 You're listening to the Naked Bible Podcast. To support this podcast, click the NakedBiblePodcast.com and click on the support link in the upper right-hand corner. If you're new to the podcast and Dr. Heizer's approach to the Bible, click on New. Start here at NakedBiblePodcast.com. Welcome to the Naked Bible Podcast, Episode 190, SBL Conference, Interviews Part 1. I'm the layman, Trey Strickland. He's a scholar, Dr. Michael Heizer. Hey Mike, how are you? Good. Well, here we are. In Boston, that means we are not in Rhode Island anymore, teardrop, but the big fan of Boston, this is my second time in the great city of Boston. Everything's green, Celtics, the land of... And the Red Sox. The Red Sox. And the Red Sox. And you may take a tour of Fidway. Yeah, that's one of my goals to slip away for an hour and tour Fenway Park. So... That'll be neat. Yeah, it will be. It's just something I've always wanted to see, so Lord willing, I'll get to do that. In our first round here, we have some good interviews, obviously. We're going to talk with David Burnett and catching up with David. David is familiar to the podcast audience. Again, we've had him on as a guest. People are familiar with him and his work, so he is well into his first semester of doctoral work at Marquette. So for sure, we're going to ask him about that, how it's going, and what he's doing in terms of research, what he's thinking about. And then we want to talk to Marina Westerdahl. Marina is a beginning doctoral student. She's applying for doctoral programs now. She has several options. I met her at Knox Seminary when I taught an interterm course on really the unseen realm content. We use that as a textbook. Knox is in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, but she was a mom, had a couple of kids, decided I want to go to seminary. And again, we met there. And now she's applying for doctoral work. So we wanted to talk with her about her experience and again, some of the things that are really interesting her in terms of content. And then finally, Sam Lamerson on this episode. Sam, again, we interviewed last year as well. Sam is a New Testament professor at Knox there in Fort Lauderdale. And some of you may recall that Sam is also sort of a fellow traveler with some interest in paranormal topics. And he has something that I think you're going to get a kick out of that he actually did in Fort Lauderdale with his own audience to sort of get them interested in why Christians should think about that sort of stuff. And we want to talk to him about that. So another good round of interviews here at SBL. Well, we're back at SBL and guess who we ran into? It's David Burnett. Hey there. So obviously, lots of people on the podcast are familiar with you, David. So why don't you give us an update on what you've been doing? Starting my doctorate at Marquette University, drowning in work. OK, so what are the classes you have? Just give us the class. So I'm doing three seminars right now. One Judaism in the Hellenistic World with Joshua Burns. I'm doing Advanced Hebrew with Deidre Dempsey. And then I'm doing Origins of Trinitarianism to Augustine with Michelle Barnes. Oh, wow. Well, that sounds like the place to be. So, OK, I got to ask you a few questions here. All right, for our audience, explain what happens in a seminar. So in a seminar, you read to your eyes fall out an absurd amount of literature. So a lot of primary sources and then a lot of secondary literature as well. A lot of articles, books. So you read the material and then you come to class it's expected to have read it all and you're discussing it. And a lot of the sort of lectures and discussion center around the reading. And then you'll have major term papers in those courses, article reviews, things like that. So a lot of work, more pages than you could physically read, probably. Sure. But, you know, you just you just do the best you can. Yeah, we kind of joke that, you know, if we didn't love this stuff, we would kill ourselves. Well, yeah, that brings back memories, actually. What what are you using for Advanced Hebrew? Do you have to read through an advanced grammar? Are you doing something else? Actually, we do a lot of translation. So it assumes that we've had like two years of Hebrew. But she we often refer to let's say, well, we've referred to a number of different grammars. So you're on Maroka, Maroka. Walk your counter. Yeah, Maroka is a is one we've referred to quite frequently. But it's it's a folk. It's focusing in on the Psalms. So we do translations of Psalms every week. So one to two Psalms will translate a week. And and it's a it's actually a split class because we have a smaller pool of graduate students at Marquette. And so half the class is a Psalms class only that doesn't need Hebrew. And then the other half of the class, Advanced Hebrew is doing all the translation. Yeah, each one has their own set of requirements. Right, right. So we did that to it, Wisconsin. Yeah, so that's that's what we're doing. And it's fun. It's and Dr. Dempsey's amazing. She's yeah, she's incredible. So, you know, I the the name of one of my novel characters, I have to admit, actually comes from her. Really? Yes, it does. No way. I'm serious. Yeah. What did you got? I just can't even hang in there. I read an article or two by her on something when I was writing my first novel and I just like the name. So that's what I did. OK, now now the whole world knows this. I'm totally going to tell her this. Well, go ahead. This is great. You can tell her. That's great. Yeah, you've got to get names somewhere. You can't just name it after your kids. Hey, you're in my buddy Mike's novel. Did you know that? Then you can't like kill anybody off, you know, so. You kill her off in the book. No, she's still alive. I was like, my goodness, she's alive after two installments. But hey, Dr. Dempsey, good news. You're not killed off in this book that you're in that you don't know about. I just like the name. So nice, nice. All right. So how has have you adjusted to life at Marquette? OK, because you went from Texas. And now you're in Wisconsin. Yeah, talk about a transition. But I haven't felt the bulk of the transition yet. You know, we're not in the deep of winter. You never go outside. No, I mean, like I'm OK with the 30s. Like it actually feels really good. Oh, yeah, just you wait. Yeah, I mean, like you can wear sweaters and stuff. And it's great. I like that part is cool. Like as long as it stayed in the 30s, I'm good. Now, the coldest it's got so far was like you got twenty five or something one day. And that was it was kind of cold. I was like, no pun intended. That's a warm up. OK. Right. I know, I know, I literally know everyone tells me about it. You know, I heard about the Polar Vortex about like five years ago or something. So everyone's told me all the horror stories. It's funny, though, like