Fresh Prince of Beliar (Transcript)

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Chris Sims: "And Isaiah answered and said: 'So far as I have utterance (I say): Damned and accused be thou and all they powers and all thy house. For thou canst not take (from me) aught save the skin of my body.' And they seized and sawed in sunder Isaiah, the son of Amoz, with a wooden saw." The Ascension of Isaiah, chapter 5, verses 9 through 11.

[Music: "God's Gonna Cut You Down" by Johnny Cash]

C: Hello friends and neighbors and welcome to Apocrypals. It's the podcast where two non-believers read 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:``` I'm good, Chris. How are you?

C: I'm doing very well.

B: Yeah, good. We got a pretty wild one this week. And then a not very interesting one.

C: We do. We are going to be reading today for our selection, The Ascension of Isaiah and The Prayer of Manasseh. Do I have that right?

B: Yes, correct.

C: Oh, it's always good when I pronounce it right on the first try.

B: Yeah, always pretty good. Yeah. So I should note before we get started here, we had a couple of big significant days recently as we're recording this. It was just Pentecost this past Sunday. So, you know, traditional greeting, Stacker Pentecost, everyone. Stacker Pentecost.

C: Now, what did you do with your Holy Ghost powers that you got? Who did you strike down?

B: Anyone that I saw because I was like, not sufficiently socialist today.

C: Agreed. Agreed. That's the big problem.

B: That's the big one.

C: Please refer to our episode about Acts if you were wondering why we were talking about this.

B: Yeah, but also the fact that it's Pentecost, it was just Pentecost, means that it's been 50 days since we've started this podcast. So here we are definitely recording episode eight, if my math works out on that one, right?

B: No.

C: Eight? Is it eight already?

B: No, no.

C: It's like five.

B: This is episode six. I was making a joke about it. This is episode six. I was making a joke about how we missed a week again.

C: We're in the Old Testament because this is an even-numbered episode, although that's going to get thrown out the window when we do four New Testament books in a row starting next time.

B: Yeah. Also, this is an Old Testament book that's actually super Christian. So, yeah, we did miss – we missed a week because Chris had to go be a celebrity at a podcast convention. My understanding is that he just – it was a fire hazard to the extent to which you packed out the room. You don't have to disavow me of that notion. It's fine. Everyone can just believe it.

C: I don't understand why I'm being dragged like this.

B: I'm not dragging you. I'm not dragging you. People listen to this show, they don't know. They weren't there. Statistically speaking, they were not there.

C: Statistically speaking, they definitely were not there.

B: Yeah.

C: I had a good road trip up to a podcast convention to record one of my other shows, which is called War Rocket Ajax, which I do with Matt Wilson. And we also recorded a bunch of other podcasts. So if you like this show, but wish it was about bad movies or snacks or D-Man from Marvel Comics, which this honestly, this show is very close to being about D-Man from Marvel Comics.

B: It basically is. And the cool thing.

C: Isaiah is very close to D-Man.

B: Yeah, he is. And the cool thing is we you and I actually got to hang out in person a little bit. Haven't done that in a while. That was cool.

C: Yeah. It's been years since we've seen each other in person, isn't it?

B: It has. And finally I got to meet your mom. That was the very important thing.

C: Yeah. Did you wake up that day expecting to meet my mom?

B: I did not, but you know what? Small miracles every day. Anyway. So yeah, we have Pentecost. That means there's a couple of other related holidays. We should give shout outs to the Monday after Pentecost is the feast of Mary, the mother of church. So: cool. I have nothing to add about that. Good job, Mary.

C: Well, that was Pope Francis restored that one. That's one that hasn't been around for a while.

B: Yeah. So that's cool. She gets like six or seven more throughout the year. So.

C: Yes, but this is specifically in her aspect as the mother of the church.

B: Correct. Yep. But Pentecost also means that it was Shavuot this past weekend. So a belated Chag Sameach to our friends out there who stayed up all night reading Torah and eating cheese. Cool. Very good on you guys. I hope you had a good one and learned a lot about Ruth and wheat, etc. Yeah, Shavuot is a Jewish holiday where you read Torah and eat cheese for numerological reasons.

C: I like how you said before we started recording that you would explain this to me.

B: Yeah.

C: And that is your – that's as deep as you're going to get in the explanation.

B: Okay, fine. All right.

C: It's a cheese numbers holiday?

B: Yeah.

C: Do not get me wrong. I'm into it. I love staying up late and eating cheese.

