What if the opening chapter of the Bible isn't telling you how God built the universe... but why he moved into it?

Dr. John Walton has spent over four decades studying Genesis through the lens of ancient Near Eastern literature, and his conclusion has reshaped the way scholars, pastors, and Christians around the world read the creation account. In this conversation, Dr. Walton walks us through his groundbreaking argument that Genesis 1 is not a material origins story. It's not a science textbook. It's not answering the question "how did God make all the stuff?" It's answering a far more profound question: what kind of world is this, and what is our place in it?

Dr. John Walton is Professor Emeritus of Old Testament at Wheaton College, where he taught for over two decades after 20 years at Moody Bible Institute. He holds a Ph.D. from Hebrew Union College and is the author of the bestselling Lost World series, Ancient Near Eastern Thought and the Old Testament, the Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, and dozens of other works that have shaped evangelical scholarship for a generation.

In this episode you will learn:

- Why Genesis 1 is an account of order and function, not material manufacturing

- What the Hebrew word "bara" actually does in the text and why "create" doesn't capture it

- How the seven days map to a cosmic temple inauguration, not a construction timeline

- Why Day 7 is the climax of the entire creation account and what divine rest really means

- What ancient Israelites would have understood about the sun, moon, and stars that we completely miss

- Why the phrase "the Bible was written for us but not to us" changes everything

- How Walton responds to critics who say he's disconnected Genesis from real history

- Why his framework removes Genesis from the science vs. faith debate entirely

- What's new in his latest book, New Explorations in the Lost World of Genesis


GUEST: Dr. John Walton

Professor Emeritus of Old Testament, Wheaton College
Ph.D., Hebrew Union College

The Lost World of Genesis One:
https://a.co/d/07tltChH

Wheaton College Faculty Page:
https://www.wheaton.edu/academics/faculty/john-walton/

IVP Author Page:
https://www.ivpress.com/john-h-walton

BioLogos:
https://biologos.org/people/john-walton


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Website:
https://www.johnnyova.com

YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/@thejohnnyova

The Revelation Reset:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DQMR4BH3

The Bible didn't drop out of the sky. It was written by real people, in real places, surrounded by some of the most powerful civilizations the ancient world ever produced. Egypt. Babylon. Assyria. Their literature, their laws, their prayers, their creation stories. All of it was in the air when the authors of the Hebrew Bible sat down to write. And they weren't ignoring it.

Dr. Christopher Hays is the D. Wilson Moore Professor of Old Testament and Ancient Near Eastern Studies at Fuller Theological Seminary. He holds a PhD from Emory, an MA in Egyptology from UCLA, reads six ancient languages, and is the author of Hidden Riches, the leading textbook on comparative study between the Old Testament and the Ancient Near East. In this conversation, he walks us through what happens when you place the Bible side by side with the texts of Israel's neighbors. From Mesopotamian prayers that sound like the Psalms to Egyptian wisdom literature that mirrors Proverbs to Assyrian propaganda that Isaiah turned on its head, this episode will reshape how you understand the origins of Scripture.

In this episode you will learn:

- Why the Old Testament is an Ancient Near Eastern text and what that means for how we read it
- How Mesopotamian prayers called Dinger Shah Dibba incantations parallel the language of the Psalms
- What the Enuma Elish and the Memphite Theology reveal about what Genesis 1 is actually doing
- Why Egyptian influence on the Bible has been massively overlooked and what it teaches us
- The striking connection between the Instruction of Amenemope and the book of Proverbs
- How the Code of Hammurabi and ANE treaty forms reshape our understanding of the Mosaic Covenant
- Why God functioning as the lawgiver in the Torah is a radical departure from ANE norms
- How Isaiah used Assyrian imperial propaganda against the empire itself
- Why Isaiah 24 through 27 is not apocalyptic and what it actually describes
- How new archaeological evidence ties Isaiah 24-27 to the fall of the Neo-Assyrian Empire under Josiah
- What it means that Scripture "breathes in" the surrounding culture and "breathes it back out" in a new form

Get Dr Hayes Book:

Hidden Riches: A Sourcebook for the Comparative Study of the Hebrew Bible and the Ancient Near East- https://a.co/d/0cBF0ZNK

Fuller Faculty Page: https://fuller.edu/faculty/christopher-hays/

Stay Connected with Dig In
Website: https://johnnyova.com

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Two swords forged in the land of the Philistines. Two kings. One throne. And a literary motif so intricate that scholars have been misreading it for generations.

