Barbara Thiede to give International Lecture

at the Centre for Religion and Public Life in Leeds, U.K.

Dr, Thiede will be presenting a lecture in a seminar series sponsored by the Centre for Religion and Public Life at the University of Leeds. The talk, titled “Not Fixing the Bible’s God: Reflections from a Rabbi and Biblical Scholar,” will be on October 9.

Abstract: “Centuries of Jewish and Christian exegetes have made strenuous efforts to redeem, justify, and explain away the difficult, even violent god of the Hebrew and Greek Bibles. Biblical scholars have often supported this effort. This is not only true for the cisgender, heterosexual, and male scholars of the global North who have dominated the field. Feminist scholars, Queer Scholars, and scholars of masculinity have also — often with the best of intentions — worked to mitigate and ameliorate the deity’s character, nature, and doings.

The outcome, however, has been harmful, particularly for children, women, members of the LGBTQ+ community, and persons of colour. In this presentation, Barbara Thiede asks whether religious leaders and scholars can help change practice, teaching, and real-world conditions for the better if they abandon any attempt to “fix” the biblical god. How would such an approach affect religion, religious practice, and learning in classrooms across the globe? And what God is left to us when we acknowledge the divine character and life we find in biblical texts?”