Beeson Podcast, Episode #725 Name Date >>Announcer: Welcome to the Beeson podcast, coming to you from Beeson Divinity School on the campus of Samford University. Now your host, Doug Sweeney. >>Doug Sweeney: Welcome to the Beeson Podcast. I am your host, Doug Sweeney. And I’m joined today by Beeson professor, Mark Gignilliat, who teaches Old Testament at Beeson Divinity School and leads our PhD in theology for the church. He’s here today to talk about a wonderful new textbook that he has co-written entitled Reading the Old Testament as Christian Scripture: A Literary Canonical and Theological Survey. And we’re joined via zoom by his textbook co-author, Dr. Heath Thomas, who serves as president of Oklahoma Baptist University. Like Dr. Gignilliat, Dr. Thomas is the author of a number of other books including The Minor Profits: A Theological Introduction with Craig Bartholomew and Habakkuk: A Commentary. So, thank you gentlemen for joining us. >>Gignilliat: Very glad to be here >>Thomas: Thank you. >>Doug Sweeney: Why don’t we start, Mark, by just asking how this book came to be. Is there a back story here? Did you and Heath have a cup of coffee one day and dream this us? Or how’d this get started? >>Gignilliat: Heath will have to help me here on the memory side, but I think this was the brainchild of Johnathan Pennington, who’s a mutual friend of ours that teaches at Southern Seminary. And he was in conversation with Jim Kinney, Baker Academic, and I think, oh goodness Heath, when was this, 2016, maybe 17 when we started these conversations? >>Thomas: Yeah, it actually may have been before that. It may have been 2014, 15. Something along those lines. >>Gignilliat: Okay, I was hoping [crosstalk 00:01:50]. And we were writing something in the wave of the interest in theological interpretation. It was really hot in that particular time. And trying to rethink what the genre of introduction might look like that takes these theological exegetical interests into account. So, we would meet at SPLETS for a couple of years to brainstorm, basically the form of this. And it actually kind of spawned out into a larger series. I think there’s spin-off volumes that we have on the Wisdom Literature and the prophets and the Pentateuch. I think the New Testament’s spawning off some work as well. So, it’s turned into a bit of a larger project. Heath and I’s is meant to be this sort of flag ship Old Testament volume and it, you know, took us a while to get it done. >>Thomas: [inaudible 00:02:40]. >>Gignilliat: But here it is. But I think that’s the back story on this. So, it wasn’t so much something that Health and I cooked up together. I think we were approached. And my sense is like Heath and I’s friendship began to kind of be formed during that as well. I’m not sure we knew each other all that well before. >>Thomas: Yeah. No, I think that’s right. I think one of the things that we had together was that the U.K. connection. And so, and the other thing that bound us a little bit more closely together were the theological instinct when it came to reading scripture and particularly reading the Old Testament canonically as Christian scripture. And those theological instincts to wrestle really with the main thing of the Old Testament and the New Testament, which is the reality of a God, the ontology of the scriptures themselves, and what they proclaim; the triune God revealed preeminently in Jesus Christ. So, you know, I mean, those were the instincts that drove us, I think, to write together and why, you know, Baker Academic was interested to bring Mark and I together in this project. >>Gignilliat: Yeah. >>Doug Sweeney: So, some of our listeners will know already what you mean when you talk about the theological interpretation of scripture or canonical interpretation of the Old Testament, but some of our readers won’t know and this might be a nice opportunity to let people know. Heath, maybe we can start with you this time. What is, if you’re an Old Testament teacher and you talk about interpreting the Old Testament canonically, what do you mean by that? >>Thomas: Well, you know, in the first place, when we’re talking about reading the Old Testament canonically, we’re talking more than just lists of you know, texts. We’re talking about hos God has revealed himself and in and through this process of cannon formation, and rather than an external force from, you know, a tradition or something like that making political decisions about what’s in and what’s out, what we’re trying to wrestle with is how the text itself exerts pressure towards the theological focus that it gives. And when you do that, what you find, and this has been, you know, well demonstrated in our view through kind of the forerunners of this, Brevard Childs and Christopher Sykes and some of those folks who really embrace canonical approach, you find the text is always pressuring towards the