Episode: In this on-location episode, Chris McKinny interviews Steven Notley about identifying and exploring the ancient city of Bethsaida/Julias. This is a crossover episode with OnScript and the new In Context university from Lipscomb University where Chris McKinny teaches.

Guest: Dr. R. Steven Notley is Dean of the School of Religious Studies at Pillar College. He was Distinguished Professor of New Testament and Christian Origins on the New York City campus of Alliance University (2001-2023). He received his Ph.D. from the Hebrew University, where he studied with David Flusser. Notley lived sixteen years in Jerusalem with his wife and four children, during which time he was the founding chair of the New Testament Backgrounds program at the Jerusalem University College. He has been leading groups of students and laypeople to Israel and the eastern Mediterranean region for over 35 years. He is the author of many books and articles. He continues collaborative research and publication with Israeli scholars in the fields of historical geography, ancient Judaism and Christian origins. Among his list of publications, he collaborated with Flusser on the historical biography, The Sage from Galilee: Rediscovering Jesus’ Genius (Eerdmans 2007); with Anson Rainey (Tel Aviv University) the monumental biblical atlas, The Sacred Bridge: Carta’s Atlas of the Biblical World (Carta Publishing 2005); with Ze’ev Safrai (Bar Ilan University) an annotated translation of Eusebius’ important description of Roman Palestine, Eusebius, Onomasticon: A Triglott Edition with Notes and Commentary (Brill 2005). He rejoined Safrai for their second work, a pioneering collection and translation of the earliest rabbinic parables that provide the literary and religious context for the parables of Jesus, The Parables of the Sages (Carta 2011). Since 2016 he has served as the Academic Director of the El Araj Excavation Project in its search for first-century Bethsaida-Julias, the lost city of the Apostles. (from the Pillar College website - https://www.pillar.edu/team-members/r-steven-notley-phd)

Photo Attribution: The “chief of the apostles” invoked in this mosaic inscription from biblical Bethsaida—being cleaned by Professor Notley and his wife, Sunya—must refer to Saint Peter the Apostle, indicating a special connection between the site and the saint. Photo from BAR website, https://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/archaeology-today/where-is-the-house-of-saint-peter-the-apostle/.

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Episode: Excavations have begun at the New Testament site of Lystra! In this episode, Jason Borges talks with Prof. Ilker Mimiroglu, the lead Turkish archaeologist at Lystra, about the city's history and excavations. Learn more on Instagram @lystraexcavations. This episode is cross-listed from our Biblical World podcast.

Guest: Prof. Ilker Mimiroglu, head of Necmettin Erbakan University's Department of Early Christian and Byzantine Arts and lead Turkish archaeologist at the Lystra excavations. More here - https://erbakan.edu.tr/en/academic-person/3494-ilker-mete-mimiroglu

New Host: Jason Borges (Ph.D., Durham University), the Assistant Director of the Asia Minor Research Center in Antalya, Turkey (ancient Attalia). His current role includes conducting biblical research, publishing resources, leading study tours, and hosting training seminars. Jason has published Travel among Early Christians (Brill, 2025), Christian Life in the Greco-Roman City (Baker Academic, 2026), and articles in leading research journals, available at Academia.edu. He is a member of several academic societies: ETS, SBL, EABS, and the prestigious SNTS. [from https://www.biblicalturkey.org/about]

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Episode: In this episode, Kyle chats with Libby Backfish and Cynthia Shafer-Elliott about bringing archaeology and theology into conversation—the topic of their recent book, Grounded Theology in the Hebrew Bible: Exploring the Cultural Context that formed Ancient Israel. The conversation starts with the ancient Israelite household (and how it was essential to ancient thinking and theology), stays with the household (and related areas of ancient Israelite life and theology), and ends with the household (and, again, how it was essential to ancient thinking).

Guests: Cynthia Shafer-Elliott (Ph.D. Sheffield) is Associate Professor of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament at Baylor University. Her field archaeology experience includes excavations at Tel Halif and Tel Abel Beth Maacah in Israel. She's the author and editor of several books, including Food in Ancient Israel (Sheffield, 2013), The 5 Minute Archaeologist in the Southern Levant (edited, Sheffield, 2016), and the book we're discussing in this episode (co-authored with Libby Backfish) Grounded Theology in the Hebrew Bible: Exploring the Cultural Context that Formed Ancient Israel (Baker, 2025).

Libby Backfish (Ph.D. TIU) is Associate Professor of Old Testament at Jessup University. She's the author of several articles and books, including Hebrew Wordplay and Septuagint Technique in the Fourth Book of the Psalter (Bloomsbury, 2019) and the book we're discussing in this episode (co-authored with Cynthia Shafer-Elliott) Grounded Theology in the Hebrew Bible: Exploring the Cultural Context that Formed Ancient Israel (Baker, 2025).

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Episode: Amy, Jules, and Matt get together to talk about their current work on Gregory of Nyssa (Amy), global theology (Jules), and Isaiah (Matt). Matt sounds like he's in a can, and this was recorded months ago, but it was a fun get-together conversation among some of the OnScript hosts.

