Beeson Podcast, Episode # Dr. Stephana Dan Laing Date >>Announcer: Welcome to the Beeson podcast, coming to you from Beeson Divinity School on the campus of Samford University. Now your host, Doug Sweeney. >>Sweeney: Welcome to the Beeson Podcast. I'm your host, Doug Sweeney, and I'm joined today by Professor Stefana Laing, who just returned from an exploration of early church council sites, mainly in Turkey, and will soon celebrate the release of a women's study Bible that she played a significant part in editing. We're looking forward to hearing all about both of these things. So thank you, Dr. Laing, for joining us. >>Laing: Wow, thanks for the invite. >>Sweeney: So you've been around Beeson Divinity School for quite a while. Most of our people know you already, but just for the few who don't know much about you yet, let's introduce you to them. Tell us just a little bit about how did you become a Christian? How did you get involved in ministry? How did we get you to Beeson Divinity School? >>Laing: Yeah, well, I'll try in 60 seconds or less. I've been at Beeson full time since 2018, but my association with Beeson goes prior to that, since 1999. I came to be a believer, actually, having grown up in a Christian family, a Christian household, a ministry household. My parents were Romanian immigrants who came to Cleveland, Ohio and my dad really wanted to have, to get a theological education which he was unable to do in communist Romania at the time in the late 60s and so he came to the States. His priority was theological education, so I grew up among all his books. My father was my pastor, my mom was my Sunday school teacher, so by the ripe old age of 13, I was ready to walk the aisle. And so loved history and wanted to teach church history and wanted to teach church history. >>Sweeney: So you knew that from an early age? >>Laing: Yes, history, especially ancient history, was my first love I would say. >>Sweeney: Yeah, when you went to college was that on your mind already? >>Laing: Yes, when I went to Macquarie University, I did a bachelor's degree in ancient history and medieval studies. And even before that, in high school, the last two years of high school, I took a class that was ancient history. So two whole years there, one for the Greeks and one for the Romans. It's a natural fit here. >>Sweeney: All right, so you went to seminary as a young adult because you wanted to be a teacher and you already had kind of patristics, ancient Christianity in your mind. >>Laing: Yes, I went to seminary, did an MDiv and was on a track that they had called the higher education track. I was always interested in higher education. I thought I might go to teach at a college, a university, whether secular or Christian, but early Christianity was my main interest. Yeah, that always was on my mind. I figured I was going to go through and do a PhD. It wasn't really a big, this might sound bad, it wasn't really a big discernment process for me. I just knew that's what it would take. So I knew I was gonna go forward all the way and I'd be in school a very long time. And I'm still in school! >>Sweeney: Yeah, super. And you've been at this school longer than I have and you started out kind of adjuncting part-time here and there, and eventually became full-time. How did Dr. George get you to Beeson? >>Laing: I mean it really was the Holy Spirit I think that brought me to Beeson and Dr. George was the conduit of the Holy Spirit for me. In my mind, I think that's always how it's going to be. But I came to Beeson in ‘99. I was still a doctoral student at Southern Seminary, which is just up I-65 from us. And I was driving through Birmingham on my way to Montgomery where my brother had just graduated from officer training school at Maxwell Air Force Base. So when I passed by the school, I thought I'd just stop in and look around, drive around. Met a couple of people who providentially were here in January when really no one is here. Dr. George invited me to teach a fall semester in 1999 to fill in for a faculty member who was going on sabbatical. >>Sweeney: Marvelous. All right. Let's dive in and talk about this wonderful trip to Turkey that you took and the study Bible that you've just helped with. Let's start with Turkey. So how did this trip emerge? What did you do when you went to Turkey? >>Laing: Well, let me just say this was a refreshing, edifying, and informative trip all together. And I owe a really big thank you to Samford and to Beeson for funding this trip. It was so worth it, I hope for my students that I will teach this fall and in coming semesters. I traveled with a company called Tutku Tours and they specialize in educational travel. I had taken a trip with them before, a couple of years ago, with our whole family. My husband and I and the kids we all went on kind of this two-week trip. One week in Turkey seeing the sites of the seven churches of the Revelation and then the second week was basically the travels of Paul from from Turkey and his church planting travels and through Greece. So we flew to Thessaloniki and then went Philippi and Kavala and Neapolis and Thessalonica, and all the way down to Athens. I neglected to tell the kids that it was more a study trip than a vacation. >>Sweeney: Oh good. Way to sneak it in on them. >>Laing: I know. They still got a few Instagram photos. It's fine. But anyway, so Tuku is the company that organized the tour under the leadership of Dr. Mark