The New Testament Through a Global Lens

Darrell Bock: 

Welcome to The Table, where we discuss issues of God and culture to show the relevance of theology in everyday life. I'm Darrell Bock, executive director for the Hendricks Center at Dallas Theological Seminary, as well as senior research professor of New Testament. And our topic today is The New Testament in Color, and I have two really terrific guests who I've known for some time and who I'm really glad to be able to have this conversation with them. Amy Peeler is Kenneth T. Wessner Chair of Biblical Studies and Professor of New Testament at Wheaton College. 

I serve on the board there, so that's a full disclosure. And she's the author most recently of Hebrews, A Commentary on Christian Formation and has also written Women and the Gender of God in 2024. She's had the privilege of serving as one of four editors for The New Testament in Color: A Multiethnic Commentary for Eerdmans. She enjoys time with her family, her husband Lance, who is a church organist and professor of liturgical studies, her high school daughter Kate, middle school son Maxson, and an elementary school son, Kindred. And then Mariam, it's Kovalishyn, right? Did I get that right? 

Mariam Kamell Kovalishyn: 

That's it. 

Darrell Bock: 

All right. I had to think about it a little bit, but that's okay. Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia with her husband, Val and their four children ages two to eight. Mariam is originally from Western New York. Her father was an immigrant from Egypt. Her mother grew up as a missionary kid in the Philippines. Boy, do you have a global background. Val, meanwhile, is an immigrant to Canada from the Ukraine. As such, global encounters with Scripture are always in Mariam's mind. And if I remember correctly, didn't you go to Denver Seminary? 

Mariam Kamell Kovalishyn: 

Yep. 

Darrell Bock: 

Is that right? Yeah. 

Mariam Kamell Kovalishyn: 

That's correct. 

Darrell Bock: 

The family is involved in a local church, Christ City that they can walk to and dream of city life. Mariam's research focuses on the Catholic epistles and the life of faith. So thank you all for being a part of this. We really are looking forward to this conversation. And so, my opening question to anyone who is here on the podcast for the first time is how did two fine ladies like you get into a gig like this? Amy, can you lead us off? Tell us how you ended up in New Testament studies, and in particular, your interest in working in this area. 

Amy Peeler: 

Certainly. So I think my interest in New Testament studies began in college. I'm going to blame it on the fact that I took an elective in Greek so I didn't have to take it. But at my Christian college, Oklahoma Baptist University, I took Greek, and it was pretty much right away I was like, this is the most amazing thing ever. I want to do this for the rest of my life. I had some excellent mentors there at OBU, and they really helped me know what path to follow. So that's where I got started, and that's why I get to do what I love. And then how I got into the writing of The New Testament in Color, that is completely the fault of my friend and colleague, Esau McCaulley, who is presently across the hall. 

I hear him in his office, and he said, "Hey, I have this idea for a commentary. And I think it's really important that if we're talking about multiethnic interpretation, that this is not just done by minority scholars in America. That tends to be where these conversations play out." But he said, "I think we need a white editor to say that European descent is one ethnicity among many." And I said, "That sounds like a great idea." And he said, "No, I'm talking about you." And so, I was very, very honored to be a part of that process, and it's been a joy to see this book come into the world. 

Darrell Bock: 

Well, that sounds exciting. I'm going to ask you a lot more questions about that because I think the perspective that you all bring is really, really an important one, so thanks. Mariam, how did you end up being in New Testament studies? And we've alluded a little bit to your interest in this area, given your background, but go ahead and tell us your story. 

Mariam Kamell Kovalishyn: 

Yeah, my interest came a little bit more roundabout. I did classics in my undergrad and loved it. I was fascinated by it, but didn't know what I wanted to do with my life when I grew up after that. And so, did a year of interim ministry because what else do you do? And discovered I didn't know that much more about the Bible than perhaps anyone else in the church did and thought if I'm going to be leading than I should learn about this. So I went to Denver Seminary, and that was where I found that the world that I'd enjoyed, the classical world that I was interested in, that literature, history, all of that mattered. But then, I was working with a text that meant everything. This was what actually brought meaning to life. So that kind of was the tumble into falling in love with New Testament studies and the historical intertestamental period as well. And from there just kind of each door opened, and I just kept going and found myself here getting to do what I love, which is amazing. 

Darrell Bock: 

And you collided in Denver, I take it, with Craig Blomberg. Is that a fair description? 

Mariam Kamell Kovalishyn: 

He was one of my key profs, yes. 

Darrell Bock: 

Yeah. 

