Eric Jarrard is a Lecturer in Religion. 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, The Exodus and Law in Monuments and Memory, enlists postcolonial theory to think about how ancient Middle Eastern monuments have shaped the way the Bible talks about history and law.

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), The Oxford Handbook of Biblical Monsters, and The Routledge Handbook of the Hebrew Bible in Contemporary Fiction and Poetry.

His classes at Wellesley include: