Theology in the Raw - 750: #750 - A Theology Geek in Youth Pastor’s Clothing: A Conversation with Dr. Joey Dodson

Episode Date: July 29, 2019

On episode #747 of Theology in the Raw Preston has a conversation with Joey Dodson. Joey is Preston’s best friend and the two of them are a recipe for disaster. In this podcast, Joey and Preston talk about the historical context of the Bible, fascinating parallels between Greco-Roman culture and the New Testament, and a botched prank toward some Scottish Jr. High girls while they were (mature?) Ph.D. students. Joey is associate professor of New Testament at Denver Seminary. He completed his PhD (with Preston) at the University of Aberdeen, Scotland and also studied at the University of Tübingen, Germany. His wife, Sadie, was his elementary school sweetheart, and they have five children: Mattie Mae, Kinobi, Cheetoh, Iain, and Caspian. He loves speaking at churches, conferences, camps and retreats as well as hiking, reading, watching sports and hanging out with Preston of course. Joey’s a nerd, who has written a number of articles for academic journals such as Novum Testamentum, Catholic Biblical Quarterly and the Journal for Jewish Studies as well as essays in various volumes such as Paul and the Apocalyptic Imagination, and Reading Romans in Context. He is the author of A Little Book for New Bible Scholars with E. Randolph Richards, and The 'Powers' of Personification: Rhetorical Purpose in the 'Book of Wisdom' and the Letter to the Romans. He is the editor of Paul and the Second Century with Michael F. Bird; Paul and Seneca in Dialogue with David E. Briones; Paul and his Greco-Roman Philosophical Tradition with Andrew W. Pitts; and Paul and the Giants of Philosophy with David E. Briones. Follow Joey on Twitter and Instagram Support Preston Support Preston by going to patreon.com Connect with Preston Twitter | @PrestonSprinkle Instagram | @preston.sprinkle Check out his website prestonsprinkle.com If you enjoy the podcast, be sure to leave a review.

Hello, Theology and the Raw listeners. Thanks for joining me on this extra, extra, extra special show I have on the podcast today, my best friend, Dr. Joey Dodson. If you know anything about me, you might have heard about Dr. Joey Dodson. We go way back. We met at Aberdeen University where we were both doing PhDs in New Testament studies. University where we were both doing PhDs in New Testament studies. And as you will see from this podcast, or I should say, as you will hear from this podcast, where I guess we're not the typical kind of PhD-ish scholarly types. And you're going to hear some stories about why that is. But I just, I'm so excited for this episode. Joey is super brilliant. He's super funny and he just makes the Bible exciting. You're going to hear all kinds of stuff in this episode about the context of the Bible, about lots of parallel stories that you know from the Bible and the parallel stories that, you know, um, from the Bible and, uh, the parallel stories that existed

all across the ancient world that resonate with some of the biblical stories. You're going to be stretched. You're going to be challenged. You're going to laugh. You're going to cry. Um, I think you're going to really enjoy this episode. I had such a wonderful time catching up with my good friend, Joey Dodson. So please give it up for Dr. Joey Dodson. All right. I'm here with my best friend, Joey Dodson. Joey, yeah, thanks for being on the show. I can't believe that I rarely, I think you've only been on the show like once. Is that correct?

Once or twice? Right. I'm sorry, man. It's okay. I don't feel like I'm very good at podcasts anyway, so it's awesome. So I've got a video of you, and i haven't seen you in several months you look like super skinny and in shape even working out or drinking your green smoothies or what i'm doing that weird vegan thing being evangelical and vegan you know it's just i want

to be that 0.01 are you under are you under like your average weight or is it just the camera i mean you look like really good man you're not gonna put this on the podcast are you oh yeah dude oh yeah oh yeah very embarrassingly uh no i just didn't just in the vegan diets i've been doing for about two years and uh yeah i feel like i'm where i need to be wow and you yeah i mean you exercise a lot, right? I do. I haven't enlightened the move, but I do like to exercise as well. So you were at Wachita Baptist University for how many years?

10 years? 11. 11 years. Longest I've ever been anywhere. Yeah. Right. And then you recently, as of a few weeks ago, moved to Denver, Colorado to take a job at Denver Seminary,

which I'm really excited about, dude, because I love Denver Seminary. I think they're doing great work there. Tell us about that whole transition. Is it going well? It is. I feel like I'm still on vacation. Yeah. So I've been here for a month, but I've been back and forth speaking at youth camps and things.

Okay. And so I feel like it's a great vacation. But God's fingerprints are all over it. It's like it's custom fit for us. I've never found an organization that balances faith and scholarship as well as Denver Seminary. And as you know, that's my heart as well. It's almost like Reese's Peanut Butter Cup, the Easter version, where the chocolate and peanut butter is absolutely perfectly. Yeah.

The ratio is perfect. Denver Seminary is close to that. That's my impression. And from the people I know that are professors there, people I know that have gone there, they seem to be passionate about the church, about the gospel. gospel, and yet very, and yet, and yet intellectually, like very capable, not only capable, but also very, and I don't know what term to use here, but very fair, balanced, non-angry, you know, even talking to Lynn a few weeks ago on the podcast, who's your dean, I believe, right? And professor, you know, she said, yeah, we have complementarians, anti-galitarians, and we actually get along well.

Like we actually don't have one kind of sub tribe that we must all fit into. We value the diversity and humble humanizing, agree to disagree kind of conversations. I mean, we've only been there a few weeks, but is that, have you sensed that spirit there as well? Definitely. That's awesome, man. So my first Joey Dodson story, I'm at, I'm actually in the office of Simon Gatherkle, our, who ended up being both of our PhD supervisors. And I had been in my PhD program for about six months and we're getting a fresh round of students coming in.

And Simon said, yeah, you know, I got we got a guy coming in doing New Testament studies. He's doing some work on Paul. His name is Joseph. And he's got three or four kids. I forgot how many it was at that time. You know, so I had this image of like for some reason, like kind of tall, slender beard, thick glasses, kind of a nerdy guy, you know? And then, um, a few weeks later, maybe a couple of weeks later, I'm in the library and, um, I'm, I'm going down towards the theology section and I, I see this guy coming at me. He, I don't know, part of this may be fictitious, part of it may be true, I don't know this part of this may be fictitious part of it may be true I don't know but he's got baggy pants he's got a low beanie and I'm like who is this flipping guy you know like

he took a wrong turn what's he doing at the African library turned out to be Joseph aka Joey Dodson I was like this guy looks like a failed youth pastor more than a staller. But shortly into our PhD programs, I'm like, that whole persona just didn't, I mean, you were actually a geek. I mean, like you would rather, when you had that whole vibe going on, you had the youth pastor thing, you've been a youth pastor, you can bottle it up with people on the courts. I mean, you can do, you can play that whole world. And yet you absolutely love studying Greek and Seneca. And as we'll talk about it a little bit later, you know, Hercules and Jesus parallels or whatever. I mean,

do you remember that at all? Or what was your first impression with, with us connecting at Aberdeen? I remember coming into the office and you were sitting there with Simon and he introduced us. That's my first time. Oh, that's right. Okay. So that might have been after he met.

