Old Testament Theology, Isaiah’s Metaphors, and Canaanite Genocide: A Conversation with Brittany Kim and Charlie Trimm

Episode: This episode involves a rich discussion with Brittany Kim and Charlie Trimm about three book’s they’ve written. We first discuss their co-authored book about the discipline of Old Testament theology, including the challenges of relating the two testaments and descriptive vs. normative theology. Then we discuss Brittany’s book on Isaiah’s familial and servant metaphors, including gendered language for God as well as the way that metaphors can help us wrestle with challenging prophetic texts. Finally, we talk about Charlie’s recent work on approaches to violence in the Canaanite conquest, which maps some of the benefits and drawbacks to various proposals for mitigating the challenges of violence in Joshua. And there’s much more here!

Guests: Dr. Brittany Kim is an Old Testament scholar, adjunct professor of Old Testament at North Park Theological Seminary and Northeastern Seminary, and she’s a spiritual director. She’s a co-director of Every Voice, an initiative for diversity in theological education. In addition to co-authoring the book Understanding Old Testament Theology: Mapping the Terrain of Recent Approaches (Zondervan, 2020) with Charlie Trimm, she’s the author of Lengthen Your Tent-Cords: The Metaphorical World of Israel’s Household in the Book of Isaiah (Eisenbrauns/PSU Press, 2018).  

Dr. Charlie Trimm  is Associate Professor of Biblical and Theological Studies at Biola University. In addition to co-authoring the book Understanding Old Testament Theology: Mapping the Terrain of Recent Approaches (Zondervan, 2020) with Brittany Kim, he’s the author of The Destruction of the Canaanites: God, Genocide, and Biblical Interpretation (Eerdmans, 2022), Fighting for the King and the Gods: A Survey of Warfare in the Ancient Near East (SBL, 2017), and “YHWH Fights for Them!” The Divine Warrior in the Exodus Narrative (Gorgias: Piscataway, 2014). He’s also a co-director of Every Voice.

Every Voice – To access the bibliographies compiled by Every Voice, please click HERE.

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If you enjoyed this episode …  listen in an earlier episode with Christian Hofreiter about his book Making Sense of Old Testament Genocide.