Esther J. Hamori will deliver the 39th Annual Mary Olive Woods Lecture in Religious Studies and Philosophy at 7 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 23, in the University Union Sandburg Theatre.

Hamori is a professor of Hebrew Bible at Union Theological Seminary in New York. Her research is focused on conceptions of divine-human contact and communication in the Hebrew Bible and other ancient Middle Eastern literature.

Hamori’s 2023 book, “God’s Monsters: Vengeful Spirits, Deadly Angels, Hybrid Creatures, and Divine Hitmen of the Bible,” explores how in both the Hebrew Bible and New Testament, God deploys an entourage of monsters. Hamori suggests that confronting God’s monsters and the God-monster may be uncomfortable, but that biblical writers’ unflinching depictions of the monstrous God validate the human experience of a world that is unpredictable, unjust, and at times monstrous.

The annual Mary Olive Woods Lecture is sponsored by the Religious Studies and Philosophy

Programs in the School of Humanities and the Mary Olive Woods Foundation. The event is open to the public.
Light refreshments will be served after in the Sandburg lounge.