The Book of Psalms: The Hopes and Fears of All the Years

Class Number: 
D07
June 2-6
2:00 pm - 4:15 pm

Class Price: 
$400


The course will involve close readings of a sample of the liturgical masterpiece from ancient Israel that we know as the Psalms. The Psalter itself is divided into five books, mirroring the structure of Torah itself, and our study will be sequenced into five parts, sampling selections from each successive book over five days. 

Our goal is to cover six psalms in each class, reading them in English. Though no knowledge of Biblical Hebrew is required or necessary, students will be provided with composite versions of the texts that include a transliteration of the Hebrew into the Roman alphabet as well as the instructor’s own translations. 

The class is designed for all levels of learners, and will consist of group discussions of the texts under consideration. The expectation is that students will read each day’s texts beforehand and be prepared to be in communal learning with each other. The are no required texts other than the Bible.

We will consider the psalms in their ancient settings while also making room for their expressive power and humanity to confound and inspire us today. 

Gregory Mobley is Professor of Hebrew Bible and Congregational Studies at Andover Newton Seminary at Yale Divinity School.

Mobley came to Yale in 2016 after twenty years of teaching Old Testament/Hebrew Bible at Andover Newton Theological School (1997-2016) and at Union Theological Seminary in New York (1996-97). He is the author of four books: Judges: Once Upon a Time in Israel (Sheffield, 2023), The Return of the Chaos Monsters—and Other Backstories of the Bible (Eerdmans, 2012), Samson and the Liminal Hero in the Ancient Near East (T & T Clark, 2006), and The Empty Men: The Heroic Tradition in Ancient Israel (Doubleday, 2005). He co-authored with T. J. Wray The Birth of Satan: Tracing the Devil’s Biblical Roots (Palgrave, 2005) and co-edited the award-winning anthology of essays on interfaith learning, My Neighbor’s Faith: Stories of Interfaith Encounter, Growth, and Transformation (with J. Peace and O. Rose; Orbis, 2012).

Mobley’s primary scholarly interest is in uncovering the meaning-making of the stirring stories under the surface of the over-edited moralistic and priestly layers of the Bible. Mobley’s teaching interests include Judges, the stories in the Bible and the Bible itself as a story, prophetic literature, Job, and reading the Bible in the light of contemporary sensibilities toward environmental sustainability. Mobley, an ordained American Baptist minister, also teaches Baptist Polity. At Andover Newton, Mobley was a co-founder of the CIRCLE interfaith program and he also teaches courses at YDS on interfaith learning.

Mobley has written articles and book review in journals such as the Journal of Biblical Literature, Catholic Biblical QuarterlyInterpretation, and Biblische Notizen, and has contributed to a number of Bible handbooks, including the New Oxford Annotated Bible.

Mobley has done archaeological fieldwork in Israel and served as an editorial assistant on the Dead Sea Scrolls project. He is an ordained American Baptist pastor.

Education 

Campbellsville College, B.A.

Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, M.Div.

Harvard Divinity School, Th.M.

Harvard University, Ph.D.

Yale Divinity School


Greg Mobley