Books
Latest Release from Dr. Julie Faith Parker
Eve Isn't Evil: Feminist Readings of the Bible
to Upend Our Assumptions
One reason the Bible has endured for millennia is its ability to reach our common humanness and give uplifting insights about struggle, resilience, and hope. Intertwining academic knowledge and candid, personal, and sometimes humorous stories, Julie Faith Parker helps readers engage biblical texts with both mind and heart—to learn the Bible's stories, explore theological ideas, question common assumptions, develop interpretive skills, and grow in their own faith.
The title chapter demonstrates how feminism interprets the Bible with fresh eyes and offers empowering insights, an approach used in the rest of the book. In each chapter, Parker reads biblical texts through a feminist lens. The book discusses both neglected and well-known Old Testament passages with one chapter on the New Testament. Parker's reflections show how vital our readings of the Bible can be as a source of strength, guidance, and joyful defiance.
Additional features include questions for conversation or reflection and an overview of the entire Bible, summarizing each book in one line.
My So-Called Biblical Life:
Imagined Stories from the World’s Best-selling book
My So-Called Biblical Life gives fresh perspectives to stories from the Bible, imbuing them with powerful, honest emotion. The editor's translation of biblical passages grounds twelve original narratives, which engage the reader and invite a personal response. Imagine sending away your precious daughter to be a concubine. Suppose your family's survival depended on the sacrifice of your brother's life. Picture Jesus looking you in the eye and telling you to sell everything you own. What would you do? The collected essays in this volume explore these scenarios and more. Readers easily learn about life in biblical times through well-researched stories with supporting footnotes. Questions follow each essay, stimulating individual reflection and group discussion, and making this book a unique resource for classes, book groups, seminars, sermons, retreats, and Bible studies. My So-Called Biblical Life transforms one-dimensional portrayals of Bible characters into vibrant portraits of men, women, and children from antiquity whose struggles and hopes still speak to us today. Three of the contributors to My So-Called Biblical Life are incarcerated; a portion of the royalties from this book are donated to the Exodus Transitional Community (www.etcny.org), which helps people re-enter into society after spending time in prison.
Valuable and Vulnerable: Children in the Hebrew Bible,
Especially the Elisha Cycle
A significantly revised version of the author’s Yale dissertation, Valuable and Vulnerable proved seminal in the field of biblical studies. Arguing that the writers of the Hebrew Bible recognized children as different from adults and shaped their stories accordingly, the author introduces a new methodology of childist interpretation and applies it to the Elisha cycle and its forty-nine child characters. The first part of the book lays the theoretical groundwork for academic exploration of the Bible’s children. The second part of the book then applies a childist lens to the stories of children with the prophet Elisha, demonstrating the value and vulnerability of the Bible’s children.
T&T Clark Handbook of Children in the Bible and the Biblical World (T&T Clark Handbooks)
Edited by Sharon Betsworth and Julie Faith Parker, this ground-breaking volume examines the presentation and role of children in the ancient world, and specifically in ancient Jewish and Christian texts. With carefully commissioned chapters that follow chronological and canonical progression, a sequential reading of this book enables deeper appreciation of how understandings of children change over time. Divided into four sections, this handbook first offers an overview of key methodological approaches employed in the study of children in the biblical world, and the texts at hand. Three further sections examine crucial texts in which children or discussions of childhood are featured; presented along chronological lines, with sections on the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible, the Intertestamental Literature, and the New Testament and Early Christian Apocrypha. Relevant not only to biblical studies but also cross-disciplinary scholars interested in children in antiquity. (This academic book is from a European publisher and priced accordingly – great for libraries!)