The State of Hebraic Thought In 2026 (Dru Johnson) Ep. #235

Dru Johnson (00:03)
We should talk about upcoming events first, right?

Mike Tolliver (00:03)
Well…

Well, hang on, because this is like a significant thing. a year ago, almost exactly to the day when this episode goes out, a year ago, we did our State of Hebraic Thought 2025. It was the first time we’d ever done this, and we promised we would do it every year. So here we are a year later with keeping our word with a lot to talk about. And that’s an exciting thing. So the question of where do we start is like a wonderful question to have. ⁓

Dru Johnson (00:12)
Yes.

Okay, keeping our word. Yep. Yep.

Yeah,

we have events, have books that came out, books that we want to talk about that are coming out, all kinds of different things that we’re doing. ⁓ So we always have lots of things in the boiler. And if you go back and watch that old video, some things that drop by the wayside as well, because we just couldn’t get to them. We didn’t have enough time. We had too many good things going on.

Mike Tolliver (00:55)
Yep.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So why don’t you kind of start with, I guess, what we’ve done with the Hebraic Thought Community.

Dru Johnson (01:05)
Yeah, so this is on Facebook. If you want to go in there and look up Hebraic thought, you’ll find the community. ⁓ And on there we have kind of weekly, ⁓ throughout the week, people can post things that they’re working on, post resources that they think are good for everybody else. We do a weekly ⁓ Torah reading paired with a Psalm and a couple chapters of the gospel, which we’re going to start probably next week, a second version of that in the evenings.

that I will take over. That’s been great to have a very solid group throughout the year where we’re reading, you know, we do about a half hour of listening to those texts and then about a half hour of reflecting on those. And I don’t know about you, but the insights I have gained from other people in that group have been liquid gold for me. I just have seen things I never would have seen if it weren’t for that group pointing them out. Yeah. And also that group.

Mike Tolliver (01:56)
Absolutely.

Dru Johnson (02:00)
You know, somebody in that group was like, hey, Dru you talk about this guy Michael Polanyi all the time. Would you ever think about reading one of his books with a group? And I was like, yeah. So we started a Michael Polanyi reading club. And so we’ve been reading that. ⁓ I wish I had juicy quotes from that one because Michael Polanyi is a difficult read, even for academics. And ⁓ man, that group is just razor sharp. And again, I’ve read this book, Personal Knowledge, by Polanyi many times.

Mike Tolliver (02:16)
You

Dru Johnson (02:29)
learning new things from them, even the kinds of questions they’re asking, it’s forcing me to rethink some things that I thought. So community, reading together, seeing things from different perspectives, so valuable. It’s exactly what we promote here at the Center for Hebraic Thought.

Mike Tolliver (02:46)
Yeah, it’s nice to put it into practice and then see it bear fruit like we always knew it could. ⁓ But connecting people from, you know, all different walks and different places, time zones. ⁓ Yeah, it’s been great. It has been great. ⁓ So it’s been good to add that relational component, I’ll just say, to the things that we do.

Dru Johnson (02:58)
Yeah, different countries. Yeah. Yeah.

Okay.

Yes. And

yeah, just to meet people who listen to the podcast and, ⁓ you know, they’re all wonderful people. Some of them are just lay people. Some are pastors. some are scholars, but, we don’t make that distinction when we meet. don’t, I don’t know who’s who. I just know Mark and David and, know, ⁓ Lois and, ⁓ it’s, yeah, it’s some of the most fun I have throughout the week. I hate when I have to miss it. ⁓ but you have what I consider to be the most exciting.

announcement we have for this year and that is about our first conference, our first like in-person big conference.

Mike Tolliver (03:38)
I do. ⁓

Yes.

Correct. Yeah. So we’ve been working since, gosh, what was it, August ⁓ with American Bible Society in partnership, developing a conference series that we’re calling the Bible First Conference Series. Can be focused on any particular topic of public life, but we’ve started our first on the topic of politics. ⁓ Feel like it’s a very timely moment, culturally, as well as

You know, all the different voices that are speaking into the topic of politics. so this particular conference is organized around the question. ⁓ Politics and faith go great together, but how? And we have eight different scholars who are going to help guide us through how different Christian traditions have answered that, starting with ⁓ the Bible as their, you know, the starting point for their framework.

Dru Johnson (04:43)
Hence, Bible First. Yeah, we branded it exactly. It’s not the greatest name, but the branding is on point.

Mike Tolliver (04:44)
So yes, yes, that’s the…

It is on point. ⁓

So we’ve gotten half of the abstracts back. The website is live. You can register right now. ⁓ And so we have up to 100 people in person that can be there. And if we get enough interest in this, we might open up a live stream or something like that so people can join at a distance. But ⁓ yeah, it’s exciting.

