Wayne Harvey

From an early age, Wayne had a strong interest in the Bible. After receiving academic degrees from Florida State Univ., Yale Univ. Divinity School, and Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, including a doctorate, he was better equipped to study and teach the Bible, one of his lifelong passions.

In 2004, Wayne began to create what he thought would be a short list of English idioms from the Bible that would help his wife and other ESL volunteers teach their international students English but eventually he discovered more than 1000 biblical terms that are being used today.

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Doing research and writing for over eight years, Wayne finally completed his work and in 2013 B&H Publishing published Raising Cain: How the Bible Shapes the Things You Say. In 2016, however, he bought back the rights to the book and created Modern Expressions, adding information about each term in the book, including definitions, biblical citations of terms, examples of contemporary use in non-religious contexts, and explanations of what the terms mean in the Bible.

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​​After thirty years as a pastor and fourteen years as a director of an association of fifty churches in and around Gainesville, Fla., Wayne Harvey retired in 2014. He and his wife of 44 years, Joan, live near Gainesville.