Dr. Bill Creasy Speaking Topics

• The Story of King David

  In "King David, the Real Life of the Man Who Ruled Israel," Jonathan Kirsch observes:

  “At the heart of the Book of Samuel, where the story of David is first told, we find a work of genius that anticipates the romantic lyricism and tragic grandeur of Shakespeare, the political wile of Machiavelli, and the modern psychological insight of Freud. And, just as much as Shakespeare or Machiavelli or Freud, the frank depiction of David in the pages of the Bible has defined what it means to be a human being: King David is ‘a symbol of the complexity and ambiguity of human experience itself.”

  No two-dimensional pious character, David played exquisitely, he fought heroically, and he loved titanically. David could be cheerful at one moment, despondent at the next; selfish, yet generous; sinning, yet repenting. David is quite simply the most human character in all of Scripture. As a work of literature, the David story is one of the most complex and subtle narratives in Scripture, and it is among the greatest stories in all of world literature.

  In this talk, Dr. Bill Creasy introduces the audience to the remarkable story of King David.

• Reading the Bible, a Literary Guide to Scripture

  Based on his most recent book of the same title, Dr. Bill Creasy introduces the audience to reading the Bible, not as a loosely connected anthology of ancient near eastern texts, but—in its final, finished form--as a unified literary work whose main character is God; whose conflict is sin; and whose theme is redemption. The Bible's curtain rises in Genesis and it falls in Revelation. In between we have a linear narrative, with recapitulation, and a series of books in a variety of literary genres: mythopoeic literature, historical narrative, poetry, prophetic literature, gospel narrative, etc. Dr. Creasy then illustrates by selecting stories from scripture such as "the binding of Isaac"; the "David and Bathsheba affair"; Matthew's Gospel as "The Hero's Journey" (a la Joseph Campbell, with parallels from the "Epic of Gilgamesh"); Paul's epistle to the Romans as dazzling rhetoric in the form of a scholastic diatribe; apocalyptic; and so on. This topic is 70 percent academic and 30 percent pure entertainment. These are GREAT stories . . . and they're a lot of fun to present!

• Meet the Women of the Bible

  Often people approach the Bible as a work of profoundly patriarchal literature. In this topic, Dr. Bill Creasy approaches the Bible from the women characters' points of view, with a decidedly feminist touch. Telling such well known stories as "the binding of Isaac" through Sarah's eyes; the book of Ruth (the greatest love story in the Bible); the rape of Tamar, David's daughter, by her half brother, Amnon, and Absalom's revenge (and motive?) for her rape; the witch of Endor, from the witch's point of view; the Annunciation, through Mary's eyes; the story of Paul's friends, Pricilla and Aquila, from Priscilla's perspective, and so on. This is really good material, and it shimmers when told from the women's points of view, something hardly ever done. Dr. Creasy has taught these stories many times for women's events and they're always a big hit.

• Meet Scripture's Adversary

  We all know the Bible's main characters: God, Adam and Eve, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and a cast of characters that takes us all the way through the book of Revelation. But another character lurks in shadows, in the background of every page: the Adversary, or the "ha Sa-tan." We meet the Adversary in the garden of Eden when he tempts Eve. Where does he come from? How did he get there? What is his motive? This is a really good session as we explore this strange character. The Hebrew word "ha-Sa-tan" means "the adversary," a function; but later in the word's usage, "ha" ("the") drops out and the word denotes a distinct personality: Satan. Tracking Satan from the garden of Eden through the book of Revelation (while adding asides from Milton's "Paradise Lost") makes for a riveting presentation, as we follow his triumph in Eden, his wager with God in Job, his struggle with Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, and his final defeat in Revelation 20. It's one of my Dr. Bill Creasy's popular talks!

• Speaking Pictures

  When the vast majority of people read the Bible, they place the book on their laps and read black words on a white page, with little idea of where the stories take place, with little knowledge of the geography, topography, and landscape in which the stories take place. Dr. Bill Creasy has led close to 100 teaching tours to the lands of the Bible, and has taught the stories on location where they took place.

  In this talk, he presents a series of stories, illustrated with photos and vivid descriptions of their setting. For example, in the story of Jesus walking on the water—and Peter trying to do so—setting the scene makes all the difference between a bland story and an unforgettable moment. The Sea of Galilee is about 13 miles long and 8 miles wide, with a maximum depth of about 150 feet. When Jesus walks on the water it is late at night (actually about 3:00 AM); he is walking from east to west, from the Golan Heights to the western shore of the lake, toward Capernaum. It is near Passover, so there is a full moon in the east, backlighting him as he walks west, his face in shadow, and the breeze is blowing from the west through the Arbel Pass, as it does every night, blowing his garments out behind him. When those in the boat see him, they think it's a ghost. Well, you would, too! When Peter tries to approach Jesus on the water, he takes a few tentative steps and "begins to sink." Dr. Creasy is an avid scuba diver, technical diver, cave diver, and he can tell you that when you step off a boat into the water, you instantly sink like a rock! Jesus grabs Peter's hand and gets him in the boat, while his companions in the boat must be laughing uproariously. It's a very funny scene! And Dr. Creasy knows at its center the lake is about 150 feet deep...as he has actually dived it, and it's a muddy bottom. When he teaches this scene in a boat late at night on the Sea of Galilee, he always ends by saying that when he dived the lake, he found a very valuable artifact: Peter's wallet!

  But you see, this is how one brings the stories to life. Teaching David at the caves of Ein Gedi on the run form king Saul takes on color, tone, and texture when you're standing on the ground, looking up at the north wall of the box canyon and seeing the actual caves in the limestone cliff. There are countless stories that can be told in the same way in a presentation illustrated by high-quality photographs . . . which Dr. Bill Creasy has carefully curated over the years with photos that his wife, Ana, who is a professional photographer, took while accompanying him on his teaching tours to Israel, Jordan, Egypt, Turkey, Greece, Italy, and Spain and the Aegean islands.

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