Dr Rebecca Watson

Associate Supervisor
Email: rsw42@cam.ac.uk

An Associate Supervisor at Westcott House, Rebecca’s areas of expertise include:

Hebrew Bible/Old Testament
Animals in the Bible
The Psalms
The relation between biblical and Canaanite religion
The sea in the Bible

Rebecca is currently Tutor in Old Testament/Hebrew Bible scholar and Director of Studies at ERMC. Alongside this, she is currently working on a Templeton-funded project on the psychology of biblical interpretation in relation to climate change.

Rebecca began theological study at Oxford, before completing an MA in biblical languages at Durham and returning to Oxford for doctoral study on the Psalms. She has held research positions at the University of Derby and at the Faraday Institute, the former with a social science of religion focus and the latter a collaboration with oceanographer, Meric Srokosz, on the sea in the Bible and oceanography. She has spent many years in theological education, mainly in Cambridge, as well as stints in Yorkshire and the North West.

She has a particular interest in ecological and psychological approaches in biblical interpretation; animals in the Bible; the Psalms; and the relation between biblical and Canaanite religion. Much of her work concerns the sea and sea creatures, an area of ecological concern for which contributions by biblical studies specialists is otherwise limited.

Rebecca is a member of the Society for Old Testament Study, the Society of Biblical Literature, the International Association of the Psychology of Religion, the International Society for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture and the John Ray Initiative.

Outside academia, her spare time is spent with her dogs and family, enjoying the outdoors and music and reading. She’s recently bought a house after 30 plus years in tied accommodation so finally investing in a home and being able to make choices about it is a revelation and a joy, even if she does not have the DIY skills to match.

Publications

Chaos Uncreated: A Reassessment of The Theme of “Chaos” in the Hebrew Bible (BZAW 341; Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2005)

with David Chalcraft and Frauke Ühlenbruch (eds.), Methods, Theories and Imagination: Social Scientific Approaches in Biblical Studies (The Bible and Social Science, 1; Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2014).

“I Shall Not Want”? A Psychological Interpretation of Psalm 23’ in David Chalcraft, Frauke Ühlenbruch and Rebecca S. Watson (eds.), Methods, Theories and Imagination: Social Scientific Approaches in Biblical Studies (The Bible and Social Science, 1; Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2014).

with Meric Srokosz, Blue Planet, Blue God: The Bible and the Sea (London: SCM, 2017).

‘“Therefore We Will Not Fear”? The Psalms of Zion in Psychological Perspective’ in James K. Aitken and Hilary F. Marlow (eds.), The City in the Hebrew Bible: Critical, Literary and Exegetical Approaches (LHBOTS 672; London: T&T Clark, 2018), 182-216.

‘Creatures in Creation: Human Perceptions of the Sea in the Hebrew Bible in Ecological Perspective’ in Hilary Marlow and Ailsa Hunt (eds.), Ecology and Theology in the Ancient World: Cross-disciplinary Perspectives (Bloomsbury Classical Studies Monographs; London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2019), 91-102.

with Meric Srokosz, ‘Chaos Reigns?’ in The Crucible (Ecological Emergency issue, April 2019), 15-26.

‘MIa … Sh: A Rhetorical Question Anticipating a Negative Answer,’ JSOT 44.3 (2019), 437-55.

Genesis 1-11 (Really Useful Guides; Abingdon: Bible Reading Fellowship, 2019).

‘The Creative Creation’ (a Bible study on Genesis 1) in The BRF Book of 365 Bible Reflections (Abingdon: Bible Reading Fellowship, 2019), 19. Reprinted in 2025 as: ‘The Creative Creation’ in Ruth Bancewicz (ed), The Works of the Lord: 52 biblical reflections on science, technology and creation (Abingdon: Bible Reading Fellowship, 2025), 19-20.

with Adrian Curtis (eds.), Conversations on Canaanite and Biblical Themes: Creation, Chaos, Monotheism, Yahwism (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2022), including ‘Introduction’, 1-7.

with Adrian Curtis, ‘“Churning the Mighty Waters”: Debating Habakkuk 3’ in Rebecca S. Watson and Adrian H. W. Curtis (eds.), Conversations on Canaanite and Biblical Themes: Creation, Chaos, Monotheism, Yahwism (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2022), 9-130.

‘The Sea and Ecology’ in Hilary Marlow and Mark Harris (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Bible and Ecology (Oxford Handbooks Series; Oxford: OUP, 2022), 324-338.

‘Psalm 88: A Psalm Without Hope?’ in Heather A. McKay and Pieter van der Zwan (eds.), When Psychology Meets the Bible (Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix, 2023), 66-96.

with Meric Srokosz, ‘Chaos and Cosmos: Biblical Perspectives for a Changing World’ in Lejla Demiri, Mujadad Zaman, Tim Winter, Christoph Schwöbel and Alexei Bodrov (eds.), ‘Green Theology’: Emerging 21st Century Muslim and Christian Discourses on Ecology (Tübingen, Mohr Siebeck, 2024).

‘Biblical Conceptions of the Sea’, SBL Bible Odyssey (2025), https://www.bibleodyssey.org/articles/biblical-conceptions-of-the-sea/