Ellen van Wolde
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Ellen van Wolde
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| Born | 1954 (1954)
Groningen (NL)
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| Nationality | Dutch |
| Occupation | Biblical scholar |
Ellen José van Wolde (born 1954) is a Dutch biblical scholar. In her research she focuses mainly on the Hebrew Bible, applying achievements of semiotics and linguistics. She became known to the general public mainly through her oration (2009) on the first three sentences of the book of Genesis. Since the summer of 2021 she is Emeritus Professor at the Radboud University Nijmegen.
Van Wolde studied theology at the Catholic University Nijmegen, Biblical studies at the Pontificium Institutum Biblicum in Rome, and semiotics at the Università degli Studi di Bologna. She completed her Master's in Theology (cum laude) and her PhD in Biblical Studies (cum laude).
Van Wolde was given an appointment as assistant professor at the Catholic University of Nijmegen. She later became associate professor there. In 1992, at the age of 37, she was appointed Professor of Exegesis of the Old Testament and Hebrew at the Tilburg Theological Faculty, which was later incorporated into Tilburg University. In 2009, she was appointed Professor of Old Testament Exegesis/Hebrew Bible and Source Texts Judaism at Radboud University Nijmegen. There she headed the Department of Bible Studies (from 2010 to 2020) and from 2020 to 2021 the (merged) Department of Textual, Historical, and Systematic Studies of Judaism and Christianity (2020–2021) at Radboud University. She retired in the summer of 2021.
Ellen van Wolde is a Biblical scholar and researches the Hebrew Bible in the context of the Ancient Near East. Her focus is on ideas about the beginning of the universe, about God and about people. She investigates these concepts through language and text research in close connection with the culture and cognition (the mental processes) of people in the Ancient Near East. In doing so, she strives to uncover the thought processes and language use of people in the time, place, and culture in which the texts originated. Her insights are captured in her monograph Reframing Biblical Studies. When Language and Text Meet Cognition, Culture and Context and in the articles she has published, among others on the first verses of the Bible (the verb ‘bara’), on the flood story and ‘the rainbow’ after the flood, on ‘the Jacob's Ladder’ and on ‘Sodom and Gomorrah’.
In 2005, Van Wolde was elected a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW).[1] In 2006, she was elected a member of the Royal Holland Society of Sciences & Humanities (KHMW). She was nominated and elected a member of Academia Europaea/Academy of Europe in 2013. From 2010 to 2016 she was a member of the General Board of the KNAW. In 2011 she was appointed Knight of the Order of the Netherlands Lion.[2]
On the occasion of the bicentenary of the KNAW, the six-part series "The Magic of Science" was made where one of the documentaries is dedicated to her.[3]
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