Psalm 97, with Marc Brettler

First Reading

The "Best of" First Reading Easter Series

We reach deep into vault once again this week, to pull out the treasure of our 2019 conversation with Dr. Marc Zvi Brettler, one of the leading scholars in the field of Hebrew Bible. He is Bernice and Morton Lerner Distinguished Professor in Judaic Studies at Duke University; and Professor Emeritus and former chair of the Department of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies at Brandeis University. He has also taught at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Yale University, Brown University, Wellesley College, and Middlebury College. He is actively involved in many aspects of Jewish communal life, and has served on the board of Boston’s Leventhal-Sidman Jewish Community Center and Gann Academy—the New Jewish High School. Dr. Brettler is known for helping to build meaningful bridges between Jewish religious life and modern critical scholarship of the Hebrew Bible. He is co-editor of the Jewish Study Bible, which won a National Jewish Book Award. We think this volume should be on every pastor’s bookshelf, and consulted often, along with another of Dr. Brettler’s editorial projects, the Jewish Annotated New Testament. For Christian leaders interested in the shared Scriptures of Judaism and Christianity, these books are must haves. Dr. Brettler has published a slew of other books, both academic and popular. He is a clear and accessible communicator, as you will experience in this week’s First Reading episode. Finally, be sure to visit theTorah.com, which Dr. Brettler helped establish, a great online repository for biblical scholarship from a Jewish perspective.