Saul M. Olyan

Saul M. Olyan is the Samuel Ungerleider Jr. Professor of Judaic Studies and Professor of Religious Studies at Brown University. He is the author of 10 books, editor or co-editor of 14 books, and author of 93 articles and essays. He has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, St. John’s College, University of Cambridge, the Centre for Animal Rights Law, University of Cambridge, and a grant from the American Philosophical Society.

Olyan was president of the New England and Eastern Canada region of the Society of Biblical Literature in 2016 and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a fellow of the American Academy for Jewish Research. His most recent monographs are Animal Rights and the Hebrew Bible and Violent Rituals of the Hebrew Bible. In 2024, he published a collection of essays entitled Human, Divine, and Textual Relationships: Essays on the Hebrew Bible in the series Journal of Ancient Judaism-Supplements.

He received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1985 and taught previously at Yale University and the University of Winnipeg.