Get to Know Research Fellow Courtney Veasey

I’m Courtney Veasey, and I currently live in the Florida Panhandle of the US. I’m so glad to be joining the BibleMesh Institute as a Research Fellow for the coming year! As a communications major years ago at Florida Southern College, my life path back then was set on a career in sports journalism. Before graduating, however, I came to discover the Lord had a different plan.

During my final college semester, God redirected my path into a ministry calling to teach His word. So, rather than attend grad school for another communications degree as originally planned, I instead went to New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary to pursue an MDiv in Biblical Languages.

From there I went on to attend Gateway Seminary in California, completing a ThM in New Testament before returning to New Orleans for a PhD in Biblical Interpretation. I’m grateful for how this educational journey has now brought me to such opportunities as this current fellowship.

Pursuing a PhD in Biblical Interpretation allowed me to study both the Old and New Testaments equally. I felt this direction would best equip me for both my narrow area of research as well as aiding other Christians in their understanding and personal study of Scripture.

My ministry background includes service in the local church, seminary faculty, and various leadership roles in parachurch organizations such as Young Life and Fellowship of Christian Athletes. These ministries all speak to my passion for helping other Christians, especially women and teen girls, to better study the Bible for themselves and understand God’s message to us and its meaning for our lives.

Formally, my specialty is in the theology of 1 Timothy wherein my doctoral research focused on a single, rare Greek word that occurs in 1 Timothy 2:9. Translators often interpret my focal word, katastole, as “clothing.” That is, English translations of v. 9 present Paul as saying Christian women are to likewise be in “proper clothing.” Years of observing this term within its wider ancient usage, however, led me to argue that katastole represents a behavioral virtue quality of “self-restraint,” with no sense rather of physical clothing in view. This work demonstrates the critical importance and value of comparing biblical usage of terms with relevant outside writings of the same period for determining original meaning of words.

A mastery of Greek and Hebrew was necessary for being able to make this biblical comparison with other contemporary literature of the New Testament period and earlier. Such a skill was not something I had anticipated. I first came to seminary and the study of biblical languages pretty green, not knowing the first thing about Greek or Hebrew, or how learning these languages can impact Bible study. I’ve since experienced the importance that such an awareness bears on proper biblical interpretation, and now aid others in learning and utilizing the biblical languages, something I believe all Christians can access on some level.

Good biblical interpretation involves paying attention to background. Context and accurate understanding of meaning matters, for us as much as the ancients. We want to approach Scripture, then, with faithfulness to the intent of the original authors to their original audiences. Along with historical context, attention to the literary context is also important, that is, observing content situated before and after a focal passage, and even the general placement of books within the Bible. This last aspect leads to also taking genre of a text into account as well.

These noted study elements, combined with consideration of the original languages, brings meaning and theological insight of a text into focus for the interpreter. To illustrate, consider this example from II Tim. 1:10. From his final Roman imprisonment, Paul began this letter by encouraging Timothy to get in the game, not giving mind to the “scuffing up” that comes with being a minister of the Gospel.

Paul roots the ability for such courage in the reality that Christ “abolished death and brought life…” (v. 9). This notion of “abolished” translates from the Greek term katargesantos. In the middle of this word is the suffix “erg,” which means “work,” where we get our English words of “ergonomic,” and “energy.” To make a Greek word negative, an ‘a’ is placed at the front (e.g., theos is the word for God, therefore, “atheist” means “not God,” or “against God”). Noticing the ‘a’ in front of “erg” in our focal word, we realize that Paul was declaring that death no longer works, Christ put that joker out of a job! With the assurance of eternal life in Christ, Paul, Timothy, and all Christians have every reason to get in the game and go all out.

This approach with consideration of background, language, genre, and more, can be summarized as demonstrating humility. With a stance of humility towards Scripture, we confess that we still have more to learn and a need for deeper study. Even when reading our English Bibles, a good practice of humility is sentence annotation, or, marking the text and/or circling terms that repeat or stand out as unique. From there, we can begin to incorporate resources for deeper digging. I regularly study this way and love utilizing accessible online tools for further enhancement such as Bible Hub and Blue Letter Bible!         

Resources abound, however, for anyone to take the bigger step of learning Greek and Hebrew. Gaining this knowledge better equips us to encounter the text on its own terms and more accurately discern its message for our lives.     

I look forward as a research fellow to exploring practical ways for students at every level to grow in biblical interpretation skills, especially with application of the biblical languages!