Jeremiah 1:4–10, with Brent Strawn

A Prophet’s Call

Lectionary Date: August 25, 2019 [11th Sunday after Pentecost, Year C]

This week, Rachel and Tim are joined by Dr. Brent Strawn. Brent joined the Duke Divinity School faculty as Professor of Old Testament in 2019 after teaching for eighteen years at the Candler School of Theology at Emory University, where he was the William Ragsdale Cannon Distinguished Professor of Old Testament. Brent is a prolific author, but we would highly recommend to our audience one of his most recent books, The Old Testament Is Dying: A Diagnosis and Recommended Treatment (Baker Academic, 2017). Brent is an ordained elder in the United Methodist Church and regularly speaks and preaches at churches across the country. He has appeared on CNN on matters ranging from Easter celebrations to Pope Francis to gun violence, and served as both translator and member of the editorial board for The Common English Bible.

Hosea 11:1–11, with Johanna Bos

Love Overcomes Wrath

Lectionary Date: August 4, 2019 [8th Sunday after Pentecost, Year C]

This week, Rachel and Tim are joined by Dr. Johanna van Wijk-Bos. Dr. Bos taught for four decades as Professor of Old Testament at Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary in KY. She continues to serve the Presbyterian Church (PCUSA) as an ordained pastor. In addition to her teaching, speaking, and preaching, she is a prolific author and an engaged activist, especially around issues of equity in terms of gender, race, and sexual orientation. Among her many great books, we recommend for our audience, Making Wise the Simple: The Torah in Christian Faith and Practice. Her latest project is a multi-volume commentary on Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings titled, A People and A Land (the first volume is available soon from Eerdmans).

2 Kings 5:1–14, with Justin Reed

God’s Power Manifested Through the Marginalized

Lectionary Date: July 7, 2019 [4th Sunday after Pentecost, Year C]

This week, Justin Reed joins Rachel and Tim for a conversation all about the healing of Naaman in 2 Kings 5. Justin is Assistant Professor of Old Testament/Hebrew Bible at Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary in KY, and an ordained Baptist minister. A PhD candidate at Princeton Theological Seminary, his research and teaching interests include ethnicity in the Hebrew Bible, inner-biblical interpretation, Bible in popular culture, and reception history. Justin’s dissertation explores Genesis 9:18-29, the passage about “Noah’s curse.” Throughout millennia, interpreters have read this passage through a particular, destructive ideological lens. Informed by critical race theory, Justin challenges this long-standing bias and proposes an alternate interpretation in which the context of the primeval history in Genesis and ironic use of intertextual allusions offer crucial interpretive clues and permit a more nuanced explication of how ethnocentrism has manifested in biblical literature. Justin explores some of these issues in his chapter, “‘How—how is this just?!’: How Aronofsky and Handel Handle Noah’s Curse” in Noah as Antihero: Darren Aronofsky’s Cinematic Deluge (Routledge, 2017) edited by Rhonda Burnette-Bletch and Jon Morgan.