Are There Hidden Secrets in the Old Testament? Featuring Chad Bird
Thinking Fellows
1517 Podcasts
4.8 • 869 Ratings
🗓️ 27 January 2026
⏱️ 53 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Chad Bird joins the Thinking Fellows to challenge the popular idea that the Old Testament is a mysterious book filled with hidden codes and secret meanings waiting to be unlocked. Together, they examine the motivations and theological presuppositions that drive these approaches and why they often distort how Christians read Scripture. In contrast, the conversation offers a constructive vision for Old Testament study; one that emphasizes historical context, literary awareness, and the value of the original languages as gifts that clarify, rather than conceal, God's Word.
Show Notes:
What's New from 1517:
-
The Essential Nestingen: Essays on Preaching, Catechism, and the Reformation
-
Untamed Prayers: 365 Daily Devotions on Christ in the Book of Psalms by Chad Bird
More from the hosts:
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to the Thinking Fellows podcast. My name is Caleb Keith, and today I am joined by |
| 0:24.4 | Adam Francisco, Scott Keith, and Chad Bird. I think lots of Thinking Fellows listeners will know |
| 0:31.3 | who Chad is because Chad is a scholar in residence at 1517.org. He's a scholar of the Old Testament. He's a co-host of 40 |
| 0:40.1 | minutes in the Old Testament. He also leads our Bible and one year project that we do at 1517. |
| 0:47.6 | And it's not too late to start that either. So there might be a link in the show notes there. |
| 0:52.4 | This episode should come out around late January. |
| 0:55.2 | So you'd only be a couple weeks behind and could definitely catch up if you have any interest in reading through the Bible in 2026. |
| 1:03.6 | And Chad is joining us today to talk about the Old Testament. |
| 1:08.2 | Specifically, we're going to talk about secrets in the Old Testament or the idea |
| 1:12.6 | that there are secrets in the Old Testament, which I, I mean, it's anecdotal just with the |
| 1:20.8 | internet, actually even people in real life. It feels like there's a resurgence of this |
| 1:25.3 | sort of like ancient Hebrew wisdom movement that says that |
| 1:30.7 | there's secret knowledge in the Old Testament or that Christianity is only totally |
| 1:35.9 | comprehensible or a total package if you understand not these big ideas from the Old Testament |
| 1:43.0 | or not even if you have knowledge of the stories of the Old Testament, but that there's secret layers underneath or things you might be missing. People might be familiar with ideas of numerology. So Hebrew numbers are shared with the words in Hebrew, and that certain words may have numerical meanings or that certain |
| 2:04.7 | prophecies could be decoded in particular ways or that there's extra biblical context that |
| 2:12.4 | without it you can't really understand what's happening in the Old Testament, things like that. |
| 2:16.2 | And so I thought it would be good to have chat on because, well, he does so much Old Testament content, |
| 2:22.3 | and he dissect the Old Testament. |
| 2:23.8 | He's done a lot of Hebrew word study at 1517 and on social media and things like that. |
| 2:28.9 | And so that'd be good to have Chad come and say, what is the Old Testament actually there for, for Christians? |
| 2:37.9 | What is the benefit of the Old Testament? What's the information inside the Old Testament? And what's |
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