What if the way you've been reading Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John your entire life has caused you to miss the point? Dr. Jeannine Brown, David Price Professor of Biblical and Theological Foundations at Bethel Seminary and member of the NIV Committee on Bible Translation, joins the show to challenge everything you thought you knew about studying the Gospels. After 25+ years training pastors and translating Scripture, Dr. Brown reveals why reading the Gospels in fragments robs us of the themes, the character development, and the narrative power the Gospel writers intended us to experience.

This conversation will transform how you prepare sermons, lead Bible studies, and engage Scripture personally. Dr. Brown walks us through plot and theme analysis, shows how the disciples function as characters in Matthew's narrative, unpacks the stunning intertextual connection between Jesus's "77 times" forgiveness teaching and the revenge cycle of Lamech in Genesis 4, and even pulls back the curtain on how narrative context shapes NIV translation decisions. If you've ever felt like you were missing something when you opened the Gospels, this episode is for you.

In this episode you will learn:

-The most common mistake people make when reading the Gospels and how to fix it
-How the early church actually experienced these texts (hint: they didn't stop after eight verses)
-Why ancient biographies were arranged by theme, not just chronology, and what that means for interpretation
-How to identify and trace themes across an entire Gospel like hospitality in Luke
-The way Matthew uses the disciples as "little faith" characters to shape our understanding of Jesus
-A powerful intertextual connection between Matthew 18 and Genesis 4 that reframes forgiveness
-How narrative thinking should change your sermon preparation on passages like the feeding of the 5,000
-Why each Gospel tells the story of Jesus with distinctive emphasis and how to appreciate that
-How narrative context influenced the NIV's translation of Matthew 8:7 as a question
-What the "Son of Man coming" language from Daniel 7 actually means across Matthew's Gospel

Connect with Dr. Jeannine Brown:

Bethel Seminary Faculty Page

Her Books on Amazon:

The Gospels as Stories
Scripture as Communication
Philippians (Tyndale Commentary)

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