Welcome to the program.

My name is Mono Gonzalez,

and I have a special guest with us today,

Dr. James Hoffmeier.

Welcome, Dr. Hoffmeier.

Good to be here.

You know, and this is really a pleasure for me

because Dr. Hoffmeier was one of my professors,

probably my main professor back in graduate school,

and he has written a recent book,

which I think is tremendous on the prophets

and really not just the prophets of the Old Testament,

but also the really the whole idea of prophets in the Bible, including the New Testament.

But for our audience, kind of share a little bit about your particular background and your

scholarly work as well as your work in the church and other things.

Well, I'm a missionary kid. I was born and raised in Egypt and lived most of my first 16

years in Egypt and so I had a distinct interest in the world of the Bible from my youth. As a 10-year-old,

my father took me traveling along with my siblings. And one of the places

we went to was Qumran. And I crawled into the Dead Sea Scroll caves and things like that,

which you can't do anymore, but I was able to do that back in 1961. And so I had this very early

interest in the Bible, even seeing Dead Sea Scrolls when

I was 10 at the museum in Jerusalem and a deep interest in scripture passed on to me

...