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Job's trying to sue God, it's diss track after diss track after diss track until he finally gets to battle against rap
God. God blesses him for being honest and says, Job, your friends were not very honest here.
It's the moral of the story that like there's a different way to go about this Christian thing. Job's last word could mean
I repent, it could also mean I'm comforted, but it could also mean I'm heated up.
It comes to a clean conclusion. I personally go back and forth every day. Okay, so tie it back to Alice in Wonderland.
Hello, hello. Welcome to Biblically Speaking. My name is Cassian Bellino, and I'm your host.
In this podcast, we talk about the Bible in simple terms with experts, PhDs, and scholarly theologians to make understanding
God easier. These conversations have transformed my relationship with Christ and understanding of religion.
Now, I'm sharing these recorded conversations with you. On this podcast, we talk about the facts, the history, and the translations to make the
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Thank you so much for listening. Now, let's get to the show. Hello, hello. My name is Cassie Imbolino, and I'm the host of Biblically Speaking.
Today, we're going to be talking about one of the books that are the most mind -bending in the Bible, the book of Job. And I don't know about you, but when
I first read that book, I was so confused. Like, is it about why bad things happen to good people or whatever it might be?
And this is something that we've already discussed with Dr. John Walton, if you were around for that episode, which was amazing.
But today, we're going to discuss it in a completely different light. Before, we discussed it from a theological protest.
What was it saying from a theological standpoint? But what if understanding Job, the secret there, is understanding it in the same way we might understand a book like,
I don't know, Alice in Wonderland? More so than understanding Proverbs. Bear with me.
Bear with me, because we are going to see this book in a completely new light today. We have an expert here that has dedicated his life to understanding it and making reading scripture so interesting, so fun, and so much deeper than what we knew before.
I have today Dr. Ryan Armstrong. You are a Hebrew Bible scholar, a linguist, and a literary mind behind your new book,
The Book of Job in Wonderland, Making Nonsense of Job's Mediators, that was released last year.
But you have education from Oxford. I'm sorry, a PhD from Princeton Theological Seminary.
You have a master's in Hebrew Bible and the Ancient Near East, my favorite topic, from Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
And you have a dual graduate degree from Southeastern Seminary. Wow, you have so many accolades.
I'm so excited for you to be here. This is really going to set apart Job yet again in a way that is maybe weird, absurd, but also helps us understand the character of God, which is really why we're here.
Welcome to the show, Dr. Armstrong. Thank you so much, Cassie. What a great introduction. It's great to meet you.
Love your podcast. I grew up reading John Walton and some of those big boys, so I feel like I get to sit at the adults' table for the first time today.
So thank you so much for having me on here. I'm so glad you're here, and you and me both. I mean, it's so amazing to be around such wonderful minds that are so wise.
How did you get into this? You know, you would think somebody with a Ph .D. would be like, you know, ancient Near East exegetical understandings, but you're like, fictional fairy tales.
How did that happen? Yeah, this is a great question. I, part of it is due to my preaching classes at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary.
I always try to open with a hook now for everything that I write or when I teach a class.
I want a little hook to kind of, we're going to talk about something unrelated, and then we'll bring it back around.
And so, for Job... You're really keeping up with the algorithm these days. I like it. Yeah, that's right.
That's right. So for Job, I was trying to think of a way to talk about his trial. I was like, you know, this is a guy who says, this is not just, and I want to sue
God. And some scholars, like Ed Greenstein, think that Job literally sues God.
It is not a metaphor for Ed Greenstein. I was like, man, this is so huge. And I feel like the past couple of decades of scholarship has really brought out the legal aspects of Job's book.
And so I was like, what is a good trial that is similar to this, where it's larger than life?
It's almost an absurd idea. It's almost impossible to get justice.
Job thinks that this God is up there, like, you did this wrong. You did that wrong. You did this wrong. No matter what he does, he can't get any justice.
And everybody is taking the side of this authority that they're all scared of.
And it took me a week to think of another trial that was similar to it. And I just kind of came across the trial of the
Knave of Hearts in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. I had read the book a few years before, and I was just like, wow, this is very similar.
And even to the point where the Queen of Hearts is called a thunderstorm several times in the book, just the way
God speaks to Job from the thunderstorm. And from there, I just started seeing more and more parallels.
And I was like, this is such a helpful way of understanding the book of Job. It was through the trial.
It was through the legal aspects, actually, that got me into Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Whoa.
Okay. So that is insane. A book that you heard years ago.
I'm not going to lie, that was the scariest of all the Disney movies. I've never liked Alice. It freaked me out.
But just the fact that a corner of your brain was like, you know what this does sound like? Did you watch it recently and you just saw it and it all just came together?
No, it was actually the book itself. I met somebody who took children's literature at Princeton University.
And she said, I read Alice's Adventures in Wonderland as homework this week. And I was like, what?
That's awesome. I want to read that. And I just ended up picking up a $5 copy from Amazon and I read it.
And as I was reading it, one thing that was really interesting to me was the way that Lewis Carroll mixes together poetry and story, poetry and narrative.
And as I was reading, I was like, wow, this is how the Bible is written. You know, like when you read the
Torah, when you read the book of Exodus, they cross the sea on dry land and the water stands up on both sides.
And you're like, wow. And then while you're reading it, the whole nation turns and looks at you and they all start singing a song together.
The Song of the Sea, Exodus 15. And it's like this whole, the whole nation sings in unison.
They break into a musical, you know? And I was like, wow, all these poems embedded in these stories.
I was like, this is how the Bible is written. And so I was reading Alice and I was like this fun juxtaposition of the story and the song.
I was like, man, there is, this is really fun. And I just kind of put it on the shelf and forgot about it until it was kind of the last stages of my dissertation.
I was like, what kind of trial do I have? And I just thought about this Knave of Hearts. I was like, let me dust this off the shelf, pull this back.
Maybe this has a little bit more, maybe this has a little bit more parallels with the Bible than what I thought the first time.
And sure enough, it was the Queen is thundering across the pages, just like God is.
Everybody's so scared. They're taking the Queen's side, just like Job's friends are like, God would never do anything wrong.
And just, you know, trying to defend God all the time without listening to Job or really looking at the evidence.
They're like verdict first and then the evidence. Exactly what the King of Hearts says, right? There's so many nonsense words in there.
Scholars, they always talk about how, I think it's funny that you say Job is confusing because you're probably just reading it in English, right?
Yeah, mostly. It's even worse. It's even worse than Hebrew.
I know. Every chapter contains about eight to ten words that never occur anywhere else in the history of the
Hebrew language. And so he's writing all this nonsense poetry together, putting all this together in this crazy zany book with these zany characters and this over -the -top authority figure.
