OnScript

Episode: This is the first of a two part episode on gender and hermeneutics in the letters of Paul. Our focus text is 1 Cor 11, a text that poses several interpretive and theological challenges that cannot be easily resolved. Michael Lakey talks with Matt L about his book  Image and Glory: 1 Corinthians 11:2-16 as a Case Study in Bible, Gender and Hermeneutics (T&T Clark, 2010). They discuss gende...

Episode: In this episode, Erin interviews Beverly Roberts Gaventa on Pauline theology, her thoughts on pedagogy, and on why Matt Bates is wrong about Karl Barth.  Guest:  Beverly Roberts Gaventa is Distinguished Professor of New Testament at Baylor University. She previously taught at Princeton Theological Seminary, Columbia Seminary, and Colgate Rochester Divinity School. Her specializations incl...

Episode: Canon, theology, and Trinity are brought together in this episode featuring guest Chris Seitz. But here's the surprise: We are talking about Trinity in the Old Testament. Seitz has written an outstanding book, The Elder Testament , showing how the Old Testament's literal sense pressures us in a trinitarian direction. Along the way Seitz drops funny personal stories about noted biblical sc...

Episode: Matt, Matt, Erin, & Dru discuss your questions. And YOU WON'T BELIEVE WHAT THEY SAY NEXT! Listen to find out. Help Support OnScript: Visit our  Donate Page  if you want to join the big leagues and become a regular donor.   

Episode: Dru and Joshua Berman discuss his bold claims in his book— Inconsistency in the Torah —that suggest source-criticism might erroneously ignore cognate literary forms in the ancient Near East, favoring notoriously slippery histories behind each source in the Torah instead. Working through Egyptian and Mesopotamian parallels, Berman discusses how the old paradigm of sources might be insuffic...

Episode:  Erin and Dru host Douglas Groothuis for an episode that breaks from our typical Onscript fare. Doug's newest book, Walking through Twilight is a memoir about his journey alongside his wife as she was diagnosed, and then finally succumbed to a form of dementia called Primary Progressive Aphasia. Doug's book is raw and painful to read at times, but it is also profound and sure to be helpfu...

Episode: Tim Mackie and Jon Collins chat with Matt L. and Dru J. about how the Bible Project started, their thesis that the Bible is a unified story, P967, and a wide range of other topics you've been dying to learn about. The Bible Project: If you aren't familiar with The Bible Project, it's best to visit their site ( https://thebibleproject.com/ ), but briefly, and from their website, 'The Bible...

Episode: Scot McKnight is back, bringing a cosmic Christological vision and wisdom about how the church should handle the topics of slavery and racial reconciliation. Last time he and Dennis Venema were talking Adam and the Genome . This time Scot shares what he learned while penning two exciting new commentaries,  The Letter to Philemon and The Letter to the Colossians , for the beloved NICNT ser...

Episode: Live from Nashotah House Theological Seminary in Wisconsin! OnScript host Matt Lynch interviews Stephen Chester. We talk about how Luther & Calvin have taken a whipping by some proponents of the New Perspective on Paul, and how they, and we, need to give them a second look. To that end, we discuss his book  Reading Paul with the Reformers , winner of Christianity Today's 2018 Book of the...

Marc Turnage lives and breathes the world of the New Testament, through literature, archaeology, and geography. He's an expert in biblical Galilee, and comes to us live from the Galilee, where he currently helps direct an archaeological dig at Khirbet el-Araj, the possible site of biblical Bethsaida and home of Peter and Andrew. Since recording this episode, those digging at the site have confirme...

Episode:  In this episode, Susan Eastman talks with Erin and Matt about her new book on Pauline Anthropology. The book is a fascinating three-way dialogue between the Apostle Paul, Epictetus, and current trends in cognitive psychology and neuroscience. Eastman's ability to integrate these three complex disciplines into a single, thought-provoking book is likewise matched by her ability to articula...

Episode: Anyone who has read sequentially from the Old Testament to the New has a bit of a shock when they arrive at the gospels. New ideas and creatures populate the landscape of Galilee and Jerusalem. Things such as rabbis and synagogues (A Greek term for an "assembly"!) snuck into the center of Jewish life from somewhere off-stage. So too did demons and resurrection of the dead. Though some wou...

Episode: Dr. Mary Hom returns to the show to talk about her soon-to-be-released book The Characterization of an Empire: The Portrayal of the Assyrians in Kings and Chronicles (Wipf & Stock, 2018). But as is normally the case, conversation goes well beyond her recent scholarship ... Guest: Mary Katherine Hom is a freelance Old Testament scholar currently residing in Sacramento, CA. In addition to T...