when I moved to Wisconsin, I was like, so you Wisconsin people, you know, Wisconsinites, I guess they call them. It's better than Wisconsinians. Yeah, I didn't know what to call them. So I guess I guessed it right. But so I was like, y'all are used to this, right? I mean, y'all are used to the winters. And and they're like, no, we still hate it. I was like, OK, all right. Do you have a car? Yeah. Yeah, I actually bought a Subaru before I moved. Do you have a heater to like in is all kidding aside, you can get a little heater installed in your engine block. Yeah. And if you're different locations, you can plug in. Yeah. The the the Subaru's have those aluminum engines that really quickly. OK. For that reason. And of course, you know, the all wheel drive. So I had to I had to I had to get ready. You're putting some thought into it. Oh, yeah, I'm prepared, I think. I've got my parka and hats and boots and all this stuff. So I'm ready to go. So how much interaction have you had with Dr. Orlov? Oh, a ton. I'm. Yeah, I love it. Andre Orlov is the best man. And we have so much fun. Like we he took me to this his favorite like Indian buffet. And we just started talking in two and a half hours later. He had me at Indian and buffet. I'm telling you. Oh, my gosh. Come to Marquette and we'll go. Yeah, I could take an enemy there and still enjoy myself. Yeah. Well, yeah. You have no enemy in Andre. But no, he's incredible. We've had some really great conversations and we email back and forth all the time. And he's been on sabbatical this semester. So he comes back next semester. Then hopefully I'll be his TA next semester and I'll be helping him edit his next book coming out without incriminating at anyone. Your reaction response to the teaching experience. Oh, yeah, my first lecturing. Yeah, you know, it was really great, actually. I had a really great experience. I sort of was thrown off into the deep end, you know. So at Marquette, they're required undergrads since it's a Jesuit school, their undergrads are required to take intro to theology. And so Mark Johnson, who I TA for is a theology prof there. He's a Aquinas guy. And I was really scared about that when they assigned me to him because I was like, I don't know anything about Aquinas. So this is not a good fit, but they're like, no, don't worry. Don't worry. He's teaching intro classes. I was like, OK, phew. So I was like, I don't have to read Thomas Aquinas. That's great. I'm sure you don't have to read the whole sumo. Well, yeah, I'm not going to read the whole sumo. I'm just not it's not going to happen. But no, so so he has three intro to theology classes in a row and from like nine thirty a.m. to like one forty five or something. And so, you know, I thought I was just going to be totally exhausted. And because I taught all three in a row. And and so the week the week that I taught was we were going through Gospel. John, did you like discussions? Well, I do sort of open. Yeah, I lecture and then throughout it, I'll have some sort of open ended questions to try to stir the pot a little bit. But they just invite a whole lot, you know, you know, it's it's hard to get them to talk. Are they mostly awake? Yeah, freshman and sophomore. But, you know, me, you know, I'm pretty jovial. That's your answer. Yeah, but freshman and sophomore. Yeah, yeah, they're immune to that. Yeah, they are. Now, it's cool, though, because I did get some, you know, gaping mouths and wide eyes and stuff once we got towards the end and connecting some stuff that I showed them in the beginning. So all the intertextual stuff, you know, that they wouldn't know those words. But, you know, the bringing the themes out in John and like the Akhidah, the binding of Isaac in the in the crucifixion, you know, why is Jesus bound? Why is he carrying his cross? This isn't in any of the gospels, you know, what's going on here? And so looking at stuff like that, you know, Jesus has new temple. Jesus isn't the man, the human one, you know, the gardener picking up on all these ademic themes, you know, Adam. So that they were they got really excited once I started making those connections, because a lot of the kids had sort of grown up in Catholic school and stuff. So they had a lot of exposure to scripture, but just never studied it. You know, probably just in catechesis or whatever. So it's really cool to sort of blow the lids off for them. I had some students that stayed after that were like, man, we heard this Lamb of God all the time in the liturgy all the time. We had no idea what it meant. It's like, well, you do now. So that was that was cool. You know, it was a really cool experience. And I like being at Marquette because, you know, you have a lot of privileged, you know, kids who just were kind of spoiled and didn't realize that all this stuff is there. They never studied it for themselves. And so to try to break the lid off and show them some of it was was cool, you know, and, you know, you always have students that couldn't care less, you know, but but so you try to get them all involved. And realistically, I can't do much teaching there. I mean, we're just too busy. So and Dr. Johnson has been incredible about, you know, realizing, you know, how much work I have to do and not burdening burdening me with a lot. So and Marquette's really great about that. I mean, they really take care of their doctoral students. So when you when Orlov comes back and you'll be the the TA, that's just primarily we're hoping that's the case. Yeah, the editing task or if it works out, that's pretty much. Yeah, that's pretty much my task. Yeah. So we've talked about it in the theme of the book and stuff. And what's it on? We'll keep. Do we want to keep that under wraps right now? Because I haven't talked to him about that. All right, I have a really. So I don't want to share it if he hasn't shared it himself. And my next question is is not because I have any knowledge of the book because I don't. Yeah, yeah. But I'm I'm planning on going to the Enoch seminar Saturday night. Have you ever been to it? That's first question. And if you have or I have to think Orlov is going to be at this thing. Of course. Yeah. So I'm hoping it's more than just like wine and cheese kind of stuff and chit chat, they're actually going to talk about research projects. Correct. Well, aren't they doing a thing for the Feshrift for Michael Stone? I don't know. It's just the description I saw said that they're going to be talking about new directions and Enoch research or something like that. Oh, OK. Yeah. It's a Saturday night reception. Honestly, I haven't. I mean, I saw the Enoch seminar stuff, but I didn't look at all that. It just said everybody's welcome and so on and so forth. So I'm thinking, yeah, I'd like to sit on that. Oh, I would love to be there. Yeah. Well, let's go. I'll email Dr. Orlov and see. Yeah, I just I mean, I've