Dru Johnson (05:16)
Yeah, who do we have coming to speak? I mean, I’m going to be like the gadfly up there forcing everybody to talk more about Bible and I’m going to be Colombo. Like, yeah, yeah, yeah, that was a great talk Miroslav. But I just missed that part where you developed this from the Hebrew Bible. No, but who’s speaking and what are we going to do?

Mike Tolliver (05:34)
Right. let me, ⁓ so I don’t miss anybody. Let me pull up the ⁓ list there. ⁓ We’ve got in attendance in alphabetical, correct, Miroslav Volf, Miles Smith, Matthew Taylor, Kirsten Burkhaug, James Wood, Dale Coulter, Chris Green, and Anthony Bradley. ⁓ So,

Dru Johnson (05:45)
Well Miroslav evolved… in reverse.

Mike Tolliver (06:03)
you know, kind of an all-star lineup here of folks that are used to talking on this issue and they’re going to be presenting ⁓ new papers, things that they’ve not, you know, necessarily presented anywhere else for the sake of helping us move this conversation forward in a helpful way.

Dru Johnson (06:22)
Yeah. And, ⁓ you know, the goal is here is to really say, OK, let’s just talk about we don’t have to talk about Christian nationalism. We don’t have to talk about any Republicans versus Democrats. Those topics will come up, I’m sure. ⁓ We don’t have to talk about any particular social policy. The goal is to get our heads around, like, politically, what is scripture doing? And then what might be some real implications ⁓ of the very easy, repeated things that scripture is doing with political thinking?

⁓ And that can guide us into the more difficult, sophisticated stuff.

Mike Tolliver (06:57)
And we have a few videos that we’ve put out on different aspects of ⁓ the Bible and politics over this past year to sort of help prime the conversation. One or two of those speakers are actually going to be at this conference. ⁓ So, you know, hope to hear from them in even greater detail around this ⁓ specific topic here. So it’ll be a lot of fun. And to be there in person, I think is going to be a pretty meaningful experience.

for those that can attend.

Dru Johnson (07:28)
And it’s free to attend and you get free lunch. ⁓ but you, if you sign up, you actually need to come. I think we’re going to send out an email like a week prior, making people vow. I vow that I will come to this breaking, breaking Jesus’s command not to take oaths. ⁓ but yeah, we, this year we, we have the pleasure that we can actually make it free for people. have some funding, but, ⁓ that won’t always be the case. So I should take advantage why it’s free.

Mike Tolliver (07:44)
Yeah.

Correct.

Now we also have another exciting thing coming this year that I think, why don’t you take that one.

Dru Johnson (08:05)
You’re talking about the book series? Yeah, so we just contracted with Cascade, people I’ve published with before, lots of biblical scholars and theologians have published with Cascade, ⁓ to do a book series called Tracing Biblical Thought. And these are gonna be short little books, I mean, think 100 pages, a small book that you can kind of tuck under your coat if you want and take to the train station with you. Nobody does this anymore, but. ⁓

could read on a train ride kind of a thing, a long train ride or a long plane ride. And these would be various topics ⁓ of interest, again, thinking about, okay, like politics. What do the biblical authors say about politics? Well, okay. And then maybe another book is going to be one from another scholar who wants to drill down and say something, well, what might the biblical authors think about liberal democracies in particular, right? So we have a podcast coming out with Josh Berman. We were just talking about the difference between liberal democracy cultures

and how that blinds you to some things going on in scripture, right? Or you can think what matters of truth. I mean, you pick the topic, we’re gonna say, who’s a scholar who’s written really well on this topic at a very high level, and now let’s ask them to write for the masses. Like, what would they say if they had 100 pages to talk about this, get people in the room, get them on their knees and saying, here’s what you need to know. That’s what these little books are about. We have a great editorial board that’s gonna help us of scholars ⁓ and writers.

So very excited about that.

Mike Tolliver (09:35)
Now, it will take some time to get those first books out there. We’ve just formed the editorial board, and so we have to go through the editing process and identifying manuscripts, all that good stuff. But in terms of folks who are hungry for stuff now, Dru, what all is out there that maybe just came out?

Dru Johnson (09:56)
Right. ⁓ I should also point out, because I do know scholars listen to us as well. I don’t know why. I don’t know why sometimes, but they do. Maybe they just need a general interest ⁓ or to get their mind off their scholarship. So, yeah, if you know people who can write those books or you think are particularly good at following and tracing a particular line of thought in scripture, send them our way. I mean, we’ve talked to some great authors this last year, some great books. I mean, kind of off the

Mike Tolliver (10:01)
Yeah.

Mmm.