B: Yeah. So Shavuot is a double celebration. You celebrate both – it celebrates both the first wheat harvest of the year. And so as a result, you read the Book of Ruth, which is primarily about a wheat harvest and lesbians. And then – but then also because of Gematria, which will probably come up a few more times, which is mystical Jewish numerology. For those reasons, plus other traditional reasons that are speculated on, cheese is associated with the holiday. And so you eat cheese products like cheesecake is very popular or cheese blintzes or whatever. And then also the second half of the holiday is that it's traditionally considered the anniversary of the giving of the law to Moses. We mentioned that, I think, when we talked about Pentecost. And so as a result, you also study Torah. And so the big thing is you have like an all night sleepover party where you stay up and read the law and then you eat cheesecake. And it sounds a little better than the feast of the mother of the church, but I don't know.

C: There's nothing. There is nothing about the feast of Mary, mother of the church that says that you cannot stay up late and eat cheesecake and read a holy scripture.

B: That's true, but is it officially endorsed by centuries of tradition? That I don't know.

C: I mean, you would have to literally ask Pope Francis, because I don't know.

B: Yeah, we got to get him on the show.

C: I am only married to someone who describes herself as a Catholic enthusiast.

B: Yeah, well, yeah, there you go.

C: Quick clarification, if I can. You said that there's cheese involved for numerological reasons.

B: Yeah.

C: Is there a number of the cheese? And if so, has that song been recorded? Is Weird Al just leaving that on the table?

B: So Gematria, what that is, it has to do with the fact that, well, you guys know how like Roman numerals are also letters. Greek and Hebrew do that as well, where the letters of the alphabet can also represent numbers. And so each word, if you use the numbers represented with the letters in that word, if you add them up, they can become a new number. That's ultimately what's behind the code of the number of the beast of 666 meaning something. And we'll get to that when we talk about that stuff. But so gematria has a lot to do with numbers that are tied to particular words. And so the word for milk is halav, if I'm saying that right. And the number associated with that is 40. And that corresponds to the 40 days and 40 nights that Moses spent on Mount Sinai before bringing down the Torah. So because the coded number reference for milk is 40, it is associated with Moses. And that's why you eat cheese and other dairy products.

C: We should probably wait until we get to like Genesis for this, but there seems to be a lot of things that happen in the Bible that are related to the number 40. You can just give me a yes or no. Is there a reason for that?

B: I mean, well, there's a lot of important numbers. 3, 7, 12, 40. Those are going to keep coming up.

C: All right. Well, before we get into the ascension of Isaiah, since we're in the preamble here, there's something that I have to call you out on this time.

B: All right. Okay.

C: Because we just did Romans.

B: Yeah.

C: And you missed something. I mean, to be fair, I also missed it. We missed it.

B: All right.

[Music: Opening of "Runnin' with the Devil" by Van Halen]

C: What's up, everybody? It's Satan Watch.

B: Oh Satan Watch? I love Satan Watch!

C: I know you love Satan Watch and I know you love talking about the mentions of Satan that show up in the Bible. We actually said it on the show, I listened back to the episode when we were talking about romans chapter 16 verses 16 through 20, Paul says "the God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet, the grace of our Lord Jesus be with you." We did not even mention it, but that is a Satan mention. That's a satan appearance!

B: Real missed opportunity.

C: So I'm doing this now. I am making up for that. Is that an appearance of the word "Satan" just meaning "adversary" or is this Paul referring specifically to the devil?

B: No, I think that's got to be the devil at this point for Paul to be talking about that at this era. Yeah, I think that's not just that's not a lowercase-s "satan" I think that is a capital-S "Satan," probably. Yeah.

C: This surely is not the first appearance of Satan in the New Testament, but chronologically is it?

B: Well, oh yeah, because I mean this is going to be earlier than the gospels. So, I mean, I don't know if there's one from an earlier– I'd have to look at the chronology of the different epistles, but yeah maybe. It would definitely be up there, and I suspect the fact that it talks about crushing him under his heel probably contributes to the later association of Satan with the serpent from the Garden of Eden, which was not associated with Satan for a long time. But we'll get to that when we do Genesis.

C: Right. Because we know from this that Satan has to be smaller than your foot.

B: Yeah, obviously.

C: He's a little guy.

B: Yeah, he's a little guy. He fits in that little can of ham. Yeah.

C: He's just a little bad guy.

B: Yeah.

C: That's all I got. That's all I got for the mention of Satan in Romans. I just didn't want to let it get past us. Because you always got to be on the lookout for the devil.

B: Yeah.

C: Do not let the devil get past you. He's out there.

B: Like a lion. He's prowling the earth, seeking whom he may devour.

