[1] As an American Schools of Oriental Research (ASOR) fellow, Gordon spent the first half of the 1930s in the Near East working out of both the Baghdad and Jerusalem centers.
Therefore, he took a series of temporary positions at Johns Hopkins University (under Albright), at Smith College, and at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey.
Later in the war, Lieutenant Gordon was assigned to the Middle East, serving in the Mediterranean, Egypt, Palestine, Iraq, and eventually in Iran.
He visited major archaeological sites of ancient Persia, and published a treatise on a number of Aramaic Incantation bowls from the collection of the Teheran Museum.
He came to New York University (NYU) in 1973, and served as director of the Center for Ebla Research, spearheading work on that ancient Syrian city.
These include: field archaeology, glyphic art, cuneiform law, the Amarna letters, the Bible, Hebrew language, Ugaritic, Aramaic magic bowls, Nuzi tablets, Minoan Linear A, Homer, Egyptology, Coptic, Hittite, Hurrian, Sumerian, and Classical Arabic.
In the 1960s, he declared his examination of Cretan texts in the Minoan language corroborated his long-held theory that Greek and Hebrew cultures stemmed from a common Semitic heritage.
Gordon's student, Michael Astour, published the most comprehensive treatment of this controversial thesis in his monumental Helleno-Semitica: An Ethnic and Cultural Study in West Semitic Impact on Mycenaean Greece (1965).
Gordon also held that Jews, Phoenicians, and others crossed the Atlantic in antiquity, ultimately arriving in both North and South America.