BIO:
Professor Mark Brett teaches Hebrew Bible and ethics at Whitley College. He was raised in Papua New Guinea, which has yielded a lifelong interest in the cultural contexts of education and biblical studies.
Mark holds a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Queensland, a Master of Divinity from Princeton Theological Seminary, Princeton (USA), and a Doctor of Philosophy from the University of Sheffield (UK). His PhD on hermeneutical philosophy was published as Biblical Criticism in Crisis? (Cambridge University Press, 1991), and his subsequent research has focused on ethnicity and postcolonial studies. His work is concerned with the intersection between religion and politics in contemporary Australia and the South Pacific.
Alongside his academic career, from 2005-2008 Mark also worked as a Policy Officer for Native Title Services Victoria, during which time he assisted with the development of new frameworks for the negotiation of native title claims within the state of Victoria. He was a member of the Secretariat for the 2008 negotiations between the Victorian Traditional Owner Land Justice Group and the Victorian State Government. The policy outcomes of these negotiations subsequently formed the basis of the Victorian Traditional Owner Settlement Act (2010).
Mark has served on the editorial boards of several journals, including five years (1992–1996) as an executive editor of the interdisciplinary journal Biblical Interpretation. In 2019 he became the first non-North-American to be appointed as General Editor of the Journal of Biblical Literature. His most recent books are Locations of God: Political Theology in the Hebrew Bible (Oxford University Press, 2019) and Indigenous Rights and the Legacies of the Bible: From Moses to Mabo (Oxford University Press, 2024).
Mark is a member of Brunswick Baptist Church.
QUALIFICATIONS:
- PhD (University of Sheffield, UK)
- MDiv (Princeton Theological Seminary, USA)
- BA (University of Queensland)
Recent Publications:
- ‘Redeeming Eden: Biblical Ethics in the Anthropocene’, in P. Walker and J. Cole (eds), Theology on a Defiant Earth: Seeking Hope in the Anthropocene (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2022), 145–159.
- ‘Introduction: Social Inclusion and the Ethics of Citation’, Journal of Biblical Literature 140 (2021): 819-825.
- ‘The Imperial Context of the Pentateuch’, in J. Baden and J. Stackert (eds), The Oxford Handbook of the Pentateuch (New York: Oxford University Press, 2021), 443-562.
- Locations of God: Political Theology in the Hebrew Bible (New York: Oxford University Press, 2019).
- ‘Religious Dimensions of Postcolonial Policy in Australia’, in C. Baker, B.R. Crisp and A. Dinham (eds), Re-imagining Religion and Belief for 21st Century Policy and Practice (Bristol: Policy Press, 2018).
- ‘A Suitably English Abraham: Emigration to Australia in the Nineteenth Century’, in J. Havea (ed.), Postcolonial Voices from Downunder: Indigenous Matters, Confronting Readings (Eugene: Pickwick, 2017), 110–121.
- Political Trauma and Healing: Biblical Ethics for a Postcolonial World (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2016).
- ‘Narrative Deliberation in Biblical Politics’, in D.N. Fewell (ed.), The Oxford Handbook to Biblical Narrative (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016), 540–549.
- ‘The Priestly Dissemination of Abraham’, Hebrew Bible and Ancient Israel 3 (2014): 87–107.
Units Currently Teaching:
Research Areas:
- Hebrew Bible
- Colonialism
- Political Theologies
- Intercultural Studies