I know he meant, I know you're hearing about your name before I saw you. So that's right. I think there was another time when you came in. I was like, yeah, that didn't, that didn't really fit.

But yeah. We had a whole California vibe going on. SoCal guy. So what's that vibe? The surfer boy, man. I don't know if you know this, but do you remember me growing my hair out there? I do, yeah. I didn't cut it for like a year and a half, maybe two years.

I was like, man, I'm not going to cut my hair kind of like Samson until I get my PhD. But, man, it got so nasty, man. I do not. I've always wanted to be, like, a cool, like, long hair kind of guy. It just never worked for me, so I haven't done it since. You, on the other hand, have our protesting hair. You've been doing the shaved head thing for a while, right? I have been, yeah, and it just stopped growing back, so.

Hair's overrated. So you grew up in the South and you grew up, I mean, doing ministry at a really young age, right? I mean, you started doing youth ministry, I mean, just right out of high school? 18 was my first youth pastor position. Yeah. When did you start getting interested in like scholarship? Like when did doing a PhD in biblical studies come on the horizon? Was that early on as well? Or is that kind of a later thing?

My sophomore year of my college, Dr. Scott Duvall approached me. I had him for Greek. And he said, Joe, you have a lot of volume. I'm sorry, you have a lot of noise. I'm sorry, you have a lot of noise, but I think if you pursued biblical studies, that would give you some volume. And I encouraged me to take Greek with him that May, doing a Greek reading of Ephesians. And intensive term, I was there with Justin Harden and Ben Blackwell, and got up at eight o'clock every morning and translated Ephesians until about four. And that really was a turning point that I saw the word of God, I memorized the word of God,

I connected with it in ways I never had before. And at that point, I was like, that's what I want to do with other students. And of course, Scott Duvall, he's great at also bridging. He referred to himself as a carburetor, which I don't know anything about cars. So but but I think he said he likes to take what's in the academy and filter it down for educated lay people and people at the church and pastors. And so that's kind of the vein that I followed. And, you know, again, he has all these one liners that I'm not sure he probably even remembers. But he told me as well that you can produce fruit the rest of your life, or you can produce fruit trees. And pursuing biblical studies helped me produce fruit trees and pastors. So that really was the turning point, having that voice speak into my life.

And you've got disciples kind of scattered all around, man. I mean, I meet people mainly on like social media, but at conferences and stuff who have studied under you and you've had, you know, some level, if not a significant level of impact. I mean, is that is that exciting for you to see all these little dots and disciples running all around or is it scary? I don't want to call them dots and disciples. They've you know, I'm just a drop in the bucket of what they're doing, but I'm proud of them and excited. And it's awesome. Now, if I have a theological question or a Greek question, I'll email Dr. Madison Pierce or Dr. Bresch.

Or if I have a theological question, I'll email this person or that person. And so they're standing on the shoulders of a hobbit. They're giants standing I love SBL, ETS, IBR because I get to reunite with all of them, find out what they're doing in their research and how they're also producing those fruits. You've turned out some sharp students too. I've talked to some of these

students or kids or whatever, but man, they're killing it with scholarship and just thinking and writing them. They are truly the next generation of Christian leaders. It's pretty amazing. Yeah. Again, I'm humbled.

It's just a drop in the bucket of what I've done in their lives. They already were great. So, yeah, I don't take credit for that. So you go to, you went to a couple different seminaries, Southwestern and HBU. No, not HBU. Wait. Yeah, not HBU. Wait. Yeah, that's right. So I was at Southwestern when it was at HBU. Cause I was doing, I was a youth pastor in inner city Houston.

So I did my seminary with Southwestern at HBU. And so it was under David Capes was my mentor there. Yeah. And then went over to Aberdeen University where we started hanging out. There were two... This is Theology in the Raw, folks, so just prepare yourself. Theology in the Raw could actually just summarize those three years in Aberdeen for us. Theology in the Raw could summarize my entire time in Aberdeen. When we hit it off, We were both doing Pauline

studies, both doing kind of early Judaism and Paul and both of us interpret Romans 7 correctly, that it's not talking about a Christian. And so we kind of hit it off early on. Do you remember that first there was that one conference

we were both involved or invited to be at. It was that small kind of invite only thing on Paul and apocalypticism, I think. And it was like, yeah, that's right. Yes. Right. And we were like, yeah, that was awesome. And Simon picked us to be like chauffeur these guys around and everything. Yeah. Douglas Campbell. Oh, man.

I couldn't even talk to him my tide was tongued and lou martin i saw lou martin i remember one time i was driving that little tiny car that i had it's like a clown car and i had like lou martin doug campbell and one other person it was like the three main kind of like paul and apocalyptic kind of people and most of my audience might not know what that means it doesn't really matter but anyway it was like man if i crash this car that whole movement will go down in flames because at the conference if you remember uh douglas campbell at duke was uh introducing his apocalyptic paper. That's right.

And in the middle of that, Friedrich Avent-Marie, was he at Munich at that time? Where was he? I think he was at Munich, yeah. He's passed away since. He has, yeah. But a Lutheran background, and he got so frustrated at Doug Campbell's, he interrupted the paper. Do you remember this?

Nein! Nein! Nein! Das ist nicht wahr! Das ist nicht wahr! I was like, what the fuck? We were going to throw things at one another. Oh, man. And Doug Campbell just cried and smiled.

It came out like he was just intentionally pushing Friedrich's buttons. Well, Doug Campbell has that. That's where I met Trolls and Berg Patterson as well. Who introduced me to Seneca. Is that where your thing on Seneca, your little, your little Seneca fetish really started kicking in. Was that that conference with trolls? It was the first time I heard of Seneca that I really like heard of him.

Like I'm sure I read things about him before, but his first time where, cause I was wanting to do Roman seven and I shared my thesis with Lou Martin and Lou said, yeah, that sounds interesting, but not very convincing. And I think Simon had kind of said the same thing. And then Trolls said, you know, this sounds a lot like Seneca, and went on for about 30 minutes connecting Romans 7 and Seneca. And then John Barclay was there, and he was the one who told me, you know, there needs to be more done with Romans and the wisdom of Solomon.

