Eric Jarrard
Assistant Professor of Religious Studies
Scholar of Biblical Studies with a focus on the Hebrew Bible, its ancient Near Eastern context, and the history of its interpretation.
Eric Jarrard is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Wellesley College. He received his doctorate in Hebrew Bible from Harvard University, an MTS from Emory University, and his BA in Religious Studies from Virginia Commonwealth University.
His research employs social-scientific approaches to investigate how communities assign and negotiate meanings to the textual life cycles of the Hebrew Bible beginning with its ancient Near Eastern context and focusing specifically on late antiquity (c. 500 BCE – 200 CE) and contemporary American culture. His current book project enlists postcolonial theory to think about how ancient Middle Eastern monuments have shaped the way the Bible represents the past.
His research and courses also address the resonances of biblical themes within contemporary popular culture. Examples include: the use of horror theory to discuss the externalization of social anxieties as monsters in Jordan Peele’s Get Out and the book of Daniel, Jewish identity and biblical exposition in the films of Darren Aronofsky, the figure of Black Moses in Zora Neale Hurston and Alain Mabanckou's Petit Piment, and an investigation of the biblical deed-consequence nexus and Game of Thrones.
His research has been published in Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft, Biblical Interpretation, Vetus Testamentum, Catholic Biblical Quarterly, and the Harvard Divinity Bulletin, and is forthcoming in Hebrew Bible and Ancient Israel. On the topic of the Bible and popular culture, Eric has a monograph, The Bible and Hip Hop, under contract with Lexington/Fortress Press, and chapter contributions to Theology and Game of Thrones (Lexington) and The Oxford Handbook of Biblical Monsters.
His classes at Wellesley include:
| Class Number | Title |
|---|---|
| CPLT/REL 112Y | Monsters |
| JWST/REL 104 | Study of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament |
| JWST/REL 106 | Queer Bible |
| JWST/REL 201 | Bible and Pop Culture [Topics] |
| JWST/REL 209 | Bible & Film |
| JWST/REL 344 | Gods of Stone: Monuments and the Sacred |
| JWST/REL 346 | Bible & Politics [Topics] |
| REL 101 | Intro to Religion |
| REL 111Y | FYS: Jesus of Nazareth |
| REL 345 | Seminar: Enslavement and the Bible |
Education
- B.A., Virginia Commonwealth University
- M.Th., Emory University
- Th.D., Harvard University
Current and upcoming courses
Concepts in Biblical Studies: Reward & Punishment
REL202
Why do bad things happen to good people? This course examines how the Bible confronts some of the most complex and confounding questions humans can ask regarding the relationship between actions and their inevitable outcomes. Through close readings of biblical texts and contemporaneous examples from the ancient Middle East and North Africa, students will be introduced to key theories and methods in biblical studies as tools for examining how the dynamic relationship between behaviors and their results shape the biblical understanding of justice, divine retribution, rewards, and moral order.
We will compare (1) punishment and reward in biblical narrative and law and their reverberations in both prophetic literature and more esoteric texts like the books of Proverbs, Ecclesiastes/Qohelet, and Job, to both (2) relevant contemporaneous examples from the ancient Middle East and North Africa, and (3) contemporary examples from popular culture (e.g., Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Wicked, KPop Demon Hunters, The Good Place, Hamilton, and Spirited Away) in order to ask how thinking about reward and punishment has changed over time and, especially, how modern thinking both adheres to and diverges from biblical and other ancient models.
This class has no prerequisites; no previous knowledge of the Bible or ancient history is presumed.
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Seminar: Bible & Politics
REL333
This course explores the explicit and implicit relationships between the Bible and politics in two distinct but interconnected contexts: Africa and the US. We will study how biblical texts and their complicated history of interpretation have shaped global discourse, political ideologies, international laws, moral debates, and justice. Topics of inquiry will include the Bible as a tool for cultural hegemony, the institution and abolition of slavery, and contemporary debates about gender, sexuality, human rights, and abortion access.Students will develop skills for engaging primary sources including biblical texts, sermons, political speeches, constitutional articles and legal decisions to understand how biblical ideas continue to influence governance, identity, and resistance globally.All persons and perspectives are welcome in this class. Previous knowledge or personal experience with the Bible, or the politics and history of Africa and the US is neither presumed nor necessary. (AFR 333 and REL 333 are cross-listed courses.)