Dr. Lisa J. Cleath has been Assistant Professor of Biblical Studies at George Fox University since Fall 2017. Prior to her appointment at GFU, Dr. Cleath was a postdoctoral researcher at the Egyptian Museum in Berlin, as the Aramaic specialist on a team that was digitizing the Elephantine papyri. Currently, Dr. Cleath cultivates her publication projects by bringing her teaching into conversation with her research interests. She works on ideas about textual authority in the ancient world, in order to explore the origins of the idea of a “Bible”—and thus encourage conscientious usage of the Bible today. She has published a piece on post colonial framing of Jewish identity in a Persian Egyptian colony—and thereby reflects on her own hybrid, mixed-race identity. She has written on the power of narrative to promote resilience in response to trauma, by relating Ezra-Nehemiah to Indigenous American community experiences. Dr. Cleath seeks to employ analysis of the ancient world and the Bible in a way that will inspire her students and peers to bring justice and transformation to our world.