You're listening to OnScript, a new podcast bringing you conversations on current Biblical scholarship.

We're your hosts, Matt and Matt. Thanks for joining us.

Okay, welcome OnScript listeners. I hope this podcast finds you well and primed to repent of the ways you've previously thought about repentance. We're at least prepared to engage in challenging and bold new proposal by David Lambert of University of North Carolina, who has written a new book, How Repentance became Biblical, Judaism, Christianity, and the Interpretation of Scripture, published by Oxford University Press.

David, welcome to Onscript. Hi, Matt. Thank you. It's great to be here. David Lambert is assistant professor of religious studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

He received his PhD, MA, and A, B from Harvard's Nearest Un language and Civilizations program,

and has taught Hebrew Bible at Emory University, where we met, and now at UNC, and also in Texas as well.

Now for the most important lead-off question, David, you had me as a student, Emory, and I worked hard in your classes and I even did some TA work for you, but I did notice you didn't dedicate the book to me.

Was this an oversight on the part of the publisher?

Well, yes, you were indeed a prize student at Emory,

and it's been great to stay in touch with you,

but my wife really did have to really had first claims on on this one

yeah okay okay that's fair enough so you've been working on this book for some time now i'm

wondering if you could take us on a quick tour of how this book came into being and describe

some of the key moments in the story of its formation.

Yeah. Well, in many ways, this book brought me into being as a scholar. When I first started

thinking about the topic, I was still a graduate student and was really interested in a variety and working

in a variety of different time periods, particularly focusing on Jewish studies. But I had

interests even in the medieval period in rabbinics, ancient Judaism. And I wanted to look at how people conceptualize their lives as narratives.

That was the kind of broader overarching question, really, that brought me to the concept of repentance because it occurred to me then

pretty fairly early on that repentance really was one of the primary dominant concepts

for how to think about these kinds of narratives among Jews and also Christians as well.

Now what happened though was as I started to research this question of the history of repentance

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