Professor Charlotte Hempel BA, PhD (KCL)

Photograph of Dr Charlotte Hempel

Department of Theology and Religion
Professor of Hebrew Bible and Second Temple Judaism
Honorary Research Fellow, Faculty of Theology and Religion, University of Pretoria

Contact details

Telephone
+44(0)121 414 8337
Email
c.hempel@bham.ac.uk
View my research portal
Address
ERI Building Room 209
University of Birmingham
Edgbaston
Birmingham
B15 2TT
UK

My latest research is on the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Rural Economy. This  follows the award of an Arts and Humanities Council  Leadership Fellowship to work on a project entitled Ezra's Legacy and the Dead Sea Scrolls: Law and Narratives of Exclusion in the course of which I founded the Second Temple Early Career Academy, a Virtual Common Room of global reach. Before that I worked on a project funded by a British Academy Mid-Career Fellowship which resulted in the first Commentary of all twelve ancient manuscripts of the Community Rules (The Community Rules from Qumran: A Commentary). I was, further, host scientist-in charge for the European Research Council funded Marie Curie Fellowship of Dr. Angela Harkins and co-investigator with Isabel Wollaston on a three year educational project Jewish Heritage and Culture: Birmingham Perspectives.

I have served in a range of leadership and editorial roles including as President of the British and Irish Association of Jewish Studies in 2016, President of the Society for Old Testament Study in 2022, Editor-in-Chief of Dead Sea Discoveries, Reviews Editor for the Journal of Jewish Studies, Chair of the Qumran Section of the Society for Biblical Literature, and Member of the New Research Unit Review Sub-Committee of the European Association for Biblical Studies. I currently serve on the editorial boards of Dead Sea Discoveries, Revue de Qumran, Journal of Jewish Studies, the monograph series Studies on the Texts from the Desert of Judah, the Society for Old Testament Study Monographs, as well as the International Meeting Committee of the Society for Biblical Literature.

Senior leadership at the University of Birmingham includes service as Director of the College of Arts and Law Graduate School, Site Director of the Midlands4Cities Doctoral Training Partnership, and most recently as Head of the School of Philosophy, Theology and Religion from 2019-2024. During my tenure I was privileged to collaborate closely with religious leaders and communities in Birmingham and around the globe, including on the establishment of world-leading teaching and research in Jain Studies and the Ethics of Non-Violence at the University of Birmingham named after the leading Jain apostle Bhagavan Dharmanath. This initiative was co-created and made possible by the generous support from the Jain community.

Feedback and office hours

  • Term Time  

    Thurs 16:00-18:00 pm ERI Room 147 (except 20 Nov) and in person or remotely by appointment at a mutually convenient time.

Qualifications

  • PhD 1995 King's College London
  • BA Hons 1991 King's College London

Teaching

I teach on the following modules:

  • LC introduction to the Study of Religion
  • LC The Bible and Global Challenges
  • LH/LM Dissertation
  • LI Dissertation Preparation
  • LI Gender, Sexualities and Religion

Postgraduate supervision

Hebrew Bible, Second Temple Judaism, Dead Sea Scrolls.

Find out more - our PhD Theology and Religion  page has information about doctoral research at the University of Birmingham.

Research

My latest research is on the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Rural Economy. This  follows the award of an Arts and Humanities Council  Leadership Fellowship to work on a project entitled Ezra's Legacy and the Dead Sea Scrolls: Law and Narratives of Exclusion in the course of which I founded the Second Temple Early Career Academy, a Virtual Common Room of global reach. Before that I worked on a project funded by a British Academy Mid-Career Fellowship which resulted in the first Commentary of all twelve ancient manuscripts of the Community Rules (The Community Rules from Qumran: A Commentary). I was, further, host scientist-in charge for the European Research Council funded Marie Curie Fellowship of Dr. Angela Harkins and co-investigator with Isabel Wollaston on a three year educational project Jewish Heritage and Culture: Birmingham Perspectives.

