University of Lethbridge

Faculty Member, Religious Studies

About

I'm associate professor of Religious Studies at the University of Lethbridge in Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada. My main field of study is the Hebrew Bible and I finished my PhD in 1997 at the University of Edinburgh.

I have two main writing projects at present. Most significantly, I'm working on a book on myth theory and the Hebrew Bible. Since myth is socially determined it does no good to assess the biblical materials according to definitions of myth best suited to describing the sacred narratives of other cultures without modifying those definitions to illuminate Israelite or Judean myth. I also want to look at the prophetic literature and prophetic characters (Isaiah, Amos et. al) in this light.  I didn't expect it, but this project has taken a bit of a turn into studying some aspects of ancient magic and incantations as examples of "applied mythology": myth that is used to empower spells and so forth.

The second project is to turn a whole mess of lecture notes and so forth into a workable introduction to the Hebrew Bible. I did want to make it a text book but I'm now thinking that will be boring and the market is pretty well flooded. And there are some good texts out there but they do not often address issues from a strong Religious Studies framework.  I also want to direct the book toward the atheist activist community who often don't have much background in biblical scholarship and often rely on outdated or wrong approaches and information and who think that any refutation that includes an insult is valid.

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