Dru Johnson (10:25)
off the shelf at Barnes and Noble kind of books that you can kind of hand anybody and let them read. I think of the Bible Reset that we talked to Alex Goodwin was a great book on new strategies for thinking about what the Bible is and how we should engage it. ⁓ Carmen Imes is a great new book that’s been very popular, Becoming God’s People, which is a of a biblical argument for why it matters to belong to God’s community, physically and otherwise. Phil Bray, who we just interviewed,

I’m a big fan of Phil. He’s a butcher by trade, not a trained theologian at all. He took some Bible classes in college, I think. But Leviticus on the butcher’s block, one of the better books I’ve ever read on Leviticus. There’s lots of good stuff on Leviticus. But again, his is a short, little, easy to access, gets you what you need to know kind of a book. We talked to Rachel Booth-Smith of her book Rest Assured, again, thinking about Sabbath in context of the ancient Near East, but in the most readable book.

I can imagine. She’s on our board for the new book series. So she’s going to be the one that helps us. ⁓ know, if scholars are having trouble translating their ideas down over for the masses, she’s going to be one of the people that helps us get scholars to translate. Plagued by Faith, which we just talked to Rick Wadholm and Dalton Avery about thinking about why the plagues might not be so horrible against Egypt. they were horrifying, but

why there might be God’s grace even in something like that. It’s a fascinating ⁓ read. So I think those are some, you could almost hand anybody who’s a reader, who’s a thinker, you could hand them any of those books and they would benefit from them. And you can listen to our podcast with them to hear a few more details before you buy the book.

⁓ We did an episode with Noreen Hertzfeld, who’s a computer scientist and theologian on artificial intelligence. And I have gotten so much good feedback on that, that that’s just really blew people’s minds. I had students listen to it and they were just like, whoa, like it, like you could see doors and windows opening and they’re thinking. So her book is called The Artifice of Intelligence. Now it’s a little bit more academic, but if you want to hear more from her, that’s the book you should go check out. I also want to tip people off that Christopher Wright’s

Second edition of his mission of God is coming out. So if you heard our interview with Christopher Wright ⁓ He’s got a new a revised version coming out, which I think is ⁓ Everybody’s looking forward to ⁓ This book I actually have it here somewhere Ingrid Farrow’s Redeeming Eden. I’m actually gonna interview her This week or next week. We’ll talk more about this book

But I have been looking for a long time at somebody who would just talk about the women in the Bible and just kind of a just a straight descriptive manner. just here is what’s going on. And I don’t want to throw anybody under the bus. But a lot of stuff that’s women in the Bible is like trying to stake stake something in the ground, which I appreciate because there’s been it’s long been absent. Right. And so there’s been a pendulum swing of like, no, no, we need to talk about women in the Bible. It’s not what most people think. There’s a lot more going on there.

but she just walks through and just the subtitle, how women in the Bible advanced the story of salvation. And she’s an Old Testament scholar. And so she’s doing very good, clear, easy to read ⁓ biblical work and just saying like, this is what’s going on. And this is why it’s super interesting that the biblical authors chose to put women at these very specific junctures of scripture. I also have this book here too.

Grounded Theology, which I’ll be talking to them next week. I did look back at last year’s video, and one of the issues was it was all men that we had. I actually was not trying to make up for that this year. It just happened this was the women’s year, right? All their books were in production waiting to come out. So, Grounded Theology by Cynthia Schaefer-Elliott, an archaeologist, an Old Testament scholar, and then Elizabeth Backfish, who goes by Libby Backfish, who’s also on our Tracing Biblical Thought ⁓ editorial panel.

Mike Tolliver (14:07)
Hmm.

Dru Johnson (14:28)
editorial board, but this is really good because it’s basically saying, here’s what life was like in ancient Israel, and here are some of the theological implications and some of the things you see in Scripture that indicate to you that their life and their agrarian subsistence life actually matters in the way God wanted them to think about salvation, peoplehood, justice, etc. Very easy to read as well. I can see this being assigned widely as kind of a

⁓ freshman ⁓ textbook. ⁓ We also had ⁓ Gideon Salter and Josh Cockayne on. They have this great book that’s come out since then, Why We Gather, which is about, from a psychologist’s point of view and a theologian’s point of view, and there’s some biblical stuff in there as well about the actual psychological importance of gathering with people. So maybe we could pair well with Becoming God’s People by Carmen Imes ⁓

Mike Tolliver (15:21)
Yeah.

