JAYMS.COM

Home

JAYMS.COM Homepage – Southeast Ohio church steeple at dawn with fiery Ophanim wheel in the sky

Begin Here · The Door In

Start Here

One man, working through the Bible with the best tools he has, with the door open so you can walk in and watch the work.

What this site is

James and Tracy smiling together in a close-up selfie, James with shaved head and goatee wearing black blazer, Tracy with blonde hair and denim jacket, both happy indoors with window and string lights in background

This is a public study log. Field notes from one working-class IT guy in heiser‘s lane — divine council theology, Ancient Near East background, the strange and the supernatural taken seriously — trying to bridge the scholarship and the actual life of a man with a household to lead.

It is not a ministry. It is not an influencer platform. It is not a finished system being unveiled. It is one person doing the work, with the door open, so others can walk in and follow along.

The posture is compiler and synthesizer, not teacher or prophet. The voice is one man thinking carefully in public, not one man possessing secret knowledge.

Who this is for

The thoughtful Christian in the pew who senses that what is being taught on Sunday is thinner than what is actually in the text — and who does not have three years and forty thousand dollars to spend at seminary finding out what was missed.

The man who has read meditations and felt the pull of Stoic discipline but suspects Paul went further, and wants to know how to get from one to the other without losing either.

The curious non-Christian or deconstructing Christian who can feel the pull of something real but has only encountered shallow or infected versions of Christianity and does not know there is a deeper, stranger, more cosmically honest reading available.

A lot of what you’ll find here reads the Bible in light of the Ancient Near East — the actual world the text was written into — and a framework called the divine council, drawn from the work of the late scholar Michael Heiser. If those terms are new to you, don’t worry; they were new to me too, not long ago. I’ve written a plain-language introduction to all three: What Is the Ancient Near East & the Divine Council? Start there if you want the door before the rooms.

The reader of heiser, wright, pageau, walton, huff, bailey, or prager who wants to see how the scholarship lands in an actual life — in a small town, in a warehouse job, on a Monday morning that needs to be lived rather than abstracted.

Start Here

This is a study log. Field notes from one working-class IT guy in Jackson, Ohio wrestling through the Bible in public — Heiser-foundational, Ancient Near East-attentive, divine-council-aware. Not a sermon. Not a brand. One person doing the work with the door open.

Start anywhere. The four links below are the floor.

About How I Study Software I Use Bible Study Tools

What this is not

This is not a heiser replacement or a heiser imitation. He already did that work, and he did it better than I can. The opportunity here is downstream of him, not parallel to him.

This is not a ministry. I have no credentials to pastor. I am not commissioned to lead a congregation. I am a man with a household and a hobby of reading carefully.

This is not an influencer platform. There is no funnel here. No lead magnet. No drip sequence. No course. No premium tier. The newsletter is plumbing, not a product.

This is not a politicized space. The work engages cultural moments because Scripture engages cultural moments — but the site is not trying to recruit anyone to a political position. The watchman calling here is theological. Correcting widespread misconception about what the text actually says, not predicting outcomes.

Community, not audience

If something here serves you, that is gain. If it does not, you are still welcome to walk through.

I am not trying to build a following. I am trying to leave honest field notes about what I am finding. The people who read this site are not an audience to me. They are fellow students, fellow stewards, fellow men and women trying to live well in front of God in a moment that makes that difficult.

That posture is load-bearing across everything on the site. It is not a marketing pose. It is the actual relationship.

How to use the site

The work here lives at three depths. None of them is harder than necessary; none is easier than it should be. Pick where you are and start there.

Gateway essays. Written for the casual reader. Full sentences, no jargon left undefined, designed to be read on a phone over coffee. Each one stands alone. You can begin with any of them.

Medium-density essays. The same voice, more depth. Greek and Hebrew terms appear here, but they are explained as they appear. You do not need a seminary degree to read these — you need patience.

Archive material. The high-density work. Sustained arguments, deep ANE background, long-form synthesis. These are written for readers who want to dig.

The site does not pretend to be only one of these. It is built to layer all three under the same voice so a casual reader can walk in and a serious reader can keep going down, and neither one feels out of place.

Where to start

If you are new, here is the door I would point you through first.

Logos Field Notes

View all →

Kingship & Recovery

View all →

The Forge

View all →

Myth Busters

View all →

Beyond the Desk

View all →