 
Completed PhDs Projects
 
1. The Significance of Exemplars for the Interpretation of the Letter of James
2. A Jungian Approach to the Dead Sea Scrolls
3. Revitalization in Judea: An Anthropological Study of the Damascus Document
4. A Contextualized Approach to the Hebrew Dead Sea Scrolls Containing Exodus 5. The Qumran Wisdom Texts and the Gospel of John (co-supervised with Karen Wenell)
6. The Significance of Selah in the Psalter
7. Encountering Evil: Apotropaic Magic in the Dead Sea Scrolls
8.Expressing Power in the Song of songs: Gender, ‎Royalty and the Gaze
(MA by Research)
9. Galilean Religious Identity in the 1st century BCE (co-supervised with Karen Wenell and Gareth Sears, Classics and Ancient History)
10. Is Wisdom Dead? Reconceptualising Wisdom in Light of the Maskil Figure at Qumran (co-supervised with Hugh Houghton)
11. Before the Bible: Ezekiel Traditions from the Corpus of the Dead Sea Scrolls in Light of 4QPseudo-Ezekiel
12. Dualisms at Qumran and Beyond (co-supervised with Andrew Perrin, Trinity Western University, Langley, BC, Canada)
13. Liturgical and Ritualised Warfare in the War Scroll and Related War Texts
 
Current Supervised Projects
 
14. The Function of Metaphor in the Depictions of Disability in the Hebrew Bible and the Dead Sea Scrolls (co-supervised with Candida Moss and Jeanette Littlemore)
15. The Temple Scroll's Vision for an Ideal Society
16. Temple and Tribute: A Materialist Reading of the Socioeconomic ‎Hierarchies in Chronicles (MA by Research)
 

Find out more - our PhD Theology and Religion  page has information about doctoral research at the University of Birmingham.

Publications

Highlight publications

Hempel, C 2020, The Community Rules from Qumran: A Commentary. Texts and Studies in Ancient Judaism, vol. 183, Mohr Siebeck: Tübingen. https://doi.org/10.1628/978-3-16-157027-8

Hempel, C & Brooke, G (eds) 2018, T&T Clark Companion to the Dead Sea Scrolls. Bloomsbury Companions, T & T Clark, under the Continuum Imprint, London. <https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/tt-clark-companion-to-the-dead-sea-scrolls-9780567590220/>

Hempel, C 2017, 'Wisdom and law in the Hebrew Bible and at Qumran', Journal for the Study of Judaism, vol. 48, no. 2, pp. 155–181. https://doi.org/10.1163/15700631-12340144

Hempel, C 2020, 4QMMT in the context of the Dead Sea Scrolls and beyond. in RG Kratz (ed.), Interpreting and Living God’s Law at Qumran: Miqṣat Maʿaśe ha-Torah, Some of the Works of the Torah (4QMMT). Scripta Antiquitatis Posterioris ad Ethicam REligionemque pertinentia, vol. 37, Mohr Siebeck: Tübingen, Tuebingen, pp. 117-136. https://doi.org/10.1628/978-3-16-159706-0

Hempel, C 2020, Bildung und Wissenswirtschaft zur Zeit des Zweiten Tempels. in P Gemeinhardt (ed.), Was ist Bildung in der Vormoderne?. Mohr Siebeck: Tübingen, Tuebingen, pp. 229.

Recent publications

Article

Hempel, C 2020, 'Why We Should be Looking for Ezra’s Legacy in the Dead Sea Scrolls', Semitica, pp. 285.

Chapter (peer-reviewed)

Hempel, C 2025, Ezra, the Dead Sea Scrolls and the People of the Land. in C Hempel & M De Vries (eds), Ezra-Nehemiah and the Dead Sea Scrolls. Early Judaism and Its Literature, Society of Biblical Literature, Atlanta, GA.

Hempel, C 2024, Rules of Ancient Communities. in K Dell & D Lincicum (eds), The New Oxford Bible Commentary. Oxford University Press, Oxford.

Hempel, C 2023, Curated Communities: Refracted Realities at Qumran and on Social Media. in T Williams, C Keith & L Stuckenbruck (eds), The Dead Sea Scrolls in Ancient Media Culture. Studies on the Texts of the Desert of Judah, vol. 144, Brill, Leiden; Boston, pp. 335-357. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004537804_010

Hempel, C 2023, Yahwistic Diversity in the Land of Israel: The Contribution of the Dead Sea Scrolls. in B Hensel (ed.), Social Groups behind Biblical Traditions: Identity Perspectives from Egypt, Transjordan, Mesopotamia, and Israel in the Second Temple Period. Mohr Siebeck, Tuebingen.

