Cynthia (Cindy) Chapman

  • Adelia A.F. Johnston and Harry Thomas Frank Professor of Religion

Education

  • BA, Kalamazoo College, 1987
  • MDiv, Vanderbilt Divinity School, 1991
  • ThD, Harvard Divinity School, Harvard University, 2002

Fall 2025

The Nature of Suffering: The Book of Job and its History of Interpretation — RELG 202

Hebrew Bible in its Ancient Near Eastern Context — JWST 205

Hebrew Bible in its Ancient Near Eastern Context — RELG 205

The Nature of Suffering: The Book of Job and its History of Interpretation — JWST 231

Senior Project — ACHS 300

Spring 2026

The Garden of Eden in Literature, Art, and Film — JWST 203

The Garden of Eden in Literature, Art, and Film — RELG 203

Senior Project — ACHS 300

  • “The Breath of Life: Speech, Gender and Authority in the Garden of Eden,” Journal of Biblical Literature 138 vol. 2 (2019): 241-262.
    https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.15699/jbl.1382.2019.655524
  • The cover of Cindy Chapman's book "The House of the Mother"The House of the Mother: The Social Roles of Maternal Kin in Biblical Hebrew Narrative and Poetry. Anchor Yale Bible Reference Library. New Haven/London: Yale University Press, 2016. http://yalebooks.com/book/9780300197945/house-mother
  • The Gendered Language of Warfare in the Israelite-Assyrian Encounter. Harvard Semitic Monographs 62. Winona Lake, Ind: Eisenbrauns, 2004.
  • The Field Belonging to Boaz: Creating Kinship through Land, Labor, Food, and Feeding,” Journal of Biblical Literature 142/3 (2023): 431-450.
  • Built Women in Men’s Paradises: A Critical Analysis of the Garden of Eden Narrative and Alex Garland’s Ex Machina,” Journal of Religion and Popular Culture, 2022.
  • ‘The Voice of Your Wife’: Why an Ancient Interpreter Chose to Voice Eve with a Testament.” Journal for the Study of Judaism, 2021.

Notes

Cindy Chapman Awarded NEH Summer Stipend

Professor of Religion Cindy Chapman received a summer stipend from the National Endowment for the Humanities to support her research on a book titled Mother-born Nations: Maternal Markings of Ethnic Insiders and Outsiders in the Bible and Pseudepigrapha. The book will establish the biblical roots for the matrilineal principle in Judaism.

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