The Bible and Modern Literature

Farewell, Lovely Listeners . . . until we meet again in podcast land at the Wild Olive podcast, where Dr. Jennifer Bird and I bring you game-changing conversations about literature, culture, and the Bible.  In this final episode of the Bible and Modern Literaure, I offer you my gratitude for your time and attention, then announce the launch of Wild Olive, where we can meet again for more deep dives into literature and the Bible. Access Wild Olive wherever you get your podcasts!  

Jeanne and Jennifer read and discuss June Jordan's "1977: Poem for Fannie Lou Hamer." Hamer was a civil rights activist who mentored June Jordan and many other Black poets and activists. Jamaican-American poet June Jordan named this poem for the year Hamer died, and it commemorates Hamer’s work as a voting rights activist–dangerous business in Mississippi in the 1960s. 

This episode explores how Alicia Ostriker's poem "Interlude" from her collection Volcano Sequence uses a reference from the Book of Joshua to explore history, violence, and trauma.

In this episode, Jeanne and Jennifer discuss fire imagery from the Bible and from an Alicia Ostriker poem, investigating how images of fire explore connections between God-experience and violence,  God-experience and history, God-experience and the desire for social justice.

This episode explores a central Bible motif and scene type that recurs throughout both testaments--the meeting at the well. After examining some scenes from the Bible that take place near wells, the conversation turns to Emily Dickinson’s poem “I Know Where Wells Grow.” 

In this episode, Professors Jennifer Bird and Jeanne Petrolle explore how Anne Sexton’s Poem “Jesus Walking” portrays Jesus of Nazareth. While considering the poem,  the  professors also discuss  wilderness scenes from the Gospel of  Mark and the Gospel of Matthew, unpacking some of the metaphorical possibilities of the Newer Testament's "wilderness" motif.

Professors Jennifer Bird and Jeanne Petrolle discuss the Book of Daniel alongside the poem “martha promise receives leadbelly,” by Pulitzer-prize-winning African American writer Tyehimba Jess, who uses the story of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego  to reflect on the life of Huddie "Leadbelly" Ledbetter, American blues legend. In the course of considering Jess's poem, the conversation explores "colonizing" and "decolonizing" approaches to interpreting the Bible.

Music credits:
Just As Soon by Kevin MacLeod https://incompetech.com/
License: CC BY 3.0 https://goo.gl/Yibru5

Bible scholars who describe one of the Bible's genres as "myth" are not trying to assert that some of the Bible's stories are scientifically or historically "untrue." Rather, they are pointing out that some parts of the Bible do not aim at scientific or historical truth so much as they aim to picture fundamental aspects of human experience, poetically. The image of Lot's wife (or woman) turning to salt, for instance, which American poet laureate Joy Harjo uses in her poem "Exile of Memory," can be read as a story-picture about human responses to historical trauma.   

This episode explores Book 1, Poem 4 of Rainer Maria Rilke’s Book of Hours: Love Poems to God, translated by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy.  Rilke's poem suggests that monarch images of God may actually present obstacles to an experience of God. While investigating Rilke’s poem, we’ll consider what theorists call the problem of representation, as it pertains to the idea or experience of God. 

Episode 7 explores how James Weldon Johnson's poem “The Creation” retells the Genesis creation story, shifting the dominant Christian interpretation of the story by focusing on original goodness rather than original sin. Weldon Johnson’s poem highlights the presence of Blackness in creation, celebrating the goodness and glory of Black bodies, Black culture, and a Black God.