Untidy Faith

1 Samuel Introduction | Reading When Your Relationship with Scripture is Complicated

• Kate Boyd | Author of An Untidy Faith • Season 6 • Episode 1

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We're kicking off a season in the Old Testament book of 1 Samuel.

Overview of today's episode:

  • Meet this season's co-hosts
  • What our relationship with Scripture is right now (spoiler: it's complicated)
  • What we remember about the Hebrew Bible growing up
  • What we know about 1 Samuel
  • An intro to the themes and background of 1 Samuel
  • Predictions for the season
  • Tools we'll be using as we go

Resources we are using to study:


Kate Boyd - Book | Bible Studies | Coaching | Newsletter | Instagram

Kate Boyd:

You're listening to happy and holy the podcasts where scripture comes to life through a small group discussion. This season, we're taking it all the way back to the Hebrew Bible with a walkthrough First Samuel, and you get to be a fly on the wall to see what new things we learned with and from one another, as we engage scripture in community. I'm your host, Kate Boyd. I'm an author and Bible teacher who is making space in the church for Christians caught in the messy middle, between conservative and progressive, between loving the church and leaving it. We love Jesus love people, and work with God and each other for a better world. Welcome to the show. Are you disentangling your faith from the culture around you? The greatest tool in that journey for me was the Bible itself. You've probably noticed that here on the show, we love the Bible, and we take it seriously, but not always, literally. And that means that meaning can get a little complicated, but you don't have to let that overwhelm you. I put together the big picture Bible toolkit to help you understand how all of Scripture fits together in one incredible story. Learn some new questions to ask to get it meaning without getting overwhelmed, and the new connections between Old and New Testaments with a special Bible reading plan. If you're ready to get back to the basics of your faith, the Bible is a great place to start. And the big picture Bible toolkit can help grab yours today free at Kate boyd.co/bible. On today's episode, I have the pleasure of introducing you to my co hosts and this season of our journey through First Samuel. So today, you'll get to know this even co hosts a little bit better. And we'll talk a little bit about the book of First Samuel, our experiences with it in the past and what we're looking forward to digging into the most. So let's get to it. Hi, everybody, and welcome to season six of happy and holy the podcast. Woohoo. Yeah, I am especially excited about this season, because I think over the last couple of seasons, so I guess I should introduce myself first. I'm Kate Boyd. I'm your host, who has been around for the last five seasons. And this is really the podcast where we go through books of scripture in community. And I sort of, it's sort of part of my own personal value that I love reading scripture and community. And it's part of my mission to help people rebuild their relationships with scripture, when some fundamentalism has maybe warped some of that or been used against them. Or, you know, I think as you sort of disentangle your faith or deconstruct that, the Bible is one of those things you've got to work through. And we all have different feelings about it. And so I'm trying to help people figure out a way to read the Bible. And that's not fundamentalist like they've come to it. And I think community is a great, great way to do that. And so for the last two seasons, we've gone through a couple of different books of the Bible, and I've had different guests slash co hosts every episode, but this season, I thought it'd be really fun to actually have two co hosts that stay with me the entire season, so that we see how that goes and how that grows and evolves. And we are all experiencing this together and maybe that it feels a little different. So I'm really excited about my two co hosts, and I will let them introduce themselves to you. So first, Robert Callaghan. Why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself.

Robert Callahan:

Hello, thank you so much for having me on the show. And I'm so excited to be here have to say that to start off with my name is Robert Callaghan. I'm many different things. I'm a lifelong Christian. I'm a husband, I'm a father of three, a lawyer by profession. I've been living in the city of Waco since 2002. As an aspiring author, I have a book that I'm working on right now. And hopefully it will be released next year working with my agent, right about now to pitch to different publishers. So that's going on. I'm also African American. And I think that that plays into part of how I see myself as a believer right now, which is in reconstruction. The term deconstruction gets thrown around a lot and say what you want to do about it, I definitely went down. I went through that process in the last two and a half years down to like the the atoms and the molecules of my faith and have just recently started rebuilding it again. And so those are the things that I bring with me into my reading of the text and as I'm thinking about the Bible going forward,