And so that little conference was just like the second week that I was there. Oh, right. I had a bigger impact on my direction and scholarship. Yeah. Wow. That's right. That happened. Yeah. That was my first summer. I came in in January. You came in that summer. I didn't realize, yeah, you were right. Wow. So that's when your thesis really took on. So your PhD work, and I don't want to bore my audience too much, but your PhD work was on, I know, right?

Charlie Brown's teacher. It was on the Wisdom of Solomon and the Book of Romans. was on the wisdom of Solomon and the book of Romans. Can you, can you give us the youth pastor elevator pitch version of, of what you were studying to somebody who might have, you know, maybe a first year Bible college degree under their belt? Well, I haven't read that book in so long. I've forgotten. Right. Should I wrap it then uh no uh in romans paul uses personification so

he personifies the law it sneaks in the back door rather than just saying god gave the law uh creation is not that which is going to be renewed but she's the one who sticks out her neck stands on her tippy toes or tiptoes how do you say it in idaho um looking for redemption uh righteousness by faith, actually quotes scripture. And so Paul has all these personifications in Romans that are, it's unusual. We don't see them as much in his other letters. So why does Paul use personification? The student who wrote Wisdom of Solomon was very influential.

He was probably like the C.S. Lewis of the New Testament day of the first century. So a lot of people were drawing upon him. A lot of scholarship before said that even when Paul writes Romans 1 and 2, he has a wisdom of Solomon right there beside him. And he also uses a lot of these personifications as well. And the question was, and when it comes to Romans, a lot of people were like sin and death. Are these demonic powers or are they just a rhetorical device? But they were were loggerheads and so that was kind of the fight going back and forth and so my question was not are they

personified powers or rhetorical device but why is paul using them in the first place so i went back in the first century uh looking at uh why and when was personification used. And often it was used when you had tricky issues dealing with the problem of evil. And so the wisdom of Solomon and Paul personify when you're asking this question of what about the redemption of Israel? They use personification. And so what about the role of the law? And so rather than God giving the law, it sneaks into the back door. And so I was looking at why Paul used personification in comparison with the wisdom of the law. And so rather than God giving the law, it sneaks into the back door. And so, uh, that, that I was looking at why Paul used the personification in comparison with the wisdom of Solomon. That's interesting. So yeah, wisdom of Solomon, if for those who might be familiar,

it's, it's part of the so-called apocrypha. Um, so if you're Catholic or Orthodox, it's in your Bible. Um, but yeah, it's, uh, it's a fascinating book. I didn't do it. I, I, you know, read it a few times, but haven't, haven't done the extensive work you've done with it, but it's a fascinating book. I didn't do it. I read it a few times, but haven't done the extensive work you've done with it. But it is, I mean, if you just read it once and then read Romans, you're like, man, this sounds, it certainly reads at least portions of it like a dialogue partner. And some metaphors and phrases are almost like, man, cut out of the cloth of the New Testament. You know, for me, and this is why I did a PhD in early Judaism in Paul, and I think you did too, is just to see how important the Jewish context is for the New Testament. The New Testament is simply a document within the larger world of early first century, not only Judaism, but also just Greco-Roman kind of thinking and writing, right?

I mean, to me, that was the biggest takeaway, apart from whatever I proved in my thesis, I can't even remember, but just living in that world for three years, you just can't read the Bible the same after that, you know? No, there's this constant, seamless interpenetration between Judaism, Greco-Roman philosophy, and early Christianity. Yeah. And fascinating, and you go down that rabbit hole, and it goes, goes, goes, goes, goes. Yeah.

I'm weird. So our mutual scholarly interests kind of began our relationship together. But I think our relationship was crystallized when I came to you in your office and said, Joey, I got a problem. office and said, Joey, I got a problem. I've got two little kids at home who are trying to sleep. And I got these junior high girls who keep doorbell ditching my apartment and they keep waking up my kids and my wife is furious. So and this is before I became a pacifist. So you know, Aberdeen never gets warm. And so the water is always cold. I'm like, okay, I got a plan, Joey. I need some help.

I'm, I, I'm going to, um, get a bucket of cold water. And when these girls come by and ring the doorbell, I'm going to reach over the fence and, and, and flood them with a bucket of freezing cold water. And what did it for me in far as far as our friendship is you didn't, you didn't blink an eye. It's like, you didn't look up from your desk like yeah sure what time i was like really you don't have any moral issues with this and you're like yeah 12 30 i'll be there i needed somebody to kind of send the signal from across the street like okay now um our plan failed because contrary to what i was expecting they actually actually rang the doorbell and crossed the street.

So I was there. Did you have the bucket or did I have the bucket? One of us had the bucket. I thought we both had buckets. Oh, did we both have buckets? Oh, that's right. No, yeah, nobody's across. Yeah, we both had buckets.

I saw some of them crossing the street, so I put my bucket down. I'm like, ah, we missed them. But then somebody ran by. I'm like, dang it, I could have really doused this girl so here's two fathers husbands phd students trying to throw on our lunch break trying to throw a bucket of cold water at a bunch of judo girls oh man anyway i don't know where I was going with that. Anyway, so let's talk about Seneca. Who is Seneca and why have you been so interested in studying Seneca and in particular the resonance that Seneca has with New Testament thought, in particular Pauline thought? line thought yeah so Seneca was a stoic um which is a Roman philosophy that was very popular um and he's the most prolific he wrote the most about stoicism in the first century and so uh you may be familiar with his brother um Gallio who was in Corinth he was the governor of Corinth

that's his brother yeah that's right so I was just in Corinth a few weeks ago yeah and actually the you have Seneca's name in Corinth. So right across from the Bema, the Judgment area, there's a stone that has Seneca's name on it. Seriously? I missed it. Yeah, so I was really geeking out when I was there last March. I had Paul right behind me and Seneca right there. Because you remember the Christian stood right before Galileo. Yeah, me and my kids reenacted that whole scene, yeah.

Yeah, exactly. And so really significant. Seneca was the tutor of Nero, but he knew that Nero was going to be a monster even from the very beginning. So he writes this book on Providence. Nero ends up executing Seneca along with the rest, and Seneca quips, of course he's going to execute me. He's going to execute me. He's executed everyone else. But yeah, it was,

it was almost like he knew he was raising out Lord Voldemort, you know, the dark Lord with that. But yeah. So you may be familiar with Marcus Aurelius. Yeah. Yeah. So maybe just from gladiator not to bring in fight, but yeah., yeah, so Marcus Aurelius would kind of be like the pop star. He would be like the Taylor Swift to Seneca's U2, if you will. Our rolling star. I don't know who would be the – Well, I knew Marcus Aurelius was a stoic,

but I didn't know he was that high up in the kind of like stars of stoicism. Well, he's the star. He's more popular because of his meditations. His meditations is almost like the pop music of the Stoic. But Seneca's is much deeper. So he wrote all these essays and letters. Okay. And dealing with some of the same issues that we see Paul dealing with.

