Scienceמשה גרסיאל

Moshe Garsiel

Moshe Garsiel is an Israeli biblical scholar and professor emeritus of Bible at Bar-Ilan University.

born 1936Bible research at Bar-Ilan UniversityThe Izbet Sarta excavationLiterary meaning of biblical names

Occupation: biblical scholar, scholar of the Bible as literature, university teacher, Judaic scholar
Education: Tel Aviv University

Moshe Garsiel was born in 1936 in Tel Aviv

Moshe Garsiel was born in Tel Aviv in 1936 and grew up there. He finished high school at the Noam yeshiva high school in Pardes Hanna.

He served in the IDF in the Nahal and the paratrooper Nahal, and later did reserve duty. He also coordinated Bnei Akiva branches in Kiryat Yam, Kiryat Shmuel and Kfar Hasidim.

He studied at Tel Aviv University, earning a B.A. in Bible and Hebrew literature in 1965, an M.A. in Bible in 1968 and a Ph.D. in 1974. His doctorate compared the Book of Jeremiah and the Book of Psalms. He then did postdoctoral work in biblical archaeology.

He joined the Bible department at Bar-Ilan University in 1968 and became a full professor in 1992. He served as dean of the Faculty of Jewish Studies from 1997 to 2001 and led the founding of the departments of Land of Israel studies and Middle Eastern studies. He also organized the Izbet Sarta dig, where an ancient Hebrew inscription on a potsherd was found.

He retired as professor emeritus in 2006 but kept teaching graduate seminars as a volunteer. In 2020 he and his wife, Dr. Bat-Sheva Garsiel, proposed identifying biblical Ziklag with Tel a-Sharia in the Negev. They live in Petah Tikva and have 3 children.