theological focus. Namely, the text is more than an exercise of literary majesty, which it is. It’s certainly more than dusty artifacts of the past, even though we recognize that the text is given over many hands over many centuries. That’s true. But really, the focus of the Old Testament in the force that it exerts is to force its readers to recon with God who gives it to a needful humanity for her hearing. So, when we are talking about a theological or canonical approach, it’s an approach that focuses on the subject matter of scripture, which is God, and takes the form of scripture absolutely seriously. So, for instance, and this is running to the New Testament, but I think the New Testament authors are responding to the kind of the pressure of the Old Testament. We hear about the law and the prophets, or when Jesus in Luke 24 is talking about, you know, on the road to Emmaus, that the disciples and Jesus is talking about law prophets in psalms, this three-fold division of the Old Testament, it’s already talked about there. And what emerges when we take that seriously and what kind of theological focus emerges? So, that’s kind of what I think about when I think about the canonical approach, the reality of God, and the shaping of the text that gives focus to this God, and how we wrestle with that as a primary interest rather than other interests that inevitably arise when we read these texts; literary, historical, etc. >>Doug Sweeney: Sounds good. And then Mark, maybe you could help by adding a little bit about what the theological interpretation of scripture is. And then what difference saying we value to canonical interpretation of the Old Testament and the theological interpretation of scripture, what difference those things make for the way you write and Old Testament textbook. >>Gignilliat: Yeah. You know, truth be told, Heath and I could probably have written this book 20 different ways, you know. At some point, you make decisions, you move forward. It’s probably alive question what theological interpretation looks like in the real because a lot of the talk is in the abstract on the hermeneutical side of things. Actually getting into the weeds and wrestling with particular texts, I think that’s part of the challenge and I think we still need to see examples of that done well. And all that interest that was generated in theological interpretation over the last 20 years, which I actually think of more as a retrieval kind of project rathe than something novel and new. There’s a lot of energy around this for a while and that seems to have kind of come undone in a way. Rusty Reno’s book that he wrote on theological interpretation recently was talking about how this whole project seemed to be fraying at some level. And there’s probably a suspicion among biblical scholars as they look at theologians, you know, finger painting with the Bible and then theologians, you know, kind of look. So, there’s still these tensions that are present. My sense is theological interpretation, at the end of the day, is a recognition of the canonical character of the scriptures as the living voice of God. That is, and I talk about this with the students at Beeson all the time, that simple confession is a game changer hermeneutically. Are these biblical books, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Song of Psalms; are they primarily understood as in route to something else? And that’s certainly a part of our interpretation, right. We understand the divine economy as real. Jeremiah and Jesus didn’t bump into one another, you know, on the falafel stand in Jerusalem. So, we get that dynamic is real, that there’s an economy that’s unfolding in time, but these texts as God’s voice participate in events that go beyond their time. So, the fanciest million-dollar terms on this is most modern critical approaches to the Old Testament see the text as a problem that needs to be solved and primarily an artifact of the ancient middle eastern world. And the truth is, both of those are kind of true to a degree. But to reduce the text to their problematic character or their ancient middle eastern setting and to misunderstand them as the living voice of God, that’s to misunderstand what the text actually, their own self-consciousness. And we use that kind of language. There’s a consciousness in the text. So, I think that’s part of the dynamic that’s at play here and really in that sense, it’s a game changer in terms of one’s interpretive approach. >>Doug Sweeney: Right. So how did it change the way you guys put together an Old Testament textbook? What difference does it make in this textbook if you say compare what students are going to get in this textbook from most other textbooks in Old Testament? >>Thomas: Yeah, I think- >>Gignilliat: [crosstalk 00:10:28] go by it. >>Thomas: Yeah, that’s right, that’s right. [crosstalk 00:10:32] for that reason. Absolutely. I