October 10, 2023 • 57 mins
Ever wondered about biblical language acquisition? Join us, as we take you on a journey with Dr. Jesse Scheumann, a biblical Hebrew expert. From his beginnings in rural Minnesota to his scholarly work in generative linguistics, language acquisition, Greek and Hebrew exegesis, and biblical theology, Dr. Scheumann’s story is inspirational.
Dr. Scheumann employs a communicative methodology that incorporates Total Physical Response (TPR) and storytelling. It's a unique approach that has sparked lively classroom experiences, even engaging his own family. Dr. Scheumann guides us through the intricacies and nuances of learning Biblical languages. He shares insights on the resources and methods crucial for this endeavor.
Dr. Scheumann opens up about his publishing journey, from contributing to a biblical theology of birth pain to co-authoring a Picture Dictionary and an illustrated Jonah book. As we further our conversation, we also explore the contrasting experiences of Christian life in urban and rural settings. Adding to this, we touch upon raising a family in an urban environment and the significance of reading the Bible in its original languages.
If you're intrigued, come join us at the upcoming Sattler College Open House on October 13th and 14th in Boston. It's your chance to connect with Dr. Schuemann.
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Episode Transcript
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Zack Johnson (00:05):
It is September 28th and I'm with the first ever
guest of a Sattler Collegepodcast.
We don't yet have a title, butwe might discover it today.
So we're with Dr Jesse Schumann, who's been with Sattler since
when Dr Schumann or Jesse 2018,so I came in August 2018, moved
(00:29):
from Minnesota.
Alright, so I'm going to readyour bio really quick so people
know who I'm talking about.
Okay, and then we're going toget into it.
Sound good, sounds good.
Thanks for being here.
I'm excited to talk aboutsomething and I've listened to
podcasts and preparations so Imight provide some alternative
personas while we talk.
(00:49):
Alright, Jesse Schuemann holds aPhD with a specialization in
Hebrew from the University ofthe Free State in South Africa.
Did you ever live in SouthAfrica?
I've never even been to SouthAfrica.
Common question I've heard youaddress.
He holds an MA in Logisticsfrom the University of Minnesota
and an MDiv and a THM fromBethlehem College and Seminary,
(01:12):
and a BA in Biblical andTheological Studies from
University of Northwestern StPaul.
In 2017, he founded PictureHebrew with his wife, marissa to
provide illustrated resourcesthat help others internalize the
language of Scripture.
That's a lot.
Anything to add or subtractfrom your bio after hearing
(01:34):
about it.
No, alright, I'll keep going.
Jesse or Mr Schumann's interestslie in the areas of generative
linguistics, languageacquisition, greek and Hebrew,
exegesis and Biblical theology.
He has been teachingCommunicative Hebrew for several
years and is passionate to seeany committed student become a
(01:56):
lifelong reader of Greek andHebrew.
His desires to build up thechurch locally and globally.
Beautiful Welcome, thanks,alright, just to start off, I'd
love to hear an arch of yourstory, just like a five minute.
This is where I was born andthis is how I got to where I am
(02:17):
now.
Sure.
Jesse Scheumann (02:20):
So I was born.
I was born in Illinois.
I'm the sixth of eight children.
My dad is a pastor, my mom homeschool.
All of us children.
We moved to Minnesota.
When I was one, lived in ruralMinnesota.
My dad was pastor of anevangelical church in the
countryside of Minnesota.
(02:41):
Throughout high school I wouldhave told you that I'm not going
to go to college becausecollege is just an expensive way
to meet your wife and I knewwho I was going to marry.
So I didn't actually, and so Iguess that's part of it was.
I broke up with this girlSummer before going to college,
(03:05):
decided I was doing communitycollege just getting my generals
out of the way.
I decided to go to college andfinish out my bachelor's degree
just to take advantage of what Ihad already done.
I had taken all the generalsthat they offered and I thought
about well, do I want to do 40credits of any one of those
(03:28):
studies?
The closest I came to was maybepsychology, maybe history, as
far as the classes I had takenat the community college.
But I wasn't really sointerested in any one of those
things.
But when I heard about thebiblical and theological studies
(03:48):
degree at University ofNorthwestern St Paul.
Every one of those classes onthe list looked so fascinating
and I fully intended to be doneafter finishing out.
That degree was just going tobe two more years of coursework,
but after two weeks of class Iwas thinking like man, I can't
(04:10):
be done in just two more years,so I have to go to seminary.
I guess at the time I was veryopen and probably leaning
towards pastoral ministry, andso when I began seminary I was
thinking about doing full-timepastoral ministry, and it was as
(04:30):
I was doing classes.
I became really interestedwhile there in going deep into
Greek and Hebrew.
First was Greek, I had takenGreek in undergrad and I came
into seminary.
Everybody starts in second yearGreek, and so I had to brush up
(04:53):
some of my Greek and I reallytreated that very seriously, and
already I was beginning tothink maybe I would do PhD work
with someone named GK Beal, andif so, I knew when are they from
, or how did you know about them?
GK Beal.
He's a New Testament scholar.
His emphases are in biblicaltheology of how the Bible
(05:16):
coheres as a unified story, andin New Testament use of old so
where Jesus and the apostlesquote and then interpret the Old
Testament, and so those are hisspecialties.
He's taught at Wheaton Collegeand then I think now he's at
Westminster and so I wasthinking about studying under
him and I had heard storiesabout him that he's really
(05:37):
intimidating.
Guys Like I would need to know.
If this happens, I would needto be really good at Greek.
So I began a daily process ofreading my New Testament,
memorizing unknown vocabulary,reviewing and doing this very
regularly, half an hour everyday.
And I so Greek was, I say Greekwas my first love.
(06:00):
Hebrew ended up becoming mytrue love.
Throughout seminary I ended upactually switching more away
from pursuing pastoral ministryto academic ministry and then
even from thinking about doing aPhD in theology and biblical
theology to study of Hebrewlanguage.
(06:23):
And there my thoughts were well, a PhD just means that I'm good
at one thing.
So what is what one thing can Ibecome good at that I can get
the most benefit from for therest of my life?
And so I was thinking well,what's more basic?
Well, more basic than studyingtheology would be studying
(06:46):
language, the language ofScripture, because we're people
with the book, so theology comesfrom the book and the book is
written in these languages.
So language study is morefundamental than theological
study.
And then I was also thinkingwell, greek, hebrew again, I was
thinking about it more.
What's more fundamental?
(07:08):
And I was thinking about well,old Testament is written first
in the foundation for NewTestament.
And I guess, speaking of GKBiel, he has this big book and
his one of his theses isbasically every significant New
Testament doctrine has its rootsin the Old Testament, and so
(07:30):
the degree to which we'reunaware of the Old Testament
roots or misinterpret the OldTestament on that point, to that
degree we're likely tomisinterpret the New Testament.
And then also, I was thinkingwell, I can think of so many New
Testament scholars who magnifyJesus and make much of Christ,
(07:56):
but not nearly as many OldTestament scholars can do that.
And so that's what really gotme into the Old Testament side
of things.
Along the way, I had gottenintroduced to a communicative
way of learning and then alsoteaching Hebrew, and this is
what I did alongside my wife.
Zack Johnson (08:14):
Can you just describe the communicative way
for people who might not befamiliar with it, what that
means?
Jesse Scheumann (08:20):
Yeah, so traditional way of teaching
Greek and Hebrew in college andseminary for I mean decade
centuries is characterized bygrammar and translation.
So grammar, everything's donein English.
So we talk about a grammaticalconcept in English, then we talk
(08:41):
about the grammatical conceptin Hebrew and then, now that we
first understood grammar inEnglish, grammar in Hebrew,
learn some vocab in Hebrew andthen learn to translate now from
Hebrew into English, and so youtalk a lot about the language
but you don't use the language.
And so that's the traditionalway, this communicative way.
(09:05):
Well, I guess there's a numberof ways that you can do it.
What I was introduced to iscalled total physical response.
It gets the acronym of TPR andit was actually discovered.
Tprs is TPRS is Total PhysicalResponse, through storytelling.
Through storytelling, got it.
Zack Johnson (09:25):
Yeah.
Jesse Scheumann (09:26):
So storytelling is the added part.
So TPR is the teacher givescommands like get up and then
you get up, sit down.
You sit down, and at first youmodel it for the students.
So you say get up and then I'llget up, sit down, I'll sit down
, I'll do that a few times andthen I'll start calling on
(09:46):
students to do that, and so it'steaching the language by using
the language, and so you'reusing the language the whole
time.
The goal is at least 90% ofclass time is using the language
and you know if the studentsdon't understand because they
don't do what you tell them toor they write it clearly on
(10:06):
their face.
Zack Johnson (10:07):
You can't cheat.
Jesse Scheumann (10:08):
Yeah, you can't cheat, you can't really hide.
Zack Johnson (10:10):
I guess you could follow somebody.
Jesse Scheumann (10:12):
Yeah, and learn from them, I guess.
So yeah, but eyes on me.
Zack Johnson (10:17):
I'm not gonna get that.
Jesse Scheumann (10:18):
Yeah, and so that's the total physical
response.
The first day is get up, sitdown.
Get up, jump, stand, sit down,so those kinds of things.
Well, the storytelling partgets into it of like, hey well,
first day getting up, jumping,clapping for one another as they
(10:43):
do the actions, like hey, thisis fun, people have smiles on
their faces.
Well, after a few weeks jumpingisn't as fun as it used to be,
and so those simple commands indoing the actions, that doesn't
necessarily keep students'attention right.
It's no longer as fun the moreyou do it.
And so what keeps studentsreally interested and engaged is
(11:07):
storytelling.
Like, no one grows out ofstorytelling.
I mean, we read books to ourchildren that have stories, but
adults read books, adults tellstories, and so then
storytelling is what will reallycarry the curriculum through,
(11:28):
although you'll continue to dothat kind of kinesthetic give
commands, be doing things,incorporate your whole body and
all of the senses and make thelanguage come alive.
But then you can also tell astory and then be talking about
the story.
So interpretation, that kind ofstuff.
So that's a little introductionto a communicative way of
(11:50):
teaching language.
Zack Johnson (11:51):
So I'm gonna park this and kind of keep diving
into this because I think it'sreally relevant to who you are.
First year at Sattler you had astudent go through a wall
Graham.
We have Graham, he's a student.
Have you heard this story?
(12:12):
I have.
Jesse Scheumann (12:13):
I feel like the fish has grown in size.
There was a student and therewas a hole in the wall, but the
student didn't go through thewall.
Zack Johnson (12:22):
Okay, I exaggerate .
Thanks for bringing me back,but I'm asking this because it
seems like students get alive,or become alive, through this
method of learning, and I'veseen it happen and I've paid for
it my budget, but I'm justkidding.
Jesse Scheumann (12:43):
I was so afraid of telling you when that
happened, like I grabbed thestudent and he grabbed me and I
thought we were gonna go downtogether.