Kate Boyd:

awesome. Thanks for sharing. And my other co hosts for the season is Amanda Waldron. Amanda, why don't you tell us about

Amanda Waldron:

yourself? Hi, everyone. I'm Amanda Waldron. I I met Kate, I think through recording on her podcast a couple seasons ago, which is really fun. But I am a clinical social worker by trade. So I have a private practice where I do therapy with people. And then I also do some faith deconstruction and reconstruction coaching as well. I live in Michigan, to some kids in foster care for fun. And I'm really yeah, looking forward to this went through a kind of a big deconstruction in my mid 20s. And kind of had some tension with the Bible during that time. But I feel like now I'm going through like, a medium deconstruction in the last few years, like I think a lot of us were, yeah, maybe in that big deconstruction, my relationship with like, Bible reading was a little bit intention. And now I feel like my relationship with the actual Bible is, I'm just trying to be more curious around what, what is the Bible? What is the Bible? Not? What were some of the perspectives of people writing these different sections? What were their motives? Why might they frame things in certain ways? So really kind of the context of where, like, where this is coming from? So I'm excited about doing this, because it's actually getting me back into the Bible. And I can sometimes yes, sometimes no doubt about that. So I got like, I got a little commentary that I am reading along with, with the passages.

Kate Boyd:

Nice. You went straight into the next thing that I want to talk about is and Robert, so you can maybe answer this, what is your relationship with scripture right now? Like, what are their hang ups are? How are you interacting with it these days? How's it feel when you do that?

Robert Callahan:

Yeah, everything that I read in the Bible now gets sifted through the filter of Jesus. And being a lifelong Christian, there's a lot of things that I have taken for granted about the text, and intuited into the texts that weren't necessarily accurate. Just because it was what I was told, or it was, you know, what I caught from the culture around me being raised in church. And so now I have so many questions about how the motives of evangelicalism as it was handed to me, as I interpreted the textbook for so now, I look at everything and analyze it through how does the square up with who I understand Jesus to be, I had to I had to get to the point where my ultimate question was, if I'm not going to fall completely off of the slippery slope that I'm just hanging on to with one finger, that's frostbitten. And I have to ask myself, well, who is who do I think Jesus was? Do I believe, who He claimed to be? Do I believe why he came? And do I believe what he said about himself? And so once I, once I discerned that, then I can work backwards? And I could think about the apologetics of the difference the the other passages that I have hang ups about?

Kate Boyd:

Yeah, I think that's good. And maybe Amanda, you experienced this too, because I know you, you are in relationship with a lot of people reconstructing or deconstructing their faith. I know that like when people ask me, how do you start? Or what does it look like? And I was like, well, like you said, Robert, I think you have to make up your mind about Jesus first. Because if you don't make up your mind about that, or interact with him at all, then the rest of it almost doesn't matter. Like maybe you don't need to unpack anything else, if you decide that that's not the That's not for you, right. And so it was sort of the same for me once I realized that, like, there was so much of my faith that was actually my culture, and not, quote, unquote, biblical, right, which I hesitate to use that word, but any other words sort of escapes me, but the way the Bible talks about itself, or reading the Bible, or what community looks like, and all these other big things, and I realized that something was off between, you know, perception and reality, right, that culture and the greater global faith, then I was like, Huh, well, maybe I realized that I was like, still in on Jesus. And I was like, Okay, so now it sort of feels like there's something worth building back and there's something that I already have to build on. But until you sort of make up your mind there, everything else felt really like shaky for me. Yeah,

Amanda Waldron:

yeah. I kind of talk about like an anchor point. There has to be something that you can go back to when everything is just swirling around. Do and for me, it was like God's faithfulness. So if God is faithful if that's the lens, if that's what I can still believe, okay, then what? What's the next step? How can I Yeah, kind of use that as a decipher for the next step or what else I'm reading?

