Michael DeVries

@michaeldevries.bsky.social

706 Followers 705 Following

PhD @unibirmingham.bsky.social | Second Temple Judaism | Dead Sea Scrolls | Qumran war tradition | Currently researching ritual, cognition, and the Qumran movement | Adjunct Professor | #LADodgers #LARams

Cover of *Reimagining Apocalypticism: Apocalyptic Literature in the Dead Sea Scrolls and Related Writings* (SBL Press)

Cover of the album *OK Computer* from Radiohead.

Cover of Curtis Dozier's *The White Pedestal: How White Nationalists Use Ancient Greece and Rome to Justify Hate* (Yale University Press)

Cover of Alex P. Jassen’s *Violence, Power, and Society in the Dead Sea Scrolls*

Cover of *The Community Rules from Qumran: A Commentary* by Charlotte Hempel (Fortress Press).

Cover of *The Dead Sea Scrolls in the Context of Hellenistic Judea: Proceedings of the Tenth Meeting of the International Organization for Qumran Studies (Aberdeen, 5–8 August, 2019),* edited by Pieter Hartog and Andrew Perrin

Cover of Dan Machiela's *A Handbook of the Aramaic Scrolls from the Qumran Caves: Manuscripts, Language, and Scribal Practices* (Brill)

Cover shot of *The Bible and Violence* (Bloomsbury T&T Clark)

Photo of a signed copy of *The Dead Sea Scrolls: A Personal Account* by John Trever

Cover of *Social and Cognitive Perspectives on the Sermon in the Mount* (eds., Roitto, Shantz, Luomanen)

Cover of *The Spirit within Me: Self and Agency in Ancient Israel and the Second Temple Judaism* by Carol A. Newsom

The seal of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts.

Cover of J. van der Ploeg’s *The Excavations at Qumran: A Survey of the Judaean Brotherhood and its Ideas*

Cover of *Tracing the Ritual Body: Catherine Bell and Rituals of the Ancient Biblical World* (Cohen, DeMaris, and Schwiebert, eds.)

Cover photo of Thomas Kazen's *Dirt, Shame, Status: Perspectives on Same-Sex Sexuality in the Bible and the Ancient World*

Dear Michael DeVries,

Congratulations! Your proposal, Agency and Efficacy: A Cognitive Analysis of Apotropaic and Incantational Texts from Qumran, has been accepted by the Cognitive Science Approaches to the Biblical World Section program unit. The meeting will be held in Denver, Colorado, USA, from 21 to 24 November 2026.

Cover shot of Franziska Ede's *Vom Prophetenbuch zum Prophetenpescher: Das Buch Habakuk und seine Auslegung in 1QpHab

Cover image of Stuckebruck/Gurtner's *T&T Clark Encyclopedia of Second Temple Judaism* with T&T Clark/Bloomsbury.

Cover image for Hindy Najman's *Scriptural Vitality: Rethinking Philology and Hermeneutics*

And if “Greatness” fails to arrive—if the regime changes the name at the top but not its basic character, and its security forces slaughter thousands more Iranians who follow Trump’s videotaped advice to “take over” their country, and civil war breaks out in ethnic-minority regions, and the entire Middle East is in flames—who can believe that Trump will take any responsibility? Rather, he’ll claim the glory of war without owning the tragedy of all that it brings and move on to something else, while the Iranian people are betrayed again, this time by us.

Cancellation message from The Washington Post that reads "We hope you’ll reconsider the value of the necessary and important work our journalists do to keep citizens informed. Absolutely nothing has changed about that. In fact, it’s more important than ever."

Cover of TIME magazine noting that the University of Birmingham has been ranked #62 in the world in TIME World’s Top Universities of 2026.

Text that reads, “Dr. Michael, please get back to me when you see this. My puppy seems to be getting worse. What should I do?”

Cover image of Anthony Giambrone's *The Bible and the Priesthood: Priestly Participation in the One Sacrifice for Sins* (Baker Academic)

She knows that many people disagree, that they see the value of liberal arts as less about job preparation and more about teaching students how to think. It’s a nice sentiment on some level, she says, but it’s also hopelessly naive. More to the point, she argues, it’s exactly the reason many colleges are in trouble: Faculty grew too powerful and too romantic about their role in society. Students are her customers, she says, and at colleges like Albright they no longer major in Latin American studies or even economics. If they want an AI major, her responsibility is to give them one.

Christmas decorations in Terminal 3 of ORD.

Title slide for our SBL presentation on ritual and anxiety.

The Police, Synchronicity

Abstract for the paper "The Psychology of Rituals: An iIntegrative Review and Process-Based Framework"

"Traditionally, ritual has been studied from broad sociocultural perspectives, with little consideration of the psychological
processes at play. Recently, however, psychologists have begun turning their attention to the study of ritual, uncovering the
causal mechanisms driving this universal aspect of human behavior. With growing interest in the psychology of ritual, this
article provides an organizing framework to understand recent empirical work from social psychology, cognitive science,
anthropology, behavioral economics, and neuroscience. Our framework focuses on three primary regulatory functions
of rituals: regulation of (a) emotions, (b) performance goal states, and (c) social connection. We examine the possible
mechanisms underlying each function by considering the bottom-up processes that emerge from the physical features of
rituals and top-down processes that emerge from the psychological meaning of rituals. Our framework, by appreciating the
value of psychological theory, generates novel predictions and enriches our understanding of ritual and human behavior
more broadly."

Quote from Malinowski’s book, Magic, Science and Religion

Cover of Bronislaw Malinowski's Magic, Science and Religion and Other Essays.

Cover image of RIsto Uro's monograph, Ritual and Christian Beginnings: A Socio-Cognitive Analysis (Oxford, 2016).

Cover of Warren Carter and Ariel Feldman’s volume, Early Judaism and the New Testament: Troubling Misunderstandings.

Screen shot of the title page of "Eschatological Violence in the Dead Sea Scrolls" in *The Bible and Violence* project with T&T Clark.

Fascism : a populist political philosophy, movement, or regime (such as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual, that is associated with a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, and that is characterized by severe economic and social regimentation and by forcible suppression of opposition.

Photo of the cover of The Ritual Animal: Imitation and Cohesion in the Evolution of Social Complexity by Harvey Whitehouse.

Cover of Senses, Cognition, and Ritual Experience in the Roman World (eds. Blanka Misic and Abigail Graham)

Schedule for the STECA Virtual Conference 2025. My presentation was on "Ritual, Cognition, and the Qumran Movement."

Photo of the cover for Harvey Whitehouse’s Arguments and Icons: Divergent Modes of Religiosity