Rebecca Poe Hays, PhD

Education

• PhD, Baylor University
• MDiv, Samford University
• BA, Union University

Research Interests

• Biblical Hebrew Poetry
• Story and Storytelling in Biblical Literature
• The Psalms, Trauma, and Resilience

Courses Taught

• Introduction to Christian Scriptures
• Christian Scriptures 2
• Hebrew 1 & 2
• Proclaiming the Kingdom (Doctor of Ministry)

Publication Highlights

• Reading Resilience in the Psalms: Trauma, Healing, and the Strength to Survive (Oxford University Press, forthcoming) 

• “Praying Psalm 46 for Resilience,” Word & World (2025) 

• Co-authored with John Garland, “Reading Psalms 136–139 with Refugees and Asylum-seekers: A Trauma-informed Canon-critical Framework for Healing,” Horizons in Biblical Theology (2024) 

• “Telling Stories for Healing and Resilience: A Trauma-informed Reading of Psalms 105–106,” Biblical Theology Bulletin (2023) 

• “A Delayed Harvest: Isaiah 61 as the Reversal of the Song of the Vineyard (5:1–7),” Journal of Biblical Literature (2023) 

• “A Rhetorical Solution to a Text-critical Problem in Psalm 69,” Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft (2021) 

• The Function of Story in the Hebrew Psalter (Lexington/Fortress Academic, 2021) 

About Dr. Poe Hays

Rebecca Poe Hays is associate professor of Christian Scriptures (Hebrew Bible/Old Testament). Before joining the faculty at Truett, she worked with Baylor’s Institute for Faith and Learning on a grant from the Lilly Endowment’s Called to Lives of Meaning and Purpose Initiative that focused on the exploration of vocation in churches. Dr. Poe Hays believes that ministry must be grounded in faithful and responsible readings of Scripture, and she loves teaching the “Older” Testament in order to draw out its ongoing relevance for the church. She is particularly interested in how the stories in Scripture—particularly in the Psalms—communicate with us and shape us, and in how these sung stories might help individuals and faith communities build resilience. She currently serves as the Vice President of the Scholars of Biblical and Associated Literature (formerly the Society of Biblical Literature Southwest Region), where she also serves as co-chair of the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible unit, and as the Vice President of the National Association of Baptist Professors of Religion Southwest Region.  

An ordained Baptist minister, she has served in churches and Christian non-profits in Tennessee, Alabama, and Texas. Dr. Poe Hays is married to the Rev. Dr. Joshua Hays, who serves as Associate Pastor at the First Baptist Church of Waco, and together they have a daughter Mary Brandon, a son Whitten, and a distinguished mutt named Cooper.