Hananel was awarded a Fulbright Postdoctoral Fellowship to pursue his research project titled “Ritual, Royalty, and Imperial Reality: Priestly Political Thought and Identity Formation".
Hananel received his B.A. and M.A. degrees in bible and archaeology from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, both summa cum laude. He then pursued his Ph.D. in the Department of Bible at the Hebrew University and received the university's President’s Stipend and the Nathan Rotenstreich Scholarship from the Israeli Council for Higher Education, as well as the Joseph C. Shenker Endowed Scholarship Fund from the Mandel Institute of Jewish Studies.
Hananel's dissertation, titled "Rituals Conducted Outside the Tabernacle in the Priestly Literature in the Pentateuch" (advisor: Dr. Naphtali Meshel; completed in 2023), was awarded the Mandel Institute for Jewish Studies Grant supporting its current preparation for academic publication as a monograph.
Currently, Hananel is a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Zurich, where he is beginning to pursue his research on royal patronage over ritual procedures in the ancient Near East in general and in biblical priestly literature in particular, focusing on the political and theological implications of this notion.
Hananel's publications include:
- "Subversion through Allusion in Samuel's Call to Prophecy (1 Sam 3)." Vetus Testamentum (In-advance publication). https://doi.org/10.1163/15685330-bja10161.
- "From Pre-Masoretic Idiolect to Pre-LXX Attestations: In Pursuit of MT-Jer's Origins." Vetus Testamentum (In-advance publication). https://doi.org/10.1163/15685330-bja10150.
- "Making Sense of the Incense Altar: Location in Sacred Space and Text." Journal of Biblical Literature 142.1 (2023): 23–42. https://doi.org/10.15699/jbl.1421.2023.2.
