Jacob L. Wright

Jacob L. Wright is an associate professor of religion specializing in the Hebrew Bible and Old Testament at Emory University. His areas of expertise include the archeology of ancient Israel, the composition history of the Bible, and warfare in the Ancient Near East. He studied at the University of Missouri, went on to receive a Doctor Theologiae degree from the University of Göttingen, and taught at Heidelberg University.

In addition to solo authoring peer-reviewed journal articles,[1] Dr. Wright wrote the book Rebuilding Identity: The Nehemiah-Memoir and its Earliest Readers,[2] adhering to the supplementation school of Hebrew Bible scholarship. In 2012, he published in the Huffington Post on the Cyrus Cylinder.[3] He has also contributed to other media endeavors, such as a co-authored piece on the permissibility of certain wartime actions.

In 2014, Dr. Wright introduced the MOOC on coursera, Bible's Prehistory, Purpose, and Political Future, to a worldwide audience of learners. In putting the Hebrew Bible firmly in people's minds, he embraced the academic richness of both Biblical Criticism and the archaeology of Ancient Near East.[4] A book penned by Dr. Wright, which deals with the major themes in the MOOC, is framed by imports from the academic discipline of War Studies -- especially how collective memories of peoplehood are shaped through war and conflict, and that any peoplehood thinking cannot be apolitical.[5] Dr. Wright argues, in the book, that the formation of Hebrew Bible, the Prehistory thereof, cannot be conceived in a vacuum. According to him, such a history must be understood longue durée: how the moral decay or fall of a given civilization is understood by its own people.