C: Like a tiny lion, though.

B: Like a very small foot-sized lion.

C: A kitten. Yeah. That's what a kitten is.

B: Pretty much, yeah. All right. You want to talk about the Ascension of Isaiah or what?

C: Yeah, let's do it.

B: Okay. All right. So, yeah, like I mentioned a little bit earlier, it's a little bit of a cheat for the Old Testament week. It fits here because it's basically a direct sequel to a couple of Old Testament books. It's kind of a sequel to the life of Isaiah, which we saw in Isaiah, but also we actually want to see the biography of Isaiah when we're going to be looking at 2 Kings. In a way, this is an expansion of 2 Kings, plus it follows up on things we saw in the life of Isaiah in the narrative bits from that.

B: But taken as a whole, this work is actually a Christian work. Jesus is in it a lot, or rather, actually, I should say Christ is in it a lot. Jesus is in it a little, and we'll learn about what that distinction is about when we get into it. But...

C: that's the other thing I was going to call you out on is that you said definitively Isaiah was talking about Cyrus the Great, but he has come back to clarify that he did in fact mean Jesus.

B: Yeah well you know.

C: He gets into some real specifics too. He talks about 12 apostles. He talks about being crucified. He, like this is some prophecy.

B: Yeah, so if you accept that this actually came out in like the seventh, the eighth century BCE, then yeah, this is very specific in a way that the Psychic Friends Network is never going to get.

C: This is straight from the coal touching his lips when Isaiah dropped this one on us. First thing that happened, coal touches his lips. Second thing, he takes off his clothes. Third thing, he delivers this straight prophecy.

B: Yeah, it really is. But. So the thing about this book that you might pick up as you read it is that it feels really disjointed and the reason for that is it is a composite, it is a combination of at least, well, primarily believed to be three different works put together by a fourth guy, who then would have added in different little editorial remarks to try and join them together. The two main parts are the martyrdom narrative, which is chapters one through five, and then the vision narrative, which is six through eleven. But in the middle of the martyrdom section, there's a bit that's called the Testament of Hezekiah, which runs from the middle of chapter three to the end chapter four. And the Testament of Hezekiah is probably actually the earliest bit, even though it is decidedly Christian. That's the little apocalyptic vision in the middle that talks about the life of Jesus and also the coming of the Antichrist and how Jesus will snuff him out.

B: So the separate bits individually were probably written between 150 CE to 200 CE. And the earliest versions of some of these bits, the earliest versions of the Testament of Hezekiah are probably as early as the canonical gospels. So some of this stuff is actually very early. And part of the reason we know that is we can see people who quote and reference the different bits of this, but also the fact of, well, we'll get to the #VariousHeresies that are brought up in this work. And those help date it as being pretty early. However, the whole thing would have been assembled into a single work, the Ascension of Isaiah, as it is called probably by the end of the fourth century. So still relatively early.

B: It would have been probably originally written in Greek, though the martyrdom bit could have originally had a Hebrew or Aramaic source. The bits that we have, if you want to read the whole thing altogether like we did, there are three different medieval manuscripts that are Ethiopic. They're from Ethiopia. But we have fragments that are in Latin, Greek, Coptic, and Old Church Slavonic. So there's a couple different sources that are used to fill in some of the blanks. But it would have been Greek originally. "To Anabatakon Acea." "Aceas." What's the genitive of Isaiah? I can't think of it. Oh, well. Yeah. So.

C: And if you do want to read it, I would say this one, it's fairly short.

B: Yeah.

C: And it picks up when Jesus starts showing up in it.

B: Yeah. Yeah. The bits, the bits with Jesus are good. The travel through heaven, the actual the ascension part, the vision is very strange. But yeah, like I mentioned last week when I when we said we're going to be talking about this. I hadn't read this one before. I'd only read a synopsis. And so I was expecting a little bit more of like prophet versus prophet. And there wasn't quite as much of that as I had hoped.

B: But yeah, you can find this. It is on early Christian writings, but just like if you looked at the Acts of Peter and Acts of Peter and Paul on there, it's another one of those where they would have done like text recognition. And so there are mistakes, like literally the first line talks about the King Hezebiah instead of Hezekiah. So there's– it's like right out the gate, there's a mistake.

C: It's also also a tough read in the same way that the act of Peter and Paul...

B: Right.

C: ...was a little bit dense to get through.

