For those of you who have followed Monomakhos for some time, the name Peter Papoutsis may ring a bell. Peter’s been a long-time contributor to the blog and over the years, we’ve developed a long-distance friendship.
He’s also part of the “brain trust,” an unofficial, semi-comedic bull-session between me, him and several kinfolk. (Needless to say, we have a great time opining on the great and not-so-great events that vex us presently.) Believe it or not, that’s where Gail and I get a lot of our information for the blog.
In any event, besides being an attorney, he’s a devoted husband and father, a pillar of his Greek Orthodox parish in Elmhurst (a suburb of what he lovingly calls “Chiraq,” and an accomplished martial artist (3rd dan black belt in Okinawan karate), What I didn’t know was that Peter has other wide-ranging interests as well, including biblical archaeology and translations. The guy’s a veritable renaissance man if you ask me.
Peter and one of his buddies, Jeffrey Earls, have a popular podcast called Bible Dig (which you can get on Spotify, Apple, Amazon and libsyn.com) in which they discuss the latest exciting discoveries in the field of biblical archaeology. It’s quite popular and even though they’re quite knowledgeable, they speak in an easy-to-understand way that makes things accessible to the average layman.
So, when I found that out, I gave him a call and told him “Dude, we need to chat.” History, one of my avocations, dovetails right up there with archaeology and it’s hard to divorce one from the other. And Peter’s knowledge is voluminous. (Check it out: https://bibledig.libsyn.com/)
As if that’s not enough, Peter is a published author. Because he is fluent in Classical and Koine Greek, he has translated several books of the Septuagint (i.e. LXX, the Classical Greek translation of the Old Testament) into English. You can purchase them on Amazon or Lulu).
This is a series of interviews which took place over several weeks so there will be some minor discontinuities (which I trust are not too jarring). For the sake of convenience, I decided to present this interview in several vignettes. Without further ado, here they are. (You will also be able to access them by clicking on the “Podcast” button above.)
I hope you enjoy listening as much as I enjoyed picking his brain!
Wish these were captioned. Hard to lip-read on a small or big screen.