been to receptions before. He probably knows what's going on. And it's they turn into business meetings real fast, you know, so I don't I'm not really up for that, you know, even if the foods. We just go for the for the drinks and the food. I mean, you know, I I want to hear about Enoch stuff. Yeah, I mean, that's I was really excited that the Enoch seminar thing is overlapping with SPL stuff. I mean, I didn't know they were even doing that until yesterday. I think my buddy Rob Cascio from Brown University posted that he was in a session at Harvard on it. And I was like, man, I want to be there. Yeah. Yeah. So I want to try to I want to try to go. Yeah, that sounds encouraging. And I've told Dr. Orlov, I, you know, that's that's a goal of mine, you know, in the future is, you know, I don't I think you have to have your PhD before you can be a member of Enoch seminar. It just said all are welcome. So I figured. But I want to be involved with it in the future. Right. They they could have just said that with that assumption. Right, right. Because it's here at SPL. So we'll see, we'll find out. Well, so, OK, do you have any and are you angling for anything specific as far as a dissertation? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Do you narrow it to one thing? Or you're well, I mean, it's the trajectory we've dealt with. OK. I mean, so, yeah, the the listen, yeah. So a lot of the listeners who heard the resurrection and death of the gods and my stuff on Romans four, these are all pieces to the puzzle. So but I think the Roman, I think the first Corinthians 15 because I've done more research on it since I presented last year on that paper. I've had a lot of emails about it, a lot of messages and conversations about it from other scholars who sort of, huh, never thought of that, you know, and and and after being cited in Teesson's book, I actually got in some interesting conversations with some other scholars about this project. So that's going to be a big portion, I think it's going to be a big chapter in my dissertation, that topic. Did you ever have a follow up conversation with the guy at it was last year? It was I think it was in the same section you spoke in. But I'm trying to remember who was Litwa. OK, David Liva. Yeah. And then there was there was in part of the Q&A, you either it was either your paper that you said something and this guy heard it or it was a Q&A where there was some interaction. There was a guy from Harvard there that came up to you afterwards and said, I think he was from Yale. He was from Yale because like this will really help what I'm doing. Did you ever Christopher? Yeah, we actually that's weird. You brought that up because we literally just ran into each other. So he was coming back from getting his name tag and I just went and got mine. And he was like, David, David, you know, I was like, yeah, Christopher, what's up? And so we stopped and talked for a little bit. And congratulations to Christopher. By the way, he got a tenure track job at Cornell College. So congratulations to him. He's out of the job. The job market. Finally, he's like, I can actually enjoy SPL now instead of just posturing the whole time. Right. So, you know, it's great. So I'm very excited for him. But yeah, he had I told him he was a big encouragement to me, because especially coming from Yale, telling me that, you know, I was connecting dots of how these texts are being used by Paul here in ways that he could never sort of figure out how it all fits together. Yeah, he was really excited last year. Yeah, he got really excited and it got me more excited because, wow, someone's seeing this, you know, and I'm still trying to convince Dr. Kover at Marquette about it. I think he's slowly his first name, Michael Kover. OK, Michael Kover. I knew another Kover, but go ahead. Yeah, he is. He's as sharp as sharp gets, man. He is. It's I'm serious. So what? So I can't speak highly enough. What what's the obstacle? I mean, what I think he. Well, we to be fair, we've only talked about the, you know, the Deuteronomy four sort of background to the creature list there in first cousins, 15. We talked about that the last time we sat down and he kept going that, well, this is clearly Genesis. I mean, this is creation stuff. This is Adam and I said, well, Deuteronomy is also sort of creation. And we talked about overlapping creation and Exodus, and he wasn't buying that too quickly. He's like, you may be trying to put an unnecessary layer in there that's not there. And but I but he hasn't heard the whole argument. And and he's forgotten more than I'll ever learn, probably. So to, you know, to have this little peon, you know, discussing this with him. No, but he's so he's so kind. He's so thoughtful. He's so nuanced and he really is a joy to have there on the third floor in Marquette Hall because his schedule is crazy and he has a family and he still makes time for us, you know. And so he's a virtuous man. He's a priest. He's a priest in the Anglican Communion from Dallas area, actually. His dad taught at DTS. Wow. Yeah. Isn't that crazy? Well, so see, the other cover I know is Robin, who had a PhD from Harvard. He was an Ancient Ariesian Studies guy, but he taught at Dallas for a while. That's his dad. OK, so where's his dad? That's Michael Cover's dad. Wow. OK. So where's his dad at now? I don't know. We haven't talked about it. But yeah, yeah, he had parted ways with DTS back. Right. It was in the late 80s or early 90s. Yeah, he was there when I was there, but I never got to take a class from him. So I was. Yeah. Yeah, that's that's literally his son. Wow, boy. And I mean, he's got pedigree of pedigrees. I mean, the guy is it's now I'm feeling a little bit old. Well, yeah, it's Yale know. Yeah, I think it's Yale, Harvard, Notre Dame is his pedigree. You know, and and he he was a Lilly Fellow, you know, he won the Acmeyre Award at SBL for New Testament. I looked out big time, you know, being there with him. And our faculty at Marquette is is outstanding. I mean, it is a place to study Second Temple and Christian origins. And it is, man, it's the spot. Yeah, well, I was hoping you'd get in there as as you know, obviously. Yeah, you know, that was my first choice. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's great. I was very happy. And it's really I really have a lot of thanks goes out to Andre Orloff because we really connected last year at SBL. And and he was really digging my research proposal and we hit it off. And it was like sort of a piece in a pod type situation, you know. Yeah. Yeah. So for this year, last question, I know you're you got the Tuesday morning slot. Yes, I have the worst slot of SBL. Well, there's two ways to look at the last lot. There's two ways to look at that, that there are fewer papers. OK, so that means if you're staying, there are fewer options. You might actually get a full room. I mean, when I read a paper on Tuesday morning. I'm not sure if I want full room. It's like this paper is more chilled in my last one. Or it's like half the people there just, well, this sounded better than the other thing. I don't really know. Yeah. But either one was about. Well, no, I mean, I joke about it, but we actually have a really good session. I mean, the whole session is on 2nd Corinthians 12 on the Ascent to Heaven. Yeah. So, you know, if you're staying and you're even if you just broadly New Testament, you're going to have people wind up in that. So if you're interested in New Testament or Paul or Apocalyptic or Second Temple or Ascent and Visions and all that stuff or Apocalyptic and Pistomology, that's the spot. That's like a great section of being. Is there, this will be the last question. Is there a paper that you're angling to hear? One in particular. Can you pull one out of your head? Like, oh, I saw this. I saw this and I can't wait to go. Yeah, that's tough. So there's no paper like Watchers and Bastards, Spirits and Glaciers. Tyler Stewart. Yeah. Fellow Marquette man. Right. As soon as we saw that, it's like, oh, yeah. Yeah. More Marquette connection there. No, not of that caliber, I think. No, I really, really like Tyler Stewart to work. I mean, he's incredibly intelligent and he's a good man too. Yeah, I don't really, nothing that just like screens out like in our sort of wheelhouses, but there are quite a few papers that I am interested in. It's just, there's too many right now to sort of rattle off. Yeah, there's one on Giborim in Septuagint and I don't know. I can't remember what the title was. What section is that in? I don't even know if I saw that. I don't know. I'd have to look at my schedule, but I have maybe four or five that I have written down that I'd really like to get to, including the Enoch seminar. But yeah, I know, I just was wondering if there was something that maybe I missed. And if you brought it up, it's like, oh yeah. Yeah, I'm sorry. I'm still like frazzled from all my work. Like this is the first break I've had was my plane ride here. So, you know, I'll sit down and actually go over my schedule tonight, what I'm actually doing. So, okay. Well, thanks for spending a few minutes with us. Yeah, no, it's a pleasure, always. Well, we're here at SPL in Boston now. And our first interview is with Marina Westerdahl. And I'm going to ask you to introduce yourself. We've known each other for a couple of years, but it's better coming from you to tell the story. I'm sure. So, I'm Marina. We're originally from Argentina and I came when I was 12. Been married about 18 years, have two kids. And I originally decided to go to seminary about five and a half, six years ago. I'd been a stay-at-home mom. I'd run my own business. And I just, since I was very young, I just love studying, studying scripture, reading books. And I was very involved in ministry. And there was an opportunity to go to a local seminary, Knox Theological Seminary. So, that was the beginning of my journey. Yeah, and that's where we met at Knox. So, I did an inner-term course. I don't even remember what it was called, but I know we went through... Something spiritual theology. Yeah, something like that. Sam Lamerson is the president there. He gave it a title and I said I would come. And we wound up going through a lot of the kind of content that's in Unseen Realm, Divine Council stuff. So, let's just talk about that. What was your experience in that? Well, it was really providential when you came. I had been reading some of your work. I'd been taking quite a heavy course load. I was taking a class on Ephesians, a class on John Calvin, Old Testament. And what happened was I was reading a lot through... All those three classes were taking me to Deuteronomy. And I remember reading through the song of Moses, Deuteronomy 32. And the experience that I had, which was amazing. I know you mentioned you had a similar experience with Psalm 82. But I was reading through Deuteronomy and verse 8 and 9 just jumped off the page. Right. I hadn't... It's good you were reading some... You were reading ESV? It was the ESV, yes. Yeah, good you picked that one. The first thing I did was compare. I went and opened my NIV, my NASV, and the King James. And they all had a different translation, which I would have totally missed. So I know that was providential. And I mean, I'd grown up in church, I'd read my Bible. I had never seen those two verses. So when what happened was that I couldn't get over what the verse said about God dividing the nations of the earth according to the number of the sons of God. And so I had so many questions and I decided to do my paper in Old Testament on the different, the divergent translations from the Mesoretic, the Tuogen, the Kumaran scrolls. And so that led me to your work. So I started doing... The Bibsac articles, you probably found that. Yes, I was doing online research and I was, you know, your name was coming up. And so I was reading anything that I could find that you'd written on that topic. And then, so this was fall semester of 2015. And I find out in January that, hey, Dr. Heizer is coming to teach. I was like, what? That must mean something. Yes, I was like, wow, he's coming to teach me. So it was really exciting. Yeah, well, it was fun. We had a good time. You know, there was, I don't know, it was a small number, as inner terms usually are. But, you know, it was a lot of fun. There were good questions. Covered a lot of ground in just a few days. Yeah. Oh, it blew my mind. There was so much I'd never seen or even thought about. Yeah. Well, you had my 15 years sort of scrunched into what, a week and a half or three. Yeah. Well, that's, you know, I hadn't heard some of the details of that story, but that's pretty neat. So you're in this program. You take the course and you complete whatever program you're in. It was the masters in biblical and theological studies. Okay. And then you decide you want more punishment. Yes. So tell us about that. Well, I had not considered doing doctoral work. I was just going to go get my masters and, you know, join a ministry and be a mom. And I fell in love with research. I really did. And this topic of who are the sons of God? It just led me to a whole new world of this underlying theology that's in scripture that I had missed my whole life and rereading not just the Old Testament, but the New Testament. I mean, Paul's theology about the powers and principalities. That was another class I was taking at that time. I was in Ephesians, powers and principalities. So I began to ask myself, well, Paul didn't have a New Testament. Where did he get the powers and principalities concept? Those terms, obviously it was the Old Testament. So I began to go back and then, you know, is there a link between these? So that just wanting to continue learning