B: Right. It's another one of those... Another one of those like intentionally archaic to sound like the King James kind of translations, because it's modern. Like a guy found this text in a book like he was in Ethiopia or something and he was going through a book stall and he found this book and he's like, what is this? And it was rediscovered at that time. So it's like there's not medieval English translations of this. It's one that was only translated to English in the last 150 years. So it is an intentionally archaic translation, just like M.R. James's – what's the guy's name? R.H. Charles or something I think is the name of the translator of this edition. It's the famous one. It's the easy one to find. It's the public domain translation.

B: So, yeah, you should read it. There's a slightly better cleaned up translation. It's a version of the same translation that I found on a blog called On the Way to Ithaca. If you want to search that, onthewaytoithaca.wordpress.com. It's a little neater and a little easier to read than the Early Christian Writings version. I would suggest checking that out.

B: Anyway, so yeah, sources for this text. In general, the story is an expansion of 2 Kings chapter 21 where we learn about Manasseh, who was the son of Hezekiah. If we recall, Hezekiah was the king, the last king that we saw Isaiah interact with in the book of Isaiah. He was the one that was good enough that God let him live an additional 15 years. He was the one that built the tunnel under the city to escape the siege. And he was the one who came back to the worship of God.

B: But in second kings 21 we see that his son Manasseh: not so good. He was 12 years old when he became king, reigned 55 years in Jerusalem, his mother's name was Hepzebah, so yes woman cool from space. "He did what was evil in the Lord's sight imitating the detestable practices of the nations the Lord had dispossessed before the Israelites. He rebuilt the high places that his father Hezekiah had destroyed and re-established the altars for Baal. He made an Asherah as King Ahab of Israel had done. He had also worshiped the whole heavenly host and served them. He built altars in the Lord's temple," et cetera, et cetera. Manasseh's bad, right?

B: He returns to worshiping idols. He committed all these detestable things. And also we see in here that he is responsible for the death of Isaiah. And so this is an expansion of that story, but it also incorporates bits from the Talmud, which we– I don't think we've talked about the Talmud at all here on the show, Chris, have we?

C: I don't believe so.

B: Okay. So just for those who don't know, like the Talmud is the, is like the chief source of rabbinical literature in the Jewish faith. It is a writing about laws and also history. It features homilies and discussions and philosophy and that kind of thing. There's two main ones. The main one, if someone just says Talmud, they're talking about the Babylonian Talmud. But there's also a slightly earlier one called the Jerusalem Talmud. And both of them have accounts of the death of Isaiah. The Babylonian Talmud says that what happens is that Manasseh calls out Isaiah due to contradictions with the Torah. So for example, in the Torah, it says, no one can see God and live, right? Moses says that. But then Isaiah in his book says, "I saw God sitting on the throne." We read that. And so there's some other contradictions with Deuteronomy and such.

B: And so Manasseh calls him out on these things. And Isaiah just, he's like, well, this guy is bad. I'm never going to convince him that what I'm doing is cool and fine. And so he gives up. He says the unpronounceable name of God, which you're not supposed to do, obviously. And a tree opens up and swallows him. And he's inside this cedar tree. And so Manasseh calls his men with a saw and they saw the tree down with Isaiah inside of it. And when the saw hits his mouth, Isaiah dies. And that's the account of the death of Isaiah from the Babylonian Talmud.

B: From the Jerusalem Talmud, he runs away from Manasseh, like we see him doing in the Ascension, like we're going to see. And he goes and he hides in a tree. In this case, he runs to the tree. The tree opens up for him. He hides inside. But the fringes of his garment that according to law, you're supposed to have out, those are poking out from the tree where the tree like closed around him, like the fringes were still hanging out. And so in this way, Manasseh was able to find him. They saw down the tree again. And as they do it, his blood spurts out. And that is that's the version from the Jerusalem Talmud.

B: And because both of these additions have to do with Isaiah being inside of a tree, that seems to be the cause of some confusion, I think, for the author of the martyrdom of Isaiah. Because by later tradition, they become convinced that it has to be that Isaiah was killed by a wooden saw. And not just that he was in a tree and killed with a regular saw, but that he was cut in half by a wooden saw, which actually seems worse somehow than a metal saw to me. I don't know.

C: So: question.

B: Yeah.

C: We talked about Mary a little bit earlier.

B: Sure.

C: And this book is called The Ascension of Isaiah.

B: Yep.

C: Is there a difference between like a capital-A ascension and a lowercase-a ascension? Because what we see here is Isaiah going all the way up to heaven and then coming back. So he ascends and then descends.