And Job's trying to sue God, you know? It's like everything is just over the top.
And I was like, wow, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is just a great way to help me think through the book of Job.
I love this because you have so much education on this topic that you're able to say like, you know what this is similar to?
A much shorter book that us lay people can wrap our head around. So this just like not to demean or like diminish the
Word of God into something small, but it's like the concepts. It's like the Queen of Hearts. Obviously, the
Queen of Hearts is not God. I'm not trying to say that at all, obviously, but it is something that allows it to. So you're talking a lot about the trials and kind of story.
Let's say somebody's listening and they don't know Job because they've been, they don't know him or they don't know Alice in Wonderland.
They're in a different country. Could you, in like a couple sentences, because we'll dissect it right now, just in a few sentences, just kind of hierarchy, the parallels that we're about to get into.
Yeah, for sure. Thank you. So the book of Job, real quick sum up, the book of Job is about the most righteous human on the planet and then he just suffers horribly.
And then his friends come and they mourn with him for seven days in total silence. And he's just devastated.
And that's just the very beginning of the book. And then there's 40 chapters after that of Job fighting with his friends.
And every chapter is a beautiful, eloquent poem with insults and it's diss track after diss track after diss track.
And the rest of the book is a rap battle where Job is spitting rhymes at his friends, using sarcasm, making fun of them.
And they're making fun of him. And they go back and forth, back and forth until at the very end,
Job battles his way up every level of the pagoda until he finally gets to battle against Rap God.
And God comes out of the sky and starts spitting all these rhymes at Job. And Job is like, okay, let me just cover my mouth, my hand for a few minutes here.
And then at the very end, though, Job gets the very last word, which is really significant,
I think. And then God blesses him for being honest and says, Job, your friends were not very honest here.
They just blindly took my side without weighing the evidence or without considering the situation.
And that is a quick, quick summary of one of the most complicated books in human history.
Let's move to Alice real fast. So Alice Adventures in Wonderland is about an ordinary little girl in Victorian England.
And she sees a rabbit with a waistcoat go running down a rabbit hole and checking his pocket watch.
And she's like, well, there's something odd about this. This is quite curious.
She chases him down the rabbit hole and then she ends up talking to all these fantastical creatures. It seems like normal logic isn't working anymore.
Everything is upside down. The normal ways that you're supposed to do things, like at a tea party, which she trains every single day.
She knows how to how to sip from the teacup, how exactly how a Victorian tea party is supposed to be. All of a sudden in Wonderland, all the rules are backwards.
The logic isn't adding up anymore. And so she actually also is a verbal gladiator like Job.
The fantastical creatures in Wonderland are not kind or sweet to her. They are antagonistic and they are yelling at her and debating with her constantly.
So she is in a series of debates, just like Job, where she's going back and forth with these creatures, filling it with also with beautiful poetry.
And until at the very end, she goes back to an ordinary life, wakes up from a dream.
It was all a dream. She wakes up from the dream and goes back to ordinary life. And there's a moment, a little sense at the end of the book that as she grows old, she never loses that wonderful heart that she had as a child.
So they seem like very different books at first, right? There's a little girl who's tumbling out of a rabbit hole.
I read it at first and I was like, this sounds familiar. Job is like this suffering servant whose children have died.
But like I said, both of these are filled with poetry. Both of them are series of debates. And at the very beginning of both books, logic just stops working.
Job is doing sacrifices. He does this every single day. Seems to be working great. His kids are all safe.
He's rich. He's got everything going for him. He does these sacrifices every single day.
And then one day, it just doesn't work. And he's like, well, I did everything right. In the ancient world, the way that you do sacrifice is extremely precise.
And so he's, you know, I cut the animal in a certain way. I put my hands on the altar in a certain way.
I sprinkled the blood and all this stuff. He did everything perfect. He does it every single day. It's routine. And then all of a sudden, at the end of the book, he makes a sacrifice for each one of his children.
At the end of the chapters, each one of those children is dead. And so he's like, what's going on?
This logic is not adding up. Like this is supposed to protect them. It seems like it's been working every day and it's just not working anymore.
At the end of the book, Job is blessed again. Job gets his riches back, gets 10 kids.
Probably not the same ones. Although there are people that argue that he gets his same kids back. But yeah, but in any case,
Job has to go back to an ordinary life after these wacky adventures, after the logic didn't work at all, after he had to question his presuppositions about life.
He has to go back to an ordinary life after these adventures. Alice also, you know, logic just gets pulled out from under her.
The rug comes out from under her. None of the logic makes sense anymore. She goes through all these wacky adventures.
And at the end, she has to go back to an ordinary life where she's changed by all these adventures. She has to question her presuppositions.
I assume that everybody knows this is how you hold the teacup. But now she's like, well, maybe it doesn't always work the way
I think it works. Job says, maybe the world doesn't always work the way I think it works. And both of these books, they have this frame tail, right?
And then they have all the wackiness inside and they have all these debates inside. But they also, the genre that they use, the way that they play with your mind, they never let you feel safe as a reader.
They never let you feel like, okay, I'm getting my mind around this. Never. You are always like, okay.
So the rabbit sends in a little bill waiting for that invoice and then Bill starts talking. You're like, what is
Bill the lizard? Like you're, wait, that makes no sense. You have to go back and reread things that you just read that don't make any sense anymore.
You're constantly having to question your own presuppositions the entire time you read it. And that's how the book of Job is, always making you question, even the basic words of Hebrew.
If you're, it's written in Hebrew. It's written probably to Hebrew speakers. But if you're a, you know, a
Second Temple Jew and you're reading this in your native language, you're going to have to keep rereading it and figure out, wait, what is that word?
What is that word? Well, this is, I feel like something you said of like, nobody feels safe because I feel like even me as a
Christian and maybe someone listening is like, what do you, what do you mean? There's like not one way, you know, like if Job did everything right, like is the moral of the story that like, there's a different way to go about this
Christian thing. And so kind of getting right into it. I mean, the way that I understand
Job is that it starts off with Job being perfect, doing everything right. And then Satan, the enemy, and you know, there's arguments that this is hypothetical, but the enemy comes up to heaven, the divine council, and is like, well, of course you're, he's blessed.
He worships you. Like what if, or, you know, of course he worships you. He's blessed. I'm sorry. What if he took all of that away?
And so God's like, all right, go ahead, like pop off, but don't kill him. And that's a very strange start to a biblical book, more so than like,
I would say like Ezekiel, which is also wild. But how does that compare like Alice in Wonderland?
She falls asleep. She sees a rabbit, like that whole book is absurd. So it's hard to be like, that was also weird, right? Like, of course, but why does that matter here with Job?
