Dr. Jack Levison from Perkins School of Theology explores the Holy Spirit in the Gospels from his new book An Unconventional God: The Spirit According to Jesus.

TRANSCRIPT

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Welcome to Jessup think I'm your host Mark Moore, and your co host Rex Gurney. And today on the show, we're excited to have another amazing author. It's been great being able to get connected to of the scholars and authors. We have jack Levison, who is the WSJ, a power professor of Old Testament interpretation and biblical Hebrew, have Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University

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in Dallas, Texas, and we'll see what kind of accent he has once he

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Yeah, exactly. And his scholarship has focused on the Holy Spirit's both Old Testament references, Pauline pneumatology, and his current book is an unconventional God, the spirit, according to Jesus gonna look at the Spirit through the lens of the four Gospels. And it's a really amazing book and kind of a powerful view of the spirit in the gospels, and how it's connected to the Old Testament. Yeah, this promises to be a really, really good conversation.

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We'd love to kind of hear a little bit more of for our listeners hear a little bit more your backstory jack of how, how you kind of got to where you are now and maybe even got into writing about the Holy Spirit and kind of your scholarship with the Holy Spirit.

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So I'm 64. That'll take the whole time. The abbreviated version, how long it takes you you never asked an academic for the abbreviated version. That's true. That's true. Okay, so

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I grew up on Long Island in the Christian churches in the restoration movement. And I at 12, I was baptized and at 15, I felt I was at church camp, this little plywood camp up in the Catskills, and I really felt called to Christian ministry. So I went up. And I was really trying to decide on where to go to college and ended up the looking my sister had gotten an application to Wheaton College in the days when you had paper applications. And she didn't fill it out. So I did. So I simply print out this crumpled old application and send it off to Wheaton. And during my first year, at Wheaton, I had a Greek teacher called Jerry Hawthorne. And he walked into the class the very first day, and put his briefcase on the desk. And then he just without saying a word wrote on the board, a bunch of Greek. And he said, Who knows what this means, since it was Greek one, none of us knew what it meant. And he, he said, Oh, this is Philippians 413. Who knows what this means. And of course, since it was Wheaton College, every other student's hand went up, they all for 13. I could do all things through Christ who strengthens me. And he said, Is that true? Can you pass a chemistry exam through Christ who strengthens you? It's not true. And then he began to tell us I like the today's English version, I can I have strength for anything through the one who gives me power. And he started talking about different ways of translating the Bible translation equivalent versus word for word. And I think I had a Wesleyan experience. Yeah, having my heart strangely worn in the fourth, third or fourth floor of Blanchard Hall on the Wheaton College campus. And then Jerry took me under his wing and I became his teaching assistant. I taught a course or two for him when he was doing something else. And then I went off to Cambridge, and then to Duke for my PhD, where I met an absolutely wonderful young woman called Priscilla Pope. There's a whole story with that one. And then Jerry, actually, for two summers, I taught his Wheaton College summer classes in Greek. So basically, I really trace my deep love of being a professor to my freshman year, the first day of my Greek class, but then it developed and I ended up marrying a woman who was it sort of changed my restoration background as a Methodist minister. And then the rest is history as they say,

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what what moved you towards H