Wilson, who heads up something called the Asia Minor Research Center, and they're based in Antalya, Turkey. He lives there, he's based there. The main goal of this tour/conference was to celebrate the Nicaea 1700 anniversary. So our main goal was Nicaea and today it's called Isnik. And the timing of this trip also was significant because the company and the research center wanted to organize the trip so that we actually arrive in Nicaea at the time that the Emperor would have arrived and the bishops were gathering to be there across the days that we know the Emperor was there. They were discussing the creed, the wording of the creed, the phrases of the creed, and the date that they released the creed, which was June 19th. So we were there across the span of those days. And it was kind of surreal, I have to say. Surreal and exciting. And I really appreciate ... who I really appreciate is the bus drivers who really negotiated some tough territory to- >>Sweeney: Yeah, in big vehicles. >>Laing: Yes, absolutely, absolutely. So that was our main goal, was to celebrate this anniversary in Iznik. And it was a conference that was kind of organized loosely across the days of the trip. So several presentations on one day, several another day. Mine was the day before we left that part of Turkey and flew into Cappadocia. So mine was kind of on a pivot day. So there were like nine other scholars speaking. Several others unofficially accompanied us, but they also shared their knowledge and expertise along the way. I was happy to have one of my friends, Glenn Thompson, who is Lutheran. He's a fellow Patristic scholar with me on the steering committee for the Patristics Medieval Group at UTS. He also has researched the journeys of Paul and also Roman roads. So he showed us a lot of Roman roads and some of the places where we went. So even though this trip was specifically for Nicaea, to go to Nicaea and to talk about the council, we actually visited all the sites of the first seven ecumenical church councils except for Ephesus. >>Sweeney: Yeah, how rich. >>Laing: So we visited all of them. Yeah, it was, absolutely. >>Sweeney: Yeah, so you've been studying ancient Christianity for a long time. But nonetheless, a trip to Turkey's got to kind of enrich your understanding of ancient Christianity, enrich the way you're going to be teaching about ancient Christianity. This is a huge question. There's not an easy way to address it in summative form. But if you could give us just one or two ways in which this trip really kind of opened your eyes and educated you and helped you as a somebody who was already a specialist to understand things better and to teach maybe in a more vivid or excited way about ancient Christianity, what would you say? >>Laing: I mean, one particular phrase that has stood out to me over the last few years, the phrase that I heard a journalist say on the radio, a journalist who travels a lot to report, and he said, “If you don't go, you don't know.” Or you don't know if you don't go. I mean it's true both ways and here at Beeson one of our big strengths is to focus on primary source documents but I think that when you go to the locations of the places where events happened, it brings alive the documents in very special ways. And so I hope that with all the photos that I've taken, I hope that it helps people to just kind of get in their mind what it must have been like. A couple of years ago when we went to Smyrna and saw the Agora in Smyrna, the public place and then a little bit up the hill there was just a little indicator of the possible place where Polycarp might have been martyred. You know what it must have been like to stand in that in that huge place or at Nicaea you know. It's right on a lake, Lake Isnik, and there's actually a basilica that's sunk down under the water, you know, might that have been the basilica where they started meeting or not. Some scholars say yes, some think no, but you might take for granted like, well there's a basilica there, it seems logical, but when you go and you physically see the size of it, you have to ask yourself, well, the documents say 318 fathers, right? Those are bishops, not including the retinue and everything. Does this structure hold 318 plus? So you start thinking, you start assessing in kind of a different way than you'd evaluate, or maybe just take for at face value what you read in a text. >>Sweeney: Yeah. I agree with you wholeheartedly. So as Turkey, would you recommend it for people who can afford to go? >>Laing: Absolutely. So if I could just say what are some highlights for me on this trip. First of all, the Hagia Sophia and its beautiful mosaics and I would also say it's worth going multiple times to a place and some of these places are expensive to go to and I know that. I think where there's a will there's a way and you know with prayer, with God all things are possible. Significantly, two years ago when I went to the Hagia Sophia, we only saw the downstairs. And I knew that upstairs there were very famous mosaics. And we weren't allowed to go. This trip, we were allowed only upstairs and not downstairs. And so I saw all the things that I missed the first time around. So I was very, very grateful for that. We visited the Church of the Holy Peace, which is the possible location of the Council of Constantinople of 381. We visited the Orthodox Ecumenical Patriarchate, which is like the Vatican of the Orthodox Church. I