B: Yeah. And actually there is. In the Greek titles, there is a difference. The Greek title of this is "To Anabatakon," which actually means like "he climbs up, he walks up to heaven." Right. And that's the word that we use for ascension there. Like he walks up and then back down. But the word that's used for the ascension of Jesus into heaven is actually "onalepsis," which means that he was taken up into heaven. And which would which seems to me would actually be closer to Mary because Mary doesn't ascend. It's the assumption of Mary. She is taken up into heaven after her dormition where she, quote unquote, goes to sleep.

C: Okay, so there is a capital-A ascension, like the Jesus and Mary ascension.

B: Right.

C: Does that happen to anybody else? Does anybody else just get taken up?

B: Yeah. Enoch, which we'll see in Genesis, he walked with the Lord and God liked him so much. He just took him straight up to heaven. And that's part of why the book of Enoch is so weird. And then arguably the prophet Elijah who goes up in his chariot of fire would be a similar kind of thing. You've got a couple of guys who don't ever die earthly deaths. They just go straight up to heaven. You've got a couple of examples of that.

C: But Isaiah, unfortunately for Isaiah, is not one of them. He gets sawed.

B: He gets sawed, yeah. He gets sawed. And it's not super pleasant because – and this is one of those where, again, it's not in the canonical Bible. But it becomes the tradition. This is what people believe about Isaiah and his death. And there are very many depictions of the martyrdom of Isaiah in art that are definitely going up on our Tumblr. And I hope you're ready to see a naked man sawed in half like 20 times because that's what our Tumblr is going to look like this week.

C: I thought that was going to be unique to the book of Isaiah. But Isaiah being naked 100% comes back.

B: It does. Yeah. And it's not just him. It's him and all the other prophets who flee to the mountains.

C: Him and all his boys just hanging out.

B: Yeah, him and his boys. They got some hair shirts, but then they're like, eh, nudity is better.

C: They're Porky Pigin' it.

B: They are straight Porky Pig in it. That's a completely different kind of Porky Party. Anyway, here's a cool thing about this story. This is a rare instance, but not super rare. A rare instance of an apocryphal book or apocryphal story getting mentioned in the canonical scriptures...

C: Go on.

B: ...because there is what is believed to be a shout out to this story in the epistle to the Hebrews chapter 11 verse 37

C: I love that's. Hebrews chapter 11 is my favorite chapter in the Bible

B: Yeah well here you go. "They were stoned, they were sawed in two, they died by the sword, they wandered about in sheepskins, in goatskins, destitute, afflicted, and mistreated." That is largely believed to be a reference to the death of Isaiah - the bit about being sawed in two.

C: So we have Stephen and others being stoned we have Isaiah being sawed – is there anyone else who gets sawed in two?

B: I don't know of anyone else that gets sawed in two. You know there's plenty of other things, lots of crucified guys, lots of stoned guys, later on you get people shot with arrows or burned on a waffle iron.

C: Saint Sebastian shot with arrows.

B: Yeah Saint Sebastian with the arrows, yeah. Saint Lawrence who was roasted and then actually he says, "I'm done on this side, turn me over"

C: Baller.

B: Yeah, very, very baller.

C: While we're on the subject of martyrs and the many methods of martyrdom I spent some time on the ride down to Charleston for my anniversary last weekend, just catching up on the 14 holy helpers.

B: As you do, sure.

C: If you are not familiar with the 14 holy helpers, I highly recommend going and reading some of those stories particularly Saint Barbara.

B: She's a good one.

C: Saint Catherine. And of course Saint Christopher who was a werewolf.

B: Indeed.

C: Which I think we're gonna have to do multiple episodes about the saints. I know that Aiden wants to be on one. I know that that is where you have a lot of knowledge. I think we need to get through probably the gospels first?

B: Sure.

C: Before we start getting into saint stuff.

B: Yeah, I'd like to have a pretty good basis in the stuff from antiquity and late antiquity before we start getting into like fully medieval stuff, but yeah I would like to eventually hit up the Golden Legend and that kind of stuff, yeah, Because there's a lot of really good weird interesting things in there.

C: Well, getting back to that line from Hebrews, my question for you would be is there a specific word that means "sawed" that would be different from a word for say hewn or cut?

B: Yes, there certainly would be. I don't off the top of my head know what it is and I closed the tab so I can't switch over to the Koine Greek. But ancient Greek has an enormous vocabulary. And so it has specific words for everything. It's one of those that like German you can make a new word by just stacking all sorts of word elements together. And so you can come up with incredibly long verbs and it definitely would have a word that specifically would mean a saw. I don't know it off the top of my head, but for sure there's a distinction.

C: Well, the reason I ask is, of course, because we know beheading is not uncommon.

B: Right.

