Dr. Herbert R. Marbury, Associate Professor of Hebrew Bible and former Chair of the Divinity School Faculty, Vanderbilt

Dr. Herbert R. Marbury is Associate Professor of Hebrew Bible and former Chair of the Divinity School Faculty at Vanderbilt University. A fifth-generation Methodist minister, he follows in the footsteps of both his father, the late Chaplain (LTC) Herbert L. Marbury, and his mother, Annette R. Marbury, who is an educator. He holds a Ph.D. in Religion from Vanderbilt University, and the Master of Divinity from Gammon Theological Seminary at the Interdenominational Theological Center. He spent his undergraduate years at Emory University studying English and African American Studies. Dr. Marbury has taught Hebrew and Biblical Interpretation at American Baptist College and taught in the Doctor of Ministry programs at both Payne Theological Seminary and United Theological Seminary. He has lectured and presented his scholarship at campuses, professional conferences, and churches around the globe including Harare, Zimbabwe and Oxford, England.

An ordained elder in the North GA Conference of The United Methodist Church, Dr. Marbury is the former pastor of Old National United Methodist Church in Riverdale, GA. In 2001, Marbury joined Clark Atlanta as its University Chaplain where he was privileged to work with some of the brightest and most promising students in the world. While at CAU, he was named the Chaplain of the Year by the United Methodist Higher Education Foundation for all one hundred twenty United Methodist Church related colleges and universities. In 2006, Marbury joined the faculty at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, TN where he researches and writes on Old Testament, Hebrew, Biblical Hermeneutics, and Black Religion. In his professional guild, Marbury has enjoyed his tenure as co-chair of the African American Biblical Hermeneutics section of the Society of Biblical Literature since 2012.

He serves on the advisory counsel for Faith and Culture for International African American Museum. In 2024 he will assume the role of executive director for the Society for the Study of Black Religion. He is the author of : Imperial Dominion and Priestly Genius: Coercion, Accommodation, and Resistance in the Divorce Rhetoric of Ezra-Nehemiah, (Upland, CA: Sopher Press, 2012) and Pillars of Cloud and Fire: The Politics of Exodus in African American Biblical Interpretation (New York University Press, 2015). Pillars of Cloud and Fire follows his interests by examining ways that African Americans during the antebellum period, Reconstruction, the Harlem Renaissance, the Civil Rights Movement and the Black Power era turned to the book of Exodus to navigate paths toward freedom. In it, he probes the work of figures such as David Walker, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Zora Neale Hurston, Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., Martin Luther King, Jr., and Albert Cleage among others.

He has also authored several articles including “Race, Class, and Ethnicity: Hebrew Bible” in Oxford Encyclopedia of the Bible and Gender Studies (Oxford University Press, 2014) and the commentary for the books of “Ezra” and “Nehemiah” in the “Ezra,” in The Wesley Study Bible (Abingdon Press, 2009). At Vanderbilt, Marbury enjoys teaching students who are preparing for ministry and religious leadership. He continues to consider it a blessing to be able to live into his calling to minister to the Church, the Academy, and the world.

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