SANDMEL, SAMUEL

SANDMEL, SAMUEL (1911–1979), biblical scholar. Sandmel was born in Dayton, Ohio, and graduated from the University of Missouri in 1932 and from the Hebrew Union College in 1937, receiving his doctorate from Yale University in 1949. He served as Hillel Foundation rabbi in North Carolina from 1939 to 1942, and at Yale from 1946 to 1949. He was professor of Jewish Literature and Thought at Vanderbilt University from 1949 to 1952. In 1952 he was appointed professor of Bible and Hellenistic literature at the Hebrew Union College. Among the many honorary degrees bestowed upon him was the President's Fellowship, by Brown University. At the time of his death he was Helen A. Regenstein Professor of Religion of the Chicago Divinity School. He was also an editor of the Oxford Study Edition of the New English Bible. Sandmel was an internationally recognized authority on the relationship between Judaism and the New Testament. Among his works are A Jewish Understanding of the New Testament (1957), The Genius of Paul (1958), The Hebrew Scriptures (1963), We Jews and Jesus (1965), We Jews and You Christians (1967), Herod: Profile of a Tyrant (1967), The First Christian Century in Judaism and Christianity (1969), The Enjoyment of Scripture (1972), Two Living Traditions (1972), Judaism and Christian Beginnings (1978), and Anti-Semitism in the New Testament (1978). He also published a novel about Moses, Atop the Mountain (1973) (Heinz Hartman (2nd ed.)