Representative Michael Patrick O’Connor

Michael Patrick O’Connor (1950, Lackawanna, New York – June 16, 2007, Silver Spring, Maryland) was an American scholar of the Ancient Near East and a poet. Within the field of Ancient Near Eastern studies he was a linguist of Semitic languages, with a particular focus on biblical Hebrew and biblical poetry. Over the course of his career he became widely recognized for his innovative work on the structure and meter of Hebrew verse and for his contributions to the description of biblical Hebrew syntax, while simultaneously sustaining an active vocation as a literary poet.

O’Connor pursued a broad and rigorous education that combined literature, creative writing, and ancient Near Eastern studies. He received his bachelor’s degree in English from the University of Notre Dame in 1970. He then completed a master’s degree in creative writing at the University of British Columbia in 1972, reflecting his early and sustained engagement with poetry. Turning toward the ancient world and Semitic linguistics, he went on to earn a master’s degree in ancient Near Eastern studies in 1974 and a doctorate in 1978, both from the University of Michigan. This combination of literary and philological training shaped his later work, in which he brought a poet’s sensitivity to language to the technical analysis of ancient texts.

After completing his doctoral studies, O’Connor worked for a number of years as a freelance scholar, during which time he began to publish specialized studies in Semitic linguistics and Northwest Semitic epigraphy. In 1977 he published articles such as “The Grammar of Getting Blessed in Tyrian-Sidonian Phoenician” in Rivista di Studi Fenici and “The Rhetoric of the Kilamuwa Inscription” in the Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, establishing himself as a careful interpreter of early Northwest Semitic inscriptions. He also contributed to the emerging linguistic study of verse, as in his 1982 essay “‘Unanswerable the knack of tongues’: The linguistic Study of Verse” in Exceptional Language and Linguistics, and he wrote on early Northwest Semitic writing systems in a 1983 essay in the volume The Word of the Lord Shall Go Forth, which he co-edited.

O’Connor subsequently entered full-time academic life, holding teaching positions that allowed him to integrate his linguistic, literary, and theological interests. He taught at the Saint Paul Seminary School of Divinity of the University of St. Thomas, where he contributed to the training of clergy and scholars in biblical studies and languages. He then joined the faculty of Union Theological Seminary, further cementing his reputation as a specialist in biblical Hebrew and Semitic linguistics. In 1997 he was appointed to the faculty of the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., where he taught in the fields of biblical studies and Semitic languages. He was promoted to the rank of Ordinary Professor in 2002, reflecting his standing as a leading figure in his discipline and his significant record of scholarship and teaching.

Within the scholarly community, O’Connor is best known for his groundbreaking work on Hebrew verse and biblical Hebrew syntax. His book Hebrew Verse Structure, first published in 1978 by Eisenbrauns, offered a systematic account of the structure of Hebrew poetry and advanced the influential proposal that the meter of Hebrew verse is based on constraints in syntax rather than on metrical feet in the manner of classical or modern European poetry. A second edition, published in 1997 under the title The Contours of Biblical Hebrew Verse: An Afterword to Hebrew Verse Structure, revisited and refined his earlier arguments. He also co-authored, with Bruce K. Waltke, the comprehensive textbook An Introduction to Biblical Hebrew Syntax (Eisenbrauns, 1990), a 765-page work that became a standard reference for students and scholars of biblical Hebrew. In addition to these major volumes, he edited or co-edited several important collections, including The Word of the Lord Shall Go Forth: Essays in Honor of David Noel Freedman in Celebration of His Sixtieth Birthday (1983), Backgrounds for the Bible (1987), and Non-fluent Aphasia in a Multilingual World (1995), the last of which reflected his broader interest in language and linguistics beyond strictly biblical studies.

O’Connor’s scholarly output extended across a wide range of topics in Semitic philology, biblical studies, and linguistics. He published on Arabic loanwords in Nabatean Aramaic in the Journal of Near Eastern Studies (1986), on the poetic inscription from Khirbet el-Qôm in Vetus Testamentum (1987), and on Ugaritic and the Bible in the volume Backgrounds for the Bible (1987). His work in lexicography and historical linguistics included studies such as “Semitic *mgn and Its Supposed Sanskrit Origin” in the Journal of the American Oriental Society (1989), “Biblical Hebrew Lexicography: טף ‘Children, Dependents’ in Biblical and Qumranic Hebrew” in the Journal of Northwest Semitic Languages (1999), and “Semitic Lexicography: European Dictionaries of Biblical Hebrew in the Twentieth Century” in Israel Oriental Studies (2002). He also examined onomastics and Bronze Age West Semitic in a 2004 article in the Journal of the American Oriental Society and contributed the entry on “Parallelism” (with E. L. Greenstein) to the fourth edition of The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics, published posthumously in 2012. His essays on biblical literature included studies such as “The Women in the Book of Judges” (Hebrew Annual Review, 1986), “War and Rebel Chants in the Former Prophets” in a 1995 Festschrift for David Noel Freedman, and “The Biblical Notion of the City” in the volume Constructions of Space II (2008), which appeared after his death.

In addition to his monographs and essays, O’Connor was an active reviewer and critic, engaging with a wide range of works in biblical studies, linguistics, and literature. He wrote reviews for journals such as South Central Review, The Catholic Biblical Quarterly, Journal of the American Oriental Society, Theological Studies, Hebrew Studies, Written Language & Literacy, and others between the early 1990s and mid-2000s. These reviews addressed topics ranging from verbal aspect in biblical Hebrew prose and Ugaritic and Hebrew poetics to modern discussions of writing systems and the relationship between word and image, reflecting both his technical expertise and his broad intellectual curiosity.

Parallel to his academic career, O’Connor maintained a sustained and serious commitment to poetry. He published poems throughout his life in literary journals, including “The News of the World for Therese” in The Iowa Review (1971), “The Aphrodite of Melos” in The Transatlantic Review (1973), and “Envoi on Our Failure” in The Great Lakes Review (1984). His book of poems Pandary appeared in 1989 with L’Epervier Press in Seattle, Washington. After his death, a selection of his poetic work was gathered in Field Notes: The Selected Poems of Michael Patrick O’Connor (2009), which further documented his dual identity as both scholar and poet. His literary training and practice informed his scholarly approach to biblical poetry, enabling him to bridge the gap between technical linguistic analysis and the aesthetic dimensions of ancient texts.

O’Connor was a Catholic, and his faith formed an important context for his work in biblical studies and his service at church-related institutions such as the Saint Paul Seminary School of Divinity and the Catholic University of America. He died of complications of liver cancer on June 16, 2007, at Holy Cross Hospital in Silver Spring, Maryland. At the time of his death he was widely regarded as one of the foremost contemporary interpreters of biblical Hebrew poetry and syntax, and his writings continued to influence the study of the Hebrew Bible, Semitic linguistics, and the theory of verse in the years following his passing.