Reading the Bible with Horror

In Reading the Bible with Horror, Brandon R. Grafius takes the reader on a whirlwind tour through the dark corners of the Hebrew Bible. Along the way, he stops to place the monstrous Leviathan in conversation with contemporary monster theory, uses Derrida to help explore the ghosts that haunt the biblical landscape, and reads the House of David as a haunted house. Conversations arise between unexpected sources, such as the Pentateuch legal texts dealing with female sexuality and Carrie. Throughout the book, Grafius asks how the Hebrew Bible can be both sacred text and tome of fright, and he explores the numerous ways in which the worlds of religion and horror share uncomfortable spaces.

This interesting, provocative, and well-documented volume makes a strong case for reading relevant biblical passages on the background of modern horror theory. . . . Overall, this volume is an excellent and important contribution to biblical scholarship., There are seldom books you can recommend to both biblical scholars and horror film fans but Grafius’ new work offers intellectual fireworks for both. In thoughtful and often engaging personal prose, he confronts the darkest shadows of the Hebrew scriptures, indeed of the God they present. Perhaps most important of all, the author, brilliantly, and passionately, uses both the Bible and horror film to explore the problems of building community, making this book especially significant in our troubled political moment., Brandon Grafius' Reading the Bible with Horror is as academically adept as it is movingly personal. This is a book that can be profitably used by biblical scholars and their students but also, much more broadly, by those exploring cultural theory and the way religion and pop culture interact with one another. Grafius takes us on a haunted tour through the Bible's monsters, contemporary fears about race and gender, Canaanite mythology, the book of Job, Kristeva, ghosts, Freud, monotheism and polytheism, Derrida, sex, legal codes, and the horror of violence both ancient and modern. The double entendre in the title powerfully suggests that the Bible can speak to/with the horror genre but also that our readings of the Bible cannot easily proceed without facing our own fear and our sense that all is not always right. Highly recommended., Grafius’ innovative book shows us how just as we often watch horror movies with fingers covering our eyes to block out the monster with the axe, we’ve covered our eyes to the Hebrew Bible’s own horror and carnage. Not only an engaging read suitable for even the most novice religion scholar (or horror fan), Reading the Bible with Horror is also methodologically groundbreaking, showing how the stories that fill our world provide an essential interpretative framework to understand the quintessentially human problems found in the stories of people's past.

Brandon R. Grafius is assistant professor of biblical studies at Ecumenical Theological Seminary.