A working study log covering biblical theology, Stoic reflection, culture, and the life beyond the desk. One person doing the work in public.
Why This Bible Study 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, which means 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.
What I Study: Old Testament, Ancient Near East, and the Stoics
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 Ancient Near East religion that the text presupposes. Much of modern Western reading has flattened those dimensions, and recovering them changes how the New Testament reads as well.
Alongside the biblical studies work I am reading Stoic moral philosophy as a tributary rather than a substitute for Christian theology. It is a tradition that arrives at overlapping conclusions about the discipline of attention, the finite nature of time, and the shape of a life lived well. The Forge is where those two traditions meet.
The third lane covers culture, technology, and media, which is to say the world we are actually living in, read with the same care as everything else.
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.
How I Study and Cite Sources
Academic rigor over sensationalism
The Bible is strange enough on its own terms. It does not need exaggeration or speculation added to it. 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 Stoic moral philosophy each illuminate different facets. I am rooted in evangelical Protestant convictions but read widely on principle.
Sourced scholarship marked apart from my own conclusions
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.
Reference tools built while learning
When a topic resists casual study I assemble a tool for it: structured timelines, command centers, cross-reference guides. Organizing the material is itself a form of learning, and the artifact stays put for whenever I come back to it.
Voices I Trust: Heiser, Walton, Wright, and Others
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, Ancient Near East context, the supernatural worldview of the biblical authors. The primary catalyst for how I read the Old Testament.
John H. Walton. Ancient Near East cosmology, Genesis as cosmic-temple inauguration, the Bible read in its cultural river.
Tim Mackie and 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.
The Forge: Stoic Philosophy and Christian Faith
One Stoic phrase I actually live by is 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, and 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. More of that work lives in The Forge.
Beyond the Desk: Lifting, Riding, and the Embodied Life
Scripture has a serious 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 is 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 turns long road time into a kind of moving meditation. The focus the road demands clears space the desk does not.
- Mountain biking has changed trails I used to hike, since riding them shows a different face of the same ground. Wisdom traditions associate humility with falling down often, and the trail keeps offering chances to remember it.
- Camping and hiking mean time outside, away from screens, in the kind of country where the mountain and wilderness imagery of the Psalms stops being abstract.
The biblical writers walked. Pilgrim songs were written by people who actually went up to Jerusalem on foot, and they knew weather, exhaustion, and the weight of a pack. Recovering some of that physicality has, in small ways, made the text more legible. The rest of it is in Beyond the Desk.
Day Work: IT, Macs, and Science Fiction
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 an 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, running thought experiments about consciousness, ethics, embodiment, transcendence, and what it means to encounter the genuinely Other.
Where Else to Go on This Site
If something here has earned your patience, there are a few other corners of the site worth a look.
- Bible Study Tools. Seven interactive timelines and the Psalter Command Center. The tools I built for my own study, cleaned up so anyone can use them.
- Beyond the Desk. Field notes from outside the IT job and the study desk. Family, lifting, motorcycles, the embodied life.
- Book Recommendations. The actual library behind the reading on this site. Not a wish list. The books I have used for real work.
- Websites and Online Resources. The free external library that supplements what is on this site. The places I return to.
Memento mori · Soli Deo gloria