C: Paul got his head lopped off. So unless his head was sawed off, which you would think they would mention.

B: Right.

C: Right. It seems like that could be a reference to Isaiah.

B: Right. And that is the generally agreed upon interpretation of that bit.

B: Yeah. OK. So, I mean, when the story opens, we basically get that bit from Second Kings where we see Hezekiah is the king. His young son Manasseh is going to come in. Manasseh comes in and is evil, pretty much. We get a couple of things here early on that are worth noting. The use of the word beloved that gets used throughout the entire text here refers to the Christ, which is Jesus here. But there is a distinction between the spiritual Christ and the physical human Jesus. And so the beloved is who we're going to see in heaven in Isaiah's vision. We also have the recurring character of Isaiah's son, Josab. He gets mentioned a lot in the book of Isaiah. This is his son who would be Shear Jashub. So this would be some kind of variation, perhaps an Ethiopic variation on that name. So we see him a number of times.

B: But yeah, Isaiah and his son, they come and they prophesy to Hezekiah and they say, "your son's going to be bad." Hezekiah says, "Cool, I will kill my son. Sounds good." And then Isaiah says, "well, you could try, but God has already decided that this is what's going to happen. I'm definitely going to get sawed in half by your son. And so that's just the way things are."

B: You got a music drop ready for me? Because it's the second one in one episode. It's time for Satan Watch.

[Music: Opening of "Runnin' with the Devil" by Van Halen]

B: Yeah.

C: What's up?

B: That's right. In this book, for the first time, we've got named demons. If we don't count Satan appearing in Romans, like we already discussed in the previous Satan Watch in this episode. But here we've got two, two main named demons. First, we have Sammael.

C: I've heard of that guy.

B: Yeah, here it's spelled with two M's. But in Jewish tradition, usually spelled with one M when transliterated to our alphabet. In Jewish tradition, Samael is the angel of death usually. But his name means either "venom of God" or "blindness of God" or "the blind God." And here he is straight up a demon. He is referred to as Malchira, which is a word that pretty much exists only in this writing, but that possibly means "king of the wicked." And it does seem to be associated with our forthcoming, more immediate antagonist, Belkira, the evil prophet, whose name might mean "chosen by evil" or it might mean "lord of the wall." I don't know.

B: But here, Sammael is also straight up associated with Satan. He is the main evil influence that leads Manasseh astray. So we've got –

C: So he is the angel of death, venom of God, king of the wicked?

B: Yeah. Yeah.

C: That's an extremely good name.

B: It's a pretty good resume to have. So yeah, we see him as kind of the overriding evil influence. And also I should say, among certain sects of the Gnostics, Samael is associated with the Demiurge and – yeah, why not? So the Demiurge is a –

C: From Marvel Comics.

B: Yeah. He is a god, but he's not the God. He's the creator of the physical world, which if you remember for most Gnostics, physical stuff is bad, right? Spiritual stuff: good. Physical stuff: bad. So the Demiurge either created the physical world or in most versions he didn't create the stuff, he formed it. He shaped it. It already existed. Or he created the physical world as a bad imitation of the platonic ideal world, right? And so that's part of why Samael is associated with him because he's the blind god. And so this god who blindly does not understand the platonic ideal world of the real God, in Marvel terms, the one above all, right? That God, the fullness, the real true supreme good God, he cannot properly replicate it. And that's why the physical world is so messed up, right? Because this blind God blindly tried to imitate it. And so Samael is associated with the Demiurge, who in many, many Gnostic sects is malevolent because he represents physical things. And so we see Samael here, he's the Lord of the air and he rules all of his demons. They live in the firmament, right, which is the upper air.

C: Quick question before we get off of Samael here. If he's the venom of God, does he ever fight the carnage of God?

B: We can only hope. I don't want to spoil everything. Who knows? Who knows when we get the separation anxiety of God, there might be as many as six or seven other ones.

B: So, of course, the other name demon we get here is another one people might recognize from such works as Paradise Lost, and I don't know, video games probably. It's Belial, known here as Beliar, because of a way that by the New Testament times, he was often called Beliar because of the way Aramaic pronounced that final "L". And he's the angel of lawlessness. His name means worthless. And he's also referred to as Matanbûchûs here, which is, I don't think that's a word that exists anywhere else. And people are very confused about what that means, but maybe it comes from the phrase "mattan buka," meaning a worthless gift, or maybe it's a distortion of the word "mithdabek," which means one who attaches himself like a demon might possess a person. But yeah, so Belial is another major guy. He's the one that influences Manasseh in a huge way.

