Alan Millard
Alan Millard[1] (born 1 December 1937) is a renowned scholar of Semitics and is Emeritus Rankin Professor of Hebrew and Ancient Semitic Languages at the University of Liverpool. He is currently married to and lives with his wife, Margaret Millard, with whom he has had three children, and now has six grandchildren. He is a member of Myton Church.
Career
Alan Millard studied at the University of Oxford and University of London, and eventually entered his career into the University of Liverpool, where he would become a professor of Hebrew and Ancient Semitic Languages in 1992. Millard has authored, co-authored or contributed to 9 academic books, and has written more than 200 scientific papers.[2] Millard was the Librarian at Tyndale Library for Biblical Research in Cambridge and has held a Fellowship at the Institute for Advanced Studies at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem, where he worked with the late Yigael Yadin. He has conducted archaeological work in numerous excavations at ancient sites, including in Nimrud, Arpad (Tell Rifa'at), Qadesh (Tell Nebi Mend), and Petra.
Alan Millard has published a number of influential books, including some of the following;
- Atra-Ḫasīs: the Babylonian story of the Flood
- The Eponyms of the Assyrian Empire 910-612 BC
- Reading and Writing in the Time of Jesus
- Dictionary of the ancient Near East
Critiques
Alan Millard has also heavily critiqued the opinions that Francesca Stavrakopoulou presented in several BBC programs against the historicity of several biblical narratives.[3] For example, regarding the historicity of King David, Millard notes "Dr Stavrokopoulou showed a broken Aramaic inscription from Tel Dan which mentions "the house of David". Engraved 150 years or so after David’s death, she suggested it came from a time when a fictional story of a founding father had been constructed. That flies in the face of well-known ancient practice. A dynasty was named after its founder, a real man. The stone does not disclose anything about David except that. Yet she did not report that hardly any scholar today doubts his existence." Millard also noted that "her conclusions about the Garden of Eden rest more on supposition than fact." Finally, he concluded "It is regrettable that the BBC should broadcast programmes that are so lacking in balance, in objectivity and in logic." Since then, Stavrakopoulou has not responded.
References
More recently, Millard