Dr. Mark McEntire
Fidelity Hall 309
Phone: (615) 460- 6387
Dr. Mark McEntire began teaching at Belmont in the Fall of 2000. Previously, he taught at Meredith College in Raleigh, North Carolina, and the Mekane Yesus Theological Seminary in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. He teaches introductory and advanced courses in Old Testament, as well as Hebrew language courses.
'I have two areas of intense interest. One is the issue of violence in the Bible, which I explored in a recent book called The Blood of Abel: The Violent Plot in the Hebrew Bible. The second area is narrative hermeneutics, specifically the question of how people's real life experiences interact with the experiences they have when they enter into biblical stories. I brought these two interests together in a recent book called Dangerous Worlds: Living and Dying in Biblical Texts. I to try to allow these concerns to shape the content and method of my teaching."
'My wife, my children, and I have enjoyed getting to know Belmont and the Nashville area. We have developed a fondness for all the places we have lived, from Kentucky to North Carolina to Ethiopia. That same feeling has developed for Middle Tennessee. I enjoy exploring this area and working on environmental projects in Williamson County."
'The School of Religion at Belmont University has been a great place for me to fulfill my sense of calling as a reader and teacher of the Bible. The most important thing I do is introduce students to the worlds the Bible creates and go with them to places in those worlds they have never seen before. The process of bringing our lives to the biblical text and bringing the biblical text to our lives may lead us to discover our place within the story of God and the world.'
