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Fellow during the winter term 2021/22
Nathan MacDonald is Professor of the Interpretation of the Old Testament at the University
of Cambridge and a Fellow of St John’s College. Prior to his appointment at Cambridge, he
worked at the University of Göttingen and the University of St Andrews. He recently co-led
the AHRC-funded project The Book and the Sword: The Bible in the Experience and Legacy
of the Great War. He has particular interest in all matters relating to the Israelite cult, and has
recently been completing a monograph on the representation of power and the priesthood in
the priestly literature of the Hebrew Bible.
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At the Munich Centre of Global History, he will be working on the transformations that
occurred to the Jerusalem priesthood and its rituals as the small kingdom of Judah
experienced dramatic changes during the late first millennium. During this period, the
southern Levant moved from being a patchwork of petty kingdoms in the Egyptian sphere of
influence to dependent and semi-independent statuses in the Hellenistic and Roman worlds
via Mesopotamian and Persian hegemony. The priesthood as the native Judean elites
negotiated new roles for themselves and their temple in a globalised and imperial context.