Texts After Terror: Rhiannon Graybill

Note: While this conversation does not contain explicit language, it does reference sexuality, rape, and domestic violence. Listeners please be advised.

Our guest Rhiannon Graybill invites us to look at the uncomfortable parts of the Old Testament with new eyes, through re-reading and even "unhappy reading" that unearths the fuzzy, messy, and icky parts of the stories.

Her recent book, Texts after Terror, offers an important new theory of rape and sexual violence in the Hebrew Bible. While the Bible is filled with stories of rape, scholarly approaches to sexual violence in the scriptures remain exhausted, dated, and in some cases even un-feminist, lagging far behind contemporary discourse about sexual violence and rape culture.

Graybill responds to this disconnect by engaging contemporary conversations about rape culture, sexual violence, and #MeToo, arguing that rape and sexual violence - both in the Bible and in contemporary culture - are frequently fuzzy, messy, and icky, and that we need to take these features seriously.

Rhiannon Graybill is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Rhodes College in Memphis, TN.