Because we don't see it in any other book of the Bible. Yeah. So this is a great point.
This is a really insightful point because Job is extremely different from the rest of the Bible, right?
Like if you're reading the Bible, you're like, and then this happened in Israel, and this happened in Israel, and this happened a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.
Who is this guy? What does this have to do with anything? Right? So you're, how did this end up in the
Bible? I mean, it's crazy. And then there's also, it's the only place that I can think of in scripture where we get a behind -the -scenes look at heaven.
Any other time this happens, like in Daniel, there's like a mediator that's like explaining what's happening behind the scenes.
This is the only time where an author takes the liberty to just tell us what is happening in the heavenly realm behind the scenes.
And so we have these two storylines that start off and then they kind of head to a collision at the end of the book, right?
Where we have this behind -the -scenes look at heaven, and then it kind of collides with Job's own reality where it seems like Job is completely separate from the divine world.
One thing that is really important about this is that most scholars now say that Job was written pretty late in the game.
Second Temple period. So it used to be, and you probably hear this still in sermons, that Job is the oldest book in the
Bible. And there's a rich tradition of Jews and Christians thinking that Moses wrote it, actually, which is also really fun.
But more and more scholars are saying that Job is written to look and sound older than it is.
That there's a lot of these foreign language words, even the Dead Sea Scrolls. It was written in an outdated script in at least one of the scrolls where it was made to look like it's this more ancient book than anything else in the
Dead Sea Scrolls, except for the Torah, also written in this ancient script. And so it seems like it was written to look and sound a little older than it was, or a lot older than it was.
And so it's written kind of maybe in the Second Temple period. And the Second Temple period, you've got
Ezra and Nehemiah that are saying, hey, we went into exile. We really messed up bad here.
All these guys that we were worshiping, probably that one God that we should have been worshiping the whole time.
Let's try to stick with this one. All right. And so they pull out Deuteronomy. They pull out the Torah. They read the
Torah in the street. Everybody's crying in the street and making confessions. We were wrong. We really messed up.
And that's Nehemiah 8. And then five chapters later, it's all fallen apart. Everybody's like, well, okay.
Yeah, I want to obey God, but I don't know if I'm down with all this stuff. Nehemiah's beating people up in the streets.
If they married a foreign woman, he's like pulling their hair and cursing at him. He's yelling at the priest, you need to sanctify yourself better than you are doing.
He's yelling at people that are breaking Sabbath. He's like going crazy, right? And so there's this younger generation that's like, is this really what
Deuteronomy is telling us to do? And I think that's how Job was written. I think Job was written at this time when, what if there's a guy that does everything right?
What if there's a guy that does everything perfect? Is he really going to get blessed? Is this what Deuteronomy is really trying to tell us?
That you do everything right, you're going to get blessed. You do everything wrong, you're going to go into exile. Maybe there's, maybe we should ask some more questions about this.
Whoa, whoa. I wasn't ready for that. That's a hot take.
Yeah, I guess so. This goes back to, it's like a pattern interrupt. Yes, a pattern interrupt.
Yeah, that's a good way to say it. Yeah, so this younger generation that I think the author of Job is very serious about his faith, but I think he also wants to rethink his faith a little bit differently maybe than his society or than what he's being taught all the time.
And this again is very similar to my man, Lewis Carroll, who is in Victorian England.
Victorian England was a time where England went from this humanist, Enlightenment -style party culture that was drunk all the time to a super prim and proper religious culture where we do what is right all the time.
And so the Victorian England is... I wasn't ready for that. That's how that's how
Queen Victoria would have said it. So, and so they're in Victorian England and especially the kids books are like the most horrifying part of the culture.
There is a woman named Mary Martha Sherwood. Martha wasn't enough. She didn't marry and Martha in her name.
Mary Martha Sherwood. She wrote a book, the bestseller while Lewis Carroll was growing up was called
The Fairchild Family. And so, or sorry, The Fairfield Family. The Fairfield Family.
So The Fairfield Family is about this group of super Christians, this family that is super Christian.
And they learn all these moral lessons all the time and everything has a clear -cut moral lesson and everything is black and white and this is how you do and this is how you don't do.
There's one chapter called The Fatal Effects of Disobedience to Parents, where the parents tell a little girl, now don't play with fire.
And then and the next page she burns herself to the ground and all the kids are crying and they're like, oh no, if only she obeyed her mom, then this wouldn't have happened.
This is why we always need to obey our parents. And then it's even worse because she wasn't a
Christian. So now she's still burning in hell. It's what all the kids say. Yeah. So this is the kind of books that was bestsellers, right?
And this is how Lewis Carroll grew up reading these books. And with Alice in Wonderland, there's a
Lewis Carroll scholar named Edward Giuliano that says, Edward, Alice in Wonderland is a revolution in kids literature.
Where what if this little girl just has fun? What if she asks questions about everything and there aren't answers for everything?
What if there's no moral of the story? There's one point where she's arguing with the Duchess and the Duchess says, everything has a moral if you just look for it, right?
And if you just ask the right questions, you can find the moral. And Alice says, what if there is no moral to this story? And she says, what a stupid child.
This is very similar to Job's Friends, right? Job's Friends. You wouldn't even know about that like sarcasm or like the satire of that statement unless you were there, unless you like understood the
Fairfield family in comparison to like what he was writing. Like we would understand that because like we couldn't reference
Veggie Tales and be like, wasn't that crazy? Because we experienced it and how different Christian faith is today. But like that is the type of context that I feel like we miss when it's like, that's why it relates.
But yeah, absolutely. I mean, okay. So some of the language that is referenced within speaking on context.
What is it? What are some examples of like the words that even Hebrews when they were reading it in Hebrew were like, what's going on?
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Thank you so much. Now back to the show. Yeah, so there's a lot of these and they're really fun.
And I think one thing that I'm really proud of with my scholarship is that scholars for generations have been trying to figure out these words, but they've been kind of quick to say that maybe scribes also don't understand these words and maybe they've been making mistakes.
And from my research, it seems like looking at the Dead Sea Scrolls and comparing it with the medieval manuscripts that we have of the
Book of Job, it seems like the scribes were very careful in preserving the things that look like mistakes.
Even when something doesn't make sense, it seems like it's very intentional to keep that going for a thousand years.
And even in today's printing editions. Like we don't know what this means, but we're going to write it as it was as it was seen.
Yes. So for example, when God comes out of the sky, God speaks to Job from the storm wind and it's all written as one word in Hebrew.
It's all written from the storm wind, one word, and the word in the middle, the letter in the middle, it's kind of like from, is written in an odd way that makes you read it all as one word.
