Date/Time
Date(s) - September 17, 2026
5:00 pm - 6:00 pm
Categories No Categories
Critical Bible scholars agree that the God of the
Bible was literarily composed from the
“repertoires” – imagery, language, stories – of
other Ancient Southwest Asian gods. This talk
takes up one such god, the ancient Semitic deity
Baal, and looks at his traces in the character of
Jesus in contemporary American fiction. The
portrayals of Jesus by Marilynne Robinson,
William Paul Young, and Tim LaHaye, I suggest,
extend the literary tradition of this ancient
storm-warrior deity.
Christopher Douglas is professor of American
Literature and Religion at the University of
Victoria. His current book project is called God Is
Made of Other Gods: Divine Plurality and the
Problem of Evil in the Literatures of Contemporary
America and Ancient Israel.