The stories in the Hebrew Bible are frequently irreverent, and its authors delighted in ambiguity, wordplay, and ambivalence. But the text has often been badly served by its translators so that these literary undercurrents are lost. Recovering the Bible's original aesthetic force requires us to attune ourselves to its voice and learn how biblical narrative differs from the narrative styles we are accustomed to. We will survey a range of biblical texts, discussing their internal themes and their literary style with an eye to discovering what these stories meant to the Israelites who first told them.
Dr. Ed Silver is a scholar of the Hebrew Bible and early Judaism. He received his Ph.D. at the University of Chicago in 2009, having written a dissertation on the poetry of the Book of Jeremiah. He has taught at the University of Chicago, Northwestern University, the University of Missouri, Wellesley College, Brandeis University, and most recently at CUNY Hunter College.