It would be kind of like if I wrote from the storm wind, all as one word, and I put the M in the middle as a capital letter or something like this, where I'd really try to draw attention to this.
And so God comes out of the sky and speaks from the storm wind, all in one word, which is odd and unusual.
And you know, at no point was a scribe like, okay, well, let's just separate this. The scribes are like, this is whoever wrote this.
You could call it a mistake, but it seems like it's maybe more than just a mistake.
It seems like it's an intentional subversion of your expectations that maybe you have certain expectations when you come to wisdom literature or kids books, right?
You have these genre expectations where this is what I'm going to get, and then the rug gets pulled out from under you and you're like, well,
I don't know what to expect anymore. And then even the very language itself, the rug is pulled out from under you and you're like, well,
I don't know what to expect anymore. Another good example of this is actually in the
Elihu speeches. Elihu uses a couple of terms here. There's one,
Pata 'ehu, which is the Hebrew word, Pata 'ehu, which people have debated for 2 ,000 years what the word is supposed to be.
There's two words in Hebrew that are pronounced Pada. One is with one letter and another was with another letter.
So one means to ransom or redeem, and the other means to set free. They're kind of synonyms, but people have just debated which one it is for 2 ,000 years.
You've got the medieval rabbis arguing about which Hebrew word is supposed to be and why it's spelled like this. But you have both letters there when
Elihu says it. Both letters are there, Pata 'ehu. And so it's like, wow, why are both of those letters there?
This makes no sense. Hebrew language is written in three -letter roots. The whole language is with three -letter roots.
And so when you see four letters, he really stands out in Hebrew, really pops in Hebrew.
I can't think of a parallel in English, really, but maybe something like, what's the one that everybody says?
Disestablishmentarianism or something where you have tons of morphemes all packed in together and you're like, well, can't you just say that in like three different words and tell me what it really means?
Is it possible that some of these words are either idioms, like by the skin of our teeth, you know, or like it's raining cats and dogs, or could it be like made -up words like when
Shakespeare made up a bunch of words that like now we understand because they're used so often. They have their denotation.
But is that possible here? Would that be expected from that time?
Okay, Cassie. I like your thinking here. That's pretty good. Yes, I think that they are made -up words.
And so I actually compared for Elihu from Pata 'ehu, where he says, is it to ransom or to set free?
I compared this to some of Lewis Carroll's made -up words like frumious and Lewis Carroll says in his introduction to Sylvia and Bruno.
He says, you know, if you decide in your mind that you're going to say fuming and furious at the same time, he said your mind might drift a little bit to the left and you're going to say fuming furious.
If it drifts a little bit to the right, you're going to say furious fuming. But if you have that rare gift of a perfectly balanced mind, you're going to say frumious.
And so Lewis Carroll has all these terms like this, frumious and frabjous and brilliant and all these terms that he makes up.
And a lot of them follow this this pattern where they will combine two synonyms. So fuming and furious, they're two synonyms, but you put them all together into frumious and you get a new word.
He just coined this word for the poem Jabberwocky and the Book of Job. A lot of these nonsense words actually fit this pattern where something like Padaehu, where it's like double the length that it's supposed to be, is two synonyms, to ransom, to set free.
And Elihu says this mediator is going to fransom you from the pit, is how
I like to say it, to fransom you, where he kind of creates this new word where we actually do know what it means.
We know what it means. We intuitively, right? We kind of figure this out as to, we know what ransom means.
We know what to free somebody. You fransom somebody. You don't have to ask too many questions about it.
Yeah, I am guilty of saying, how are you? Gruel, you know, really gruel.
Grud, grud mostly, actually. I'm great and good. Great and good. I do that all the time.
You have a perfectly balanced mind. Lewis Carroll would love to talk to you. Exactly. That's what I like to think too.
Not that I have dyslexia. Maybe you should write another book of the
Bible. That is so amazing. But I don't know.
Maybe this is like, maybe like, people back then would never, because they were so holy, people would never speak so ineloquently.
Am I ignorant to think that? Oh, I think that,
I look at the Bible and I just see so much fun. I think, you know, we talked about already, we talked about the
Pentateuch is written like a Broadway musical. I think the book of Job has tons of jokes in it.
Like I see, you know, we, of course it has horror. We always remember
Job as horror and Alice too, Alice. A lot of like remakes of Alice focus on the horror of it because it's scary to have a little girl running around in the woods by herself.
You know, it's horrible to have a man lose all of his children. And so there is horror in there, but there's so much dark humor.
Like Alice has so many death jokes in it, which is not par for the course for Victorian kids books.
Usually death is extremely serious in those books and Job also, there's tons of death jokes.
He's making fun of his friends. He's like, you know, you are so wise. You remind me of the last time that a human was born from a donkey, you know, like these kinds of like things where he's like just insulting his friends, but it's such sarcasm, you know, it's amazing.
And so I think that Job especially and a lot of Psalms too. I think this this happens throughout the
Bible and maybe we don't I think we don't talk about it enough, but the
Bible has a lot of irreverence in it and sometimes it wants us to get down and dirty have a little fun.
Sometimes I completely agree. My siblings and I talk about this so often. We're like Jesus is so funny.
Like there is that one passage where they're like, he's got Jesus is like go on. I'm not going to go to the festival with you.
So Jesus was like go without me and the next verse is like so Jesus went and it's like wait, what's going on here?
Jesus is like I'm not going I showed up surprise. That's something my sister references quite often, but I agree.
I think that the Bible is funny and people might be afraid to say that because it's like trying to be disrespectful.
It's like it's not I think that this is you know, our faith. I think this is our God. We have a sense of humor because he gave us one but that is
I would have never thought that Job had jokes in it. All of them went right over my head.
Maybe I just thought he's being a little spicy sometimes. But again, it's the Bible so I can't assume you know what
I mean? Yes. Yeah. So there's one that was a scholar in the 1950s that was looking at Job 7 and said wow, this is really similar to Psalm 8 and then over time.
It seems like more and more now is this kind of a hot topic with scholarship where most of us do think that Job is kind of quoting
Psalms as a parody Psalm 8 is where the psalmist says who am
I that this Almighty God would think about little old me and of course for the psalmist.
This is wonderful, right? This is such a blessing that God would think about me the Job quotes almost word -for -word the same thing and says who am
I that the Almighty God would think about little old me every single second of every single day.
Could you please give me a break once in a while God where he thinks God is out to get him and he's like, you know, the
Psalms may sound great to you when everything's going great. But sometimes when you're suffering when you just quote
Psalms of people's face, it can be more hurtful than good sometimes. And so these parodies of the
Bible itself like they have a powerful message there. And I think that I think you're right.
