Chair of the Old Testament and Semitic Studies

Research interests:

• form history of the Ancient Hebrew and West Semitic literature (wisdom, psalms, prophetic literature, narratives),
• history of traditions and religion of Ancient Israel in the first and second temple periods,
• exegesis, hermeneutics and theology of the Old Testament / Hebrew Bible,
• literary, form and reception history of the Book of Job.

CV and list of publications in Estonian Research Information System

Research interests:

• Semitic philology,
• folkloristics,
• the comparative study of ancient narratives,
• the ideological and cultural aspects of ancient Near Eastern societies, 
• anthropology,
• evolutionary psychology,
• cognitive science of religion, which approaches he aspires to apply alongside with traditional philology in the study of historical texts,
• cognitive historiography.

CV and list of publications in Estonian Research Information system

Research interests:

• history of Jewish ideas and identity and Jewish ethics,
• religion in modern-day Israel,
• history of Jewish ideas in 19th century,
• religious and cultural life of the Estonian Jewish community in the first half of the 20th century,
• reception history of the biblical book of Job in early rabbinic literature.

CV and list of publications in Estonian Research Information System

Research interests:

• religious history of the ancient Near Eastern region,
• the early (pre-Hammurapi) Mesopotamian pantheon with a focus on the deities of magic and healing,
• parallels between the Old Testament and the ancient Near Eastern literatures,
• the religions and history of ancient and modern Iran. 

CV and list of publications in Estonian Research Information System

Research interests:

• Semiotics of Abrahamic religions, with a focus on Judaism and Eastern Orthodox Christianity;
• modeling information dynamics within Jewish and other communities, considered as semiospheres; 
• Semiotics of Jewish identity, especially in terms of individual agency navigating within and among semiospheres;
• Juri Lotman and C.S. Peirce studies.

Research interests:

• semiotic analysis of Sumero-Akkadian literature and rituals,
• cognitive approaches to religious studies,
• the figure of the Sungod Utu/ Šamaš in Ancient Mesopotamia.

Research interests:

• hasidism.

CV and list of publications in Estonian Research Information System