Dru Johnson (15:23)
Geoff and Cyd Holsclaw, a husband and wife who work on neuroscience and attachment thinking. I just relistened, I posted today, I relistened to that episode for the third time and have learned new things every time I listen to it, because I caught something or made a connection. They have a book called Landscapes of the Soul, which I thought was fantastic. ⁓ Josh Cockayne also has an edited volume called Participation in Church Planting.

which starts out with a few essays by biblical scholars on church planting. Like, what does scripture say? What are the kinds of things it might say about church planting? Because it doesn’t really have church planting directly in an obvious way. You kind of have to assume that there’s something like church planting going on there. ⁓ Another book I have here, hold on. Modern Genre Theory, the funniest book by Andy Judd, who is also on our editorial board for tracing. I didn’t actually not in…

I did not intend for that to happen, but this is how it’s worked out. Andy Judd, Australian Old Testament scholar, also works on genre theory. This book is extremely informative and hilarious. He makes all kinds of jokes in there and they’re not dad jokes, they’re not dumb jokes, they’re really clever. ⁓ And then I think also about ⁓ Mark Scarlata, who’s been on this podcast quite a few times. He’s a good friend at…

Cambridge University or is in that circle. And he wrote a book for Cambridge. They have a series, Old Testament Theology series, and he wrote the Leviticus volume of that. So thinking about Leviticus as a theological text, what would be the theology of the book of Leviticus? So another banger coming from Mark Scarlata. Last year I talked about his book that was coming out, Wine, Soil, and Salvation. That’s come out. We did an Onscript episode interview with him on that and my other podcast. ⁓ And it was a great…

Mike Tolliver (17:06)
That’s right.

Dru Johnson (17:13)
great book as I expected, as I predicted. was a, feel like Jack Van Empy, as I predicted. It was a great book. And Paul Sloan, which his book that I called out last year, which I said, this is going to be a banger and I hadn’t even read, it and lo and behold, it was a banger of all bangers. Yeah. So.

Mike Tolliver (17:29)
Here we are.

Now with, I don’t know if you’ve talked to, a little bit, a little bit. And maybe, you know, we could sow some seeds for Paul to continue his work with Jesus and the law, because he has a very narrow focus in that book of just the law prophets and then the synoptic gospels. But it feels like there’s a sequel in here or three or four that would be meaningful. Do you know, is he planning on that?

Dru Johnson (17:33)
This has turned into a bragging session by me. Like, I knew it.

yeah.

I don’t know. I think I might have even asked him that and he kind of winced like, oh, yeah, maybe. I’d have to do it. It’s work. It’s the burden of producing a banger. You can do lost world of, lost world of, lost world of. Some people have the energy to just keep cranking out the next spot in that line of thinking.

Mike Tolliver (18:15)
I tell you, I tell you.

Yeah.

Yeah, well, Paul, if you’re listening, I’m going to throw my hat in the ring for Hebrews and the law of Moses. If you can at least come out with that book, that would do me a solid. So.

Dru Johnson (18:35)
yeah. Yeah. That’s just what every

New Testament scholar wants to tackle is Hebrews. ⁓ So coming up this year, I actually only have two books ⁓ that I know personally that I’m excited about. ⁓ I don’t know if it’s a low year or I’m just not paying attention to what’s out there as much. It’s probably me not paying attention. ⁓ Josh Berman, who I just interviewed today, it’ll come out in a few weeks.

Mike Tolliver (18:42)
Hahaha

Dru Johnson (19:04)
His work has been working for years on this book on forgiveness in the Hebrew Bible and he moves it all the way into the gospel of Matthew ⁓ Which was a very risky move for him. I have read chapters of this book and I’m telling you I actually think this is gonna be a game changer and thinking about forgiveness in both the Old Testament and the New Testament because I think a lot of things that he Is saying and you’ll hear in the podcast some of the he gives some juicy tidbits there

but is really gonna have to revamp the way we think about forgiveness. ⁓ And so it’s gonna do a lot of work. If you can’t wait until, if you’re dying like me for that, go back and read David Lambert’s, How Repentance Became Biblical, which ⁓ he does a very interesting job. Again, it’s an academic book. I think it’s Cambridge University Press, Oxford University Press, ⁓ But he does this good job of asking like, wait, is being,

feeling sorry and then asking for forgiveness, is that really a biblical thing? And he answered, no. Now I think he goes a little too hard. Like I might pull back a little bit on some of the things, but it’s a great exploration and at least forces you to go, ⁓ yeah, maybe I have been importing some ideas. Josh Berman’s gonna go even harder and say, not only have we been importing ideas, but it’s really an apples to oranges conversation with forgiveness in the Hebrew Bible.

Mike Tolliver (20:06)
Hmm.

Wow.

Dru Johnson (20:28)
And but he doesn’t just leave you there. He also says, but here is what’s going on and here’s why this is also valuable and something that we need to learn. Yeah. The last book I’ll talk about is Michael Rhodes, Reimagining Biblical Politics. ⁓ I always talk about Mike Rhodes work. He’s a brilliant thinker. He’s young. He’s like, I don’t even know if he’s 40 yet. I mean, he’s, you know, he’s just brilliant. His mind is everywhere. And he wrote this book, Reimagining Biblical Politics, which kind of

Mike Tolliver (20:34)
Okay.

