Education
Van Wolde studied at the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome, and the University of Bologna.
Van Wolde studied at the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome, and the University of Bologna.
Van Wolde is known for her view that in the Genesis creation narrative, the Hebrew verb bara does not mean "to create" but to "spatially separate", and that "the traditional view of God the Creator" is now untenable, since "the Earth was already there when he created humans and animals."
In 2009 her book Reframing Biblical Studies. When Language and Text Meet Culture, Cognition, and Context was published in which she explained her method of analysis. Wolde, East.J. van (2013), One Bow or Another.
A study of the bow in General 9: 8-17, Vetus Testamentum, 63, pp.
Essays in Memory of Ron Pirson (pp 71-100), Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature;
Wolde, East.J. van & Roman Catholic Rezetko (2011), Semantics and the Semantics of bara: a Rejoinder to the Arguments Advanced by B. Becking and M. Korpel, The Journal of Hebrew Scriptures 11(9);
Wolde, East.J. van (2008), Sentiments as Culturally Constructed Emotions. Anger and Love in the Hebrew Bible, Biblical Interpretation.
A Journal of Contemporary Approaches 16, pp.
Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.