Mariam Kamell Kovalishyn: 

Yeah. He collided... I was fortunate to have him as a professor, and he helped stir some of the interest in this kind of global readings as well in the process because he would just assign people like Elsa Thomas or others in our classes. And it wasn't something weird, it was just you should be hearing from other voices around the world, and you may not otherwise bump into them. And then someone like Danny Carroll, as well, was one of my profs, and he brought his whole self as a half Guatemalan, all the bits of him into reading the Old Testament really well. And so, I had modeled for me people who were just teaching that you need to hear other voices to be able to read well. You might be missing things you wouldn't even know you're missing. And so, that was part of how I... Or I was encouraged that this is an interest that I should continue to follow. 

The book that we're talking about here, The New Testament Around the World, for me, really came into being because of a session we did at SBL in 2018, and it was with my... I'm a part of the James, Peter, Jude study group, and we did majority world readings. And I was fascinated and wanted those essays for my students, but then I wanted all the books of the New Testament to have essays on it for my students. And so, it kind of came out of begging the people in that session to give me their essays as the seed for the rest of the book, and then just hunting people down around the world to help fill in all the rest of the New Testament. 

Darrell Bock: 

Okay. Well this is terrific. And Mariam, I've got to say that this is a small world. Craig and I literally overlapped almost to the day at Aberdeen. 

Mariam Kamell Kovalishyn: 

Oh, my gracious. 

Darrell Bock: 

And Danny Carroll and I grew up together. I've known Danny since second grade. I was the first person to share Christ with Danny. 

Mariam Kamell Kovalishyn: 

Oh, my. Good. Well, thank you for that. 

Darrell Bock: 

Yeah, so we used to play high school basketball together. I was the guard, and he was the center. And once you see Danny at six foot seven, you know why. And when I introduce him these days, I say, "My job was to get Danny the ball. And once I got Danny the ball, I knew I wasn't going to see it again." 

So that's kind of the inside story on all this. Danny, you're right, does bring a global perspective, so does Craig. Craig and I taught together in South Africa a couple of summers ago, and his perspectives on things is really helpful. So we've got this global element of what's going on here, this multiethnic concern. And Amy, talk about why that's important for the church and maybe even why that's important for the church in America. 

Amy Peeler: 

Yes. So I think Mariam has already said really well, the breadth and the depth of scripture is so massive that we would really be quite prideful to imagine that we could come to such a majestic text and hear and see and learn all that we can. All of God's plan has been for humans to work together, communities. And so, we should expect that this would be true of interpretation, that we have gifts to bring, our perspectives are good, and then also we have limitations. And so, God says, "Hey, partner together with brothers and sisters across the world." So it is just good practice of good reading and respecting the gift that God has given us in scripture. When Esau was deciding to do this work, and it really did come out of his book, Reading While Black, "Hey, I want to bring the voice of the black church to the interpretive conversation in ways that maybe it hadn't completely been brought before." 

He realized, well, I'm bringing my community, but I don't know about other communities. And so, because the dynamics of ethnic interaction in America are complicated, often painful, I think this is especially true for American students, American pastors. This is an opportunity for us to learn well so that we can offer wise and gracious answers when people are wondering, hey, this is a tense thing to talk about race and ethnicity. This could be a created opportunity for Christians to say, "Actually, we do this well because Christianity is global and multiethnic and always has been." So we have some skills, and we discover this is not scary. It actually is wonderful. I think that's a particular message, a gospel message, that could be brought for the American culture right now. 

Darrell Bock: 

Well, it's a terrific point, and one of the things that I often say is that... two points really. One is that we were designed to collaborate together. The whole point of Genesis one is to show the collaboration between male and female in operating the creation well. I tell people, "We're designed to be hummers. We're supposed to make the creation hum, and sometimes we don't do very well." And then the second point is that the variety of perspectives really is helpful in helping people to see the different lives that people lead and the different backgrounds that they come from, the different perspectives that they're able to gain, etc. So I'm going to come back and ask you in a minute how you all thought about and planned the book. So we'll talk about that in just a second. But Mariam, you've already alluded to the fact you put your book together really by working with people you were working at in the SBI, I take it's the Catholic Epistles group primarily. 

Mariam Kamell Kovalishyn: 

Yes, indeed, indeed. 

Darrell Bock: 

And of course, when you say Catholic Epistles, some people go, "Now, wait a minute." But the Catholic Epistles are, we aren't talking Roman Catholic, we're talking Catholic Epistles, the Epistles that went out to all the churches, the non-Paulines really is basically what we're talking about. Talk a little bit about how you put your book together and where the idea for it came from. 