Dru Johnson (20:58)
pushes forward from his just discipleship, which is about justice and discipleship in the church. But ⁓ again, I think that’s going to be one of those people talking about assigning this book, reading it in churches. ⁓ He’s worked on economics. He’s worked on matters of justice. He leaves me really, really long voice messages on WhatsApp. He’s in New Zealand when he’s jogging. So I have to hear him heavy breathing while he’s like…

saying, I listen to podcasts and I just don’t buy that when they say this, why didn’t you ask them this? But he’s a great thinker and he’s a great colleague who pushes me in all the right ways. okay. And he has written for us some great, great essays. ⁓ Yeah, so I think that’s all I have as far as the books go.

Mike Tolliver (21:37)
And he’s written for us before and I thought, yeah.

Okay. ⁓ Are there any articles or last time we talked about like articles, tools, resources that are out there? Is there anything that’s new on your radar that we should know about?

Dru Johnson (22:02)
There are, but I didn’t prepare any, so I can’t remember any off the top of my head. You know, did go back and watch the last episode, so I think a lot of what we said there, we covered a lot of territory. Are there any new resources, maybe, that have emerged in the last year? I don’t, I’m sure there are, so forgive me those of you who are screaming at your podcast device right now. ⁓ But I do know of some that are coming that probably aren’t.

Mike Tolliver (22:04)
Okay, I figured I’d just spring that on you.

you

Dru Johnson (22:30)
ready to be talked about yet. So ⁓ there are people working on some interesting stuff, especially in the kind of app world. ⁓ Not me, like some other people I’ve talked to, because I’ve been working on this app forever, Bible Dojo. But ⁓ I don’t know if that’s going to come out next year or not. ⁓ So yeah, I think there’s always a lot of help for people who want to learn more. As we said, we’ve been saying

Mike Tolliver (22:32)
Okay, all right

you

Dru Johnson (22:58)
when it comes to resources for studying scripture better, it feels like we’re starving in a supermarket of resources. Like there’s so much out there, even for free even. ⁓ And so I think we don’t need to reinvent the wheel a lot of times and just go back. One resource that I’ve come to re-appreciate as I’ve been working on a book with an engineering professor and a statistician ⁓ is the net Bible. ⁓ Kind of.

how much a lay person can do with ancient languages using the net Bible. When you get around there and play with it, it’s an online Bible, ⁓ it has an online interface, but you can really, if you play with it long enough, you will realize it gives you lot of access to what’s going on with the biblical languages, even if you can’t read Hebrew or Greek or Aramaic. ⁓ So maybe that’s a resource that we should have mentioned that I didn’t.

Mike Tolliver (23:50)
Fair enough. enough. Now, ⁓ speaking of that version, it occurs to me that you and I have done a lot of talking for reasons that are ⁓ not yet announced ⁓ projects in the center. But we’ve talked about Bible versions, like translations of the Bible. And one of the ones that we’ve been ⁓ recently impressed by or maybe renewed appreciation for

is the the Lexham translation, right? Can you talk a little bit about what it is that you like about this translation?

Dru Johnson (24:22)
Right. Yeah.

I only like one thing about translations. I’m a single track person. the Lexham just got, they were part of ⁓ Faithlife ⁓ out in Bellingham, Washington and Logos Software. Lexham was kind of the publishing arm of that company. They just got bought out by Baker. Just so happens the new president of Baker came from Logos Faithlife division. And so he brought the whole Lexham collection over there, including, think the

Mike Tolliver (24:34)
Yeah.

Dru Johnson (24:58)
I believe it’s true to say the translation. When it comes to me and what I look for in an English translation, when I think about what I can use is what comes closest to kind of rendering what’s going on in the text, clarity be damned. Because even in Hebrew, it’s not like if you’re a native Hebrew reader or speaker, you read the biblical Hebrew.

Mike Tolliver (25:17)
You

Dru Johnson (25:27)
you go, ⁓ that’s the best way you could have put that in Hebrew, right? I mean, even the biblical Hebrew reads awkward sometimes, right? But that’s the way that they wrote ⁓ it. I was in Jerusalem a couple weeks ago, and I picked up a copy of a modern Israeli Hebrew translation of the Old and New Testament all in one. And so I’m reading through the New Testament in this modern Hebrew, right? As best I can, I’m stumbling through it right now.

But it’s really interesting to see how they translate certain things, kind of using biblical Hebrew, where it shows up in modern Hebrew to translate New Testament text. Anyways, what it also has, which I didn’t know when I bought it, is it has a modern Israeli Hebrew translation of the Old Testament in Hebrew. So it has two columns. It has the Masoretic text, the Old Testament, the Hebrew Bible, and then in the other column it has a modern Israeli Hebrew translation.