and finding not just the biblical studies aspect, but what theological implications are there of these sons of God? And I think there's many. I haven't, obviously I haven't started my doctoral work yet, but the more I read and the more I think of this topic, I realize that even in the eschatological terms that in the fact that Jesus didn't come just for a forgiveness of sins, there's the cosmic reason. So all of Paul's theology came alive even more by understanding a little more of the identity of these sons of God. Yeah, we were talking, it was mentioned in earlier interviews that we did. Again, podcast listeners have heard bits and pieces of that. But yeah, like when Paul talks about the resurrection, we typically think of, oh, I get a new body, that'd be neat. But again, five or six times, he feels sort of compelled by something. When he thinks of the thought of the resurrection, his mind goes to, again, the defeat, the delegitimization of the powers, the authorities, the rulers. Like, why does he make those, why does he connect those two things? Because you never hear it that way. But again, if he might have done it once, okay, he sort of had a bad day or he wanted to vary the message. But again, half a dozen times, he thinks of A and then B as the sons of God stuff. So why is that, where does that come from? You get these connection points, again, all over the place, that you don't expect to find them. And you'd never see them unless you have, again, sort of the matrix in your head. You kind of know what you're looking for. Now, again, I know you're trying to work out the details of your doctoral study, applications, interviews, all that stuff. What are your research interests? It's early, so you don't really have to have a topic, but you've got to be thinking about a couple things. Well, definitely interested in not just the identity, but the theological implications. So I would like to do some work between both the old and the new testaments. So I'm looking right now at having a Old Testament supervisor and a New Testament supervisor. But it's also important to the New Testament supervisor and the Old Testament supervisor have experience in the Inter-Testamental writings in literature, because there seems to be a progression of terms that there's a link there in the language. And so that's sort of what I would like to study. It's not clear. What you're doing, and I'm just going to point this out for our listeners, what you're doing is smart, because you just mentioned, well, hey, it's important that my advisors have some cross fertilization here, where chances are reasonable that not just maybe one person on your committee, but a few of them have run into this material. I mentioned that because, I mean, you can talk to a lot of New Testament professors, for instance, about divine counsel stuff. How does that bleed over the New Testament? And they have no idea what you're talking about. Absolutely. And it doesn't mean they're dumb. I mean, they have PhDs, they're good thinkers, they're good researchers. But when you get to doctoral work, you can really fall victim to tunnel vision, where you get funneled into one little area, whether you're interested or not, or whether you sort of feel, well, I got to do this to have a dissertation topic that so-and-so can supervise. There are a lot of people who go through that, and they're never exposed to wider thinking, wider topic areas. And they literally can get a PhD and teach 10, 15, 20 years somewhere, and have never heard of this. I've had a New Testament professor once email me about the citation in Hebrews. Again, if you're into Hebrews, you know that there's a reference to the gods in Hebrews 1, but it doesn't come from the Masoretic text. And even in the Septuagint, it's a little fuzzy. And so this guy, he's a seasoned New Testament scholar, emailed me one day and said, you know, I know this is in the Qumran stuff. Deuteronomy 32, there's something going on there. And this looks like where the citation comes from, that writer of Hebrews was thinking of. Does this have anything to do with that divine counsel stuff? And it's like, yeah, ding, ding, ding. But again, he had never really hit it and thought about it. So for you to be thinking ahead, thinking like, hey, it'd be nice to have someone who sort of knows what I'm talking about, like knows what I want to think about. That's really wise. So what's been your experience since you, again, had your cage rattled? Yes. Oh, absolutely. How about your experience talking to friends, other believers, the home Bible study thing, church, have you dared to bring any of this? I get looks when I do bring up, especially at church. I've discussed, of course, with family members and friends. There's a certain, it's almost like you can only share a certain amount maybe, and but at church, especially, they might look at me like, wow, you know, the main thing. What happened to you? And the one thing that, which was my question was, well, what about the shema? What about the oneness of God? Are you talking about other gods that makes people very nervous, especially in Christian circles? So I found that I have to be careful what I say and realize that perhaps not everybody gets us excited about this. Or is even really ready because you can, you know, I'm sure you have the feeling, you know, like I do so many times, it's, well, I'd love to answer that question, but I have to talk about these 10 other things first before the answer would make any sense. Or so that you're not troubled by the answer. So yeah, you get into that. I assume you haven't been written out of anybody's will. I know. And you're still at the church you were at before you started all this? Well, that's another story. There's some changes there, but it's for different reasons. All right. Well, well, that's good just so that you didn't sort of get drummed out. No, no, no, no. But, but I have, you know, had to with this, I have to realize that it took, it took me a long time and I didn't see it and I do see what happened as very, I mean, I had been in seminary for two and a half years already and I had never noticed. I had never had a professor even mentioned this. So, so that kind of helps me realize that I have to be patient and many people may not be interested and it's okay. They can still be good Christians and not go into this death. Now, for me, I find it fascinating and I want to keep learning about it and continue in finding perhaps theological implications for this and what I love in some of the interviews that you did with Fern and Audrey is that those, that's the practical outcome of this very wonderful and deep teaching. So, I think that there is perhaps thinking long term, there are practical outcomes to pursuing new knowledge in this theology. What would you say, again, Naked Bible podcast audience has a lot of homeschool moms in it. Really? I