Julia M. OBrien

Over at the Lingamish blog, David Ker has been talking about marriage and about gender roles within it.

One of the fascinating, if maddening, aspects of biblical interpretation is that the story embraced by one community as the greatest good news is often rejected by another as the worst bad news. Take the Exodus story, for example.

In the spring 2010 semester at LTS, I'll be teaching a new course:  Violence and the Bible.

In his book America's Prophet:  Moses and the American Story, Bruce Feiler makes a bold claim: "Moses is bigger than Jesus."

There’s been some discussion over at the Changing Lives through Literature blog about an article I wrote this summer.   You can click here to learn more about this program, which engages offenders in a process of reading and self-discovery as an alternative to incarceration.

How to respond to the Christian tradition's blaming Eve for The Fall of Humanity?

What good can come from challenging David's status as a hero?

Every year since the late 1980's, I have assigned Phyllis Trible’s “Eve and Adam:  Genesis 2-3 Reread”  in introductory Bible courses.   From 1989-1997, my students were undergraduates at Meredith College, the women’s college from which Trible herself graduated in 1954.  Since 1997, the students to whom I’ve assigned Trible have been those preparing for theological vocations at Lancaster Theological Seminary.

I've just had an article published in the on-line journal The Bible and Interpretation.  It calls for biblical scholars to start talking more about why people should care about the Bible, not relying on the fact that they historically have.

Returning to the classroom after sabbatical is always a shock.  After months of focusing on my own interests and communing with others primarily via a computer screen, I'm now face-to-face with real people, responsible for helping them understand and respond to diverse perspectives on the Bible.