Joel Baden
@joelbaden.bsky.social
Professor of Hebrew Bible, Yale University.
Ever had a major figure in the field call your first book “borderline incompetent” in the flagship journal of the field? I have. (Made my career, to be honest, but I’d still rather it hadn’t happened. Probably.)
Andrew Tobolowsky@andytobo.bsky.social · last wk.As a grad student, I gave a talk on Homer and Hesiod at a grad conference at UCSB and an elderly art history professor stood up and yelled "You didn't say ANYTHING about Etruscan sarcophagi"
Recently finished a relatively new semi-accessible scholarly book, and man, Israeli archaeology really can’t get away from the Bible, huh? It’s like imagining historians of England who just had to tie everything back to Shakespeare somehow. It makes the whole project seem impossible.
Dear god someone pay me to do a line by line review of this
Kristina Killgrove@killgrove.bsky.social · 4w agoUh, y'all, Dinesh D'Souza has a new booking coming out on biblical archaeology. Yiiiikes. 😬🏺
Dear god someone pay me to do a line by line review of this
Kristina Killgrove@killgrove.bsky.social · 4w agoUh, y'all, Dinesh D'Souza has a new booking coming out on biblical archaeology. Yiiiikes. 😬🏺
Super fucking cool, genuine response. All the credit: thanks for listening. Really well done.
Fr Sam@frsamsheridan.bsky.social · 4w agoI'm not going to delete these interactions because I should experience the shame of being so weird with someone who knows more than me. And it might have some value to model just apologizing and acknowledging that it's inappropriate that my response was based on who I thought you were.
I’d also really love to know if this is a real Christian thing - like has the 613 come to have some independent Christian meaning, or is it just used as shorthand for “what Jews believe” (as different from what we believe)?
Joel Baden@joelbaden.bsky.social · 4w agoLegitimately interested: can you tell me where the 613 commandments come into Christianity? Because even in Judaism that idea doesn’t exist until the middle of the first millennium CE, and there’s no attempt at enumeration for another five hundred years or so after that.
Dude, I did start this mostly joking - just pointing out that it’s kind of a category mismatch to put the Jewish idea of 613 commandments into the Christian idea of the OT. Now you’re playing the “your feelings don’t matter” card, which seems like a wild place to have gone.
Fr Sam@frsamsheridan.bsky.social · 4w ago"Christian Seders" misunderstand both religions. This law thing has a history and your personal feelings do not change the historical context of your question. The answer is the same.
Less important - but not unimportant.
Fr Sam@frsamsheridan.bsky.social · 4w agoBecause even the well meaning Christians are like "How can we better understand each other" and the Jewish participants in those conversations are like "We just want you to stop with the xenophobic violence please, and the theological conversation is less important than how you k*ll us."
Feels weird to tell me that the thing I obviously care about isn’t a thing that Jews care about. I promise that stuff like Christian Seders bothers “us.”
Fr Sam@frsamsheridan.bsky.social · 4w agoTo throw out the history of Christian interpretation in the interest of... Something Jewish people do not care about... Feels counterproductive. And they don't. Interfaith dialogue with Jewish people is incredibly disjointed. 5/6
Legitimately interested: can you tell me where the 613 commandments come into Christianity? Because even in Judaism that idea doesn’t exist until the middle of the first millennium CE, and there’s no attempt at enumeration for another five hundred years or so after that.
Fr Sam@frsamsheridan.bsky.social · 4w agoBut the second thing is I think there's a lot of work to be done, and is being done by people like Reed Carlson at Sewanee, about the difference between supersessionism and antisemitism. Christians have a history of interpretation and the 613 laws this is part of how we got here. 4/6
Yeah - I know what the OT is, and I don’t have any problem with Christians using the term. It’s more that the 613 commandments is an entirely rabbinic concept, and belongs to the Jewish Bible, not the OT. Combining the two feels vaguely supersessionist, like a Christian Seder.
Fr Sam@frsamsheridan.bsky.social · 4w agoThat's a great question that I'm used to answering because I am an Episcopal priest. The thing I'm referring to as the Old Testament, is that big introductory material to the Holy Bible which many of my colleagues seem to have not read, and very few of them ever preach on.
