Faculty & Staff Directory

Robert A. Di Vito, PhD

About

Dr. Robert A. Di Vito has a BA (Classics) from Fordham University (1973); an MDiv from Weston School of Theology (1978); and both an MA and PhD from Harvard University in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations (1983, 1986). He was elected to Phi Beta Kappa in 1972 and is a founding member of Loyola's chapter. He is also a member of the American Schools of Oriental Research, the Catholic Biblical Association of America, the Chicago Society of Biblical Research, and the Society of Biblical Literature.

Dr. Di Vito has been teaching at Loyola University Chicago since 1991 and has served as the Graduate Program Director in the Department of Theology from 1997 to 2002. At Loyola he regularly teaches courses on the Pentateuch, the Prophets, classical Hebrew, and the Dead Sea Scrolls. He is the author of one book: Studies in Third Millennium Sumerian and Akkadian Personal Names: The Designation and Conception of the Personal God. In addition to publishing a number of articles and reviews, since 1994 he has been involved in the complete revision of the translation of the New American Bible Old Testament, serving on its Board of Editors-in-Chief. A past associate editor of the Catholic Biblical Quarterly, he currently serves on the editorial board of the Catholic Biblical Quarterly Monograph Series.

Program Areas

Old Testament and Northwest Semitic Philology

Research Interests

Hebrew Bible; Pentateuchal Criticism; History of the Religion of Israel and the Ancient Near East; Anthropology; Biblical Hermeneutics

Selected Publications

• "Questions about the Construction of (Homo)sexuality: Same-Sex Relations in the Hebrew Bible," in Sexual Diversity and Catholicism, eds. Patricia Jung and Joseph Coray (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 2001), 108–132.
• "Old Testament Anthropology and the Construction of Personal Identity." The Catholic Biblical Quarterly (1999) 217–38.
• "Here One Need Not Be One's Self: The Concept of 'Self' in the Old Testament," in The Whole and Divided Self: The Bible and Theological Anthropology, eds. David E. Aune and John McCarthy (New York: The Crossroad Publishing Company, 1997) 49–88.
• "The Tell el-Kheleifeh Inscriptions" (Chapter 6), in Nelson Glueck's 1938–1940 Excavations at Tell el-Kheleifeh: A Reappraisal, ed. G. Pratico (American Schools of Oriental Research, Archaeological Reports; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1993) 51–63 + 75–86 and pls. 74–84.
• "The Demarcation of Divine and Human Realms in Genesis 2–11," in Creation in the Biblical Traditions, eds. R. J. Clifford and J. J. Collins (The Catholic Biblical Quarterly Monograph Series 24; Washington, DC: The Catholic Biblical Association of America, 1992) 39–56.