Francesca Stavrakopoulou

Francesca Stavrakopoulou was born on 3 October 1975 to an English mother and a Greek father. Stavrakopoulou was brought up in no particular religion and is a self-described atheist. ==Career==

Stavrakopoulou was awarded a D.Phil. in theology by the University of Oxford. Her dissertation, which examined the creation of an imagined past within the Hebrew Bible, was subsequently published as King Manasseh and Child Sacrifice: Biblical Distortions of Historical Realities. She filled teaching and research positions at Worcester College as a junior research fellow and as a career development fellow in the Faculty of Theology until leaving Oxford in 2005. rising to the level of senior lecturer by March 2011. Public appearances and presentations , Giles Fraser and Adam Rutherford at Conway Hall in 2015. Stavrakopoulou has appeared on several occasions in BBC One's programme featuring "moral, ethical and religious debates," The Big Questions hosted by Nicky Campbell; appearances include on the topics "Is the Bible still relevant?", and "Are religions unfair to women?" Stavrakopoulou has been writer and presenter for media productions relating to her scholarly and political interests. She contributed to Channel 4's series The Bible: A History (2010), regarding the historicity of Moses. She has written about some of the sexist responses to her work, listing letters and emails she has received as a result of her work in religious studies. ==Scholarly positions==

The main focus of Stavrakopoulou's research is on the Hebrew Bible, She has further stated that she believes "very little, probably" of the Hebrew Bible is historical fact, based on the arguments that ancient writers had an understanding of "fact" and "fiction" very different from a modern understanding, and that the Hebrew Bible "wasn't written to be a factual account of the past". She concludes that she does not believe accounts of Moses and King David in the Hebrew Bible to be factual and that "as an historian of the bible, I think there is very little that is factual". She later reaffirmed that David possibly existed based on archaeological evidence: "Yeah, possibly David existed. I think probably not". In her 2021 book, God: An Anatomy, Stavrakopoulou "presents a vividly corporeal image of God: a human-shaped deity who walks and talks and weeps and laughs, who eats, sleeps, feels, and breathes, and who is undeniably male. Here is a portrait—arrived at through the author's close examination of and research into the Bible—of a god in ancient myths and rituals who was a product of a particular society, at a particular time, made in the image of the people who lived then, shaped by their own circumstances and experience of the world". The book has been described by John Barton as showing that the non-corporeal God of Judaism and Christianity "was not yet so in the Bible, where God appears in a much more corporeal form". == Major published works ==

Books Stavrakopoulou's dissertation-based monograph, and her subsequent authored book-length publications are: • • • • Theses Stavrakopoulou's academic theses include: • Biblical Distortions of Historical Realities: A Study with Particular Reference to King Manasseh and Child Sacrifice (2002). PhD thesis, University of Oxford. OCLC 59313595. • Discerning the Nature of Academic Theology (2005). Dip. L.A.T.H.E. thesis, University of Oxford. OCLC 66385438. Edited Volumes edited or co-edited by Stavrakopoulou include: • Religious Diversity in Ancient Israel and Judah (2010). Edited with J. Barton. New York, NY: T&T Clark. • Ecological Hermeneutics: Biblical, Historical and Theological Perspectives (2010). Edited with D. G. Horrell, C. Hunt, and C. Southgate. New York, NY: T&T Clark. Journal articles and book chapters Stavrakopoulou's major journal articles and authored book chapters include: • "Exploring the Garden of Uzza: Death, Burial and Ideologies of Kingship" (2006). In Biblica, 87(1), pp. 1–21. JSTOR 42614642 • "Gog's Grave and the Use and Abuse of Corpses in Ezekiel 39:11–20" (2010). In Journal of Biblical Literature, 129(1), pp. 67–84. DOI 10.2307/27821005 JSTOR 27821005 • "'Popular' Religion and 'Official' Religion: Practice, Perception, Portrayal" (2010). In J. Barton (ed.), Religious Diversity in Ancient Israel and Judah, pp. 37–58. New York, NY: T&T Clark. • "Tree-Hogging in Eden: Divine Restriction and Royal Rejection in Genesis 2–3" (2011). In M. Higton, C. Rowland, and J. Law (eds.), Theology and Human Flourishing: Essays in Honor of Timothy J. Gorringe, pp. 41–53. Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock. • "Religion at Home: The Materiality of Practice" (2016). In S. Niditch (ed.), The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Ancient Israel, pp. 347–365. New York, NY: Wiley-Blackwell. ==References==