Gregory Mobley

Gregory Mobley is a 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 Quarterly, Interpretation, 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.

Books

1. Judges: Once Upon A Time in Israel. Sheffield University Press, 2022.
2. The Return of the Chaos Monsters—and Other Backstories of the Bible. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2012.
3. My Neighbor’s Faith: Stories of Interfaith Encounter, Growth, and Transformation. New York: Orbis, 2012. Co-editor with Jennifer Peace and Or Rose.
4. The River: An Introduction to Tanakh/Old Testament. Thompsonville, MA.: Institution Hill Publishing, 2012. Book for classroom use, available to students through lulu.com.
5. Samson and the Liminal Hero in the Ancient Near East. Library of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Studies 435. New York/London: T&T Clark, 2006.
6. The Empty Men: The Heroic Tradition of Ancient Israel. Yale Anchor Bible Reference Library. New York: Doubleday, 2005.
7. The Birth of Satan: Tracing the Devil’s Biblical Roots. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005. Co-author with T. J. Wray.
8. Perspectives in Old Testament and Hebrew. Festschrift for Page H. Kelley. Perspectives in Religious Studies 29/3 (Fall 2002). Co-editor with Claude Mariottini.