Mariam Kamell Kovalishyn: 

So yeah, as I said... Excuse me. The idea for sparked in sitting in that session in SBL and listening to these papers and realizing that I'd been studying James for 15, 18 years by now, and I was hearing lenses. I was hearing things that I hadn't thought through the same way or just different ways of looking at issues or highlights that I hadn't seen before. And I thought, okay, this is amazing, and I would like more of this. So really, I just went straight from that session to the Baker booth and just started talking to Jim Kinney. And he said, "I was at this session. It was great, and I would love to maybe see if there's something that we could develop out of this as a New Testament resource for professors to be able to use in their classes as just having readings alongside." 

So you're reading your textbook, and you're getting your lectures about the class. But here's another way of asking questions of the text. And then my next real jump was to contact Langham, the Langham scholars and to ask if they had suggestions of people who could write on all these books. It ended up not being all the original people they put me in touch with, but it really, from there, it just became who knew who, knew who. So I asked Craig Keener for suggestions as well, given his work in this. I asked a lot of people different suggestions and just contacted tons of people just trying to find people whose specialties were in these books so they could really bring their interest and their strengths to bear and on questions that interested them on their books. We ran into big issues with COVID, and I think as well cultural things came into play because some authors would disappear. And there was some shame, honor shame going on of like, "I can't fulfill my obligation, and so I don't want to be in contact." 

And so, I had to defuse some of those and say, "There's no shame. Please, if you can't finish, that's great. I want to free you to do what you need to do." So it was interesting to navigate a lot of things globally during COVID on this project. I learned a lot and had to navigate some intercultural stuff while doing this, which is fitting, but ended up with, I think, a really great lineup of people all over the world and also some essays from North America, from minorities in North America. So it's trying to hit that minorities aren't just out there. So a little bit like what Amy's talking about and you're talking about, Darrell. It's not just out there. We're all going to see differently based on our embodiedness, and we need to actually be willing to take that seriously and not just assume I'm neutral and everyone else is different. 

Darrell Bock: 

It sounds like in your answer... We have another podcast called The Challenges of Being an Editor. I often tell people that editing a book is sometimes more challenging than writing it because when you write it, all the responsibility's on your own shoulders, the scheduling, everything else, but when you edit a book, it's like talking to cats and saying, "I want you in the same room." So it's quite a challenge to edit a book like this, and particularly with a variety of perspectives that are represented. Amy, talk about how you all put the book together, and you mentioned how you were really sensitive to making sure that it was ethnically representative of the variety of the church. And I'm going to come back to that because I think there's a really core New Testament principle that's at work here that makes these works valuable, not just for the perspectives that they represent, but for the theology that they exemplify. So tell us a little bit about how you put The New Testament in Color together. 

Amy Peeler: 

Right. I love also that this project unfolded in a really relationally way. And so, the idea was Esau's. We're colleagues and friends. So he reached out to me, and then said, "Who do you know from the Asian American church background?" And I reached out to my dear friend from graduate school, Jeanette Oak, kind of connected them, and then through Christian Padilla, we found Oswaldo. So it is this sense of we know one another, and that could possibly be negative as like, oh, it's this inner network. But I see it as just a real positive that we're friends. We're committed to a similar mission, and so it kind of unfolds. And then, we did try to be very careful, just as Mariam described, to find scholars who were really expert in these particular books. So again, strengths and their knowledge and expertise would show forth, but also to do the very difficult task of trying to get a broad representation. 

And we recognize that we didn't do that perfectly. I don't know that anyone could achieve that perfectly, but we see this work, Mariam's work, I don't know if you feel this way, Mariam, but we saw this as, hey, we're contributing to something that's not super widespread yet. We're kind of getting things going, and so, surely there's going to be imperfections. But it's better to do something imperfect and get the conversation started than to wait until you do it perfectly. So I think if we had to do it over again, we included indigenous authors, but we might've had an indigenous editor because that might've been something that we should have done. But we tried to get as much coverage as possible. Even within the Asian American community, there's so much diversity. 

And Jeanette was really helpful in saying there has been a tendency for Korean Americans to be dominant in theological conversations. Let's make sure that we're also listening to Chinese American and Japanese and Filipino, and her connection with my other colleague, Jordan Ryan, has resulted in their doing another book together. So we did the best that we could, but we were very thoughtful to balance expertise and as solid representation as possible. And we look forward, I already hear there's conversations for Old Testament in Color. They have a lot more books to deal with, so maybe they'll be able to do an even better job of representation than we did. 

Darrell Bock: 

Well, it's an interesting thing when we talk about South American representation in the Latin world, representation, you've got your Spanish world. You've got your Portuguese. You've got Central America, South America. You've got interesting mixes there that sound like the Asian issue. Africa certainly presents a similar kind of challenge in terms of Northern Sahara and south of the Sahara. I mean, once you open this up, it goes in a variety of directions and ends up being, as you talked about, a majestic text. Well, you also have a majestic creation that you're dealing with in which there are many people from many different backgrounds with many different concerns. 