I think that the Bible really wants to get down and dirty have a little fun. Let's really be raw and honest sometimes instead of always have to feel like we have to be sanctimonious in a way
Job's friends are kind of a parody of sanctimonious people, right? They quote
Proverbs at you and quote Deuteronomy 32 at you all the time and just clean up your act and everything's going to be fine.
You need to be more holy, you know, and at the end God's like that's not what I'm looking for running my own podcast.
I'm always moving too fast. I'm finding guests. I'm editing episodes. I'm creating reels or guesting on other shows not to mention.
I just live in a world that moves fast notifications trends endless to -do list, you know, what feels like a blessing and all that slowing down.
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Take a breath slow down and dwell in the good things now back to the show that is so refreshing but also scary because it's like is can
I wear jeans here? You know, like I just think like can I wear jeans to this church? Can I wear sweatpants to the church? Like you don't want to be suck.
You don't want to be blasphemous. You don't want to be sacrilegious. You don't want to disrespect the word of God.
Like you are to enter his presence. Like it's a holy presence. You should you know, there are things in Deuteronomy.
That's like, yeah, we don't have to do them today. But like they served a purpose of showing how holy and separated from us. He is but like to see this fun and like to see this element of God in the
Bible where it's like God's like you can look the part but I still know your heart. Like I know you're a funny person cast.
Why not make a joke if I know like I created you that way like I totally understand that but like that's why
I don't want to start this podcast because I was like, I sometimes I make jokes that don't land in our route, you know, sometimes across the line and I don't want to cross the line with God.
So it's almost like where else in the Bible can I do this?
Like where else in my faith? Can I do this without crossing that sacrilegious line, you know, like I assuming there are no sins being broken.
Like, you know, is this like a I can go on a hike instead of Church. Is it like I can make fun of some of the scripture in the way that we just did not like, you know, the one of those like Jesus said he wasn't gonna go and then he showed up like that's hilarious.
Objectively. That's funny. But I don't I think there's a fear that I feel that maybe others feel of like I'd rather completely opt out of any humor in the
Bible by because I don't want to risk the sacrilegious. You're right there.
There's always a balance right? I think I mean, I think for Job Job is about wrestling with God is about telling being honest with God when you're mad at God tell
God that you're honest. Don't be like these friends that just flatter God and act like you think everything is okay when you don't so Job is about being honest, but sometimes you you also need the other thing, right?
Sometimes you need to say I just have to let go and let God right like we always need both and are not sometimes we need one.
Sometimes we need the other the other sometimes we need to yell at God and sometimes we need to give up and say I don't know what's going on, but I need to trust
God right and I think there's always this balance of sometimes sometimes it's okay to make jokes and and and you know, yeah, we're jeans to church or whatever but sometimes in some context, it's it's it's it's it is disrespectful or people will misread it or whatever and you don't want to cause people to stumble either right that aren't ready for it.
So there's I think you're right. I think there there needs to be a balance and I think I think that's what I one thing that I really love about the
Bible. So we have this whole conversation happening in the Bible right is that we have all these different voices.
It's different authors. It's not one author that just gave us the whole Bible. It's different authors that have a different want us to think about God differently or want us to have a different perspective or want us to approach
God differently even right that sometimes you have people that are that are like Joseph that are just doing it.
All right all the time and then you have some people that are that are like job that he's not he's sick of doing it right all the time.
I like that. I like that showing up honestly and almost like not being a poser like I think that's like maybe the line that I just needed to draw for myself of like showing up with God of like God.
This doesn't make sense and I can tell you that or like oh, yeah, I do all the right things but like in my heart of hearts.
I hate it. Like I should just be honest with God of like I know supposed to but I don't want to so God like and that's where I've honestly felt a lot about like sin in my life where I was just like I love this in God.
Why do you hate this in and I think just like being able to be honest with God of like I know I shouldn't but I want to but you think it's bad.
So like I'm not going to lie to you like I want to I'm probably going to do it but you don't want it. So like well, let's just start that conversation.
So like my heart can be your heart and see why you hate that. I don't know if that's that's just what I'm gleaning from this but I really like the honesty of it.
Yeah. Yeah, the honesty. I think the honesty is so huge. I like the way that you think that to think through that too with with sin or with with different things in our life where it's not always just about just about extremes, right?
Like sometimes we just need to sit and be honest and find nuance and I think that but Job is kind of pulling the rug out from everything that you assume you're you know, you feel off balance the whole time you read it and you're like,
I don't know who's going to be blessed at the end of this book and and at the end is the honesty that's blessed the authenticity that's blessed and I think
Job really wants us to see some nuance in the world Job really wants us to see that things aren't always black and white and and human intellect is is limited can only get you so far and you just gotta you just gotta be honest about your limitations.
Would you say that's where his friends failed is that they were pushing him to be inauthentic? Yes, I would actually.
Yeah, I think that for in Job 13 Job actually cites
Leviticus 19 at his friends Leviticus 19 says a friend love your friend as yourself, but when we quote that verse, we don't realize that it's actually in a legal context because in the ancient world, yeah, it's in the ancient world.
You are they don't have a legal system like we do. They don't have an official courthouse where you go there and you get your thing done.
They would have judges. Sometimes I would step up and they would have especially at the city gates.
They would have judges that were there but usually it's like a wise person in your village. So you go to an elder in your village or maybe a witness that saw something happen.
Like this guy was mowing his yard and cut off my favorite flower and so you get a witness or a wise person to adjudicate right and so Leviticus 19 says if you are called on to adjudicate like specifically legal language of four judges and says if you are called on to be a judge in a dispute, you cannot favor the rich and powerful or the poor it says you have to be fair and you have to be honestly weigh the evidence and so in chapter 13
Job says to his friends, he says you are not following Leviticus 19 and he follows
Leviticus 19 very closely in structure and in the same words the same vocabulary saying that a judge should not make assumptions before considering the evidence a judge needs to be honest here and honestly listen to what
I'm saying and honestly weigh the evidence and you guys are just blindly taking the side of the rich and powerful who is
God, right? So Job is like I'm here at this lawsuit against God and you're just blindly taking
God's side because God is rich and powerful now at the end of the book. Yeah, the word taking taking taking sides in my book.
I translate it as give deference to give deference towards somebody this is used in Leviticus 19 and also
Job 13 and it comes up at the end of the book to when God comes to the friends and says hey y 'all been taking my side.
I'm going to take Job's side right here use the same word at the friends and says I'm giving deference to Job because you all did not speak honestly of me the way that Job did and that word honestly is only used one other time in the
Bible it's in Psalm 5 where it's contrasted against flatterers.