Okay. And focusing on moral formation. And yeah, focusing on moral formation. And yeah, so. So the ethics of Stoicism is very similar to Paul, right? And can you give us some examples of that? Yeah. Well, one thing I like about Seneca is that whereas Paul would say in Ephesians, don't let the sun go down on your anger. He doesn't really go into depth on how do we overcome that anger. And so he mentions that in passing. And I think, of course, it's Paul's Holy Spirit-centric ethic. But with Seneca, he has like three books on anger and how to overcome anger and why to

overcome anger. And so there are some scholars that say that Seneca was right on the threshold of Christianity and didn't even know it. However, according to church tradition, Seneca ended up becoming a believer. And so the early church fathers referred to him as our Seneca. Yeah. So there's this great book called Paul and Seneca in Dialogue with Brill that you can get a copy of. And the very first essay in that has the 1,000 years of Paul and Seneca. In the Middle Ages, there was such a fascination with Paul and Seneca that there were these letters that were written between the two,

kind of a fanfare, fan fiction type idea that happened to introduce pagans to Paul and maybe vice versa, Paul to pagans as well. Interesting. I've reviewed that book, but I haven't read it, but you get a free copy. I think I have. And it's really expensive. So then you can sell it right back on Amazon. Make some money. So, so yeah,

give us some touch points between new Testament ethics or specifically Pauline ethics and Seneca or Stoic ethics that would be very, very similar. Like if Paul and Seneca were in a room, where would they be like just amenning each other on ethical points? Yeah, Seneca and Paul both depict themselves as being crucified, which is really unusual. They're the only two people that I know in the first century that have this idea of, whereas Paul would say, I've been crucified with Christ. Seneca has this idea of I've been crucified with Plato and with Cato and the great philosophers. Both of them use this depiction in response to these haters who are hating on them, accusing them of hypocrisy. So Galatians for Paul, and it's in the good life for Seneca. And so in both of them with that, not only is it the same context, but the cross represents sin.

And so Seneca says, hey, why are you guys giving me a hard time? I'm on my cross and I'm not perfect, but I'm trying to get off of the cross that is sin. And so Seneca says, hey, why are you guys giving me a hard time? I'm on my cross, and I'm not perfect, but I'm trying to get off of the cross that is sin. And the same way you crucified, vilified Plato and company, that's what you're doing to me, so I'm in good company. And he says, I'm trying to get off my cross while all of you are laying on your crosses, your sinful pleasures, not even trying to get off, and spitting on those who are at the bottom of your cross, mocking you. And then you have Paul that, of course, says that I died to sin on the cross. And for Paul, he's been crucified with Christ, but not just with Christ, but the believers are also crucified with him.

And so you have this idea of the cross being that which represents sin. And for Seneca, the place that you want to get off of, and for Paul, the place where sin goes to die, and he relishes, he glories in the cross, in contrast to Seneca. Now, Seneca, I would assume, isn't thinking about Jesus, probably not even aware of that, maybe. So there's this other, there's kind of a pre-understanding or another category of cross sin being crucified that exists kind of outside of the crucifixion of jesus that maybe the crucifixion of jesus participates in but doesn't necessarily create if that if that makes sense there's there's a pre-existing kind of idea out there of crucifixion and sin.

Again, we kind of thought Paul was seminal with this idea. I mean, we could go back to Deuteronomy where it curses everyone who hangs upon a tree. But Seneca is the very first one that we have that we know of, aside from Paul, that is going to connect sin and crucifixion. aside from Paul, that is going to connect sin and crucifixion. But Seneca, he also lists the three most glorious deaths, one being, of course, Socrates, and the other one, this guy named Regulus. Regulus was a Roman general who fought in the Punic Wars back when Rome was fighting against Carthage, and he was captured and he was crucified.

But in his crucifixion, he overcame Lady Fortune, the goddess Lady Fortune, and Ta-Damonia, the demons, and so he overcame through his crucifixion not only the Carthaginians, but also these demonic powers who were after him, and so it was super popular. Everybody writes about it. Cicero seems to fangirl over Regulus. It was so popular that by the middle of the first century, so the New Testament was written in the middle of the first century, this was part of the education. It was the Roman propaganda, and it was part of the public education of the kids, the story of Regulus. And so when we get to the early church fathers, they're going to point back and say, hey, you can't say that Christ's death was shameful because you use your own

Regulus as an example of that. And so here you again have them drawing upon these Roman history stories to contextualize the gospel very early on. Wow. Do you think that the New Testament retelling of the crucifixion of Christ, I guess I should say, do you think that some New Testament writers who are retelling the crucifixion of Christ were thinking of that Regulus story? Is that could that be an actual backdrop? And is it almost like an implicit critique of that story? Or how would you or is it hard to tell if there's an actual backdrop? And is it almost like an implicit critique of that story? Or is it hard to tell if there's an actual relationship? Yeah, correlation causation, of course. But we're not quite sure, the evangelists, how much they're going to draw upon that.

I do think that in Colossians 2.15, when Paul talks about this triumphal procession, oh, by the way, Regulus was led in a triumphal procession by Lady Fortune before he overcame her. And he gave his life as a ransom for these. And so since it was part of the Roman propaganda, I think the Colossians has some anti-imperial or super imperial. Do you want to explain what that is? Anti-imperial, where you had these kind of themes that are paraded around in the first century Roman Empire.

You know, the Roman Empire brought peace and prosperity and good news to all the land. And, you know, all these things that if you look at the New Testament, it sounds like these theological themes, I'm using scare quotes here for theological themes. There are theological themes, but they're also very political in their background. So they're, um, so, so like the proclamation that Jesus is Lord is curious. There's an implicit kind of whisper in the wake of that, that says Caesar is not, um, yeah. Um, so you're saying that this might have that kind of counter imperial.