hope I'm right in making that kind of that kind of parallel. >>Sweeney: Was the patriarch in town? >>Laing: Yeah, not only was he in town, but our group had an audience with him. It had been arranged by Mark Wilson, which was just amazing, just amazing. And Patriarch Bartholomew let us know that later on in November, at the end of November, November 30 is the feast day of St. Andrew, who's kind of hailed as the establisher of the Orthodox Church there in Istanbul and Constantinople. So he and Pope Leo will meet together at that time and they'll go visit Nicaea together. Yeah, we just got a little insight into upcoming world events. Of course, our travel to Nicaea, the organizers wanted the buses to pursue the route that the emperor would have taken. So it was off the main road. >>Sweeney: Do we know the whole route? >>Laing: So, that was significant. We can pretty much guess. But you've got to have some scholars like Glenn and like Mark who study Roman roads to say, “Hey there's not a road there right now, but look at the remains. There must have been a road this way,” and putting that together with documents that we have, you know, bits and pieces you can kind of figure it out. Yeah, so we visited Nicomedia where Constantine had had a palace and then of course there was the conference participation itself which was, it was surreal for me to talk about the Cappadocians, Gregor of Nazianz, who had been for a short period the Bishop of Constantinople and then later John Chrysostom had been Bishop of Constantinople and for me to talk about them in Constantinople was such a such a privilege and such a rush. >>Sweeney: Yeah, and for listeners who might not know Constantinople is today Istanbul. >>Laing: Yes, that's right. So for this conference, I kind of summarized what happened between Nicaea and Constantinople 381, where, as the Beeson magazine has kind of highlighted, the Nicene Creed, as we say it today, was kind of finalized and set forth at Constantinople 381. Yeah, so that was wonderful, wonderful and then we went to Cappadocia from there and visited a lot of rock churches, rock cities. You know I got a Starbucks mug from Cappadocia, which they call Cappadocia, and even on that they've got this huge rock with a lot of little windows in it just to symbolize Cappadocia, with the geography of the land is like. >>Sweeney: Oh nice, you can take your coffee to class in that mug. >>Laing:’ Yeah, I don't know, I think it might need to be preserved at home. >>Sweeney: Oh, in the shrine. >>Laing: I know. The shrine of travel mugs. Yeah. >>Sweeney: Well, wonderful. I'm really glad you got to go. You went as a patristic scholar at a conference about ancient Christianity in Nicaea, but of course, Turkey was also the site of many places that we read about in the Bible. Most famously in the book of Acts, but elsewhere also. And that's a nice segue into asking you about this new Women's Study Bible that you've played a huge role in helping to produce. Tell us just a little bit about it. I don't know if I said this at the top of the show, so let me say it now. The release date is November 1. So very soon, we all can go and get this Women's Study Bible. And I think you've provided for us here, this is just a sort of pre-publication sample with one book of the Bible in it. >>Laing: Yes, it's the book of Esther. Right, just so you can see the kind of the features of the Bible. It's a full color illustration Bible. These are kind of interesting, they're earrings for men. >>Sweeney: Oh really? >>Laing: Yes. >>Sweeney: Okay. >>Laing: There are pictures on a kind of a glazed frieze on one of the palaces there in Susa, I believe, where there are warriors kind of stepping forward. And you can see that they're wearing earrings like this. >>Sweeney: Yeah, nice. >>Laing: So, you know, and again, I was talking about pictures and material culture in general, contextualizing what we see in the documents. And it's like that for the Bible as well. So I think that showing pictures of the palace at Susa, what soldiers might have been wearing, maybe what eunuchs were wearing, just to kind of bring alive the world of Esther. You know, this Jewish girl, Hadessa, she was entering into a pagan world, a pagan context, very intimately so. She would be housed in the harem. What might her life have been like? Who would have been coming in and out of her space? What would her future have been? Who else was in there with her? What other women were in there? What was their life like? And so we feel like we wanted to kind of build out some of this context into a study Bible like this so that women can allow the Word of God to kind of come up like a pop-up book, almost like a pop-up book, and to kind of step in, have an immersion experience into the text. >>Sweeney: All right, well let's just sort of get introductory with people, how did this study Bible come to be? And those of you who are involved in making it, what did you feel like your sense of mission and purpose was in this project? >>Laing: Well, it was a long process. >>Sweeney: It must have been, it's a huge project. >>Laing: It was. Yes, well, some of our vision was some things that I've already mentioned to bring alive the text. It was also to present something that is, I know, very popular right now, a POV, the point of view, a feminine point of view for every book. I mean, it's not just certain books that are for women, like just Ruth or just Esther, you