So some people flatter with their lips, but I speak honestly is actually says they have no honesty there.
They're there do not speak honestly. They flatter and so at the end of the book, the only other time is using the Bible is Job 42 at the end of this book where God comes to the friends and says you did not speak honestly about me.
I think God is saying you've been flattering me. You've been trying so you took my side without looking at the evidence you need to be a good friend to Job a friend loves at all times.
Sometimes we translate that word as neighbor, but it's actually the same word that's used of Job's friends through the whole book.
So this the Job's friend. So how to be a good friend a friend loves at all times that is also in Leviticus 19 a friend loves at all times by being an honest friend by being an honest judge that really looks at the evidence and really considers the case of your friend and so God says you guys have been taking my side.
Thanks, but no, thanks. I don't really need that. You know, I need people that are going to be honest with me the way that Job is
Job in chapter 27. He says God took away my justice. That's really honestly speaking, right?
And I don't think that Job had all the facts, right? I think that he was speaking honestly. I think that's why he was blessed.
It really makes me think of like people in hard conversations. It's like oh just like tell not like tell them what you want to hear or like just don't say anything at all.
It's like we so often mostly myself like I can tell you the truth of like I think that's wrong
XYZ thing, especially like holding other Christians accountable or I could just like let you do them because you're a person of Authority like this is a stupid example, but it's like probably the most like PC when
I can go into is like right now. It's the Met Gala. The Met Gala was yesterday. I don't know much about fashion, but I know what looks good and a lot of these looks are horrible, even though they're made by like the best designers in the world.
It's like if I met them the nice thing would be a lie to say the best thing ever couture or I could be honest and be like,
I don't get it. I don't understand it. I'm not trying to be mean but like honestly, I don't I don't think that's as aesthetically pleasing as you think it is.
And do you feel like that's the same thought of like being honest with someone of like I know that you're a power.
So I want to respect you and give you flatter. I want to tell you that you're great because you've earned it your God, you know, you're you're the
Pope. You're the president whatever it might be but it's like at the end of the day. It's better not to flatter that person of Authority with respect but to be honest with where your heart is.
Yes. Yeah, very much in in my book actually compare it God to Mafia boss when
I talk about this where there's a kind of a Mafia boss the movie three amigos.
Have you ever seen that film? Anyway, there's a they got a
Mexican filmmaker Alfonso Arau to play El Guapo and he's this evil villainous murderous guy and he has the all these henchmen that are always flattering him all the time and there's one scene where he's just it's he gets one of his henchmen.
He's like, are you telling me the truth here and and it's like this moment where the henchman is so scared because he was flattering the
Mafia boss. And I am and I'm like this is kind of how God is you right? God hears us praise him all the time, right?
God hears us. Praise God. We praise God praise God praise God, but sometimes we don't want to right and and and God knows when we don't want to and I think that this also goes back to the very beginning of the book of Job when
Satan is like look is he doing all this for free like the word in Hebrew for his job doing this for not as translated as not sometimes or his job doing this for nothing right in modern
Hebrew. They use that word for free. This is hidden. This is free and I think that's a great translation for Job one is job doing this for free.
And so Satan says is job doing all this for free and God says, well, you know, what do you think?
He's like, well, you protected him so much. He's rich. He's has everything that he wants. Of course, he's going to be praising you all the time, right?
And God says we'll take it away and let's see if Job curses me and so Job loses everything. And so the question is is
Job going to curse God and I think the Satan I think there is something here where Satan is.
I think there is something here where Job doesn't really curse God probably right?
Some people argue that Job does. I don't think he does but it seems like if Job had kept flattering
God if Job had kept being righteous, we would still be questioning his honesty at the end of the book, but I think
Job's willingness to immediately in chapter 3 start saying I don't think this is right.
I don't think this is just I don't think God is treating me, right? I think Job's honesty there goes back to the
Satan's challenge where is Job doing this for free? I think the friends are saying flatter God get your stuff back, right?
The friends are saying flatter or flatter God and die right like just end all this and I think Job's willingness to be honest goes back to the
Satan and says I think Satan was wrong. I think that Job is not doing this for free.
I think Job is genuine here. There's this genuineness that Job proves by fighting with God and fighting with God to the very end shows that Job does have this honesty that Satan has been questioning.
Yeah that and how often are we more more willing to like opt out then like really lean in and like understand why
I'm like, okay God like I'll just I'll just take it like that's what you've got whatever and kind of opt out of the conversation but Job's willing to like lean in and be like but why
I don't understand because I have been faithful like yes, and you've blessed me but right now this isn't justified.
So why and because of that I am questioning this and because of that like I don't understand it's it's not from a place of like now
I hate you because you took away the things that on earth made me feel good. It's I know a God that's no longer working in the way that I believed he worked and now it's just confusing.
Yeah, you're right. Yeah, and Job is part of a long tradition of wrestling with God right like the word
Israel means he wrestles with God is named after a guy that got in a literal fist fight with God until God hit him below the belt right like there's there's a long tradition
Habakkuk all the prophets Jeremiah wrestling with God saying this is not right God you could even put
Jesus on the list like take this cup from me. I don't this can't be the right way to do it. There's got to be some other way right this wrestling with God and I think last week
I was talking with my students about about this concept of wrestling with God and and what it means for Job and Elie Wiesel wrote a book called
God on trial and he said it was based on actual situation in Auschwitz in the concentration camps in World War two where some of the
Jews put God on trial and at the end of the book they say I'm sorry give away a spoiler alert at the end of the book.
They say God is guilty. God is guilty. God should not treat us this way. This is wrong for God to do
God should save us and God doesn't and then they pass out their prayer books and they go about the rest of their service and it's like sometimes you don't know you don't know why and you think it's wrong, but you know, where else can
I go? These are the words of life is kind of a way that a way of understanding maybe this kind of faith through struggle is like it's hard.
It's hard to know why it's hard to live this life without all this understanding, but where else am
I going to go? I just got to keep keep the faith in some way. Yeah. Well kind of coming to the end of the book the rap
God battle. I love the way you put that and chapter 38 is the best book and the best chapter in the entire
Bible in my opinion, like it's amazing spitting bars. Like were you there when I marked off the dimensions?
Tell me where are they? Yeah, there are a couple pages like in Deuteronomy where I'm like, oh this is insane.
Like this is the worst type of torture I've ever heard in my life. But like 38 is insane.
Okay, so tie it back to Alice in Wonderland. Is this like when you were like reading the rap
God scene where you're like, oh, this is just like the courtroom scene in Alice in Wonderland. Actually, yes,
I feel like for God speaking at the end there are some differences.
