The Bible and Migration

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Written By Open Plaza

Dr. Daniel Carroll Rodas and Dr. Jean-Pierre Ruiz revisit the Old Testament for stories past and present

“Ruth in Boaz's Field” by Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld, 1828. Source: The National Gallery, London

“Ruth in Boaz's Field” by Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld, 1828. Source: The National Gallery, London

 
 

Dr. Daniel Carroll Rodas and Dr. Jean-Pierre Ruiz discuss how "the history of the world is the history of migration," as shown in the Bible, which is filled with stories about migrants. The two Old Testament scholars share what it's like "wrestling across cultures" in the Bible and in their own lives—and why it is that, in immigrant communities, it is the children who become the bridge to the other side.

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Daniel Carroll Rodas

Dr. M. Daniel Carroll Rodas is the Blanchard Professor of Old Testament at the Wheaton College Graduate School. He holds a ThM from Dallas Theological Seminary and a PhD from the University of Sheffield, both degrees in Old Testament. Dr. Carroll Rodas is half-Guatemalan (his mother was Guatemalan) and was raised bilingual and bicultural. In his youth he spent many summers in Guatemala and later taught many years at El Seminario Teológico Centroamericano in Guatemala City. He has taught Old Testament at Denver Seminary, where he founded a Spanish-language lay training program. At Wheaton, he hopes to model a commitment to connecting careful biblical scholarship with the mission of the church as it engages today’s complex realities. Dr. Carroll Rodas is the author of The Lord Roars: Recovering the Prophetic Voice for Today (Baker Publishing Group, 2022), The Bible and Borders: Hearing God's Word on Immigration (Brazos Press, 2020), and The Book of Amos (New International Commentary on the Old Testament) (William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2020).

Featured
Jean-Pierre Ruiz

Dr. Jean-Pierre M. Ruiz is Associate Professor and Senior Research Fellow in Theology and Religious Studies in St. John's College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. He holds STL and STD degrees in Biblical Studies, and an STB in Theology, all from Pontifical Gregorian University. A Past-President of the Academy of Catholic Hispanic Theologians of the United States (ACHTUS), Dr. Ruiz maintains an active program of research in biblical studies. His particular interests are in the prophetic and apocalyptic literature, and with a special focus on the relevance of the Bible to contemporary concerns regarding immigrants and refugees. This was the focus of his book, Readings from the Edges: The Bible and People on the Move (Orbis Books, 2011), the winner of a Catholic Press Association Award. A contributor to the New Oxford Annotated Bible and to the Anselm Academic Study Bible, he is widely recognized as an authority on the Apocalypse of John. Dr. Ruiz has served as editor-in-chief of the Journal of Hispanic / Latino Theology and as associate editor of the Catholic Biblical Quarterly. He is a consultant on teaching and learning with the Lilly Endowment-funded Wabash Center for Teaching and Learning in Theology and Religion. Dr. Ruiz serves on the Religion and Foreign Policy Working Group of the U.S. Department of State, and he was a participant in the nationally broadcast Bill Moyers series, Genesis: A Living Conversation.

 
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