Hector Avalos (October 8, 1958 – April 12, 2021) was a professor of Religious Studies at Iowa State University, a cultural anthropologist, and the author of several books on religion.

Finally, he obtained a Doctor of Philosophy in Hebrew Bible and Near Eastern Studies from Harvard University in 1991.

The program is dedicated to teaching courses about U.S. Latinos, who are defined as people living in the U.S. who trace their roots to the Spanish-speaking countries of Latin America.

[11] Avalos' first major work was Illness and Health Care in the Ancient Near East: The Role of the Temple in Greece, Mesopotamia, and Israel (1995), published in the Harvard Semitic Monograph series.

The book combined systematically critical biblical studies with medical anthropology to reconstruct the health care systems of Ancient Greece, Mesopotamia, and Israel.