think one of the things, I mean, just in terms of the structure and organization of the text what you’ll find, and this is something we had to not fight hard, but we had to assert ourselves to get this in, was a three-fold division of the organization of the Old Testament canon. Normally, you know, for English Bible readers, a five-fold division makes a lot of sense because that’s how your English Bibles are presented. Well, our is laws, profits, and writings. And again, that’s a little bit de-familiarizing to the canonical shape of the Old Testament. But we actually believe that, you know, a trifold tripartite Hebrew canon is actually a Christian Bible. Is it the only one in history? No, obviously not. But it is an early one and it’s one that we find attested among the early church, and we believe that the Old Testament pressures in that way, the text of the Old Testament pressure in that way. So, that’s one of the distinctives. I think- >>Doug Sweeney: You guys believe that, by the way, and what’s in stake in saying that? What difference does it make to say that? >>Thomas: Well, I think, you know, you get a lot of different emphases and I’d be interested to hear what Mark has to say about this. The text of scripture, whether we’re talking about the canonical force of the Old and New Testament interacted is combusted, it’s beautiful, it’s wonderful, it’s dynamic. And so, there are a lot of things, interconnections that emerged just on the reading. And so, you know, it’s not that there’s something magical about a three-fold division, but what I would say is it orders how we understand God. So, for instance, you know, having Genesis first is not accidental. It actually matters. It matters that Genesis 1 sets the frame for Genesis 2. It matters that those sets the frame for Genesis 3. And it matters that all of that sets up the call of Abram in Genesis 12 to 50, and then the Exodus. And then when you get to Deuteronomy on the threshold of the promise land. So, all of that sets a frame which then picks up, actually beautifully, in Joshua with shared language that discloses who God is and what He’s doing with this world. So, you have the creator- creature distinction here but played out in the economy of God’s salvation. And I think, you know, that matters. You get some of that, whether you’re talking about a traditional three-fold division or whether you get a five-fold division, but where things get a little bit interesting is how Malachi in Deuteronomy framed, for instance, the law and the end of the prophets at the end of Malachi, which closes the prophetic books. And so, you get a recapitulation of Horeb and then eschatological forward look towards the coming of Elijah and the Messiah. Well, that gives us a kind of a forward momentum to the shape of the prophetic vision that becomes theologically important. So, these things matter in how we read the whole, in my view. >>Gignilliat: Yeah. And we’re not super rigid on this, you know. We’re not interested in taking anybody’s English Bibles away from them. But we do feel like there are kind of internal realities that come to the surface that it seems like that appears to be the bible’s own self-consciousness. you know. So, law and prophets and the New Testament become, in some sense, the fundamental grammar for the Old Testament. And then you get this third, you know, in reciprocal relation, the one to the other. And then you get this third section of the writings, which both Heath and I find fascinating. We have a colleague here, Alex Kirk, who’s doing a lot of work on this as well. And what are the writings? Well, the writings are in many ways, what does life on the ground look like in light of the reality of the law and the prophets. So, let’s get into the tethered, I mean the textured reality of our existence to see what worshiping looks like in the Psalms, and how does one think in terms of wisdom, and what do you do when life doesn’t make sense, and what about human sexuality? I mean, all of those things tethered to the governing logic of the law and the prophets. So, we thought, you know, it’d be helpful for students that are pretty familiar with the normal English structure, that this could be a way of maybe jolting them a little to have a different entry point. And that also seems to be the way in which the texts were received in the earliest form. But these things get a little tricky. >>Doug Sweeney: Yeah. That sounds great. And so, Mark, if professors adopt this textbook and students get it in their classes, what actually do they get? Walk us through just a little bit, chapter one, two three. How’s it organized? How are you delivering the material in this textbook? >>Gignilliat: Yeah. And Heath, you’ll have to help me remember this. I think we do a basic introduction to the whole volume and then we do the tripartite canon for the law, prophets, writings. We do