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BookTALK: PTS Faculty Series

This guide contains resources that complement the Faculty Series sponsored by the Center for Writing and Learning Support and Barbour Library.

Library & Online Resources

Dr. Kimberly Russaw, Associate Professor of Old Testament

Dr. Kimberly D. Russaw is associate professor of Old Testament. She is a member of the Society of Biblical Literature, where she serves as the chair of the African American Biblical Hermeneutics program unit. She is also an editorial board member of the Journal of Biblical Literature. Her other professional memberships include the American Academy of Religion, the Society for the Study of Black Religion, and the National Black MBA Association. Her many publications include Revisiting Rahab: Another Look at the Woman of Jericho (Wesley Foundry Books, 2021), Daughters in the Hebrew Bible (Lexington Books, 2018), and “Undaunted: Reading Miriam for the Sisters They Tried to Erase” in Stony the Road We Trod: African American Biblical Interpretation 30th Anniversary Expanded Edition (Fortress Press, 2021). Russaw has lectured or presented at events for PBS, Bible and Religions of the Ancient Near East, the Association of Theological Schools, and the Society of Biblical Literature, in addition to events at many universities and seminaries. She received her Ph.D. in Hebrew Bible and Ancient Israel from Vanderbilt University, and is an ordained itinerant elder in the African Methodist Episcopal Church.

 

Remembered primarily as the prostitute who helped the Israelites claim theRevisiting Rahab: Another Look at the Woman of Jericho book cover land of promise, Rahab has been relegated to the crevices of the story and the reader's imagination. Described as foreign woman and branded as a sex-worker, Rahab nevertheless defies the authority of the Jericho king and negotiates with representatives of the Israelite army, thereby saving her family and more. According to Russaw, Rahab, rather than being one-dimensional, is a complex, unwieldy character who upends the patriarchal ecosystem. By reframing Rahab, Russaw offers the biblical character as an exemplar of the inconvenient characters who persist at the margins even today. Russaw argues that the writers of Judges make the point that God is a promise keeper even to those beyond the Israelite camp.

 

 

 

 

Library Resources by Subject

Click on the links below to perform subject/author searches in the library catalog:

Bible. Old Testament -- Criticism, interpretation, etc.

Bible. Old Testament -- Feminist criticism.

Rahab (Biblical figure)

Women in the Bible

Women in rabbinical literature.

Select Bibliography

The links below will take you to either Bookshop.org (which supports local bookstores) or Amazon.com, where you can purchase the book.

Glahn, Sarah L. Vindicating the Vixens: Revisiting Sexualized, Vilified, and Marginalized Women of the Bible. Grand Rapids: Kregel Academic, 2017.

McCabe, Elizabeth, Ed. Women in the Biblical World: A Survey of Old and New Testament Perspectives. Lanham, MD: University Press of American, 2009.

Russaw, Kimberly D. Revisiting Rahab: Another Look at the Woman of Jericho. Nashville: Wesley's Foundery Books, 2012.

Books in Barbour Library

Print books below may be checked out by PTS students, faculty, and staff, as well as local area patrons who have library accounts (requires an annual fee). Ebooks are indicated by asterisks, and are available to current PTS students, faculty, and staff only. 

For a complete list of titles, see our Display Bibliography (bottom of this box or in the left sidebar).

Display Bibliography

Click the file below for a complete list of books used for a display at Barbour Library to support this event!

Select Bibliography

The articles below without links are not available in the Barbour Library journal collection - please check your local library for interlibrary loan services in order to obtain copies of these.

Jenei, Péter. 2019. “Strategies of Stranger Inclusion in the Narrative Traditions of Joshua–Judges: The Cases of Rahab’s Household, the Kenites and the Gibeonites.” Old Testament Essays 32 (1): 127–54.

 

Articles in Barbour Library

Articles that are available online have links, and are only available to current PTS students, faculty, and staff. Articles without links are in the print journal collection.

Kozlova, Ekaterina. 2020. “What Is in a Name?: Rahab, the Canaanite, and the Rhetoric of Liberation in the Hebrew Bible.” Open Theology 6: 572–86.

Lunn, Nicholas P. 2014. “The Deliverance of Rahab (Joshua 2,6) as the Gentile Exodus.” Tyndale Bulletin 65 (1): 11–19.

Mangililo, Ira D. “When Rahab and Indonesian Christian Women Meet in the Third Space.” Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion (Indiana University Press) 31, no. 1 (Spring 2015): 45–64.

Russaw, Kimberly D. 2020. “Reading Rahab with Larsen: Towards a New Direction in African American Biblical Hermeneutics.” Horizons in Biblical Theology 42 (1): 1–13.