That's right. Or maybe a super imperial. So I use this story of growing up on the Arkansas, Louisiana line. I was raised as a Razorback fan and our enemy who we thought was our enemy was University of Texas. So we defined ourselves with a Razorback symbol or with the Longhorn symbol turned upside down. And I remember meeting my first University of Texas fan and saying, yeah, you guys are enemies. And he looked at me and said, who are you? You're not our rivals. We don't even know who Arkansas is. So it could be that idea that when Paul, like in Colossians 2.15, where Christ takes off the powers and authorities

and he leads them in a triumphal procession, it may be that this is not anti-imperial a la N.T. Wright, but super imperial, where Christ's crucifixion, his triumphal procession, is so much greater that the Roman propaganda doesn't even begin to compare. Hell's in comparison. I've never heard to compare. Hell's in comparison. I've never heard that distinction. That's really helpful, the anti-imperial versus super-imperial. But we're understanding the imperial kind of concept is still helpful for giving some sort of shape, some contextualization to this otherwise kind of abstract-seeming concept in the New Testament.

Yeah. Cabin Rose, World Upside Down is one of the best books to go for that. Yeah. Yeah, you're a big fanboy, Cabin. I haven't read his stuff in a long – So since then, I've read – I think parts – I know parts of the book. I don't think I've read the whole thing. But is he still like killing it in scholarship?

I don't – I'm not in the scholarly world as much as I used to be. Right, right, right. His latest book is One True Life, which actually deals with Christianity and Stoicism saying that we can't actually, we cannot actually compare the two, or I'd be very cautious in comparing the two. And so it sent a lot of people like Troels and Merle Pedersen into a panic with his arguments. Oxford University Press came out a couple of years ago, but he's such a great thinker. Yeah.

And I do fan the boy over him. Yeah, he's, I remember reading his stuff. You know, I read his, I think I read his dissertation on the use of kurios, Lord, in Luke's writings. Or maybe it was just Gospel of Luke. Man, he's pulling some like medieval literature for no reason i mean he's just like all over the place i heard somebody say that um and i can't verify this so i'll just throw it out there but richard hayes who's one of the you know all-time great new testament scholars of the late 20th century early 21st century um i heard somebody say that Richard Hayes said,

hands down, Kevin Rowe was the best student he's ever had. And he's had some pretty sharp students. Yeah, I've heard the same. Have you? Yeah. Man, I kind of miss that world, dude. I mean, you stayed in it. You're still publishing all these high-powered journal articles and I can hardly read them anymore.

But do you still love it when you i mean yeah because you could easily go into kind of pop christianity be a circuit youth speaker whatever like you can live in that not so academic uh world if you wanted to but you your main love is still seneca and Paul and Regulus and Romulus. You still love it? I mean, you, you, uh, you're still going. I love Jesus more than all of that. So all of those actually are roads that lead to Jesus. So they help me understand the gospel more. And so I love, as a professor, seeing the light come on in the eyes of my students. But maybe close to that is seeing the lights go on in my own eyes. And so I'm reading

a story about Hercules the other day, where there's a father who's going up onto his mountain to sacrifice his son. And all of a sudden, right before he kills his son uh his only son whom he loved um hercules shows up and says stop in the name of love put down the knife please step away from the knife zeus my father uh because hercules was none other than son of god my father zeus does not require human sacrifice and all of a sudden he points and over in the bush there is a golden ram solid gold uh or i don't know if it's just golden color, but they sacrifice the ram and they take the fleece and they put it up in a tree, which becomes the fleece that Jason and the Argonauts, Jason ends up getting with that, the gold fleece, if

you remember. And so like seeing things like that, like I've never heard before, just it empowers me to continue to dig deeper and try to understand the gospel all right let's hit pause there because i that okay so who borrowed from who i mean okay so i've never heard that story that parallel obviously genesis 22 and abraham and isaac i can send it to you if you want to put it online too yeah yeah send the link. I'll put in the show notes. Um, so what, wait, okay. So when was that story written? My first one that we have that I know of, and I'm just, this is this week that I've stumbled across of it in the Scandinavian journal of the old Testament. Oh yeah. That's where I found it. So, uh, but Sophocles is the very first one that we have.

Sophocles is around 400 BC. He's the one who wrote Oedipus Rex or Oedipus the King, if you remember. And so we have fragments of him where he refers to this. And some tales of the stories, it's actually Hermes who shows up and says stop, which makes sense because he's the messenger of the gods. So he borrowed from Moses then. I think Josephus would say exactly that. This article was saying the reverse. He was saying that this idea of the angel of the Lord that we have in the Old Testament is borrowing from Greek and other A&E sources.

Josephus and Philo and we can go to our time, C.S. Lewis would say, no, these are maybe ideas that are kind of the census planor. Genesis 22, and of course, ultimately, John 3.16 is the fulfillment of what these pagans had candlelights of. Jesus Christ is the son that eclipses that. I mean, just, okay, so on a historical level, like, so when we read like parallel flood accounts, some people are troubled by this. So like the, you know, liberals will say this is clearly where the biblical writers got it from. It's just a myth they're drawing on and conservatives are going to say, no, the parallels, you know, they'll downplay the parallels. To me, it's like if there was some kind of flood, whether it's global or local, we would expect it to find its retelling in various pieces of literature.

So to me, to find parallels of flood stories is like it verifies some level of historicity of the flood account. But with Abraham and Isaac, we're not dealing with a global flood here. here we're dealing with an isolated incident recorded in jewish literature which isn't like you know translated and passed around the world you know like this is really so how how do you how do you have parallel accounts in two very different societies or bodies of literature did it just so happen that these two things happened or two? I mean, maybe a more liberal person might say, you know, these two myths both happened to occur in different strands of literature. Yeah.

If we go back and look at the ancient authors who made these comparisons, and I don't think Josephus mentions this one, but he often says that the stories of like Hercules or Heracles and Jason, that they're borrowing off of like Samson. And so they're going to, Josephus is going to say that, yeah, the Greek heroes are derivative of like what we see the Jewish heroes are. And so you have some of those that are going to come that way. With the Hercules accounts, sticking with him, Hercules was known as the

son of God, the savior of the world. He's the one who went down and overcame death. If you remember, he stole death's dog and brought it back up and led it in a triumphal possession because Juno's acting like a demon more than a goddess. She's coming after him. And Seneca, by the way, gets to bring them together, if it's not going into too much depth, he actually writes two plays, two tragedies about Hercules. And one is the hero of hell. He's the one who overcomes death in hell. And the second one is of his death, where he has apotheosis. He becomes a god and goes and sits at the right hand of his father, Zeus.

And that account, it sounds like Chuck Norris, because when it's time for him to die, death and the fates run away from him. They take him to his funeral pyre, and the flames won't take him. And so he thrusts his own body into the flames, and rather than him crying out in pain, the flames cry out in pain. So it's kind of like early Chuck Norris stories. And at this point, he goes back down to hell again. He beats up the,

the guy who, Chiron, who takes you across the river sticks. He gets his own paddle and beats Chiron up with the paddle. And then he, you know, hell can't hold him. So he goes back up.

