Professor David Janzen

Professor of Hebrew Bible / Old Testament

Affiliations
Affiliation	Telephone
Professor of Hebrew Bible / Old Testament in the Department of Theology and Religion	+44 (0) 191 33 43958

Biography

David Janzen received his M.Div. and Ph.D. from Princeton Theological Seminary. He has taught in the United States and Guatemala, and has been in the Theology and Religion Department at Durham since 2015. His more recent research has focused on decolonial and emancipatory approaches to biblical literature as well as trauma and the study of the Bible, and his work has covered the Deuteronomistic History and Persian-period material from the Hebrew Bible, among other pieces of biblical literature. He is currently at work on a two-volume commentary on Chronicles for Eerdmans Press.

Besides more traditional historical-critical approaches to biblical literature, David has explored other hermeneutical avenues. In his book The Liberation of Method, he focuses on hermeneutical theory, and argues that while the study of history need not be a part of academic biblical interpretation, readings with the ethical goal of supporting the emancipatory struggles of minoritized communities should be. The book argues as well that the field of biblical literature should orient itself to leadership by members of those communities, who can provide guidance to more privileged students and scholars as to how to go about this liberative work. He continues this hermeneutical argument in the monograph Liberating Imagination, where he reads a variety of biblical texts in the light of literature by contemporary artists from different minoritized communities, an approach that allows academic readers of the Bible to learn from the experiences of groups to which they do not belong and apply those insights to analyses of biblical texts.

In a current book project, David is combining decolonial theory and different kinds of trauma theory to read Chronicles as a response to and rejection of imperial ideology in fourth-century BCE Judah. This builds on earlier applications of different kinds of theories of trauma in works such as The Violent Gift, which describes a traumatic deconstruction of the narrative of the Deuteronomistic History, and Trauma and the Failure of History, which uses both the philosophy of history and trauma theories to contrast history as narrative with psychological trauma as something that cannot be narrativized and so cannot be a part of history. It builds as well on David’s earlier use of postcolonial theory in a work such as The Necessary King, which adopts this approach to argue that the themes of leadership and monarchy are central to the interests of the Deuteronomistic History.

David has also used social anthropology to investigate sacrifice as ritual and ritualized action in The Social Meanings of Sacrifice in the Hebrew Bible and to explore the story of the divorce of the foreign women in Ezra-Nehemiah in Witch-hunts, Purity, and Social Boundaries. Monographs such as The End of History and the Last King and Chronicles and the Politics of Davidic Restoration study Persian-period biblical writings and their historical contexts from more traditional historical-critical approaches.

Books

Liberating Imagination: Reading the Bible after Minoritized Literature. Society of Biblical Literature Semeia Series. Atlanta: SBL Press, forthcoming 2025.

The Liberation of Method: The Ethics of Emancipatory Biblical Interpretation. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2021.

The End of History and the Last King: Achaemenid Ideology and Community Identity in Ezra-Nehemiah. Library of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Series, 713. London: Bloomsbury, 2021.

Trauma and the Failure of History: Kings, Lamentations, and the Destruction of Jerusalem. Society of Biblical Literature Semeia Series, 94. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2019.

Chronicles and the Politics of Davidic Restoration: A Quiet Revolution. Library of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Studies, 657. London: Bloomsbury, 2017.

The Necessary King: A Postcolonial Reading of the Monarchy in the Deuteronomistic History. Hebrew Bible Monographs, 57. Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2013.

The Violent Gift: Trauma’s Subversion of the Deuteronomistic History’s Narrative. Library of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Studies, 561. London: T & T Clark, 2012.

The Social Meanings of Sacrifice in the Hebrew Bible: A Study of Four Writings. Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft, 344. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2004.

Witch-Hunts, Purity, and Social Boundaries: The Expulsion of the Foreign Women in Ezra 9-10. Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement Series, 350. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2002.

Recent selected peer reviewed articles and essays

“Geography as Destiny in Achaemenid Ideology and Ezra-Nehemiah” in Empire and State: Postcolonial Approaches. Edited by JiSeong James Kwon and Jeon Jaeyoung. Berlin: de Gruyter, forthcoming.

“Imperial Violence and Community Identity in Ezra-Nehemiah” in The Bible and Violence. Edited by Christopher Greenough, Mmapula Diana Kebaneilwe, Jonathan Jodamus, and Johanna Stiebert. London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, forthcoming.

“Reading Kings through the Lenses of Trauma” in The Oxford Handbook of the Books of Kings. Edited by Stephen McKenzie and Matthieu Richelle. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2024. Pages 534-45.

“Jephthah’s Daughters, Ethical and Unethical: Characterization and Ethics” in Characters and Characterization in the Book of Judges. Edited by Keith Bodner and Benjamin J. M. Johnson. Library of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Series, 717. London: Bloomsbury, 2023. Pages 119-32.

“The Deuteronomistic History as Trauma/Defeat Literature” in The Oxford Handbook of the Historical Books of the Hebrew Bible. Edited by Brad Kelle and Brent Strawn. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021. Pages 421-433.

“Traumatic Speech and the Rejection of Narrative in Lamentations” in Biblical and Theological Visions of Resilience: Pastoral and Clinical Insights. Edited by Christopher C. H. Cook and Nathan H. White. Routledge New Critical Thinking in Religion, Theology, and Biblical Studies. London: Routledge, 2020. Pages 58-69.

"Claimed and Unclaimed Experience: Problematic Readings of Trauma in the Hebrew Bible." Biblical Interpretation 27 (2019): 163-85.

"A Monument and a Name: The Primary Purpose of Chronicles’ Genealogies." Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 43 (2018): 45-66.

"Yahwistic appropriation of Achaemenid ideology and the function of Nehemiah 9 in Ezra-Nehemiah." Journal of Biblical Literature 136 (2017): 839-56.

"A Colonized People: Persian Hegemony, Hybridity, and Community Identity in Ezra-Nehemiah." Biblical Interpretation 24 (2016): 27-47.

"‘What He Did for Me’: David’s Warning about Joab in 1 Kings 2.5."　Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 39 (2015): 265-79.