You're listening to the Bible for Normal People, the only God-ordained podcast on the internet.

Serious talk about the sacred book, I'm Pete Ends.

And I'm Jared Byas.

Hey everybody, welcome to our podcast, which today is entitled,

a gentle reminder that the Old Testament is part of our Bible,

and you can't avoid it.

And our guest today is Brent Straun.

He is a Professor of Old Testament at Candler's School of Theology at Emory University.

And Jared, what did you think?

Well, I always appreciate when we have guests on the show who are just very articulate.

And he could recall a lot of quotes, and he's just a real sharp person,

who is trying to nuance a lot of things that we work kind of throwing back on him.

So I appreciated that, and I appreciated his love of St. Augustine.

He's a geek who can communicate.

I know, it's a rare thing.

Anyway, and Brent's a great guy.

What I got out of it was, I mean, there's a lot that I appreciated about our discussion,

but I think for me, the big takeaway was how the Old Testament is really,

and the Bible is a whole, is a book that's really meant for adult reading and adult consumption,

and it's worthy of our adult attention, and not coming away with simple lessons,

like moral lessons, for example.

It is actually very complex.

...