translation of the Dead Sea Scrolls, widely admired for its felicitousness; Thespis, his application of the Frazerian myth-and-ritual theory to the ancient Near East and beyond; and his abridgment and updating of Frazer's The Golden Bough (The New Golden Bough [1959]), in which he retained the theory but updated the data. This abridgment was of Frazer's twelve-volume third edition of his opus, which Frazer himself had abridged into one volume in 1922. Gaster's final major work, the two-volume tome Myth, Legend, and Custom in the Old Testament (1969), was similarly an abridgement and updating of Frazer's Folk-lore in the Old Testament. In 1955, he released an album on Folkways Records, The Hebrew Language: Commentary and Readings by Theodor H. Gaster. Only in 1966, at the age of sixty, did Gaster secure a permanent full-time academic post, as professor of religion at Barnard College, the women's undergraduate division of Columbia University. He helped revamp the curriculum and was Head of the Department of Religion from 1968–1972. He continued to lecture widely, and from 1971 to 1981 he was professor of religion and director of ancient Near Eastern studies at Dropsie College, by then renamed Dropsie University. Upon his retirement from Barnard, he was once again a visiting professor at many American universities. He relocated to Florida to teach for several years at the University of Florida. He moved to Philadelphia in 1988 and died there on February 2, 1992, survived by his wife, Lotta, and daughter, Corinna. Elaine Pagels, who taught for a time at Barnard College, notes in her book Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas (2003), that Gaster, her Barnard colleague, was "the 13th son of the Chief Rabbi of London. He knew all the languages of the Bible, and, at one time in 1976, students in one of his classes heard that he knew 32 languages in all. His teaching was full of warm humanity, humor, challenge, encouragement, and wit." Books Reprinted from Journal of the American Oriental Society, volume 66, number 1, Jan.-March, 1946. Other edition: (Republished as ) New Year: its history, customs, and superstitions (1955) Other editions: Recordings References British Sephardi Jews Jewish American writers Alumni of the University of London English emigrants to the United States Columbia University alumni Dropsie College faculty New York University faculty English people of Romanian descent 1906 births 1992 deaths American Sephardic Jews 20th-century American Jews