A true Renaissance man, William W. Hallo—the William M. Laffan Professor Emeritus of Assyriology and Babylonian Literature at Yale University—passed away Sunday, March 29, 2015, at age 87. In addition to being a leading Assyriologist, Hallo also made significant contributions to Biblical studies. He even pioneered a new contextual approach that combined the two disciplines. Hallo and K. Lawson Younger, Jr., of Trinity Evangelical Divinity School edited the impressive three-volume series The Context of Scripture that used ancient Near Eastern literature as background and comparative materials for the Biblical texts.
Hallo was born in Kassel, Germany, in 1928 to parents Rudolf Hallo, an early leader in the field of Jewish art history, and Dr. Gertrude Rubensohn Hallo. In 1939, Hallo and his siblings were rescued through the Kindertransport—a program prior to World War II that evacuated Jewish children from Nazi Germany and sent them to England. A year later, in 1940, their mother joined them, and they journeyed as a family to the U.S. His father had passed away in 1933.
After receiving his B.A. from Harvard University, Hallo studied at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands on a Fulbright scholarship. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago under the tutelage of Professor Ignace Gelb. Before joining the faculty of Yale University in 1962 as assistant curator of the Babylonian Collection and professor of Assyriology, he taught at Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati. Hallo spent 40 years at Yale, serving as a professor, curator of the Babylonian Collection and master of Morse College from 1982 to 1987.
In addition to authoring almost 200 scholarly articles and a dozen books, Hallo was also a frequent writer for BAR and Bible Review.a His contributions to the fields of Assyriology and Biblical studies were vast.
Hallo is survived by his wife, Nanette Stahl, children and grandchildren.
A true Renaissance man, William W. Hallo—the William M. Laffan Professor Emeritus of Assyriology and Babylonian Literature at Yale University—passed away Sunday, March 29, 2015, at age 87. In addition to being a leading Assyriologist, Hallo also made significant contributions to Biblical studies. He even pioneered a new contextual approach that combined the two disciplines. Hallo and K. Lawson Younger, Jr., of Trinity Evangelical Divinity School edited the impressive three-volume series The Context of Scripture that used ancient Near Eastern literature as background and comparative materials for the Biblical texts. Hallo was born in Kassel, Germany, in 1928 to […]
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