The death of King Saul at Mount Gilboa is one of the most dramatic moments in the Old Testament. But what most people don't realize is that a misinterpretation of the archaeological evidence at Beth Shean has distorted how scholars understand what happened to Saul's body, his armor, and his sword after his death. The text doesn't say what we've been told it says. And once that mistake is corrected, an entire narrative thread running through 1 Samuel 13 to 31 suddenly comes into focus.

In this episode of The Dig In Podcast, Johnny Ova sits down with Dr. Chris McKinny, Associate Professor of Biblical Archaeology at Lipscomb University's Lanier Center for Archaeology, senior staff archaeologist at the Tel Burna project in Israel, co-host of the Biblical World Podcast, and on-screen host of the upcoming feature documentary Legends of the Lost Ark. Dr. McKinny has spent over a decade excavating in the land of the Bible and his research on the death of Saul reveals one of the most sophisticated literary devices in all of ancient literature.

Together we explore the full arc of David's rise and Saul's fall, including:

- Why the only two swords in Israel belonged to Saul and Jonathan and what that means for the narrative
- How Goliath's sword becomes a story device that tracks David's entire journey from shepherd to king
- The real reason Saul's armor and head were not taken to Beth Shean but to the land of the Philistines
- What archaeologists got wrong about Beth Shean and the Philistine temple identification
- How the sword motif connects to the Ark of the Covenant as part of a larger literary structure
- Why David never used the sword against Saul and how the narrative builds that restraint into the climax
- The significance of Nob, the tabernacle, and the sword of Goliath waiting for David
- How the geography of the Jezreel Valley, the Shephelah, and the coastal plain shaped the entire conflict
- What Judah the Hammer's sword in 1 Maccabees reveals about how ancient readers understood this motif
- How this corrected reading elevates the biblical authors as world-class storytellers

This conversation takes us into the archaeology, the geography, and the literary genius of the biblical authors in ways most readers have never considered.

Check out Dr. Chris McKinny's work:

Legends of the Lost Ark (in theaters April 12, 14, and 15, 2026): https://www.legendsofthelostark.com/

Biblical World Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/biblical-world/id1566455453

Stay connected with The Dig In Podcast and Subscribe.

Website: https://johnnyova.com/

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Get a copy of Johnny's latest book about the book of Revelation: https://a.co/d/02v5yH7A

What do we actually know about Jesus’ childhood? Not much.

The canonical Gospels say surprisingly little about the birth and early life of Jesus. Matthew gives us only a few verses about the Magi. Luke tells us about the manger and one story of Jesus at the temple at age twelve. After that, the story goes silent.

But early Christians were not satisfied with the silence.

In the centuries after the New Testament was written, believers began creating new stories to answer the questions the Gospels left unexplored. Who was Mary before the birth of Jesus? What was Jesus like as a child? Who were the Magi really?

In this episode of The Dig In Podcast, Johnny Ova sits down with Eric Vanden Eykel, Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Ferrum College and author of The Magi: Who They Were, How They've Been Remembered, and Why They Still Fascinate. Dr. Vanden Eykel is a leading scholar of early Christian apocryphal literature and has spent years studying the texts that shaped Christian tradition but never made it into the Bible.

Together we explore the fascinating world of early Christian writings, including:

• The Protevangelium of James and how it shaped what Christians believe about Mary
• Why the three kings of the Christmas story are not actually in the Bible
• The Infancy Gospel of Thomas and the strange stories about Jesus’ childhood miracles
• How early Christians filled in the gaps left by the Gospels
• Why some texts became Scripture while others did not
• How tradition helped create the nativity story most people picture today

This conversation takes us into the questions early Christians were asking, the stories they wrote to answer them, and what those stories reveal about the development of Christian belief.

Check out one of the latest books by Dr. Eric Vanden Eykel.

The Magi: Who They Were, How They've Been Remembered, and Why They Still Fascinate- https://a.co/d/0avwBxrt

Stay connected with The Dig In Podcast and Subscribe.

Website: https://johnnyova.com/
Subscribe on Youtube- https://www.youtube.com/@UCdD6qAedykU7b4fgNPsPogw
Get a copy of Johnny's latest book about the book of Revelation: https://a.co/d/02v5yH7A

The Old Testament was not written in a vacuum. It was written inside a world. A world of clay tablets and cuneiform, flood epics and creation myths, law codes carved into stone centuries before Moses climbed the mountain. Dr. Joshua Bowen has spent his career decoding that world. And what he found does not diminish Scripture. It puts it in focus.

