Rate My Professor Kenneth Hanson

Kenneth L. Hanson is an Associate Professor in the Department of History at the University of Central Florida, where he also serves as Coordinator of the Judaic Studies Program. In September 2021, he was invested into the Tess and Abe Wise Endowed Professorship in Judaic Studies during a virtual ceremony, honoring his accomplishments and supporting his ongoing research and teaching. Hanson earned his Ph.D. in Judaic Studies from the University of Texas at Austin in 1991. His research specializes in the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Judaism of late antiquity, fields in which he has published a number of scholarly articles. He is the author of six books, including Dead Sea Scrolls: The Untold Story (San Francisco: Council Oak Books, 1997), Kabbalah: Three Thousand Years of Mystic Tradition (San Francisco: Council Oak Books, 1998), Words of Light: Spiritual Wisdom from the Dead Sea Scrolls (San Francisco: Council Oak Books, 2000), Secrets from the Lost Bible (San Francisco: Council Oak Books, 2005), Blood Kin of Jesus (San Francisco: Council Oak Books, 2010), and The Eagle & the Bible: Lessons in Liberty from Holy Writ (Nashville, TN: New English Review Press, 2012). Hanson has also co-edited The Annotated Passover Haggadah with Zev Garber.

Hanson's contributions extend beyond publications to public scholarship and innovative pedagogy. His research was featured in the 2007 History Channel documentary Banned from the Bible II. He directed the documentary film The Druze: An Ethnic Minority in the Holy Land, shot on location in Israel, which premiered at UCF Celebrates the Arts in 2021 and earned acclaim at international film festivals. Renowned for his engaging teaching style, Hanson incorporates immersive techniques such as period-accurate costumes, spoken Hebrew, greenscreen technology, and video games to transport students into the worlds of Middle Eastern history and archaeology, in collaboration with UCF's Center for Distributed Learning. He teaches a broad array of Judaic Studies courses, including Modern Israeli Hebrew, Dead Sea Scrolls, History of the Holocaust, and Jewish history and culture more generally. Dr. Hanson regularly presents public lectures on these topics in various venues, contributing significantly to the dissemination of knowledge about Jewish studies and biblical archaeology.