Background
He was born in Chicago, United States.
He was born in Chicago, United States.
He then attended Loyola University in Chicago, where he received his Bachelor of Arts in 1944. He resumed his studies at Johns Hopkins University and gained his Doctor of Philosophy in 1950.
After this, he taught Latin and Greek in a high school in Cincinnati between 1946 and 1947. After further studies he worked on the "Chicago Assyrian Dictionary", and in 1955 he taught biblical studies at the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome between 1958 and 1966. In 1966, he took the position as professor of Assyriology at Harvard University, and was respected as a rigorous and learned teacher of the Akkadian language who could easily discuss problems in Biblical lexicon and literature.
He retired in 1990, and moved to Brunswick, Maine, where he died in 2000.
In 2005, a 224-page book titled "Biblical and Oriental Essays in Memory of William L. Moran," edited by Agustinus Gianto for Biblica et Orientalia 48 was published by Roma: Pontificio Istituto Biblico to honor his career and memory.