introductions to each section. In some sense, it’s kind of standard fair. In other words, we’re not treating Genesis or Isaiah or Jeremiah as problematized texts and I think that’s a pretty important thing. So, that’s a canonical instinct. The final form is an achievement of providence. We’re not denying that there may be complicated compositional historical matters behind it, but the achievement of Isaiah, the achievement of Genesis in the literary form is to be respected and as really an achievement of providence. I think that’s important. So, we treat the books in that way. And at the same time, we have, and I’m using probably too heavy of a term here, but we have the antilogical clutch fully unleashed from the beginning. So, God’s triune character is assumed to be the character of the god who has revealed himself as tetragrammaton. That is the essential nature of our God who is Father, Son, Spirit. So, that language, doesn’t mean we’re finding Jesus under every rock and tree, you know. It’s not wack-a-mole approach to finding Jesus, but we do recognize that the character of God is triune is manifest in the text and we’re following that and allowing that to kind of open these texts in those ways. So, and Heath, I don’t want to say too much, but this was an editorial decision that wasn’t just the tow of us. But I think the calling card of the book are all these boxes that are in there. >>Thomas: Yeah. >>Gignilliat: So, we have, help me remember this Heath, we have historical boxes. >>Thomas: Right. >>Gignilliat: That’s when we take historical background matters seriously. Literary boxes that will deal with various literary genre matters or even figures of speech or something pertaining to how the literature’s shaped. Canonical connections that will go Old Testament hearing Old Testament, New Testament hearing Old Testament. So, those are there. Theological insights. So, let’s talk about the fall and its impact on humanity in Genesis 3. Or let’s talk about who in the work is Jacob wrestling with in Genesis 32 by the river of Jabbok. So, those are there. And then our final one is reception history. >>Thomas: Yeah. >>Gignilliat: So, these are just teasers, you know. All of these are books just waiting to be written. Just little teasers about ways in which you might can go with it. >>Doug Sweeney: It’s an intro- >>Thomas: Yep. >>Gignilliat: Yeah. >>Doug Sweeney: I’d love for our listeners to get just a little bit more. I know I’ve kind of taken a couple angles at this. But the reality is, in a lot of contexts, when you study the Old Testament, you’re not getting much theology from your teachers. You know, Old Testament studies as a discipline tends to be dominated by historians, philologists who sometimes are even allergic to theological conversation. And you guys are coming out of the gates just unapologetically theological in the way you present the Old Testament, interpret the Old Testament. Tell us a little bit, as specialists in the Old Testament, how you came to be like that and what the significance of being like that given the state of biblical studies these days. >>Gignilliat: Okay Heath. >>Thomas: Sounds like an affliction, doesn’t it? Well, I think actually, how I came to this was the people that I read that I found most interesting, so both of my undergraduate and my graduate studies, I was always working in the life of the church, so in ministry. And you know, I was learning the requisite eight languages that I had to learn to get my master and prepare myself for my PhD and all of those kinds of things in Old Testament. But the questions that I found most pertinent were the ones that involved the intersection of God and the life of faith in the real world. And I found those authors that were doing that were folks who were exploring the Old Testament theologically. And the way that I would define that back then were people like Gordon Wenham and Gorden McConville who I studied with in the U.K., and I liked what they were doing. Brevard Childs wrote this Exodus commentary that I didn’t really understand but I thought, this is dynamite stuff. And then I was reading this guy, Chris Sykes, and this weird book called Figure it Out and I thought my goodness, I don’t even understand this, but this is great. This is incredible because it was trying to pressure towards the reality of the text and what is that? The substance of the Old Testament is God. And so, they were asking questions in their own ways about who is this God, and what is this God doing in the world, and how does this lead us to Jesus? And for me, that was like dynamite. And so, the instinct there was just reading people who, frankly, were churchmen. And there was this resonance of spirit, I would say, between what I was doing and what they were doing. And that’s actually why I went to the U.K. to study with those folks. It’s why I became interested in, you know, some