B: So let's just go ahead and get this out of the way, Chris, because it's coming. I know we can't resist it. So Manasseh is the impudent son of King Hezekiah. And he serves Beliar. So you might call him.

C: The Fresh Prince of Beliar.

B: Yeah, he's the Fresh Prince of Beliar.

C: Yeah, they're the Fresh Prince of Beliar.

B: The Fresh Prince of Beliar. We did it. Yeah.

C: Thanks. Thanks for trying to take away my joy with that.

B: No man, look, I knew the joy was coming. It was inevitable, so...

C: Just like Christmas over here. when it's that easy to title an episode.

B: Yeah, it's really good. But another thing that's interesting is actually we get Satan in the plural by the end of this one. Satan is used as a common noun to refer to demons up in the air, which if you think about it, like we talked about, Satan meaning the accuser, if you think of Satan as not a name, but a title, that makes a lot more sense of how Sammael can also be Satan, right? And then how you can have plural Satans. You have these guys, these adversaries or accusers who fly around in the upper air and make things difficult for the people of the physical world.

C: Now, I think it's worth noting that at this point in our reading, which of course is non-chronological and very out of order, but it kind of makes sense to us. We have really only seen devils and demons, Satans, in the sky. We've seen them with Simon Magus carrying him around and eventually just throwing him at the ground. We've seen these guys. The only like ground stuff that we've seen has been the mention of Gehenna.

B: Sure.

C: In Romans.

B: Yeah. Yeah. In the traditional view, demons were thought to be in the air.

[MUSIC: "In the Air Tonight" by Phil Collins]

B: In the gospels Satan is referred to as the prince of the powers of the air and that's what that means, right? The demons are these flitting about air spirits, and so yeah, I mean for a lot of these early bits of literature that's where you're going to see. And we do of course also see demons possessing people. But when we see them loose and free, yeah, they're usually flying around. They're in the firmament, they're in the air.

C: When is the shift to heaven being up and hell being down? Because heaven's clearly up. It's up past the firmament.

B: Yeah, heaven is definitely up here. I mean, it helps that the word heaven as it is in English, it can have a religious or just a normal, like the heavens, meaning the sky, right? The word for heavens and sky is the same in Latin and Greek. I don't know about Hebrew. So it's just a matter of context. And so I think the association between, yeah, capital H heaven and the lowercase h heavens goes way back. The idea of hell being below, well, that's definitely true for the Greeks, right? And the Romans, the underworld. And that comes, the Roman understanding of the underworld comes to be a huge influence on hell, especially once you go through Dante, who pulls in just basically Virgil, like the writing of Virgil and also the character of Virgil. And he just basically puts Christian stickers on top of a Roman model that already existed. So you definitely have it by that point, but I mean...

C: Right, because Hades was underground, Tartarus was underground.

B: Right yeah exactly. But I mean, yeah, even by christian times when we see it referenced here the descent into hell which we'll read about in great much greater detail when we read the Gospel of Nicodemus eventually which includes the descent to the underworld, the harrowing of hell, that tradition.

C: You know I love the harrowing of hell.

B: Yeah, we'll get to that eventually, but yeah, so even at that point we have that that idea of below, so I don't know enough about the the hebrew cosmology their their version of like hell has different aspects there's seven different aspects of hell that represent, that correspond to the seven heavens that we're going to see as well so there's a bunch of different names. So like we've talked about Sheol, we're going to see a second one later in this episode and Gehenna is another one and they're different aspects of death in the afterlife in the underworld. So, I suspect probably there would have with the Hebrews been an association with going down for hell as well, possibly related to the fact that they buried their dead as well. So dead bodies go down. I don't know. So yeah.

C: And, and surely once you're into the, the Gehenna stuff and the lake of fire stuff, like volcanoes exist and have existed for quite some time, if you're going to see a lake of fire while you're alive.

B: Yes, of course. So once Manasseh takes over and he's not taking any guff from these prophets of God, Isaiah, he flees first to Bethlehem and then to the mountains. And it's not just him. It's several other prophets, including ones that we know that have books of the Bible named after them, like Micah, who's called Micaiah here, Joel and Amos, someone who's referred to as Ananias and is referred to as being old. But I don't I don't know who this Ananias is. I can't find a prophet from the Bible that he's supposed to be. But, yeah, they all...

C: He ain't the last Ananias we've seen because that dude got Pentecost-ed.

