Table of Contents

Cynthia Chapman, Oberlin College
"The Aesthetics of Empire: The Depiction and Bracketing of Violence in the
Assyrian Palace Reliefs"

Daniel Smith-Christopher, Loyola Marymount University
"Micah 1-2: On The Pleasures of Prophetic Judgment"

Corrine Carvalho, University of Saint Thomas
"The Beauty of the Bloody God: The Divine Warrior in Prophetic Literature"

Julia M. O'Brien, Lancaster Theological Seminary
"Violent Pictures, Violent Cultures? The ‘Aesthetics of Violence' in Contemporary Film and in Ancient Prophetic Texts "

Robert D. Haak, Augustana College
"Mapping Violence in the Prophets"

Mary Mills, Liverpool Hope University, UK
"Divine Violence in the Book of Amos"

Carolyn Sharp, Yale Divinity School
"Hewn By the Prophet: An Analysis of Violence and Sexual Transgression  in Hosea With Reference to the Homiletical Aesthetic of Jeremiah Wright"

Yvonne Sherwood, University of Glasgow
"‘Tongue-Lashing' or a Prophetic Aesthetics of Violation: An Analysis of Prophetic Structures that Reverberate Beyond the Biblical World"
 
Chris Franke, title TBA
 

Promotional Information

This volume collects those essays as well as others especially commissioned for its creation. As a collection, they address questions that are at once ancient and distressingly-modern:   What do violent images do to us?  Do they encourage violent behavior and/or provide an alternative to actual violence?  How do depictions of violence define boundaries between and within communities?   What readers can and should readers make of the disturbing rhetoric of violent prophets? 

About the Author

Julia M. O'Brien is Professor of Old Testament, Lancaster Theological Seminary Chris Franke is Professor of Old Testament/Hebrew Bible at the College of St. Katherine in St. Paul, Minnesota

Reviews

‘Originating from a 2006 session at the Society of Biblical Literature, this excellent and timely volume explores the complex synergy among violence, rhetoric, aesthetics and audience impact in the prophets and their contemporary analogues.'
*Religious Studies Review*

Overall, this collection of essays is a wonderful contribution to the study of violence in biblical texts... The personal nature of the essays creates a connection between the author and reader that enhances the reader's experience. I highly recommend this book because it will do much for how people teach, preach, and read all of the violent texts in the Bible.
*Reviews in Religion & Theology*

‘[The book] takes violent rhetoric seriously as a powerful datum of the Bible that is substantive and intentional and not as simply an embarrassing side issue...[It] is an invitation to think again about violence in the Bible—not to dismiss it as objectionable and unacceptable, but to recognize it as an inescapable vehicle for saying what must be said in a society narcotized by denial and despair.' —Christian Century