Episode: It was half an hour before coffee and cake with the Campbell family, so Chris sits down with Douglas Campbell to interview him on his new book on the Apostle Paul, a particularly racy, fast-paced and electrifying book which Douglas Harink has described as “The best book on Paul since Acts”! Douglas Campbell is one of the leading Pauline scholars in the world, but this new and more popular...

Episode: Matt interviews Christian Hofreiter (RZIM) on one of the most vexed issues in biblical studies ... genocide in the Old Testament. Christian Hofreiter has been pondering this question for a long time, and has written a groundbreaking work on the subject -  Making Sense of Old Testament Genocide: Christian Interpretations of Herem Passages (Oxford University Press, 2018). Guest: (from the R...

Episode:  In this episode, we discuss the Mesopotamian texts about matters of children to deity relations, families roles, abandonment, child death, and more for the sake of understanding some of the texts of the Hebrew Bible. There exists a clear set of practices in the ancient Near East that show the value of children outside of their utility, which creates the question: Did Israelites feel the...

Episode:  In this episode, Cynthia Long Westfall talks with Erin about her new book on gender in Paul's letters, which emphatically is not just a conversation about women's issues in Paul's letters. Tune in as Cindy and Erin discuss veiling, masculine and feminine stereotypes, what it's like to be a woman in the academy, and the superiority of Minnesota hockey. Guest: (from the publisher's website...

Episode: Brace yourself for a celestial journey through the letters of Paul, the Multiverse, and the inner soul. Prof Ervine Sheblatzm sits down with OnScript host Matt Lynch to discuss his recent book The Apostle Paul, Multiverse Theory, and the Journey of the Inner Soul (2018). If you enjoy science, biblical studies, or both, and want to learn how they all fit together in what Prof Sheblatzm cal...

Episode: We've got another Q&D comin' at'cha. These are your questions, so there are no reasons not to listen. And it gets even better, we've got Chris Tilling joining us as a co-host, and he's here to stay, we think.  Hosts: You can find all the info HERE, but since Chris isn't yet on the page, here's a bit more about him: r Chris Tilling is Graduate Tutor and Senior Lecturer in New Testament Stu...

(Photo Ouria Tadmor. Copyright Eilat Mazar)[/caption] Episode: We discuss the alleged Isaiah Bulla (clay seal impression) with one of the finest epigraphers in the field. The seal was found by the Temple Mount in 2009 by Eilat Mazar, and first announced in Biblical Archaeology Review last month (February, 2018). Matt L. and Dru J. discuss the find with Prof. Christopher Rollston, who urges caution...

Episode: What can the language we use for “them” tell us about who “we” are? What do a group’s descriptions of outsiders tell us about the values and self-perceptions of the in-group? The New Testament uses a range of designations for outsiders and, at first blush, some of the terms, like “sinner,” “unbeliever,” and “unrighteous,” seem unusually harsh to our ears. In an age where inclusivity rules...

Episode: OnScript welcomes one of its favorite guests, Joshua Jipp, back to the microphone. Host Matthew Bates asks Josh pointed questions that all OnScript listeners are dying to know. Like, "Why, Josh, didn't you title your book Salvation by Allegiance Alone (and Hospitality) rather than Saved by Faith and Hospitality ?" And, "In light of your book's thesis, when I wanted to visit Chicago this p...

Episode: In this episode, Matt sits down with Carol Newsom to discuss the Dead Sea Scrolls, her research on the Bible and ecology, the development of the self in the Bible and other early Jewish literature, glass beading, weaving, and much more! Guest: (from the Candler website) Carol Newsom is Charles Howard Candler Professor of Old Testament at Candler School of Theology and a senior fellow at E...

Episode: Gender is a hot-button topic. The validity and limits of "gender roles" remains a controversial issue in the church. Meanwhile early Christian theology is all about the church Fathers--at least this is the mindset in some circles. While it may be acknowledged that women were vital to the development of early Christianity, for those nurtured in such circles, any notion of women making last...

Episode: Pour yourself a wee dram of whisky and tune in as Matt and Dru talk with Iain Provan about the perils and benefits of literal(istic) interpretation of Scripture and his new book The Reformation and the Right Reading of Scripture  (Baylor, 2017). In addition to some great convo, in this episode you'll witness the special guest appearance of an Eastern European thought leader, and a new edi...