And so you can compare, if you know a little bit of modern Israeli Hebrew, you can see some of the differences. And I was asking my friend David Pileggi, I said, what? Because he kind of knew the story of the translation. was like, why, why retranslate into modern Hebrew? He goes, well, the kids in Israel can’t read the biblical Hebrew, right? It’s like reading King James, like the kids can’t read the King James English anymore because it’s, it’s dropped out of favor as far as our reading habits. ⁓

Mike Tolliver (26:26)
Okay.

Gotcha.

Dru Johnson (26:52)
So that, like, if you wanted to read the Bible, they got to have something they can read in their own language, just like we say about English and French and Kiswahili and other languages.

Mike Tolliver (27:03)
⁓ But so connect that thought then to the the Lexham like what’s going on and the complexities of the Hebrew. It does that well. ⁓

Dru Johnson (27:12)
Yeah,

think, you know, every translation is going to struggle. They’re going to pick their battles as far as what they think is important to translate. I think ⁓ vocabulary consistency. So if a word appears this way in this way, NASB and ESB try to do this as well. If it appears translated this way here, you’re going to translate it consistently that way throughout the text. You’re not going to try to put a synonym in there because American, the American ear is used. You don’t like to hear the same word over and over again.

So even when we’re grading writing, we’re thinking, hey, you just said the word ritual 50 times. Maybe picking a word ceremony, something. Well, the biblical authors have no problem using the exact same word over and over, because they’re using it in these very strategic ways to shape out a concept. So I appreciate translations like the lexem that is trying to show you what’s going on ⁓ at the level, and a little bit of the word order thing.

trying, you can see they’re trying to restrain themselves as far as trying to translate it into a modern vernacular. And even like the name of God, right? It’s Yahweh throughout, rather than the Lord. So you don’t have these weird, you know, the Lord is Yahweh or the Lord, the Lord, the Lord is his name. You’re like, the Lord’s not a name. That’s a title. It says Yahweh, Yahweh, Yahweh is his name, right? And they’re like, Oh, okay. That’s like Bob is his name. So, so there,

Mike Tolliver (28:30)
Hahaha

Dru Johnson (28:38)
Yeah, so they’re trying to do things like that. And again, all translations have to pick their battles. They have to make theological decisions and philological decisions about what language and what word order. And the word order in Hebrew, if we were to put it directly into English, would be so clunky and awkward, even for modern Hebrew speakers. ⁓ It would be, you would stumble over it a bit. So again, it’s been, as I’ve been looking at those two Hebrew translations, the…

Mike Tolliver (28:56)
Hmm.

Dru Johnson (29:06)
Masoretic text and the modern Hebrew translation of the Masoretic text both in Hebrew I’ve noticed how often they rearrange the word order in the modern Hebrew So so it’s not just an English thing even though English is much more intent word order Makes meaning more in English than it does in most languages. That was a weirdly ordered way to say that by the

Mike Tolliver (29:16)
Hmm, okay.

Well, you’re just getting used to the Hebrew ordering of the sentence. ⁓ Well, good. hope that we will have the opportunity in next year’s podcast to discuss why we’ve been looking at these translations, but ⁓ we’ll leave that as a teaser. Okay. If those are some of the tailwinds, some of the stuff that’s going on that’s really, really exciting.

Dru Johnson (29:33)
Right.

Yes, yes, stay tuned. Bible stuff. Yes.

Mike Tolliver (29:57)
with respect to Hebraic thought, let’s talk about some of the headwinds. What is going on in the culture that is making Hebraic thought so challenging? ⁓ We’ve talked about a couple of these things. Where do you want to start?

Dru Johnson (30:01)
Okay.

Yeah, you and I had a heated conversation with somebody at the annual conferences, right? I felt so bad. It was too heated. I was being too much of a jerk in that conversation. If you’re listening, you know who you are, and I feel badly about that conversation. ⁓ But no, I think it was a little frustrating for us both sides because that side was trying to say, look, Hellenism and the Greek tradition.

Mike Tolliver (30:16)
Yes.

Dru Johnson (30:35)
That’s not all there is, but it’s part of the tradition. What it means to think Christianly means to think within that tradition. They weren’t saying that exactly, but that was kind of the tone that I was being triggered by, whether it was actually what they were saying or not. I’m easily triggered in these conversations, as you can imagine. And a few books have come out, too, kind of making this case. There always is a book every few years that Hellenism, and by that we mean Greek thought, and also some Roman thought in there as well.

helped to complete the thinking of scripture in some way. Like, we couldn’t quite understand what they were doing until we got these Greek categories that finally gave us enough sophistication and enough conceptual hygiene as my colleague, Francis Watts, no, sorry, not Francis Watts. ⁓

