Hello and welcome to the scriptures or real podcast.

This is the podcast where we talk about elements of the scriptures that have made them become more real for us because we believe the more real they are in our minds,

the more we'll be able to see how they apply to us in our lives, and we need all the help we can get.

I'm your host, Kerry Mealstein, and I am so happy to have with me my dear friend and colleague and boss.

This is Sean Hopkin, who is the chairman of the Department of Ancient Scripture, which

is the department that I am in. And Sean has been on the program a few times before, and even

with his father. So if you've been with us for a while, you're familiar with him. But he has

degrees in, I think, both Arabic and Hebrew Bible from Texas, right? University of Texas.

You tell me.

My Hebrew studies did Arabic literature as well. So I used Hebrew and Arabic literature from medieval times.

So, and Spanish literature.

Yeah.

Yeah, which is, so this is a fun one year. There was a week we spent in Oxford together on a program together where you were looking at, I think, Arabic texts there. And I was looking at excavation notes from people who had excavated in Oxford before. But anyway, so we had a great time in Oxford,

and I am still unhappy that Sean won the Croquet game. But I'm so glad you admitted that,

Carrie. Like, I remember it too, but my wife claims that I remember games incorrectly. I was ahead

the whole time, and then you still killed me at the end. Anyway, it was a good game there on the lawns of Oxford. So we're happy to have you with us, Sean. What else should we know about you? Your father and a bishop right now for the second time. I'm serving as a YSA bishop right now and loving that, staying busy with that. And then for those who-

Because you weren't staying busy as department chair.

So it's a good thing they give you something else to keep you busy.

They are two different things, but they do feel similar at times.

And it's sort of being department chair in one sense, in one sense they're very different.

But another sense, they're similar in that like a bishop, you know, you can be

serving in the nursery, then bishop, and then primary and whatever it is. So it's my turn right

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