Kate Boyd:

Yeah. I like that one to God's faithfulness because I think we also sort of undercut that too in because it's such a big theme of the Old Testament, which is also what will be, or the Hebrew Bible. I don't really like calling it the Old Testament anymore. But the Hebrew Bible, the Hebrew Scriptures, yeah, I feel like that's sort of like the theme is God's faithfulness. And I think we see it a different dimension of that in Jesus in the New Testament. But yeah, I think we miss, I think that that's a great anchor point, because it is so such a big part of the faith heritage, that or even the scriptural heritage that we consider the Bible now is built on. Thank you guys for introducing yourselves and unpacking some of that so far, I just wanted to mention, like, I reached out to both of these fine, folks, because we had had interactions before and I knew that I was looking for CO hosts, and Robert has like this, if you follow him on Twitter, he and you should follow him on Twitter. He has his way of being like very pointed and honest, with like, insight and humor. And I thought, Man, that is just like a really, I think that's a good perspective, that would be really helpful. And Amanda is like, you know, very empathetic holds a lot of tension and ambiguity for people is a great space holder and creator and is better on that emotion side where like, that's like, not my strong point at all. And so I sort of chose them because they I feel like they balanced me out who's like, like, no, but what's in there, and let's talk about it. And let's get weird. about things. I wanted to challenge myself by bringing on people who might have different perspectives, or bring out different things in the text that I wouldn't necessarily look at, because I'm looking at like, language and history. And like, I'm trying, I'm sort of like, get to, in my head about it. And so I'm really excited to have you guys on here. And I'm really curious as to what what made you say, yes. Why would would you decide that in this time when you're sort of feeling like, you know, your relationship with Scripture is maybe being rebuilt? Like, why the heck would you want to do that in public on a podcast? don't actually know?

Amanda Waldron:

No, I think, for me, there was, I don't know, I like doing things that challenged me a little bit. And I think this is, I don't know, I feel like this whole year has been kind of the three configuring of like, okay, what is faith gonna look like in the season, I've had some changes around that. And so I think it was just, I don't know, it excited me that there was some sort of an external reason to, to get into this. But yeah, and I do like having these types of spiritual conversations, too. So I think that was kind of the pool for me.

Kate Boyd:

I did stuff like that, too. For the external accountability. I was like, that's part of why I went back to school was just because it's sort of like forces me to learn the things that I would want to learn but would like not sit down and learn on my own. Robert, how about you?

Robert Callahan:

Yeah. So for me, I needed I think I needed this to help motivate me to read Scripture. Because honestly, my relationship with the Bible is so tenuous right now. Because when I open up the scriptures, especially because I am a lawyer, I knew I wanted to be a lawyer since I was 11 years old. So post 2020, slash 2021. I mean, I'm so frustrated with the nature of the church, the evangelical church tradition that I was raised in, largely specifically. And I feel like I can just drop the Bible in no matter what page it opens to, I can see something about justice and about how God sees justice. And so if it actually seems triggering to me to read the Bible, because I'm constantly having these little subconscious arguments with people who aren't in the room, who helped form my spiritual development. Yeah. And we call them the ubiquitous they in our household. And so like, you know, I'm constantly thinking, well, how can they read the scriptures in such a way that they don't see X, Y, and Z? So I needed something that was going to put me in the word again. But there's also an aspect of accountability to doing this publicly and doing it publicly and community. Maybe, you know, to publicly with the way that the internet works, but we'll see. I'm an Enneagram eight, so

Kate Boyd:

I'm not a huge pie.

Robert Callahan:

Mom Right. So yeah, I think that there's, there's something to be said about doing it in such a way that, you know, people can people can poke and ask questions and, and sort of rein me in if I need to be and what I'm hearing is it sounds like Amanda and I are polar opposites and so that's why you chose us to balance you out in the middle. She's my my kryptonite. My my auntie Enneagram eight.

Amanda Waldron:

Are you an eight robber?

Robert Callahan:

I'm an eight with an eight wing

Kate Boyd:

What are you Amanda? I

Amanda Waldron:

was six loyal skeptic. I love the Bible. But I'm skeptical of.

Kate Boyd:

Yeah. And I'm a five with four wing. So I'm like, I need to have I need to know everything. And I need to be able to talk about it in a way that nobody else in the entire world has ever talked about it before.

Amanda Waldron:

Well, this is gonna, it's gonna be interesting.

