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Jacob Wright, Professor of Hebrew Bible at Emory University, joins us to discuss his award-winning new book, Why the Bible Began: An Alternative History of Scripture and Its Origins. Featured on the “best-of 2023” lists for The New Yorker and Publishers Weekly, the book celebrates the Hebrew Bible as an unparalleled achievement in human history. Forged after Babylon’s devastation of Jerusalem, it makes not victory but defeat the foundation of a new idea of belonging. At the heart of this corpus is not a creed but a question: What does it mean to be a people? More than just religious scripture, the Bible began, according to Wright, as a trailblazing blueprint for a new form of political community. Its response to catastrophe offered a powerful message of hope that was unique in the Ancient Near Eastern and Greco-Roman worlds.
