Biblerella (Transcript)

Chris Sims: The living God, the God of vengeance, the jealous God, the God who stands in need of nothing. This God has sent me to provide people with salvation by dragging them away from corruption and impurity and every pleasure and death, that they may no longer sin. The Acts of Thecla, Chapter 17

[Music: "Danger! High Voltage" by Electric Six]

C: Hello friends and neighbors and welcome to Apocrypals. It's the podcast where two non-believers read through the Bible and we try not to be jerks about it. My name is Chris Sims, and with me as always is the other set of footprints Benito Cereno. Benito, how are you today?

Benito Cereno: Very good, Chris. How are you doing?

C: I'm alright.

B: Yeah, we got a pretty good one today, I think. I feel like.

C: I did not read this in the order in which we are discussing it.

B: Yeah, that's okay.

C: So I will say that I started out being a little disappointed by how boring it was.

B: Mm-hmm.

C: And then it finished up pretty strong.

B: There are definitely some highs and lows in this one. It's a very fragmentary thing, and so the the book that you and I were reading out of definitely has things out of order. If people who listen to the show that follow the links on our Tumblr were reading along on the Early Christian Writing site, they would have gotten it in a more kind of logical order. But yeah, some real good stuff that I think I think is going to really jazz some people up because I don't know, it feels like we've got our first real female protagonist with actual agency, like real for real, throughout an entire book, right? Like, am I forgetting somebody? Like, this seems like the first time. Where we've really got a woman who's the main driving force, right?

C: Yeah, I mean we've had female figures in the Bible before. We've had Eve and and Sarah and Rachel. But I mean those were not main characters in a story.

B: Right.

C: Like even Eve, which is very surprising. We did we did have Lilith for a minute.

B: Yeah, not in canon.

C: But before she had to go off and live on a rock and give birth to five hundred monsters every day.

B: That's right. That's true. I should say what we're reading today is the Acts of Paul, the Apocryphal Acts of Paul, which include a number of different documents that were distributed separately, and so the most famous bit out of this is the story called The Acts of Paul and Thecla. You may have heard of that one. and that's gonna kind of be the main story and definitely the one with the coolest bits in it. And the one that if I had to guess is most likely to inspire some very choice fan art if we're lucky. I would like to think.

C: Yeah, and if people want to read along with us specifically, I read the versions that are printed in the book The Lost Scriptures by Bart D. Ehrman. It's from Oxford University Press. And it is, even if you don't get the book, it's worth reading, I'll tell you that. The Acts of Thecla: pretty choice.

B: Yeah. The book is a good resource. Part of the reason I wanted to read this reading this week is because I knew Chris and I both had a copy of this book and we really hadn't had a chance to use it until now. And so I really wanted to pick something where he and I could both use this book because I know he got a copy for his birthday, if I recall correctly. But part of the issue with this book is it's very good. It's an excellent survey of a lot of the different kind of material. But the stuff I most want to read, the different Acts of the Apostles, are very frequently abridged or excerpts in the book.

So like, for example, probably the coolest of the apocryphal Acts of the Apostles, obviously, besides Peter and Paul with his talking dog and Simon Magus and all that. But Acts of John is very cool. The Acts of Thomas are very cool. But those are both rather long and they're heavily, heavily abridged in this edition. And so this one I wanted to do because we could get the whole thing. Because taken individually, the Acts of Paul and Thecla, the martyrdom of Paul, not very long on their own. And so, "Lost Scriptures: Books that Did Not Make It Into the New Testament," by Bart Ehrman, who's one of the most prominent scholars in this kind of field of study. He has a large number of books that you can find. Lost Christianities is another one that's very famous. He's easy to find. If you go to a bookstore and look in the religion section, you'll definitely find a number of books by him, including possibly this one.

C: You mentioned last week that the Acts of Thecla, or I guess the Acts of Paul as a whole, was almost canonical.

B: Right. Specifically the Acts of Paul and Thecla part. In very early canonical lists, there's a few where it gets mentioned. The book is not in any canon, not even in the extended canon that you get with some of the African churches. But in early churches, it would have been listed on lists of canon, which that's one thing that this book, The Lost Scriptures, has. That's a cool resource that it has in the list. In the book it has a number of early canonical lists. This one was definitely accepted as having apostolic authority by a number of early church fathers, but it's ultimately rejected. And you can probably guess why, Chris. Do you have any idea why this one might get knocked out?

C: Well, it certainly has a woman who is defying all male authority figures in her life.

B: Right. The book is stricken down as a possible candidate for canonicity due to the fact that it says, hey, look at this woman who not only can perform baptisms, she also baptizes herself, and also she is anointed by Paul to be a minister, and that was not going to fly with the early church, it would not fly with many denominations in the today times church. And so for that reason, yeah, Thecla, because it endorses the ministry of women was struck down. It was notably most famously associated with the church father Tertullian, who's known as the father of Western theology. He was a Carthaginian. He was a very, very influential early church father. He did a writing where he basically uncovers the actual author of the Acts of Paul. He finds out, we don't know his name, but according to Tertullian, he was a priest in Asia Minor. And when he was confronted about it, he confessed and he said that he wrote this book because he just loves Paul so much. He wrote this very big work of Paul fan fiction.

C: I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Are you saying that like Thecla is his OC.

B: Yeah, well, yes, except the thing is, Thecla might be real. Thecla might have been a real person.

C: I mean that does explain why she has lavender eyes and why she is described as pretty but a little clumsy.

B: Yeah, it's true. But Thecla may have been a real person. She may have been a real early Christian martyr. And this story would have been crafted around her. And it is worth pointing out that as with so many of the apocryphal books that we've done before, even though this didn't make it to canon, this story was incredibly popular, especially the Paul and Thecla part. There are so many extant copies of it, especially in Greek. But there's Coptic manuscripts and there's some Latin translations as well. But there's so many versions in Greek of the Acts of Paul and Thecla. Thecla is still venerated as a saint by most churches, right? By Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholics, the Episcopal Church. Her feast day is on September 23rd or October 3rd in the Coptic Church. So we just just missed that one. But yeah, like even still today, she's venerated. She's considered by some to be the first woman martyr, even though we see she survives the many different martyrdom attempts. Nevertheless...

C: Yeah! One of the things about this book, it never gets to the ending I was expecting.

B: Yeah, you definitely expect her to die, right? And it doesn't happen.

C: Because we've talked about this. Like there are so many. If you go in and read any hagiographies of saints, they all end the same way. The way you become a saint is by being martyred.

B: Yeah, in a lot of them. Yeah. Not every saint is martyred, notably our boy, St. Nicholas. Was never martyred. But but yeah, she is...

C: Never died.

B: He died, but then he came back after the translation of his relics. Anyway, let's not get into Santa Claus canon right now. Um But

C: We got a whole month for it.

B: Yeah, yeah, it's coming. Don't worry, friends. We're definitely gonna get heavy, heavy into St. Nicholas canon.

But anyway, so there is a martyrdom tradition around Thecla. And here's a cool fact: in Spanish-speaking countries. Thecla is kind of jokingly venerated as the patron saint of computers and the internet because the name Tecla sounds just like the word for computer key in Spanish. And so...

C: That's a stretch.

B: It's the same word. So it's like if we had a Saint Keyboard, we wouldn't not make them the saint of keyboards, you know what I mean? But it is, like I said, done j jokingly, semi-seriously Everyone knows the real patron of the internet is Saint Isidore, which is true. There are a number of...

C: Stop, stop, stop. You are gonna have to elaborate.

B: I mean that's what it is. Like Isidore of Seville is the patron of the internet, computer users, computer technicians, programmers, and students.

C: Why? Can you give me like a brief – do I need to get out the Golden Legend?

B: I don't think that would explain the internet part. I actually think it has to do with the fact that he did so much stuff with language. Like he wrote a number of books of etymology and because of that it has to do with like communication. I'm not sure. I'd have to double check, but Isidore of Seville is definitely the patron of the internet. That's not a joke. That's real. I can't remember the exact explanation for it, but I think it has something to do with his writings and his scholarship on on language and communication.

