Francesca Stavrakopoulou

Francesca Stavrakopoulou, born 3 October 1975, is an Oxford University-trained theologian,^[1][2] and current Professor of Hebrew Bible and Ancient Religion at the University of Exeter and head of its Department of Theology and Religion.^[2] The main focus of her research is on the Hebrew bible,^[1] and on Israelite and Judahite history and religion.^[3] She is also well known as a popularizer of biblical historical subjects through her presentation roles (e.g., in programs for the BBC2 and Channel 4).^[1] Her popular contentions reflect her research perspectives, and include that Hebrew bible (Old Testament) authors had understandings of fact and fiction that differed markedly from modern notions,^[4] and statements that particular characters in these texts (e.g., Moses and King David) are not factual, historical accounts.^[1][4] As of 2011, Stavrakopoulou was a self-described atheist.^[1][2][5]

Early life and education

Francesca Stavrakopoulou was born on 3 October 1975^[6] in suburban Bromley, in greater London, to an English mother and a Greek father.^[1][7] Stavrakopoulou is quoted as having said that "she was brought up 'in no particular religion'," and that she remains an atheist.^[1][2][5]

Career

Stavrakopoulou was awarded a D. Phil. in theology by the University of Oxford.^[1][2] Her dissertation, which examined the creation of an imagined past within the Hebrew Bible, was subsequently published as King Manasseh and Child Sacrifice: Biblical Distortions of Historical Realities.^[8][9]

Stavrakopoulou filled subsequent teaching and research positions at Oxford for three years, at Worcester College, as a Junior Research Fellow, and as a Career Development Fellow in the Faculty of Theology, departing Oxford in 2005.^[10]

Stavrakopoulou began a position in Hebrew Bible and Ancient Religion in the University of Exeter's Department of Theology and Religion in 2005,^[10] rising to the level of senior lecturer by March 2011.^[1] She was elevated to a "personal chair" in 2011.^[11] She currently serves as Head of Theology and Religion.^[12]

Stavrakopoulou began a position as secretary of the British-based Society for Old Testament Study.^[1][13] She has been a member of the European Association of Biblical Studies, and of the US-based Society of Biblical Literature.^[1][14]

Public appearances and presentations

Stavrakopoulou has appeared on several occasions in BBC One's programme featuring "moral, ethical and religious debates," The Big Questions hosted by Nicky Campbell; appearances include on the topics "Is the Bible still relevant?", ^[4] "Is there a difference between a religion and a cult?",^[15] and "Are religions unfair to women?".^[16]

Stavrakopoulou has served as writer and presenter for a number of media productions relating to her scholarly interests. She contributed to Channel 4's series The Bible: A History (2010), regarding the historicity of Moses.^[1] Her first primetime presentation was a three-part television series for the BBC2 The Bible's Buried Secrets (2011;^[1][2] not to be confused with NOVA's 2008 programme of the same name).^[1]

These popular presentations, while being widely presented (e.g., the BBC2 production has been appearing in the U.S. as an offering of PBS stations^[17]), have met with mixed and some skeptical reviews, both in the U.K. popular press,^[1][2] and more broadly.^[18]

Fr. Alexander Lucie-Smith, likewise a theologian, and consulting editor of The Catholic Herald, notes that the BBC's …Buried Secrets series "is the sort of television programme that theologians ought to cherish…" and notes that "…Stavrakopoulou, the programme’s presenter [is] …an absolute natural in front of the camera [and] …does not shy away from asking some weighty questions."^[18] However, he goes on to argue, regarding the second episode of the production, which addresses the origins of monotheism, that "…in [its] closing moments… scholarship seemed to be given up in favour of… mere opinion"; he then proceeds to take strident issue with Stavrakopoulou's suggestion that contemporary Christianity's views of Mary, saints, and angels were a "hangover" [holdover] from the polytheistic religions, and that monotheism's presentation of God as "exclusively male" led therefore "to the marginalisation and repression of women."^[18] With regard to the latter point, he argued:

With a charge like this, where can one start? The polytheistic Greeks and Romans denied females all political rights, despite the fact that Athens was under the protection of the goddess Athene, and Rome under the protection of Juno. The Julio-Claudian rulers claimed descent from Venus, but were not noted for their feminism. The idea that polytheism is more friendly to women is simply unsupported by the facts. It is easy to claim and sounds good, but as a serious thesis, it deserves to be dismissed. How on earth did it find itself in what purported to be a serious programme about the Bible?^[18]

Lucie-Smith goes on the accentuate the positive of the series, that "Dr Stavrakopoulou wants us to see that the Bible and history are not necessarily the same thing, and that is a worthy task; [and that] she does have some thought-provoking things to say about modern Israeli claims to the land of ancient Israel," but argues that the programme as a whole was "undermined" by closing speculative argument.^[18]

Scholarly positions and responses

The main focus of Stavrakopoulou's research is on the on the Hebrew bible,^[1] and on Israelite and Judahite history and religion.^[10] She describes herself as "an atheist with huge respect for religion" and regards her work as "a branch of history like any other."^[5] Stavrakopoulou has argued in popular venues, based on her research, that important figures in the Hebrew bible were not historical figures as represented in that text.^[1][4] She has further stated that she believes "very little, probably" of the Hebrew bible is historical fact, based on the arguments that ancient writers had an understanding of "fact" and "fiction" very different from a modern understanding, and that the Hebrew bible "wasn't written to be a factual account of the past"; she concludes, saying she does not believe accounts of Moses and King David in the Hebrew bible to be factual, and that "as an historian of the bible, I think there is very little that is factual."^[4] In response to the pronouncement of "hardly any facts," her fellow panelist, the Right Reverend Michael Nazir Ali, former Bishop of Rochester, replied that her view was one of "radical skepticism," stating that it was unwarranted; continuing, he said:

This is just sensationalism... Most mainstream archaeology would accept that there is an historical basis to what there is of history in the bible,^[4]

and further argued that archaeological evidence, as held by a large company of scholars of history and archaeology (noting G.E. Wright, John Bright, and Kathleen Kenyon), supports the historicity of the historical books of the Hebrew bible (of which he noted the books of Kings, Chronicles, Ezra, and Nehemiah).^[4] Stavrakopoulou dismissed the scholars noted by Ali for their being deceased, and therefore "disengaged" from the modern debate; Ali replied that their being dead did not make their work wrong or irrelevant to the question.^[4]

John Barton, Oriel & Laing Professor of Interpretation [of biblical texts] at the University of Oxford, in his Ethics in Ancient Israel, comments thus on the conclusions and general disputes in one area that Stavrakopoulou is writing as theologian and historian:

[Stavrakopoulou] argues that the idea of the king and his entourage as worshipping in an official way—that is, in practice, in accordance with the kind of religious customs the prophets approved of—while the populace at large indulged in illicit cults, is wishful thinking. A particularly striking example is child sacrifice, which (she has argued) was regarded as normal by everyone in pre-exilic and exilic times, except prophets such as Jeremiah and Ezekial.^[19] And indeed the Old Testament itself, while strongly condemning such a practice, makes it abundantly clear that it was very common. The idea that it was popular rather than official reflects Old Testament condemnation, but probably not the reality on the ground at the time. Similarly, polytheism was fairly obviously common in pre-exilic Israel, but there is no particular reason to think it was more common among 'the people' than in the king's palace and, indeed, in the temple. / These matters are widely disputed, but so-called popular religion may well have been much nearer to official religion…^[20][21] [break in paragraph indicated, emphasis regarding disputed nature of views, added]