Dr. Bowen holds a Ph.D. in Assyriology from Johns Hopkins University and is the founder of Digital Hammurabi. He reads Sumerian, Akkadian, and Biblical Hebrew, and has spent years working the primary cuneiform sources that form the ancient backdrop of the Hebrew Bible. In this conversation, we cover the Mesopotamian parallels to Genesis, the flood traditions that predate Noah, the law codes that share striking overlap with the Torah, and the theological genius behind how Israel reworked those traditions to say something no surrounding culture was saying about God.

In this episode you will learn:

- Why the ancient Near East is essential background for anyone who takes the Bible seriously
- How the Enuma Elish and Genesis 1 interact and what that interaction actually means
- What the Gilgamesh Epic reveals about the biblical flood narrative and why borrowing an earlier story does not undercut the theology
- How the Laws of Hammurabi, Ur-Namma, and Eshnunna relate to the legal material in the Torah
- Why the goring ox law appears in nearly identical form across multiple ancient law collections
- How Israel used surrounding mythology as a polemic, arguing theologically through the very stories the surrounding nations told
- What Genesis 1 is doing in response to the Enuma Elish and why Yahweh does not even have to fight
- How the Babylonian exile shaped Israelite identity and the final form of the Hebrew Bible
- Why understanding these ancient texts deepens rather than destroys a serious reading of Scripture


Get Dr. Bowen's book:

Did the Old Testament Endorse Slavery?: https://www.amazon.com/Did-Old-Testament-Endorse-Slavery/dp/1734358629

Explore Digital Hammurabi:
https://www.digitalhammurabi.com

Stay Connected with Johnny Ova:

Website: https://johnnyova.com
Subscribe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@thejohnnyova
Get Johnny's latest book:

The Revelation Reset: https://www.amazon.com/Revelation-Reset-Johnny-Ova/dp/B0C9SFQX4J

Melchizedek appears just three times in the entire Bible. Twice in the Hebrew Bible. Once in the New Testament. And yet entire priesthoods, theological systems, and centuries of Christian doctrine have been built on top of this one figure. So who was he really? And what if the text was changed to hide his true identity?

Dr. Robert Cargill, Associate Professor of Classics at the University of Iowa, former editor of Biblical Archaeology Review, and one of the most recognized biblical archaeologists in the world, sits down to walk us through the evidence. His Oxford University Press book argues that Melchizedek was originally the king of Sodom, and that ancient scribes deliberately altered Genesis 14 to distance Abraham from a city God would later destroy. That single scribal edit sent ripple effects through the Psalms, into the book of Hebrews, and straight into the foundation of Christ's priesthood. This conversation takes you inside the Hebrew text, into the caves of Qumran, through the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Pseudepigrapha, and into the hard question of what archaeology can and cannot prove about the Bible.

In this episode you will learn:

- Why Melchizedek is one of the most leveraged figures in biblical history and how different groups used him for their own purposes
- The textual and grammatical evidence that Melchizedek was originally the king of Sodom, not the king of Shalem
- Why scribes changed a single word in Genesis 14:18 and how that edit reshaped centuries of theology
- How the tithe in Genesis 14 may have gone the opposite direction from what English translations suggest
- What the Dead Sea Scrolls actually are and why they changed how scholars read the Bible
- What the Pseudepigrapha (1 Enoch, Jubilees, the Genesis Apocryphon) reveal about what Second Temple Jews actually believed
- How the book of Enoch rewrites the flood story to solve an ethical problem in Genesis 6
- The most common types of bogus archaeological claims and how to spot them
- Real archaeological discoveries that illuminate the biblical text, from the seal of Hezekiah to the Tel Dan inscription
- Why Dr. Cargill believes archaeology should never be used as a tool for evangelism
- The story of the Greek Orthodox archaeologist whose answer about faith and science changed everything


Dr. Robert Cargill's Books:
Melchizedek, King of Sodom: How Scribes Invented the Biblical Priest-King (Oxford University Press) - https://a.co/d/0e3LmMWE
The Cities That Built the Bible (HarperOne) - https://a.co/d/04VqTMt6

Dr. Cargill's Website: bobcargill.com
Dr. Cargill's YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@UC6TIKnUUWEhh1nspJ62komg


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Website: Johnnyova.com
Subscribe on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@thejohnnyova
Get my book! The Revelation Reset: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DZSM695Y

The Hebrew poets didn't write safe words. They stacked image on top of image, layered metaphor on metaphor, and built texts designed to hit you in the chest. But when those words crossed into English, something got lost. The raw emotional power. The vivid word pictures. The sounds, the rhythms, the physicality of a language that was built to be felt, not just read.

