Hey everybody, I'm Tim McEy 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 ten 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 be helpful for you too.

I also help start this thing called the Bible Project.

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

You can find those resources at thebibelproject.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 Doravop, 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 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 Lubek.

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

...