Martha Himmelfarb, the William H. Danforth Professor of Religion, will transfer to emeritus status this spring after teaching at Princeton for forty-four years. Born into a prominent intellectual family in New York, Martha was influenced in her approach to the study of the literatures of ancient Judaism by her father Milton Himmelfarb, longtime director of research for the American Jewish Committee and editor of the American Jewish Year Book. Her father, whose approach to Jewish tradition she described in a 2018 memorial in the Jewish Review of Books as both serious and “idiosyncratically modern,” introduced her to critical Bible studies. Martha recalled being fascinated by his engaging reflections on the textual sources of each week’s Torah portion and credited these discussions with contributing to her desire to know more about ancient texts and Jewish tradition. Her deep engagement with ancient sources and full command of numerous languages, including Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic, ground her innovative scholarship that has addressed some of the most significant questions in the study of early Judaism and Christianity. 

Martha earned a bachelor of arts from Barnard College in 1974, with distinction in Greek, and studied at the Jewish Theological Seminary’s Teacher’s Institute from 1970 to 1974 and at Hebrew University of Jerusalem from 1972 to 1973. She received her Ph.D. in religious studies from the University of Pennsylvania in 1981, writing a dissertation on “Tours of Hell: The Development and Transmission of an Apocalyptic Form in Jewish and Christian Literature.” She first came to Princeton in 1978 as the Melanchton Jacobus Instructor in Religion and, when she completed her dissertation, became an assistant professor of religion in 1981. 

Martha’s scholarly work has had a profound impact on the study of ancient Judaism and early Christianity. Her insistence on the need to study both religious traditions, their texts, and communities in connection with one another distinguishes her research. Martha’s approach challenged and reoriented the long-standing paradigm that assumed the inevitability of Judaism and Christianity diverging into distinct religious traditions, and her research has pioneered new ways of understanding this ongoing relationship from the Second Temple period through the Middle Ages. 

Martha began exploring many of the themes that have come to characterize her scholarship and influence in the study of religions in Mediterranean antiquity in early works like the pioneering Tours of Hell: An Apocalyptic Form in Jewish and Christian Literature (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1983), based on her dissertation, which one reviewer described as “a courageous study in a still very thorny field” and another “a model of careful and creative scholarship” showcasing a “remarkable” knowledge of primary and secondary sources. She continued to work on the genre of apocalypse in her next book, Ascent to Heaven in Jewish and Christian Apocalypses (Oxford University Press, 1993), deepening her case for examining the religious cultures of ancient Judaism and early Christianity as intertwined, and expanding understandings of the nature of apocalyptic literature by turning a fresh eye to texts other scholars had overlooked within the genre. The result is a rich study of the imagination of heaven and its inhabitants in apocalyptic literature that reveals a more complex perspective than the dualistic one of pessimism or optimism toward the world long assumed to characterize apocalyptic literature. She traced the broad tradition and offered a thematic introduction to Jewish and Christian apocalyptic literature through the Middle Ages in The Apocalypse: A Brief History (Wiley-Blackwell, 2010). 

Several of Martha’s more recent books, particularly A Kingdom of Priests: Ancestry and Merit in Ancient Judaism (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006) and Jewish Messiahs in a Christian Empire: A History of the Book of Zerubbabel (Harvard University Press, 2017), take up consequential questions for the study of Second Temple Judaism, showcasing both erudite readings of texts at the center of scriptural canon as well as less familiar texts that, through her careful and patient reading, also reveal much about Jewish life in changing social contexts from the Second Temple through the Middle Ages. In A Kingdom of Priests, she explores the tension in ancient Jewish literature between birth and merit for priests and the covenanted people of Israel, and in Jewish Messiahs in a Christian Empire, she once again highlights a neglected text, Sefer Zerubbabel, and considers the influence of popular Jewish messianic traditions. 

In addition to these monographs, Martha has collected essays on various topics in the study of ancient Judaism in Between Temple and Torah: Essays on Priests, Scribes, and Visionaries in the Second Temple Period and Beyond (Mohr Siebeck, 2013) and edited two collections with Peter Schäfer, the Ronald O. Perelman Professor of Jewish Studies, Emeritus and professor of religion, emeritus, both in collaboration with their former graduate students. She has received grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the New Jersey State Council for the Humanities, was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, and was named an Old Dominion Research Professor in the Council of the Humanities. In recognition of her outstanding scholarship, she received the Howard T. Behrman Award for Distinguished Achievement in the Humanities in 2022. 

Even as Martha has produced significant and influential scholarly works over the course of her career, she has compiled an exemplary record of teaching and service. Her courses have introduced generations of undergraduate and graduate students to a range of topics in ancient Judaism, focusing on literatures and cultures of the Greco-Roman world and guiding students to engage with rigor and care the texts that animated her interest in the field from her childhood years. Her graduate advisees, for whom she has proven a tireless advocate and caring mentor, have gone on to become major figures in the field and influential advisors to the next generation of graduate students focusing on religions of Mediterranean Antiquity. 

Her colleagues in the Department of Religion benefited greatly from her steady leadership during her time as chair from 1999 to 2006 and from her service on numerous committees across the years. Martha’s contributions to the life of the University extend beyond the Department of Religion, including service on University-wide committees, time as a faculty fellow in the Society of Fellows in the Humanities, and engagement with student life, particularly through Princeton’s Hillel. 

The vibrant interdisciplinary community of scholars gathered in the Ronald O. Perelman Institute for Judaic Studies owes a great debt to Martha’s tireless work on behalf of Jewish studies at Princeton. She was among the group of twelve faculty who in 1982 formed a Committee for Jewish Studies to organize interdisciplinary study in this field under the auspices of the Council for the Humanities and served as acting chair in its first year. She played a key role in the Committee’s efforts to establish a certificate program in Jewish studies, which was approved in 1995, and in the creation of the Perelman Institute in 1996. She served as director of Judaic Studies from 2013 to 2020 and, because of her efforts, the program has thrived for undergraduates, graduate students, and faculty and the Institute has become one of the most prestigious such academic entities in the country. 

It is difficult to imagine the Department of Religion without Martha Himmelfarb’s regular presence, wit, kindness, patience, and practicality. She has left an indelible mark on the department and University, and we look forward to reading work yet to come that will continue to influence the field. 

Written by members of the Department of Religion faculty.