OnScript

Christian Hofreiter - Making Sense of OT Genocide

Episode: Matt interviews Christian Hofreiter (RZIM) on one of the most vexed issues in biblical studies ... genocide in the Old Testament. Christian Hofreiter has been pondering this question for a long time, and has written a groundbreaking work on the subject - Making Sense of Old Testament Genocide: Christian Interpretations of Herem Passages (Oxford University Press, 2018).

Guest: (from the RZIM site) The Revd Dr Christian Hofreiter is Director of RZIM Austria, Germany and Switzerland, the Zacharias Institut für Wissenschaft, Kultur und Glaube, a Research Fellow at the Oxford Centre for Christian Apologetics, and, most recently, the author of Making Sense of Old Testament Genocide: Christian Interpretations of Herem Passages (Oxford University Press, 2018). A native of Austria, he has studied, lived and worked in Innsbruck, Brussels, London, Los Angeles, Washington, DC, and Oxford, and now lives with his family in Vienna, Austria.

From 2008-2012, Christian served with the Oxford Pastorate as a chaplain to the graduate student body at Oxford University, working closely with senior academics, leaders of various churches, and a broad variety of students. An ordained Anglican minister, he was also a member of the leadership team at St Aldates Church, Oxford.

In addition, Christian studied theology at Oxford University, earning three degrees (MA, MSt, DPhil), winning several prizes and scholarships, and gaining the top first class award in 2008. His doctoral research focused on the Christian interpretation of “genocide texts” in the Old Testament.

Before arriving in Oxford, Christian worked in a government relations firm in Washington, DC, which represented the interests of foreign governments and other clients to the United States Congress and Administration, and also served as deacon at the Church of the Resurrection on Capitol Hill.

Book: Making Sense of Old Testament Genocide: Christian Interpretations of Herem Passages (Oxford University Press, 2018) takes an historical look at how Christians through the centuries have addressed, wrestled with, and re-interpreted the 'herem' passages in the Old Testament. Herem is the practice of devoting people or objects to destruction (or removing them from use) at the behest of a deity. Hofreiter provides a critically rich and illuminating tour of the history of Christian engagement with these challenging biblical passages.

Help Support OnScript: Click through one of the links above to purchase Christian's book (or others, while you're in there) and the OnScript Podcast gets a whopping 2.5% or so (at no loss to you). Each bit helps us keep this operation going. Or visit our Donate Page if you want to join the big leagues and become a regular donor. Don't let us stop you from doing both.

Shawn Flynn - Children in Ancient Israel

Episode:  In this episode, we discuss the Mesopotamian texts about matters of children to deity relations, families roles, abandonment, child death, and more for the sake of understanding some of the texts of the Hebrew Bible. There exists a clear set of practices in the ancient Near East that show the value of children outside of their utility, which creates the question: Did Israelites feel the same? If so, do these shared presumptions about children explain biblical texts that cover the same social geographies?

Guest: Shawn Flynn is an Associate Professor of Hebrew Bible the Academic Dean at St. Joseph's College (University of Alberta). He is the author of two books: Yhwh Is King: The Development of Divine Kingship in Ancient Israel, Brill 2013 and the book we’re discussing in this episode, Children in Ancient Israel: The Hebrew Bible and Mesopotamia in Comparative Perspective (OUP, 2018). Dr. Flynn studied English Literature at Univ. of Northern British Columbia, Biblical Studies at Trinity Western University, and began doctoral work at Trinity College Dublin, completing a PhD at the University of Toronto in the department of Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations.

The Book: (from the publisher's website) Flynn contributes to the emerging field of childhood studies in the Hebrew Bible by isolating stages of a child's life, and through a comparative perspective, studies the place of children in the domestic cult and their relationship to the deity in that cult. The study gathers data relevant to different stages of a child's life from a plethora of Mesopotamian materials (prayers, myths, medical texts, rituals), and uses that data as an interpretive lens for Israelite texts about children at similar stages such as: pre-born children, the birth stage, breast feeding, adoption, slavery, children's death and burial rituals, childhood delinquency. This analysis presses the questions of value and violence, the importance of the domestic cult for expressing the child's value beyond economic value, and how children were valued in cultures with high infant mortality rates. From the earliest stages to the moments when children die, and to the children's responsibilities in the domestic cult later in life, this study demonstrates that a child is uniquely wrapped up in the domestic cult, and in particular, is connected with the deity. The domestic-cultic value of children forms the much broader understanding of children in the ancient world, through which other more problematic representations can be tested. Throughout the study, it becomes apparent that children's value in the domestic cult is an intentional catalyst for the social promotion of YHWHism.

Help Support OnScript: Click through one of the links above to purchase Shawn's Book (or others, while you're in there) and the OnScript Podcast gets a whopping 2.5% or so (at no loss to you). Each bit helps us keep this operation going. Or visit our Donate Page if you want to join the big leagues and become a regular donor. Don't let us stop you from doing both.