Hempel, C 2022, Community Formation in the Dead Sea Scrolls: Beyond the Watershed Paradigm. in JJ Collins & A Geyser-Fouche (eds), Emerging Sectarianism in the Dead Sea Scrolls: Continuity, Separation, and Conflict. Studies on the Texts of the Desert of Judah, vol. 141, Brill, Leiden, pp. 119–144. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004517127_007

Hempel, C 2021, A Tale of Two Scribes: Encounters with an Avant-Garde Manuscript of the Community Rules (4Q259). in J-S Rey & M Staszak (eds), Hokhmat Sopher: Mélanges offerts au Professeur Émile Puech en l’honneur de son quatre-vingtième anniversaire. Etudes Bibliques N.S., vol. 88, Peeters Publishers, Leuven, pp. 115-128. <https://www.peeters-leuven.be/detail.php?search_key=9789042945753&series_number_str=88&lang=en>

Hempel, C 2021, Self-fashioning in the Dead Sea Scrolls: thickening the description of what rule texts do. in M Bar-Asher Siegal & J Ben-Dov (eds), Social History of the Jews in Antiquity: Studies in Dialogue with Albert Baumgarten. Texte und Studien zum Antiken Judentum, vol. 185, Mohr Siebeck: Tübingen, Tübingen, pp. 49-66. https://doi.org/10.1628/978-3-16-160708-0

Hempel, C 2021, The Dead Sea Scrolls: Challenging the Particularist Paradigm. in M Witte, J Schröter & VM Lepper (eds), Torah, Temple and Land: Constructions of Judaism in Antiquity. Texts and Studies in Ancient Judaism, vol. 184, Mohr Siebeck, pp. 91-104. https://doi.org/10.1628/978-3-16-159854-8

Hempel, C 2020, The Apotropaic Function of the Final Hymn in the Community Rules. in A Feldman & T Sandoval (eds), Petitioners, Penitents, and Poets: On Prayer and Praying in Second Temple Judaism. BZAW, De Gruyter, Berlin, pp. 131-154.

Chapter

Hempel, C 2018, Rules. in G Brooke & C Hempel (eds), T&T Clark Companion to the Dead Sea Scrolls. Bloomsbury Companions, T & T Clark, under the Continuum Imprint, London, pp. 402. <https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/tt-clark-companion-to-the-dead-sea-scrolls-9780567590220/>

Anthology

Ausloos, H & Hempel, C (eds) 2026, History, Prophecy, Identity and Language in the Hebrew Bible: Proceedings of the 18th Joint Meeting of the Society for Old Testament Study (SOTS) and the Oudtestamentisch Werkgezelschap in Nederland en België, Nottingham 2022. Oudtestamentische Studien / Old Testament Studies, vol. 84, Brill, Leiden. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004740655

Conference contribution

Hempel, C 2026, Theologies Past and Future: Rural Labour and Resource Extraction in Ancient Judaea. in JC Gertz & K Schmid (eds), Theologie der Zukunft: XVIII. Europäischer Kongress für Theologie (8.-11. September 2024 in Heidelberg). Veröffentlichungen der Wissenschaftlichen Gesellschaft für Theologie, Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, Leipzig, pp. 83-91, 18th European Congress of Theology, Heidelberg, Baden-Württemberg, Germany, 8/09/24.

Entry for encyclopedia/dictionary

Hempel, C 2020, Legal Texts (Qumran). in D Gurtner & L Stuckenbruck (eds), T&T Clark Encyclopedia of Second Temple Judaism. T & T Clark, London, pp. 428.

Web publication/site

Hempel, C, Dead Sea Scrolls Deciphered: Esoteric Code Reveals Ancient Priestly Calendar, 2018, Web publication/site, The Conversation . <https://theconversation.com/dead-sea-scrolls-deciphered-esoteric-code-reveals-ancient-priestly-calendar-91777>

View all publications in research portal

Expertise

Media experience

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Expertise

  • The Dead Sea Scrolls 
  • Jewish heritage