people would call that biblical theology. It was a theological focus. And you know. Mark said it, it’s not, the substance of the Old Testament, the main focus, the main thing is the God with whom we must deal. It's not kind of the background noise which is, you know. all the garb of the Old Testament, the ancient middle eastern context, the language, the grammar, which all of that is important and it frames up and it discloses. It gives birth to the God that we see in scripture. However, it’s the God that we encounter in scripture that’s looking back at us. That’s the thing that got me into this. And that’s why I write from a theological perspective. That’s why I read from a theological perspective. And I think that’s where we get the power to live. And so, that’s how I came to it. But I’d be interested to hear what Mark has to say. >>Gignilliat: Yeah. Boy that’s really great Heath. How do we back into this? I think when Heath’s talking about the sociology of our learning or maybe even where we frame ourselves in our imaginations when we’re doing our scholarly work is a really big deal, and I still wrestle with that in my own vocation. And I think Heath’s right. I mean, I understand my own calling primarily as a churchly one. I’m happy to go play in the guild but the guild’s not my home and it’s not really the place that, for me, shapes the kinds of interesting questions that, you know, I’m pursuing. I’m not thrilled about that. I mean again, that’s why I kind of laughed when you asked the question. This puts us a little bit on the hot seat in a way. You know, I kind of get bored by my own discipline. You know, just being truthful. >>Doug Sweeney: I can too. >>Gignilliat: It’s like, you know, one more monograph on this or that. And not that that stuff’s not helpful, but at the end of the day, and I have my students read this quote from Herman Bavinck around here where he describes the scriptures as the eternally youthful word of God. I just love, I cannot get over that phrase. If, I mean, do we really think that Numbers in eternally youthful? Or Leviticus? I mean, we’re all operating with some metaphysic that helps us make sense of the world. The majority of biblical scholarship, both evangelical and non-evangelical over the last 2200 years, is working with a governing historicist metaphysic. And that doesn’t mean there’s not an enormous amount to be gained from that, but it’s a real limitation. And this is, I remember reading when I was in Saint Andrews back in the day, when Heath was down in England, trying to wrestle through this and reading that preface from Karl Barth on the second edition of Romans commentary, that famous line, “The historic critic needs to be more critical.” Of what? Of their own governing assumptions. So, we’re not displacing the importance and the value of all of that work, but that’s stop one. And for those of us who preach or are teaching those who will preach someday, we know that our students have to have some mechanism to engage in theological interpretation or else they’re just describing the ancient world. >>Thomas: Yeah. >>Doug Sweeney: Yeah. >>Gignilliat: So, preachers have to do this or they’re kind of forced into moralistic readings and that’s it. So, I’m not really all that interested in grand, having some sort of grand theme that holds it all together. I’m like, these texts, that’s where the canonical approach is so interesting. Not some sort or governing theme. Not some sort of governing idea- >>Thomas: Or method. >>Gignilliat: Or method. But it’s these texts themselves are the instrument by which God speaks and that means we just, we give ourselves to this as one generation and then we pass it off to another who’s going to do it as well. So, that’s our, I think Heath and I’s, prayer for this book is, capture the imagination of a generation. >>Doug Sweeney: Yeah. >>Thomas: Yeah. >>Doug Sweeney: That’s what I love about this book. That’s what I want our listeners to understand about this book. We have a lot of lay people who listen to the podcast, some pastors, some prospective students who love the Bible and they love good preaching and good Bible teaching, and they’re serious Christians. And they need to know that what you guys have done here is give students all the basic information they need to learn about ancient near easter history and languages and archeology. But you’ve written an introductory textbook for real believing Christians who want to understand the Old Testament as part of the word of God, and that’s a real blessing for people. >>Gignilliat: Yeah. >>Thomas: Yeah. And you know, it is, we pray, we pray it’s fresh bread but at the end of the day, one of the passions that got me excited about this was, you know, we’ve all, Mark and I have taught the Old Testament now for, you know, over two decades. And one of the things that we always encounter with some of these introductory, you