Through Trauma Towards Praise (Part 2) [Embracing Transformation]

Trauma lies at the heart of the Old Testament, and its many books offer a range of models for embracing potentially traumatic transformations. Two quite divergent models can be found in the book of Psalms and Job. The Psalter builds a temple in space and in time that envelopes and moves through trauma toward praise. The book of Job places trauma at the beginning and moves simultaneously into the dark reality defined by trauma and out of that darkness into a world after trauma, at once more free and mysterious than the world it attempts to leave behind. We will consider the impact of trauma on the formation of the Bible generally and the two particular responses in the Psalter and Job as models for resilience.

Dr. Paul K.-K. Cho holds a B.A. in comparative literature from Yale University, an M.Div. from Yale Divinity School, and a Ph.D. in Hebrew Bible from Harvard University. He serves as Associate Professor of Hebrew Bible at Wesley Theological Seminary. He is author of Myth, History, and Metaphor in the Hebrew Bible and is currently working on a book on The Dead Give Life: Willingness to Die in the Hebrew Bible.