Zack Johnson (12:51):
So it tends to be like an action-packed classroom,
and then there's rumors aboutnoise complaints, but we can't
pin down if that's yourclassroom or something else.
Jesse Scheumann (13:02):
Right, yeah, yeah, I think that was the ping
pong table.
But in the past I've had noisecomplaints.
So before I came to Sattler, Itaught Hebrew as a community ed
class for four years and so itwas a community ed class and
there are other classes going onfor working adults.
And I had one time where duringbreak, a professor from two
(13:23):
classes down.
He came to me and said hey,jesse, can you keep it down in
Hebrew class?
It's distracting my students.
And I thought that, well,that's when I had really arrived
.
Was that people having to go tothe Hebrew professor and say,
hey, your students are being toorowdy, they're being too loud,
(13:43):
you need to quiet down in there.
Zack Johnson (13:45):
No, I'll take it.
And then one of the things Iwant to chat about is your
family as well, and so I've beento your house before, and so
your students are really engagedin your teaching.
But on your bio, you and yourwife started this flashcard set.
It's called Picture Hebrewright, and I know that your
(14:09):
children have already beenabsorbing your passions through
some of the way that youstructure your house.
How do you sort of engage?
Tell me a little bit about yourfamily, just first off, and how
they engage with this sort ofstyle of teaching.
Jesse Scheumann (14:24):
Yeah, so my wife Marissa.
We've been married now for 11years and we have five kids, so
age is basically nine, seven,five, three one.
Zack Johnson (14:36):
I bet they all have biblical names.
Jesse Scheumann (14:38):
They do.
They do, yeah, a little bit ofa new testament, a little bit
old testament.
So, rebecca, peter, abigail,lydia and Isaiah, so three girls
, two boys.
And so, yeah, I mean, myjourney into communicative
Hebrew began with my wife, Imean.
So I was traditionally trainedin Hebrew grammar translation in
(15:01):
seminary, and it was only lateron that on my own, but actually
not on my own with Marissa thatwe first we got this curriculum
and we started working throughit together.
Then, in 2014, when our firstdaughter was just born she was
only two months old we packedher up and we went to North
Carolina to do a month-longimmerse, of course, and so
(15:24):
that's when I was reallyintroduced to how to teach
Hebrew communicatively.
And then, beginning that fall,marissa and I started
co-teaching Hebrew, and so itwas just a one night a week
class, and so we would have toget a babysitter, and then
Marissa and I we would alwaysteach together.
(15:45):
So she's never actually been inthe classroom with me once at
Sattler, as we've had extrachild responsibilities at home,
but she's as involved in thecurriculum as she's ever been, I
mean.
So we with the picture Hebrew.
(16:05):
So it began with well, I guessit actually began with the book
of Jonah.
That's right.
So we had done this.
Curriculum has a lot ofpictures at the beginning, but
as you go deeper into theprogram, no more pictures.
And that was really hard onMarissa because she was
(16:26):
benefiting so much from thepictures that for her own
benefit, as we were learningJonah, she would do little
doodles above the text for Jonah.
And that was kind of the startof the Jonah book.
We decided to do that more indepth and then we thought, hey,
why not do this for thevocabulary words themselves?
So then we did the pictureflashcards where instead of
(16:49):
English on one side and Hebrewon the other side, it was a
picture on one side and Hebrewon the other side.
So then you would go frompicture like the actual
reference, and then you wouldcome up with the Hebrew word for
it, or you'd see the Hebrewword and then try to picture the
reference and just try tobypass English as medium for
learning or engaging with thelanguage altogether.
(17:09):
And since then she's continuedto do a lot of illustrations.
We have some other bookprojects, we've done a picture
dictionary together and thenshe's engaged with me probably
on every single lesson plan thatI've developed.
Zack Johnson (17:27):
If I had Graham.
Graham doesn't have Graham's inthe room with us.
Have you seen that?
There's this TED talk about aguy talking about language
acquisition through learningwords in really loud sort of
loud types of ways.
You know what I'm talking about.
It's like some guy talkingabout learning a word for a
drink at a bar in Russian.
(17:48):
Anything, any recollections.
So the idea behind theflashcards is that you're kind
of trying to mimic how maybe ababy might learn there are
acquire words and languages asopposed to sort of picking it up
through a textbook.
Is that sort of the idea behindit?
Jesse Scheumann (18:09):
Yeah, or I guess just trying to bypass
English as a medium forengagement with the language
whatsoever, and so directengagement with the language
that I don't need to go.
Hebrew word sus means horse,and then I have a picture of a
(18:30):
horse and maybe actually, inorder to get there, I actually
have a mnemonic that susprobably had a lot of horses in
it.
And so then you think oh, sushad horse to actually like the
animal, the horse.
(18:51):
Actually, hey, let's just goanimal word.
So you have a direct connectionbetween the word and then what
the word represents or what theword connotes.
Zack Johnson (19:04):
So I was just in an elevator with an unknown I
won't disclose their identity,but not someone that works here
and they were discussing howthey wanted to teach here in the
past and they just said I can'tfathom doing the communicative
method because I all my studieswere through what's the opposite
(19:26):
of communicative the grammartranslation.
Grammar translation would bethe correct term.
Can you talk a little bit aboutyour view on the pros and cons
of those two methods?
Just a little bit of acomparison on the resources out
there and why the communicativemethod.
You've staked a lot on thatmethod yourself and the
(19:47):
institution has as well.
Jesse Scheumann (19:50):
Yeah, with communicative and grammar
translation, the resources thatare out there.
There's a lot more resourcesfor grammar translation than
there are for communicative,although I would say a lot of
more of the exciting developmentin teaching Greek and Hebrew
(20:12):
have happened on thecommunicative side of things
Illustrated resources et cetera.
It's a young movement but it'salso growing.
There are differences ofopinion about, I guess, more or
less doing a pure communicativeapproach.
(20:34):
The communicative approach isbasically hey, we should try to
teach Hebrew as a secondlanguage, like how a child would
have learned Hebrew as hisfirst language.
Call the language that youlearn as an adult, l2 for
(20:57):
language two and L1 is thelanguage you learned as a child.
That basically L2 should mirrorL1 exactly.
With language, you have fourfaculties of language.
You have speaking and hearing,reading and writing.
Those come in pairs.
(21:17):
You receive through hearing andyou produce through speaking.
You receive through reading andyou produce through writing
those four faculties of languageWith child development you
usually have well, a child can.
It first goes, the child canhear, comprehend and then begins
(21:40):
to speak, then probably beginsto read and then begins to write
.
They're pretty neat stages ofgoing one to the other.
If L2 equals L1, then we shouldnot have any kind of grammar
instruction, we should justspeak.
(22:01):
We don't have to worry abouteven necessarily making
everything fully andintelligible, just kind of like
the fire hydrant of just givestudents comprehensible input.
Well, you speak it, they canunderstand it.
Maybe they can't remembereverything, but you just keep
(22:24):
loading on students, then sooneror later they'll start to
figure out the system of thelanguage on their own.
That would be maybe a more purecommunicative approach.
As much as I'm ideologicallycommitted to the communicative
(22:45):
method, what I would say is I'ma grammar second approach.
I actually still want to givegrammar, but I don't want to
lead the classroom with grammar,grammar.
I don't want grammar to be theporthole through which you see
(23:07):
the whole language.
If you don't get the abstractgrammatical concept, then you
don't get the language.
I want to flip it.
I want communication and usingthe language to lead the way of
how I teach the language.
Then, along the way, I want tobuild up the system of the
(23:29):
language, the grammatical systemof the language, and describe
that to the students.
I want to do that as, and thendirectly after I've been using
the language and doing thelanguage.
I'm trying to get the best ofboth approaches.
Zack Johnson (23:49):
Then you asked about pros and cons Right, Just
a little bit of a benefit,that's great.
I'll ask a little bit of aquestion that I get a lot when I
talk about this.
I'm going to shoot myself inthe foot.
What percentage of Christiansdo you think engage or pursue
learning biblical language is,and what percent of Christians
(24:14):
should pursue biblical learning,biblical languages?
Jesse Scheumann (24:20):
What percentage do you think like 1%?
Zack Johnson (24:23):
1%?
I don't know.
Jesse Scheumann (24:25):
What percentage should?
I don't know, maybe like 10%.
Zack Johnson (24:31):
Why is it important, if we care about
Christianity, to devote time tobiblical languages?
It's a weird thing when Idescribe Sattler, people just
look at it.
They say Sattler College, bibleCollege, but we have all our
students sort of take biblicallanguages at least a year of
Greek and Hebrew, whether you'recomputer science, biology,
(24:56):
history, major, business andespecially the biblical studies
majors.
What's the benefit of peoplestudying languages and maybe try
to make a case for the pursuitof biblical languages?
Maybe if you're not going to beas academically trained as
someone as yourself, you mightnot use them in a lot of your
(25:19):
day-to-day classroom environment?
Jesse Scheumann (25:22):
Sure, yeah, right, I would say yeah, not
everyone should be as engagedwith it as I am.
It's my vocation, after all.
I think my wife can be a modelfor anyone where she only began
(25:49):
after she became a mother.
She's developed as she's been amother now a mother of five
children.
She still reads her OldTestament in Hebrew, a chapter a
day.
She's been through the entireOld Testament more than once.
I mean, there's hardly a morebusy or scatterbrained person
(26:17):
than a mother of multiplechildren, and yet she's found
great benefit to reading the OldTestament in Hebrew.
Once you gain a reading abilitywith it, well then there's
nothing to keep up other thanjust well, do you read your Old
(26:38):
Testament?
You need to read your OldTestament in Hebrew.
And so then, what's the casefor learning Greek and Hebrew?
It's well, you're a Christian.
I assume you're reading yourBible regularly, and then would
(26:59):
you rather be reading your Biblein English, or would you rather
be reading your Bible in Greekor Hebrew?
And well, what are the benefits, then of Greek and Hebrew?
There are some misconceptions.
Probably the primary one wouldbe if only I knew, let's keep
(27:19):
the Hebrew side of things, sincethat's my specialty.
If only I knew Hebrew, then allmy questions would be answered.
Zack Johnson (27:27):
Like your questions about God himself.
Jesse Scheumann (27:29):
About God or about this text, about what it
means, and sadly, that's nottrue, but that's actually where
a lot of the benefit comes fromActually reading it in Hebrew.
It doesn't answer all yourquestions.
It actually gives you morequestions to ask, and so it's
not at all something for thefaint of heart, I mean as far as
(27:54):
the basic meaning of somethingthat's captured perfectly well
in basically any standardEnglish translation.
So then, that's why I say 90%of people don't need to learn
Greek or Hebrew because we havesuch fantastic English
translations.
But for anyone digging into themeaning of the passage and
(28:16):
going deep into it and wantingto teach, then there's no more
fundamental skill for biblicalinterpretation than engaging
with Greek and Hebrew.