Kate Boyd:

Yeah, we're gonna, we're gonna have some fun. So the last two seasons, we have been I and the guests that I've brought on who are just like, friends from the internet have talked through mark and X mark, because it's always a good starting point in the Bible, generally, because you get right down to it, Mark wastes no time and no words. He's just like in it, and you get to see Jesus. And then x. I just X is one of my favorite books in the entire Bible. And I love walking through what it looked like to be the church in the beginning. And then I was like, Well, what do I want to do next? Because we could keep going New Testament, but I was like, you know, when I was young, I feel like I learned a lot of the Bible stories, right? Like you learned about Noah and Abraham and Moses, and like, you know, David, and all these people, and in a very sanitized way, mind you, like, somehow the flood is the hopeful thing, and not this horrible, horrible actual story where everyone dies. I was in high school when 911 happened. And so we got a lot of Old Testament right then because war was coming. And we needed to sort of like think through what it means. If it was an okay thing to be at war. The church I was in at the time, thought so and use the Old Testament to defend that, as well. As you know, I think it's constant in life that, you know, gender roles are also like, thrown out from Genesis and different examples like that. And so I would say those are the ways that the Old Testament was like, mostly expressed to me. But I think as I've been taking Hebrew for the last year, and learning like so much, and even interacting with stories that I haven't looked at in a really long time and seeing new things. And so I thought, Hey, let's go to the Old Testament, or the Hebrew Bible. And so I'm curious what your experience was either growing up or now, in your later years with the Old Testament.

Robert Callahan:

Yeah, for me, the Old Testament growing. So the first 14 years of my life, I was raised in this other black Baptist church tradition, and I'm talking about like the hooping hellfire and brimstone like, you know, Sunday morning, church service lasted all day, and there were no air conditioners inside, like that tradition. And most of the information that I got, I think, in that church context was through Old Testament, I heard at one point, some statistic, I don't remember where it came from, or how accurate is but it said something to the effect of like, black churches are, like 75% of their, their texts, or 75% of their sermons are based in Old Testament readings, whereas like, it's it's far less common in the white Evangelical Church. And I think that that's because the black church in America sees itself as a type of Israel, like we see we see ourselves like I mean, when you're looking at American chattel slavery, which was different than biblical slavery, but you know, we we have that expression that we see in the Bible that we can empathize with. And so we're, we're constantly feel like we're looking for the Messiah as deliverance as a people group and just moving through the Civil Rights Movement and particular just like experiencing that oppression, and saying how long O Lord, that's that's the context that I'm very familiar with, in my most formative base of faith. And so that's I'm far more likely, I think, to look at Old Testament, the New Testament because I, I can empathize, especially with the Psalms with David, just, you know, crying out, where are you God? I think that that's that speaks to me more than the New Testament as

Kate Boyd:

Amanda, how about you?

Amanda Waldron:

Yeah, I'm trying to think of I have any distinct memories about the Old Testament being distinct from any other scripture that was taught in the church that I grew up in. And I feel like it was pretty, pretty mixed in there. And of course, like, Adam, I've read through the Bible, like a couple of times, and so have gone through that information. But I almost feel like, there's this, like you get through half of the Old Testament, and then you skip to this New Testament. So like, I feel like now that I'm reflecting back, I don't have a lot of knowledge on kind of the prophetic books at the end of the year old testament. So maybe, maybe like the first half of the Old Testament was emphasized a little bit more.

Kate Boyd:

Well, and I think it sort of speaks to Robert's point before, you know, like, it's hard to read through the Bible as a whole and not see certain things. But when you skip over the prophets most of the time, because they don't have like fun, happy stories or stories that you can, you know, easily walk people through, like, they're actually just, they're really tough texts. And they're not just tough, like, in there, toughen Hebrews. They're really hard to wrestle with. And it's really, and you have to talk about things that are uncomfortable. And so yeah, I mean, I would say that there, I don't know that I remember much about the prophets as a young person, either. I think certain things would come out, like around Christmas time, right, when you would talk about like, the Messianic prophecies or something like that. But yeah, I mean, other than maybe Daniel, because it has some stories in it. And then maybe a little bit of like Nehemiah, because we talked about him building the wall, like stuff like that. But yeah, I don't think I think that's a good point to you. I don't think the prophets were much in my childhood at all. Okay, so we aren't, we're not going to do prophets, because like I said, that's hard. And that sort of, I think what works best here is to go through narrative. So to go through story and to talk about what we learned from there in Genesis and Exodus, I feel like are pretty well worn. And I think we know some of the things from First Samuel, but it's a place that like, we don't always camp in that later history. And maybe that's partly tied to some of that profit stuff that we maybe skip over. So I am curious what you guys know, or think or expect maybe to encounter, you know, from First Samuel like, what is what are some of your like, impressions before we even get into it? Amanda?