know. The whole Bible is for everybody, but there are women in every book, and we wanted to lift up their words, their lives, their experiences, and also to show, not to pull down other characters in the stories, but to show God is working His plan, His providential plan, through both men and women. Through Deborah and through Barak, through Esther and Mordecai, together. I mean, they're working together. Through Sarah and Abram, through Ruth and Boaz. So we wanted to kind of bring out that aspect as well, where men and women are working together in God's... Because God has decided that it was going to be so. God had brought them together providentially. And so we wanted to bring out that aspect as well. >>Sweeney: Who was the publisher of this? >>Laing: The publisher is B&H Bibles and Reference. So a lot of listeners might know them as part of Lifeway Resources. And I'd been involved in the publication of the predecessor of this Bible about, I guess, a decade ago now. But I had been a section editor. I had been responsible for editing the major prophets. So I had a smaller role then and this role I wasn't quite prepared for when I said yes. I wasn't completely sure what I was stepping into. >>Sweeney: Well, you did it. And tell everybody, so what was the role that you played in this one? >>Laing: For this Bible, I'm the general editor. I had a lot of help from a dear friend, a brilliant friend named Hannah Anderson. >>Sweeney: We just interviewed her on the podcast. >>Laing: That's right, that's right. And she'll be speaking in Chapel this semester. But Hannah and I worked as a really, I think a really great team because I brought in the academic aspect of the editorial task and Hannah has been in women's ministry also a writer in her own right, writing for women and just on the spiritual life and things like that. And she really understood how the Bible has been preached and taught and used in discipleship in women's ministry. And she's a specialist in that. That's something that I really didn't know all that much about. >>Sweeney: Yeah. So how did you think about putting this together? I've got a couple things in my mind at the same time, and maybe we just unpack these things slowly. But I know you've got a lot of helpful commentary that explains what we're reading about in the Bible. It looks like there's some pictures and some sidebars and things like that that kind of bring the Bible to life. How did you make decisions about what to emphasize? For example, one thing in my head is when I looked at these earrings, I thought, it's a women's study Bible. Maybe these were earrings that women wore. You said, no, these were for men. So, yeah, men are going to read this too, I'm sure. I bet was you were thinking about it and praying about it. You had women mainly in your mind. But what does that mean for if you're in charge of deciding how to edit this thing, what you focus on, what you talk about the most in the notes and what you decide to illustrate the Bible with, how much of it is sort of aimed at these are things women will be especially interested in, and how much of it is, you know what, everybody needs to know this, and let's make sure we get this stuff in here that's sort of more generally explanatory as well, and that'll draw some of the men in to use this and let's make sure we get this stuff in here that's sort of more generally explanatory as well. And that'll draw some of the men in to use this Bible too. Anyway, what you have in your heads as you set out to produce this kind of Bible? >>Laing: I've got about 10 answers, but I'll try to just limit myself. One thing that was driving my selection of things was what am I interested in? What am I interested in? Here at Beeson, I teach spiritual formation and patristics. I don't teach Old Testament or New Testament. I have been teaching the Bible, though, in adult Sunday school context for more than a decade. I think I've probably taught through the whole Bible. And that doesn't make me an expert. It leaves me with a lot of questions though. And so when I look at the text ... I try to look sort of with fresh eyes and to think about women's POV and to say what emerges here that either I'm curious about that I haven't maybe focused on before dealing with women in the text or women's situation in the text, what texts have been maybe misunderstood, what texts maybe have been overlooked, what have been taught poorly, without nuance, without sensitivity, and what are those texts that deserve attention. For example, I'll say two things about, for example, Genesis. In Genesis, a lot of focus is spent on the patriarchs and the covenant and it should be so. But just as we look at like the life cycles of Abram, the whole life of Abram, or the whole life of Isaiah, the whole life of Jacob, you can identify in the text, because the text will tell you in small notations, the life cycle of Sarah. Sarah is introduced to us same time as Abram is, who was Abram still at the time with Sarah. Sarah's death is also told to us. And so there are about 10 chapters there where we can say, what must these events have been like for Sarah? Right? And I think that there's enough information. I mean, we don't want to push an extra biblical agenda or anything like that. We're looking for what does the text tell us that maybe has been overlooked or, you know, just not observed. Let's just say it that way. So, I mean, there's no covenant progeny or, I