You mentioned something else that's important, and you said something isn't widespread. I take it that one of the goals, one of the challenges in teaching New Testament studies today is that we have a lot of standard books that we use that all come from the same perspective and the same orientation. And that orientation has been established for, not just decades, but centuries. And so, I take it that part of your goal was to open up the conversation and to have different voices be injected into the reflection about what goes on in New Testament. Is that right? 

Amy Peeler: 

That's right. And specifically in New Testament textbooks. So all of us teach intro New Testament at our institutions and had for years had a standard textbook. I love my textbook. I thought it did an excellent job, but all of its editors were from similar places. Of course, their lives are very different, but kind of that western perspective. And so, then I would supplement with other things. And so, the idea here was what if we could create something that could be used in a New Testament introduction, and maybe you need to supplement it with other historical essays. But you get, in one book that students can purchase, many different perspectives from the ethnicities across the world. 

I'm using it for the first time this semester, and it's been really fun to see the fruit of that realization of that beauty play out in the lives of my students. Jeanette did last semester with her grad students, and she said it worked really well. So that's the grand experiment, I think, that's going on this school year, and our sense is a lot of people are giving it a shot. And we're eager to hear feedback about how that's working in the lives of students. 

Darrell Bock: 

That's great. Let me talk about the core theological issue that I think this represents because I tell people... A lot of people, the whole discussion of ethnicity and sometimes race comes into this, although race is a very challenging term to think about. 

Amy Peeler: 

It is. Yeah. 

Darrell Bock: 

But the whole thing is it gets viewed as something that's kind of on the side or the periphery of what's going on in the New Testament. I tell people, "I want to take you to Ephesians chapter two, which is probably one of the most stereologically saturated passages in the New Testament." And when you take that chapter all the way through, and you move from being dead and trespasses in sin to God being rich in mercy, having seated us with Christ, and most people stop at verses eight and nine, salvation by grace through faith, not of works lest anyone should boast and all the Protestants rise up and go, amen. And we're done reading the chapter, but it goes on from there to for we are God's workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. And then if you ask the next question, which is, so what's the initial good work that God has us participating in? 

It's Jew and Gentile in Christ in one new man. God says, "I'm going to take people," Jews and Gentiles didn't get along in the first century. We all know that as New Testament people. So I'm going to take these two groups that were totally estranged from one another and make them family. I'm going to adopt them as family. And now the question will be, will they adopt one another? And so, you couldn't be in a more central place in the scripture. And what's really interesting is the world is a very tribal place I think if you look around. That could be one way to describe what goes on in the world, and the Bible is a kind of anti-tribal message in a tribal world. It doesn't wipe out who God made us to be, but it does try and make us think about who we should be together, as again, as this collaborative element that we talked about in Genesis 1 has been designed into the creation. Mariam, there's a long excursus, but tell me what you think. 

Mariam Kamell Kovalishyn: 

What I think, I would just say, amen. Reading the whole text of Ephesians 2. I mean, it makes me jump as well to Revelation and the idea that the final vision isn't that we all become uniform. You have every tribe, every tongue. The diversity is incredible, but they're all together in the throne room worshiping the Lamb. The way that what Jesus did brings us together, people who should have no reason otherwise for being together is such a beautiful vision. 

And if we, as Christians, could live into that in this time when there is such a desire for tribalism, like you were saying, there's such a desire for, I find my people, and I cut off anyone who I disagree with. This reconciling work of Christ that goes through families, but also through every boundary that we would want to put up is such a vision that I think the world desperately needs and desperately needs to hear and be captivated by. So any of these ways of trying to say, "Hey, we're all serving Christ together. Let's read together. Let's be together. Let's worship together. Let's practice for the kingdom together and practice the eschatological vision in the now," I think, would make such a transformation for our world. 

Darrell Bock: 

And Amy, your take on all as well. 

Amy Peeler: 

Yeah, I think that's just such a good word and a good word for students who might have a fearful, or at least they are hearing voices that would say be fearful of any talk of diversity. That it's a great pedagogical moment to walk carefully through the whole of these passages and texts to say, "This is God's heart." And so, how can we be so rooted in Scripture that we see, yes, salvation of individuals, this restoration, that you can have a personal relationship with God, and then, that means that you are put into a new family. I think that's just a wonderful way to say to students, "Get the whole of Scripture. Don't take just this little part." Because if you take just a little part, that can lead you down a path of falsehood and lead you into tribalism, which is really just a sense of fear and not trusting that, hey, God is bringing us all together, and it's going to be good. And we don't have to wait for the end of time. We can experience that now as we listen and learn from one another. 

