Frank Moore Cross

Frank Moore Cross
Born	Frank Moore Cross Jr. (1921-07-13)July 13, 1921 Ross, California, US
Died	October 2012 (aged 91) Rochester, New York, US
Spouse	Betty ​ ​ (m. 1947; died 2009)​
Academic background
PhD)
Doctoral advisor	William F. Albright[1]
Academic work
Institutions	Harvard University
Doctoral students	James R. Davila[1] Sidnie White Crawford Richard Elliott Friedman Choon-Leong Seow Lawrence Stager[1] Michael E. Stone
Notable students	Northwest Semitic epigraphy Dead Sea Scrolls
Notable works	The Ancient Library of Qumran and Modern Biblical Studies (1958) Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic (1973)

Frank Moore Cross Jr. (July 13, 1921 – October 16, 2012) was the

. Many of his essays on the latter topic have since been collected in Leaves from an Epigrapher's Notebook.

Early life and education

Cross was born on July 13, 1921, in Ross, California. He was the son of Frank Moore Cross, a long-time pastor of Ensley Highland Presbyterian Church in Birmingham, Alabama. One of his uncles, Laurance L. Cross, was mayor of Berkeley, California, from 1947 to 1955.

Cross graduated from

in 1990.

Career

From 1949 to 1950 Cross was a junior instructor in Semitic languages at Johns Hopkins University. He was subsequently an instructor in biblical history at Wellesley College from 1950 to 1951, an instructor in Old Testament at McCormick Theological Seminary 1951 to 1953, and an associate professor at the same institution from 1954 to 1957.

Cross was appointed associate professor in

from 1958 to 1961 and director of the museum from 1974 to 1987.

Cross was a fellow of the

(1971).

During his tenure at Harvard, Cross supervised more than a hundred dissertations, with the result that many of today's senior scholars in Hebrew Bible and ancient Near Eastern studies are his former students. Among the most prominent of these are Emanuel Tov, John J. Collins, Jo Ann Hackett, John Huehnergard, William G. Dever, P. Kyle McCarter Jr., Peter Machinist, Lawrence Stager, Bruce Waltke, Richard Elliott Friedman, Hector Avalos, and Mark S. Smith.^[4]

Dead Sea Scrolls

Beginning June 1953, Cross was a member of the international committee responsible for editing the

subsidy. Cross was one of only two American scholars on the scroll-publication team, and he has since been recognized as a founder of Qumran studies. His general introduction to the topic is The Ancient Library of Qumran, the third edition of which was published in 1995.

Death

Cross died in Rochester, New York, in October 2012 after a long illness. He was 91.^[6]

Honors and awards

In 1980, Cross received the Percia Schimmel Prize in

in 2004.

Cross was an honorary member of the

(1973–1991), and an honorary trustee from 1991; a trustee of the Ancient Biblical Manuscript Center (1979–1996) and a lifetime honorary trustee from 1997; and a trustee of the Dead Sea Scrolls Foundation since 1992.

Selected works

Thesis

• Cross, Frank Moore;
  OCLC 1179572
  .

Books

• Cross, Frank Moore (1973). Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic: Essays in the History of the Religion of Israel. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
  OCLC 671934
  .
• ———;
  OCLC 1622259
  .
• ———;
  OCLC 1339664
  .
• ———; Lemke, Werner E.;
  OCLC 1975958
  .
• ———, ed. (1979). Symposia Celebrating the Seventy-Fifth Anniversary of the Founding of the American Schools of Oriental Research (1900-1975). Occasional publications – Zion Research Foundation. Cambridge, MA: American Schools of Oriental Research.
  OCLC 4775395
  .
• ——— (1995). The Ancient Library of Qumran. Haskell lectures, Oberlin College, 1956-1957 (3rd ed.). Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press.
  OCLC 32719999
  .
• ——— (1998). From Epic to Canon: History and Literature in Ancient Israel. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
  OCLC 38966035
  .
• ——— (2003). Leaves from an Epigrapher's Notebook: Collected Papers in Hebrew and West Semitic Palaeography and Epigraphy. Harvard Semitic Studies. Vol. 51. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns.
  OCLC 50476904
  .
• ———; et al., eds. (2005). Qumran cave 4. XII, 1–2 Samuel. Discoveries in the Judaean Desert. Vol. 17. Oxford; New York: Clarendon Press.
  OCLC 48754179
  .

Chapters

• ——— (1976). "Exile and Restoration: The 'Olden gods' in ancient near eastern creation myths". In ———; Lemke, Werner E.;
  OCLC 1975958
  .
• ——— (1979). "The Development of the Jewish scripts". In
  OCLC 4964210
  .
• ——— (1979). "Early Alphabetic Scripts". In ——— (ed.). Symposia Celebrating the Seventy-Fifth Anniversary of the Founding of the American Schools of Oriental Research (1900-1975). Occasional publications – Zion Research Foundation. Cambridge, MA: American Schools of Oriental Research.
  OCLC 4775395
  .

Festschrift

• ISBN 978-0-800-60831-6
  .

References

External links

• Cross at Harvard Divinity School
• "Religion: The Oldest Decalogue". Time. September 29, 1958.
• Harrington, Daniel J. (Winter 1994/1995). "What's New with the Dead Sea Scrolls?". CrossCurrents. 44 (4): 463–476.
• Frank Moore Cross CV and bio