And so why say that looking ata passage in Hebrew, that it
(28:39):
actually gives you morequestions to ask is because
there's no translation withoutsome bit of interpretation, and
so once you go to the originallanguage, well then some of that
interpretational work is notbeing done for you, so you have
to do some of that spade workyourself.
That means you have morequestions to ask.
(29:01):
But then there are some thingsthat just cannot be translated,
just because language A doesn'thave all of the ways of
communicating that language Bdoes.
So you can't just perfectlymatch something from language A
to language B.
And so then there's thoseuntranslatable things that now
(29:21):
you have to wrestle with.
I would say the other.
So it doesn't sound like abenefit, but if you're willing
to dig into the Bible, actuallyhaving more questions to ask,
and you dig into it and you findanswers, that's really
rewarding.
And then also that's where youalso have a kind of confidence
(29:43):
in talking about what the Biblesays, because sometimes you see
a connection in English Acertain word is being used,
again you're connecting twopassages, two verses together,
something like that, and you'rekind of wondering, like, is this
a right connection to make?
If you can see that connectionin Hebrew, then you have a lot
(30:09):
more confidence in thatconnection and then in your
interpretation.
I would say another thing as faras so those would be some
benefits of learning Greek andHebrew.
As far as why to do it at acollege, for a college is this
is part of developing criticalthinking, and a really basic
(30:35):
critical thinking skill is.
I mean, we do our thinkingthrough language, we verbalize,
we conceptualize and wecommunicate our thinking through
language, and so language is avery critical part of critical
thinking, and so learninganother language, even just
(30:57):
learning another language, isgoing to give you other tools
for critical thinking of justthis thing called language that
we have as people made in theimage of God.
But then language that theseyou know I guess that could
(31:18):
pertain to learning any language, but for Christians, all of the
importance of learning Greekand Hebrew to be able to read
the Bible in its originallanguages and then, I guess, to
be able to produce well-roundedChristians then where they can
engage in some degree.
You only do one year oflanguage study, so you're only
(31:40):
going to get so far with whatSattler is requiring of everyone
.
But I think the very fact thatSattler says every graduate of
the bachelor's program needs tohave the only college in the US,
maybe the world, certainlyNorth America.
Zack Johnson (31:57):
I'm just kidding.
How about I'm not?
Jesse Scheumann (31:58):
kidding You're not kidding, Certainly North
America that all students,regardless of major, take a year
of Greek, a year of Hebrew andthat statement of being
well-rounded Christians who canengage with the whole counsel of
God in a deeper way.
I mean that sends a message,that makes a statement, and an
(32:23):
meaningful statement, becauseit's actually beneficial to our
students.
Zack Johnson (32:27):
Yeah, I heard an analogy once.
I was listening to a podcastabout Greek and the guy talking
said the analogy he uses for thedifference between reading in
the biblical language versusEnglish is he's the sports
analogy.
He said being able to read yourBible in, let's just say, the
(32:47):
New Testament is like attendinga live sports game, where you
can sort of engage with thewhole environment, and then
reading it in English is likewatching the game through like a
black and white TV set, that'slike a 24-inch monitor or
something small.
I remember that analogy stuckwith me because it's pretty
(33:10):
compelling, but you probablywouldn't go as far as the
difference between reading it inthe original language versus
English, because you can stillget a lot out of reading in
English and things like that.
Jesse Scheumann (33:25):
Yeah, it's always tricky to try to answer
this question, because I neverwant to undermine….
Zack Johnson (33:32):
To shame people.
Jesse Scheumann (33:33):
Yeah, and undermine the significance of
our English translations, likeour faithful, accurate English
translations, and even just thelegitimacy of a translation,
which is significant becausewith Islam, the Quran is Arabic.
(33:56):
It's always existed as anArabic Quran, even before it was
handed down to Muhammad.
It's always been Arabic, and soyou translate it.
That's no longer the Quran, andso there is something unique
about the Bible can betranslated and it can still be
(34:18):
the Word of God.
Part of this we know is because, with the translation of the
Old Testament into Greek, whichwas the primary Bible that Jesus
and the apostles used, and sothey use it, they quote from it.
So we know there, we know thelegitimacy of a translation.
But then I think even we havethe key within Christianity of
(34:43):
how can something be translated.
How can the Word of God, whichwas given in a language, be
translated into another languageand it still be the Word of God
is I think we have an analogy,at least within the incarnation
of Jesus is the Word of God.
He's the Son of God.
He translates himself to becomeman.
(35:05):
He's no less God.
He's still the second person ofthe Trinity, even as he's
clothed in frail humanity, andso I don't want to say anything
that undermines the significanceand legitimacy of English
(35:27):
translations or translation ingeneral, because I think it's
actually something reallyprecious to us and unique even
within Christianity.
Zack Johnson (35:37):
And then, in the back of my mind, I always think
that at least the firstChristians didn't have a trend,
didn't necessarily have the textitself, and so we know that God
can move beyond that.
I'll transition here.
You've written at least onebook.
Tell me about the books you'veauthored and why you chose to
(36:01):
pursue them, and things likethat, if you want to yeah.
Jesse Scheumann (36:07):
Well, there's the one with my.
Zack Johnson (36:14):
THM thesis.
It's the one that got publishedby Crossroads Crossway.
Jesse Scheumann (36:20):
Yeah, so it was my THM thesis.
I did it on a biblical theologyof birth pain, which sounds odd
, and actually probably soundsmore odd if you knew that I was
working on it as a single21-year-old guy.
That is odd.
(36:41):
There's a bit of a story, whichis the short version is well, I
wanted to look at Genesis 3.15and the offspring of the woman
defeating the offspring of theserpent, so tracing this
offspring of the woman themethroughout scripture.
So I wanted to do that, whichis something totally normal
looking at this messianic motifthroughout scripture.
(37:01):
That's pretty normal, right?
Totally normal.
Zack Johnson (37:04):
You're back to normal now.
Jesse Scheumann (37:06):
So that's where I began, but then that was a
pretty well-worn path.
But then, as I was seeing, youknow what I think actually
scripture not only animates anddevelops this messianic motif,
not simply through the angle ofoffspring, of the woman, but
through the complementary angleof mother, of the offspring,
(37:26):
like there's a motherhood themethroughout scripture that
animates and develops hope inthe coming messiah.
Again, that's pretty normal,right, that's more unique, but
that's still very normal.
And well, that blew up on metoo and became way too big.
And so I had to pick a chapter,what was going to be a chapter
in my thesis, and make thatactually be my thesis.
(37:49):
And what I picked was somethingthat I thought could grow into
a thesis in its own right, butthen also something that I
didn't see much in theliterature and that I could
actually develop and contribute.
And so I chose my chapter onbirth pain.
And so then that's what I wrote, and birth pain, from Genesis
to Revelation, is actually afairly significant theme.
(38:11):
I mean, there's something like64 passages that explicitly
mention birth pain, and someprominent ones in the New
Testament where you have Paulsay my dear Galatians, whom I'm
so perplexed about, how I wish Icould be with you now and
change my tone, because I'mperplexed about you, my dear
children, for whom I am again inthe pains of childbirth, until
(38:35):
Christ is formed in you.
But then also, we know Jesususes a metaphor of that the day
of the Lord will come like athief in the night, or labor
pains upon a pregnant woman.
But then also some perplexingpassages In Acts.
Peter says that God raisedJesus up from the dead, loosing
(38:58):
the birth pains of death.
What in the world is thattalking about?
Well, one associating birthpains of death but then loosing
these birth pains, breaking thechains of the birth pains.
What's going on there?
So that's what I wrote onpeople.
When they hear about the thesis, they're thinking like oh,
would you like put electrodes onyour tummy and want to hear
(39:20):
what birth pain was, or want tofeel what birth pain was like,
and then write about yourexperience.
It wasn't that.
It was looking at the metaphorof birth pain throughout
scripture and seeing what thistells us about the truth, about
God, ourselves in the world.
So you never did that like theshopping.
I never.
(39:40):
I still have seen my wife fivetimes, but I do not know
experientially.
Zack Johnson (39:47):
That could be a popular episode later.
Can you remind the title of thebook again?
Jesse Scheumann (39:54):
So yeah, what happened was I wrote my thesis
and then afterwards I got intouch with a woman named Gloria
Ferman who had authored severalbooks on being a wife and a
mother.
She's also had experience beinga doula.
She wrote an article, a blogpost, saying I think it would be
(40:17):
a fruitful study to look atchildbirth from Genesis to
Revelation.
I said, hey, maybe it wasn'texactly what you had in mind,
but I actually just finishedwriting something like this and
actually very early on in ourconversations I was encouraging
her to take my thesis and thenwrite that for a broader
(40:41):
audience, because I can't writea book, a popular book for women
, about birth pain and how tothink about that biblically,
experientially.
And so then the book isentitled something like Labor
(41:02):
with Hope Gospel Meditations forBirthing Mothers, something
like that, but that waspublished in, I think, something
like 2019.
So that was a book that I'mlisted as a co-author for.
But really the story behindthat book is I actually didn't
write a single word of the bookitself, but she generously
(41:26):
listed me as a co-author becauseshe really was taking a lot of
my ideas and my scripturalinterpretation, repackaging it
also sending me the chapters.
Zack Johnson (41:38):
And then I would give feedback.
So I would give feedback, nomanipulation on, like I'm just
kidding.
Jesse Scheumann (41:46):
Right.
So I didn't look at a blankpage and then create a page of
that book, but all of my pageswere more on the back end and
then I gave feedback on the bookand listed it as a co-author.
So that's kind of the story ofthat.
But then I guess the other bookwould be the Picture Dictionary
that Marissa and I did, andthen also the illustrated Jonah
(42:08):
book too that we also did with aguy named Christine Hegel.
Zack Johnson (42:13):
And both of those are connected to Hebrew
acquisition.
Jesse Scheumann (42:15):
Exactly.
Zack Johnson (42:17):
And then you spent most of your life in Minnesota,
right?
Can you just tell me a littlebit about the setting of
Bethlehem College and seminary,like where it is in the city?
I want to talk a little bitabout Christians and cities.
It's something that I wasthinking about a lot last year
and then I'll get into anarticle that came out here.
(42:39):
I'll ask you about it.
Jesse Scheumann (42:42):
Yeah.
So Bethlehem College andSeminary.
It's housed within BethlehemBaptist Church, which is the
church where John Piper was apastor for 33 years or so, and
what really attracted me to theseminary is that it's a
church-based seminary, and Iknow from my dad's seminary
(43:02):
studies that many times, likeseminary and church can actually
be really really separate, andthen you actually have to work
to be involved in church lifewhile you're doing your seminary
studies, and many timesseminary studies aren't really
concerned with the life andvitality of the church itself.
(43:24):
So it was a a big draw for methat this was a church-based
seminary.
So then it's in downtownMinneapolis.
Zack Johnson (43:35):
You can see it right off the highway.
I forget what highway runsright by it 35W.
It goes right through the heartof Minneapolis, literally right
in the heart of Minneapolis,yeah.