Robert Callahan:

There's a spot on, we'll put you on.

Amanda Waldron:

Okay. All right. Um, well, I have been reading through the first couple chapters. And yeah, there's some stories where I was like, this didn't make it to my long term memory. Is this the first time I'm reading this? So yeah, right. Like there's some of these highlights of First Samuel, but I feel like the way that I was taught the Bible, it was all kind of just leading up to David. Right. Like, the whole focus was on David and me, like, that's a big theme of first and second Samuel. But there's all these little stories at the beginning of First Samuel that I think also point to, yeah, how people were interacting with God, how God was interacting with his people. So I'm curious to see what else didn't make it into long term memory. And I'm also I've also found it fascinating to kind of just the end of the progression of Saul through these scriptures as well. Because, yeah, I think we he gets talked about in a certain way of who he was, at the end of his life, and I think it's not often maybe empathize of like, No, at one point he was he was connected and chosen and yeah, just kind of had an out. Yeah, that progression. Yeah,

Robert Callahan:

I agree. So Samuel was the setup for David, for me, up until this point, and I always saw Samuel sort of as the Obi Wan Kenobi character I'm also a huge science fiction. So just like he was, you know, the setup for the Luke Skywalker kind of character, which was David And now, as a recovering toxic male, which is going to be a lifelong process, one of the things that jumps out at me first off is just how the book just starts with patriarchy. Like, it's weird. The first thing that it says is like, you know, there's a man named Elkanah. And it's like, bro, this is not about, you know, the first story is, at best, like for you is about your wife and your connection to your wife. But like, I mean, it starts off with him being the central character, and, you know, then we get to this rivalry between Hannah and and then Penina panini. I don't know, I'm gonna go with Miami. I don't know. But yeah, like, I mean, and then like she, you know, spoiler alert, for those that haven't read the first chapter that are listening. She ends up having a son. And the whole, like, praise of her like there's, you know, almost the next chapter is her. Just saying, like, how great God is and how he's given her the victory over her enemies, which, in terms of the text, the only enemies that have been identified was Panini, like her, her rivalry with her for having children. And so it's just kind of weird. And then, and then so she, so she has the victory in that she has the sun. And then like, the first thing she does is she gives the sun to the temple priest who she knows nothing about. And the text tells us that his sons are super shady, and it's all

Kate Boyd:

fine. From there. Yeah.

Robert Callahan:

What are we doing? So yeah, like that, that I think that we're gonna think that I'm gonna be surprised by how much misogyny and patriarchy I overlooked in my youth going forward.

Kate Boyd:

Hmm. i Yeah, that's good. I would say Samuel, like you guys, it was very much like, we're just trying to skip ahead to David, because he's the one that counts. And so you hear things about Hannah. But you know, it's just she is a means to having a kid that's going to make a difference in the future. She's faithful. But that's kind of the point is that she has a son, and and then he somehow interacts with David. And Saul is a bad guy. And David's a good guy. And that's all you really need to know, like, word of the Lord. Right? And so there's just I feel like there's so much that is probably skipped over or that was framed probably differently than I would experience it now reading it for myself. And so I'm looking forward to kind of going back to these stories and seeing like, I'm just really curious to see. And I especially think these early parts, because this is sort of like, we don't really even get into David's reign. It's all the stuff before that. And so I'm, I don't feel like those are the things that we talked about when we talked about David other than Goliath, right? Like we talked about Goliath, but that that was sort of like, and then Saul just becomes a bad guy. They fight over each other and over things. And then eventually, we get David the king, and that's when everything really counts. And so I think of the Samuels, right and First and Second Samuel originally one one thing, but they got broken in half. I think First Samuel is the stuff that I'm probably less familiar with. So I'm sure I'll see new stories, but I'll also see new things and old stories. So just for everyone else, and maybe for you guys, too. I'm going to do just like a couple of points about First Samuel just so that as we go into the season, we know what we're kind of looking at, like I mentioned before, the book of Samuel used to be one. So there's First and Second Samuel in our scriptures, as they are today. But they used to just be one book called Samuel. And they're sort of part of the history, or the former prophets, as some of them are called, like, Joshua, Judges and kings fall into that this mostly takes place in Israel, or Canaan, which is the same thing at this point. And sometimes they'll go into the Philistine territory, and sometimes they'll go some other places, but it's mostly there. And it's sort of at the end. So before Israel had kings, they were like tribes, right? There are the 12 tribes of Israel. And that's sort of how they were. They were like, the Study Bible. I'm giving you guys's information from as the new interpreter Study Bible, which I really like because it focuses on a lot of literary perspectives and things that it pops out. And so this is at the end of that what it calls the tribal Confederacy. As they're going into, they decide where God is their king, and they're sort of managing as tribes. They decide they want to King like all the Other nations. And so that's sort of where we pick up in this story. And it's very similar to a lot of the history of the Bible where the theme is sort of like, if the nation is faithful, then it will prosper. Like that seems that sort of like if it's faithful to the Lord, which is like the proper name for God, that we don't always that Jewish people don't say out loud and don't right. And so I at least try not to do that as well. But anyway, so if that's sort of like the thrust of this, and if it's not faithful, then that's where you get sort of like exile and defeat and the suffering that you encounter a lot in the Old Testament. And this study, Bible says, there's like two main themes. One is the importance of good and government of good government. So you sort of see how like, God used to choose the judges, and now we've got the kings and how they sort of come together. And the second one is the complexity of relationships. So not just between these people and God, but also these people on each other, which I think Robert, you touched on a little bit when you were talking about like Hannah, and the other wife, and Elkanah. And then just like, I think over and over, we'll see a lot from like, Saul and David coming together. And their relationship is complex, and varies throughout the years, too. And so, there are a lot of different complicated people, and events and a lot of different stories and points of view. So yeah, we're going to talk about Hannah, we're going to meet Samuel, who is, you know, a judge and a prophet, we're going to meet Saul, and we're going to meet David, and a whole bunch of other people in between, I think it's going to be interesting, because there are a lot of stories. And there are probably some grisly ones, I think there's definitely going to be some violence, which we don't always see. Or we haven't really, I mean, I say that, like, the crucifixion was obviously very violent. But it's not something that like, we've talked at length that it because the New Testament is sort of like how to deal in suffering, when violence is happening to you. And this is more like, they're actually going to talk about some of the violence in the war, and battles and things like that. I think that will be challenging to me, because I know those are the harder things for me to wrestle with, like the purpose of violence, the nature of it, especially if it is written as a as a God ordained thing, as it sometimes is. Yeah. And I'm just not sure that I, I buy that. Yeah, but yeah, which makes, which makes me a bad fundamentalist, but that's sort of the point.

Robert Callahan:

Okay, do we know do Is there a theory on who wrote First and Second Samuel?

Kate Boyd:

That's a good question. It didn't say in this study Bible, I could probably look it up. But I would even say I, for me, that is even become more complex, like, even in the books that we know about, right? Like Genesis, and like the first five books of the Bible, you should always be that will obviously Moses wrote them, right? Turns out, probably not for not all of them. And not all of every piece. You know, there's lots of theories about like the four different potential writers or editors of Genesis, even Isaiah was probably written by at least three different people. So it's probably when often when they name the books, after particular people, it tends to be as using that person, maybe as an archetype for what the writing would be like, or their perspective might be like, they're trying to sort of like bolster their credibility by claiming that person that is known, and they may be in the tradition of that person. Right. So like, Isaiah may have been the first part they probably think was written by a prophet named Isaiah. The second part. And third part may have been more like, people who are prophets or writers in the tradition of Isaiah, or who are connecting some of the themes from the first part of Isaiah. But it's probably not Isaiah himself, because they're actually talking about a completely different time in Israel's history that would be post Isaias life. So and so I imagine. It's something like that. That too.

