The BRANE Collective is proud to open our new PhD showcase series with a spotlight on Daniel O. McClellan’s 2020 dissertation, “Deity and Divine Agency in the Hebrew Bible: Cognitive Perspectives.”
Dan will discuss his new research with Debra Scoggins Ballentine, Mark McEntire, Brian Rainey, and Jen Singletary. Join us!
Thursday, Oct. 22 4:00 pm – 5:30 pm EST
please register here for the link and pre-circulated material
Discussants:
Debra Scoggins Ballentine focuses on ancient Israelite and Judean history, religion, and literature, viewing literary and material data as social artifacts that reflect engagement with their contemporary contexts. She is the author of The Conflict Myth and the Biblical Tradition (2015), which analyzes how ancient authors adapted traditional mythic themes of divine combat to further specific political and theological ideologies.
Mark McEntire‘s research interests span the entire Hebrew Bible, engaging concepts from death and violence, through urban life, to the reception of biblical themes in popular music. Two of his recent books, Portraits of a Mature God (2013), and An Apocryphal God: Beyond Divine Maturity (2015), trace the narrative development of the divine character in the Hebrew Bible and beyond.
Brian Rainey is interested in the comparative study of the Hebrew Bible and ancient Near East, including anthropological, sociological and cognitive theories of “ethnicity” and their usefulness for the study of ancient societies; Assyriology; biblical mythology and Christian theology; and the development of “monotheism” in the ancient world. He is the author of Religion, Ethnicity, and Xenophobia in the Bible: A Theoretical, Exegetical and Theological Survey.
Jen Singletary researches the languages, religions, and cultures of the ancient Near East (including Israel and the Hebrew Bible), especially scholarly rivalry and collaboration in the ancient Near East in the second and first millennia BCE, as well as concepts of deity in a comparative perspective. Her forthcoming book is entitled Objects of Their Trust: Manufactured Objects, Divine Qualities, and Attributes as Deities in the Ancient Near East.
Bible and Religions of the Ancient Near East Collective 