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Carmen Palmer
Carmen Palmer is a scholar of Hebrew Bible who specializes in the Dead Sea Scrolls. Her main interests include issues surrounding identity and conversions. She is an instructor at Martin Luther University College in Waterloo, ON (Canada) in the area of Biblical Studies and teaches online classes for the College of Emmanuel & St. Chad in Saskatoon, SK (Canada) on early Christian writings. Dr. Palmer has also taught biblical Hebrew at Emmanuel College of the University of Toronto for a number of years.

Dr. Palmer is also a current member on the Society of Biblical Literature’s International Cooperation Initiative (ICI) Committee. ICI seeks to remove barriers to individuals in ICI designated countries in order to make biblical scholarship more globally accessible. Dr. Palmer works more broadly within the ICI to help remove barriers for individuals who may not be from an ICI designated countries, but who for one reason of another feel disconnected from the scholarly community.

Her first monograph, published in 2018, is titled Converts in the Dead Sea Scrolls: The Gēr and Mutable Ethnicity.

Education
Dr. Palmer earned her PhD in Biblical Studies from the University of St. Michael’s College in 2016. Her Master of Divinity degree was earned at Emmanuel College at the University of Toronto in 2007. She also has a Bachelor of Arts in French Literature and East Asian Area Studies from the University of British Columbia, which she earned in 2000.

Monographs
Her first book publication is titled Converts in the Dead Sea Scrolls: The Gēr and Mutable Ethnicity (STDJ 126, Leiden: Boston, Brill, 2018). In it she asks the question of whether or not the figure of the gēr referred to in the Dead Sea Scrolls represents a Gentile convert to Judaism.

In a recent interview, Dr. Palmer reflects on her monograph saying, "The sectarian movement affiliated with the Dead Sea Scrolls is considered quite impermeable to outsiders, leading scholars for the most part to conclude that the figure is a “resident alien” as the term is in the Hebrew Bible. But, by comparing the gēr in scriptural rewriting in the scrolls against scriptural predecessors, I concluded that the gēr is actually a convert. The next question was to establish “what” converted means exactly, in other words, what components of identity are central within the sectarian movement that would transform in a conversion. In the end, I found that components of kinship, culture, and connection to land transformed in the figure of the gēr. Overall the conclusion means that the sectarian movement is more permeable that scholars initially thought."

Book Translations
Translator (French to English) for Macchi, Jean-Daniel. Esther. IECOT (International Exegetical Commentary on the Old Testament). Edited by Adele Berlin. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer. Forthcoming 2018.

Projects
Dr. Palmer is currently working on a second project titled: More than Men: Exploring the Possibility of Female Gentile Converts to Judaism within the Dead Sea Scrolls. This project is a continuation of her first monograph. In this project she focuses on the question of whether the gēr of the Dead Sea Scrolls is a male or female figure. Furthermore, she broadens her examination to ask the question of whether or not there is evidence in the Dead Sea Scrolls of female conversions.

Dr. Palmer explains, "In this project, passages from the Dead Sea Scrolls are the central starting point of investigation, as with my first project, although the scope of inquiry is even broader. I am casting comparisons to texts from within Greek, Roman, rabbinic, early Christian, and biblical traditions. My preliminary conclusions suggest that female converts do seem to be present within the Dead Sea Scrolls, although their level of agency is less than their male counterparts."