On one matter of her dissertation and later writings, regarding the places of the burial of Judean kings and the implications thereof, Christopher B. Hays, D. Wilson Moore Associate Professor of Ancient Near Eastern Studies at Fuller Theological Seminary describes Stavrakopoulou as calling into question any reform to burial practices under Hezekiah,^[22] while Nadav Na'aman, Professor of Jewish History at Tel Aviv University, has argued to the contrary, "that the place of the… kings' burials moved for religious reasons… as a part of Hezekiah's reform program…".^[23]

In an interview with Anita Singh of The Telegraph in March 2011, Stavrakopoulou acknowledged that the public presentation of the conclusions based on her scholarship on the Hebrew bible are intended to be "'colourful' and 'uncomfortable'."^[1]

Major published works

Thesis

• ——— (2005). Discerning the Nature of Academic Theology (Dip. L.A.T.H.E.). Oxford, England: University of Oxford. OCLC 66385438. 
• ——— (2002). Biblical Distortions of Historical Realities: a study with particular reference to King Manasseh and child sacrifice (PhD). Oxford, England: University of Oxford. OCLC 59313595. 

Books

Stavrakopoulou's dissertation-based monograph, and her subsequent authored book-length publications are:

• Stavrakopoulou, Francesca (2004). King Manasseh and Child Sacrifice: Biblical Distortions of Historical Realities. Berlin, GER: Walter de Gruyter. ISBN 3110179946. 
• ——— (2010). Land of our Fathers: The Roles of Ancestor Veneration in Biblical Land Claims. New York, NY: T&T Clark. ISBN 9780567028815. 
• ——— (2010). How to Read the Hebrew Bible. Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-47141-1. 

Edited

• ———; Barton, J., eds. (2010). Religious Diversity in Ancient Israel and Judah. New York, NY: T&T Clark. ISBN 9780567032157. 
• ———; Horrell, D. G.; Hunt, C.; Southgate, C., eds. (2010). Ecological Hermeneutics: Biblical, Historical and Theological Perspectives. New York, NY: T&T Clark. ISBN 9780567033031. 

Journal articles and book chapters

Stavrakopoulou's major journal articles and her authored book chapters include:

• ——— (2006). "Exploring the Garden of Uzza: Death, Burial and Ideologies of Kingship". Biblica. 87 (1): 1–21. JSTOR 42614642. Quote: Given the important theological and narrative functions of the death and burial notices in emphasizing the continuity of the Davidic dynasty… variations [in the stated burial places] have proved problematic for many commentators. 
• ——— (2010). "'Popular' Religion and 'Official' Religion: Practice, Perception, Portrayal". In Barton, J. Religious Diversity in Ancient Israel and Judah. New York, NY: T&T Clark. pp. 37–58. ISBN 9780567032157. Retrieved 3 April 2016. 
• ——— (2011). "Tree-Hogging in Eden: Divine Restriction and Royal Rejection in Genesis 2-3". In Higton, M.; Rowland, C.; Law, J. Theology and Human Flourishing: Essays in Honor of Timothy J. Gorringe. Eugene, OR, USA: Wipf and Stock. pp. 41–53. ISBN 1621898849. Retrieved 3 April 2016. 
• ——— (2016). "Religion at Home: The Materiality of Practice [Ch. 19]". In Niditch, S. The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Ancient Israel. Wiley Blackwell Companions to Religion. New York, NY: John Wiley & Sons. pp. 347–365. ISBN 0470656778. Retrieved 3 April 2016. Quote: For scholars of ancient Israel and Judah… the designation 'household religion' has particularly come to index a category of difference: on one level, it tends to be a label employed to describe and interrogate forms of religious practice that are distinct from religious activities associated with temples and other high-status religious sites. … On another (though related) level… the term… is also employed to designate a category of difference concerned with distinguishing the "real" religions of Israel and Judah from the somewhat caricatured biblical portrayal of 'ordinary' or 'normative' religious practice in these ancient societies. 

References

Further reading

• Stavrakopoulou, Francesca (2014-10-26). "Female academics: don't power dress, forget heels—and no flowing hair allowed" (blog posting). The Guardian. Retrieved 4 April 2016. 

External links