In this episode, Dr. Alison Gray, Director of Studies in Old Testament Language, Literature, and Theology at Westminster College, Cambridge, pulls back the curtain on what your English Bible simply cannot deliver. From the spatial drama of Psalm 18, where height means safety and narrowness means despair, to the stunning revelation that the Hebrew word for compassion literally means "wombs," this conversation exposes an entire dimension of Scripture that most believers have never encountered.

In this episode you will learn:

- How metaphor functions as the backbone of Hebrew poetry, not decoration but the primary vehicle of meaning
- Why the spatial imagery in Psalm 18 (high vs. low, wide vs. narrow) unlocks the entire emotional architecture of the poem
- What "metaphor clusters" are and how Hebrew poets deliberately piled images to overwhelm the reader
- The specific emotional and theological losses that occur every time Hebrew poetry is translated into English
- How the Hebrew accent marks called "taste marks" shaped the oral performance of the Psalms
- Why reading Job through the lens of trauma literature makes sense of its contradictions and fragmented voices
- The dangerous church tradition of sanitizing lament and why the Psalms of agony were never meant to be resolved quickly
- What the British Sign Language Bible Translation Project reveals about the physicality already embedded in Hebrew Scripture
- How the Hebrew word for compassion (rachmayim) literally comes from the word for womb
- Why "slow to anger" in Hebrew actually means "long of nose" and what that tells us about how the ancient world pictured emotion

Dr. Gray's Book:

Psalm 18 in Words and Pictures: A Reading Through Metaphor (Brill, 2014)
https://brill.com/display/title/23722?language=en

Westminster College:
https://www.westminster.cam.ac.uk/academic-staff/dr-alison-gray

Winter School in Ancient and Biblical Languages:
https://www.westminster.cam.ac.uk/biblical-languages

BSL Bible Translation Project:
https://bslbible.org.uk/

Stay Connected:
Website: Johnnyova.com
Subscribe on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@thejohnnyova
The Revelation Reset: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DKSLQXWQ

What if almost everything you were taught about Old Testament purity laws was wrong?

Most Christians hear "impurity" and immediately think sin. We've been taught that the purity system was about moral failure, that sacrifice was primitive and empty, and that Jesus came to sweep the whole oppressive thing away. Dr. Jonathan Klawans, Professor of Religion and Jewish Studies at Boston University, says we've collapsed two completely different categories into one confused mess, and it's been distorting how we read the Bible for centuries.

In this conversation, Dr. Klawans walks us through the critical distinction between ritual impurity and moral impurity, two systems the Hebrew Bible treats as entirely separate. Ritual impurity comes from things like childbirth, menstruation, and touching a corpse. These aren't sins. They're natural, unavoidable, sometimes even commanded. Moral impurity is something else entirely: idolatry, sexual transgression, bloodshed. These defile the land, pollute the Temple, and if left unaddressed, drive out God's presence.

We dig into why the prophets weren't rejecting sacrifice but calling out theft and injustice. We explore how sacrifice functioned as imitatio Dei, the imitation of God, from the careful shepherding of unblemished animals to the priest examining the kidneys and heart. We discuss how both Christian and Jewish traditions have imposed later theological frameworks onto ancient texts, and what it costs us when we do. And we ask the hard question: What was Jesus actually doing when he interacted with purity and the Temple?

Dr. Klawans is the author of four books with Oxford University Press, including the award-winning Impurity and Sin in Ancient Judaism and Purity, Sacrifice, and the Temple.

In this episode, you will learn:

- The difference between ritual impurity and moral impurity and why conflating them causes so much confusion
- Why becoming ritually impure was sometimes unavoidable and even commanded
- How moral impurity defiles the land and the Temple, and what happens when it goes unaddressed
- What the prophets were actually criticizing when they seemed to reject sacrifice
- How sacrifice functioned as imitatio Dei, imitating God through the entire process
- The role of sacrifice in attracting and maintaining God's presence
- How supersessionist frameworks (both Christian and Jewish) distort our reading of ancient sources
- What really happened to Judaism after the Temple's destruction in 70 AD
- How to understand Jesus's interactions with purity and the Temple

BOOKS:

Purity, Sacrifice, and the Temple: https://a.co/d/0bXkmvkj

Impurity and Sin in Ancient Judaism: https://www.amazon.com/Impurity-Ancient-Judaism-Jonathan-Klawans/dp/0195177657

Boston University Faculty Page: https://www.bu.edu/religion/faculty/jonathan-klawans/

STAY CONNECTED:
Website: johnnyova.com
Subscribe on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@thejohnnyova
The Revelation Reset: https://www.amazon.com/Revelation-Reset-Reclaiming-Optimistic-Eschatology-ebook/dp/B0D2TXFX3J