Prof. David P. Wright is Professor of Bible and Ancient Near East at Brandeis University. He received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley and he is author of Inventing God’s Law: How the Covenant Code of the Bible Used and Revised the Laws of Hammurabi (2009),  Ritual in Narrative: The Dynamics of Feasting, Mourning, and Retaliation Rites in the Ugaritic Tale of Aqhat (2001), and The Disposal of Impurity: Elimination Rites in the Bible and in Hittite and Mesopotamian Literature (1987).