Darrell Bock: 

Yeah, in fact, I say that eschatology and where God is taking the story, we're supposed to be a sneak preview of where God is taking us. And so, if we live that out, we can preview what is coming and give little glimpses of it, which I think is also very, very important. I mean, there are so many touchstones here. You mentioned the relational part, Amy, and what strikes me about that is that I mean, even if you look at the great Commandment, our relationship with God is not supposed to be done in a private, how can I say this, in a private test tube where it's just me and my God. It's always designed to be triangular. It's always designed to connect me to God and to connect me to others at the same time. There's a wonderful passage in Luke 3, I had to bring in the Gospel of Luke, where John the Baptist is asked about the call to repentance. And you think, because it's a question about repentance, he's going to talk about how the person relates to God. 

And yet in every case, this is in Luke 3, 10 to 14, only Luke has this passage. And in every case, the response isn't about how I'm relating to God, but how I'm relating to others. And that repentance is supposed to show in how I relate to others. The great Commandment is not only the love of God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength, but the love of your neighbor as yourself. The Ten Commandments are not just about my relationship with God, but how I treat others depending on how I look at Table one or Table two of the 10 Commandments. So it's all built in fundamentally into the Scripture. And again, I'm making the case. This is not a peripheral conversation. This is actually in the middle. It's in the theological hub of what God is doing when he saves us, if we think about that corporately. I think part of our problem is we only tend to think about salvation in individual terms. 

Amy Peeler: 

So true. 

Mariam Kamell Kovalishyn: 

I would add to that is the 1 John part, which is if you don't love your neighbor who you can see, John questions whether you actually can love God, 

Darrell Bock: 

That's a good way to put it in reverse. Yeah, exactly. 

Mariam Kamell Kovalishyn: 

gets in the question. And so, that relational piece is not just secondary. Oh, if you can get on board with it, maybe you should be nice to somebody, but actually, this neighbor who is other, but is now your brother or sister in Christ, if you cannot find a way to learn to love them, then this is a very, very serious problem, says John. 

Darrell Bock: 

So you have to understand they may be other, but at the same time you're one with them. And you can't break up... Both elements of that are important, the difference that they bring on the one hand and the oneness that you share with them on the other. Let me ask you this question because you guys have talked about the perspective that comes with this. I'd like you each to share with me a couple of examples of perspectives that were raised in the book or in your process of doing the book that show what the potential of this is in terms of raising perspectives that are a little bit different than the way you may have thought about things as a result. Amy, I'll let you start. 

Amy Peeler: 

Sure. So an example that immediately comes to mind is the different way that authors will appeal to other languages. I love that we're all friends with Danny Carroll, and who has not yet had the opportunity to be with him where he just had to move into Spanish to make his point. Several of our authors did that. So we have a whole essay on languages. I think about Jordan Ryan's work in Acts from the Filipino perspective. It was such a reminder to me, and I feel kind of embarrassed to say it, but I think a part of these conversations is also to own up to prejudices that you carried that you didn't even know and to be honest about that. But I feel naive in saying that I kind of thought you could just communicate everything in English, that you could do Exegesis always in English, but Jordan's commentary in particular does this pretty regular. 

He's like, "You know, there's this concept in Acts, and English doesn't really get us there. I'm going to switch over to Filipino, and here's what this word means in Filipino and how it really captures." And that makes a lot of sense because the first century was more communally minded than we are in the Western North American context. And so, it would make sense that he would need to go to a different linguistic resource to express, and I thought, well, duh, of course that's how it should be. But it was really beautiful, and he doesn't just say the Filipino word and kind of leave me in the dark as a reader who doesn't know Tagalog, but to explain, "Hey, here's the fullness of what this means," kind of exegete that word so that I can better understand what Luke is describing in Acts. So those are several examples that come to mind of the riches that we get when we get to learn with others. 

Darrell Bock: 

Interesting. Mariam, you have an example that you can think of in your book? 

Mariam Kamell Kovalishyn: 

Oh, gracious. Yeah. I mean every one of those- 

Darrell Bock: 

You're allowed more than one if something leaps at you. 

Mariam Kamell Kovalishyn: 

One that always struck me from early on was I had a author from Korea writing on 1 Corinthians in table fellowship, and he unpacked so much, let me tell you. I don't even know how to say it in Korean, but a certain cultural way of honoring others. But it plays into table fellowship in how you are supposed to eat in Korea. And then, suddenly he mapped out how this has crept into the church, but in a way that's actually counter to what Paul's talking about when he talks about table fellowship and the way the church is supposed to eat together and just ways of how our practices in our embodied life, that you don't even think about because this is just our cultural practice and this is what you do and this is how you honor people, but they can affect our church worship in ways that actually end up leading us away from embodying the gospel. 