Jesse Scheumann (43:43):
It's just a couple blocks from where the
Minnesota Vikings play, sodowntown, downtown and
Minneapolis.
Zack Johnson (43:51):
And just tell me a little bit.
Do you know if the institutionor if they chose that
strategically to put theirseminary in the middle of a city
, or is that sort of bycoincidence, or they followed
the church?
Do you know anything about that?
I'm going to try to get usbeing in Boston and things like
that.
Jesse Scheumann (44:10):
Yeah, so it'll be different than Sattler being
intentionally in Boston.
So it's very different thanthat.
Because the church had existedthere for over 100 years Got it
and then Piper had already beenthe pastor there for over 25
years.
They had started.
It was called the BethlehemInstitute, where it was a
(44:32):
two-year elder preparation trackthat you could transfer to
another seminary and getgraduate level credit for and
then that kind of naturallyorganically developed into a
seminary.
I guess why it's in Minneapolis?
Because the church is in.
Zack Johnson (44:49):
Minneapolis Got it .
There is an article that cameout in Christianity today and it
says New Yorkers watch as theirevangelical colleges close and
so I'm sort of watching thisfrom from Boston, and the author
basically says that now if youwant to be a Christian looking
in a sort of an urbanenvironment, there aren't many,
(45:13):
many options and Sattleractually made its mention here.
Surprisingly, we're like brandnew.
But can you just talk a littlebit about life as a Christian in
an urban, urban environmentversus a rural environment and
just relate it a little bit tohow you think about it?
And even like raising yourfamily and having five kids I
(45:36):
know you, I think you're, I knowyou homeschool and that whole
gamut of Christians and cities.
You don't have to talk too muchabout it.
Jesse Scheumann (45:45):
But yeah, well it's.
I mean there's a lot to it andmy children are going to have a
much different experiencegrowing up than I had growing up
.
I mean I was in rural Minnesota, my family, we had 40 acres of
land and that was very enriching, especially for so many
(46:09):
children.
We got to do so many thingsoutside in the woods, et cetera,
et cetera, et cetera.
But my children won't be ableto do, and so I've had to come
to terms with that.
There are some pros and cons.
There's some gifts, there'ssome takes, what it means, as
well as that, actually being inan urban environment is richer
(46:31):
in many ways.
I mean, at our church there area number of Berkeley School of
Music students, and so theyinvite us to their jazz concerts
, and so we've been able to takethe kids and go to free jazz
concert of these students thatwe know.
Zack Johnson (46:49):
Did you invite Graham?
Jesse Scheumann (46:50):
I didn't.
I didn't invite Graham, butmaybe next time I will.
Zack Johnson (46:55):
I'm going to get him to say something eventually
in this whole new episode.
Jesse Scheumann (46:59):
Or make him Graham famous.
Yeah, yeah, and so it's thingslike that that being in an urban
environment is richer.
Also, I mean we naturallyengage with our neighbors a
whole lot more.
I mean, from our house where welive we counted we can see five
(47:24):
different swimming pools andyou know how many of our
neighbors have swimming pools.
But like we're looking downinto our neighbor's yards and
we're seeing a lot of yards andof the yards, five of them have
swimming pools.
But like you're just rubbingshoulders with that many more
people being in urbanenvironment.
Zack Johnson (47:45):
Do you commute to?
Do you commute here?
Jesse Scheumann (47:49):
I have commuted using public transit and then
now I'm mainly using my scooter.
So I do commute.
Yeah, wait, you just scooterhere.
Yeah, yeah, I know it's justhop on the scooter and then park
it here.
So, yeah, it can do thedistance, just six miles, it
doesn't take about half an hour.
Zack Johnson (48:06):
How long does it take you to scooter?
Six months, so half an hour.
Jesse Scheumann (48:08):
Grandma, what do I?
Zack Johnson (48:09):
ask about this.
I don't know what follow upquestion to ask after I find out
someone scooters six miles.
All right well let's get it.
Jesse Scheumann (48:18):
How's my back, How's your back?
It's okay.
Is that dangerous?
No, I mean it's partly wearingthe backpack.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So I wear a helmet with lightsand then I actually wear one of
those bright orange vest,reflective vest.
So basically I'm telling peopleI know I'm riding a scooter and
(48:41):
you might think I wanna die,but actually I don't wanna die.
So that's the reason for it.
Zack Johnson (48:45):
Can we get someone to capture a picture of Dr
Schreeman on the way to worksometime?
Jesse Scheumann (48:50):
Oh man, I'm looking, we can post it
somewhere.
I looked dumb, but I also don'twanna die, got it.
Zack Johnson (48:59):
And then tell me just what classes do you teach,
like what's your bread andbutter on, what you teach and
what you like to educate on.
Jesse Scheumann (49:09):
So typically any semester I'm teaching two
Hebrew courses.
So the sequence of classes is afour course Hebrew sequence.
So in the fall I'm teachingfirst semester Hebrew, third
semester Hebrew and then thisspring second semester and
fourth semester with a threecourse typical load.
Then that leaves one coursewhere it's kind of on a two year
(49:33):
rotating basis.
So I've taught a course onIslam many times about four
times now and then this semesterI'm teaching a course, new
Testament Use of Old.
So looking at those cases whereJesus and the Apostles quote the
Old Testament and interpret itand just like look at what's
going on, comparing Greek andHebrew, looking at New Testament
context, old Testament context,talking about the progress of
(49:55):
Revelation, et cetera.
Then I've taught book study onIsaiah.
Next semester I'm looking toteach a book study on Psalms.
I'm teaching an advanced Hebrewdirected study.
This semester I've taught acourse on Judaism and then I've
co-taught like apologetics,fundamental texts, thinking of
(50:20):
other courses that I've taught,the Greek exegesis course before
.
Also next semester I'm lookingto teach a course on topics in
biblical theology.
So again looking at the Bibleas more one book with 66
chapters.
So I'm looking to see how itall relates and co-hears in
(50:41):
Christ.
Zack Johnson (50:42):
And you also preach.
Where do you preach?
Down the street here at Tremont, right?
Yeah, yeah, I'd be like howoften do you preach?
I preach every five weeks,Every five weeks.
Jesse Scheumann (50:54):
Yeah, which is a nice rhythm for me.
Zack Johnson (51:00):
I enjoy it, got it .
And then, lastly, or how longdo we go?
As long as we want.
Jesse Scheumann (51:10):
We're about an hour in.
Zack Johnson (51:12):
If we wanna talk about maybe we'll follow up on
more topics here but if peoplewanna find out a little bit more
about your work and your books,your Hebrew content, where can
they sort of find that?
I guess they could Google me,they could Google you.
Will they find you?
Picturehebrewcom.
Jesse Scheumann (51:33):
No, it's so.
I don't think the domain forpicturehebrewcom is active
anymore, because I ended uptaking all of my resources over
to glossahouse.
com Glossahouse, so glossahouseG-L-O-S-S-A.
Zack Johnson (51:48):
That's a great word.
Jesse Scheumann (51:49):
Yeah, yeah, for language language house, and so
all of my or I think most of myresources are published through
them.
I guess you could Google meJesse Schuman, s-e-h-e-u-m-a,
and then.
Zack Johnson (52:05):
And then I'm gonna ask a couple questions.
You've shared a couple pearlswith the student body about.
Pearls are where we sort of tryto torture the wisdom out of
everyone on campus and share itwith the student body.
Jesse Scheumann (52:20):
Not torture, that's a bad word that's a good,
so it's actually a much morepleasant experience.
Zack Johnson (52:24):
It's a very pleasant experience where you
have the opportunity to shareyour life lessons with sort of
our audience.
If you could leave a pearl foranybody listening, so it could
be a new one or one that yousaid before.
Jesse Scheumann (52:40):
I feel like the one that you want me to share
is the phrase of cutting theEnglish on Bill Cook.
Zack Johnson (52:45):
Well, you have that one and you have, like, the
three Ds of learning.
You have a lot of good ones.
Okay, yep, but you can sharetwo and then the audience can
choose which one they likebetter.
Jesse Scheumann (52:55):
Okay, okay, well, keeping that language
related, I've said that anambitious goal is to seek to cut
the English on Bill Cook'schord to the Bible.
Basically it's well, if youdevelop a reading fluency in
Greek and Hebrew, you're readingyour Bible.
You don't need to access itthrough English to get the
(53:20):
nourishment from God's word.
But you can do it through Greekand Hebrew.
And while that takes a lot ofeffort on the front end, it's
very much kind of like anairplane getting a lift off,
take off.
And so I mean how much energyis an airplane expending just to
get off the ground?
(53:40):
But once it's off the groundand once it's at cruising
altitude, I mean then how muchenergy is it expending?
A lot less.
So, similarly, for any kind ofnormal person it's probably
gonna take two full years oflanguage study.
But if you can do two years oflanguage study, I've been able
(54:02):
to prove many times over with myHebrew students that I can get
them up to cruising altitude atcertainly take off in two years
to be able to continue to engagethe Old Testament side of
things through Hebrew.
So that would be the cuttingthe English umbilical cord.
(54:24):
But then I've thought a lotabout how to glorify God as a
student.
And so then, that's where thethree D's have come in.
What are you?
What are the three D's?
The three D's are diligence,dependence and delight.
So diligence is God's made uswilling, responsible creatures.
(54:45):
And our diligence how can weask God to bless something if
we're not being diligent, ifwe're shirking our
responsibilities?
So diligence is key.
But then also dependence,because we know that unless God
watches over the city, thewatchman keeps watching vein,
(55:07):
that it is in vein that you goto bed late, rise early eating
the bread of anxious toilbecause he gives to his beloved
sleep.
So there is a dependence allalong.
And then I've and I think it's aparadox, but the Christian life
is working vehemently from astate of rest.
(55:30):
In Christ we have our rest, sowe're not seeking to attain
something that we don't alreadyhave, but then the so it's from
a state of rest.
But the paradox is that I thinkGod is pleased in our vehement
work.
So working vehemently from astate of rest, that's putting
(55:53):
diligence and dependencetogether.
But I think delight is thethird ingredient, that God has
prepared these good works inadvance for us and there for us
to do, and we glorify Godthrough our through, our delight
(56:13):
that we're not, we're notmoaning, we're not complaining,
we're not just doing it strictlyfrom well, I should do this but
that God would actually give usa delight in it and that we
would show that delight in whatwe get to do.
So that's the diligence,dependence and delight, the
(56:33):
three Ds of glorifying God.
As a student, but certainly Imean, that's a framework for
anything that you do, anyvocation that you're doing.
Zack Johnson (56:41):
Great Well, jesse, dr Schuman, brother, jesse,
co-laborer he gave me a nickname, but I'm not gonna call it.
Thanks for the conversation,and we're gonna have this man
back on sometime, aren't we?
Absolutely yes, it got him.
Jesse Scheumann (56:57):
Yeah, got him.
Zack Johnson (56:57):
There is another person in the room.
