Jacob L. Wright > Quotes

“In the Song (of Songs), love defies death itself.”
― Jacob L. Wright, Why the Bible Began: An Alternative History of Scripture and its Origins

“Without partnership between two, it is not realistic to expect a community of thousands to survive let alone thrive.”
― Jacob L. Wright, Why the Bible Began: An Alternative History of Scripture and its Origins

“To put things into perspective for those who hastily condemn the biblical authors, assuming that they were just sitting around looking for opportunities to make life more difficult for their women, we need to remember that these folks were writing three thousand years ago.”
― Jacob L. Wright, Why the Bible Began: An Alternative History of Scripture and its Origins

“Lamentations allows the deity to speak only once, and then merely in passing (3:57). By omitting the divine voice, it creates space for the community to express its collective anger.”
― Jacob L. Wright, Why the Bible Began: An Alternative History of Scripture and its Origins

“Judeans were searching for hope in the wake of disaster and devastation that had been inflicted upon them by foreign armies, but they did so by constructing a history of their own culpability.”
― Jacob L. Wright, Why the Bible Began: An Alternative History of Scripture and its Origins

“The Babylonian Empire itself would endure for just another half century, making way for a succession of new imperial powers: the Persians, the Hellenistic kings who succeeded Alexander the Great, the Romans, the Christian Byzantines, the Muslim caliphates, the Ottomans, and finally the British. In the twentieth century, territorial states would re-emerge in the form of Jordan, Israel, Lebanon, and Syria, but the fate of those states now hangs in the balance with several players reviving their ancient imperial ambitions.”
― Jacob L. Wright, Why the Bible Began: An Alternative History of Scripture and its Origins

“Lying underneath this majestic memorial of military grandeur(Arc de Triomphe) is the "Tomb to the Unknown Soldiers". The edifice affirms the bloody truth that statehood requires triumph, and triumph requires sacrificial death.”
― Jacob L. Wright, Why the Bible Began: An Alternative History of Scripture and its Origins

“the requirement to rest after six days of labor, which extends to not only servants but also (work) animals, represents one of the earliest, and most ambitious, labor laws in human history, and it was not until recent times that a weekly rest day established itself as the norm.”
― Jacob L. Wright, Why the Bible Began: An Alternative History of Scripture and its Origins

“Both then and now, the most powerful means of creating community is to tell stories.”
― Jacob L. Wright, Why the Bible Began: An Alternative History of Scripture and its Origins

“..they force their readers into a challenging dialogue with earlier works. They defence the reader's right to argue - with the text, with the tradition, and even with the deity. In so doing, they validate, and give voice to those who struggle with the perennial problem of the theodicy that arose from the new covenantal order.”
― Jacob L. Wright, Why the Bible Began: An Alternative History of Scripture and its Origins

“Thus, Shakespeare took the greatest rulers in the English imagination and revealed their all-too-human qualities. The authors of the Palace History did the same for their most celebrated monarchs, reworking older texts and composing new ones that provide behind-the-scenes glimpses of them in action.”
― Jacob L. Wright, Why the Bible Began: An Alternative History of Scripture and its Origins

“Many of the historical factors that shaped Israel’s and Judah’s formation find no mention in the Bible, while much of what the Bible portrays in considerable detail is far removed from history.”
― Jacob L. Wright, Why the Bible Began: An Alternative History of Scripture and its Origins

“A society that fails to care for the socio-economic conditions of its members, and does not establish an equitable system to justice cannot endure, let alone be free.”
― Jacob L. Wright, Why the Bible Began: An Alternative History of Scripture and its Origins

“Going forward, the Bible can continue to shape our public cultures if we are willing to assign it a new role. It cannot be taken as normative. But it can be mined for wisdom – wisdom that bears directly on questions of corporate life, common welfare, and collective survival.”
― Jacob L. Wright, Why the Bible Began: An Alternative History of Scripture and its Origins

“Israel constitutes a people not limited to its historical territory and longstanding monarchies, and it can survive without its temple and armies.”
― Jacob L. Wright, Why the Bible Began: An Alternative History of Scripture and its Origins

“the biblical laments give their voice entirely to the community. They do not wait for Yhwh to speak; rather, they expect him to listen.”
― Jacob L. Wright, Why the Bible Began: An Alternative History of Scripture and its Origins

“As many scholars today agree, the biblical notion of covenant emerged in direct response to Israel’s and Judah’s experience of political subjugation and defeat. However, the authors of the Pentateuch have concealed those origins. Indeed, texts like explicitly link the covenant not to defeat but to a great victory over the nation’s first imperial oppressors.”
― Jacob L. Wright, Why the Bible Began: An Alternative History of Scripture and its Origins

“Without couples, there can be no communities. Without friendship, trust, and intimacy between two, the bonds connecting three, or four, or four thousand, are easily severed.”
― Jacob L. Wright, Why the Bible Began: An Alternative History of Scripture and its Origins

“There are no accusations, no demands. The only expectation is that one does not relinquish hope.”
― Jacob L. Wright, Why the Bible Began: An Alternative History of Scripture and its Origins

“What propelled Judah’s restoration, according to the narrative, were texts, and those who interpreted them, and in depicting how texts played this formative role, its authors made a compelling, and creative, case for their culture of writing and reading.”
― Jacob L. Wright, Why the Bible Began: An Alternative History of Scripture and its Origins

“In the biblical corpus, nationhood is a state of mind – a kingdom of not only collective consciousness but also collective conscience.”
― Jacob L. Wright, Why the Bible Began: An Alternative History of Scripture and its Origins

“Pushback and questioning make a system more flexible and resilient, and this intuition clearly informed the inclusion of a couple of other controversial books.”
― Jacob L. Wright, Why the Bible Began: An Alternative History of Scripture and its Origins

“The law means little if it is not embedded in a shared past that the members of the community create through a collaborative effort of political imagination. Law requires a story, nomos needs narrative. A people needs a past, and especially stories about that past. Without narration, there is no nation.”
― Jacob L. Wright, War, Memory, and National Identity in the Hebrew Bible

“Knowledge is power, and throughout history rulers have gone to great lengths to control the flow of information.”
― Jacob L. Wright, Why the Bible Began: An Alternative History of Scripture and its Origins

“In contrast to this top-down, statist approach that forms obedient and willing subjects, the biblical model of peoplehood relies on individual actors collaborating for the good of the community.”
― Jacob L. Wright, Why the Bible Began: An Alternative History of Scripture and its Origins

“From the vantage point of the intended audience, the maternal maneuvering of this aged matriarch on her child’s behalf made possible their own existence.”
― Jacob L. Wright, Why the Bible Began: An Alternative History of Scripture and its Origins

“When the authors of the Exodus-Conquest Account incorporated Joshua into their narrative, they made a dramatic change to his identity: instead of saving a population and becoming their king, he is now a prolific regicide, warring against, and later executing, a myriad of monarchs”
― Jacob L. Wright, Why the Bible Began: An Alternative History of Scripture and its Origins

“Languages contain within themselves not only rich cultural histories but also important insights on life, and thus their preservation is no less important than the protection of endangered wildlife.”
― Jacob L. Wright, Why the Bible Began: An Alternative History of Scripture and its Origins

“A Judean was thus one who lived in Judah. The Jew had yet to be invented.”
― Jacob L. Wright, Why the Bible Began: An Alternative History of Scripture and its Origins

“whose husband and children go unmentioned (whether”
― Jacob L. Wright, Why the Bible Began: An Alternative History of Scripture and its Origins