C: Okay, do continue.

B: Anyway, so yes, my point is the story of Thecla was very popular. It was very widespread. There are numerous shrines, numerous places that claim to be her tomb. And so she continues to be venerated today, even though this story was never in canon anywhere. And so I did mention that this guy loved Paul so much he wrote a very beefy bit of fan fiction. Here's the thing. The original Acts of Paul, of which all of these things are fragments – let me say what these the different bits are. Because these different bits were often passed around separately as separate documents. So the main one is the most famous one is the Acts of Paul and Thecla. But other ones that we're going to be looking at today are the Epistle of the Corinthians to Paul and then the Third Epistle to the Corinthians. So that's Third Corinthians, which last week I made a cryptic reference to coming back to the thing about Constantine saying Corinthians had more chapters in hell. And I meant to cycle back to that and say it was because we were reading Third Corinthians this week. Which is not very hellish in the slightest. But I totally forgot to do that. So if you were confused by that, which some people were, because a couple of people did ask me about it: that's why. I made a reference to Third Corinthians because we were coming back to that. So you got that.

C: Yeah, in case you haven't seen the movie Constantine which is actually pretty fun and makes for some good Halloween time watching, there is a line about how Corinthians has 21 chapters in the Bible in Hell.

B: Yeah.

C: Which is weird. Why would it be Corinthians?

B: Out of all of them, like that's like... Corinthians is the book that you read at your wedding, right? Like every wedding you've been to. So they read First Corinthians. That's love is patient, love is kind. Like, why is that one the one where they're like, "oh, you know what? I bet there's an additional chapter about other aspects of love that they read in Hell." I don't know.

C: And it's all about like the apocalypse. There's we have already discovered in our brief period of reading Bible, several places that could have additional verses about the apocalypse.

B: Absolutely. And there are there's no shortage of apocryphal apocalypses. Like we said, in canon, there's Revelation in the New Testament. Which is the origin of the name Apocalypse because the Greek word is apocalypsis for revelation. And then the apocalypse at the end of Daniel in the Old Testament. And like that's it for canon. But non-canonically, there are so many Apocalypse, there's Apocalypse of Peter, Apocalypse of Paul, Apocalypse of Moses, a bunch. There's a lot. And even other books that don't have the word apocalypse in the name of them that still have the genre of apocalypse within them that they could have picked, but they were just like, what if it's Corinthians? Anyway, so 3rd Corinthians. But then there are these fragmentary stories including the healing of a guy named Hermocrates, there's the resurrection of the son of a guy named Panchares, and then the Strife of the Ephesian Beasts. And we'll be talking about those as much as we can. They're very fragmentary. so altogether, according to an ancient document that basically would have counted up the lines of different biblical and biblical adjacent books, the Acts of Paul had 8,600 lines total. Do you want to guess, Chris, how many lines the canonical Acts of the Apostles had? So if The total Acts of Paul, 8,600.

C: Acts was not that long.

B: Right.

C: It was, I mean it's a chunk of the New Testament.

B: Sure.

C: But it's not that long.

B: Right.

C: I'm gonna say 4,200.

B: 2,800. So

C: So this dude this dude wrote a fanfic about Paul.

B: Yeah, that's nearly three three times as long.

C: Three times as long as Acts.

B: As the canonical cts of the Apostles, yes. But the bad news is, of that, not that much is left. We have, well, in the M.R. James translation of this stuff, he says 1,800 lines. But I know we've discovered more, because the M.R. James edition does not have the very good story about the lion that we're gonna get to. So I know we've discovered more because that was discovered in the nineteen thirties, and the M.R. James edition is from, I don't know, earlier than that. But so I don't know, maybe 2,000. Maybe they've discovered about 2,000 out of 8,600 lines of the Acts of Paul. But it does seem that the narrative portions of the Acts of Paul are probably all by one author because it's very internally consistent. The only part that seems to be an addition that was kind of spliced in are the letters. The letters from the Corinthians and then Third Corinthians. And so, other than that though, it does seem to be this one this one dude in Turkey who just loves Paul very much. You wanna look at Paul and Thecla? Let's start let's start with that, 'cause that's the that's the beefiest narrative, it's the most famous part.

C: I am very surprised that we're starting with Paul and Tecla.

B: Yeah.

C: Boy does it build to a climax.

B: Sure. But you know, I'm just thinking, logically in times of in terms of chronology because we don't wanna... Oh I forgot to mention the other excerpt of course is the martyrdom of Paul, which is what we're gonna end with. It seems like the logical thing to end with in my estimation. So I figure we would start with Paul and Thecla, the main longest bit, and then we'll talk about the the letters and the fragments, and we'll finish up with the martyrdom of Paul with the surprise twist ending of what does Paul's heart beat out? It's not what you think.

C: So we open in Iconium.

B: Yeah, correct. Yes, which is in Turkey. Most of the places that we're gonna see about are in Turkey, which makes sense if a guy from Turkey wrote the book, I guess.

C: And Paul is traveling with his fellow travelers, Demas and Hermogenes.

B: Yes.

C: The bronzemith.

B: Yes. And they were filled with hypocrisy.

C: Yes. Who are the the bad guys. They're his Bulk and Skull.

B: I guess, kinda. Like they're traveling with him, but they're definitely trying to undermine him, for sure. Because yeah, we see them they're Christians, but they're not real Christians. You know what I mean? Like, I don't know how I don't know how to describe it. Yeah, they're trying to undermine him because they, I don't know, they think he thinks he's better than them or something. And so we see...

C: Which which he clearly does. We've read Romans.

B: Yeah, yeah.

C: He clearly does think he's better.

B: Yeah. And so yeah, we we see that they don't have a true understanding of the faith of Christ and so as a result they do they do some bad stuff.

C: But you know what?

B: What?

C: Doesn't matter to Paul.

B: Sure.

C: Because Paul is looking only at the goodness of Christ, and so did them no harm. B: Absolutely.

C: Instead he loved them very much, giving them sweet discourses about all the Lord's sayings.

B: I love that discourse. Hashtag discourse.

C: Here's that sweet, sweet discourse, which is the worst punishment you can give to someone.

B: Absolutely is.

C: As you know if you have ever been on Twitter.

B: Yeah, so they arrive in Iconium they come to the house of a man named Onesiphorus, who, that's a guy from canon Bible. His name is mentioned in Second Timothy, so that's Paul's second letter to Timothy. He's mentioned as a guy who visited Paul in prison when he was in Rome. So he traveled to Rome to visit Paul there. So his name Onesiphorus means bringing profit. So just a little etymology corner there for you. Yeah, so Onesiphorus is a good guy, let's Paul in. Then we get this we get this physical description of Paul, which we haven't gotten elsewhere.

C: Yeah, it's not great.

B: It's not great

C: It's it's weird like for a dude who loved Paul so much that he wrote – that he started A01. That was just Archive Of.

B: Yeah.

C: He does not seem to have a high opinion of Paul's looks. "Then he saw Paul coming, a man short in stature, with a bald head, bowed legs, in good condition, eyebrows that met, a fairly large nose, and full of grace."

B: Yeah.

C: And then my favorite little edition, based on what we already know, "at times he seemed human, at other times he looked like an angel." So, you know, six wings.

B: Six wings.

C: Covered in eyes.

B: On fire.

C: Head of a bull, head of a lion.

B: Yeah. Just covering up his genitals. Yeah. Yeah, not it's not great. But the fact that he's like full of grace at the end makes me wonder, it's like, was that this guy's type? Was that was like unibrow, pointy nose, bald? That was this bow-legged? Like that's what this guy was into, maybe? I don't know. Because he's like, here's what Paul looked like. Pretty good. Angelic, I would say. So you know what? Different strokes. Different strokes. Paul and Onesiphorus greet each other and it's cool, but Demas and Hermogenes are jealous. They stir up a great hypocrisy so they're already starting to kind of foment dissent against Paul. And then we see Paul praying, giving a sermon.

C: I just want to say basically Paul sounds like the vulture from Spider-Man.

