Hey, my name is Matt Whitman, and this is the 10 minute Bible Hour podcast.

And also you should know, full disclosure, this is me from the future.

Coming back to add a bonus intro and welcome to you at the front end of the very first episode in the

history of this gigantic project. If you're here it's because you decided to start

from the beginning, which I think is amazing. Thank you for doing that.

Here's what I know now that I could not possibly have known when I started this

thing and recorded this episode that you're listening to right now, however many years ago it was.

I couldn't have known that we would move

at the pace that we're moving and that people would enjoy moving at a slow pace

through the text and diving so deep into the history and the background and the culture and we've got to know each other and I've discovered that the group of people who are making this part of their daily routine

You're totally different from each other is a very diverse group of people gathered in one place, which

hardly ever happens in this day and age of the internet. So this has grown into a really awesome

thing because of the people who listen, and now you're one of the people who listen. So thank you so, so so so much for doing that. The goal of this

podcast is not for me to persuade you of a whole bunch of things or get you to think just like

me that's not very interesting or compelling. The goal of this podcast is for us to try and cut through

the noise and look at one book of the Bible at a time no matter how long it

takes in light of its historical context and its literary context.

This is fancy ways of saying,

we're going to try to look really closely at it

with the goal of you getting it on complete lockdown.

One book of the Bible for starters totally in your hip

pocket so that you can mentally spread out all the parts on the table in front of

...