O'Connor, Michael Patrick 1950-2007 (M. O'Connor, Michael P. O'Connor)

OBITUARY NOTICE—

See index for CA sketch: Born April 7, 1950, in Lackawanna, NY; died of complications from liver cancer, June 16, 2007, in Silver Spring, MD. Semitic scholar, linguist, educator, poet, and writer. O'Connor immersed himself in the field of Near Eastern studies, specializing in ancient and modern Semitic languages, including Akkadian as it was once spoken in what is now Iraq, ancient Ugaritic from what is now part of Syria, and more universally recognizable languages such as Arabic, Aramaic, and Hebrew. He spent most of his career teaching like-minded scholars at institutions of higher learning, often those affiliated with one religion or another, including Albion College and the University of St. Paul in the Midwest and Union Theological Seminary in New York City. In 1997 he became a professor of Semitic languages at the Catholic University of America in Washington, DC. Some critics claim that O'Connor's most respectable achievement in the field of scholarly literature is the 1990 book An Introduction to Biblical Hebrew Syntax, which he wrote with Bruce K. Waltke, but he published other books as well. These include Hebrew Verse Structure (1980), The Bible and Its Traditions (1983), and Agrammatic Aphasis: A Cross-Cultural Narrative Sourcebook (1990). With David Noel Freedman, he edited Backgrounds for the Bible (1987). Outside the academy, O'Connor reportedly enjoyed creative literature and cultural pursuits. His own poetry was published in Pandary in 1989.

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Washington Post, July 1, 2007, p. C8.