Michael E. Stone

Michael Edward Stone (born 22 October 1938) is a professor emeritus of Armenian Studies and of Comparative Religion at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

His research deals with Armenian studies and with Jewish literature and thought of the Second Temple period.

He is also a published poet.

Michael Stone was born in Leeds, England in 1938.

In 1941 his family moved to Sydney, Australia, where he was raised.

He attended North Sydney Boys High School where he studied Latin, Hebrew and Greek (First Class Honours).

He earned a bachelor's degree from the University of Melbourne in Semitic Studies and the Classics during the years 1956–1960.

His father, Julius Stone, was a professor of International Law at the University of Sydney and the first chairman of the Truman Institute at the Hebrew University.

He immigrated to Israel in 1960.

After a year-long acclimation program at the Hebrew University (1960–61), Stone transferred to Harvard University in the United States and there completed a doctorate under Professor Frank M. Cross in the Department of Near Eastern Languages during the years 1961–65.

His doctorate addressed the conception of eschatology in 4 Ezra.

Afterwards he became a lecturer in Comparative Religion at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

He married Nira Weintraub in 1961.

She was a scholar in the history of Byzantine and Armenian art, a field in which she taught for many years at the Hebrew University.

They have two children and six grandchildren.

He was (according to chronology) assistant professor of religious studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara (1965–66), lecturer in Jewish studies and Armenian studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (1966–69), senior lecturer in the same (1969–76), visiting research fellow at Harvard University (1971–72), George Scott Fellow at Ormond College of the University of Melbourne (summer of 1974), visiting member of the Theological Faculty at Leiden University (summer of 1975), associate professor at the Hebrew University (1976–80), the Berg Professor of Judaic Studies (1977–78) and the Tarzian Adjunct Professor of Armenian History and Culture at the University of Pennsylvania (1977–83), fellow-in-residence (1980–81) and visiting scholar (autumn of 1984) at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Studies, distinguished visiting professor at the University of Pennsylvania (summer 1985), visiting scholar at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Studies (summer of 1986), distinguished visiting fellow at Ormond College of the University of Melbourne (spring of 1988), visiting professor of Jewish studies at Harvard Divinity School (fall of 1989), visiting professor at Yale University (autumn of 1991), Distinguished NEH Visiting professor at the University of Richmond (spring 1993), visiting professor of religious studies at the University of Virginia (1993), fellow-in-residence and the director of a research group on translation techniques at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Studies (1997–98), visiting professor of New Testament and Judaic studies at Harvard University (autumn of 2001), distinguished senior visiting fellow in the Kluge Center of the Library of Congress (autumn 2003), the Sugden Distinguished Visiting fellow at Queen's College of the University of Melbourne (summer of 2004), and distinguished visiting professor of Judaic studies at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte (2006–07).

He is a member of the editorial board of the journal, Revue des Études Arméniennes (Paris), served as a member of the scientific board of Patmabanasirakan Handes (Erevan) and as a member of the editorial board of Dead Sea Discoveries.

He is a founder of the Society of Biblical Literature Pseudepigrapha Group (USA) and was a member of the steering committee.

In 1966 he returned to Israel, became a lecturer in Comparative Religion at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and in the following year became an associate professor.

In 1980 he became a full professor of Armenian Studies and was named as the Gail Levin de Nur Professor of Religious Studies.

He published the first edition of the Armenian version of the Armenian Adam book, The Penitence of Adam in 1981.

In so doing, he initiated long-term research on the deuterocanonical books dealing with Adam and Eve, which he collected over the past decade.

He published concordances of Armenian deuterocanonical literature about Adam (1996, 2001) and additional literature related to Armenians and other Adam traditions (mentioned below).

With these publications Stone initiated a new field of study and research: deuterocanonical literature in Armenian, which is the transmission of biblical and Jewish traditions in Armenian.

In so doing he had lasting influence on Armenian Studies as well as the study of deuterocanonical literature.

In recent years he has focused on the way in which these traditions function within the Armenian culture and how their transformation reflects changes in the religious and intellectual history of the Armenian nation.

He presents diachronic questions that were never before posed and traces shifts of religious, intellectual, and cultural history that were hardly addressed.

In 2007 he retired from the Hebrew University, where he continues his research and lecturing as a professor emeritus.

Stone held many visiting research and professorial positions at academic institutions worldwide.

Nira died in the summer of 2013.

Stone has written and published many poems in English, and he is a member of the Israel Association of Writers in English.

Stone is first and foremost a historian of religious thought.

His research focuses on two fields: Jewish thought and literature of the Second Temple period including its transmission into the Middle Ages; and Armenian Studies.

His work emphasizes texts and their interpretations but extends beyond a narrow textual focus to ideological analysis within religious and intellectual history.

Credited with "single-handedly pioneer[ing] the study of the Armenian language, literature and history", Stone's research has focused on several topics within this subject:

Stone has published several books dealing with Jewish literature translated to Armenian.

In his book, The Armenian Version of 4 Ezra, Stone published the first full critical edition of any text connected with the Armenian biblical canon.

Following its publication, Stone produced several volumes of texts and exegesis addressing biblical or Jewish traditions.

These volumes contain manuscript texts edited anew including the first editions of documents that were beforehand unknown.

In this vein, many of Stone's articles are dedicated to the publication of texts, and in so doing he established a wide body of texts that were important both for Armenian and Pseudepigrapha Studies.