B: Yeah? Oh, the description. Yeah, sure. Yes.

C: Yeah. That's what the vulture looks like. He's very graceful. And he's in good condition. He fights Spider-Man.

B: He's got wings too, like an angel.

C: It's dead on. It's dead on. If you're if you're mentally casting. This section, Adrian Toombs, the Vlaying the role of Paul.

B: Yeah, not Michael Keaton. It's gotta be the Ditko version.

C: No, Michael Michael Keaton. The description of Paul, if he was played by Michael Keaton, would be like: Super intense eyebrows, piercing eyes, rugged good looks. Very, very funny.

B: Very good turtleneck. Wire-rimmed glasses.

C: Not super great to be Batman.

B: Yeah. Anyway, hey, what's up? Paul gives this sermon where he runs down some beatitudes of his own.

C: Congratulations.

B: Congratulations. Congratulations, Pure in heart, for you will see God. But his message kind of reflects the overall theme of the book, especially the Thecla portion, which is true love waits until you are dead even because don't get married even that. That's too that's too much.

C: Do you think that Paul was able to collect enough signatures on virginity pledges to reach the top of the Georgia Dome?

B: Yeah. Yes, it reached all the way to the top of the Flavian amphitheater. That's the Coliseum. For all you keeping notes out there. which did not have a roof, by the way. But uh

C: Wow, that's a lot of virginity pledges.

B: Yeah, so the roof is heaven. And so yeah, it just keeps going.

C: Let me build the tower of virginity pledges in the between the heavens and the earth. B: Someone call in Ahikar. And get those flying eagle boys in here so we can build this giant tower of chastity pledges. Yeah. Blessed are those who have kept the flesh chaste, for they will become a temple of God. And so chastity and self-control and continence, those are kind of the motifs, the moral virtues of the day across the course of this book.

C: I had a question about one of Paul's things.

B: Okay. Yeah.

C: Blessed are those who have wives as if they did not have them. For they will be the heirs of God.

B: Yes.

C: He just means like not having marital relations with your wife.

B: Yes, correct. Yeah. So if you you are married, don't do the deed, even. And that's the kind of thing that well, that's the reason we don't have shakers anymore, because they took that particular commandment too seriously. And so even this, I should say, this does not quite match up with canonical Paul and his teachings. He's a little more ambiguous about getting married and chastity and that kind of stuff. Where he's basically like, you know, if you feel like you can't control yourself and you have to get married, you should. But if you think you can be chaste, do be chaste. And so a lot of the Paul stuff here. probably comes from oral tradition rather than matching up to anything from Canonical Paul in either the Acts or the Epistles. And of course, I think we mentioned before some of the stuff doesn't quite match up between the Acts and the Epistles anyway, in terms of like Paul's preaching.

But so yeah, this is this is not quite canonical Paul, but his main thing is all about chastity. And the number one person hearing this lesson is Thecla, our heroine from the title. She does not see Paul, but she is the daughter of a wealthy, noble family who lives basically next door, and she is sitting in the window and she can hear Paul's voice, but she does not see this bald-headed bow-legged man.

C: She does not see him in his green suit flying around.

B: Yeah, she doesn't.

C: Robbing banks.

B: Thecla we see is the daughter of Theocleia, and the name Thecla is just a contraction of that same name, Theocleia, right? Which just means glory to God, basically. That's the same - the "clea" there at the end is the same as the "cles" and Heracles. Like Hercules. So glory or honor to God. She's engaged to a man named Thamyris, which in classical Greek is definitely a woman's name, so that's weird. But she's engaged to him, but she hears these sermons about chastity from Paul like wafting in like a pie smell from the house.

C: "Day and night Thecla heard what Paul said about chastity."

B: Yeah.

C: "And she did not budge from the window." So a) she is sitting there on the windowsill, wistfully looking outside, hearing about chastity day and night. Also, Paul is going strong. No breaks. Filibustering against against sex.

B: Right. So yeah, she hears his voice, doesn't know what he looks like, only hears her word, but she won't get up from the window. She won't take any food or water. Her mom is panicking. Her fiancé, Thamyris, is panicking. They're like, what's what's going on? And they realize that she's hearing the words of Paul who is a foreigner, which is bad, and he's also additionally, preaching chastity, which is bad, right? We see that in a lot of stories of saints where chastity is what's being preached. That's what the new newly converted Christian saint is experiencing, but the people around them are reacting negatively to that. Like pretty much any any story of a female saint is because she wants to remain chaste, her family wants her to get married, and so as a result, they're like, well, why don't we set you on fire instead? And that's the way most of those stories go. And so not a big shift from the trope here. And so yeah, they're very disturbed that she won't get up from the window. Her mom and her fiancé. Her dad is never mentioned, I don't believe.

Yeah, so Thamyris is like, "Thecla, my future wife, why are you sitting like this? What kind of mad passion has overwhelmed you? Turn around and see your Thamyris and be ashamed."

C: I have cast Thamyris as a sort of Tommy Wiseau type.

B: Yeah, yeah. "Thecla, you're tearing me apart!" Very good. But yeah, she continues to sit there, she continues to listen. Thamyris eventually goes out to see these people and he's like, who is this guy? Who's teaching? And who does he run into but Demas and Hermogenes, who are, as we know, Very jealous of Paul, and want to ruin him. And they say, "We do not know who he is, but he is depriving young men of their wives and virgins of their husbands, by saying that you will not be raised from the dead unless you remain chaste, abstain from polluting the flesh and guard your chastity."

So that goes bad. They convinced him to take Paul in front of the governor. And then here's the thing that was really interesting to me. Demas and Hermogenes say, "Make him stand trial before the governor of Castelius for leading the crowd astray with the new teaching of the Christians. Then he will destroy him, and you will have Thecla as your wife. And we will teach you that this resurrection, which he claims is about to happen, has already occurred in the children we have had," which is a very interesting interpretation of the idea of the resurrection of the flesh, right? That you're immortal, not in a literal sense, not because God has raised your body from the grave, but because you live on through your offspring. Right? Your DNA lives on and into posterity. So that's a pretty interesting bit. Then we get we get the whole crowd with torches and pitchforks and everything.

C: Yes, and they say, "Take the magician away, for he has corrupted all our wives." Which is probably what every magician most hopes to hear.

B: Yeah, I mean that's the main goal of being a stage magician, right? Is to corrupt wives, I think.

C: Why else would you learn close-up magic?

B: Yeah. That's why the hat guy. What's his...?

C: The hat guy?

B: You know. The "here's how to"

C: Bullwinkle?

B: No, "here's how to do some negs. Here's my cool hat."

C: Mystery.

B: Mystery. There it is. That's why he's advocating close-up magic all the time. Because he wants to corrupt some wives. Anyway.

Alright, so Paul defends himself, but he nevertheless gets arrested. He's he's thrown in chains, doesn't go great for him. And so he's in prison. "The governor heard these things, he ordered Paul to be bound and taken off to prison until he had greater leisure to listen to him more carefully."

C: Which is a pretty boss move, by the way.

B: Yeah.

C: Which again, this is Castelius. And it's a pretty relatable move to have a crowd of people with torches and pitchforks dragging Paul in front of you. And then just being like, "I cannot deal with this right now."

B: Yeah.

C: "Take him away. I will get to this in the morning."

B: Yep. Yep, exactly.

C: Meanwhile, Paul's like, I want to be tried by Caesar.

B: Paul, that can't be your go-to every time! So, Thecla bribes the guard at her door. She removes her bracelets, gives them to the gatekeeper. And then she goes and bribes the guard at the prison with a silver mirror. This is the point at which this book about chastity gets very horny.

C: It is a it is thirsty for virtue.

B: It absolutely is. Like..

C: I highlighted this this bit.

B: For a book where the main theme is that chastity of the flesh is the only thing that will allow you to live into eternity, it is so thirsty and it is so erotic. Everything is so erotically described basically from now on.

C: "Sitting at his feet, she heard about the majestic character of God. Paul showed no sign of fear, but he was filled with the boldness of God, and Thecla's faith increased as she was kissing Paul's bonds."