don't know, heirs, son of the promise without Sarah, right? There's no ongoing line of the covenant without Rebekah and Rachael and Leah and Bilhah, and Zilphah. And this is another aspect that we wanted to consider, like, what about these other female figures who are not really talked about that much, or who are, let's say, foreign, or it feels like they're maybe outside the covenant like they're pagan. What about what about Tamar? You know she's Canaanite. What about Hagar? She's Egyptian. What about Joseph's wife? I mean she produced Manasseh and Ephraim and they became two tribes of Israel - Ephraim was the biggest. It was on both sides of the Jordan. Well, those came from this Egyptian woman that Joseph married in a kind of an exile in Egypt, away from the promised land. God is working. God is working. So, the things that I was curious about, texts that are misunderstood, taught poorly, or texts that really have not been treated sufficiently, I think. So I'll say just one more. Moses. Moses has, of course, a huge role between Exodus and Deuteronomy. But what about before Moses ever got to be the deliverer of Israel? I mean, there is a conglomeration of about four to five women, at least, in Moses's life that saved his life before he ever delivered a single person, before he ever met the Lord. And so I think the text, if we're looking for it, and we're listening for it, the text brings out these people, they're not just sort of throwaway details. I mean, I'm an errantist on the scripture. I want to look at all the details, I want to look at all the details. I want to look at all the people and the text tells us not just about the midwives but their names and how God blessed them. And Moses's sister who helped to lead the people is important. Moses's mother and Pharaoh's daughter. And so we want to recognize and bring out the experiences of these women in the lives of, you know, sort of the great patriarchs that we study a lot. We need to kind of study these other characters as well. >>Sweeney: You're helping everybody learn the Bible better. >>Laing: Well, that's what we're hoping. That's what we're hoping. >>Sweeney: Well, I was about to ask you a question. I'm not sure, you've kind of almost answered it, but one thing I'm sure you're going to get when this Bible comes out is people asking, well, why do we need a study Bible that's just a women's study Bible? We talked about this in a different way last year. We had Osvaldo Padilla come on and talk about the Bible in Color project that he's working on. A lot of Christians, for good reasons, deep down our instinct is, well, the church is made up of people from every tribe, tongue, and nation. We're one in Christ. Why do we want to do all these study Bibles that emphasize our differences rather than our unity in the Lord? And those are reasonable questions, but there are also good answers to the questions, I think, too. And you've already given us some good answers about why a women's study Bible, in part because you're asking questions and providing information that just is not in a lot of the other reference Bibles that people can use. >>Laing: You know what, there's not enough space in study Bibles for study notes that are comprehensive, like what we would need to address everything for everybody, so it's very uniform. That's why I think these specialty Bibles are important because of course you're going to have the text always, that's primary, and then you're going to have a special focus, a special emphasis on whatever it is that it's about, whether women or there's men's study Bible or just other kinds. I think it brings to our attention the beautiful diversity that is the church all united various members with various giftings, various aspects of God's work in the world to sort of be able to accord attention to one particular aspect of the church to say, yes, we all are united in Christ. Let's learn about each other. You know? Yeah, I mean, I hope that this Bible goes beyond only addressing women's concerns. Women's concerns and women characters and the POV that I'm talking about, those things are primary for this Bible. But just to be honest, and I don't want anybody listening to think that I wrote all the study notes here because I didn't. The study notes came from a team of about 30 academic women. All of them, except maybe one, have PhDs in either Old Testament or New Testament. And a very few, like myself, are theology or historical theology, PhDs. But I think that all those women are contributing out of their specializations to our content and you know scholarship changes and updates according to like some of the things we talked about in the first half of the podcast according to you know archaeology, archaeological finds, textual finds, new documents are uncovered and it helps our knowledge of the Bible, of various aspects of the Bible. And as that kind of information becomes available, new commentaries are written or commentaries are updated and new study Bibles are written. And the study part of study Bible is so important and so difficult too, because in the study Bibles, I think a lot of people don't realize and I didn't realize till I got involved here. They don't realize that the study notes of a study Bible are not just observations or rephrasing or anything like that. It's actually a mini commentary. Really, what we wanted to have were specialists in Old and New Testament with languages and everything