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Eric J. Harvey, Ph.D.

@blindscholar.bsky.social
1.5K followers 450 following 801 posts

PhD in Hebrew Bible and Ancient Near East from Brandeis, postdoc at Stanford. Interests in disability, myth, economics, and materiality. More at www.blindscholar.com.

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Reposted by Eric J. Harvey, Ph.D.
Tobias Wilson-Bates @phdhurtbrain.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
There was a bloom of stories maybe ten years ago about older professors creating problems for the job market by not retiring, and just checking in now to point out that they’ve since retired and almost none of their jobs continue to exist.
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David M. Perry @lollardfish.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
I mean the American right is fully committed to normalizing disability slurs and are finding a fertile audience across the political divide. Because ableism is really popular and easy for people to perform, even though they think they are good people.
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Reposted by Eric J. Harvey, Ph.D.
Andrea Kaston Tange @aktange.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
This is fantastic
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JP @jpbrammer.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
it's important to arrive at sturdy ethical principles that you can't be annoyed out of. people are annoying as shit
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Eric J. Harvey, Ph.D. @blindscholar.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
OMG, 7yo stumbled on a Roblox quiz about Jesus, clearly written by a fundamentalist group with dubious biblical literacy. What did David use to kill Goliath? a. spear b. sword c. slingshot d. bow and arrow
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Michael Hobbes @michaelhobbes.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
Great system, no notes www.propublica.org/article/scho...
Voucher programs and the private schools they increasingly fund have proliferated across the country. Yet those schools often reject children with disabilities — the very kids who were used to help sell early voucher programs to lawmakers and the public - for having needs that are too costly, complex or disruptive. That leaves those children with few options beyond the public schools. And as public schools lose enrollment as a result of more and more
voucher use, they lose resources that would benefit children who remain, including those with disabilities.
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Dr Naomi Scott @drnaomiscott.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
It’s so depressing to see how many of my peers have minimal or no employment this academic year, when meanwhile every Classics department I know has more work than can reasonably (or safely) be accomplished by the number of staff they have left.
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Eric J. Harvey, Ph.D. @blindscholar.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
Yup.
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Reposted by Eric J. Harvey, Ph.D.
"Online Rent-a-Sage" Bret Devereaux @bretdevereaux.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
Yup. The left assumes the bipartisan institutions that drifted left over the 1900s (higher education) will do the job for them and they will not. MAGA will capture or destroy those institutions without an active effort by the left/center-left to fund and defend them.
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Arthur Urbano 🌍📷🏛️🛫🇮🇹🤌😷 @arturoviaggia.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
So much of the ancient statuary and portraiture study I've been doing for this book has led me to the discovery that once upon a time, scholars were so eager to identify the subjects as well-known historical figures that they made leaps and bounds to identify them, without any evidence.
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Eric J. Harvey, Ph.D. @blindscholar.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
I'm making an online course and I think it's pretty good. Today is the last day to get it for $49, so you should probably do that.
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Reposted by Eric J. Harvey, Ph.D.
Parchment & Clay @parchmentandclay.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
The first session of my new course, The Bible Against Kings, is now up! Today is the last day of pre-sale pricing, so go check it out now if you’re interested in critiques of monarchy and tyranny from the ancient Levant. www.parchmentandclay.com/the-bible-ag... (Edited 9:42 AM via @skeetsapp.com)
A slide from Lesson 1 of the Bible Against Kings. It shows a 19th century painting of a biblical scene—the dedication of the Jerusalem temple by King Solomon. Solomon stands at the top of the temple steps surrounded by various officials, important people, and everyday citizens.
The text reads 
"Heroic kings? Solomon Dedicates the Temple of Jerusalem by James Jacques Joseph Tissot, c. 1896-1902."
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Reposted by Eric J. Harvey, Ph.D.
jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 15/09/2026
pleasant surprise. i would like to read whatever deranged dissent alito and thomas have written. i’m sure it will be some version of “MAIL FRAUD IS REAL AND I SAW IT IN THE CLOSET MAKING A BABY AND THE BABY LOOKED AT ME”
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kentropic @kentropic.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
🔥💯🎯🔥
“We likewise perceive political ideologies and political parties in subconsciously gendered ways. In contemporary American discourse, liberalism is female-coded, conservatism male-coded. As a result, rivers of ink are spilled to frame liberals as possessing sole agency, and hence responsibility. There is a palpable aversion to saying voters who loudly proclaim the most extreme racism, sexism, threats of violence, or deranged conspiracy theories are doing anything wrong. They are just reacting. Reacting to alleged liberal disrespect, to alleged liberal cultural dominance, to some kid hundreds of miles away on a college campus using obtuse social justice terminology, to Democratic politicians getting their messaging a bit wrong, not ‘talking their language.’ We shouldn’t even be thinking about what is wrong with them—we should be asking what we did to provoke it. We should be careful, always so careful, not to ‘set them off.’”