There’s stuff about which the Bible is bad all on its own- slavery, women, homosexuality - and bad people take advantage of that stuff. Then there’s stuff that isn’t in the Bible at all, and bad people make the Bible into a source for - and racism is one of those things.
Right Wing Watch @rightwingwatch.bsky.social · 4w agoPreaching that God has assigned black people to "a civilizational station of subordination and dependence" due to the Curse of Ham, Christian nationalist pastor Dale Partridge calls for a "return to European Christian colonization of African nations." www.peoplefor.org/rightwingwat...
If you’re going to invite me to be on your editorial board, probably don’t a) fail to describe any of the responsibilities, b) forward me the message from the EIC saying they’re on a tight deadline to add members, or c) extend the offer also to any students I might have. Must be a terrific journal!
You mean your workplace doesn’t have this sort of thing? Your loss I guess.
Four sources of the Pentateuch, four ideas about Moses’s heritage and relationship to Aaron: P: brothers, both Levites J: brothers, only Aaron is a Levite E: not brothers, no one is a Levite* D: cares about neither thing *requires emendation in Exodus 2:1 that I’m increasingly confident of
Very proud of my doctoral student Paul Essah, who is now ABD and ready to start writing his dissertation, “Revelation as Decolonial Praxis: The Politics of Knowledge and the Book of Daniel.” It’s going to be AMAZING.
Just a fun little pre-Passover reminder that not everyone in ancient Israel thought that Israelites were enslaved in Egypt. Enjoy!
I teach a course on how to engage with scholarship - how to read, how to do panels and book reviews - and one of the first things I tell the students is they can’t say that they liked or didn’t like something. They have to say what it’s trying to do, and what they can profitably take from it.
Kevin M. Kruse@kevinmkruse.bsky.social · 5mo agoNew grad students often adopt a stance of hypercriticism as a shortcut to seeming savvy. When I was one, Nick Salvatore told us he didn't like "shit-on-the-book seminars" so we would instead spend our time talking about what *worked* in various texts to see what we could learn from other authors.
Quick plug: I’ll be presenting at the "New Insights into the Hebrew Bible" conference March 20–22. Join me and 12 other scholars for a deep dive into Genesis. Register by Feb 28 to save up to 25%. bartehrman.com/nihb
Hi, friends. An FYI for those interested: I've published an article in JSP about Esther as "American scripture." Includes analysis of the Heritage Foundation's "Project Esther" (2024) and its strategies for regulating free speech, higher education, immigration, and foreign policy.
@joelbaden.bsky.social Just wanted to tell you that I am ADORING your Great Courses series!!!! Bravo!!!!
What - and I’m not sure how else to put this - the living fuck is this shit doing in the New York Times? The Kingdom of God Is Ruled by the Humblest of Men www.nytimes.com/2025/12/25/o...
Opinion | The Kingdom of God Is Ruled by the Humblest of Men
nytimes.com
And universalist religions, granted immense power, become, let’s say, oppressive to those religions that would like to just be left alone to do their thing in peace please.
The New York Times@nytimes.com · 7mo agoIn @nytopinion.nytimes.com “Christianity has always been about far more than identity. It is universalist in its aspirations, if not always in practice,” E. J. Dionne Jr. writes.
Poking through some recipe reviews on the NYT just now and saw multiple people commenting on the irony of using *kosher salt* in a *pork dish* and the fundamental lack of the most basic understanding of what kosher salt is just kills me every so often.
Favorite Courses 1. What Wrote the Bible? (@joelbaden.bsky.social) 2. Understanding Western Art (Dr. Noah Charney) 3. How Science Shapes Science Fiction (Dr. Charles Adler) 4. Archaeological Mysteries of Europe/Mediterranean (Dr. Karen Bellinger) 5. Forgotten America (@phdrachel.bsky.social) 2/3
Like many scholars, especially in the religion space, I get a lot of crazy mail. The one that came today is particularly impressive:
You know what makes a great last minute Christmas gift, but doesn’t really work as a stocking stuffer? My “Who Wrote the Bible?” on Great Courses! www.thegreatcoursesplus.com/who-wrote-th...
Who Wrote the Bible? Searching for Its Origins and Authors
Reveal the voices behind the Bible’s beloved books, what is known of the authors, and the fascinating process by which this world-shaping text took shape.
thegreatcoursesplus.com
Happy to receive a copy of this volume (to which I made a small contribution):
