Scriptural Works

About Scriptural Works

Hosted by two biblical scholars with diverse career backgrounds, Greg Camp (Sheffield University, Ph.D.) and Patrick Spencer (Durham University, Ph.D.), Scriptural Works focuses on a dynamic exploration of how to read and interpret scripture for greater meaning in today's postmodern world. Each episode unpacks the tools, methods, and insights that can be used to bring scripture alive, whether through their engaging dialogue or through conversations with guest scholars who bring specialized perspectives to particular texts or themes. From ancient contexts to contemporary application, from literary analysis to historical insights, Scriptural Works equips both lay readers and religious leaders with fresh approaches to biblical interpretation. Whether you're a curious reader, a minister seeking fresh perspectives, or anyone interested in developing a deeper grasp of scripture, Scriptural Works provides the intellectual tools and practical approaches to make biblical texts more accessible and meaningful.

Publisher

Greg Camp and Patrick Spencer

Category

religion & spirituality · religion & spirituality

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

12 May 2025

Latest episode

28 Sept 2026

Latest episodes

37 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   28 Sept 2026

   How Assyria and Babylon Shaped the Seventh-Century Prophets | Dr. Nathan Lovell

   How did Assyria and Babylon shape the seventh-century prophets? Most readers picture Judah under Assyria as a broken vassal waiting for the end. Dr. Nathan Lovell, senior lecturer in Old Testament and Hebrew at George Whitefield College in Cape Town, South Africa, tells a more complicated story. Imperial roads, trade networks, and tribute brought real prosperity to Judah under Manasseh, along with the social inequality the prophets condemn. Kings gives Manasseh's 55-year reign barely twenty verses, every one of them damning. Lovell reframes Isaiah's Immanuel sign as a claim about divine presence under empire, not a riddle about which child it names. He also reads Hezekiah's standoff with Sennacherib in 701 BC as a choice between covenant and Assyrian peace, and he asks why Josiah, the most faithful king in Kings, dies so abruptly at Megiddo as Assyria collapses and Babylon rises to take its place. That historical context changes how the seventh-century prophets read. Lovell shows how Kings functions as literature for a traumatized community, using the remnant to give exiles an identity once land, temple, and Davidic king were gone. He sets Kings beside Chronicles, written under Persian rule, to show how each book shapes Israel's memory for its own audience (only Chronicles lets Manasseh repent), and he explains why Jeremiah and Ezekiel begin to speak of a new covenant after Josiah's reforms fail. For pastors, priests, seminarians, lay leaders, and Bible teachers, this is the essential background for preaching and teaching Isaiah, Jeremiah, Habakkuk, Nahum, and Zephaniah, and for tracing the question that drives Israel's literature from Assyria through Babylon and Persia: how does a conquered people keep its covenant identity under empire? CV: https://www.gwc.ac.za/about-us/faculty/dr-nathan-lovell

2. 

   18 Sept 2026

   Paul, Socrates, and Acts 26: Why Luke Echoes Plato's Apology | Jihye Yu | Ep. 34

   What happens when Paul’s defense before King Agrippa in Acts 26 is read alongside Socrates’ speech in Plato’s Apology? New Testament scholar Jihye Yu examines the Greco-Roman rhetorical world behind Luke-Acts, arguing that Paul’s speech is forensic in form but reaches beyond legal defense toward persuasion, witness, and theological interpretation. The conversation explores ethos, divine commissioning, Paul’s Damascus Road account, Agrippa’s response, and the striking phrase “kicking against the goads,” which carries wider Greek literary resonance. Yu shows how Luke reshapes the courtroom scene so that the question is not simply whether Paul is innocent, but whether his mission, resurrection message, and appeal to Israel’s hope are credible—and how the audience will respond. The comparison with Socrates highlights how Luke presents Paul as a public witness under accusation. The discussion then widens to Yu’s research on ancient biography, Gospel genre, and cultural memory. She explains why identifying Matthew and Luke as ancient biographies does not settle how they relate to history, since Greco-Roman biography ranged from historically oriented lives to more imaginative narratives. Yu also connects cultural memory in Deuteronomy with Gospel formation, showing how communities preserve, interpret, and transmit traditions for new settings. Throughout, she argues that the New Testament must be read within both its Jewish scriptural world and its Greco-Roman literary environment. The result is a richer understanding of Acts 26, Luke-Acts, Gospel composition, rhetoric, memory, and the literary sophistication of early Christian texts, with implications for how pastors, teachers, students, and scholars read the Gospels and Acts. JGRCHJ: https://jgrchj.net/volume21/JGRChJ21.4Yu104-29.pdf

3. 

   5 Sept 2026

   1 John Wasn’t Settling a Schism. It Was Countercultural Resistance to Rome | Dr. Ahreum Kim | Ep. 33

   1 John has been read for decades as a window into one crisis: a Johannine community splitting apart over secession, docetism, and rival claims to truth. Dr. Ahreum Kim's work on the letter's Greco-Roman background argues that reading misses the letter's real target. The "conquering the world" and victory language running through 1 John draws directly on Νίκη, the goddess whose image, a six-foot statue in the hand of Zeus at Olympia and winged figures on the Arch of Titus, was inescapable across the Greco-Roman world. πίστις, usually flattened to "faith," carried the sense of loyalty owed to an emperor styled as a divine son. Read this way, 1 John's opponents are not simply a rival faction inside the church; they are the pull of an entire culture. That shift matters past the seminar room. "Perfect love casts out fear" stops sounding like devotional comfort once you know Plutarch and Cicero both wrote essays on the anxiety of divine judgment gripping ordinary people; the verse answers that fear directly, not the Hebrew Bible's fear of the Lord. "Keep yourselves from idols," the letter's abrupt final line, turns out to be literal instruction, not a stray metaphor, and the Cain material in chapter three reads as a warning against real violence inside families and communities under pressure to conform. For anyone teaching or preaching 1 John, the payoff is concrete: a sharper account of what the letter is actually defending its audience against, and, as Kim argues, a modern equivalent hiding in plain sight: the smartphone. It's a case study in how much biblical interpretation depends on historical context. Conquering the World: The Countercultural Victory of First John in Greco-Roman Context (LTNS 689): https://www.amazon.com/Countercultural-Victory-John-Greco-Roman-Context/dp/0567712079/ref=sr_1_1

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Apple Podcasts (US)

4.8 / 5

5 ratings

Spotify

5.0 / 5

1 ratings

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