He speaks to his mom and says, Hey mom, don't be, don't be, don't be sad. My part that belongs to you, my can't hold him. So he goes back up. He speaks to his mom and says, hey, mom, don't be sad. My part that belongs to you, my flesh, is burned away. But my part that belongs to my father will live with him forever. And so there's like worship that's led with Hercules.

He's known as the avert of evil. Whereas the Jews would have Deuteronomy 6 at their doorpost. A lot of Greeks, we have the Greeks that would put Hercules dwells in here, so all evil run away. And so as early as Justin Martyr, which he's early second century, so 100, 150, we have these comparisons. And Justin Martyr is going to say that the pagans are borrowing from Christianity. uh christianity uh and so so in one and so that's kind of the the earliest uh explanations of how these parallels were is that the pagans were borrowing from that celsus the early heretic yeah am i going too deep don't even pull up no that's fine no no my audience is pretty i think they're i would think most of them are probably really getting off on this right now so

so some might be lost but yeah yeah well celsus was a guy who first wrote to defame Christianity that we have to say that it was, and he said, Hey, why do we need your Jesus Christ? And we have Hercules and Hercules later on this dude named Justin, sorry, Julian, the apostate, who was the emperor right after Constantine legalized Christianity. Julian, the apostate wanted to make paganism great again. And so the way he does that is he takes the story of Hercules and he borrows stories from Christ. And so now Hercules walks on water.

Now Hercules is part of a divine triad with Hera, Zeus, and Hercules. And so you do see that early on. But when it comes to the Old Testament, that's more your area. Well, because that makes sense. I mean, in the early church, now we're a couple hundred years after the New Testament, Christianity has flourished and spread. So that makes perfect sense that in an effort to make paganism great again, they would sort of remap pagan stories on Christianity.

But going back to the Hercules and Abraham and Isaac story, I just don't, unless, I'm just kind of thinking out loud here, so don't tweet this, but, you know, unless there's kind of some common, for lack of better terms, myths floating around the ancient world that the retelling of Abraham and Isaac is maybe drawing on. And oh, by the way, this Hercules story is also drawing on, but there's kind of some common mythical tradition.

And if some of you are troubled by the term myth or saying, wait a minute, no, Abraham actually did do it. I'm not denying that. But clearly, when biblical writers were retelling actual historical events, they would often use language of myth, both to critique kind of the anti-imperial thing or to adopt. You know, we see this most blatant examples with Leviathan. We see references to Leviathan and Job and, and Isaiah and, you know, and Psalms and Leviathan, you know, Leviathan occupied a really common myth of, you know, the evil of the, of the sea or, you know, the underworld, whatever. So clearly biblical writers.

With the Jewish diaspora, the Jews are all around and they're telling these stories to their Greek neighbors. And so it makes sense. It's intuitive to me that some of these Greeks would hear this story like, man, that's a great story. Let's just kind of change the names and make it our own story in light of the diaspora. And so, again, it goes back to interpenetration. So we can talk about the Persian or the Babylonian influence upon the Jews and their soteriology, their understanding of creation or salvation. But that goes the other way as well.

And so it makes sense that they would borrow these stories of their own account. And so they would take from the real thing and make a myth out of it. Interesting. Yeah, that's fascinating. C.S. Lewis, he's going to argue that these type of seeds are an example of God disseminating notions of the gospel so that when Christ came in the fullness of time, they have, oh, we have this type of story. And now they see it's fulfillment in Jesus Christ. And so he sees it as this kind of divine evangelist idea that puts these myths that are as a breadcrumb trail to the person of Jesus Christ. That makes sense to me. And then, yeah, I mean, I saw a lot of this

when I did a lot of work in the Dead Sea Scrolls where you have, you know, 50, 100 years before Jesus. I mean, striking, shocking parallels to stuff in the gospels. Like there's one in, oh gosh, I haven't thought about this stuff in so long, but the community rule, which is referred to as one QS, uh,

one is the cave number that it was found in of the eight or nine caves that this literature is founded. But one QS is kind of like, um, I don't know. It's kind of like the Ephesians of the Dead Sea Scrolls kind of talked about a lot of like ecclesiology community rules really. And, and, um, at the end of that, I think it's at the end of the community rule, it talks about, you know, when the Messiah comes and sits down with his 12, you know, elders, and they break bread and drink wine together. And this is like 50 years before, 100 years before the New Testament, you know, 150 years, it's like, so wait a minute, you know, you could in your freak out moment say, gosh, the New Testament is just all made up, They're just borrowing from stuff that's already

existed or it actually did happen. It's just God took those breadcrumbs that were kind of scattered throughout history and to give people, to kind of prepare people for the significance of actual events that happened, you know? So to me, it's not either or, you know, some people make so much about the parallels. To me, it's like, it just shows that the biblical story and the gospel wasn't written in a vacuum. It wasn't, it was in real space, real time. And people had categories in their minds and hearts

already prepared by God in history for these events. I mean, to me, it's just, it's exciting and gives life and earthiness to the New Testament, you know? Yeah. But. So that answers your question on why Angelique's fellowship. All right.

What about, I heard you make a comment recently on a podcast about Jesus as a cynic. And you made a distinction between, you know, lowercase C, cynic and uppercase C, cynic. And I can't remember. I thought you might have said he was both. Maybe not. I don't know. Or no, he was more of just a capital C, cynic. Yeah.

Well, a lot of people would have considered him a capital C, cynic in the Greco-Roman world. So help us understand, again, for the junior higher, what is a capital C Cynic and why do you think Jesus fit that kind of mold? Yeah. So just like maybe in our church, we have different denominations today that stem back to the gospel of Jesus Christ. In the Greco-Roman world, you had all of these denominations, if you will, that kind of go back to Socrates and Plato. So N.T. Wright has made it popular by saying Homer would be the Old Testament of the Greeks, and Plato would be the New Testament of the Greeks. So you have all these different denominations, one of which is the Stoics that I was talking about with Seneca. The Epicureans, your group may be familiar with. And another

popular one was the Cynics. And the Cynics actually comes from the Greek word dogs. And their idea was to get back to nature. And so they were minimalist. They wanted to live a simple life. We're all just animals, basically. And so they would defecate in public. They would urinate. They would do other things in public that we would not do.

