Professor Katharine Dell

My main research area is the wisdom literature of the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible - Proverbs, Job and Ecclesiastes – particularly in a theological context. So my two most recent books are “A Theology of Proverbs” (CUP, 2023) and “The Lord by Wisdom founded the Earth: Creation and Covenant in Old Testament Theology” (Baylor University Press, 2023). I also have interests in environmental ethics in relation to the Bible and musical interpretations of texts. I am keen to disseminate my subject to a wider audience and have published some more popular books such as “Who Needs the Old Testament: Its Enduring Appeal Appeal and Why the New Atheists don’t get it” (SPCK, 2017). I have also edited a number of volumes, notably “The Biblical World” (Routledge and Taylor, 2021); “The Cambridge Companion to the Biblical Wisdom Literature” (CUP, 2022) and the “New Oxford Bible Commentary” (with David Lincicum, OUP, forthcoming) and I have written some introductory textbooks too. I am currently finishing off a commentary on Ecclesiastes (with Tova Forti, Kohlhammer, forthcoming) and have a fresh interest in “The Five Scrolls” on which I have devised a new course for undergraduates and am planning a book on the topic.

President; Director of Studies in Theology, Religion and Philosophy of Religion

Professor in Old Testament Literature and Theology

Professor Katharine Dell is Director of Studies in Theology, Religion and Philosophy of Religion at St Catharine’s.  Her research interest is the wisdom literature of the Old Testament and she has written monographs on each of the main wisdom books of Proverbs, Job and Ecclesiastes as well as an introduction for students entitled “Get Wisdom, Get Insight!” (2000).  She has also written an introductory handbook (her ‘coffee table’ book) to the Old Testament as a whole entitled “Opening the Old Testament” (Wiley Blackwell, 2008).  She is pleased also to have collaborated with one of our Honorary Fellows – Professor Arnoldus Blix – on an article on Job - “The Norwegian philosopher Peter Wessel Zapffe (1899–1990) and the Book of Job” in Transactions of the Royal Norwegian Society of Sciences and Letters 2022 (1), 5-25 – which shows the fruitfulness of cross-Fellowship discussions and interactions. 

She is a full Professor now, having been teaching in Cambridge for nearly 30 years! She came to Cambridge from Oxford where she was an undergraduate and graduate and where she had her first job at Ripon College, Cuddesdon, teaching ordinands. She joined the college in 1996 as DOS and served as a Tutor for many years, also as Fellows’ Steward. She is now President of the College for 2022–25. She teaches across the Old Testament syllabus in the Faculty of Divinity, has many research students who come from around the world to work with her and she supervises St Catharine’s undergraduates in their Old Testament options.

Professor Katharine Dell is married with a son and three cats.  She is a semi-professional singer in the London Bach Choir and received an LCM Diploma for singing in 2016. She is also a school governor. She is particularly proud of the ‘wisdom window’ in the chapel in St Catharine’s – an idea that she initiated – and has used the image in her Cambridge Companion to wisdom literature (CUP).

The Bible is an endlessly fascinating book, and within that my specialism is 'wisdom' - practical knowledge of the world, of relationships, of navigating life and understanding life's complex interactions, human and divine. I focus particularly on the Old Testament wisdom books of Proverbs, Job and Ecclesiastes - whilst Proverbs lays the groundwork for a thorough understanding of the world through wisdom, Job and Ecclesiastes both question many of its premises and question some of life's basic assumptions. I also find other books of the Old Testament fascinating and have developed a recent interest in Song of Songs, an amazing love song, and in prophetic books. I am also interested in different approaches to the Old Testament/Holy Bible such as knowing more about creation from an environmental perspective, and at the way texts have been appropriated and interpreted over the centuries.

• The Book of Job as Sceptical Literature, Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1991
• ​Get Wisdom, Get Insight: An Introduction to Israel’s Wisdom Literature, London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 2000.
• The Book of Proverbs in Social and Theological Context, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006.
• Opening the Old Testament, Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2008.
• On Stone and Scroll: Essays in honour of Graham Ivor Davies, eds. James K Aitken, Katharine J Dell and Brian A Mastin, BZAW 420, (Walter de Gruyter, 2011)
• Reading Job Intertextually, eds. Katharine Dell and Will Kynes, LHBOTS 574, London: Bloomsbury, 2012 (also Reading Ecclesiastes Intertextually, 2014 and Reading Proverbs Intertextually, 2018)
• Interpreting Ecclesiastes: Readers Old and New, Critical Studies in the Hebrew Bible 3, Winona Lake: IN: Eisenbrauns, 2013.
• Katharine J Dell and Paul M Joyce, Biblical Interpretation and Method: Essays in honour of Professor John Barton (Oxford University Press, 2013)
• 'Job: Where shall Wisdom be Found?', Phoenix Guides to the Old Testament, ed. Adrian Curtis (Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2013)
• Study Guides to the Old Testament, ed. A. Curtis, London: Bloomsbury T & T Clark, 2016.
• Who needs the Old Testament?: its enduring appeal and why the New Atheists don’t get it, London: SPCK, and Eugene, Oregon: Wipf and Stock (Cascade books), 2017.
• The Solomonic Corpus of Wisdom and its Influence, Oxford: OUP, Publication in August 2020.
• The Biblical World, Second Edition, ed. Katharine J. Dell, London: Routledge/Taylor and Francis, 2021.
• The Book of Job: A Theological Approach, Cambridge: Grove Books Ltd., 2021.
• The Cambridge Companion to Biblical Wisdom Literature, eds. Katharine J. Dell, Suzannah Millar and Arthur Keefer Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2022.
• Human Interaction with the Natural World in Wisdom Literature and Beyond: Essays in Honor of Tova L. Forti, eds Mordechai Cogan, Katharine J. Dell and David Glatt-Gilad, LHBOTS, Bloomsbury/T&T Clark, 2023.
• The Theology of the Book of Proverbs for Old Testament Theology, eds. B. A. Strawn and P. D. Miller, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023.
• “The Lord by Wisdom Founded the Earth”:  Creation and Covenant in Old Testament Theology. Waco TX: Baylor University Press, 2023.

1996