To Have and To Hold: Sexual Violence and the Bible

CW: This episode discusses themes of sexual assault and intimate partner violence. Dr. Rhiannon Graybill shares her research on sexual violence in the Hebrew Bible and ways of reading such messy stories for then and now. We also talk about violent tropes in modern romance literature and Rome's origin stories—and what these kinds of tales do to those who read them. She says, “In our world sexual violence is often grounded in or justified by the Bible, and the Bible is used against survivors of...