Prof. Michael Segal is the Father Takeji Otsuki Professor of Biblical Studies. His research focuses upon the Hebrew Bible and Jewish literature of the Second Temple period, with specific emphasis on the fields of textual criticism of the Hebrew Bible; Jewish literature of the Hellenistic period, including the latest books of the Hebrew Bible, Apocrypha, Pseudepigrapha, and Dead Sea scrolls; and the history of early biblical interpretation. He has addressed each of these subjects independently, but also aims to synthesize them with an eye towards producing an integrated picture of how the Bible was received, interpreted and transmitted in antiquity.

Segal has authored monographs, including The Book of Jubilees: Rewritten Bible, Redaction, Ideology and Theology (Brill, 2007); and Dreams, Riddles, and Visions: Textual, Contextual, and Intertextual Approaches to the Book of Daniel (De Gruyter, 2016); edited seven volumes; published over 45 articles in scholarly journals and collections; and lectures widely in academic contexts. He currently serves as Editor of the Hebrew University Bible Project, the most comprehensive scientific edition of the Hebrew Bible. After a decade of research, the Bible Project has completed the preparation of the Twelve Prophets volume, which will appear during the 2018-2019 academic year.

Michael was born and grew up in the United States (Silver Spring, MD), and completed his B.A. in Mathematics at Yeshiva University (New York). He then pursued an M.A. and Ph.D. in Bible at the Hebrew University. Following his doctoral studies, he spent a year as a postdoctoral fellow at Yale University, and then started as a full-time Lecturer in the Department of Bible at the Hebrew University. Prior to his current role as Dean, he served as Head of the Department of Bible and of the School of Philosophy and Religions, and most recently as Head of the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Institute of Jewish Studies.