I feel like for the Queen of Hearts fits with Job 9 where Job is saying
God is this petty fault finder looking for anything wrong just want some excuse to punish us so bad and this off with his head off with his head off with his head like this is
Job 9 Job talking about God when you come to 38 Job the way that God talks around the issue so much is so fascinating, right?
And I do see there's kind of this culmination of the trial of the name of hearts to where nothing makes sense and you're going back and forth with all these people that are just blindly taking the
Queen side. But at the end everything like the pack of cards goes up in the air everything swirls around and Alice wakes up from the dream and I feel like that's kind of where where you get with this amazing vision of God at the end of the book and and you're right.
God is so sarcastic, right? There's some places where God's like well tell me since you know so much right like I'm quite curious what you think about my creation here
Job like or why don't you go fight with Leviathan for a few minutes and then come fight with me when you're done with that, right?
Like it's like like wow so much sarcasm, but also so much wonder and so much sublime and this all the
I mean things about creation that scientists still have no idea how they work and that are in Job 38 and so there's this this wonder happening also and I think this is kind of like Alice coming out of the dream and then back into reality all of a sudden
Job 42 like catch my breath. What just happened here?
I feel this same kind of sense of wonder at the end of Alice the epilogue of Alice like coming back into ordinary life like wow, this was larger than life.
What is happening? Okay. Do you feel like Job exits with answers like very clear with like, okay, all of these bad things happen to test me and it all it all it just came down to honesty.
Like do you feel like it comes to a clean conclusion? No, it's and it's even worse in Hebrew than it is in English at the very end
Job's last word. I think most English translations say I reject and I repent in dust and ashes something like that in Hebrew.
That word has three different meanings and even in ancient translations. They have three different ways of reading this.
So the word repent it says a mass when they Humpty in Hebrew the word repent it could mean
I repent it could also mean I'm comforted but it could also mean I'm heated up.
So is Job more angry or is he comforted or is he repenting and I think that the author is kind of like an in English in English.
If I use the word like sanction if I put sanctions on you, you're not allowed to do it.
If I sanction you you are allowed to do it, right? And so a clever poet will make you come away wondering what is it?
Is it the thing or is it the opposite of the thing and this is like Job is he more angry or is he repenting here at the end of the book?
And I think that the author is very careful with this word choice and the author really wants us to make a decision, but you have to make a decision from the entire book, right?
Does Job repent or is Job more angry? I personally go back and forth every day.
I don't know if he's more angry or if he repents, but I feel like just that question lets us know that we're not always going to get set answers all the time.
And I think for Job at the end of this book, he gets a couple of I do think that he gets a couple of answers.
There is one question that Job asked throughout the book is make known to me why you are doing this to me make known to me the list of accusations is what
Job asked for. He says it's in chapter 10 verse 2. It says it's chapter 13 verse 23. It says make known to me the list of accusations, which is a question that is impossible for God to answer because there is no list of accusations
Job was doing everything pretty much, right? Like it's a bet with Satan has nothing to do with punishment or anything like that.
God doesn't need to justify this by calling it punishment, right? And so there is no list of accusations impossible impossible for God to answer that question.
And so God says where were you when I made the foundation of the world as Job a question that is impossible to answer but God uses
Job's exact word twice where God says make known to me this word outside of Job is only used to ask of Revelation from God make known to me something special God and so Job says make known to me my list of accusations why
I'm being accused of and so Job said God says the only time this is not used of God is
God telling Job. I want you to make some revelations to me. Where were you when I created the earth?
I think this is a subtle way for Job to say. I was asking things that I didn't really know about and I think this maybe he doesn't have all the answers, but he the answer is that he doesn't have all the answers.
He presumed that he was being punished him and his friends are like, why did you why did
God do this? Was it right for God to punish you? Was it not right for God to punish you? Nobody said maybe
God isn't punishing us, right? Maybe this isn't or even discipline. Maybe this isn't even discipline or punishment or anything like that.
And at the end of the book, I think that Job's the last words he's
I translate them a little bit differently than most translators and I think that Job is saying I spoke things too wonderful for me to be on over my head.
And I think he said and then he says make known to me and I think he's saying that when
I said make known to me I was asking for stuff that I didn't really know what I was asking about. So I think Job gets a little bit of an answer mostly just to say you don't know all the answers.
I think it's kind of like now, I don't know what are those great great stories of of a person who makes a great journey to find eternal life and he finds out just living a life that is meaningful here will last forever or something like this, you know, or like I want to know the truth of whatever and he gets there and the truth is that there is no truth though.
The truth is that you you can never know the truth, right? And so I think for Job like he's like I want to know why this is happening and he says
God knows all this stuff. I just want God to give it to me and at the end. He's like, okay, I can't always know everything.
In fact, I knew that I didn't know enough but now that I know that I was presuming stuff that I didn't even know that I didn't know that I didn't know in the first place.
It says that I you know, make known to me why I'm being accused. I think at the end Job realizes well, even that was a presupposition.
Oh, so would you say like just kind of wrapping up like the people that read Job and they're like I still
I think that was rude. I think that was rude for him for God just to decide that he was going to test Job without any justification and now
Job just has to accept that, you know, I feel like that'd be a pretty like surface -level like, you know, interpretation of someone listen to this on 2x speed.
What would be like a good prayer, you know, a good prayer for that person of like God make known to me at your will like have a prayer like surrender but also like genuine like that.
I want to know like I don't I'm not comfortable with ignorance here. Yeah, this is such a this is a powerful question.
Actually, I'm just I feel like me five years ago needed this. Yes. Yeah. Yeah, I think for Job it's definitely
Job's honesty that's blessed right and and he wants to know again. He's never it's like he he is so curious.
He's not satisfied not knowing but at the end of the book, he really has to be honest that we can't know.
So maybe maybe that's maybe that's the key right there is being honest that we can't know keep fighting for answers, you know, keep asking
God why or keep asking God keep talking to God from your heart.
Don't give pretense, but at the same time, I think Job learns this humility of this this humility that comes from honesty that I I can't know all the answers.
I do think that Job gets a little victory at the end too. I think that seeing God is a huge victory for Job.
He was fighting for that from the very beginning. God is totally silent. There's not even a message of no prophet explaining why
God did all this right and Job's like I want to see God face -to -face and fight with God face -to -face and the friends are like what just say some prayers up to the sky.
And at the end Job sees God. He says I've heard you with the hearing of my ear, but now my eye has seen you and I think
Job says look, I know even more how little
I know now that I see God and I heard Job 38. All right.
I just got to acknowledge that I can never have all the answers, right?
This is one thing that John Walton's interpretation is really good at bringing out is just the lack of answers in Job is such a powerful message.