get to the text of the intro and it’s like a summation of the contents. And so, it’s almost like the introductory textbook becomes a replacement for the reading of the text of scripture. And one of the things that we tried to do in this book, I don’t know how successful we were but boy we tried hard, is we gave the reader the opportunity to read this set text. Now what follows is really more of a discussion and an exploration of that rather than a summary of that content. And the reason that’s important is because we’re wrestling with these texts and the writing of this textbook. We’re not trying to bypass the word. We’re trying to wrestle with the word in the writing of this text and then giving the readers some insight on how does this trajectory lead to Jesus. Or how did the New Testament receive this text and the implementation? And then even with some reading or thought questions at the end and kind of key texts in Leviticus or whatever book we’re exploring, trying to give some handles for the readers to hold onto. But I think it’s really important, we’re not trying to replace the Old Testament with an introductory textbook. We’re trying to give an on ramp into the text and drive people back again and again and again to the scriptures. Why? Because that’s what we need. We need the voice of God to break open into our lives through His word. >>Gignilliat: My father, if I can tell a quick story, my father’s 84 years old. I pray people have a father like mine. He’s one of my biggest fans. I have to tell him all the time, Dad, people aren’t nearly as interested in me as you are, just remember that. I’ve given him every book that I’ve ever written and you know, he’s always kind. You know, thank you. He is so excited about this book, and it cracks. He has sent it to friends. He’s like, get me so and so’s. He’s sending it to friends. He’s never sent any of my books to friends before. So, the fact that it’s captured my 84-year-old dad’s imagination, I’m like, that’s, thank you Lord. My mom’s telling me that he’s in it everyday reading and learning. I’m like, that’s great. So, if my 84-year-old father can dive into this and find joy in it, I hope it finds an audience like that as well. >>Doug Sweeney: When you guys, I’m assuming, you pray as you write. You pray and ask the Lord to guide you as you go. As you prayed over the writing of this textbook, were there particular prayers that you wound up praying the most for this one? What’s your, what are you longing for the Lord to do as people use this book? >>Gignilliat: Lord, help us to finish. >>Doug Sweeney: He answered that prayer. >>Gignilliat: I know that’s what the people at Baker were praying. Lord, please help them. >>Thomas: Oh, they were. They had to have been. >>Gignilliat: Go ahead Heath. >>Thomas: Well, that’s a great question. I really do appreciate it. I think one of the prayers, honestly, you know, my background’s in minor prophets and prophetic literature and then lament literature is really kind of where I’ve lived most of my academic career. And you know, we divvied up the chapters and one of the things that I think we both found were even though we’ve taught these texts, writing them is a much more, writing these chapters is a much more intimate engagement with these texts. And so, for instance, I remember working through Ezra and Nehemiah, especially, thinking oh dear Lord, help me not to get this wrong and lead people astray because these are difficult texts. You’re dealing with, you know, divorce and the sending away of women and children and my goodness, you know, you don’t want to, and there’s a lot of discussion. So, I prayed a lot about just allow me not to get this wrong and bring shame on the Lord. Just help me to do this right and fire a love for your scriptures. And so, you know, the prayers, maybe Mark’s prayers were more like Lord, help us to sell 50 thousand copies or something. But that wasn’t my prayer. I’m kidding. It wasn’t Mark’s. Well maybe it was Mark’s. I don’t know. It was more like just don’t mess this up. We don’t want to drive people away from your word, but more deeply to your word. >>Doug Sweeney: Yeah, that’s good. >>Gignilliat: It’s a humbling thing to do this, you know. So, truth be told, I know we should probably be excited whenever you have a book like this come out. I’m actually quite intimidated by it. You know, I tease my New Testament colleagues here like, almost all of Paul’s writings could fit into Isaiah. >>Thomas: Yeah. >>Gignilliat: And so, I spend a lot of time in Isaiah. I’ve done some work on the minor prophets as well. We’re both kind of prophets. God made me fiddle in the writings a little bit. But you know, Exodus, Genesis, you know. I was given the chapter on Kings and Chronicles. I hadn’t really done deep dives in those books. So, I think the weight of new territory kept me before the Lord on this. Like, help me