Katharine Doob Sakenfeld (born 1940) is an American Old Testament scholar. She is Professor of Old Testament Literature and Exegesis Emerita at

Princeton Theological Seminary Princeton Theological Seminary (PTSem), officially The Theological Seminary of the Presbyterian Church, is a private school of theology in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1812 under the auspices of Archibald Alexander, the General Assembly of t ...

, having previously been William Albright Eisenberger Professor of Old Testament Literature and Exegesis. Sakenfeld studied at the

University of Rhode Island The University of Rhode Island (URI) is a public land-grant research university with its main campus in Kingston, Rhode Island, United States. It is the flagship public research as well as the land-grant university of the state of Rhode Isla ...

and

Harvard Divinity School Harvard Divinity School (HDS) is one of the constituent schools of Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The school's mission is to educate its students either in the academic study of religion or for leadership roles in religion, gov ...

before obtaining her Ph.D. at Harvard University. She was ordained as a Presbyterian

teaching elder Presbyterian (or presbyteral) polity is a method of church governance ("ecclesiastical polity") typified by the rule of assemblies of presbyters, or elders. Each local church is governed by a body of elected elders usually called the session or ...

in 1970, and has served as the moderator of the

Presbytery of New Brunswick The Presbytery of New Brunswick is a presbytery of the Presbyterian Church (USA). In 1738 the Presbytery of East Jersey was merged with the Presbytery of Long Island and renamed the Presbytery of New York, and two days after that, the Presbyter ...

in the PCUSA. She served on the translation committee of the

New Revised Standard Version The New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) is an English translation of the Bible published in 1989 by the National Council of Churches.Society of Biblical Literature in 2007. Sakenfeld was written commentaries on

Numbers A number is a mathematical object used to count, measure, and label. The original examples are the natural numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, and so forth. Numbers can be represented in language with number words. More universally, individual numbers can ...

and

Ruth Ruth (or its variants) may refer to: Places France * Château de Ruthie, castle in the commune of Aussurucq in the Pyrénées-Atlantiques département of France Switzerland * Ruth, a hamlet in Cologny United States * Ruth, Alabama * Ruth, Ar ...

, and was general editor of the '' New Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible''. In 2006 a ''

Festschrift In academia, a ''Festschrift'' (; plural, ''Festschriften'' ) is a book honoring a respected person, especially an academic, and presented during their lifetime. It generally takes the form of an edited volume, containing contributions from the h ...

'' was published in her honor: ''Engaging the Bible in a Gendered World: An Introduction to Feminist Biblical Interpretation in Honor of Katharine Doob Sakenfeld'', which included contributions from F. W. Dobbs-Allsopp, Choon-Leong Seow, Phyllis Bird and Patrick D. Miller.

Selected works

* ''The meaning of hesed in the Hebrew Bible : a new inquiry'', 1977 * ''Faithfulness in action : loyalty in Biblical perspective '', 1985 * ''Journeying with God : a commentary on the book of Numbers'', 1995 * ''Just wives? : stories of power and survival in the Old Testament and today'', 2003

References

1940 births Living people Princeton Theological Seminary faculty American biblical scholars Old Testament scholars Bible commentators Translators of the Bible into English Presbyterian Church (USA) teaching elders University of Rhode Island alumni Harvard Divinity School alumni Female biblical scholars Female Bible translators {{US-scholar-stub