Galambush, Julie

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Galambush, Julie

(Julie G. Galambush)

PERSONAL: Female. Education: Yale Divinity School, M.Div.; Emory University, Ph.D. Religion: Jewish.

ADDRESSES: Home—VA. Office—Department of Religious Studies, College of William and Mary, P.O. Box 8795, Williamsburg, VA 23187-8795. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: Former ordained Baptist minister; College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, VA, associate professor of religious studies.

WRITINGS:

Jerusalem in the Book of Ezekiel: The City as Yahweh's Wife, Scholars Press (Atlanta, GA), 1992.

The Reluctant Parting: How the New Testament's Jewish Writers Created a Christian Book, HarperSan Francisco (San Francisco, CA), 2005.

SIDELIGHTS: Writer and educator Julie Galambush serves as an associate professor of religious studies. She was an ordained American Baptist minister prior to converting to Judaism, and her religious conversion makes the subject matter of her book, The Reluctant Parting: How the New Testament's Jewish Writers Created a Christian Book, particularly interesting. The volume addresses each book of the New Testament from the perspective of their origins as Hebrew texts, investigating the relationship between the works and the strains put on Judaism, bothat the time and in the present. Ilene Cooper, in a review for Booklist, called Galambush's effort "an important book in the growing canon devoted to the Jewishness of Jesus and his followers." A contributor for Publishers Weekly criticized Galambush for her method of summarizing New Testament text, but otherwise remarked that she "demonstrates that the development of the religion that became Christianity was a slow and torturous journey."