Exploring My Strange Bible

In this first episode we unpack the introduction to the book of Ecclesiastes and touch upon the issues of authorship. Mostly we'll camp out on the core the metaphor the teachers uses to talk about all of life. It's the Hebrew word “hevel” which means vapor or smoke. You won't be able to see my hand-carved Danish tobacco pipe, but you'll hear all about it. It's a powerful image to talk about the fleeting nature and unpredictability of all of life. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

This last episode is about the manuscript history of the New Testament, as well as a short history of English translations. In the second half of this lecture, we talk about the process and the dynamics at work in collecting the books of the bible into the “canon," a technical term referring to the authoritative collection of the biblical books. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In this episode we dive into the composition and writing of the book of the New Testament. Specifically, we'll look at how the books themselves give us clues about when and how they were written. As we learn more about where the Bible came from, we gain a deeper sense of what the Bible is and what we're supposed to do with it. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In this series we explore how the Bible was written and the long process of its composition and manuscript history. The bible is a book with a very traceable history, it was not written in secret. The authors of these texts were of course humans, but they also claimed that through these human words God speaks to his people. It's important to keep the divine and human nature of the Bible in balance. Many people think that believing the Bible is God's word necessitates believing it came into existence with little or no human agency. This idea is foreign to the biblical authors and we should cherish the beautiful and complex ways the Bible was composed and collected over the centuries. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In this episode, we focus on the purpose of the laws in the story line of the Torah and the whole Bible. The story about the covenant that God made with the people of Israel at Mount Sinai makes up 2/3 of the entire Torah. There are 613 laws that God gives to Israel at Mount Sinai. In this lecture, we’ll talk about where the laws come in the story, and how the stories offer important commentary on the laws. In short, the Torah is showing how the Israelites were unable to truly love and obey God and to follow the laws. This unresolved tension creates a future hope that Moses himself announces. If God is ever going to have loving and faithful covenant partners, he will have to do some future work of transforming their hearts and minds. This is the future hope of the Torah that Jesus believed he was bringing to fulfillment. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In the final episode we see Jonah's response when God forgives his enemies. He's hot with anger and chews God out for being to gracious. This part of the story challenges us to reconsider Jesus' teaching to love and forgive our enemies, those people in our lives who are the most difficult. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Jonah goes very much against his own desires to the ancient city of Nineveh. He utters a very strange five word sermon and the people of Nineveh have a very interesting response. Also, we discuss the meaning of the biblical word “repentance” and what it does and doesn’t mean. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In this episode we ponder the very strange and beautifully intricate poem that Jonah utters in the belly of the fish. This is a powerful and heavily ironic moment in the story. This poem represents a moment when one of God’s people is in crisis. Jonah discovers that his crisis is actually God’s work to bring him to the end of himself. Jonah’s experience in this story forces us to think about similar moments of crisis in our own lives. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Jonah is ironically portrayed as God’s own prophet, but he is the only person who really refuses to listen to God. This episode explores how Jonah is “asleep at the wheel” and deaf to God and everything that God uses to communicate to him. This story invites us in to think about our own lack of perception and awareness of the ways that God might be trying to get through to us. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.