B: Yeah And so she stays in the prison cell with him overnight. They spend the night together, talking about God, embracing in the spirit, kissing each other's bonds. She doesn't have bonds, whatever. But you understand what I'm getting at. And so then when Thamyris finds out that his fiancée has slipped out and spent the night with another man in jail, the foreigner, who was saying that she shouldn't marry him in the first place. He's pretty upset about that. He commands Paul to be brought before the judgment seat, "but Thecla was rolling around on the place where Paul had been teaching while sitting in the jail." That is weird. Thecla. That is weird. Trying to pick up some of that Holy musk off the floor.

C: Here's a thing I like about Thecla.

B: Yeah.

C: She's not a hundred percent in like Paul was. Right. She's a million percent in.

B: She is a million. A million percent in. And so Paul's brought forward, the crowd is again yelling about how he's a magician, get rid of him. They bring Thecla out and they're like, why don't you marry Thamyris in according with in accordance with the law? And she just stares at Paul. She doesn't respond. She just stares at Paul. And when she won't answer, her mom, her mom says, burn the witch.

C: Yes! "Burn the lawless one! Burn the one who will not be a bride! Burn her in the midst of the theater! Then all the wives who have been taught by this one will fear." That's her mom.

B: That's her mom saying that. Her mom is so mad. Yeah, so they go. This is the first, but not the last, attempted martyrdom of Thecla.

C: Yeah, I am glad that we already spoiled this. Thecla gets a happy ending.

B: Yes, and yeah, despite the better efforts of the people of Iconium, yes, she still manages to come out clean on the other side.

C: Yeah. So they are going to burn her at the stake. The governor peaces out because he doesn't want to watch them burn this young lady at the stake. Then she looks around trying to see if Paul is in the crowd. He's not, but when she looks intently into the crowd, she saw the Lord sitting there in the appearance of Paul.

B: Yeah.

C: "She said, 'Since I am unable to endure my fate, Paul has come to watch over me.' And she continued to gaze upon him, but he departed into heaven."

B: So the weird thing about this book is that Thecla is in, but basically never talks about Jesus. She's there for Paul. And like she should have just seen Jesus in the crowd, right? Like that would have been more of a thing. But instead she was like, please give me that bald unibrow guy. I need him in my eyeballs as I get burned to death at the stake.

C: So if if Paul's the Vulture, is this more of a Mysterio or a Chameleon situation, you think?

B: I think it's mist I think it's gotta be a Mysterio. I think it's gotta be a Mysterio because because of the way he disappears in a puff of smoke.

C: Yeah. We're just reading a lot of this story to everyone, but "the children and virgins brought wood and hay for Thecla's burning is the start of the next chapter"

B: Yeah, yeah.

C: Then I highlighted this too. "When she was brought into the arena naked, the governor wept, marveling at the power he saw in her."

B: Yeah. You know, the power. Her power was so good he cried.

C: It's a thirsty book.

B: It's so thirsty, thirsty for virtue. and so yeah, they they set the pyre on fire, they light the pyre, and God is like, nah, I feel compassion for this girl. "And a great roar underground, overhead, a cloud full of water and hailstones overshadowed the place." The rain puts out the fire. and so Thecla is saved for the first time.

C: So then Paul is Paul is gone. Paul is back with Onesiphorus and is basically like, what a shame Thecla had to get burned at the stake. Can you pass me that bread, please?

B: Yeah. Well Onesiphorus has sold all of his worldly goods in accordance with the teachings of Christ, and so he didn't have money for food. And so...

C: They're living in an open tomb, which is mad gross.

B: Yeah, super gross. So Paul sells his cloak. He sells his cloak to buy bread and then when the child goes out to buy bread, the child runs into Thecla and he's like, what are you doing here? You're supposed to be completely burnt to death. And she was like, no man, I've been saved. Where's Paul at? Please take me to Paul. And so she goes back, meets Paul. Paul is like, oh my God. This rules. God is pretty dope. And yeah, "so there was great love inside the tomb" with Paul.

C: Paul tells her, and this is an amazing line. "The time is shameful and you are beautiful."

B: There are so many Christian side hugs happening inside that open tomb right now.

C: Boy, they're praying. They are just really praying.

B: They are just on their knees all night.

C: But then, then.

B: Well, here's the line that I like because this line absolutely does not work as a pun in the original language, whether Greek or Coptic or Latin. But in English? In English it does.

C: Oh yeah.

B: And I like it because because Thecla says, "just give me the seal in Christ and no temptation will touch me." You're gonna get that seal, baby.

C: Don't worry about it.

B: I promise. Don't worry about it. Paul says you'll be you'll receive the water. She gets both water and a seal. It's coming.

C: The next morning they meet a Syrian named Alexander, and Alexander asks who Thecla is, and Paul goes, "I do not know the woman you are speaking of."

B: Yeah, I don't know her. Mariah Carey.

C: Dang Paul. Paul. In the words of the Three 6 mafia, DJ Paul is a dog, one you do not trust.

B: I think it's supposed to be another one of those things like like Abraham pretending Sarah is his sister, kind of kind of situation, maybe. So the idea is this guy, Alexander, is the main dude of Antioch. And and so he won he wants to get with Thecla. And Paul's like, I don't know who that is, because I don't know. I don't know. Yeah, it's kind of not a great move, Paul. But Alexander began embracing her in the street. She resisted him. And so she rips off his cloak, yanks his crown down around his head like a cartoon, and then everyone in the street starts laughing at him.

C: Yeah, it's great.

B: Yeah, it's really good.

C: Here's here's the thing about Thecla. She is not to be trifled with.

B: Very true. Extremely true.

C: Then later she is brought to the governor. Another governor, a second governor.

B: Yeah, this is the governor of Antioch. So they've moved cities, right? They've left Iconium. They're in Antioch now. And so yeah, she's brought before the governor of Antioch, and she's condemned to die by wild beasts. That is, thrown into the arena with wild animals. C: You've you've heard of the Christians and the Lions.

B: Yeah, this is this is that. Yes, this is absolutely that.

C: "Thecla asked the governor to be allowed to remain chaste until she had to fight the wild beasts."

B: Right, and so in order to help her

C: That's what bullfighters do, dog.

B: That's true. That's so true. It absolutely is. I wonder if they think about Thecla. No, they shouldn't think about Thecla, probably. But she's put in the care of a wealthy queen named Tryphaena, who, I'm going to point out, is absolutely 100% Caesar real. Tryphaena is a real, verifiably real person who was the great niece of the Emperor Claudius. And she was the widow of Cotys, king of Thrace, and the mother of Polemon II, King of Pontus. All of those places are in and around Turkey. So this is this is a real-for-real person who was related to Caesar. So in the strictest sense, she is Caesar real and she's a major character who has had a dream in which her late daughter, whose name was Falconilla, dope name, appeared to her and she says, Mother, you're going to have a new daughter. And here's the wildest part to me because this is not doctrine. You're gonna have a new new daughter, and if you save her life, she will pray so hard that I will go to heaven.

C: Yeah, that makes perfect sense given Thecla's level of intensity.

B: Yeah, I mean, while yes, the idea of praying souls out of purgatory, like that's a thing, like presumably Falconilla and Tryphaena were both you know, pagan people prior to this point and so like it doesn't seem like another... I don't know. Maybe. Maybe there's a church in which that's a thing, but it does it doesn't seem to me like that is fully orthodox, the idea that... But maybe, maybe Thecla is just so holy that she breaks she breaks doctrine.

The other bit that I that I missed here, there's a procession of the wild animals leading the animals to the arena where they will then eat these unlucky victims, presumably, or kill at least. And Thecla is chained to a fierce lioness. And the idea is that's supposed to be intimidating, obviously, and maybe she won't even make it to the arena, but the lioness lets Thecla sit on her back and the lioness licks her feet as a sign of submission, obviously. Licking feet, that's a pretty universal sign of submission.

C: Hey, let's keep it clean. Let's not make the 400 jokes that are in our heads.