didn't know. A lot of moms just generally, yeah, we, it's, it's kind of amazing as we travel, you know, Tray and I and, you know, just even, you know, by myself as well, you get to meet people and you, and you hear that they listen to the podcast, but the variety is just kind of crazy. Like we were, I was at a conference two weeks ago and I'm talking to somebody in a hallway and then somebody walks by and then just stops and looks and recognizes me, I guess, from the web website. Yeah. Thanks from London. So then that guy goes away and then we resume our conversation and it happened again and that guy's from Norway. So, yeah, it's just really, and even, you know, being at the, you know, just, we were doing some interviews last night after we were done, somebody, you know, stops and says, Hey, you know, I, I'm at this, you know, such and such institution and, you know, my students, you know, love your podcast. I listen to it too. And, you know, we read the books and and you know, North Carolina, I mean, just all over the United States. It's really kind of amazing, you know, the reach. I mean, we all know what the internet is, but until you're sort of actually doing something that, you know, involves the internet and people actually, you know, my husband listens to your podcast. And many times he's like, Oh, I was on my way to work. You know, guess what? What did he do now? Well, what would you say again to somebody, you know, like yourself, you know, they're, you know, whatever, you know, station of life and they're thinking about, okay, you know, maybe now or maybe a few years down the road, I want to throw my hat in the ring. I want to actually get formal education or take courses. I mean, what would you say to them? I assume your experience, you know, overall has been a good one. Yeah, absolutely. So how would you advise someone? What are the dos, the don'ts? Someone interested in seminary training? Someone interested in seminary. Yeah. Well, I always say this, that you get through seminary on your knees. For me, it's been so much prayer. When I began the types of books that I was reading, I mean, Bovink, right, that would be quite different. Right. I'd always been a reader, but the level of reading, the amount of reading, it was, it was overwhelming. So there's an adjustment period. Be patient with yourself. Only take one, two classes at a time, if that's all you can handle. And just approach scripture with a posture of humility and realize that there's so much you don't know. Right. Yeah, that's really important. Absolutely. And you're going to find that out going through your doctoral work. Yeah. A lot of people have the impression that people with PhDs, you know, sort of, and you know, you'll meet these types, but anybody with a PhD sort of things, they know everything. That's actually very contrary to most of my experience. Again, you will meet those people that sort of give you that impression. But overwhelmingly, it's, they just get it. I know a lot about this one area, because, okay, it's within, it's under the umbrella of Old Testament. And I know a lot of this because it was my dissertation. And I had to read this, that and the other thing and, you know, basically try to cover everything that's been written on that. And that, that consumed my life for five, six, seven years. So that's really what I know. But again, if they, you know, sort of step back and look at that, it's like, yeah, that, that's what I know. But there's other stuff over here. I, you know, I'm going to be real careful, you know, what I say. And so a lot of the PhDs I know are very cognizant of that. And so that's good advice. It's almost like, I hate to say it this way, but you, I think you run into more of that when you have people who sort of know enough not to be dangerous, but, but know enough to know that they know more than the people they're ministering to. And, and again, part of there, there's, there's a, there's an arrogance problem there. There's a little bit of a, of a pride problem, but they're also sort of taught to think that way or kind of victimized because their people expect them to be the answer person. And then, you know, as you, you get four or five years of that, and you wonder, well, you know, if I don't know, can I fake my way through it? Because I want, I don't want to create the impression that I'm, you know, that I don't know things. It's, it's better to say, you know what, I don't know. I'm not an expert in this field. And that, to me, that's, that's, I actually, I think higher, higher of that person, I think highly of that person that will say, you know, I, and, and it's true. I mean, you can only zero in on a specific area because we don't have infinite intellect and time, you know, so. How did your seminary time affect your kids at all? Were they encouraging? Were they sort of ambivalent? You know, I studied, I took all my classes basically during the day while they were at school. My daughter just started ninth grade, and my son just started seventh grade. So when, when I started seminary about five and a half, six years ago, they were little, but they were in school. And they were okay. But I realized that as, as, as time went by, that it was actually a really positive thing. Because my daughter, for one class, for speech class, she actually talked about, you know, she had to choose, you know, my son picked my husband. And so my daughter picked me. So she did a, you know, I look up to my mom because, you know, she studies and she's learning, you know, different languages. And so I realized that it actually, it helped inspire my kids. So, so there may have been times maybe where, you know, mommy has to study or write a paper, so we're not going to go here or there. But overall, it's been, it's been very good, very positive. It's good to get them young. When you said inspire the kids, I thought of why I'm going to not name this person because they may be listening. But I know someone who went to school, didn't need the degree, but went to school to try to motivate their kid. Like, I'm going to take the same like courses with their kids. Well, they didn't, they weren't always in the club, but they took the same program thinking, well, you know, if dad's in there doing it, that's going to motivate them to put a little fire under them. Didn't work. Didn't work at all. You know, it was like the kid would look at him and like, I don't know why you're doing this. And then again, the fellow I know, he wouldn't quit either. So when he realized this isn't working, it's not like, oh, well, I tried that. I can walk away. I actually went through the whole degree program and didn't need the degree because he already had a good job and something else. But yeah, it was, and again, this is somebody in my wider family. So I would hear the details of this struggle. And I'm, why don't you just drop out? I