Michael DeVries, PhD

Adjunct Professor, Department of Biblical and Religious Studies

Phone: (949) 374-2702
Photo of Michael DeVries, PhD

Biography

Michael DeVries, PhD, specializes in Jewish writings of the Second Temple period, specifically those discovered in the caves near Qumran known as the Dead Sea Scrolls. His interests include the production and transmission of texts as well as material and scribal culture. He is a specialist in issues of priesthood, purity and defilement, ritualization, ritual violence, and the eschatological imagination. His publications include a co-authored chapter on ritual studies and the Dead Sea Scrolls in The Dead Sea Scrolls and Ancient Media Culture (Leiden: Brill, 2023), a chapter in the forthcoming edited volume Ezra-Nehemiah and the Dead Sea Scrolls (SBL Press, forthcoming) of which he also served as co-general editor, and encyclopedia articles in The Bible and Violence (T&T Clark, forthcoming) and Brill’s Encyclopedia of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Education

  • PhD, Second Temple Judaism and the Dead Sea Scrolls, University of Birmingham, UK
  • MA, Biblical Studies, Azusa Pacific Seminary
  • BA (Magna Cum Laude), Religion, Azusa Pacific University

Academic Area

  • School of Theology
    • Department of Biblical and Religious Studies

Expertise

  • Dead Sea Scrolls and Other Second Temple Jewish Texts
  • Issues of Warfare, Eschatological Imagination, Ritual Violence, Purity, and the Priesthood
  • War Scroll (1QM) and Related Qumran War Texts
  • Writings of the Qumran Movement

Courses Taught

  • GBBL 530 - Hebrew I
  • GBBL 540 - Hebrew II
  • GBBL 570 – Directed Research: Eschatology and the Qumran Movement
  • GBBL 611 - Old Testament Seminar
  • HEBB 455 – Hebrew Readings: Qumran Hebrew
  • HEBB 200 – Elementary Hebrew I
  • PRBL 230 – Luke/Acts
  • UBBL 100 – Introduction to Biblical Literature: Exodus/Deuteronomy
  • UBBL 310 – Rise of the King: I and II Samuel
  • UBBL 420 – The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Biblical World
  • UBBL 472 - Biblical Apocalyptic