Hey, everybody. I'm Tim Mackie, and this is my podcast, exploring my strange Bible. I am a card-carrying

Bible history and language nerd who thinks that Jesus of Nazareth is utterly amazing and worth following with everything that you

have. On this podcast, I'm putting together the last 20 years worth of lectures and sermons where I've

been exploring the strange and wonderful story of the Bible and how it invites us into the mission

of Jesus and the journey of faith.

And I hope this can all be helpful for you too.

I also help start this thing called the Bible Project.

We make animated videos and podcasts and classes about all kinds of topics in Bible and theology.

You can find all those resources at Bibleproject.com.

With all that said, let's dive into the episode for this week.

We decided to launch this podcast with a five-part teaching series that I did back in 2013

in the Sunday gatherings at Door of Hope Church, where I was a pastor

for many years. And in this series, we explore the book of Jonah, which is one of the most

fascinating, fascinating books of the Old Testament. I've had going on a two-decade

kind of obsession with understanding the brilliance of this book. I was first introduced

to the book of Jonah as a new Christian in my early 20s. I had this class on reading biblical

literature with an amazingly brilliant professor of Hebrew Bible named Ray Lubbeck. And he blew my mind teaching me to read the Bible as Hebrew

literature. So what this first message, Five, is going to do is actually just go through the first

couple of verses of the book of Jonah, but then set up what kind of book is before us in the book

of Jonah and how if you've only been introduced to it through children's literature or media, how unfortunate that is, because this is definitely not a children's story. It's very complex and subversive and challenging. So this first message then is just setting you up for reading a book that says sophisticated as the book of Jonah.

But I learned a ton in the process of preparing for it, and I hope that it's helpful for you.

How many of you are familiar with the story of Jonah?

...