A World Beneath the Waves: Womanist Midrash

The two volumes of Womanist Midrash employ translation-based exegesis in conversation with classical rabbinic midrash and the homiletic of the sanctified imagination in black preaching. This lecture will present readings from each volume of the series focusing on the contemporary midrashic elements and delineate the ways in which they put flesh on the bones of the biblical text.

The Rev Dr Wil Gafney, Ph.D. is a biblical scholar whose work focuses on translation of the scriptures for congregations and lay readers, womanist and feminist biblical interpretation and, women who prophesied in ancient Israel and the ancient Afro-Asiatic world and, their reception in rabbinic literature. She is the Right Rev Sam B. Hulsey Professor of Hebrew Bible at Brite Divinity School in Fort Worth, Texas. She is the author of A Women’s Lectionary for the Whole Church Years A, B and C and a novel Year W (a stand-alone volume) and translator of its biblical selections. She is the author of Womanist Midrash: A Reintroduction to the Women of the Torah and the Throne and its sequel, Womanist Midrash: A Reintroduction to the Women of Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings along with a commentary on Nahum, Habakkuk and Zephaniah in the Wisdom series and, Daughters of Miriam: Women Prophets in Ancient Israel. She co-edited The Peoples’ Bible and The Peoples’ Companion to the Bible.

Dr Gafney is an Episcopal priest canonically resident in the Diocese of Pennsylvania and licensed in the Diocese of Texas and, a former Army chaplain and congregational pastor in the AME Zion Church. A former member of the Dorshei Derekh Reconstructionist Minyan of the Germantown Jewish Center in Philadelphia, she has co-taught courses with and for the Reconstructionist Rabbinical Seminary in Wyncote, PA. Her lectures and sermons are widely sought after in academic and Jewish and Christian congregational spaces in the US and in the UK. She is a public facing religious scholar, preacher, teacher, activist and an amateur watercolourist.