The Bible For Normal People

This episode of the podcast is filled with listener question from our Ask Pete and Jared page on the website. Pete answers questions about Job, ancient Egyptian letters, the world of biblical scholarship, shifting faith views, and much more!  Show Notes → Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What does it mean to “speak the truth in love?” On this episode we’re taking about Jared’s new book Love Matters More and what it should actually look like for Christians to interact with people they disagree with.  Show Notes → Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Ancient interpreters made all sort of assumptions about the Bible much like we do today. What do their assumptions tell us about how to interpret the Bible today? James Kugel breaks down the function of the Bible throughout history and how it has changed from antiquity to today.  Show Notes → Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Just because someone claims to hold the truth doesn't mean they actually do. On this episode, investigative journalist Ariel Sabar tells us the fascinating story of how a Harvard professor was duped into believing she made a discovery that would turn the Christian world upside down. But as it turns out, truth is not always subjective. Show Notes → Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastcho...

What is sin? It’s something we talk about often but rarely take the time to define. Gary Anderson has written a book on the subject so we brought him on the show to explain it to all us normal people. He sheds light on some common misconceptions and explains the history behind our modern understandings of sin.  Show Notes → Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

On this episode, Pete and Jared discuss the intersection of faith and science with scientist and theologian Ilia Delio. They get into why these two subjects have historically been at odds and why it holds us back to continue believing they actually are. Show Notes → Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What's the deal with Job? In this episode, Pete gives an overview of the book, pushes back on some readings you might have heard in the past, and points out some significant features that can help us better understand it.  Show Notes → Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Joe Gordon is a professor at Johnson University in Tennessee. In this episode, we talk with him about his book Divine Scripture in Human Understanding. We discuss what it means for the Bible to be inspired and how that affects how we read and use the Bible.  Show Notes → Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

We’re answering some listener questions from the Ask Pete page and answering the bigger question: Did the Bible get it wrong? We talk about the return of Jesus, David being a man after God’s own heart, and if there is a right or wrong way to read the Bible.  Show Notes → Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

We’re revisiting an episode from Season 1 in which Dr. Drew G. I. Hart shares about the Bible and white supremacy. We get into what exactly white supremacy is and how it has influenced how we read the Bible and our theology.   Show Notes →   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Brooke Prentis is an Aboriginal leader and CEO of a Christian organization in Australia called Common Grace. On this episode, she shares with us some Aboriginal perspectives on the Bible and how the Bible speaks to the injustices that Aboriginal people have faced and continue to face. Show Notes → Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What happened during the time the writings of the Old Testament stopped and the New Testament writings began? People didn’t stop writing and what they wrote helps us better understand the context of the Bible. On this episode we talk with Dr. Matthias Henze who studies this in-between time period and he shares with us what he's learned about the world in which Jesus lived.  Show Notes →  Learn mor...

Many of us believe that our interpretations of the Bible are generally the same as everyone else's. But does that make them good? On this podcast episode, we talk with Professor of Social Ethics and Latinx Studies, Miguel De La Torre about why we all need to examine where our biblical interpretations come from and why we need to diversify our understandings of the Bible.  Show Notes → Learn more a...

In this episode, Jared and Pete are joined by political correspondent Kirsten Powers, to talk about her journey of faith, her openness to the mystery of God, and how she’s learning to treat others with a higher level of grace. Show Notes →  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Biblical scholarship has grown a lot over the centuries but there are some ideas that are just so good they never go away! On this episode of the podcast, Pete looks at one of those foundational ideas: Julius Wellhausen’s documentary hypothesis. Wellhausen and others saw inconsistencies in the Old Testament and their discoveries shaped how we understand the historicity of the Bible.  Show Notes →...

Under the hood of America, we see an interesting history of using the book of Revelation to talk about immigration. Our guest, NT scholar Yii-Jan Lin walks us through the profound impact the book of Revelation has had on the US dialogue about people coming into our “City on a Hill.” Show Notes → Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In this episode Jared begins to tackle the book of Jonah by asking, “What kind of book is this?” as well as introducing the first chapter. Just because Jesus mentions Jonah does that mean we have to believe it’s historical? What is the historical context for the book? And what is the message it’s trying to convey? Show Notes → Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The writings of formerly enslaved people tell us a lot about how they viewed the Bible. We sat down with Professor Emerson Powery to talk about how the Bible was used around the institution of slavery and how it can be both a book of oppression and a book of liberation.  Show Notes →   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

On this week's episode, Pete and Jared are talking about the afterlife. What is it and what does the Bible say about it? Show Notes →  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If we look under the surface, we find a fascinating conversation about the Spirit of God in the Bible. Considering the word for Spirit, Wind, and Breath of God is often the same in the Bible, how are we to understand the relationship between them? We talk to Jack Levison about this mysterious and interesting intersection. Show Notes → Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adch...

Dr. Martin Luther King says “All people are caught in an Inescapable network of mutuality.” So what does that mean when it comes to the gospel, the Bible, and how we navigate racial equality? In this episode, we talk to Xavier Ramey about diversity, inclusion, and how our Christian faith impacts how we see community, organizations, and institutions today. Show Notes → Learn more about your ad choi...

This week Pete & Jared talk to Meghan Henning about hell. She shares with us her knowledge of the ancient world Jesus and the New Testament writers were familiar with and how they might have understood hell. Show Notes → Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

That 50 cent word describes something many Bible readers have noticed: the way the New Testament writers quote the Old often has little to do with what the Old Testament writers were actually trying to say. Jesus was in fact a surprise development in Israel’s story, but the New Testament writers nevertheless believed Jesus to be the true purpose or goal (Greek telos) of God purposes. And that beli...

Translating the Bible is more than just about being woodenly accurate. We’re humans after all. In this episode, Pete and Jared talk to Sarah Ruden, who talks about using our imaginations to put ourselves in the place of the biblical writers, emotions and aesthetics and all. With a background in translating classical literature, she helps us read the Bible within a fuller context, both humanly and...

Sometimes it can be easy to forget the psychological ramifications of our faith. The way our faith shapes the language we use to talk about tragedies and sadnesses in our life can be life-giving or it can really mess us up. In this episode we talk to Alison Cook, an expert on the intersection of faith and psychology, about some of the ways, as Christians, our views on our emotions can be harmful a...