This is On Script, bringing you conversations about current scholarship on scripture.

We're your host, Matt and Matt. Thanks for listening. Have you ever wondered about the relevance of Old Testament law?

What about those laws concerning eating locusts versus eating cockroaches?

Or what about the necessity of staying outside the camp if you have a skin disease?

Or have you ever felt challenged by the portrayals of God's wrath and anger in the Old Testament?

Or what about some of the morally problematic portions of the Old Testament, like the command to slaughter the inhabitants of Canaan,

or views on women in the Bible.

Each of these areas touches on the strange and troubling dimensions of the Old Testament.

While in this brand new episode of OnScript, we will be addressing these kinds of topics with Dr. Matthew Schlimm, who joins us today from Dubuque, Iowa.

Matthew is on to discuss his recent book,

This Strange and Sacred Scripture, Wrestling with the Old Testament and Its Oddities,

published by Baker Academic in 2015.

Matt, welcome to OnScript.

Thank you.

Matt is Associate Professor of Old Testament at the University of Dubuque Theological Seminary.

He is the author of From Fratricide to Forgiveness, the language of ethics, the language

and ethics of anger in Genesis published by Eisenbrowns in 2011.

He's the co-editor of the Common English Study Bible and now this strange and sacred scripture,

which we're here to discuss.

So Matt, you're from Wisconsin, is that right?

That's correct, yes, I was born in Madison.

Okay, because I once spent a year in the in the far north of wisconsin and cable near

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