Acknowledging Defeat to Forge New Narratives

We talk with Hebrew Bible scholar Jacob L. Wright about why no other ancient society produced anything like the Bible: a testimony of survival, but also an unparalleled achievement in human history. Wright's book Why the Bible Began: An Alternative History of Scripture and Its Origins was on The New Yorkers BEST OF 2023 list, as well as one of the best five books on religion according to Publishers Weekly. It was also the winner of the PROSE Award from the Association of American Publishers.

Jacob L. Wright is Associate Professor of Hebrew Bible at the Candler School of Theology, Emory University. His first book, Rebuilding Identity: The Nehemiah Memoir and its Earliest Readers (de Gruyter, 2004), won the 2008 Templeton prize for a first book in the field of religion. He is also the author of David, King of Israel, and Caleb in Biblical Memory (Cambridge University Press, 2014), which won The Nancy Lapp Popular Book Award from the American Schools of Oriental Research, and most recently, War, Memory, and National Identity in the Hebrew Bible (Cambridge University Press, 2020).

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