The fourth of the 2020 CSSSB Online Discussion Series will be held on Monday, May 4, at 7pm BST (2pm EST/11am PST). CSSSB’s Prof James Crossley and Prof Chris Keith discuss John Ball, the Peasants Revolt, the Bible, Accordion playing, and the Historical Jesus.
THE BIBLE IN POLITICS
2-3 June, 2017
The Bible in Politics conference was held earlier this month at St Mary’s University, Twickenham, London. St Mary’s has made the videos of the presentations available on their YouTube channel.
Friday 2 June
10.30-11.15am Hugh Pyper, ‘“Don’t Mention the Bible! Religion, Identity and Contemporary Scottish Politics’
11.15-12.00 Christina Petterson, ‘The Politics of Biblical Translation’
12.15-1pm Fatima Tofighi, ‘Paul, the Mystic Who Wasn’t a Mystic: A Reexamination in Light of the Politics of Religious Scholarship’
2.05-2.50pm Tarcisius Mukaka, ‘“Let Every Person be Subject to the Governing Authorities”: Reading Rom. 13.1-7 against the Grain, or a Postcolonial Reading’
3-3.45pm Jo Carruthers, ‘The Bible, Aesthetics and the Origins of the American Self: Islamophobia and Protestant Aesthetics in Homeland’
4-4.30pm Taylor Weaver, ‘Trump’s Bible: Weakening Relevance in the American Political Sphere’
4.30-5pm Chris Meredith, ‘The Bible and the Poetics of Modern Militarism: The Good Samaritan and the UK’s 2016 Airstrikes in Syria’
Saturday 3 June
10-11.15am Erin Runions, ‘Carceral Technologies, Religious Affects, and US Theopolitics’
11.30am-12.15pm Lesleigh Cushing, ‘The “Good Book” in the “Promised Land”: The Bible in Contemporary American Politics’
12.15-1pm David Tollerton, ‘Alternative Facts from the Whirlwind: Zvyagintsev’s Leviathan and the Obfuscating Oppression of the Divine/State’
2.15-3pm Robert Myles, ‘Fishing for Entrepreneurs in the Sea of Galilee’
3-4pm or so James Crossley, ‘Italian Politics, Italian Westerns…and the Bible’
Ward Blanton, “Apostle of the Self-Help Entrepreneurs?”
Professor Eric Nelson (Harvard University) lectured on Jewish sources and the transformation of European political thought for the Israel Democracy Institute’s Human Rights and Judaism project, on July 9, 2012. The respondent is Professor Arye Edrei (Tel Aviv University). Nelson’s lecture concerns some of the same material covered in his book, The Hebrew Republic: Jewish Sources and the Transformation of European Political Thought (2010).
Professor Douglas Thompson’s Mercer University course Biblical Texts and American History looks at historical uses of the Bible in U.S. history. One of the lectures in that course examines the impact of the Bible and religion “on the relationship between slaves and their owners during the Antebellum period”.
He cited Nat Turner’s 1831 slave rebellion and Frederick Douglass’ 1845 memoir as examples of how whites and blacks interpreted biblical passages on slavery.
A video of his lecture (February 11, 2015) is available on C-Span American History TV:
Our very own brand of Biblical Studies Online podcast are available on iTunes. Biblical Studies Online podcasts will be a fairly regular (hopefully 1-2 every month), about 10 minutes long, and will cover a wide range of topics in Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, early Judaism, New Testament, historical criticism, reception, and more. One notable feature will be interviews with scholars in the field and the first interviews should be uploaded in the next couple of weeks. It has genuine Biblical Studies Online artwork but there is no introductory jingle as you may have heard with other leading biblical studies podcasters.
The first podcast is on reception history and biblical studies.
In this podcast, James Crossley (University of Sheffield) introduces Biblical Studies Online podcasts and the general aims. It looks at issues of historical criticism and reception history and whether there should even be a distinction between the two.
The second podcast will be available on iTunes in the next 24 hours. It is currently available here and is on the late Tony Benn and his understanding of the Bible and religion. It ‘looks at the former Labour MP Tony Benn and his views on religion and the Bible. In particular, it looks at how Benn understood the Bible as part of a British and English socialist tradition.’
James Crossley’s lecture of Margaret Thatcher and the Bible in English politics is available for download and listening (mp3 here) and on YouTube.
Rob Marshall interviews James Crossley about his book, Jesus in an Age of Neoliberalism (2012). The interview is available on Crossley’s webpage at the University of Sheffield.
In Our Time is a BBC Radio 4 programme on the history of ideas and is presented by Melvyn Bragg. Its range of episodes are classified under the headings ‘Religion’, ‘History’, ‘Culture’, ‘Philosophy’, and ‘Science’. The format consists of Bragg asking questions to, and leading a discussion with, a panel of academics. There are over 600 episodes – either for listening online and/or download – and the full archive is available here. There are numerous episodes covering topics in biblical studies and relevant areas:
Prophecy (13 June, 2013)
Gnosticism (2 May, 2013)
King Solomon (7 June, 2012)
Judas Maccabeus (24 November, 2011)
The Dawn of the Iron Age (24 March, 2011)
The City [Part 1] (25 March 2010)
The Augustan Age (11 June 2009)
St Paul (28 May, 2009)
Miracles (25 September, 2008)
The Greek Myths (13 March, 2008)
Hell (21 December, 2006)
Heaven (22 December, 2005)
Archaeology and Imperialism (14 April 2005)
Angels (24 March, 2005)
Zoroastrianism (11 November, 2004)
Babylon (3 June 2004)
The Fall (8 April, 2004)
The Alphabet (18 December, 2003)
The Devil (11 December, 2003)
The Apocalypse (17 July, 2003)
The Lindisfarne Gospels (20 February, 2003)
The Soul (6 June 2002)
In addition to the episodes listed above, there are episodes on a range of topics and individuals which will be directly relevant to certain areas of biblical studies research (e.g. Plato, Pliny, Roman satire, Wyclif, Erasmus, Milton, historiography, cultural memory).
Biblical Studies Online 