Hosts: Amy Brown Hughes, Jules Martinez-Olivieri, and Matt Lynch Amy's new book is called Gregory of Nyssa on the Resurrected Life (Cambridge University Press).

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Episode: Jonathan Lyonhart joins the podcast to discuss his fictional-philosophical exploration of the life of Moses. Somehow Moses manages to climb each major branch of the philosophical tree in this creative and thoughtful engagement with Exodus. Among other things, we also learn of Jonathan's practical jokes gone wrong.

Guest: Jonathan D. Lyonhart (PhD, Cambridge) is an Associate Professor of Religion and Philosophy at the University of Jamestown, a Fellow at the Cambridge Center for the Study of Platonism at Cambridge University, and a co-host of the Spiritually Incorrect Podcast. Additionally, he co-founded The NumiNous Institute for Faith and Neurodiversity with his wife, Madison Lyonhart, who is a doctoral candidate in History at Oxford University. He’s author of several books, including The Journey of God: Christianity in 6 Movements (IVP Academic, 2025), Space God: Rejudging a Debate Between More, Newton, and Einstein (Cascade Books, 2023), MonoThreeism: An Absurdly Arrogant Attempt to Answer All the Problems of the Last 2000 Years in One Night at a Pub (Cascade Books, 2021), and, the book we’re discussing in this episode, Zeus Was An Atheist: An Odd Retelling of the Moses Story (Cascade Books, 2025). He's also edited a volume with John Milbank and Ryan Haecker called New Trinitarian Ontologies (Cascade Books, 2024).

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Episode: In this episode co-host Amy Brown Hughes nerds out with fellow historical theologian J. Warren Smith about what it would be like if a bunch of early Christian theologians hung out for dinner. Smith's new book Early Christian Theology: A History offers us an entrance into the story of the development of early Christian theology that is engaging, winsome, and informative.

Guest: J. Warren Smith is Professor of Historical Theology at Duke Divinity School. He's the author of several books, including Passion and Paradise: Human and Divine Emotion in the Thought of Gregory of Nyssa (Crossroad, 2004), Christian Grace and Pagan Virtue: The Theological Foundation of Ambrose's Ethics (Oxford, 2010), Ambrose, Augustine, and the Pursuit of Greatness (Cambridge, 2020), and the book we're discussing in this episode, Early Christian Theology: A History (Eerdmans, 2026).

Beyond these works, Dr. Smith is turning to a project, tentatively entitled Plato and Christ: Platonism in Early Christian Theology, that will examine the significance of the tradition called "Christian Platonism" for Christianity in a post-modern age.

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Episode: Is redemption the Bible's "big story"? Is salvation THE goal of Scripture's narrative? Are "story" and "narrative" even helpful ways of conceptualizing the whole Bible? Cornell would answer (a qualified) NEIN! to each question. Listen in to hear why, and about alternative communion model he proposes.

Guest: Dr. Collin Cornell is Assistant Professor of Bible and Mission at Fuller Theological Seminary. Previously, he was a Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow at Candler School of Theology (at Emory University). Before returning to Emory, he taught for three years as a visiting assistant professor of biblical studies in the School of Theology at the University of the South (Sewanee). Collin is author of three books, Divine Aggression in Psalms and Inscriptions (Cambridge University Press, 2020), Divine Aggression in Psalms and Inscriptions (2021), and the book under discussion today, God Draws Near: Rethinking the Biblical Theology of Mission (Baker, 2025). He's edited two books, Divine Doppelgängers: YHWH’s Ancient Look-Alikes (Penn State University Press, 2020) and The Incomparable God: Readings in Biblical Theology (Eerdmans, 2023), and co-translator of a third, Biblical ABCs: The Basics of Christian Resistance (Lexington Books, 2021). He is currently working on a book entitled The Lords that Never Were: Early Judaism and the Gods of the Hellenistic Levant. He has also written several articles on Elephantine.

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Episode: In this second part of a two-part episode, Kevin Vanhoozer is interviewed by Matthew Bates, along with his Northern Seminary students, as part of a "live" classroom event. Over the duration of an academic quarter, Bates and his Intro to Biblical Interpretation students read and discussed Vanhoozer's award-winning book, Mere Christian Hermeneutics. Now they have questions! Vanhoozer brings both academic expertise and pastoral wisdom, clarifying what it means to interpret Scripture faithfully.

Guest: Kevin Vanhoozer is currently Research Professor of Systematic Theology at TEDS, but in the fall will take a new post: Blanchard Professor of Systematic Theology at Wheaton College. He has written numerous books, including several award-winners: Is There a Meaning in this Text? (Zondervan, 1998; Christianity Today Book Award, 1999) and The Drama of Doctrine (Westminster John Knox, 2005; Christianity Today Best Theology Book of the Year, 2006). Our conversation today focuses on Mere Christian Hermeneutics (Zondervan Academic, 2024), which won major book awards from Christianity Today and the Gospel Coalition, among others.

OnScript's Review: "Wise. Learned. Bold. Faithful. Kevin Vanhoozer's Mere Christian Hermeneutics is the definitive work on the theory of scriptural interpretation." -- Matthew W. Bates, Professor of New Testament, Northern Seminary

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