Twenty nine scholars from Israel, Europe and the Americas came together to honor and celebrate Prof. Bezalel Porten's (Emeritus, Dept. of History of the Jewish People, Hebrew University of Jerusalem) academic career. Covering a wide variety of topics within Aramaic, Biblical, and ancient Near Eastern Studies, "In the Shadow of Bezalel" offers new insights and proposals in the areas of Aramaic language, paleography, onomastica and lexicography; ancient Near Eastern legal traditions, Hebrew Bible, and social history of the Persian period.

Alejandro F. Botta, Ph.D. summa cum laude, Dept. of History of the Jewish People, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem (2002) is Associate Professor of Hebrew Bible at Boston University School of Theology. His most recent publication is The Aramaic and Egyptian Legal Traditions at Elephantine: An Egyptological Approach (2009).