First Reading Rev. Rachel Wrenn, PhD; Rosy Kandathil, JD; Paul Essah, MDiv; Tim McNinch, PhD

The "Best of" First Reading Easter Series





While the RCL hangs out in the Book of Acts, we at the Old Testament Lectionary Podcast are replaying some of our favorite interview episodes. This week, we are bringing out Rachel's and Tim's 2019 conversation with Rev. Dr. Johanna van Wijk-Bos. Dr. Bos taught for four decades as Professor of Old Testament at Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary in KY. She continues to serve the Presbyterian Church (PCUSA) as an ordained pastor. In addition to her teaching, speaking, and preaching, she is a prolific author and an engaged activist, especially around issues of equity in terms of gender, race, and sexual orientation. Among her many great books, we recommend for our audience, Making Wise the Simple: The Torah in Christian Faith and Practice. Her latest project—Now Available!—is a spectacular multi-volume commentary on Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings titled, A People and A Land (Eerdmans).

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.

The "Best of" First Reading Easter Series





During Easter season this year, when the lectionary pulls from Acts as the “first reading,” we are re-releasing some of our favorite interviews with biblical scholars from the First Reading podcast vault. This week, we’re sharing another of our very early episodes, a conversation with the inimitable Stephen Breck Reid.



Dr. Stephen Breck Reid joins Rachel and Tim for a long-form episode, focusing on Psalm 30. Steve is Professor of Christian Scriptures at George W. Truett Theological Seminary of Baylor University (and Vice Provost for Faculty Diversity and Belonging at Baylor University). He earned his PhD at Emory University and has held a number of academic positions during his career. Dr. Reid is ordained in the Church of the Brethren, and you can find his preaching tips and exegetical work on WorkingPreacher.org. His areas of expertise include the Psalms, apocalyptic literature (especially Daniel), and black biblical hermeneutics. If you’d like to know more about his work, check out his book, Listening In: A Multicultural Reading of the Psalms.

The "Best of" First Reading Easter Series





This summer, while the Lectionary uses the Book of Acts as the first reading, we are re-releasing some of our best episodes from the First Reading Podcast vault. This week, we’re going way back to one of our first episodes (#007 actually, for James Bond fans out there), back to 2019 when Rachel and Tim interviewed the amazing, delightful, Rev. Dr. Vanessa Lovelace. Dr. Lovelace has moved institutions since our interview and is now Associate Dean at Lancaster Theological Seminary, where she is also a faculty member in Hebrew Bible/Old Testament. Dr. Lovelace has a brand new book about to drop with Fortress Academic Press: A Womanist Reading of Hebrew Bible Narratives as the Politics of Belonging from an Outsider Within. The book comes out in June, but you can pre-order it today!

The "Best of" First Reading Easter Series





Easter is a strange season in the Lectionary for us here at the "Old Testament Lectionary Podcast," because during Easter the first reading is drawn from the New Testament book of Acts. So, this year, we’ve decided to use this season to re-release some of our favorite episodes from the vault, conversations with leading scholars in the field. This week, since we just passed the Jewish holiday of Purim, we are featuring our 2021 interview with Rosy Kandathil, who (not long after this interview) became one of our regular hosts! Our conversation is centered around the book of Esther, which is the topic of Rosy’s PhD dissertation—which, by the way, she is defending this week! Go Rosy! So enjoy this “best of” FR episode!



Esther is a rich and complex biblical story—which is why it's unfortunate that it only appears once in the 3-year lectionary cycle. But to help us make the most of this occasion, we invited Rosy Kandathil to join us for a deep dive into Esther. Rosy is a PhD candidate in Hebrew Bible at Emory University, where she is writing a dissertation on the collision of humor and violence in the book of Esther. Rosy's insights help us get to the core relevant issues of the book: how it navigates multiple identities at once, deals with the challenges of thriving in diaspora, and hosts some of our own deep questions about violence and vengeance. Buckle up for a great episode!

PARTY EPISODE: Easter Hope in the Middle of Chaos



Lectionary Date: March 31, 2024 [Easter Sunday, Year B]



Rachel, Paul, and Tim discuss the first reading for Easter in this party episode (also celebrating Rachel's birthday!). We also made a video version of this episode, which you can see on YouTube: