Julia M. OBrien

I just published a new session in my Reading the Bible as an Adult project:  Bathsheba, Tamar, Absalom, Solomon:  David's Family Curse? The entry deals primarily with the trans-generational dynamics of 2 Samuel 11-18, how the themes of David's later life spill over into those of his family.  I talk about David's fukú , the language that Junot Díaz  uses in his novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao to describe a family curse. But there's a lot more to discuss  in these stories of David and his children, including the way that different people and different cultures think about rape.

When you encounter a website that slaps the face of all you believe in, makes your blood pressure rise, and basically ticks you off, should you speak against it or ignore it in hopes that it withers from lack of attention?  That's the dilemma I face when I view the Visionary Daughters website.

My web-support friend alerted me to this sermon on youtube.  It's based on a phrase that appears in the King James Version, though not in other translations (including the New King James):  "the one who pisseth against the wall."  Watch it for yourself before reading further, so that I don't spoil the surprise (or not) ending.

I need help with the name of my new project.

Maybe I should start with a little history.

It's time for the results of the "What is the primary role of a prophet?" poll. . .

Even as booksellers and English teachers lament that Americans don't read, the phenomenon of the book club just keeps getting bigger.  Every month, book clubs gather in small town libraries, in independent book shops, and at almost every Barnes and Noble in the nation.  Oprah makes and breaks careers by picking her book club insiders.  The websites of major publishers pitch their wares to the book club crowd, sometimes targeting African American readers or evangelical Christians. A simple internet query for "book clubs" returns page after page of discussion questions (general and tailored to particular books) and guidelines for how to start a live or virtual book club of one's own.  Apparently there are a lot of people for whom reading and talking about reading matter.

 

I just learned about an on-line Bible study coordinated by Carolyn Sharp, Associate Professor of Hebrew Scriptures at Yale Divinity School.

Mark Goodacre, Associate Professor in the Religion Department at Duke University, has developed a New Testament podcast.  He describes it as "condensed content from an academic perspective for everyone interested in historical approaches to the New Testament.

In the May 29, 2009 issue of The Chronicle Review, two articles underscored the power of literature to transform students' lives.  In "Life Stories Unlocked by Literature," Margot Mifflin invited us to witness a female haunted by rape find strength in reading Alice Sebold's Lucky and a male abused by a babysitter affirm his sexuality in response to Shelley Jackson's "My Body: A Wunderkammer."  In "Great Books 2.0," David Clemens introduced us to Joshua, jazzed up on the Great Books, convinced they are the "real deal."  In the classics, Clemens proclaims, students hungry for meaning feast on perennial questions of human existence-a repast far more wholesome and satisfying than the empty calories of an educational diet of multiculturalism and pop culture.

In an earlier blog post, I referred to Abraham Joshua Heschel’s understanding of divine pathos—God’s passionate care about humanity.  In a 2007 article in Catholic Biblical Quarterly, Matthew Schlimm compares Heschel’s views with those of two other biblical scholar/theologians:  Walter Brueggemann and Terence Fretheim.  ("Different Perspectives on Divine Pathos" An Examination of Hermeneutics in Biblical theology" Catholic Biblical Quarterly 69 2007: 673-694.)   Schlimm finds the biggest differences between Heschel and Brueggemann, with Fretheim's views often falling inbetween that of the others.