His name have just completely Dr. Watts out of Cambridge. His name has completely escaped my mind. He likes to say it’s conceptual hygiene. And so they say they’re basically making the case that the biblical authors couldn’t do the conceptual hygiene. They couldn’t do conceptual clarity. And it’s not until the Greeks come along ⁓ and then the Roman influence of Greek thought that we actually get what we need in order to understand the sophistication of God’s theology.

that and the scripture is just kind of the fertile ground from which you can work, but the goal is to work outside of scripture because scripture just provides the playground. ⁓ Scripture becomes the bucket of Lego bricks from which you can kind of build systems of theology. And so to see that in various ways in the academic world and also in some writing that’s trying to reach the public and the church more. And our argument is that no,

Mike Tolliver (32:05)
you

Dru Johnson (32:27)
the biblical world, Genesis is a sophisticated theological and philosophical text on its own rights. That is difficult to understand, but what is important about Genesis is easy enough for a child to understand. That’s the claim of scripture. ⁓ And they literally, I don’t mean that in a metaphor or analogy, I mean they literally believe children can understand this because that is what you’re supposed to be teaching your children as you rise up and you go along the way. I mean this is actually commanded that you do this.

and that you teach it to the foreigner and that you teach it to the widow and you teach it to the native and the young and the old. ⁓ So this is this kind of collectivist notion of biblical theology and wisdom and discernment and you know I would say a philosophical system is actually required of all Israelites which means that it’s required of all Christians as well because we are Israel of God that it doesn’t stop there. ⁓ And so I think that’s kind of the thing that is always

you know, the wind that’s always flying in our face that’s slowing us down or that it feels like it slows us down from making progress because that assumption, even if people don’t know they’re making that assumption, they might not even know what Greco-Roman means or they might not know anything about Hellenistic philosophy. They pick it up in their thinking because it drips through a lot of other thinking. So when they talk about, God is omniscient and say, okay, well, we’re in scripture. Does it actually teach a consistent view of God’s knowledge?

And I say, well, I don’t know, but it’s in there somewhere. It’s not that I don’t think God is omniscient or all-knowing. It’s that we want to show why they thought that was the case and how did they show it so that we can talk about all kinds of other things about God as well that are true to what the biblical authors thought, even though the biblical authors don’t have the final thought.

Mike Tolliver (34:15)
Now you mentioned a lot of this stuff kind of dripping its way through to the broader culture, the things that folks might just say to one another in the pews, not even aware that it comes from these different ⁓ streams of thought as opposed to the biblical authors. And in the broader culture, we’ve noticed at least two ⁓ discrete streams of non-Hebraic thought that

are kind of captivating people’s imaginations, ⁓ know, neoplatonism being one and stoicism being the other. And so I’m just curious either how you’ve seen those take root or ways that we can offer a counter narrative.

Dru Johnson (34:48)
Right.

Yeah, how about I’ll take neoplatonism and you take stoicism. ⁓

Mike Tolliver (35:07)
All right. ⁓

Dru Johnson (35:10)
And by neoplatonism, you know, we really just mean a version of Plato, the philosopher who really roots our understanding and kind of how we navigate the world best is by tapping into our pre-existence in the heavenly reality or some kind of connection between our soul in the heavens and the ordering of our soul. That’s a crude, very crass analogy of what Plato is arguing. And then later people who take up his tradition.

But essentially, it’s kind of this heavenly bound, or as Nietzsche would call it, a world fleeing theology, that the real stuff is up there in the heavens and everything down here is muddied, it’s problematic, it’s deceptive, our eyes deceive us, our brains deceive us, our dreams deceive us, ⁓ and that the goal is to somehow find ways to get past all of that stuff. ⁓ And I do actually think in culture, we have found ways to mitigate. One is what I just call common sense wisdom.

that is trying to do that. Another one would be something like the scientific enterprise. When it’s operating at its best, it’s trying to say, no, we want to say the real world can tell us something and we want to focus down and see in community when we really focus on and watch some aspect of the real world, what will it tell us about what creation is like and what we are like? And ⁓ so I think that that neoplatonism, it pops up in all kinds of places, but

Certainly one of them is where you, as soon as somebody says in a Christian context, perfection, I’m like, ooh, what do you mean by perfection? Like, well, the Garden of Eden was perfect, right? And I’m like, mm, you might already be importing a lot of ideas about perfection that come from Plato, Neoplatonism, that come from Aristotle, that come from ⁓ enlightenment thinking, that come from post-industrial…

engineering metaphors, right? This idea of perfection to scale German engineering, right? Like these ideas that perfection is getting the absolute perfect system worked out together in some way. So we got to be really careful. And we just say, you know, what we do, Mike, is we just say, well, what do the biblical authors think? You know, if they think that it is perfection, how would they describe it? What language would they use? How would they develop that concept?

