Julia M. OBrien

I've just published a piece over at the Bible and Interpretation site entitled "Who Cares about the Prophets?"

With the start of a new semester, I’ve had to shift my direct attention away the West Bank/ Israel trip to courses, writing assignments, and speaking engagements.  But the realities I encountered in January aren’t fading away; instead, they are finding their way into all the work I’m doing.

The second edition of my Readings series volume on Nahum has just been released by Sheffield Phoenix Press.

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.

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

Another reason to read the Old Testament: the power of its big ideas.

A lot of folks treat the Old Testament as "background" reading for something else.  For Christians, it's treated as the prequel to the New Testament, the part you have to read in order to understand the stuff you want to read. Who is Melchizedek and why does the book of Hebrews link him to Jesus?  Why was circumcision important to Jews of the first century?  What does atonement mean?  What's a covenant? The Old Testament offers the answers for the New Testament reader who wants to know.

It's time for the results of my first reader poll.  Drumroll, please.

It's easy to read the Bible as if it contained disembodied doctrine, eternal truths about the divine being and the cosmos floating above the mundane concerns of human living. But biblical materials were shaped by the people who wrote them--not only by their beliefs but also by the economies in which they lived.  And as ancient Israel's economy changed over time, so too did the assumptions and the agendas of the writers of the documents that we now have in the Bible.

The pope’s comments during his recent visit to Israel spurred a reader of the website to ask me this question:   “Why would the pope support the creation of a Palestinian state, since the Bible claims that God has given the Holy Land to the Jewish people?”

I thought others might be interested in my reply.

It sounds so simple, doesn't it?   Since the Bible insists that God promised land to Abraham's descendants, and since Jews are descendants of Abraham, then obviously Israel always and only belongs to Jews.

But the issue is far more complicated than such a simple formula implies.