mean, you don't need this. It was like computer science or something. And didn't know anything. He would tell me, no, I'm going in, I'm sitting there and we're having a test. And before I can even read the instructions, I hear, you know, these younger kids just typing out this code and thinking like, I can't keep up. But he wouldn't quit. But it didn't work. Maybe. Well, I don't know. Maybe. I mean, did his kid continue in school? He did continue. And he finished a few like, I don't know, two years or so later. But it didn't, it didn't propel him, you know, like to work harder in class or take more class or get out sooner. It almost had zero effect, maybe comic effect, I don't know. But yeah. Well, thanks for spending a little time with us just to hear your story. And again, I hope it does inspire some, you know, out in the audience because I do get a lot of inquiries about should I take classes? And most of, a lot of it is like language stuff. People want to learn how to handle languages. Should I go to school? I'm thinking about going to seminary. What should I be looking out for? And you have your sort of, your normal obstacles, the time, the expense and all that. But there are these intangibles too. If you really feel driven and, you know, you can see, you know, the use of it at the other end, it's like, well, you know, if you're convinced the Lord wants to do that, then that's what you need to do. Yeah. And my advice would be like, for me, at the time, I was really interested in apologetics. I was, you know, leading Bible studies for believers and nonbelievers. So that's what interested me. And Knox happened to be offering a class taught by Dr. Lamerson in apologetics in the mornings. So even though I was scared to go to seminary, I was very nervous, to be honest. I actually fought it for a couple of years. I thought, okay, well, so that was your first class, one class that was available in the mornings was apologetics. So I signed up and I realized, wow, I actually maybe can do this. You can do this. It's good to open with Sam too. Yes. Oh, yeah. He's a great teacher. So after that, I was hooked. So don't overthink it. Don't try to take all these hard classes right away. Just kind of get your feet wet. Yeah. So that would be my advice. That's good. Well, thanks again. Thank you. Thank you for having me. You bet. Well, we're back at SBL and we have a familiar name with us, at least to our audience, Sam Lamerson. We talked to Sam a little bit last year. And so it's nice to get a little bit of an update. So Sam, please introduce yourself for anybody new. Hi, I'm Sam Lamerson. I teach at Knox Theological Seminary in Fort Lauderdale. Mike and I have been talking about UFOs and Bigfoot for a long time. Yeah, we do that here at SBL, too. That's pretty much why I come. Okay. You want to ferret out all the abductees, right? Exactly. I'm still looking. Well, believe it or not, I've had scholars at this meeting come up to me and say, I want to tell you my story because I know you won't out me. I've actually had that happen here. Yeah. I've had it happen in other places, but never here. Yeah. Well, since you jumped right into that, you've been doing something interesting in Fort Lauderdale. Is it at your church or Yes. It's sort of through the seminary. We had this thing called Lunch and Learn, where I just pick a topic and speak like every couple of months. So I wanted to do for Halloween, something on the Bible and the paranormal. So we talked about ghosts and UFOs. And in terms of ghosts, we talked about what happened with Saul and the Witch of Endor. And then with UFOs, I talked a little about what the paranormal world is, how we are, as Christians, we believe in at least some sort of an invisible realm and that there are evil beings in that invisible or visible realm and that the evil one may be much happier to have us believe in aliens than to have us believe in an evil beings that are really going to harm us. So how was that received? How many, how many came out? It was probably 150 came out, which is we usually have about 30 or 40. So it was many, many more than we had ever had before. And it was I had a few people come up to me afterwards and want to tell me their story. And of course, I there were people who wanted to ask questions. I didn't allow them to ask questions in front of the whole crowd because you never know what could happen there. I'm pushing the envelope as it is. I don't want to make things any worse. But it was many, many people said, I'm so glad to hear somebody who knows what they're talking about, speak about these issues because so often, it's just ignored by the church. And we know that there's something there, but the church is almost, as you say in your book, it's almost non, it's almost materialistic in the way that it looks at the world. We almost get to the point where we say, well, yeah, all that stuff about the invisible realm, it's true, but we don't want to really want to talk about that. And that's very serious problem. Yeah, I've had, it's kind of interesting because again, at one of these kind of events, I've had professors from different departments, evangelical schools come up to me and lament that just exactly what you described. And some of them even went as far to say that this is going to be sort of in the future a confrontational issue that we're going to have sessions on, should we believe this, what the Bible says about this supernatural world or not, which is kind of startling, but you can see it happening with some of the like, okay, Historical Adam, these kinds of discussions because this one isn't going to become any less popular and it's so embedded in pop culture. So yeah, I could see that happening, which would be both interesting and kind of alarming at the same time, given evangelical. And I think that some of it is just the average minister is sort of afraid of it, they don't know what to say. So they just kind of let it go. And so it never makes its way down to the ground level. There are people talking about these things and thinking about these things, but a lot of it never makes its way down to the bottom shelf for people to sort of get the easy cookies and understand what's really going on. So what sessions were you able to get to so far? Anything that sort of stood out as boy, that was interesting or that was really helpful or boy, we needed to hear one on that. I went to a session yesterday on apologetics and textual criticism, which was really good in terms of how many, many evangelical apologists misuse the statistics of textual criticism, taking them essentially from FF Bruce's book, which is 75 years old. And they often even when they update the statistics, they will only update the statistics which are in favor of the Bible. So if FF Bruce says there are 5000 Greek New Testament manuscripts, they'll update that to nearly 6000, but they