About Jayms
A working study log — biblical theology, Stoic reflection, culture, and life beyond the desk. One person doing the work in public.
I — Why This Site Exists
My name is James. I live in Jackson, Ohio.
I am not a seminary graduate. I do not have a theology degree. What I have is a large library, years of reading, a warehouse floor that gave me time to think, and forty years of wrestling with a God I could not fully explain.
This site exists because I am teaching myself the way I learn best — reading carefully, building reference tools as I go, and pairing serious scholarship with honest personal reflection. The hope is that the work I do for my own study might serve other readers walking similar ground.
If something here serves you, that is gain. If you find errors or have suggestions, this is a working document and I welcome correction.
II — What I Am Studying
Most of my time is spent in the Old Testament — the Hebrew Bible read in something approaching its original conceptual world. That means taking seriously the cosmology, the divine council, the cosmic-mountain theology, the role of Sheol, and the polemical engagement with surrounding ANE religion that the text presupposes. Much of modern Western reading has flattened these dimensions. Recovering them changes how the New Testament reads as well.
Alongside the biblical studies work I am working through Stoic moral philosophy as a tributary — not a substitute for Christian theology, but a tradition that arrives at overlapping conclusions about the discipline of attention, the finite nature of time, and the shape of a life well-lived. The Stoic-Christian Forge section of this site is where those two traditions meet.
The third lane on this site covers culture, technology, and media — the world we are actually living in, read through the same careful lens.
Beyond the Desk is the physical life that runs alongside all of it. Theology is not a head-only discipline and the body is not a container the soul is trying to escape.
III — How I Approach the Work
Academic rigor over sensationalism. The Bible is strange enough on its own terms. It does not need exaggeration or speculation. I look for teachers who do careful philological, historical, and theological work and who are honest about what the text does and does not say.
Multiple traditions held in conversation. Reformed, Wesleyan-Arminian, and even Stoic moral philosophy each illuminate different facets. I am rooted in evangelical Protestant convictions but read widely on principle.
Sourced scholarship distinguished from personal synthesis. I mark clearly what comes from the trusted voices below and what is my own working conclusion. I am not a credentialed scholar. What I can do is read carefully, synthesize honestly, and show my work.
Build reference tools as I learn. When a topic resists casual study I assemble a tool for it — structured timelines, command centers, cross-reference guides. The act of organizing the material is itself a form of learning and the artifact remains for later return.
IV — Voices I Trust
These are the scholars and thinkers whose work shapes the study on this site. Not an exhaustive list — a curated one.
Old Testament & Biblical Theology
Michael S. Heiser — Divine council, ANE context, the supernatural worldview of the biblical authors. The primary catalyst for how I read the Old Testament.
John H. Walton — ANE cosmology, Genesis as cosmic-temple inauguration, the Bible read in its cultural river.
Tim Mackie / BibleProject — Literary-theological reading of the Hebrew Bible as a unified narrative.
Daniel Block — Old Testament theology, Judges, Ezekiel. Careful exegesis with serious attention to the text’s literary shape.
New Testament & Broader Theology
N.T. Wright — Second Temple Jewish context, Pauline theology, narrative theology.
D.A. Carson — Exegesis and biblical theology in the Reformed tradition.
Kenneth Bailey — Middle Eastern cultural reading of the Gospels.
Apologetics & Manuscript Studies
Wesley Huff — Manuscript evidence, textual reliability, and patient public apologetics. Among the clearest on-ramps I have found for how we actually got the Bible we have.
Greg Koukl — Tactics in conversation, clear thinking.
John Lennox — The science-and-faith interface, philosophy of science, the long-running case against new atheism.
C.S. Lewis — The imaginative apologist whose framing endures.
Perspective & Intellectual Insight
Read for cultural, moral, and symbolic insight — not as theological authorities.
Dennis Prager — Jewish reading of the Hebrew Bible, ethical seriousness, The Rational Bible commentary series.
Jonathan Pageau — Eastern Orthodox symbolic and iconographic reading. The patterns that hold Scripture, story, and culture together.
Ryan Holiday and the Stoics — Moral philosophy as a tributary, not a substitute.
V — The Stoic-Christian Forge
One Stoic phrase I actually live by: memento mori — remember you will die.
I do not treat it as dark or gloomy. I treat it as the opposite. We are mortal and the time we have is finite. That fact, held honestly, is a forcing function for living well now — for taking the trip, having the conversation, building the thing, doing the work that matters before there is not time left to do it.
Teach us to number our days, that we may get a heart of wisdom. — Psalm 90:12
The Stoics arrived at the same insight from a different angle. Both are right.
VI — Beyond the Desk
Scripture has a robust anthropology — humans are embodied creatures, made from dust and animated by breath, called to dominion over a physical creation. The body is not a container the soul is trying to escape. Neglecting the body, in my experience, eventually neglects the mind and the spirit as well.
Lifting — The kind of training that demands consistency, progressive load, and showing up when you do not feel like it. The same disciplines that build a body build a mind.
Motorcycle riding — Long road time as a kind of moving meditation. The focus the road demands clears space the desk does not.
Mountain biking — Trails I used to hike I now ride, which has changed how I see them. Wisdom traditions associate humility with falling down often and the trail keeps offering opportunities to remember it.
Camping and hiking — Time outside, away from screens, in the kind of country where the Psalms’ mountain and wilderness imagery stops being abstract.
The biblical writers walked. Pilgrim songs were written by people who actually went up to Jerusalem on foot — they knew weather, exhaustion, the weight of a pack. Recovering some of that physicality has, in small ways, made the text more legible.
VII — Day Work
By trade I work in information technology — the kind of work that runs in the background of everything else. The same instinct that shows up in the day job shows up in the study tools on this site: information wants to be organized, and a well-built reference is itself a form of understanding. I am a longtime Mac user and unapologetic computer enthusiast — the kind who builds things because the building is part of the thinking.
Science fiction at its best is theology by other means — thought experiments about consciousness, ethics, embodiment, transcendence, and what it means to encounter the genuinely Other.
Memento mori · Soli Deo gloria