Professor William M. Schniedewind chairs the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures and is a Professor of Biblical Studies at UCLA. He has been a fellow at the Albright Institute of Archaeological Research in Jerusalem as well as a Visiting Scholar at the Hebrew University. He received his PhD in Near Eastern and Judaic Studies in 1992 at Brandeis University. He is most recently the author of Society and the Promise to David, published in 1999.