B: Yeah, we'll just leave it. This this book is horny enough, it's fine. Yeah, so Tryphaena is her new kind of patron and guardian, but she makes her way to the the staging for the hunting games and guess who is the particular nobleman who was paying for these games? That's right, it's Alexander, the guy who had his pants pulled down in public and got laughed at by a woman who is now about to be eaten by a lion, maybe.

C: I highlighted this, because it's an amazing description. "Thecla was then taken from the hand of Tryphaena, and stripped, given an undergarment to wear, and cast into the stadium. Lions and bears were cast in to attack her. A fierce lioness ran up and lay down at her feet." So She's in her underwear fighting wild animals.

B: Right.

C: She is Bible-rella.

B: Yes. Yes, and presumably this is the same lioness from the procession. It doesn't say that, but I mean logically. And so what happens is now this lioness fights for Thecla. So a bear comes up, the lioness kills the bear. A lion comes up and they kill each other. That part's a bummer. "And the lioness tangled with the lion and was destroyed along with it." The women in the crowd, keep that in mind. There's a crowd full of women who are on Thecla's side. The women in this part, I love it. I love that the women are they're mega into it and they're like, "go Thecla, survive. None of us want to get married to men. The men of Antioch are terrible." And keep in mind also that prior to this point, Thecla wants desperately to be baptized, but Paul was like, "the time's not right, but when the time is right, as he says, you will receive the water." And so Thecla, thinking that she's at the moment of her death, is looking around desperately in the arena and she notices there's a big pool of water, a large vat filled with water.

C: Can I read this entire chapter?

B: Just do it, man. Go for it.

C: This is the Acts of Thecla chapter 34. "Then they cast in a large number of wild beasts while she stood, reaching out her hands and praying. When she finished her prayer, she turned and saw a large vat filled with water, and said, 'Now is the time for me to be cleaned.' She threw herself in saying, 'In the name of Jesus Christ, on this final day I am baptized.'" She just baptized herself

B: Yeah, also that's orthodox. Continue.

C: "When the women and the entire crowd saw what she was doing, they wailed aloud and said, 'Do not throw yourself into the water.' Even the governor began to weep, because seals were about to devour such beauty. But then she threw herself into the water in the name of Jesus Christ, and the seal saw a lightning bolt and floated on the water dead. Then a cloud of fire surrounded her, so that the beasts could not attack her and no one could see her naked."

B: Yeah, you guys know that that viral picture of the lightning bolt hitting the water and it says it's got God saying "Heck, these six fish in particular." This is that moment. You got a woman in a vat full of seals that are about to eat her, and then a lightning bolt comes down and strategically branches out to hit and kill every individual seal in the tank. It's amazing.

C: I have several questions.

B: Yeah.

C: Do seals eat people?

B: Not as far as I'm aware, but to the best of my knowledge, the most aggressive they get is they'll slap you in the face with an octopus. That is my understanding.

C: In your studies of ancient Rome, were seals commonly featured in the gladiatorial games?

B: Not that I am aware of. No, I have to say this is probably the first ancient text I've encountered with seals as an aggressive carnivorous beast Or at all. Or at all. In fact. I I don't you don't encounter seals a lot, which is I think why they stand out so much in this particular story.

C: Third question, and I think this is the last one I have about the seals, had they just not discovered sharks yet when this was written?

B: That could be, or yeah. They couldn't transport the sharks or everyone who tried to catch the shark got eaten. I don't know. But yeah, seals, these ravenous man-eating seals. Woman... that's the problem. They're man-eating seals. That's why they didn't eat the woman.

C: Not anymore. They're cookrf seals now.

B: Yeah, they are.

C: Because Thecla is rising out of the water cloaked in fire.

B: Yeah, which is awesome. I love it because it's got the dual purpose of covering her nakedness and also protecting her like a fire shield from the remaining animals. And then I love this, the women in the crowd, because they let more they let more animals out to try and get Thecla. So the women are all shouting, and then they throw leaves into the arena. they threw in Nard. That's right, Theecla's got nard.

C: What is that?

B: It's like a fragrant plant that you might make an oil out of. Like in some translations of the story of Mary and Martha where Mary anoints Jesus' feet, she or whoever, because I guess in different versions it's a different woman anointing Jesus' feet, but it in some versions it's very expensive nard. And so yeah, it's like a fragrant plant that you might make a perfume out of. And cardamom and other smelly plants, is the idea, right? So they throw them in and the whole place fills up with the smell of perfume, which works as a knockout gas for the animals.

C: Hey, Benito?

B: Yeah.

C: Thecla rules.

B: Thecla totally rules and that and I think I think this vision of a woman's shielded in fire, enshrined by friendly lions, surrounded by knockout gas, I think if that doesn't inspire some really dope fan art, I feel like we have failed as a podcast.

C: I mean I feel like the fan art that has inspired was made in 1966 and starred Adam West and Julie Newmar.

B: It's true. It's true. So here's a wild thing. Alexander's like, okay, let's do something that even knockout gas won't stop. And so they get...

C: Alexander sees all this and does not go Hey, we should really cut our losses.

B: Yeah, yeah, it's time yeah, it's time to just go home on this one, I think. There's other fish in the sea. But instead he says, "hey, what if we got these wild bulls and then we just strapped burning irons to their genitals? So that they will remain crazy, right? They they'll tear about and kill her." And yeah, so they bind her between the bulls. She's tied to the two bulls, but her MegaMan-esque flame shield burns through the ropes. and she escapes.

And then meanwhile, Queen Tryphaena, she passes out in the walkway and they think that she's died. And everyone freaks out because like I said, IRL, she's Caesar's niece. Claudius's niece, and so they're like, Whoops let's call her off. We gotta take care of this passed out queen who might be dead. And so Alexander begs for mercy, "set the prisoner free, lest the entire city be destroyed." And so Thecla's called out, and he's like, "Who are you? What is this? What's going on?" And she, of course, says, "I'm a slave of the living God. etc." And so the governor calls for real clothes for her to wear, not just like fire.

C: This is great. "And he said, put on your clothes. But she replied, The one who clothed me when I was naked among the wild beasts will clothe me with salvation on the day of judgment." But then she does put on her clothes.

B: Yeah, right, yeah.

C: She just wanted to get that in.

B: She's released, and all the women shout out, "the one god, the one who saved Thecla." So again we see you know these great moments leading to mass conversions within the city. In this case among women again. And this and so this whole story is a big, like powerful moment for women, which you can see really grating on the nerves of someone like Tertullian, for example. And yeah, so Tryphaena is very happy. She revives from her from her unconsciousness. she embraces Thecla. "Now I believe that the dead are raised. Now I believe that my child lives. Come inside and I will bequeath to you all that is mine." She gives her a lot of stuff. She makes her her heir. Thecla of course sells all that stuff and gives it to the poor, because of course she does. And Thecla, of course, as soon as she's freed, what's the first thing she does? She goes to look for Paul. So she appears to Paul. And he's astonished, of course, and he was like, how did how did this happen? And she's like, "I got baptized, Paul. I did it. Just like I said. I got that seal. Wink."

C: And we iris out. The end.

B: Yeah.

C: We freeze frame and the executive producer credit comes up.

B: Yeah. And so yeah, anyway, they get back they get together. Then eventually she returns to Iconium. She finds out that Thamyris has died. her mother was still alive. She calls her mother and says, "Theocleia, my mother, are you able to believe that the Lord in heaven lives?" And we get the implication here that her mother converts. In some versions of the text, it goes on to say that her mother did not convert. And furthermore, in some versions of the text, there's an additional– there's a coda to the story where we see that Thecla lives for another 72 years. And until eventually some young men decide that they will find her and ill-treat her at the age of ninety. And so she retreats into a cave, and the cave wall opens up. And she goes inside it and it closes behind her, and she's able to travel via underground tunnels from Turkey to Rome, where she comes out and finds the tomb of Paul, who has been martyred at this point, and she lies down on his tomb. And in in that case, and in those versions, that's the end of the story. So Thecla and Paul together forever.

