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Missed the first episode of Books Worth Reading? Here’s a partial edited transcript to give you an idea of what the conversation was like!
HOST: Welcome to the first webinar in our Books Worth Reading series. It’s a series dedicated to having conversations with CTS faculty and friends who have authored books you should probably have on your shelves. My name is Helen Blier, I’m the Associate Dean for Lifelong Learning here at Columbia, and I’m the facilitator and host for this series.
I’m joined today by Dr. Bill Brown, our recently retired William Marcellus McPeters professor emeritus of Old Testament. We know him as a beloved and wise guide to the texts comprising the Hebrew Bible. We’re going to be discussing his most recent book today, published in 2025. It’s called Sacred Tension, Embracing Dissonance and Dialogue in the Old Testament. It is well worth having on your bookshelf.
It is an accessible dive into a really important but typically bypassed aspect of Scripture, which is its dialogical and dissonant nature. We are going to be diving into that today, and why on earth, especially in these times, Bill would decide to wade into those waters and write a book about this.
Bill, welcome!
You have said that your approach to biblical interpretation is an exercise in wonder and surprise, and that is certainly something you manifest when you’re teaching and you’re engaging in the text. You’ve also said that wonder and surprise lead to hard questions and wondering, particularly about God, the text, and each other. So, why did you write Sacred Tension, and how is it an exercise for you in this kind of wonder and wondering?
Bill Brown: Thank you, Helen. What a great question. That question brings me back when I was in high school and I was involved in a Presbyterian church. I was involved also in a para-church ministry led by some high school students, and we had Bible study probably about once a week. It was very different from my life in the youth group at Trinity Presbyterian Church in Tucson, Arizona. This gathering of students was very conservative, evangelical. We spent a lot of time defending the Bible, reconciling and harmonizing apparent differences in it. And, you know, I was sort of an outsider, but I was intrigued by the conversation, and so I was kind of in and out of that. In retrospect, as I look back at that I don’t regret it, I learned a lot, but I realized what a waste of time spent on trying to harmonize the Bible!
What got me interested in the Bible, and it began during that experience, was trying to understand why there are differences and that they need not be harmonized or canceled out. But rather, they need to be explored. Why? What motivated the biblical authors to say what they said? Why do we have 4 Gospels instead of one? Why do we have several law codes in the Old Testament instead of one consistent code of law?
That launched my own work in biblical study, beginning in high school, through college, seminary, and now teaching. It is through navigating and exploring those differences that I’ve come to be surprised, that I have sensed wonder and wonderment, and wondering, always asking questions. And all of that has deepened my appreciation of Scripture.
One thing I’ve come to realize in my own work, in conversation with other scholars, is that the Bible is rather unique as an ancient body of literature. It’s unique in this one respect, that it preserves tensions. It preserves contradictions. It preserves different perspectives. So why not treat that that hallmark characteristic of the Bible as a treasure, rather than as a liability; as something to explore, rather than something to try to smooth out? Part of my own agenda in teaching is to sit in the difference and to try to understand why there are differences, rather than trying to ignore them or deny them. I’ve written the book with the spirit of invitation, hoping that readers hang in there, and in the process, really learn something deep.
The Bible itself is the product of a journey, over a millennium of theological struggle and discernment. It did not come down on golden plates from heaven. It wasn’t dictated to a single individual in a cave. It is the product of a community, or better communities; for instance, we have in antiquity northern Israel, and we have southern Judah. And the Bible is the product of both of their struggles in coming to terms with God. And so one would expect differences, because a whole historical span is covered, by the Bible, historically, theologically, literally. My goal is to invite folks to appreciate that because somehow that makes the Bible more real.
Join the conversation at our next Books Worth Reading – Oct. 23, 3pm ET, with Israel Galindo!
