Background
Prior was born in Cork in 1942.
Prior was born in Cork in 1942.
After ordination he studied Semitic Languages, gaining his Licentiate in Sacred Scripture in Rome in 1972.
The majority of Prior"s career was as a professor of Theology and Religious Studies at Street Mary"s College. Prior was an anti-Zionist and believed that biblical scholarship encouraged collusion in the oppression of the Palestinian people. In his book The Bible and Colonialism: a moral critique, Prior argued that the biblical narrative of the Exodus from Egypt and the Conquest of Canaan had been deployed to justify what he considered colonialism in Palestine, the Americas, and South Africa.
In his book Zionism and the State of Israel: a moral inquiry, Prior developed a moral critique of Zionism, emphasizing its secular roots and the relatively recent character of support for Zionism by religious Jewry. Prior also claimed that the expulsion of the Palestinians, far from being a consequence of the Nazi Holocaust or of the fortunes of war in 1948, had been planned by the founding fathers of Zionism from the beginning. Prior believed that Zionism was morally flawed from 1948, when the first war was fought.