C: But she is not martyred. She goes on to enlighten many there with the word of God. And then she lays down to her glorious rest, possibly on top of Paul's tomb.

B: Possibly on top of Paul's tomb. Right. There is a catacomb of St. Thecla in Rome. And so that that would explain that particular element. So yeah, she has definitely, even to this day, venerated, even though this story has never been official canon anywhere. Because again, I cannot stress enough, this story was incredibly popular, regardless of its canonicity.

C: I wonder why.

B: Because it rules is probably why.

C: Was it the part where the naked lady came out of the water casting down lightning surrounded by fire?

B: It might be.

C: And fought bears and seals?

B: Yeah.

C: This was the Furious 7 of early Christian times.

B: Yeah, I was gonna say it was it's kinda it's it's a little it's a little Mandy-esque. You could imagine Nicolas Cage as Paul in this.

C: He does fit the description.

B: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, so that is Paul and Thecla.

So now let's just look at some of the other parts, some of these shorter bits, starting with the letter of the Corinthians to Paul, followed by his reply, which is together taken as Third Corinthians. So these are very short letters, much shorter than the canonical, authentic First and Second Corinthians, which are non-controversial that IRL Paul wrote those. But this false, pseudonymous Third Corinthians seems to be created with the idea of clearing up confusion that would have been created by the first two letters. Most notably, First Corinthians says, "flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God," which you can see if you've been paying attention to this show, that should be setting off some Gnostic alarm bells in your head when you hear that. Anytime you hear flesh and blood being disdained, you should be thinking Gnosticism.

And in fact, the letter from the Corinthians to Paul, sent by guys named Stephanus and the presbyters with him Daphnus, Eubulus, Theophilus and Zenon, probably not I don't know, maybe the Theophilus, why not? And they say, basically, that there are two guys, Simon, maybe Simon Magus, we don't know, and a guy named Cleobius, and they've been spreading false teachings, and they say "There is no need to consider the Hebrew prophets, that God is not the Almighty, that there is no resurrection of the flesh, that humans are not God's creation, that the Lord did not come into the world in the flesh, that he was not born from Mary, and that the world did not come from God, but from the angels." All of that stuff is in some branch of Gnosticism or another, right? The idea of the demiurge who is like a secondary god who's responsible for the the creation of the physical realm, the fact that Jesus did not physically come down but instead was a a phantasm of some kind that's docetic teaching. We've seen that one before. And so some of the all of this should be ringing bells to you from other stuff that we've looked at before.

And basically, the letter of Third Corinthians is a brief rebuttal to all of those arguments. I mean there's no real reason to go through it point by point. He's just basically saying that yes, Jesus came in the flesh got because there's one God and God created that flesh, and so flesh is not evil. And in fact, Jesus coming down with his sacrifice of flesh is there to redeem all flesh. I'm sorry I keep saying flesh, but that's really what the book is. And and it kind of ends with him saying... So he's in prison. Paul is in prison. This I think is supposed to be written when he's in prison in Philippi or something. And he says, I have chains on my hand that I may gain Christ, and marks on my body that I may come to the resurrection of the dead. Any one who remains in the rule received through the Blessed Prophets and the Holy Gospel will receive a reward. Any one who transgresses these things is bound for the fire, as are those atheists who have come before them, offspring of vipers, whom you should reject by the power of the Lord. May peace be with you.

C: What if they're trying not to be jerks about it?

B: Yeah, he doesn't seem to allow for that, and that's very rude, in my opinion, Paul.

C: Paul.

B: He just didn't know. but yeah, so that's 3rd Corinthians. There's not much to it. it's not very infernal, despite what you might have learned on Constantine.

Then we've got a couple of other fragments. There's a super fragmentary thing where Paul meets a guy named Panchares, I think, I didn't write that name down. And his he has a son named Barnabas, and Paul raises him from the dead. That's that's the gist of it.

Then there is the somewhat longer, well, longer in the sense that we have more of it, bit of the healing of a guy named Hermocrates. who has dropsy, which is edema. He has swelling in his body, a lot of a lot of fluid that builds up between the skin, and so he would have had he would have painful swelling in his limbs or in other cavities of his body, maybe his stomach. And we see Paul heal him by running his finger down his belly, and his belly splits open and all the fluid pours out. And then he goes, man, I'm starving. Can I have some bread? Then we see that Hermocrates has two sons, one of whom is good and one of whom is bad. The good one dies, and Paul brings him back to life. the bad one tries to attack Paul with a sword, and Paul strikes him blind, after which he repents of his sin. That's about the gist of the healing of Hermocrates, that portion of the story.

Then we have the bit referred to as the strife of the Ephesian beasts.

C: No, I believe this is the one that you said you really wanted to hear my reaction to live, because I have not read these.

B: Yes, correct. And most of our readers would not, or listeners, I should say, most of our listeners probably also have not because like I said if they followed our link they would have seen the M.R. James edition of this which did not have the full version of this. Instead all he had was references to this story from other ancient authors. And so he includes excerpts from other auth authors referring to this, but they don't quite get the really great details of the Strife of the Ephesian beasts.

And so The inspiration for this bit seems to come also from 1 Corinthians. In 1 Corinthians 15:32, Paul says, "What do I gain if, humanly speaking, I fought with beasts at Ephesus? If the dead are not raised, let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die." And so it seems to be this very literal taking of, "oh, Paul fought some beasts at Ephesus? Better expand on that particular line." And so that's where we get this story because we found they found a they found a fragment of this in Coptic, which again is, Coptic is a late Egyptian language that is written in an alphabet similar– it's a modified Greek alphabet. And so this is supposed to happen shortly after St. Paul's conversion on the road to Damascus. And the idea is he's with some traveling companions, they're in prayer, and an enormous lion comes up. The lion is described as being twelve cubits tall.

C: Okay!

B: That is 18 feet tall, that is an eighteen foot tall lion, as big as a horse, which, that's also very large for a horse. They don't make eighteen-foot-tall horses. But what happens is, after they finish praying, the lion bows down at his feet. Paul says to the lion, "lion, what do you want?" And the lion answers, yes, he answers, "I want to be baptized." Paul takes the lion to the river. Yeah. Paul takes the lion.

C: I mean, usually cats don't want that.

B: No, cats really don't usually want to be dunked underwater. It's true. As someone who's tried to bathe multiple cats in the past, it does not go great. So they get to the bank of the river as Paul's companions continue to pray. Paul then, he says, "We accomplished the plan which you have appointed." He takes the lion by the mane, dunks him in the river, the lion comes out of the water, shakes himself off, and he says to Paul, "Grace be with you," and Paul says, "and also with you." And then this part rules, this part extremely rules. The lion runs into the woods, and a lioness approaches him, and the lion says, "No, I'm celibate now," and he runs off into the woods. That's not the end. This is not the end. Hold on. So...

C: Okay, first of all, lions don't live in the woods.

B: Yeah, well, the countryside, whatever. I don't know, whatever. So, from this manuscript, the governor of Ephesus, Hieronymus, has arrested Paul due to complaints against him and he has sentenced him to die by the beasts. He sent ad bestiam. It's a Latin phrase that means "to the beast." And Paul's there to fight the beasts, like he says in 1 Corinthians. But a giant lion that has recently been captured comes out to eat him.

C: Is it about eighteen feet tall?

B: I'd say about that, yeah. "And so after six days Hieronymus made a display of animals. All who saw it were astonished at the size of the beasts. While Paul was bound, he began to pray, he heard the noise of the wagons that carried the beasts, and when the lion came to the side door of the stadium where Paul was imprisoned, it roared loudly so that everybody cried out, 'The Lion!' for it roared fiercely and angrily, so that even Paul broke off his prayer in terror. At dawn there was a cry from the citizens 'Let us go to the spectacle. Come, let us see the man who possesses God fighting with beasts.' Paul was dragged in, saying nothing, but bowed down and groaning because he was led in triumph by the city. The authorities then ordered a very fierce lion which had been but recently captured to be set loose against him. But the lion looked at Paul, and Paul at the lion. Then Paul recognized that this was the lion which had come and been baptized. And borne along by faith, Paul said, 'Lion, was it you whom I baptized?' And the lion in answer said to Paul, 'Yes.' Paul spoke to it again and said, 'And how were you captured?' The lion said with its own voice, 'Just as you were, Paul.' After Hieronymus had sent many beasts so that Paul might be slain, the archers said the lion too might be killed, a violent and exceedingly heavy hailstorm fell from heaven, although the sky was clear. Many died, and all the rest took to flight, but it did not touch Paul or the lion, although the other beasts perished under the weight of the hail."