Yeah, I think John does a or dr. Walton. Sorry does a great job of just being like why do I serve God because he's
God like not because he gave me back like 10 children alive or dead whatever it was or you know, 10
X my wealth. I worship God with her without that because it's God and oh my gosh,
I literally had somebody last week be like you're Christian. Why why are you Christian? And like I wasn't ready to give a defense for my faith at the time, but I was like because it's
God and like but how do you know he did that and I was like, this is a wild way to go about this, but I'm like because he's got really scared of being held hostage, but it was like that is at the end of the day.
It's a it's a God. It's a human question with a God -sized answer. Like you just can't say because he's
God to somebody that doesn't understand but like it's our job to help them understand and then I think you know, my conversation with dr.
Walton about this was phenomenal, but you're just echoing it like it's a willingness to be honest that I don't know and that's it and yet I'll still worship.
Yeah. Yeah, because he's God. I feel like there are so many biblical characters that would give that same answer, you know, like why are you faithful because he's
God like it's there's so many ways of saying it right because he's God because he's God because he's
God right there's so many and so many characters will say the exact same words with a different a different sense to him, right?
So how would you just like final question with a Christian who is like, okay, so Job wasn't literal.
How do you think that they should navigate that as like a story in the midst of like the living word that like we're supposed to take on as truth.
Like how should we in our human mind be like history history history. Here's a random story. That's supposed to teach a lesson back to the regular programming.
Like I don't want to dilute the word of God, but like obviously it serves a purpose. Obviously, it's spoken word.
Obviously it has all these things but I think like again, it's a pattern interrupt for people to be like, so there's just fantasy fiction in the middle of the
Bible. What am I supposed to do with that? How do you how do you navigate that?
This is a good question. So for me, one of my former teachers John Selhammer, he used to talk about how half the
Bible is written in poetry and you can't really interpret poetry like a list of propositions, right?
Like poetry, there's nuance to it. There's song. It's there's Psalms where like there are
Psalms that don't even have trust statement. It's just like God has abandoned us. Do you want to read that like a list of propositions?
It's a poem, right? It's a poem. It's it's conveying emotion. There's so much more there than it's more truth than if it were telling you a list of propositions.
If it were if it were laying stuff out like God is like this and God is like this and God is like this like you would be like, okay, this
I guess this is what I have to believe now, right? But when you have a human telling you God has abandoned us and it's hard to live my faith.
It's there's something else there other than just something historical. There's something powerful and emotional and more truth than what you would get from just a list of propositions.
And I think Job is the same way that for for Job whether or not he was a real person or what happened.
I think the author of Job took some creative license and rewrote it as a rap battle like the like the
Hamilton the musical, right? It's like you see this this whole rap battle in the
Bible and there's something more powerful here than just telling you a straight story about Job fighting with his friends or fighting with God that there is that putting these in poems and using these nonsense words and making you feel off balance the whole time is there's more happening here than more truth than what you would get with just a list of propositions.
Oh such a good explanation. I feel like anybody that's like about to read Job. It's like listen to these first just like in the right headset, you know, because you get so caught up in like language.
You don't understand and it's so unfamiliar and like just the concept. So thank you for making this like understandable.
This is this is so good for the early Christian and I think I spoke with Dr.
Walnut like maybe a year ago. So this is just such a good renewal for me. So thank you so much for sharing your work on this.
Yeah. Thank you so much for having me. You're you asked such great questions and I love your podcast. I'm so impressed with the way that you've built such a media
Empire here and it's so well organized and you get great guests and I appreciate you letting me be on here.
Of course, but before you go and all of that was covered in the grace of God. It's wild that this is blown up.
But how do people get in contact with you if you're having courses? Are you teaching breakdancing classes?
Are you? Oh, you know a little something about a little something something I see. B -boy Lucy Goo.
He's teaching me. Okay. I'm not making up things.
Dr. Armstrong is a dancer. He's professional B -boy. Oh, that's that's my my secret hobby on the side.
That's my. Are you where's the glass at? I'll go. Secret identity. Oh, yeah,
I am. So for Hebrew Bible, I actually just today hot off the press have agreed to join
Georgia Southern University's Religious Studies faculty. So anybody looking to study Bible come on down to Georgia Southern.
Let's let's do it. It's we have a good major a good program. They're great Department for Religious Studies. And so that's
Georgia Southern. So that's where I'm going to be teaching. I'll be teaching biblical studies there Old and New Testaments and then and yeah, and you can also go to my website ryanmarmstrong .com
very hopefully that's easy to remember. I don't know but I try to update my blog when
I can I keep I you can find a list of all my publications there. I actually did did publish a little piece about hip -hop history in February.
So loose goose is coming back through every once in a while, right? I feel like every time I I get
I get so professional and I the loose goose has to come back out. Gotta balance the universe with loose goose.
That's right. Shout out to my crew the Dynamic Rockers still killing it killing it out there.
Shout out to them. Where can people buy your book though? My book? Yes available on Amazon or through Oxford University Press every once in a while.
They'll have deals. It's it's about I think 35 bucks. But they have deals. Sometimes you can catch it for a little bit a little bit cheaper, but yeah, it's available on Amazon or Oxford University Press Book of Job in Wonderland.
It was really fun to write. I really think I think it's really helpful for me to think about going through the
Book of Job as kind of a fun romp across Wonderland or across the land of ooze, right?
So so hopefully hopefully you have fun with it too. It's it's I don't skimp on the Hebrew with it.
Like I don't really skimp on the scholarship, but I try to put most of it into the footnotes. So if you don't know
Hebrew or if you don't know biblical scholarship or history that well, you can follow along for the most part and try to bring in a lot of fun
Alice stuff and three amigos and actually quote dumb and dumber in it at one point, but don't tell my my dissertation advisor that the next one.
So I remember from our notes. The next one you're writing is on Ruth. That's right. Yes. I'm working on a
Ruth project right now. I'm really excited about it and looking at Ruth's relationship with Deuteronomy and also the relationship between Ruth and and Samuel the
Book of Samuel. So David but one thing that's really fun about Ruth is that similar to Job is that she asks us to look at the nation of Israel from an outsider's perspective, right?
So again, you're reading Israel Israel Israel Israel and then you're reading about Israel from the eyes of somebody else that's coming into the nation an immigrant woman coming into the nation.
Now, how do we look at ourselves? So I think it's really going to be a really fun one to write. I'm really looking forward to it.
I've really really enjoyed the research for it. Yeah, I can't wait to have you back on to talk about Ruth.
So thank you so much. Everybody every link is going to be hosted in the show notes below. So definitely read on more but thank you so much.