And so, it was just a fascinating way of unpacking how a culture can lead us closer or it can lead us farther. Hearing from other people and other cultures can help us see, oh, it's not always what they're doing is right, and we're wrong. It's more that we all need to be reflecting on how Scripture transforms our cultures, but there are ways in which things we do will sometimes bring us closer or sometimes bring us farther. And the other example, just... Anyway, one of my former students wrote on Philippians for me, and he has a very complicated history of being born in the US. But his mother was an illegal alien from Colombia, and he then was raised in Colombia and kind of between cultures in that sort of way, lost several brothers to the violence in Colombia. 

But was writing on Philippians and the joy of the Lord that comes through that text and talking about how his mother's faith made her one of the most joyful people despite everything. And just hearing that affirmation in a very comfortable culture, shall we say, in Canada and North America, and generally, I'm fairly comfortable in my life. And to hear the reality of the joy of the Lord coming through this essay and how significant it is when life is not comfortable and how important it is to not lose sight of that. I feel like sometimes we can wallow in, I need to be miserable because there are miserable people in the world instead of the fullness of the joy of the Lord can fill us and keep us going even when it is miserable. The transformation that he brought in that essay was just a beautiful, beautiful example. 

Darrell Bock: 

You've triggered two thoughts in my mind. One is, if you've ever eaten a meal in an Asian restaurant in the circle that happens in the way in which the food is passed on to keep the table organic, if I can say it that way, your example, the meal example made me think immediately of those meals that I had, the most recent one probably in the Philippines, where we were gathered together, a place I was teaching, and there were a group of us gathered together. And we were all around the table and sharing the food that was there, etc. A very different experience, generally speaking, than eating in the West. And then the second example that you brought, and Danny Carroll is going to be omnipresent in this podcast because I used to go down with him to Seteca when he was at Denver. He would bring students from Denver. I would bring students from Dallas. 

We'd combined with students from Seteca, and we'd tour Guatemala, both the very poorest parts because the seminary was located literally blocks from the garbage dump and then the very wealthy parts of Guatemala City where you would walk into a place and you would think you were somewhere in Europe, that range. And the thing that I think of is that World Vision had a school on the edge of the garbage dump, and we went in. We did a tour, and as we did the tour of the garbage dump, we met these people who were believers, who participated in this school at World Vision, living in what can certainly be described as one of the most challenging environments that a person could possibly live in. And yet they were reasonably happy people despite that, and when our students would go in, they'd have one of two reactions. A lot of students in the meal right afterwards, they couldn't say a word. 

They were so busy processing what they had seen and coming to grips with it emotionally, they couldn't say a word. And then you got the opposite personality, the person who couldn't stop talking about it because they were processing it out loud, and they were trying to come to grips with what was going on, etc. And in those experiences for our students, the assignment that we gave them on the trip, the students who came from the US is, we gave them one assignment, one hermeneutical assignment. That is to say, how would you read the Bible differently having been exposed to this culture and the things that you tend not to see in the States as a result of this trip? That was their assignment, to write an essay on that topic. And most students saw the trip as really transformative for them in terms of the experience that it brings. So I'm talking a little bit about an incarnational example of what the books are talking about. Amy, fill that in a little bit for us. How should we think about the value of this kind of work? 

Amy Peeler: 

No, that's such a great perspective, and that really is, it has to be a life-on-life kind of work. You can go and visit and learn, but that's why it was really important to get a variety of authors for whom this is their experience, their culture, their background. Now of course, they aren't speakers for their entire ethnicity. They have their very interesting pieces of how the ways of their lives come together, but yet they can say, "Hey, I'm familiar, both by my research and my life." And that is very incarnational. It is a person speaking in the wholeness. They're bringing their whole selves to the interpretation. We had a panel, I think this is a great example of this, just a week or so ago here at Wheaton where Dr. McCaulley and Jordan Ryan, Dr. Ryan, and Danny Carroll and I were speaking about some of our work on this. 

And it really did strike me that all of them were able to say, "I've spent most of my life in people groups that are on the margins for any number of reasons in different kind of ways." And that position, I think, allows them to connect with the authors and audiences of the New Testament who were also off center, not in the hallways of power in the Roman world. But that's also then why my other example that I might bring is why I think it is really vital for those of us in majority culture to also be a part of this project. I'm thinking of Madison Pierce's work on Hebrews in our book, where she very explicitly says, "What does it mean to have privilege and power in certain ways?" And of course, depending on one's economic class or where you live geographically, that it comes out in different ways. 

