Hey, OnScript listeners, this is Matt Lynch coming to you from Regent College in Vancouver.

This is an episode we released a little while back on our Biblical World podcast.

Did you know we had that podcast?

And wanted to re-release it here on OnScript.

Hope you all having a good holiday season, good Christmas, and wish you all.

Happy New Year.

We'll be out with new episodes in the

new year, both on OnScript and Biblical World. So stay tuned. Thanks for listening. Thanks for all

your support and encouragement throughout the year. Well, I'm delighted today to be talking with

Jason Staples, who has a fabulous book, The Idea of Israel in Second

Temple Judaism. I highly recommend it to our listeners. And so it's a real treat for me, Jason,

to spend some time talking with you. Thanks for coming on the Biblical World podcast.

Well, thank you so much for the invite. And really,

the pleasure is mine here. I've listened actually to every episode in the back catalog. So

this is really a delight. Oh, well, great. Great. And before we dive into your book, I was looking

a little bit at your history. And it seems that before you finished your

PhD and this thriving New Testament scholar, you had like an earlier career. You worked in sports

media. So I'm trying to find the connection between what you're doing now and sports media.

Tell us a little bit about what that sports media job was all about.

So actually, I'm actually still working in sports media. That's actually my primary source of income since I

haven't been able to land a permanent job in academia and can't feed my family on adjunct income.

So I actually make most of my living by doing football analysis, that sort of thing,

...