This episode today is broughtto you by ourselves, Sattler
College, and if you want to knowmore, go to Sattleredu.
It's September 28th.
I don't know when we're gonnapost this, but there's an open
house October 13th, where, ifyou're interested in the campus
and you want to meet Dr Schumanin person, that would be a great
(57:20):
time to come and visit us.
Yeah, great time, October 13th,14th.
Where do you find Sattler.
edu/events?
is where you can find that,and if you have more questions
for me, best way to reach me ispresident @ sattler.
edu.
We can write in and anythingelse I need to announce.
Jesse Scheumann (57:37):
Thanks, that's right, thank you.
It is September 28th and I'm with the first ever
guest of a Sattler Collegepodcast.
We don't yet have a title, butwe might discover it today.
So we're with Dr Jesse Schumann, who's been with Sattler since
when Dr Schumann or Jesse 2018,so I came in August 2018, moved
(00:29):
from Minnesota.
Alright, so I'm going to readyour bio really quick so people
know who I'm talking about.
Okay, and then we're going toget into it.
Sound good, sounds good.
Thanks for being here.
I'm excited to talk aboutsomething and I've listened to
podcasts and preparations so Imight provide some alternative
personas while we talk.
(00:49):
Alright, Jesse Schuemann holds aPhD with a specialization in
Hebrew from the University ofthe Free State in South Africa.
Did you ever live in SouthAfrica?
I've never even been to SouthAfrica.
Common question I've heard youaddress.
He holds an MA in Logisticsfrom the University of Minnesota
and an MDiv and a THM fromBethlehem College and Seminary,
(01:12):
and a BA in Biblical andTheological Studies from
University of Northwestern StPaul.
In 2017, he founded PictureHebrew with his wife, marissa to
provide illustrated resourcesthat help others internalize the
language of Scripture.
That's a lot.
Anything to add or subtractfrom your bio after hearing
(01:34):
about it.
No, alright, I'll keep going.
Jesse or Mr Schumann's interestslie in the areas of generative
linguistics, languageacquisition, greek and Hebrew,
exegesis and Biblical theology.
He has been teachingCommunicative Hebrew for several
years and is passionate to seeany committed student become a
(01:56):
lifelong reader of Greek andHebrew.
His desires to build up thechurch locally and globally.
Beautiful Welcome, thanks,alright, just to start off, I'd
love to hear an arch of yourstory, just like a five minute.
This is where I was born andthis is how I got to where I am
(02:17):
now.
Sure.
Jesse Scheumann (02:20):
So I was born.
I was born in Illinois.
I'm the sixth of eight children.
My dad is a pastor, my mom homeschool.
All of us children.
We moved to Minnesota.
When I was one, lived in ruralMinnesota.
My dad was pastor of anevangelical church in the
countryside of Minnesota.
(02:41):
Throughout high school I wouldhave told you that I'm not going
to go to college becausecollege is just an expensive way
to meet your wife and I knewwho I was going to marry.
So I didn't actually, and so Iguess that's part of it was.
I broke up with this girlSummer before going to college,
(03:05):
decided I was doing communitycollege just getting my generals
out of the way.
I decided to go to college andfinish out my bachelor's degree
just to take advantage of what Ihad already done.
I had taken all the generalsthat they offered and I thought
about well, do I want to do 40credits of any one of those
(03:28):
studies?
The closest I came to was maybepsychology, maybe history, as
far as the classes I had takenat the community college.
But I wasn't really sointerested in any one of those
things.
But when I heard about thebiblical and theological studies
(03:48):
degree at University ofNorthwestern St Paul.
Every one of those classes onthe list looked so fascinating
and I fully intended to be doneafter finishing out.
That degree was just going tobe two more years of coursework,
but after two weeks of class Iwas thinking like man, I can't
(04:10):
be done in just two more years,so I have to go to seminary.
I guess at the time I was veryopen and probably leaning
towards pastoral ministry, andso when I began seminary I was
thinking about doing full-timepastoral ministry, and it was as
(04:30):
I was doing classes.
I became really interestedwhile there in going deep into
Greek and Hebrew.
First was Greek, I had takenGreek in undergrad and I came
into seminary.
Everybody starts in second yearGreek, and so I had to brush up
(04:53):
some of my Greek and I reallytreated that very seriously, and
already I was beginning tothink maybe I would do PhD work
with someone named GK Beal, andif so, I knew when are they from
, or how did you know about them?
GK Beal.
He's a New Testament scholar.
His emphases are in biblicaltheology of how the Bible
(05:16):
coheres as a unified story, andin New Testament use of old so
where Jesus and the apostlesquote and then interpret the Old
Testament, and so those are hisspecialties.
He's taught at Wheaton Collegeand then I think now he's at
Westminster and so I wasthinking about studying under
him and I had heard storiesabout him that he's really
(05:37):
intimidating.
Guys Like I would need to know.
If this happens, I would needto be really good at Greek.
So I began a daily process ofreading my New Testament,
memorizing unknown vocabulary,reviewing and doing this very
regularly, half an hour everyday.
And I so Greek was, I say Greekwas my first love.
(06:00):
Hebrew ended up becoming mytrue love.
Throughout seminary I ended upactually switching more away
from pursuing pastoral ministryto academic ministry and then
even from thinking about doing aPhD in theology and biblical
theology to study of Hebrewlanguage.
(06:23):
And there my thoughts were well, a PhD just means that I'm good
at one thing.
So what is what one thing can Ibecome good at that I can get
the most benefit from for therest of my life?
And so I was thinking well,what's more basic?
Well, more basic than studyingtheology would be studying
(06:46):
language, the language ofScripture, because we're people
with the book, so theology comesfrom the book and the book is
written in these languages.
So language study is morefundamental than theological
study.
And then I was also thinkingwell, greek, hebrew again, I was
thinking about it more.
What's more fundamental?
(07:08):
And I was thinking about well,old Testament is written first
in the foundation for NewTestament.
And I guess, speaking of GKBiel, he has this big book and
his one of his theses isbasically every significant New
Testament doctrine has its rootsin the Old Testament, and so
(07:30):
the degree to which we'reunaware of the Old Testament
roots or misinterpret the OldTestament on that point, to that
degree we're likely tomisinterpret the New Testament.
And then also, I was thinkingwell, I can think of so many New
Testament scholars who magnifyJesus and make much of Christ,
(07:56):
but not nearly as many OldTestament scholars can do that.
And so that's what really gotme into the Old Testament side
of things.
Along the way, I had gottenintroduced to a communicative
way of learning and then alsoteaching Hebrew, and this is
what I did alongside my wife.
Zack Johnson (08:14):
Can you just describe the communicative way
for people who might not befamiliar with it, what that
means?
Jesse Scheumann (08:20):
Yeah, so traditional way of teaching
Greek and Hebrew in college andseminary for I mean decade
centuries is characterized bygrammar and translation.
So grammar, everything's donein English.
So we talk about a grammaticalconcept in English, then we talk
(08:41):
about the grammatical conceptin Hebrew and then, now that we
first understood grammar inEnglish, grammar in Hebrew,
learn some vocab in Hebrew andthen learn to translate now from
Hebrew into English, and so youtalk a lot about the language
but you don't use the language.
And so that's the traditionalway, this communicative way.
(09:05):
Well, I guess there's a numberof ways that you can do it.
What I was introduced to iscalled total physical response.
It gets the acronym of TPR andit was actually discovered.
Tprs is TPRS is Total PhysicalResponse, through storytelling.
Through storytelling, got it.
Zack Johnson (09:25):
Yeah.
Jesse Scheumann (09:26):
So storytelling is the added part.
So TPR is the teacher givescommands like get up and then
you get up, sit down.
You sit down, and at first youmodel it for the students.
So you say get up and then I'llget up, sit down, I'll sit down
, I'll do that a few times andthen I'll start calling on
(09:46):
students to do that, and so it'steaching the language by using
the language, and so you'reusing the language the whole
time.
The goal is at least 90% ofclass time is using the language
and you know if the studentsdon't understand because they
don't do what you tell them toor they write it clearly on
(10:06):
their face.
Zack Johnson (10:07):
You can't cheat.
Jesse Scheumann (10:08):
Yeah, you can't cheat, you can't really hide.
Zack Johnson (10:10):
I guess you could follow somebody.
Jesse Scheumann (10:12):
Yeah, and learn from them, I guess.
So yeah, but eyes on me.
Zack Johnson (10:17):
I'm not gonna get that.
Jesse Scheumann (10:18):
Yeah, and so that's the total physical
response.
The first day is get up, sitdown.
Get up, jump, stand, sit down,so those kinds of things.
Well, the storytelling partgets into it of like, hey well,
first day getting up, jumping,clapping for one another as they
(10:43):
do the actions, like hey, thisis fun, people have smiles on
their faces.
Well, after a few weeks jumpingisn't as fun as it used to be,
and so those simple commands indoing the actions, that doesn't
necessarily keep students'attention right.
It's no longer as fun the moreyou do it.
And so what keeps studentsreally interested and engaged is
(11:07):
storytelling.
Like, no one grows out ofstorytelling.
I mean, we read books to ourchildren that have stories, but
adults read books, adults tellstories, and so then
storytelling is what will reallycarry the curriculum through,
(11:28):
although you'll continue to dothat kind of kinesthetic give
commands, be doing things,incorporate your whole body and
all of the senses and make thelanguage come alive.
But then you can also tell astory and then be talking about
the story.
So interpretation, that kind ofstuff.
So that's a little introductionto a communicative way of
(11:50):
teaching language.
Zack Johnson (11:51):
So I'm gonna park this and kind of keep diving
into this because I think it'sreally relevant to who you are.
First year at Sattler you had astudent go through a wall
Graham.
We have Graham, he's a student.
Have you heard this story?
(12:12):
I have.
Jesse Scheumann (12:13):
I feel like the fish has grown in size.
There was a student and therewas a hole in the wall, but the
student didn't go through thewall.
Zack Johnson (12:22):
Okay, I exaggerate .
Thanks for bringing me back,but I'm asking this because it
seems like students get alive,or become alive, through this
method of learning, and I'veseen it happen and I've paid for
it my budget, but I'm justkidding.
Jesse Scheumann (12:43):
I was so afraid of telling you when that
happened, like I grabbed thestudent and he grabbed me and I
thought we were gonna go downtogether.
Zack Johnson (12:51):
So it tends to be like an action-packed classroom,
and then there's rumors aboutnoise complaints, but we can't
pin down if that's yourclassroom or something else.
Jesse Scheumann (13:02):
Right, yeah, yeah, I think that was the ping
pong table.
But in the past I've had noisecomplaints.
So before I came to Sattler, Itaught Hebrew as a community ed
class for four years and so itwas a community ed class and
there are other classes going onfor working adults.
And I had one time where duringbreak, a professor from two
(13:23):
classes down.
He came to me and said hey,jesse, can you keep it down in
Hebrew class?
It's distracting my students.
