Prof. Dr. habil. Zsengellér József DSc

József Zsengellér is Professor of Biblical and Talmudic Studies at the Jewish Theological Seminary – University of Jewish Studies in Budapest, and chair of the University’s Doctoral Council. He is also president of the Hungarian Society for Hebrew Studies. He is a Reformed pastor, theologian, and Hebraist.
He studied in Budapest, where he earned MD and MA degrees, as well as in Jerusalem and Utrecht, where he received his PhD. Between 1993 and 1997, he taught as an assistant lecturer at the Faculty of Theology of Károli Gáspár University of the Reformed Church in Hungary. In September 1998, following the reopening of the Pápa Reformed Theological Academy, he became head of its Department of Old Testament Studies as a college professor. In 1999, he was appointed full professor.
From 2008 to 2020, he served as professor and head of the Department of Biblical Theology and Religious Studies at the Faculty of Theology of Károli Gáspár University. During this period, he also served as dean from 2011 to 2017, vice-rector for strategy from 2016 to 2019, and rector from 2019 to 2020. Between 2023 and 2026, he served as vice-president of the Hungarian Doctoral Council. Since 2025, he has held the title of Doctor of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.
He is a founding member and, since 2000, secretary of the THÉMA Protestant Study Circle. He was editor-in-chief of the journal THÉMA from 1999 to 2011.
His research interests include the literary and canonical history of the Old Testament / Hebrew Bible; the religious history of ancient Israel; the literature and history of the Samaritan community; early Jewish literature; the Deuterocanonical books; seventeenth-century Hebrew congratulatory poems written by Protestant peregrine students; and the role of the Old Testament in homiletics.
He is married and the father of six children. His wife, Edina Zsengellér-Kekk, is assistant pastor of the Reformed Congregation of Velence.