Welcome to the Thinking Fellows podcast. My name is Caleb. And today I'm joined by one other of our regular thinking fellows, Dr. Adam Francisco, who's here with me today. And we're actually recording at Concordia University Irvine. And we have a guest with us today. I've been doing a couple of interview episodes the last couple weeks. And we have Dr. C.J. Armstrong on the show. Listeners may recognize the name.

I complained about him on the show and the Latin course that I suffered through. No, I really enjoyed it.

But the last two semesters before I graduated last spring, which is a great time. And so we brought

you on the show to talk about kind of classical education, the languages, you know, those things that you kind of specialize in here at Concordia. You do a lot, though. You teach languages and history and theology. I tend to do it all. And I've had my feet, one foot in each world of theology and also of humanities and the ancient world classical

studies, that sort of thing for a long, long time.

From the time that I went on to seminary, I was doing the master's work that they offer

at Washington University in St. Louis, which is real close to the Concordia Seminary. And several of my

colleagues there while I was at St. Louis there in the late 90s, we're doing the exact same thing,

because there's a natural marriage between the study of the ancient Mediterranean and what's

going on in the ancient Near East and what's going on in the context

of the development of the Old Testament literature, the New Testament literature. And gosh, it's just

way too much fun to read Latin poetry to give that up for a little while. It's a wonderful thing.

As you know, Adam, you've been reading Virgil's Aeneid with our history students for the last seven to ten years here doing our Q&I.

I tell you I have been.

My students say that all the time.

Yeah, we read Dr. Armourne.

We read.

Yeah, there's nothing better, in my opinion, than the study of the classical world,

especially in the original languages, and especially if you're reading Roman poetry.

And let's get more a fine tune than that, the poetry of Publius Ovidius-Ovidius-Nassau.

I love that guy.

If you read Ovid, there's no going back.

...