Just like happened to Thecla, so you're repeating yourself, Asia Minor Presbyter? But anyway, St. Paul's able to leave Ephesus on a ship with the other Christians who were fleeing, while the lion vanished into the mountains beyond the city. So yeah, pretty great. You guys might recognize this motif from the stories Androcles and the Lion, or even the Lion and the Mouse, right? It's the exact, it's that exact story. except with except with t the talking lion and baptism involved in a in a weird way.

C: Dog, that is wild.

Yeah, that rules, right? So yeah, that's Paul against the beasts of Ephesus. And yeah, so that leaves us now with our final portion, the martyrdom of Paul.

C: Yeah, which we we've seen most of this before. It's it's Paul getting in trouble for preaching in Rome and getting yelled at by Nero.

B: Yeah. it's weird because we've seen different motivations, right? When in Acts of Peter and Paul, they were killed because they killed Simon Magus, or no, in the Acts of Peter they were killed because they killed Simon Magus. In Peter and Paul they were killed because, well, related to this, they led to the women of Rome deciding to pledge chastity, including Nero's concubines, and he didn't care for that. But in this case, what happens is the cupbearer, Nero's cupbearer named Patroclus, goes to listen to Paul's preaching, and he's sitting up in the window. And Satan, being wicked, became jealous of the love of the brethren and pushes Patroclus out of the window, and he falls to his death. You guys might remember from the canonical acts, that's basically the story of Eutychus, except he falls asleep. He falls asleep listening to the sermon, relatable, and he falls to his death out of the window.

So this is very similar to that where he falls to his death and and then Paul resurrects him. And so Nero only hears the first part of the story. He hears that his cupbearer has died, and so he's like, "Well, we're gonna need another cupbearer. Bring bring one in," but they're like, "nah, Patroclus is here." And Nero kind of flips out because he's like, "What is happening? Because he totally fell out of a building and died." And they said it was this man, Paul, and Patroclus comes and tells him, you know, "Christ Jesus, the King of the Ages, has raised me," and then we see Nero, similar to Herod in the Gospels, is threatened by the fact that there is a new eternal universal king who is going to have power over the terrestrial kings and emperors like himself.

And then there's a couple of other guys who get named. Barsabbas Justus the Flatfooted and Urion the Cappadocian and Festus of Galatia. They're the chief men of Nero, and they say, "Yeah, we like Jesus too." And Nero's like, "No, you guys are all gonna be tortured. Round up all the Christians, please." And that includes Paul. Paul is arrested and brought to him. And Paul tells them, "Yeah, we're building an army. An army from all over the world. We're enlisting men not just from here, but from all over." Nero doesn't like it. He says, "Burn them all," until eventually the Romans have to come and they're like, "Hey, Nero, these people are Romans that you're killing. You're killing your own citizens. You're gonna run out of Romans. It is enough, Caesar. These people are ours, you destroy the strength of the Romans." Amd so he says, "Okay, no more no more killing Christians. Let's do an investigation."

And yeah, then we get these guys, we get Longus the Prefect and Cestus the Centurion. Longus, you can probably guess what that one means, Chris. Want to take a stab at it?

C: Does it mean long?

B: It does mean long. Yeah. And then Cestus is a pretty cool name for a centurion. you might know that one from I don't know, video games or Dungeons and Dragons. Do you know what a Cestus is?

C: It's so rude of you to not be like, oh you know you know what this word is. You have to be like, oh you know this word from from your nerd stuff.

B: Okay, you know this from sports? I don't know, Chris. Do you know what it is?

C: A cesutus is a weighted glove.

B: Yes, it's it's a weighted boxing glove. Yeah, and so pretty cool name for...

C: Which I do in fact know from video games and Dungeons and Dragons.

B: Yeah, yeah. Sorry about my accurate assessment. Anyway, so Nero says that Paul's going to be executed.

C: I am I am ready to talk about this.

B: Are you? Go for it.

C: "And turning toward the east, Paul lifted up his hands to heaven and prayed at length, and after having conversed in Hebrew with the fathers during prayer, he bent his neck without speaking any more." Totally normal. Ready to get beheaded. We know this happens to Paul, right? "When the executioner cut off his head." Everybody? Benito, could you bring out the Guess-o-tron 5000, please?

B: Mm-hmm. Yeah, let's bring it out. Everyone, enter your guesses into the Guess-o-tron 5000. What do you think is going to happen when Paul's head gets cut off?

C: "Milk splashed on the tunic of the soldier." That's right, you cut Paul's head off and a bunch of milk shoots out of his neck.

B: Yeah. Yeah. I imagine, what if it comes out like the water from the the fire hose on UHF.

C: I keep thinking of the Dragnet movie, when they they roll the tank into the milk factory. It's that.

B: Yeah.

C: It says here that everyone was astonished, which I think I also would be.

B: I would also be astonished.

C: So here's the thing, it's not blood and milk. It's just milk.

B: It's just milk. Yeah.

C: It's like you and me when we're on this podcast.

B: That's right. The two jugs of milk just spraying out. So Paul...

C: Was that a prophetic dream?

B: I feel like it was. It was. Yeah, so I mean the idea, I guess, is that milk versus blood, that milk is a symbol of life, I guess, right? Like that's my best guess. That seems to be Bart Ehrman's guess as well, that the milk is a life symbol as opposed to blood. I mean even when Jesus got stabbed, he at least got blood and water. But milk? Paul is pure milk.

So I wrote this story, and some of you guys might have read it if you follow my my website, but I wrote it as a comic first, but then I wrote it as like a prose short story. You can find it online. But it's a story where Santa Claus fights Dracula because obviously. and in the second part of it, Dracula's out for revenge and he manages to catch Santa Claus and he bites his neck and then a bunch of milk sprays out because I thought that was a funny joke about Santa Claus. There's a twist to it that I'm not gonna spoil on this podcast. You guys should go find it on my website. But it's weird. It's weird to see that come up in in a book that was almost Bible. You know what I mean? Like it's one thing in my funny Santa Claus Fights Dracula story, but it's another thing in a book that was a hair's breadth away, if it weren't for misogyny, might have been in the Bible.

C: Now, here's my question.

B: Yeah.

C: Does Paul resurrect or is this a ghost?

B: This is a ghost, because he's trying to prove the resurrection. And so he tells Longus and Cestus, he's like, "You're gonna kill me, but God is gonna bring me back. And you're gonna see me." And also, he tells them, "After my death, go to this place, and you'll find Luke and Titus at his grave. Go to my grave, and you'll see Luke and Titus," presumably the Luke and Titus from Bible, "and they'll give you the seal in the Lord, but there is another sign" right? And so they were amazed, they didn't know what to say. While many philosophers and the centurion were assembled with the emperor, Paul came about the ninth hour, and in the presence of all he said, "What's up? It's your boy Paul, the soldier of God, I'm not dead, but live in my God," except he is dead. Then he vanishes again. He departs from them back to heaven. So Nero was like, "Well. Let's let those prisoners go, I guess." So Patroclus and Barsabbas and Urion the Cappadocian and the other Festus, they all get released.

And then as promised, Longus and Cestus go to Paul's grave. And they find Luca and Titus there. And Luke and Titus, of course, see Roman soldiers and they freak out. They're afraid they're about to be arrested. But then Longus and Cestus say, "No, no, no. We follow you not in order to kill you, blessed men of God, as you imagine, but in order to live, that you may do to us as Paul promised us. We have just seen him in prayer beside you." So that's two ghosts of Paul sightings after his after his death. And so Longus and Cestus convert to Christianity. "Everyone glorifies God and the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ to whom glory forever and ever. Amen." That's the end. That's the Acts of Paul.

