrew Language, and Archaeology.