Em, and you know, we're goingtoget locked down for two weeks.

So a ya. Well,

first of all, am just curious to hear a bit of your story about how you found your way into biblical studies, um, and maybe some of the both how you got into it. And you know, we all hit barriers along the way. So it is some of the barriers that you had to overcome to im going to make your way in this field? Yes,

that great question. Mat i. I describe myself usually as an accidental academic. I meet some of my students at wheaton college who have this game plan to become a bible professor some day. And for me, part of my journey was, i i a turneda to god midway through my sophomore year college, and transferred to oberarched christian college. And thought, hay, reading the bibles a good thing to start doing. And i just was reading the bible to kind of find life and meet with god. And started taking a few bible classes and enjoyed those, and was able to squeeze one simester of hebrew ind am. And i was like, o i love this stuff, and it's so foreign, you know, and there's this romantic sense about the script and, and i'd started loving, really studying the bible, but never thought i'd be a bible scholar. Am, but after am seminary and being in a ministry for three years. Am, i'd been encouraged a to pursue phd. By someone who'd really influenced me during my mdiv studies, a dutch scholar named phillim van gamron. And he said, andy, you need to do a peach dea with me some day. I'm like, i want to be exactly like you, doctor van gamron. So, yes, i'll, i'll do that. So i a. I i didn't really have any sort of sense of, maybe you don't want to do a peach at the same school you did your m dia. I didn't know anything about academia. So i think that's one of the herd s, if you will, as i kind of entered academia just completely oblivious to how the game works. And, um, so i did my ped on isaiah and wrote on eating in isaiah, and never really thought that any of my work would have currency for anybody. A dissertation committee maybe, but, um, but i ended up getting my ation picked up by brill and that was a real boost of confidence, i think, for me to think, ha, maybe the sort of scholarship in writing that that i was offering had a place in the field im. And along the way, i'd say god brought a couple of peoplen an along my path that really cunn encouraged me. Mark bratt, who's now the chief editor at am jbl. He was a conference i was at in new zealand when i i began working at a college called ridley college. And turns out mark was just down the a block down the street at whitley college. And he became a great friend. We we edited a book together, and he was just a real champion for me to encourage me academically. And and another one of those same people was lena a sophia tamir, i'm met at that same conference in new zealand, and she's become a real encourager for me to keep a, keep riding in the field of isaiah. And i'm so, i'd say those are some her, you know, a hurdle for me coming out of an evangelical seminary without a big name. Ph d, imnot like you met with the emery. Ph dor all my colleagues that wheaton, you know, from harvard and yale and so forth. And im, yes. So i think a hurdle for me was, first, in my person to kind of feel like, wel, you know, maybe i do have am able to contribute to the conversation, albeit my own unique way. And then ther people god brought along the waytt, that helped in the process.