Conversation with Steed Davidson: Biblical Studies and the Twilight of the Humanities

The drum beats of the death of the humanities began several decades ago and have not let up. Pressures from within and without institutions dedicated to the study and learning of the human condition that hasten their decline imperil not simply disciplines, professions, or programs. The vitality of what it means to be human, the expansion in the depth of human relationships, as well as a human’s relationship with the created order are similarly threatened. Biblical Studies that explore the Bible’s ancient engagement of what it means to be human under the power of God has long contributed to the humanities and still has the potential to do even more. Deeper conversations with other disciplines including technology, expanded public engagement, accessible research that touches religious communities, creative and relevant teaching in primary education provide possible paths for reinventing and sustaining Biblical Studies in an age that threats to shrink the community of the world’s people.

Steed Vernyl Davidson, a native of Trinidad and Tobago, serves as the Executive Director of the Society of Biblical Literature. He has degrees from the University of West Indies and Boston University and a PhD from Union Theological Seminary. He has held teaching and administrative positions at the Pacific Lutheran Theological College (Berkeley) and McCormick Theological College (Chicago) where he taught Hebrew Bible/Old Testament through postcolonial studies. He is also ‘Extraordinary Visiting Professor, Old Testament,’ Department of Old and New Testament, Stellenbosch University.

Among his publications are Empire and Exile: Postcolonial Readings of the Book of Jeremiah (Bloomsbury, 2011); Writing/Reading the Bible in Postcolonial Perspective (Brill, 2017); and the coedited volumes, Prophetic Otherness: Constructions of Otherness in Prophetic Literature (T & T Clark, 2021); Queering the Prophet: On Jonah, and Other Activists (SCM Press, 2023).