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Eric J. Harvey, Ph.D. @blindscholar.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
trying to spread the word that fundamentalist stone on the Bible, and that it can be way more fun if you read it without any of these pesky ideas that it has to be correct or all agree with itself. Also, that it contains some absolute Proto-anarchist bangers. 
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Patrick Wyman @patrickwyman.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
Realizing the extent to which this is true wildly changed my opinions about how to deal with Trumpism, since they're never going to be satisfied unless they're actively dominating everyone else. You can't give them some concessions and go back to the status quo: they're reactionary revolutionaries.
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Parchment & Clay @parchmentandclay.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
For the upcoming release of The Bible Against Kings, I'm making Ancient Sayings about the unflattering things that Sumerians had to say about royalty! Ancient Sayings #86: Dangers of the Palace... but for whom? youtu.be/uItx1cUtr-U
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Parchment & Clay @parchmentandclay.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
And you can find presale information about The Bible Against Kings here: www.parchmentandclay.com/the-bible-…
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Reposted by Eric J. Harvey, Ph.D.
Asheesh Kapur Siddique @asheeshks.org · 06/09/2026
This is also wrong. Research is part of the core mission of the university - certainly of all the humanities disciplines in the university - for centuries. What happened was that research came to be oriented toward subsidizing private corporate profit press.princeton.edu/books/hardco...
press.princeton.edu
Creating the Market University
When science adopts the logic of the market
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Mr. Bible Lore Podcast @haydentank.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
Eric is a phenomenal scholar and folks should check this out! Make sure to listen to his ep of Bible Lore Pod as well if you'd like to understand how good he as at this!
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Eric J. Harvey, Ph.D. @blindscholar.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
Please share and get the word out about our new course! On pre-sale until September 17. 
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Eric J. Harvey, Ph.D. @blindscholar.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
Join my email list (no spam, I promise) to stay up to date on upcoming happenings, and get a free ten-minute video about what the Hebrew Bible is!
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Reposted by Eric J. Harvey, Ph.D.
Parchment & Clay @parchmentandclay.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
We’re launching our first course soon, and right now it’s available for a sweet presale discount. Sign up to learn about cool anti-monarchic and anti-authoritarian texts from the ancient Levant! www.parchmentandclay.com/the-bible-…
parchmentandclay.com
The Bible Against Kings
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Parchment & Clay @parchmentandclay.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
I made a neat little video about why I use the term Hebrew Bible instead of Old Testament or Tanakh, but I did that sneaky thing where you have to sign up for my email list to get it. You should sign up for my list anyway, so it’s kind of a win-win. www.parchmentandclay.com
parchmentandclay.com
Parchment & Clay
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Eric J. Harvey, Ph.D. @blindscholar.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
I bet if you were a lamassu in ancient Assyria one of the worst things people could call you was a lame-ass-u.
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Eric J. Harvey, Ph.D. @blindscholar.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
On paper, I know I’m exactly the perfect demographic to love Terry Pratchett, but I’ve never been able to make it all the way through one of his books until I read Small Gods just now. It was pretty good. 
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Reposted by Eric J. Harvey, Ph.D.
Andrew A.N. Deloucas @aandeloucas.com · 23/08/2026
What We Know About Amargi, An Ancient Sumerian Solution to Debt. My response to Paul Vigna’s @nytimes guest essay: www.nytimes.com/2026/08/22/o...
nytimes.com
Opinion | An Ancient Sumerian Solution to Our $40 Trillion Deficit (Gift Article)
In the ancient world, debt forgiveness was a regular tool to control the economy. Why have we forgotten it?
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Andrew A.N. Deloucas @aandeloucas.com · 23/08/2026
Mutatis mutandis, if we are going to look to Sumerian amargi as a way to address American debt by benefitting its state workers, we should see what is happening to the debt of America's public servants: www.politico.com/news/2026/08...
politico.com
‘Profoundly cruel’: Errors upend student loan forgiveness program
Trump’s Education Department is clawing back credit toward loan forgiveness due to errors it said were made during the Biden administration.
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Andrew A.N. Deloucas @aandeloucas.com · 23/08/2026
When we talk about debt remission, we are usually talking about Old Babylonian mīšarums, a form of redress used by kings such as Hammurabi or Rim-Sin I. Many kings announced them and they were recognized in legal documents. We have one extant copy from the time of Ammi-ṣaduqa (1646-1626 BCE).
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kobayashi ḫamṭu @mattboot.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
they say learning Latin will make you a better speller, meanwhile i am out here writing "litteracy" and "exspenses"
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Eric J. Harvey, Ph.D. @blindscholar.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
This is why I tell students that AI is the forklift in the gym. There’s a time in a place for a forklift, but it’s not part of your fitness plan. The student who uses a forklift to lift all their weights in a weightlifting class isn’t winning.
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Tressie McMillan Cottom @tressiemcphd.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
Correct. They are being defrauded.
