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I’m really pleased to have an essay about the Bible as folklore in this book with contributors from all over the Patheos Nonreligious channel! 

At some point in the last year+ when my life was utter havoc, I managed to write an essay I’m really proud of. And now it’s available for all to read.

One of the wonderful things I took away from my folklore studies with Alan Dundes at UC Berkeley was his perspective on the Bible as folklore. The Bible exhibits multiple existence of motifs, themes, and stories, as well as variation therein. That makes it, by most definitions, folklore. As in, it started as oral tradition, circulated for a while, and was eventually written down.

You would not believe how contentious a statement this is.

Anyway, Dudes painstakingly documented these correlations in his writing and teaching. And when I was asked to contribute to Not Seeing God: Atheism in the 21st Century, I knew that I would share this perspective, because this is one of the most important contributions folklore scholarship can make to discussions of religious belief and non-belief. I hinted at the significance of this intersection in my second-ever blog post here at Patheos.

So, go check out the book if you get a chance. I’m super excited to read my contributor’s copy, but I might snag a Kindle copy too.

FOXY FOLKORIST Studied folklore under Alan Dundes at the University of California, Berkeley, and went on to earn her PhD in folklore from Indiana University. She researches gender and sexuality in fairy...