Brandon R. Grafius - Böcker

The Oxford Handbook of Biblical Monsters brings together the work of world-renowned scholars in Bible, theology, religion, and cultural studies to explore the monsters that rampage through the biblical text. Essays provide in-depth analysis of the Ancient Near Eastern background of these creatures, explore how they have continued to live on after the biblical text, and discuss how they remain impactful through art and literature today. The chapters not only study where monsters came from, but continually focus on what they mean, and how these meanings are generated.These chapters work to bridge the perspectives of traditional scholarship and more postmodern ideas of monsters as cultural and rhetorical constructions. There are chapters on the Ghosts of Mesopotamia, Leviathan, and the Giants, but also on the Monstrous Jew in the Gospels and the Monstrosity of the Crucifixion. They serve both as foundational pieces of research for scholars looking to familiarize themselves with monsters and discourses of monstrosity, but also as creative and provocative examinations of how these monsters generate meaning. While working to summarize the research that has been done on biblical monsters up to the present day, this Handbook points the way forward towards new and exciting studies in unnatural creatures and the rhetoric of horror.

In the Hebrew Bible, encounters with the divine are always laced with a mixture of awe and terror. This holds true for priestly interactions, for Job's theophanic confrontation, and for many descriptions offered by the psalmists. In some instances, these encounters are experienced by the characters within the narrative, and presented to the reader, as an experience of the sublime, in which marvel and fear mingle together, but are eventually resolved into the emotion of wonder. In other instances, fear overwhelms the divine encounter and turns it into an experience of transcendent terror. This sublime horror is the focus of Concerning Dust and Ashes, which explores how the Bible uses horror to introduce ideas that our rational minds would reject, allowing us to explore our relationship to the cosmos, the unfriendly spaces of the world, and the nature of the divine.Brandon R. Grafius guides the reader through different stories and moments in the Bible where terror plays a defining role, considering the different world views and potential realities implied by these encounters: be it a reassurance of humanity's importance in the span of the cosmos or instead the implication of divine indifference and the isolation of humanity in an uncaring universe. Grafius also draws on H. P. Lovecraft's ideas of cosmic horror and how they might be translated into a theistic worldview. Ultimately, the book suggests that even the most horrific of Biblical stories engender understanding in the character--and reader--about the world and their place within it.

Seeing the Apocalypse: Essays on Bird Box is the first volume to explore Josh Malerman’s best-selling novel and its recent film adaptation, which broke streaming records and became a cultural touchstone, emerging as a staple in the genre of contemporary horror. The essays in this collection offer an interdisciplinary approach to Bird Box, one that draws on the fields of gender studies, cultural studies, and disability studies. The contributors examine how Bird Box provokes questions about a range of issues including the human body and its existence in the world, the ethical obligations that shape community, and the anxieties arising from technological development. Taken together, the essays of this volume show how a critical examination of Bird Box offers readers a guide for thinking through human experience in our own troubled, apocalyptic times.

“Grafius uses his extensive knowledge of horror films to tease out horror tropes from the Bible . . . this book is thought-provoking.” –Library JournalYou may know the Bible as a testament of faith. But within this sacred book are also the world’s first horror stories.Conventional wisdom has it that the origins of the horror genre are found in the nineteenth century, in works like Frankenstein, Dracula, and The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. In this paradigm-shaking new book, Bible scholar and cultural historian Brandon Grafius argues that the Bible is, among other things, the world’s first work of horror literature.  The tropes and themes that we find in slasher movies, body horror, folk horror and zombie apocalypses were kickstarted by the Bible. Before Godzilla, there were the monsters arising from the sea in the book of Daniel. Before The Wicker Man, there was the folk horror violence of the book of Judges. And before The Fly, Leviticus and Paul understood that our bodies are untrustworthy. Sometimes, the Bible has decided that the best way to help us understand the world in new ways is to scare us. Grafius’s book is a revelatory work of biblical scholarship as well as a cultural analysis of the contemporary horror genre. It is a book that will make readers revise how they see the Bible and impact how they consume horror literature and cinema. It is guaranteed to make them wiser consumers of both.

The tale of the “zeal” of Phineas, expressed when he killed an Israelite man and a Midianite woman having sex and thus stopped a “plague” of consorting with idolatrous neighbors in the Israelite camp (Numbers 25), has long attracted both interest and revulsion. Scholars have sought to defend the account, to explain it as pious fiction, or to protest its horrific violence. Brandon R. Grafius seeks to understand how the tale expresses the latent anxieties of the Israelite society that produced it, combining the insights of historical criticism with those of contemporary horror and monster theory. Grafius compares Israelite anxieties concerning ethnic boundaries and community organization with similar anxieties apparent in horror films of the 1980s, then finds confirmation for his method in the responses of Roman-period readers who reacted to the tale of Phineas as a tale of horror. The combination of methods allows Grafius to illumine the concern of an ancient priestly class to control unsettled and unsettling community boundaries??and to raise questions of implications for our own time.

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.

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.

Scholars of religion have begun to explore horror and the monstrous, not only within the confines of the biblical text or the traditions of religion, but also as they proliferate into popular culture. This exploration emerges from what has long been present in horror: an engagement with the same questions that animate religious thought – questions about the nature of the divine, humanity's place in the universe, the distribution of justice, and what it means to live a good life, among many others. Such exploration often involves a theological conversation. Theology and Horror: Explorations of the Dark Religious Imagination pursues questions regarding non-physical realities, spaces where both divinity and horror dwell. Through an exploration of theology and horror, the contributors explore how questions of spirituality, divinity, and religious structures are raised, complicated, and even sometimes answered (at least partially) by works of horror.