And I thought that, well,that's when I had really arrived
.
Was that people having to go tothe Hebrew professor and say,
hey, your students are being toorowdy, they're being too loud,
(13:43):
you need to quiet down in there.
Zack Johnson (13:45):
No, I'll take it.
And then one of the things Iwant to chat about is your
family as well, and so I've beento your house before, and so
your students are really engagedin your teaching.
But on your bio, you and yourwife started this flashcard set.
It's called Picture Hebrewright, and I know that your
(14:09):
children have already beenabsorbing your passions through
some of the way that youstructure your house.
How do you sort of engage?
Tell me a little bit about yourfamily, just first off, and how
they engage with this sort ofstyle of teaching.
Jesse Scheumann (14:24):
Yeah, so my wife Marissa.
We've been married now for 11years and we have five kids, so
age is basically nine, seven,five, three one.
Zack Johnson (14:36):
I bet they all have biblical names.
Jesse Scheumann (14:38):
They do.
They do, yeah, a little bit ofa new testament, a little bit
old testament.
So, rebecca, peter, abigail,lydia and Isaiah, so three girls
, two boys.
And so, yeah, I mean, myjourney into communicative
Hebrew began with my wife, Imean.
So I was traditionally trainedin Hebrew grammar translation in
(15:01):
seminary, and it was only lateron that on my own, but actually
not on my own with Marissa thatwe first we got this curriculum
and we started working throughit together.
Then, in 2014, when our firstdaughter was just born she was
only two months old we packedher up and we went to North
Carolina to do a month-longimmerse, of course, and so
(15:24):
that's when I was reallyintroduced to how to teach
Hebrew communicatively.
And then, beginning that fall,marissa and I started
co-teaching Hebrew, and so itwas just a one night a week
class, and so we would have toget a babysitter, and then
Marissa and I we would alwaysteach together.
(15:45):
So she's never actually been inthe classroom with me once at
Sattler, as we've had extrachild responsibilities at home,
but she's as involved in thecurriculum as she's ever been, I
mean.
So we with the picture Hebrew.
(16:05):
So it began with well, I guessit actually began with the book
of Jonah.
That's right.
So we had done this.
Curriculum has a lot ofpictures at the beginning, but
as you go deeper into theprogram, no more pictures.
And that was really hard onMarissa because she was
(16:26):
benefiting so much from thepictures that for her own
benefit, as we were learningJonah, she would do little
doodles above the text for Jonah.
And that was kind of the startof the Jonah book.
We decided to do that more indepth and then we thought, hey,
why not do this for thevocabulary words themselves?
So then we did the pictureflashcards where instead of
(16:49):
English on one side and Hebrewon the other side, it was a
picture on one side and Hebrewon the other side.
So then you would go frompicture like the actual
reference, and then you wouldcome up with the Hebrew word for
it, or you'd see the Hebrewword and then try to picture the
reference and just try tobypass English as medium for
learning or engaging with thelanguage altogether.
(17:09):
And since then she's continuedto do a lot of illustrations.
We have some other bookprojects, we've done a picture
dictionary together and thenshe's engaged with me probably
on every single lesson plan thatI've developed.
Zack Johnson (17:27):
If I had Graham.
Graham doesn't have Graham's inthe room with us.
Have you seen that?
There's this TED talk about aguy talking about language
acquisition through learningwords in really loud sort of
loud types of ways.
You know what I'm talking about.
It's like some guy talkingabout learning a word for a
drink at a bar in Russian.
(17:48):
Anything, any recollections.
So the idea behind theflashcards is that you're kind
of trying to mimic how maybe ababy might learn there are
acquire words and languages asopposed to sort of picking it up
through a textbook.
Is that sort of the idea behindit?
Jesse Scheumann (18:09):
Yeah, or I guess just trying to bypass
English as a medium forengagement with the language
whatsoever, and so directengagement with the language
that I don't need to go.
Hebrew word sus means horse,and then I have a picture of a
(18:30):
horse and maybe actually, inorder to get there, I actually
have a mnemonic that susprobably had a lot of horses in
it.
And so then you think oh, sushad horse to actually like the
animal, the horse.
(18:51):
Actually, hey, let's just goanimal word.
So you have a direct connectionbetween the word and then what
the word represents or what theword connotes.
Zack Johnson (19:04):
So I was just in an elevator with an unknown I
won't disclose their identity,but not someone that works here
and they were discussing howthey wanted to teach here in the
past and they just said I can'tfathom doing the communicative
method because I all my studieswere through what's the opposite
(19:26):
of communicative the grammartranslation.
Grammar translation would bethe correct term.
Can you talk a little bit aboutyour view on the pros and cons
of those two methods?
Just a little bit of acomparison on the resources out
there and why the communicativemethod.
You've staked a lot on thatmethod yourself and the
(19:47):
institution has as well.
Jesse Scheumann (19:50):
Yeah, with communicative and grammar
translation, the resources thatare out there.
There's a lot more resourcesfor grammar translation than
there are for communicative,although I would say a lot of
more of the exciting developmentin teaching Greek and Hebrew
(20:12):
have happened on thecommunicative side of things
Illustrated resources et cetera.
It's a young movement but it'salso growing.
There are differences ofopinion about, I guess, more or
less doing a pure communicativeapproach.
(20:34):
The communicative approach isbasically hey, we should try to
teach Hebrew as a secondlanguage, like how a child would
have learned Hebrew as hisfirst language.
Call the language that youlearn as an adult, l2 for
(20:57):
language two and L1 is thelanguage you learned as a child.
That basically L2 should mirrorL1 exactly.
With language, you have fourfaculties of language.
You have speaking and hearing,reading and writing.
Those come in pairs.
(21:17):
You receive through hearing andyou produce through speaking.
You receive through reading andyou produce through writing
those four faculties of languageWith child development you
usually have well, a child can.
It first goes, the child canhear, comprehend and then begins
(21:40):
to speak, then probably beginsto read and then begins to write
.
They're pretty neat stages ofgoing one to the other.
If L2 equals L1, then we shouldnot have any kind of grammar
instruction, we should justspeak.
(22:01):
We don't have to worry abouteven necessarily making
everything fully andintelligible, just kind of like
the fire hydrant of just givestudents comprehensible input.
Well, you speak it, they canunderstand it.
Maybe they can't remembereverything, but you just keep
(22:24):
loading on students, then sooneror later they'll start to
figure out the system of thelanguage on their own.
That would be maybe a more purecommunicative approach.
As much as I'm ideologicallycommitted to the communicative
(22:45):
method, what I would say is I'ma grammar second approach.
I actually still want to givegrammar, but I don't want to
lead the classroom with grammar,grammar.
I don't want grammar to be theporthole through which you see
(23:07):
the whole language.
If you don't get the abstractgrammatical concept, then you
don't get the language.
I want to flip it.
I want communication and usingthe language to lead the way of
how I teach the language.
Then, along the way, I want tobuild up the system of the
(23:29):
language, the grammatical systemof the language, and describe
that to the students.
I want to do that as, and thendirectly after I've been using
the language and doing thelanguage.
I'm trying to get the best ofboth approaches.
Zack Johnson (23:49):
Then you asked about pros and cons Right, Just
a little bit of a benefit,that's great.
I'll ask a little bit of aquestion that I get a lot when I
talk about this.
I'm going to shoot myself inthe foot.
What percentage of Christiansdo you think engage or pursue
learning biblical language is,and what percent of Christians
(24:14):
should pursue biblical learning,biblical languages?
Jesse Scheumann (24:20):
What percentage do you think like 1%?
Zack Johnson (24:23):
1%?
I don't know.
Jesse Scheumann (24:25):
What percentage should?
I don't know, maybe like 10%.
Zack Johnson (24:31):
Why is it important, if we care about
Christianity, to devote time tobiblical languages?
It's a weird thing when Idescribe Sattler, people just
look at it.
They say Sattler College, bibleCollege, but we have all our
students sort of take biblicallanguages at least a year of
Greek and Hebrew, whether you'recomputer science, biology,
(24:56):
history, major, business andespecially the biblical studies
majors.
What's the benefit of peoplestudying languages and maybe try
to make a case for the pursuitof biblical languages?
Maybe if you're not going to beas academically trained as
someone as yourself, you mightnot use them in a lot of your
(25:19):
day-to-day classroom environment?
Jesse Scheumann (25:22):
Sure, yeah, right, I would say yeah, not
everyone should be as engagedwith it as I am.
It's my vocation, after all.
I think my wife can be a modelfor anyone where she only began
(25:49):
after she became a mother.
She's developed as she's been amother now a mother of five
children.
She still reads her OldTestament in Hebrew, a chapter a
day.
She's been through the entireOld Testament more than once.
I mean, there's hardly a morebusy or scatterbrained person
(26:17):
than a mother of multiplechildren, and yet she's found
great benefit to reading the OldTestament in Hebrew.
Once you gain a reading abilitywith it, well then there's
nothing to keep up other thanjust well, do you read your Old
(26:38):
Testament?
You need to read your OldTestament in Hebrew.
And so then, what's the casefor learning Greek and Hebrew?
It's well, you're a Christian.
I assume you're reading yourBible regularly, and then would
(26:59):
you rather be reading your Biblein English, or would you rather
be reading your Bible in Greekor Hebrew?
And well, what are the benefits, then of Greek and Hebrew?
There are some misconceptions.
Probably the primary one wouldbe if only I knew, let's keep
(27:19):
the Hebrew side of things, sincethat's my specialty.
If only I knew Hebrew, then allmy questions would be answered.
Zack Johnson (27:27):
Like your questions about God himself.
Jesse Scheumann (27:29):
About God or about this text, about what it
means, and sadly, that's nottrue, but that's actually where
a lot of the benefit comes fromActually reading it in Hebrew.
It doesn't answer all yourquestions.
It actually gives you morequestions to ask, and so it's
not at all something for thefaint of heart, I mean as far as
(27:54):
the basic meaning of somethingthat's captured perfectly well
in basically any standardEnglish translation.
So then, that's why I say 90%of people don't need to learn
Greek or Hebrew because we havesuch fantastic English
translations.
But for anyone digging into themeaning of the passage and
(28:16):
going deep into it and wantingto teach, then there's no more
fundamental skill for biblicalinterpretation than engaging
with Greek and Hebrew.
And so why say that looking ata passage in Hebrew, that it
(28:39):
actually gives you morequestions to ask is because
there's no translation withoutsome bit of interpretation, and
so once you go to the originallanguage, well then some of that
interpretational work is notbeing done for you, so you have
to do some of that spade workyourself.
That means you have morequestions to ask.
(29:01):
But then there are some thingsthat just cannot be translated,
just because language A doesn'thave all of the ways of
communicating that language Bdoes.
So you can't just perfectlymatch something from language A
to language B.
And so then there's thoseuntranslatable things that now
(29:21):
you have to wrestle with.
I would say the other.
So it doesn't sound like abenefit, but if you're willing
to dig into the Bible, actuallyhaving more questions to ask,
and you dig into it and you findanswers, that's really
rewarding.