But there is still an ethnic power that comes with those of us who are majority culture. And to have her reflect on, what does it mean to read this text for a persecuted community? What kind of work do I need to do to understand that Christological model of using my privilege for the benefit of other, giving up? And I think she does a really nice job in the commentary of not self-flagellating, right? Like Mariam, you're saying like, "Oh, I feel bad because this isn't my experience." No, God has put me in this people group. This is who I am. I can praise God for that and also be aware that there are some ways that I really need to listen because I haven't lived on the margins. And therefore, I might really miss some of the dynamics of the New Testament because it's written for and from those who are outside of the center of power and respect. 

Darrell Bock: 

Yeah, I find that interesting, and you used a word here that I think is really, really important. And that was the word listen. That the idea of encountering someone who's very different than you and then making the effort to learn about it. I told my staff this story last week that I've been teaching at Dallas for 43 years, and the first class I walked in, I looked at the roster. And I had a lot of Asian students. And I'm looking at the roster, and I'm thinking to myself, I still remember this, I'm thinking to myself, I know next to nothing about Asians and Asian culture. And here I am in a position of teaching. And of course, the pastor in me says, in a sense, having a pastoral responsibility to those students. And I know nothing about them, and I recognize that. And I said, I better do a pretty good crash course in getting to know Asian, Asian culture, Asian people because I know absolutely nothing about them, and I really need, it's a responsibility of mine to actually get to know the people that I'm charged to minister to. 

And that feeling never left me in the sense of, as I was encountering, because our campus, like your campuses, are very international. We've got significant number of international students coming from countries who I probably couldn't pronounce, much less spell originally, when they showed up. And I find myself always curious. I think it's a combination of listening and curiosity that opens you up to engaging with someone and hearing about their world and learning about their world and what their experience is so that you are in a better position to connect with them and to learn and listen and grow and become aware of the beauty of the depth of the variety of what constitutes the body of Christ. 

Amy Peeler: 

And I think the church is the perfect place, or Christian higher education is the perfect place to do this because we share this bond in Christ. So we don't just happen to live in the same country. We're unified under the same God. We are family. And so, there's this bond that's already been created by the power of the Holy Spirit that should, God willing, make that conversation of listening flow more easily because we already are brought together in Christ. 

Darrell Bock: 

It's a terrific, rich experience to dive into that pool. I mean, it just is and swim, maybe sometimes flounder, but swim in the midst of it and come to grips with it. Mariam, tell us a little about, you've got such a mix in your life story, tell us a little bit about how does someone like you end up with a Russian Ukrainian as a husband? I mean, how does that work? 

Mariam Kamell Kovalishyn: 

I mean, having both my parents not growing up in North America, my mom was American but was a missionary kid, and then my dad came when he was about 15. They fled from Egypt and came to the US and were granted asylum there. And so, they met, and I was raised in North America. But we used to joke that my sister would be like, "Mom, can we eat what real Americans eat?" My mom would be like, "We are real Americans," but we'd be eating all these Egyptian foods. And my dad grew up Coptic, the family was still Coptic. We grew up in a more Baptist context. He would say he truly encountered Christ in a Baptist setting, so came to appreciate the Coptic heritage, but before it had just kind of been more cultural. So I wasn't raised with a lot of Coptic experience except when we would visit grandparents or aunts and uncles or whatnot, but with definite appreciation for the tradition in the church that was much longer than just my local church. 

So just because my local church did things a certain way did not mean that was the only way that things should be done or the right way necessarily or the right interpretation. So I think that was always in my head that the church was much bigger than what I experienced of it. And then, it was when I moved to Vancouver and met Val that then we added the Eastern European vein into things, and he was raised in the Soviet Union. So he was not a Christian growing up in any way whatsoever. He was not in the Orthodox brand. It was very secular where he was. So he also met Christ when he came to North America. But yeah, so I think in a sense, because my family was already not as located, if you will, when I met Val, it wasn't weird to me that he also wasn't fully Canadian. He's Canadian, but he's also very much not sometimes. You learn to listen well, listen to why are you... And you're listening to what's not said. 

I think that's something that I've been granted through life is the unspoken, because you may say things the way people expect them, but there's something underneath it. And that's where the cultural bit comes in, I think. And so, some of the beauty of The New Testament in Color or this other work I've been working on or just helping students hear the New Testament, there's culture underneath that they're assuming. And sometimes reading these other authors from other parts of the world or other experiences can help you hear the unspoken that are where we may trip up because we're, especially in the West, very used to a very clear communication. You tell me what's going on, it's up here. And the more subtle cultures that are not going to necessarily express a yes or a no or express honor shame or express some of these things, these authors can maybe help us learn to hear the New Testament authors better when they're doing some of the unspoken cultural moments. 