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Eric J. Harvey, Ph.D. @blindscholar.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
What was wild to me was the intense conflict of interest training that I, a lowly postdoctoral fellow in the humanities, had to go through at Stanford. Any place where that level of reporting was mandatory was not bereft of possibilities for side profit. 
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Anna Kornbluh @annakornbluh.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
universities are not run by leftist profs they are run by corporate profiteer board members siphoning public $$ to tech partnerships "An Inside Higher Ed analysis of SEC filings turned up dozens of presidents paid handsomely for sitting on corporate boards." www.insidehighered.com/news/governa...
the 10 presidents in Inside Higher Ed’s analysis who earned the most from outside board service in 2025.
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Eric J. Harvey, Ph.D. @blindscholar.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
The Bible is a very important text for understanding American culture. But for many of the reasons that make it important to understanding American culture, biblical education in public schools can never be done responsibly here. 
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Andrew Tobolowsky @andytobo.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
Again, not the main point, but THESE are the guys shaping the biblical curriculum that is being proposed down there, not some imaginary, different guys. You can't say it's good because it could be good if somebody else was doing it differently!
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Eric J. Harvey, Ph.D. @blindscholar.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
One of my most revelatory conversations came early in my biblical studies career, when an old high school friend told me “I don’t like to read the Bible that much, because when I do, it’s not what I expected to be. I just like people to tell me what it means.”
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Atkinson @maddavenport.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
This is why I translate the Bible, incidentally—to un-domesticate these texts, to quiet what I think I already know and to make room for different kinds of relationships with them. One small example: Job 1:3 lists Job’s מקנה. The list includes oxen, sheep, donkeys, camels, and slaves.
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Christina Holland @mortalwombat.info · 19/08/2026
Let me merge the bible curriculum and trump aide discourse and tell you that when the Bible's King David was super old and has constant chills and presumably couldn't get it up they hired a young lady unfortunately named Abishag "just to keep him warm" and she became a pawn in the succession crisis
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Eric J. Harvey, Ph.D. @blindscholar.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
Does his Twitter bio still say “aspiring race grifter?“ I’m sure he thought that he meant it ironically, but that told me everything I ever needed to know about this guy from the very beginning. 
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Reposted by Eric J. Harvey, Ph.D.
Ann Leckie @annleckie.com · 17/08/2026
SFF worldbuilding advice--quick and dirty way to make your fictional religion seem real is to give it contradictions, and if there's a text involved, put in a few jumps of logic between scripture and actual belief and practice. It's like adding perspective to a drawing, BOOM 3D.
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Eric J. Harvey, Ph.D. @blindscholar.bsky.social · 17/08/2026
I would go further and say that, in every case, it is impossible to predict the nature of any community’s religious beliefs and practices from the content of their sacred texts. 
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A. M. Vincent @vincent.northsky.social · 17/08/2026
No one, ever, in all of history, has believed everything written in a religious text or performed all of the actions dictated therein, not because people are imperfect but because that is simply not how religion works, anywhere, ever, for anyone.
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Kate Lingley 龍梅若 @klingley.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
Buddhism in the wild (photo by Jerry Feldman, Target Honolulu)
View of an end-cap display at Target, with a sign above it saying “Must have!” The shelves are empty.
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Quinn Slobodian @quinnslobodian.com · 10/08/2026
Today's Atlantic story confirming something obviously true: most self-declared leftist "anti-woke" positions are about something that happened down the hall in their academic department.
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Dr. Rachel Schine @rachelschine.bsky.social · 10/08/2026
Lololololol 😂
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Eric J. Harvey, Ph.D. @blindscholar.bsky.social · 06/08/2026
"You know, you could go blind from something else long before you go blind from this." - Dr. sharing diagnosis of a degenerative retinal condition with me.
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Melissa Ryan @melissaryan.bsky.social · 06/08/2026
This is a batshit response to attacking candidates who are winning primaries and elections, when the other side is fascists. If you think you have more to lose from lefty candidates winning office than MAGA's continued destruction, no one should take you seriously. www.nytimes.com/2026/08/06/u...
nytimes.com
Moderate Democrats Prepare for ‘War’ Against an Ascendant Left
One moderate group says the progressive wins are “deeply troubling” and is planning a $15 million effort against democratic socialism.
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Eric J. Harvey, Ph.D. @blindscholar.bsky.social · 03/08/2026
Humanity: the millennia change; the problems stay the same.
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Parchment & Clay @parchmentandclay.bsky.social · 03/08/2026
Today's #AncientSayings is either a lament for lost youth or the beginning of an ancient Mesopotamian Viagra commercial. Ancient Sayings #81: When your personal god abandons you... and your loins youtu.be/W12IYHXsqUs
The Ancient Sayings thumbnail image, with its winged lamassu statue and the text 
ANCIENT sayings
 #81
 Gods &
 Old Guys
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