And then also that's where youalso have a kind of confidence
(29:43):
in talking about what the Biblesays, because sometimes you see
a connection in English Acertain word is being used,
again you're connecting twopassages, two verses together,
something like that, and you'rekind of wondering, like, is this
a right connection to make?
If you can see that connectionin Hebrew, then you have a lot
(30:09):
more confidence in thatconnection and then in your
interpretation.
I would say another thing as faras so those would be some
benefits of learning Greek andHebrew.
As far as why to do it at acollege, for a college is this
is part of developing criticalthinking, and a really basic
(30:35):
critical thinking skill is.
I mean, we do our thinkingthrough language, we verbalize,
we conceptualize and wecommunicate our thinking through
language, and so language is avery critical part of critical
thinking, and so learninganother language, even just
(30:57):
learning another language, isgoing to give you other tools
for critical thinking of justthis thing called language that
we have as people made in theimage of God.
But then language that theseyou know I guess that could
(31:18):
pertain to learning any language, but for Christians, all of the
importance of learning Greekand Hebrew to be able to read
the Bible in its originallanguages and then, I guess, to
be able to produce well-roundedChristians then where they can
engage in some degree.
You only do one year oflanguage study, so you're only
(31:40):
going to get so far with whatSattler is requiring of everyone
.
But I think the very fact thatSattler says every graduate of
the bachelor's program needs tohave the only college in the US,
maybe the world, certainlyNorth America.
Zack Johnson (31:57):
I'm just kidding.
How about I'm not?
Jesse Scheumann (31:58):
kidding You're not kidding, Certainly North
America that all students,regardless of major, take a year
of Greek, a year of Hebrew andthat statement of being
well-rounded Christians who canengage with the whole counsel of
God in a deeper way.
I mean that sends a message,that makes a statement, and an
(32:23):
meaningful statement, becauseit's actually beneficial to our
students.
Zack Johnson (32:27):
Yeah, I heard an analogy once.
I was listening to a podcastabout Greek and the guy talking
said the analogy he uses for thedifference between reading in
the biblical language versusEnglish is he's the sports
analogy.
He said being able to read yourBible in, let's just say, the
(32:47):
New Testament is like attendinga live sports game, where you
can sort of engage with thewhole environment, and then
reading it in English is likewatching the game through like a
black and white TV set, that'slike a 24-inch monitor or
something small.
I remember that analogy stuckwith me because it's pretty
(33:10):
compelling, but you probablywouldn't go as far as the
difference between reading it inthe original language versus
English, because you can stillget a lot out of reading in
English and things like that.
Jesse Scheumann (33:25):
Yeah, it's always tricky to try to answer
this question, because I neverwant to undermine….
Zack Johnson (33:32):
To shame people.
Jesse Scheumann (33:33):
Yeah, and undermine the significance of
our English translations, likeour faithful, accurate English
translations, and even just thelegitimacy of a translation,
which is significant becausewith Islam, the Quran is Arabic.
(33:56):
It's always existed as anArabic Quran, even before it was
handed down to Muhammad.
It's always been Arabic, and soyou translate it.
That's no longer the Quran, andso there is something unique
about the Bible can betranslated and it can still be
(34:18):
the Word of God.
Part of this we know is because, with the translation of the
Old Testament into Greek, whichwas the primary Bible that Jesus
and the apostles used, and sothey use it, they quote from it.
So we know there, we know thelegitimacy of a translation.
But then I think even we havethe key within Christianity of
(34:43):
how can something be translated.
How can the Word of God, whichwas given in a language, be
translated into another languageand it still be the Word of God
is I think we have an analogy,at least within the incarnation
of Jesus is the Word of God.
He's the Son of God.
He translates himself to becomeman.
(35:05):
He's no less God.
He's still the second person ofthe Trinity, even as he's
clothed in frail humanity, andso I don't want to say anything
that undermines the significanceand legitimacy of English
(35:27):
translations or translation ingeneral, because I think it's
actually something reallyprecious to us and unique even
within Christianity.
Zack Johnson (35:37):
And then, in the back of my mind, I always think
that at least the firstChristians didn't have a trend,
didn't necessarily have the textitself, and so we know that God
can move beyond that.
I'll transition here.
You've written at least onebook.
Tell me about the books you'veauthored and why you chose to
(36:01):
pursue them, and things likethat, if you want to yeah.
Jesse Scheumann (36:07):
Well, there's the one with my.
Zack Johnson (36:14):
THM thesis.
It's the one that got publishedby Crossroads Crossway.
Jesse Scheumann (36:20):
Yeah, so it was my THM thesis.
I did it on a biblical theologyof birth pain, which sounds odd
, and actually probably soundsmore odd if you knew that I was
working on it as a single21-year-old guy.
That is odd.
(36:41):
There's a bit of a story, whichis the short version is well, I
wanted to look at Genesis 3.15and the offspring of the woman
defeating the offspring of theserpent, so tracing this
offspring of the woman themethroughout scripture.
So I wanted to do that, whichis something totally normal
looking at this messianic motifthroughout scripture.
(37:01):
That's pretty normal, right?
Totally normal.
Zack Johnson (37:04):
You're back to normal now.
Jesse Scheumann (37:06):
So that's where I began, but then that was a
pretty well-worn path.
But then, as I was seeing, youknow what I think actually
scripture not only animates anddevelops this messianic motif,
not simply through the angle ofoffspring, of the woman, but
through the complementary angleof mother, of the offspring,
(37:26):
like there's a motherhood themethroughout scripture that
animates and develops hope inthe coming messiah.
Again, that's pretty normal,right, that's more unique, but
that's still very normal.
And well, that blew up on metoo and became way too big.
And so I had to pick a chapter,what was going to be a chapter
in my thesis, and make thatactually be my thesis.
(37:49):
And what I picked was somethingthat I thought could grow into
a thesis in its own right, butthen also something that I
didn't see much in theliterature and that I could
actually develop and contribute.
And so I chose my chapter onbirth pain.
And so then that's what I wrote, and birth pain, from Genesis
to Revelation, is actually afairly significant theme.
(38:11):
I mean, there's something like64 passages that explicitly
mention birth pain, and someprominent ones in the New
Testament where you have Paulsay my dear Galatians, whom I'm
so perplexed about, how I wish Icould be with you now and
change my tone, because I'mperplexed about you, my dear
children, for whom I am again inthe pains of childbirth, until
(38:35):
Christ is formed in you.
But then also, we know Jesususes a metaphor of that the day
of the Lord will come like athief in the night, or labor
pains upon a pregnant woman.
But then also some perplexingpassages In Acts.
Peter says that God raisedJesus up from the dead, loosing
(38:58):
the birth pains of death.
What in the world is thattalking about?
Well, one associating birthpains of death but then loosing
these birth pains, breaking thechains of the birth pains.
What's going on there?
So that's what I wrote onpeople.
When they hear about the thesis, they're thinking like oh,
would you like put electrodes onyour tummy and want to hear
(39:20):
what birth pain was, or want tofeel what birth pain was like,
and then write about yourexperience.
It wasn't that.
It was looking at the metaphorof birth pain throughout
scripture and seeing what thistells us about the truth, about
God, ourselves in the world.
So you never did that like theshopping.
I never.
(39:40):
I still have seen my wife fivetimes, but I do not know
experientially.
Zack Johnson (39:47):
That could be a popular episode later.
Can you remind the title of thebook again?
Jesse Scheumann (39:54):
So yeah, what happened was I wrote my thesis
and then afterwards I got intouch with a woman named Gloria
Ferman who had authored severalbooks on being a wife and a
mother.
She's also had experience beinga doula.
She wrote an article, a blogpost, saying I think it would be
(40:17):
a fruitful study to look atchildbirth from Genesis to
Revelation.
I said, hey, maybe it wasn'texactly what you had in mind,
but I actually just finishedwriting something like this and
actually very early on in ourconversations I was encouraging
her to take my thesis and thenwrite that for a broader
(40:41):
audience, because I can't writea book, a popular book for women
, about birth pain and how tothink about that biblically,
experientially.
And so then the book isentitled something like Labor
(41:02):
with Hope Gospel Meditations forBirthing Mothers, something
like that, but that waspublished in, I think, something
like 2019.
So that was a book that I'mlisted as a co-author for.
But really the story behindthat book is I actually didn't
write a single word of the bookitself, but she generously
(41:26):
listed me as a co-author becauseshe really was taking a lot of
my ideas and my scripturalinterpretation, repackaging it
also sending me the chapters.
Zack Johnson (41:38):
And then I would give feedback.
So I would give feedback, nomanipulation on, like I'm just
kidding.
Jesse Scheumann (41:46):
Right.
So I didn't look at a blankpage and then create a page of
that book, but all of my pageswere more on the back end and
then I gave feedback on the bookand listed it as a co-author.
So that's kind of the story ofthat.
But then I guess the other bookwould be the Picture Dictionary
that Marissa and I did, andthen also the illustrated Jonah
(42:08):
book too that we also did with aguy named Christine Hegel.
Zack Johnson (42:13):
And both of those are connected to Hebrew
acquisition.
Jesse Scheumann (42:15):
Exactly.
Zack Johnson (42:17):
And then you spent most of your life in Minnesota,
right?
Can you just tell me a littlebit about the setting of
Bethlehem College and seminary,like where it is in the city?
I want to talk a little bitabout Christians and cities.
It's something that I wasthinking about a lot last year
and then I'll get into anarticle that came out here.
(42:39):
I'll ask you about it.
Jesse Scheumann (42:42):
Yeah.
So Bethlehem College andSeminary.
It's housed within BethlehemBaptist Church, which is the
church where John Piper was apastor for 33 years or so, and
what really attracted me to theseminary is that it's a
church-based seminary, and Iknow from my dad's seminary
(43:02):
studies that many times, likeseminary and church can actually
be really really separate, andthen you actually have to work
to be involved in church lifewhile you're doing your seminary
studies, and many timesseminary studies aren't really
concerned with the life andvitality of the church itself.
(43:24):
So it was a a big draw for methat this was a church-based
seminary.
So then it's in downtownMinneapolis.
Zack Johnson (43:35):
You can see it right off the highway.
I forget what highway runsright by it 35W.
It goes right through the heartof Minneapolis, literally right
in the heart of Minneapolis,yeah.
Jesse Scheumann (43:43):
It's just a couple blocks from where the
Minnesota Vikings play, sodowntown, downtown and
Minneapolis.
Zack Johnson (43:51):
And just tell me a little bit.
Do you know if the institutionor if they chose that
strategically to put theirseminary in the middle of a city
, or is that sort of bycoincidence, or they followed
the church?
Do you know anything about that?
I'm going to try to get usbeing in Boston and things like
that.
Jesse Scheumann (44:10):
Yeah, so it'll be different than Sattler being
intentionally in Boston.
So it's very different thanthat.
