Whitley Lecture – Dead and Buried? Attending to the voices of the victim in the Old Testament and today.

Whether we are reading a modern news article about a violent atrocity, or one of the shocking Old Testament stories of violence, it is important that we ask certain questions of ourselves and of the written account. Whose interests are being served by the telling of this story? Whose voices are not being heard? Whose lives are considered worthy of grieving, and whose deaths are regarded as forgettable? What responsibility does reading this story place upon me? This lecture will aim to consider these questions and so provide some tools to assist us as we read Old Testament stories of violence.