understand this and what’s going on because these are, a lot of them are complicated text. Kings is especially complicated. >>Thomas: Yes. >>Gignilliat: So, just help me sort it out, or just help me kind of get this, you know, understand what the movements are here and what you’re trying to do in this text. So, I do think it was kind of a constant refrain just given the scope of what we were engaging. >>Doug Sweeney: Speaking about prayer and with the clock in mind, we’re running out of time. I want to ask you guys how should our listeners be praying? I have two questions. Part A, how should our listeners be praying for the students, either that you have in your classes right now in Old Testament or the students who in other people’s classes will be using this book? We’ve got a lot of lay people, pastors, alumni, and so on who listen, and they want to be praying for our community, our professors, our students. How should they be praying for your students, students who use this textbook? And then part B, I’ll remind you if we forget, part B’s going to be how can they be praying for you? And Mark, you’re a busy Old Testament prof, you run a doctoral program, you’re preaching and teaching a lot at churches. Heath is the president of a school now. He probably has very pressing prayer requests on a regular basis. But let’s start with students. How should faithful Bible loving lay people be praying for you students these days? Heath, do you want to go first? >>Thomas: Sure, I’d be happy too. So, number one, pray for a deeper faith. And what I mean by that is, you know, education should not be indoctrination. It should be truly education. And we want to be opened up to the expansiveness of the God who made us. And so, as we think about that, we want texts like this in the education of our students to drive them more deeply into the beauty of Christ. And so, we need pray for that because they’re wrestling with texts and ideas and concepts they’ve never wrestled with and sometimes it can be a bit overwhelming or discombobulating. And so, what we want them to do is to find that anchor which is Christ and hold on. And you know, hopefully texts like this help them do that. >>Doug Sweeney: Anything you want to add about prayers for students? >>Gignilliat: I mean, just very briefly, you know, I think both of our hopes for this is that it will catch the imagination of its readers. And if students will get their affections ignited for scripture and realize that what’s being offered in there is more resplendent, it’s more beautiful, it’s more compelling than what’s offered in the culture that surrounds them, I think that would be our prayer. In fact, we dedicated this book to our children. In some ways our children are kind of, you know, autonomies of the whole, I guess. You know, they’re representative of all these children that are out there that we pray someday may read this and wish for the Lord to capture their imagination that you’re better, you’re more beautiful. >>Thomas: Yeah. >>Gignilliat: Yeah. >>Doug Sweeney: Wonderful. Alright, and how can we be praying for you? Mark, why don’t we start with you now? >>Gignilliat: Well, that’s very kind. You know, we’re all spinning plates, so I think my story is no different than anyone else, family, vocation, local church, writing. You know, just learning how to spin those well. Something’s always falling through the cracks, and I think just as I get older, I just learn to kind of deal with it. But that’d be kind to pray for that. >>Doug Sweeney: Yeah. Heath, you got a presidential prayer list? >>Thomas: Yeah. Just faithfulness and humility. I mean, those are the big. I’ve read the book of Kings. Leadership can go badly, right. Honesty, faithfulness. I do think institutions matter and leadership is not for the faint of heart. I think that’s true. I’ve learned that in a whole new way. So, you know, I think faithfulness and faithfulness from Suetonius to everything else. Just from the interior self all the way to the external realities, my goodness, that presidenting drives you to. >>Doug Sweeney: Yeah. Alright dear listeners, you have been listening to Dr. Mark Gignilliat, Professor of Old Testament here at Beeson Divinity School and Heath Thomas, President of Oklahoma Baptist University. They have a marvelous new textbook we want you to know all about. Please pray for them in days ahead and for their students, even more importantly. We love you. We’re praying for you. And we say goodbye for now. >>Announcer: You’ve been listening to the Beeson podcast; coming to you from the campus of Samford University. Our theme music is by Advent Birmingham. Our announcer is Mark Gignilliat. Our engineer is Rob Willis. Our producer is Neal Embry. And our show host is Doug Sweeney. For more episodes and to subscribe, visit BeesonDivinity.com/podcast. You can also find the Beeson Podcast on iTunes, YouTube, and Spotify.