who can choose the specialized material and give you that. You don't need to reread a paraphrase of the text because you've just read it. What you need is information to help you get insight, further insight into the text. >>Sweeney: Yeah, thinking again about the point of view, feminine point of view, I know a lot of pastors these days who are just regular people, they're not politicized people or anything like that, but they're thinking harder than they ever thought before about the fact that, you know what, when I preach and teach in my church, usually at least half, more than half of the people sitting there are women. And if I'm going to get better at teaching the Bible to everybody in my congregation, I probably ought to ask some questions and pay attention to concerns that the women in the pews before me on Sunday morning have in their minds. And a study Bible like this would be great. It's sort of sparking some new thinking on the part of preachers and teachers. >>Laing: I hope so. I hope so. There is a particular feature in here that a lot of sweat and tears has gone into and it's called the closer look. And there are lots of closer look boxes all the way through. Hannah added up the words that we have generated for these closer looks is over 70,000 words. Just for the closer look. And the closer look boxes try to kind of do a deep dive into a particular section of the scripture. So for Esther, we have a closer look here called Women in the Royal Court. It's basically the question of what happened in the harem. You know, what was Esther's life like in the harem? We have closer look boxes on sibling rivalry in, I think, Genesis 30. So, you've got a lot of sibling rivalry happening in those first 30 chapters you know it's like Cain and Abel and Rebecca and Leah and Jacob and Esau and Isaac and Ishmael you know and that is just an issue in our families you know our family life and so that was that was kind of a fun, closer look. There are some other closer looks that are maybe not as fun on more sensitive issues like sexual assaults or like prostitution in the Bible, issues like that. And so, yeah, we did want to address those. You can't get away from those. You can't get away from David's abuse of power as he has Bathsheba brought to him even though he knows who she's related to and her situation and everything, you can't get away from that. You can't not say more about the rape of Tamar by Amnon because it's just a part of the downward spiral of David's reign because of his own sin. You can't not address terrible, horrible things that happen to women in the book of Judges. It starts well and then for women throughout the stories of the book of Judges it just gets worse and worse and worse until it's very, very dark in the end with the death of the Levites concubine and then the abduction of women by the men of the tribe of Benjamin because their tribe has almost been decimated. I don't want to depress us too much by going further but we did want to address those things and I think for pastors it's maybe very difficult to kind of know as a man how to address a difficult topic in the experience of women. And I dearly hope that these kinds of closer looks at this kind of feature is going to be actually a help to pastors in addressing these issues in their church, biblically. >>Sweeney: Yeah. Thank you. Thank you for doing it. All right, so I'm assuming we can go online and preorder this thing now, right? >>Laing: Yes, absolutely. >>Sweeney: How do we do it if we want to do it? Is it on Amazon? >>Laing: It is on Amazon, but there's also a dedicated website. >>Sweeney: Okay. And I think B&H made this? >>Laing: Yes. >>Sweeney: And you can order it that way? >>Laing: Absolutely. >>Sweeney: Wonderful. Dr. Laing, thank you very much for being with us. Thanks for all this wonderful work you've been doing based on your trip to Turkey, the Women's Study Bible. We thank you for your faithfulness in teaching lots of people here at Beeson Divinity School. Let me just conclude by asking you how our listeners might be praying for you in the days ahead. >>Laing: Oh yes, I'm ready. Please pray for resilience this semester. It's going to be a heavy semester, but an enjoyable one. So resilience and joy in study and teaching and learning. I'm still learning, I learn all the time. And yes, I would love to be lifted up for those things. >>Sweeney: Listeners, thanks for being with us. This has been Professor Stefana Dan Laing. She teaches ancient Christianity and spiritual formation here at Beeson Divinity School. She's the general editor of the Women's Study Bible that's coming out any day now from B&H. She had a wonderful trip to Turkey that I'm sure is going to improve even more her fantastic teaching here in the building. So please pray for her. This is a heavy term for her. Please pray that the Lord will guide and help her and sustain her through it all and give her deep and abiding joy. We're praying for you. We love you. Thanks for being with us. We say goodbye for now. >>Mark Gignilliat: You’ve been listening to the Beeson podcast; coming to you from the campus of Samford University. Our theme music is by Advent Birmingham. Our announcer is Mark Gignilliat. Our engineer is Rob Willis. Our Producer is Neal Embry. And our show host is Doug Sweeney. For more episodes and to subscribe, visit www.BeesonDivinity.com/podcast. You can also find the Beeson Podcast on iTunes, YouTube, and Spotify.