Professor of Biblical Studies and Associate Dean for Academic Affairs

The Rev. Dr. Julie Faith Parker

Julie Faith Parker combines her passions for the Church and Scripture in her role as Professor of Biblical Studies. She holds a Ph.D. in Old Testament/Hebrew Bible from Yale University, awarded with distinction, and also has degrees from Yale Divinity School (S.T.M), Union Theological Seminary in NYC (M.Div.), and Hamilton College (B.A.).  During her education, she spent a year in Paris studying art history and also lived in a barrio in Central America for six months studying liberation theology. She is ordained in the United Methodist Church and worked full-time in ministry prior to doctoral studies, first as a congregational pastor then as a university chaplain. Her research interests focus on feminist biblical interpretation, childist biblical interpretation, and ancient Near Eastern languages and cultures. She has authored or edited seven books and many articles.

Julie+Faith+Parker.jpg

“Our witness to the Word unfolds in justice and joy at General.” 


Prior to coming to General, Parker taught at Trinity Lutheran Seminary in Columbus, Ohio where she founded the Trinity Prison Project. She has also taught at Yale Divinity School, Colby College, Fordham University, Andover Newton Theological School, and New York Theological Seminary, with a program teaching students incarcerated in Sing Sing Maximum Security Prison. At General, she founded the General Prison Project, a letter-writing program between people who are incarcerated and seminarians.

She is married to the Rev. Dr. Bill Crawford and they are the proud parents of two grown children, Graham and Mari. She enjoys going to museums, singing, and running, and has run the New York City Marathon twice.

 

Contact Info

Located in Seabury Hall, Fourth floor
Phone: 646-717-9753
Email: parker@gts.edu

 

Courses Taught

Introduction to the Old Testament: Torah and Historical Books

Introduction to the Old Testament: Prophets and Writings

Interpreting and Proclaiming Holy Scripture: Old and New Testament Hermeneutics and Exegesis

Biblical Hebrew

Moses, Miriam, and More: Children in the Bible

Reading the Bible, Experiencing the Arts, Engaging Issues of Justice

Princesses, Prostitutes, Prophets: Girls and Women of the Bible

Heart, Soul, Voice, Psalms

Memberships

The Society of Biblical Literature

The New York Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church

American Alliance of Museums

Recent Books

Eve Isn’t Evil: Feminist Readings of Biblical Texts to Rekindle Our Hearts and Reshape Our Minds. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, forthcoming 2023.

The T & T Clark Handbook of Children in the Bible and the Biblical World. London: Bloomsbury/T & T Clark, 2019. Co-edited with Sharon Betsworth.

My So-Called Biblical Life: Imagined Stories from the World’s Best-Selling Book. Foreword by Mark Allan Powell. Eugene, Or.: Wipf and Stock, 2017. Editor and Contributing Writer.

Valuable and Vulnerable: Children in the Hebrew Bible, especially the Elisha Cycle. Brown Judaic Studies Series 355. Providence, RI: Brown University, 2013. Paperback, 2017.

journal articles

  • “Where Have All the Young Girls Gone? Strategies for Discovering the Bible’s Girls Applied to Exodus 2 and Mark 5-7.” Co-written with Sharon Betsworth. Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion. In press. (peer-reviewed) 

  • “Hardly Happily Ever After: Trafficking of Girls in the Hebrew Bible.” Biblical Interpretation 28.3 (2020): 540-56. (peer-reviewed) 

  • “Children in the Hebrew Bible and Childist Interpretation.” Currents in Biblical Research 17.2 (2019): 130-57. (peer-reviewed)

  • “Soul Magnification: A Heartfelt Tribute and a New Christmas Pageant.” Currents in Theology and Mission 46.2 (2019): 34-39.

  • “Ishmael as a Refugee.” The Biblical Studies Collection, Point of View Publishing: 2019. https://www.pointofviewpublishing.com/biblicalstudies

  • “Children in the Hebrew Bible.” In Oxford Bibliographies in Biblical Studies. Edited by Christopher Matthews. New York: Oxford University Press, 2016. (peer-reviewed)

  • “Embrace the Bible’s Children: A Call to Seminarians, Pastors, and Scholars.” Trinity Seminary Review 35 (2016): 11-22.

  • “Remembering the Dismembered: Piecing Together Meaning from Stories of Women and Body Parts in Ancient Near Eastern Literature.” Biblical Interpretation 23 (2015): 174-190. (peer-reviewed)

  • “Blaming Eve Alone: Translation, Omission, and Implications of עמה in Genesis 3:6b.” Journal of Biblical Literature 132.4 (2013): 729-47. (peer-reviewed)

  • “Women Warriors and Devoted Daughters: The Powerful Young Woman in Ugaritic Narrative Poetry.” Ugarit-Forschungen 38 (2006): 557-75. (peer-reviewed)

CHAPTERS IN COLLECTED VOLUMES

  • “The Force of YHWH Awakens: Social Scientific Methodologies and Children Who Rise from the Dead.”  Pages 143-63 in Children and Methods: Listening To and Learning From Children in the Biblical World. Brill’s Series in Jewish Studies. Edited by Kristine Garroway and John Martens. Leiden: Brill, 2020. 

  • “‘I Bless You by YHWH of Samaria and His Barbie’: A Case for Understanding Judean Pillar Figurines as Children’s Toys.” Pages 137-49 in Children in the Bible and the Ancient World: Comparative and Historical Methods in Reading Ancient Children. Studies in the History of the Ancient Near East. Edited by Shawn W. Flynn. London: Routledge, 2019. 

  • “Isaiah 52:7-10,” “Isaiah 62:1-5,” “Isaiah 62:6-12.” in Connections: A Lectionary Commentary for Preaching and Worship: Advent through Epiphany. Year C, Volume 1. Edited by Thomas G. Long, Cynthia L. Rigby, Luke A. Powery, and Joel B. Green. Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 2018. 

  • “Children in Biblical Narrative and Childist Biblical Interpretation.” Co-written with Kathleen Gallagher Elkins. Pages 422-433 in The Oxford Handbook of Biblical Narrative.  Edited by Danna Nolan Fewell. New York: Oxford University Press, 2016. 

  • “Children in the Hebrew Bible” in Bible Odyssey series of the Society of Biblical Literature (first published 2014) http://www.bibleodyssey.org/en/passages/related-articles/children-in-the-hebrew-bible.

  • “QUEENS and Other Female Characters: Feminist Interpretations of Kings.”  Pages 135-149 in A Retrospective of Feminist Hebrew Bible Exegesis: Histories of Interpretation (vol. 1). Edited by Susanne Scholz. Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix, 2012. 

  • “Children in the Hebrew Bible.”  In The Encyclopedia of the Bible and Its Reception.  30 vols. Edited by Hans-Josef Klauck et al.  Berlin: de Gruyter, 2011.

  • “You Are a Bible Child: Exploring the Lives of Children and Mothers through the Elisha Cycle.” Pages 59-69 in Women in the Biblical World: A Survey of Old and New Testament Perspectives.  Edited by Elizabeth A. McCabe.  Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 2009.