Inappropriate to say, just to say, hey, we're all animals. But part of this is that they would be homeless. And so when Jesus would say the birds have nests and foxes have holes, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head, that would come across as being very cynic. So the idea of why would have two cloaks? If you don't need two cloaks, you don't need two cloaks. You don't need two pairs of sandals. Give away one. And so even what we see with John the Baptist,

this idea of you only need one bag. Just take what you need resonates with the cynics. Going back to what nature is. Again, Jesus wasn't like the cynics in the sense of pushing back and trying to scandalize in the sense of urinating in public and all those other things. But when he makes a comment, when he doesn't wash his hands before he eats, or his disciples, this would be something to a popular first century audience would sound very cynical because it's not what goes into your mouth.

You don't need to wash your hands. We're just animals. It's what comes out of the heart that makes you impure. And so there are a lot of resonances with the cynics and Jesus in the Gospels, particularly with the earthly Jesus of Mark's Gospel. Yeah. Sounds like Shane Claiborne. Not that he's defecating in public, but I don't know.

I haven't followed him around, but that's it. So what about, so Jesus is clearly in a Jewish Palestinian context, cynics or Greco-Roman thing. Would there be any intentional kind of playing on those themes or can we connect those dots given that he's not like Jesus is running around Asia minor doing this stuff? Right, right. Well, if it's correct that Mark is writing to a Roman context,

the Roman audience is going to see that connection. If you remember Mark, he has a lot of Latin phrases that he has to explain. And so the first audiences of the Gospels weren't particularly Jewish. They were a mix of Jewish Gentiles. And so whether Matthew, Mark and, and John wanted to depict Jesus as a cynic or a stoic or whatever for debate, but many in the audience would make those connections. And that podcast is trying to move from cynicism to solutions, I think is their tagline. It's like the Catacomb podcast. What's up, Jay? And so I was just kind of pushing back to say there is a place for cynicism in the

sense of uh being minimalistic simple don't worry about what you're going to eat or drink uh seek first the kingdom of god and all those other things um it's a lot of stuff in the sermon on the mount would resonate with some of the cynic um as uh ethics what about this is gonna shift us gears i guess but it's a good segue what about about the lowercase C cynicism? Um, and I'll just confess, I do battle with that brand of cynicism when it comes to, uh, for specifically the American evangelical church. Um, and I try hard, really hard to not let that get the best of me or whatever, but man, sometimes the church can give you a lot of material to work with. Um, and I, here's where I want to, here's where I'm going

with this. For some reason, I don't know when you, when you both go outside of America and experience a brand of Christianity, that's not American. And also when you go through a lot of just intellectual studies, scholarly study, I don't know, it's hard not to be cynical sometimes. Have you experienced that in your life? Of course. I mean, as scholars, we're training ourselves to be skeptics, which is another version, another denomination in the first century, and cynics. That's kind of what we're trained to do. We question everything. We think everyone has their own baggage that they bring to the text, for example. And so there is some value in asking questions, but if those questions does not end in hope, of course, you talk about the

church. Philip Yancey has the book, Church, Why Bother? Yeah. So there's many of us that get to that experience where we're like, why? I just want to punt when it comes to church. But that cynicism has to lead to hope because we realize that Ephesians 5, 21 and following, that Christ is washing the church. And the reason the church is messed up is because we're messed up as well. is washing the church. And the reason the church is messed up is because we're messed up as well.

And so I don't think it's wrong to start with some cynic ideas with respect to questioning, seeing problems, but we need to make sure we take the planks out of our own eyes and also look at, keep our mind fixed on Christ

rather than the problems of people. Are you still Southern? Are you officially Southern Baptist? I know that was your background and somewhat of your foreground, but is that? I tell people you officially Southern Baptist? I know that was your background And somewhat of your foreground I tell people I'm Southern Baptist Like the Olive Garden's Italian So

I'm a really bad Southern Baptist But Yeah I went to Washtenaw Baptist University as an undergrad Which was in cooperation with Southern Baptist and with the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. And I've served under the church of Southern Baptist up until now working with Denver Seminary. And so my roots are in missionary Baptist and Southern Baptist world. And you were a pastor at a Southern Baptist church in Ouachita, right?

Yeah, that's right. In Ark of the Ark. It's like First Baptist. But it's kind of like the Olive Garden of Southern Baptist church in Ouachita, right? Yeah, that's right, in Arkadelphia, Arkansas, First Baptist, but it's kind of like the Olive Garden of the Southern Baptists as well. So it's... It kind of was, if I can, I don't know Southern Baptist history at all, but I mean, it sounds like, I mean, right now you have, and I don't mean this in a positive or negative way,

just a factual way, you have kind of the wake created by Al Mohler coming into Southern Seminary, which is bled into gospel coalition and and so you have a a brand of southern baptist church right now the the dominant brand i would say that is what people think of when they think southern baptist but pre al moeller come to southern seminary there was i mean what if i correct me if i'm wrong, but one of the reasons why they brought him in was because of the so-called liberalism that was widespread in Southern Seminary. And so you still have kind of a, the pre-Al Mohler Southern Seminary brand of

Southern Baptist Church that would be more centrist, if not more liberal in the evangelical kind of scheme of things. And your church would fit more in that kind of centrist middle left. Yeah, it was weird at our church. We had a great spectrum. And so we would have people on the far right and people on the far left. You remember some of my two best friends there. That one's a hardcore Republican. Ben Shapiro is not,

is left, is a liberal to him. The other one on the opposite side of that spectrum. But we all came together and focused on the gospel and mission and got along miraculously. Yeah. Yeah, there wasn't a single area.

I mean, it probably leaned a bit to the left just because we had so many university professors from two universities. But it was a beautiful mix of people that realized that those are not the issues that we're going to focus on. Have you guys found a church in Denver? Probably not, right? Man, it's crazy. So the very first church we've gone to, we've fallen in love with. The first family that we met, we were walking our dog and they asked us where we're from. And we're like, well, we're from Arkansas. And they said, where in Arkansas? We said, well, Arkadelphia. She's like, no way,

I went to Wichita Baptist University. And I was like, well, I taught there. And then she said, what's your name? And I said, I told her my name. And then she's like, well, Aubrey Smith was my best friend, and Aubrey was one of my all-star students there. And so she's like, you should come to our church. And so we go to this church she says it's charismatic anglican yeah yeah the same look is what i made yeah what is this uh and we went um and we've only been here for three sundays okay wow we really enjoyed it i'm not a crier as you know emotions have to sneak up on me um and tackle me but the spirit at this place is just so palpable that there's times where I can't, I have to stop singing because I just feel.