C: Whew! What a what a journey we've been on with this one.

B: What a long, strange trip.

C: Yeah. Did you have a verse that stuck out to you?

B: All of them. They're all good. We already read the good ones. The best one is Zekla surrounded by a cloud of fire. How are you gonna top that?

C: Yes, that is the best one. One that I did highlight from the Acts of Paul chapter four. This is one that you can just bust out whenever. "You men who are now ignorant and in error, change your mind and be saved from the fire which comes over the whole earth."

B: Pretty good.

C: That's a good one. That you can just drop on anybody.

B: That's a good one. Yeah. Pretty good.

C: Yeah. Here's what we've learned today: Thecla rules.

B: Thecla rules, yes.

C: And Nero drools.

B: Yes, Thecla rules, Nero drools, yes, absolutely. Yeah, pretty good one, pretty good. I don't know. I feel like I've said what there is to say.

C: Yeah, there's not a lot to add to the story of Thecla. What do you want to do next week?

B: We had a couple of things on the table, but I think due to certain events in the world, when I say the world, I mean the United States. We're gonna do the capital A Apocryphal, Deuterocanonical, that is canon in many churches, story of Judith, another one with a good woman with agency as the main character, in this case a woman who very famously cuts off the head of a man. And I think we are all, I think we can say big mood on that one probably, right? I think that would be appropriate. So yeah, we're gonna hit up Judith. It'll be if you've got a Bible that includes the Deuterocanon or the Apocrypha, it's going to be right there right after Tobit. You can also find it on Bible Gateway as long as you look for the NRSV version. That's what we'll be using. You can find it there. And that's what we're gonna be reading next week. I think we're all ready for it.

C: Yeah, so that is what we will be doing next time. Benito, where can everybody find us?

B: You can find us online, the podcast, you can find supplemental materials, links, episodes of the show, all sorts of things on our Tumblr page at apocrypals.tumblr.com or tumblr.com/apocrypals. And probably this week I'll be posting up some images of Thecla because there are some nice sculptures and frescoes and paintings and things of her surrounded by the beasts, including some really strange ones that look like she's being licked by giant frogs. I don't know what's going on with that. But we'll have definitely have some art of Thecla. And yeah, we share all sorts of things like from last week with our guest David Wolkin. He sent us a whole list of links and resources and books and that kind of stuff that if you were interested in the discussion that we had last week and you should have been, you can definitely follow up on a lot of those things if you want to see more information about bibliodrama or any of the things that David was talking about, there's like 20 links and those are up on our page. So you can find us there.

Also if you like the show, you want to support the show in a monetary fashion, you may do so by going to ko dash fi dot com slash apocrypals. That's ko dash fi dot com slash apocrypals where you can tip us basically or you can make small donations to the show in increments of three dollars or large donations if you want. You can do anything that's a multiple of three dollars. People have recently been doing 18, which is really nice because, you know, Jewish numerology, it's a life, it's the number of life. And so if you want to hit us with $18, that would be dope. If you want to hit us with $3, that's fine. Anything you can donate goes towards helping us pay to keep the show going. And we really appreciate it. Otherwise, if you don't have that kind of scratch, that is fine.

And if you want to help the show, you can definitely leave us a rating and or review on iTunes or Stitcher or whatever your preferred method of listening to this podcast is. We are there. We're also on Spotify. You can listen to the show on Spotify, but we also have our The Apocrypals Hymnal is up on Spotify as a playlist where you can hear all the songs that we've featured at the top of the show, any song that's been a needle drop in the middle of the show, any song that we've referenced is going to be up on that playlist. I had somebody tweet us this week that they discover that a nice side effect of this show is that they discovered lots of new cool music, which I think is awesome. That's mostly on Chris who picks pretty much all the music for the show. What about you, Chris? Where can people find you?

C: People can find all my stuff just by going to the dash isb dot com. There's links there to everything. Hey, you can also find the two of us along with a bunch of other very talented people in this year's Army of Darkness Halloween Special 2018. My writing partner Chad Bowers and I, we wrote the main story in that with art by Owen Marin. And Benito, you wrote the backup.

B: That's right, with art by Sam Lotfi. It's very cool. I think it came out really great. The whole package is is awesome. Chris and Chad's story all about Blackbeard just in time for the 300th anniversary of Blackbeard's last stand. Super cool story. If you want to see you Ash get rough with a with a ghost tour guide, pretty good one. You guys also just had you just had Sleepwalker come out this week. And it's great.

C: Infinity Wars Sleepwalker No. 1 out now at your local comic book store and online. So do check those out.

B: It is October, and if you guys are in the Halloween spirit, and I hope you are because Chris and I are the kind of guys who get very into the Halloween spirit until it becomes Christmas and then we are completely Christmas Spirit, but but for now we're Halloween boys. And if if you are the kind of person who is interested in horror movies, I do have a resource for you on my personal tumblr at Benito dash Cereno dot tumblr .com. You can go there and find my annual list. It's called the Haunting of Netflix House. I'm up to part six this year. Every year I make a list of the best or at least the good horror movies that you can watch on Netflix available now, currently on streaming if you're curious about what's good because they have a bunch of stuff on there. Not all of it's great, but if you want to go there, you can find that on my personal Tumblr, I think the list came out pretty well this year. There's a lot of good things, a lot of movies you've heard of this year, probably like The Witch and The Strangers and As Above So Below. Those are all streaming this year. But then a bunch of other ones that you haven't heard of that I think are great, such as Cargo and A Dark Song. and other things like that. So check that out on my Tumblr.

Also, I want to give a shout out to some of our our sister podcasts in spirit, they're not made by us, but other podcasts that you guys might like since it is now the spooky season, one we've mentioned many times Scream Scene, which is co-hosted by Ben Rowe, friend of the show Ben Rowe, we mention him all the time, and his wife Sarah. They do Scream Scene in which they rank every horror movie ever made in chronic chronological order, starting with, you know, the silent short films of the 1890s. They're currently into the early 40s. And so if you want to hear really interesting podcasts about the history and production of the most iconic horror movies of all time, you should listen to their Dracula episodes. Their Phantom of the Opera episode is really good. The Bride of Frankenstein episode is really good. So check that one out.

But I would be remiss if I didn't also meant mention another horror movie ranking podcast made by friends of ours. That one's called Rank and Vile. They do everything in whatever order they want. They'll review a Count Chocula commercial if they feel like it. Chris and I have both been on that show, right? Chris, you talked about Army of Darkness, right?

C: I did indeed.

B: And Taste of the Blood of Dracula, I think.

C: Yes.

B: And they had me on and I talked about some of my favorite horror movies, The Wicker Man, the original Wicker Man with Christopher Lee, not the one with Nicolas Cage, but also Mask of the Red Death with Vincent Price, one of my favorites. So check that one out.

And finally, in my opinion, the absolute best serialized horror fiction podcast on internet is the Magnus Archives written, produced, hosted, usually narrated by a guy named Jonathan Sims, no relation as far as I know, to Chris Sims. He is British. it's really good short episodes that all have an underlying thread that ties everything together, but the individual stories are so nice and the in the style of, well mentioned them in this episode, M.R. James, who of course was an antiquarian, as he would have called himself, but also considered the greatest ghost story writer of all time. They're very much in the spirit of M.R. James in classic Victorian ghost story style. Weird tales and if you want something that feels both classic and new at the same time I absolutely recommend the Magnus archives if you're looking for something spooky for this Halloween season. So that's it. Just a couple of podcast recs and shout-outs to friends of the show.

C: That's it, everybody. We will be back next time with the Story of Judith, which you can find on BibleGateway.com. Until then, for Benito Cereno, I've been Chris Sims. Benito, peace be with you.

B: And also with you.

[Music: "Danger! High Voltage" by Electric Six]