Robert Callahan:

Yeah. Yeah, I did a quick Google search on it. It sounds like that. That's the case. I've seen Nathan and Gad, or Nathaniel and Gad, were were mentioned with Samuel, when I was looking just now, that also gets into the question of like, who, who's the gatekeeper? Yeah, like if you're, if you're saying that this person is writing in the tradition of Isaiah in the tradition of Samuel than who got to decide that this person was sort of the model for the voice that should be should be elevated?

Kate Boyd:

Yeah, and would he even agree with that? You know, any mean? I think there's some of that we get into with Paul in the New Testament, there are books that are disputed that are his that are disputed whether or not they're his letters. And those are the ones that tend to have more of the problematic things like Timothy, right. And so people were like, Oh, well, if it wasn't written by him, it was either someone either trying to write in his tradition, or trying to get credibility for their point of view for because of Paul's name. So, yeah, I mean, it, obviously I believe in the canon canonicity of Scripture, I believe that what we have is, what is meant to be there. But I do think there are a lot of like, blurry things, even after that. So it's sort of weird. And that's, I would say, that's fairly new territory for me in the last couple of years really sort of like understanding some of that, how complex even the shaping of these things that I have learned my whole life are actually not just historically but in in their actual creation of them. Well, any I think we've talked a little bit about predictions, anything you're looking forward to, or anything that you're using. I know Amanda, you mentioned like a commentary you're working with, how are you? How are you guys going to sort of approach this and what are you looking forward to? And

Amanda Waldron:

yeah, I think I'm in a no, read it. With this camp like commentary, as well, and probably doing some Google searches. I think there's a part of me that's like, I need to know everything about this. But I think that's where you come in Kate with your knowledge base. So I think, yeah, I'm just gonna, I guess, come with my observation, what stands out how it's moving me being curious about Yeah, what that brings up? Nice.

Robert Callahan:

Yeah, I'm figuring out what sort of other resources should be incorporated into my reading of the Bible, because I have to determine which resources that I've historically utilized are safe and not safe. One of the things that I'm going to be leaning heavily on my wife for she is a seminary students started her first year of seminary, here in Waco this year, and she actually started using, I think it's an African Study Bible, I tried to just Google it. But I didn't recognize the one that came up in terms of the cover. But um, she's just raved about how much she's gotten from reading that along with her just regular reading of Scripture. So looking forward to delving into that. I asked her the other day if you if she had any commentaries or anything, and she had to be like five dictionaries. So you want me to go to seminary? Got it? Okay. Yeah.

Kate Boyd:

I am, I am chronically over prepared I, and apartments because I just I love getting really nerdy about this stuff. So there's a couple of study Bibles, I tend to use. One has more language notes. One is more literary notes. One is cultural background stuff that I like, I have a couple of big commentaries, like you were saying, Robert, there's like an Africa one. And then South Asia, one that sometimes I look at just to get different perspectives from outside of the American ones that I would tend to find. And then, yeah, a lot of just other digging around, I like to follow. Wherever my curiosity goes, or something that I'm curious about, I'll Google it or search in all of the books that I've purchased, because I purchase a lot of books to see if I can get something or get some theories, or ideas. And so yeah, there is not just one thing for me, it's a lot of things. So I don't encourage everyone to go to the level that I do. Because it can be fairly Yeah. Here's the 17 things I looked at for these two chapters. And it's fine. I read this journal article, and it was really interesting.

Amanda Waldron:

Here's a list of 14 books for purchase to listen to this.

Kate Boyd:

Well, I'm really looking forward to this season, not just because it's new territory, you know, content and content and context wise, but I'm looking forward to seeing what it looks like to have you guys here this whole season and and to your perspectives. And so thank you for being a part of this and for unpacking this with me today. And then yeah, the next time you hear from us, it'll be talking about First Samuel one and to the other. Thank you so much for joining our discussion today. I hope that you got as much out of it as we always do from these conversations in If you enjoyed it, please leave a rating and review on your favorite podcast player to help more people find the show and learn along with us. And don't forget to find and follow us on social media. All our links are in the show notes and I can't wait until we see you next time. Buh bye.