Because the church had existedthere for over 100 years Got it
and then Piper had already beenthe pastor there for over 25
years.
They had started.
It was called the BethlehemInstitute, where it was a
(44:32):
two-year elder preparation trackthat you could transfer to
another seminary and getgraduate level credit for and
then that kind of naturallyorganically developed into a
seminary.
I guess why it's in Minneapolis?
Because the church is in.
Zack Johnson (44:49):
Minneapolis Got it .
There is an article that cameout in Christianity today and it
says New Yorkers watch as theirevangelical colleges close and
so I'm sort of watching thisfrom from Boston, and the author
basically says that now if youwant to be a Christian looking
in a sort of an urbanenvironment, there aren't many,
(45:13):
many options and Sattleractually made its mention here.
Surprisingly, we're like brandnew.
But can you just talk a littlebit about life as a Christian in
an urban, urban environmentversus a rural environment and
just relate it a little bit tohow you think about it?
And even like raising yourfamily and having five kids I
(45:36):
know you, I think you're, I knowyou homeschool and that whole
gamut of Christians and cities.
You don't have to talk too muchabout it.
Jesse Scheumann (45:45):
But yeah, well it's.
I mean there's a lot to it andmy children are going to have a
much different experiencegrowing up than I had growing up
.
I mean I was in rural Minnesota, my family, we had 40 acres of
land and that was very enriching, especially for so many
(46:09):
children.
We got to do so many thingsoutside in the woods, et cetera,
et cetera, et cetera.
But my children won't be ableto do, and so I've had to come
to terms with that.
There are some pros and cons.
There's some gifts, there'ssome takes, what it means, as
well as that, actually being inan urban environment is richer
(46:31):
in many ways.
I mean, at our church there area number of Berkeley School of
Music students, and so theyinvite us to their jazz concerts
, and so we've been able to takethe kids and go to free jazz
concert of these students thatwe know.
Zack Johnson (46:49):
Did you invite Graham?
Jesse Scheumann (46:50):
I didn't.
I didn't invite Graham, butmaybe next time I will.
Zack Johnson (46:55):
I'm going to get him to say something eventually
in this whole new episode.
Jesse Scheumann (46:59):
Or make him Graham famous.
Yeah, yeah, and so it's thingslike that that being in an urban
environment is richer.
Also, I mean we naturallyengage with our neighbors a
whole lot more.
I mean, from our house where welive we counted we can see five
(47:24):
different swimming pools andyou know how many of our
neighbors have swimming pools.
But like we're looking downinto our neighbor's yards and
we're seeing a lot of yards andof the yards, five of them have
swimming pools.
But like you're just rubbingshoulders with that many more
people being in urbanenvironment.
Zack Johnson (47:45):
Do you commute to?
Do you commute here?
Jesse Scheumann (47:49):
I have commuted using public transit and then
now I'm mainly using my scooter.
So I do commute.
Yeah, wait, you just scooterhere.
Yeah, yeah, I know it's justhop on the scooter and then park
it here.
So, yeah, it can do thedistance, just six miles, it
doesn't take about half an hour.
Zack Johnson (48:06):
How long does it take you to scooter?
Six months, so half an hour.
Jesse Scheumann (48:08):
Grandma, what do I?
Zack Johnson (48:09):
ask about this.
I don't know what follow upquestion to ask after I find out
someone scooters six miles.
All right well let's get it.
Jesse Scheumann (48:18):
How's my back, How's your back?
It's okay.
Is that dangerous?
No, I mean it's partly wearingthe backpack.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So I wear a helmet with lightsand then I actually wear one of
those bright orange vest,reflective vest.
So basically I'm telling peopleI know I'm riding a scooter and
(48:41):
you might think I wanna die,but actually I don't wanna die.
So that's the reason for it.
Zack Johnson (48:45):
Can we get someone to capture a picture of Dr
Schreeman on the way to worksometime?
Jesse Scheumann (48:50):
Oh man, I'm looking, we can post it
somewhere.
I looked dumb, but I also don'twanna die, got it.
Zack Johnson (48:59):
And then tell me just what classes do you teach,
like what's your bread andbutter on, what you teach and
what you like to educate on.
Jesse Scheumann (49:09):
So typically any semester I'm teaching two
Hebrew courses.
So the sequence of classes is afour course Hebrew sequence.
So in the fall I'm teachingfirst semester Hebrew, third
semester Hebrew and then thisspring second semester and
fourth semester with a threecourse typical load.
Then that leaves one coursewhere it's kind of on a two year
(49:33):
rotating basis.
So I've taught a course onIslam many times about four
times now and then this semesterI'm teaching a course, new
Testament Use of Old.
So looking at those cases whereJesus and the Apostles quote the
Old Testament and interpret itand just like look at what's
going on, comparing Greek andHebrew, looking at New Testament
context, old Testament context,talking about the progress of
(49:55):
Revelation, et cetera.
Then I've taught book study onIsaiah.
Next semester I'm looking toteach a book study on Psalms.
I'm teaching an advanced Hebrewdirected study.
This semester I've taught acourse on Judaism and then I've
co-taught like apologetics,fundamental texts, thinking of
(50:20):
other courses that I've taught,the Greek exegesis course before
.
Also next semester I'm lookingto teach a course on topics in
biblical theology.
So again looking at the Bibleas more one book with 66
chapters.
So I'm looking to see how itall relates and co-hears in
(50:41):
Christ.
Zack Johnson (50:42):
And you also preach.
Where do you preach?
Down the street here at Tremont, right?
Yeah, yeah, I'd be like howoften do you preach?
I preach every five weeks,Every five weeks.
Jesse Scheumann (50:54):
Yeah, which is a nice rhythm for me.
Zack Johnson (51:00):
I enjoy it, got it .
And then, lastly, or how longdo we go?
As long as we want.
Jesse Scheumann (51:10):
We're about an hour in.
Zack Johnson (51:12):
If we wanna talk about maybe we'll follow up on
more topics here but if peoplewanna find out a little bit more
about your work and your books,your Hebrew content, where can
they sort of find that?
I guess they could Google me,they could Google you.
Will they find you?
Picturehebrewcom.
Jesse Scheumann (51:33):
No, it's so.
I don't think the domain forpicturehebrewcom is active
anymore, because I ended uptaking all of my resources over
to glossahouse.
com Glossahouse, so glossahouseG-L-O-S-S-A.
Zack Johnson (51:48):
That's a great word.
Jesse Scheumann (51:49):
Yeah, yeah, for language language house, and so
all of my or I think most of myresources are published through
them.
I guess you could Google meJesse Schuman, s-e-h-e-u-m-a,
and then.
Zack Johnson (52:05):
And then I'm gonna ask a couple questions.
You've shared a couple pearlswith the student body about.
Pearls are where we sort of tryto torture the wisdom out of
everyone on campus and share itwith the student body.
Jesse Scheumann (52:20):
Not torture, that's a bad word that's a good,
so it's actually a much morepleasant experience.
Zack Johnson (52:24):
It's a very pleasant experience where you
have the opportunity to shareyour life lessons with sort of
our audience.
If you could leave a pearl foranybody listening, so it could
be a new one or one that yousaid before.
Jesse Scheumann (52:40):
I feel like the one that you want me to share
is the phrase of cutting theEnglish on Bill Cook.
Zack Johnson (52:45):
Well, you have that one and you have, like, the
three Ds of learning.
You have a lot of good ones.
Okay, yep, but you can sharetwo and then the audience can
choose which one they likebetter.
Jesse Scheumann (52:55):
Okay, okay, well, keeping that language
related, I've said that anambitious goal is to seek to cut
the English on Bill Cook'schord to the Bible.
Basically it's well, if youdevelop a reading fluency in
Greek and Hebrew, you're readingyour Bible.
You don't need to access itthrough English to get the
(53:20):
nourishment from God's word.
But you can do it through Greekand Hebrew.
And while that takes a lot ofeffort on the front end, it's
very much kind of like anairplane getting a lift off,
take off.
And so I mean how much energyis an airplane expending just to
get off the ground?
(53:40):
But once it's off the groundand once it's at cruising
altitude, I mean then how muchenergy is it expending?
A lot less.
So, similarly, for any kind ofnormal person it's probably
gonna take two full years oflanguage study.
But if you can do two years oflanguage study, I've been able
(54:02):
to prove many times over with myHebrew students that I can get
them up to cruising altitude atcertainly take off in two years
to be able to continue to engagethe Old Testament side of
things through Hebrew.
So that would be the cuttingthe English umbilical cord.
(54:24):
But then I've thought a lotabout how to glorify God as a
student.
And so then, that's where thethree D's have come in.
What are you?
What are the three D's?
The three D's are diligence,dependence and delight.
So diligence is God's made uswilling, responsible creatures.
(54:45):
And our diligence how can weask God to bless something if
we're not being diligent, ifwe're shirking our
responsibilities?
So diligence is key.
But then also dependence,because we know that unless God
watches over the city, thewatchman keeps watching vein,
(55:07):
that it is in vein that you goto bed late, rise early eating
the bread of anxious toilbecause he gives to his beloved
sleep.
So there is a dependence allalong.
And then I've and I think it's aparadox, but the Christian life
is working vehemently from astate of rest.
(55:30):
In Christ we have our rest, sowe're not seeking to attain
something that we don't alreadyhave, but then the so it's from
a state of rest.
But the paradox is that I thinkGod is pleased in our vehement
work.
So working vehemently from astate of rest, that's putting
(55:53):
diligence and dependencetogether.
But I think delight is thethird ingredient, that God has
prepared these good works inadvance for us and there for us
to do, and we glorify Godthrough our through, our delight
(56:13):
that we're not, we're notmoaning, we're not complaining,
we're not just doing it strictlyfrom well, I should do this but
that God would actually give usa delight in it and that we
would show that delight in whatwe get to do.
So that's the diligence,dependence and delight, the
(56:33):
three Ds of glorifying God.
As a student, but certainly Imean, that's a framework for
anything that you do, anyvocation that you're doing.
Zack Johnson (56:41):
Great Well, jesse, dr Schuman, brother, jesse,
co-laborer he gave me a nickname, but I'm not gonna call it.
Thanks for the conversation,and we're gonna have this man
back on sometime, aren't we?
Absolutely yes, it got him.
Jesse Scheumann (56:57):
Yeah, got him.
Zack Johnson (56:57):
There is another person in the room.
This episode today is broughtto you by ourselves, Sattler
College, and if you want to knowmore, go to Sattleredu.
It's September 28th.
I don't know when we're gonnapost this, but there's an open
house October 13th, where, ifyou're interested in the campus
and you want to meet Dr Schumanin person, that would be a great
(57:20):
time to come and visit us.
Yeah, great time, October 13th,14th.
Where do you find Sattler.
edu/events?
is where you can find that,and if you have more questions
for me, best way to reach me ispresident @ sattler.
edu.
We can write in and anythingelse I need to announce.
Jesse Scheumann (57:37):
Thanks, that's right, thank you.
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