Ralph Marcus

Ralph Marcus (August 17, 1900–December 25, 1956) was an American

Philo of Alexandria from Koine Greek and Classical Armenian

Biography

Ralph Marcus was born on August 17, 1900, in San Francisco. His father was Moses Marcus, a Talmudic scholar, and his mother was Selma Marcus, née Neufeld. After the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, his family moved to New York. Marcus studied at Columbia University and received his BA, Masters, and PhD there. He finished his doctorate in 1927, with his dissertation being "Law in the Apocrypha". In addition to his studies at Columbia, Marcus also worked and studied with Harry Austryn Wolfson at Harvard from 1925–1927, one of the premier scholars of Hellenic Judaism and Philo of Alexandria of the era.^[1]^[2]

After attaining his doctorate, he acquired a teaching position at

Johann Wolfgang Goethe University

in Frankfurt.

Marcus died of a heart attack on December 25, 1956, in Chicago.^[2]

Work

Marcus's most notable achievements were landmark translations for the

Louis H. Feldman would translate volumes 18–20 of the mammoth work.) For Philo, Marcus translated "Questions and Answers on Genesis and Exodus" despite much of the work only existing in an Armenian language translation; his attempts at reconstructing the original Greek from the Armenian were lauded.^[1]^[2]

Toward the end of his life, Marcus contributed to academic study of the Dead Sea Scrolls, a cache of scriptures of the Essenes found in the late 1940s that greatly expanded knowledge of Hellenistic and Roman era Judaism.

Marcus served as an associate editor of the Journal of Biblical Literature and various other journals during his career.^[2]

References

^ ^a ^b MARCUS, Ralph at Rutgers Library of Classical Scholars]
^
S2CID 222425762
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[rutgers-1] MARCUS, Ralph at Rutgers Library of Classical Scholars]

[gevg-2] 
S2CID 222425762
.

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[2]