Hello and welcome to the scriptures are real podcast, the podcast where we talk about times where the scriptures

have become very real to us because we believe there's a tremendous amount of power in the

scriptures, and as they become more real to us, we can draw more heavily on that power and have it

influence our lives better. I'm your host, Kerry Mealstein, and I'm excited for our guest today.

This is a friend that I've known for a long time.

We've done some great studies and is currently teaching seminary. I'll let him tell you a little

bit more about himself, but we're with Josh Mattson. Welcome, Josh. Thanks, Carrie. It's so great

to be here with you and thank you for a wonderful podcast. Tell us a little bit about yourself, Josh,

and what you've done and why you're doing what you're doing. Yeah, so my journey really started

off as an undergraduate at BYU. I had an opportunity to study in the Ancient Near Eastern

Studies program there where I emphasized in Hebrew Bible,

which is coming to be very handy this year with Come Follow Me and the curriculum of church study.

I went from BYU to Trinity Western University in Vancouver, British Columbia,

where I did a master's degree that focused in biblical studies, but with an emphasis in Dead Sea Scrolls research.

And then just recently finished a PhD

at Florida State University in religions of Western antiquity,

where I wrote my dissertation on reception

of various Old Testament books by Jewish communities

in the late Second Temple period. And so a kind of

an academic journey that has gone this way in that and recently was hired as a full-time

religious educator with seminaries and institutes where I spend my day teaching the Old Testament

to high school students. Just good fun stuff, good fun stuff.

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