Darrell Bock: 

Well, I'm going to ask you all to share one thing you'd like our audience to appreciate about the work that you've attempted to do, one thing to leave them with as we close, but as I do, so I want to thank you all for taking the time to walk us through this global space that we find ourselves in, in the church. It's a big space. It sometimes can be an intimidating space because it does represent encounters with people whose backgrounds are very different than our own. And so, it takes a certain chutzpah, talking about a word that we don't often use. It takes a certain chutzpah to walk into that space. So Amy, if there's one thing you could say to people about the topic and what you would hope they might learn from what it is we've tried to say, what would it be? 

Amy Peeler: 

Yeah. I think if someone is able to do a limited amount of listening, and it does come by small steps, so you're like, "Oh, I need to, every time I read my Bible, I should be reading 12 other people." And no, that's not what we're saying. We're saying take some steps. If that's something you've never done, how could you take a small step? So if someone was able to get ahold of New Testament in Color, at the beginning are these just fantastic essays by the editors and a few others, what is African American Biblical Interpretation, Asian American, Latino, et cetera, and these authors do such a really important job of saying two things. One, they distill some of the particular gifts. Because of the life experiences of these communities, what do they see in Scripture that maybe other communities would miss? But this, I think, is a distinction. The authors are also willing to say, what temptations might be faced in my community in a particular strong way? 

My understanding is, from listening to all of them multiple times, is that sometimes when minority scholars go into more secular academic spaces, they're told to own their identities, but never try to correct their communities. And the Gospel both is an affirmation, a celebration of the goodness of God and the gifts of culture and also their space for critique. And if that's true for everyone, then no one is different. But I think that's a really beautiful thing to be able to read the gifts and the challenges that come for each community. And what I've loved seeing in my students is yes, they're learning and they're listening, but many of my students have said, "Wow, I never thought I bring something to the text. I have a background that also probably has blessings and challenges that I need to be aware of." So actually when we read in community, we become more self-aware of our role as interpreters, and I think that's a good thing. 

Darrell Bock: 

Mariam? 

Mariam Kamell Kovalishyn: 

That's great. I just want to amen that. I think the other thing I'd want to add too is, given the moment of time we are in history right now, I would just want to encourage people to not see this as any of us doing these sorts of projects or trying to be cool or jump on a bandwagon or do something political. That's not at all what this is about. This is about trying to read scripture well with the whole body of Christ, and to be humble enough to see where our blind spots are, to be humble enough to admit that we need the whole body and that we are actually part of one body. 

And so, when it's easy to start to just write off things as being political statements or different kinds of agendas or whatever, to actually take the time to hear from our brothers and sisters around the world well and realize that they're as much of a gift to us and that we have much to receive. And I sort of feel like we're the church that thinks it's wealthy but is actually quite poor sometimes. And so, to be humble enough to be able to receive this in an age when it's more popular to just describe things as we're fine and not. So it's a little bit of a loaded end maybe, but hopefully a bit of an encouragement as well that this is the gift of the church to all of us. 

Darrell Bock: 

Yeah, you've walked in the same space that I was going to close with, which is the whole idea of sometimes when you live outside your own culture and you've had a cross-cultural experience elsewhere, you get to look at the primary culture you live in from the outside a little bit. And that actually helps you to see things that you didn't see when you're in the midst of the fishbowl. And so, I find this dimension of interpretation and this element that's coming into the church in a major way now, and part of it is actually an outgrowth probably of the communication revolution that we have, that we're in much better contact with one another. We're able to get to know one another and work together a little easier because of the way in which communication has changed and our awareness of one another has changed. This is healthy for the church, and it's good for the church. 

And so, I just want to commend you both for one, making the effort in writing in this direction and encouraging us in this direction. And secondly, for taking the time to be with us today and helping us think through it a little bit. So Amy and Mariam, thank you all very, very much. 

Amy Peeler: 

Thank you so much for having us and for doing this work yourself and then saying it on the podcast so that more people might hear the message. Thank you. 

Mariam Kamell Kovalishyn: 

Yeah, thank you for making this time with us. It's been a delight. 

Darrell Bock: 

Well, we'll have to do it again sometime. You guys take it easy. It's great to see you, and I'm sure we'll run into each other at the myriad of events where we collide on a regular basis, to use a metaphor that I use with my friend, Craig Blomberg. Let me thank you for joining us on The Table, where we discuss issues of God and culture to present the relevance of everyday life and how theology ties into that. If you are interested in our podcast, please give us a review or tell other people about it. We'd love to have more people be participating in what it is that we do and what we offer, and we look forward to seeing you again soon on The Table. And we wish you all the Lord's best.