Wow. So I'm not sure that's where God's going to have us. But that's where we're really enjoying it. My son's coming to Utah next week on a mission trip with them, working with refugees. Wow. And he hasn't even met the youth pastor yet. So, but anyway, we're enjoying that so far.

Are you free to share the name of it or would you rather not? It's Wellspring. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Wellspring Inglewood. We were at a church called Denver United, more kind of downtown area. That's an awesome church, fairly multicultural, very community engaged. Theologically, I think,

and it was healthy diversity and just really really great people there really enjoyed it but right i i've heard a lot of compliments about a lot of churches um which is refreshing because usually you go to a place and you're getting uh the insults about the churches the baggage about them but yeah it seems like god's doing a great thing among the churches around here well denver Denver seems like a very kind of post-Christian area. So usually places like that, like Portland or other places, the churches tend to be much more united because there's such a stronghold that they're, you know, against.

Wow, man. So what are you working on right now scholarship-wise, writing-wise? What are you thinking through? Sure, man. So what are you working on right now, scholarship-wise, writing-wise? What are you thinking through? Sure, yeah. Besides the Hercules thing. Yeah, Regulus and Hercules are two journal articles that I have out right now. And then I'm spending a lot of time in Colossians. I'm writing a Colossians through Philemon commentary series. Really? Yeah, so with Brandon Smith and Michael Byrd are the editors for it, the Christian Standard.

Tom Schreiner's book in that series is coming out soon, and I'm doing the Colossians through Fleeman. From what I heard, it's almost like they're making the NAC, the New American Commentary, kind of redoing that. Okay. And so I've been spending a lot of time in Colossians trying to have something new to say. As you know, most commentaries are kind of rearranging on the furniture,

but I'm trying to discover some new furniture, hence the Hercules and the Regulus issues. And then secondly, I'm writing a book on Romans 7 with Lexham. Yeah, and it's one of those ideas where they're taking what's really popular and common in scholarship and bringing it down to the church. And so I'm excited about that. And then likely my magnum opus is I'm writing a Romans commentary for Brill, Brill Exegetical, under Stanley Porter.

No way. Wait, that's the one. That's been, that commentary series has been in the works for over a dozen years, I think, right? That's right. So, and mine's a 10 to 12 year project for that. I've written one journal article on that, arguing about the intercession of the spirit. Where does Paul get that? Is that seminal when he talks about the spirit of God praying for us?

Because we have a lot of people that pray for us in scripture, a lot of mediators, but God is never one who mediates. And so is this something that Paul just pulls out of the apocalyptic gospel when Jesus knocks him on his donkey on Damascus? Or is Paul drawing for something? And so I have an essay coming out in a volume that's arguing that, no, this is Paul drawing from the wisdom of Solomon. The wisdom of Solomon has a similar idea. Except in the wisdom of Solomon, the spirit of God takes our evil thoughts up to God for condemnation. Really? Yeah. So your bad thoughts that you have, the Spirit of God takes it and says, look at this. But with Paul, he has the same idea, but now there's now no

condemnation for those of us in Christ Jesus. And so the Spirit of God can take a break from accusing us and now bringing intercession on our behalf. And so that's only my really first step into the Romans commentary, but I'm teaching Romans here. That's my major thing to teach at Denver Seminary. And so I'm hoping to be able to double dip and start working on it. So if you want to attend, if you want to sit under Dr. Joseph Dodson and learn about Hercules and Regulus and Seneca and romans uh jesus and paul jesus and

paul in the gospel and throwing ice cold water on junior high girls then please consider uh denver seminary i'm studying we have an awful online program as well um and a thm oh right on i'm the least of the apostles here lynn koik, Craig Bomberg, Rick Hess. And the list goes on and on and on. Is Hal Hess still there? How about, um, Oh, who was that guy that wrote that great immigration book? Um, you grew up in Central America, I think. Yeah. He's not here anymore. Sadly. I think he's at Wheaton now.

But yeah, he's a here anymore sadly i think he's at wheaton now oh okay he's gone but yeah he's a fantastic guy but yeah so i'm the least of the least of the least of the apostles here so wow and you guys have good um kind of hybrid programs too where you can do like modules live i think they don't they ship out professors for like a couple days all day and then they do the rest so we have we have a side in amarillo um whichever time i hear i want to bust into george straight song amarillo by morning yeah exactly and a site in dc um as well and so we're a lot of great things um of course i'm focusing more on biblical studies new testament studies but uh they boast that our counseling program is the best in the world. If you're looking at doing Christian counseling, Christian psychology. Okay. You don't have a Larry Crabb out there, do you?

Cause I know he's in Colorado. Yeah. I don't know where he is. I think he's in Denver. He was, but anyway, well, dude, thanks so much for being on Theology in the Raw. Where can people check out your stuff? Do you even have a website? I should know this, but do you have a website or just social media? No, I think if you go to denver seminary uh sooner or later it'll have my cv on it with my publications um right now you can go to uh obu.edu um washington baptist university

starts with a no despite it um and my cv with all of my publications um okay is there um but i don't have a proper website you're active on Twitter too, right? I'm Preston Sprinkle's best friend. That's how I introduce myself. Yeah, they're like, oh, you're Preston's friend, which makes me feel like Peter and Andrew in the gospel. You know, every time Andrew's introduced, it's like, oh, yeah, that's Peter's brother. Peter's brother.

Yeah. Oh, stop. I consider it an honor to be called your best friend. Well, you're pretty active on – are you still active on Twitter much? I see you on Twitter. Yeah, I haven't been because we've been transitioning. It's been so crazy. But it's J-R-R-D-O-D-S-O-N.

Man, where'd you get that other R? Come on. It's a legacy. I'm living for Tolkien. So I'm a big Tolkien fan, as you remember. And I'm a junior, so you can take the junior and bring it in with the extra R. But, yeah, J.R.R. Dotson. And then I'm on Instagram probably more than I am on Twitter

because I'm posting all of my hikes and trail runs. Yeah, you've gotten into the mountains quite a bit over the last few years, right? I've loved the mountains. You know, when we went to the Sawtooth, I think I had some incipient fetish for the mountains, but that just made it run rampage. Yeah. I love hiking.

So I can't wait to meeting up with you and hiking. I know, man. Yeah, we got to plan something out. All right, dude, I got to run, dude. Thanks so much for being on the show, bro. Love you, man. Thanks, guys. Take care.

Bye. Bye. Love you, man. Thanks, guys. Take care. Thanks for listening to the show. If you benefited from it and if you are benefited from your regular listening to Theology in a Raw, please consider supporting the show. You can go to patreon.com forward slash Theology in a Raw

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