The Garden of Eden seems like a perfect place if I were to talk about something like perfection, that seems like a really appropriate place to talk about it. Yet, here’s all that don’t seem to fit your category of perfection. The new heavens and the new earth seem to be another good place, but yet they don’t seem to talk like that, right? So, our minds be chastened ⁓ by how the biblical authors think so that we can accurately

Mike Tolliver (37:31)
Hahaha

Dru Johnson (37:50)
project kind of what we think they might be thinking today about our world. Stoicism has its own cult following though. ⁓ It’s doing something different than what I just described though.

Mike Tolliver (38:02)
Yeah, I am by no means an expert on Stoicism, but I have seen this trend, particularly among men, ⁓ that it seems to be an ⁓ appealing sort of alternative to a lot of what men are told men ought to be doing in broader culture. And so yearning for something that is ⁓ maybe more spiritual, but ⁓

Dru Johnson (38:13)
Hmm.

Mike Tolliver (38:29)
you know, helps them achieve the things that they want to achieve. There is a particular interest in Stoics like Marcus Aurelius I’ve seen where ⁓ their entire podcast dedicated to the works of ⁓ some of these famous Stoics out there. ⁓ In my memory of the original context where Stoicism came out is that it was an alternative or a foil with hedonism.

So if you are familiar with all the hedonistic ways of our modern culture, men who are looking for an alternative to that are turning to the classical alternative, which is offered through Stoicism. And there’s ⁓ an appeal to mastery over yourself ⁓ that this offers. so when it comes to ⁓ how it relates to scripture,

⁓ There are scholars who go so far as to say, ⁓ Jesus was just a stoic philosopher. ⁓ But they are quite absolutely. And certainly Paul was aware of stoicism ⁓ with his upbringing and education. But, ⁓ you know, that he we believe he was appropriating the ⁓ Old Testament prophetic method to critique the Judaism of his day and also

Dru Johnson (39:33)
Right. Paul was just the steward.

Mm-hmm.

Mike Tolliver (39:56)
the broader Greek alternatives. So, you know, where we would want to paint a compelling picture for men who are tired of the hedonism of our culture. You know, I think we have a little bit of work to do, but this is why I’ve appreciated so much Anthony Bradley’s work in this. you know, we just did a podcast interview with him. You know, I think it was back in November. Really, really good stuff.

Dru Johnson (40:23)
Yeah, a month or two ago, yeah.

Mike Tolliver (40:25)
And he’s real big on how we’re missing the opportunity with men in our culture. And because we’re missing it, they’re turning to stoicism.

Dru Johnson (40:34)
Yeah, it’s not like they’re going to just sit there neutrally and go like, well, I’ll twiddle my thumbs until everybody figures out what we should be doing. Right. And it’s got a it’s got a very direct appeal to this kind of, know, don’t get yourself ⁓ bound up in the affairs of this world. It’s all fatally determined. Right. I’m getting another crass caricature. And there’s some truth to it. Right. Like when your mom says, hey, you can’t control the situation, but you can control how you react to the situation. I mean, there are some things that we would say

Mike Tolliver (40:42)
Mm-hmm.

Hahaha

Hmm.

Dru Johnson (41:04)
that are true, like emotional guardrails that people can live into in some ways. But when it all becomes about me, what you see as a lack of is the community, how the community should be shaping you. ⁓ And even to plug our reading of scripture together, we have a guy in Alaska who works with indigenous people in Alaska, and he just very quickly rattled off one indigenous view, and this is Alaskan tribe.

their view of what it means to be masculine. And I think it wrecked most of us. It was, you know, that they’re a real man, right, is quiet and peaceable and his emotions are steady. ⁓ But he, you know, he cares for his children tenderly. He, ⁓ you know, it’s almost, it almost sounded, if you just gave somebody on the street that description, they would think you were describing a mother, right?

But that was what was valued is that a man who cares about the community before himself, he cares about his family before himself, and he’s soft spoken, he’s tender. He’s not detached, he’s actually relationally attached to his family and his community. It was a remarkable, it was just a little quote, but it blew my mind. Almost every next adjective that came out, I was like, nope, was not expecting that, right? And you realize that… ⁓

Even going back to old Roman Stoicism, you’re going back to a very specific culture’s view of manhood as well, because Stoicism was mostly designed for men in its original forms.

Okay, well, those are some of the challenges we have is to kind of get Christians, I think even non-Christians, onto better ways of thinking about existing in the world. Ones ⁓ truer to reality. Even if those are not bad ones, there are truer ones that will guide them ⁓ more truly. Anything else we need to talk about for this year?

Mike Tolliver (42:57)
Hmm.

That’s everything I had.

Dru Johnson (43:06)
Okay, if you’re still listening at this point, kudos to you or you’ve fallen asleep and didn’t hit stop. So, nighty night. See you,

Mike Tolliver (43:18)
See you,