don't update the number of manuscripts that have been found for Josephus or Philo or any other documents like that. And so it's essentially unfair and it does damage to the gospel when other scholars look at that and say, you're just not being truthful with the text here. Yeah, yeah, like different readings, of course, you're going to get issues of lexicography, you know, with new, new Greek manuscripts and other texts. That's interesting. Yeah, it was very, very helpful. I went to Greece this summer with Dan Wallace, where we prepared some ancient Greek manuscripts for photography. His ministry is CSNTM Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts and they try to photograph as many Greek manuscripts as possible. And one of the interesting things that I found was the way that the text is presented to you affects the way that you read it. And so if you see a text without verses, it will affect the way that you read it. And I'm becoming more and more convinced that the versification of the Bible is one of the worst things that has ever happened to it. Yeah, because you tend to, if it's broken up into verses, you know, it's like you pull out one or two, you know, that these are my verses for the day, or you sort of intuitively might assume that, oh, this is a thought unit, somewhat related, or not related at all to what precedes and follows. Yeah, yeah, without any understanding what the context is without any understanding of what came before it or what comes after it. And it causes us to read the New Testament and the whole Bible in a way that we would never, ever read another book. And that's, that's crazy. We would never pick up a John Grisham novel, begin in the middle of it, read a paragraph and say, okay, I'm done for the day, pick it up the next day, turn to another page and read a sentence and say, okay, that's good for the day. We would say that's a crazy way to read a book. And yet, that's the way that many people read the Bible. Yeah, you wouldn't even do that to like a, you know, a nonfiction book, like maybe maybe a textbook because they're typically written according to an outline. But if you have a, you know, like a reference book or any sort of standard nonfiction prose, yeah, you wouldn't do that. Right. You would, you would realize that context is king and that if you can't understand what's going on, on the whole page or in the whole chapter, then you're probably going to miss what that one sentence mean. How about you're teaching anything, anything new, anything old? I'm still teaching, still teaching Greek. I love, love teaching Greek. It's just a wonderful, it's the greatest language in the world. And I love it. I also teach New Testament Survey. I haven't taught New Testament Survey in a while because of my other things that I'm doing. So I'm really excited about teaching New Testament at Knox Seminary. If you'd like to hear anything that I have to say, just go to Knox Seminary.edu. And there are all kinds, that talk I did about ghosts and the Bible, that's up on our website. And there are all kinds of other things up there as well. Yeah. And that's Knox as in K-N-O-X. K-N-O-X. Seminary.edu. So what would you recommend sort of, you know, for a survey, maybe getting into the New Testament, what kind of resource would you recommend? And have you seen anything on the tables here that you might be adopting? There are a lot of interesting things, but one of the things I saw yesterday or the day before was this reader's Bible. It doesn't have verses and it doesn't have chapters. And so it's interesting in that it doesn't say the Bible on the cover. I mean, it's the New Testament and it's essentially the message, the translation, the message broken up with no chapter divisions. So you read the letter to the Ephesians or you read the letter to Philemon as if it's a real letter. And then you can bring people together and say, instead of having a Bible study, let's have a book club. This is the book that we're going to read and we'll all read it together and then we'll talk about what it has to say. And I think people are much less afraid of a book club than they are a Bible study. And even seekers might come when you're just saying, look, this is a book. We're going to read it together and we're not going to condemn anybody. We're just going to read and see what it has to say and see how it speaks to us. Yeah, it sounds like it would be a good conversation starter, again, to somebody who's really unchurched. That's an interesting idea. Who was the publisher for that? I'm sorry. Off the top of my head, I don't remember, but maybe I can find it and email it to you and you could put it in here. Yeah, yeah. It'd be interesting. I mean, I'm going to troll all the book tables like I usually do. I've only hit about maybe 10% of them at this point, but I'll so many books a little time. That's the problem here. Yeah, there's, there's, I don't know, dozens and dozens and dozens of publishers here. And I've made the comment before a lot of people come to this because it's the only time you're going to get a discount from some of these high end absolutely places. So this is this is the thing to do even if you're not never good of the papers. If you live in the area, yeah, you know, you pay a pay a single day fee, you go in and you get books at a discount, you'll never see anywhere else. So what about anything personally that that's sort of newsworthy? I just had a granddaughter, so that's incredible. Her name is Ella Grace, and I'm going to call her L after Stranger Things. Does she have any powers? She can cry. I know that. That's, that's her biggest power right now. I'm still, you know, doing magic here and there, making a few bucks on the side, and making people laugh. So that's always going well. So that this is your first? This is my first grandchild. Yeah, L. So that's exciting. We're hoping to get a will next. Right. Yeah, there you go. Or Mike, you know, I don't know, maybe not. One of them. Yeah. All right. Well, thanks for spending a few minutes with us. I know you have another appointment that you got to get to. And I think he's standing right there to your left. So again, thanks for taking a little time with us. No problem. Thank you. See you later. Bye. Bye-bye. All right, Mike. Well, I feel for David having to get the, having the last draw, I guess. I don't know what you call it, but the last talk on Tuesday morning, hopefully people will turn out for that. Yeah. That's when the conference ends. And so lots of people are gone. But, you know, like I told him, you know, I had that slot once and it worked out really well. So, you know, hopefully it'll go well for him. He'll get a good crowd and maybe get a heckler or two in there. Well, good deal. All right, Mike. Well, we hope everybody enjoyed it. And I want to thank everybody for listening to the Naked Bible Podcast. Stubbless.