B: He did. He did. And he and his wife. Yeah. But, so then we see our human adversary here. We get Belchira, who is an evil prophet from a family of evil prophets. They give us his, his pedigree. Like, his uncle killed the prophet Micaiah, but not the Micaiah, not the Micaiah that's the prophet Micah. There's a different prophet Micaiah, which is very confusing. And this bit also seems to be a little bit fragmented. And so it's kind of hard to tell what's going on, but as far as I can tell, it's just giving you know, it's giving his bona fides, right? You know, Belchira is a very good evil prophet who gets good prophets killed because he comes from a long line of dudes who did that.

B: And so echoing the tradition from the Babylonian Talmud, Belchira comes out and accuses Isaiah and he's like, you're a false prophet. And here's how I know. Moses said, no one can see God and live. And you said you saw God and then his boy put a coal on your mouth. That's no good. And things go very bad for Isaiah.

B: But first, we cut into the Testament of Hezekiah, which is basically the prophecy that Isaiah gave to Hezekiah. So it's confusing because it seems like Testament of Hezekiah seems like it would be something he said, but instead it's something that Isaiah said to Hezekiah. And this is what we see that makes Beliar so mad. He's specifically mad because of this prophecy that Isaiah gives to Hezekiah, which is mega christian.

C: It's also a flashback. It's another flashback.

B: There's a couple of flashbacks throughout, because the book opens in the 26th year of the reign of Hezekiah and then it says in the 20th year of Hezekiah's reign this is what happened and then it cuts back to the present and then before the vision it's like remember back in the 20th year? This happened then too. So yeah there's a couple flashbacks throughout. Helps really cement the idea that this is a composite, like pastiche work put together from a number of different sources.

B: But yeah, like, I don't think we need a full new music drop here because I don't know how often this segment is going to come up. But we basically got Antichrist Watch here.

[Music: "Anarchy In The U.K." by Sex Pistols]

B: Yeah, the Antichrist is another one of those things that is not really in the Bible. It's just, it's not. The word Antichrist appears, but it's a lowercase antichrist kind of thing, meaning people who are literally against Christ. But what we see here is really the full-on vision of a guy who comes down and is evil Jesus and has evil disciples and does evil miracles. And then Jesus has to come down and ultimately lay the smackdown on him. And...

C: Bizarro Jesus

B: It's Bizarro Jesus. Yeah. Or it's the Negaduck of Jesus. Bizarro is misunderstood. Negaduck is evil. It's Negaduck Jesus. So...

C: Why are you going to drop Negaduck Jesus on me when I've already picked a title?

B: Look, man, sometimes it's just an embarrassment of riches. What can I say? But let's see Chris, let me read you this bit here from out of the middle of the Testament of Hezekiah. This has got to be chapter 4 – see if this sounds familiar to you: "And now Hezekiah and Josab my son, these are the days of the completion of the world. After it is consummated, Beliar the great ruler, the king of this world, will descend, who has ruled it since it came into being ; yea, he will descend from his firmament in the likeness of a man, a lawless king, the slayer of his mother: who himself (even) this king Will persecute the plant which the Twelve Apostles of the Beloved have planted. Of the Twelve one will be delivered into his hands." Does that sound familiar to you? A lawless king, a slayer of his mother, and one of the 12 will be delivered into his hands?

C: That sure does sound like Nero.

B: It sure does, right? Well, considering that the beast of the apocalypse, once we get into Revelation, is almost certainly referring to Nero. This one is again here too. And so here-

C: Not a popular guy.

B: No, certainly not with Christians.

C: Certainly not with the Christians. Not really with the other Romans either, but definitely not popular.

B: Yeah, no. And so this kind of helps us date this element of the book. It gives us an idea that maybe this was written during Nero's reign and is probably contemporaneous with the revelation of John. And so that helps us get the idea that this is the earliest part of the three parts of the Ascension.

B: And so, yeah, we get this apocalypse, which kind of helps us see probably what the main point of this work is. There probably would have been disunion and disorganization within the church. And this is a reminder. It's like, "hey, man, this is endgame. Here's what's happening. We need to stay disciplined. We need to be good to go because Belial is coming in the form of this king and we got to be ready to be on the side of the Beloved when he comes back." And so, I wasn't sure. I didn't know if we were going to have a favorite verse bit at the end, but I got to do this now because this part is very dope from chapter four, verse eighteen, so after the reign of Belial in human form, this incarnation of Belial as the Antichrist:

B: "Then the voice of the Beloved will, in wrath, rebuke the things of heaven and the things of earth and the mountains and the hills and the cities and the desert and the forests and the angel of the sun and that of the moon, and all things wherein Beliar manifested himself and acted openly in this world, and there will be a resurrection and a judgement in their midst in those days, and the Beloved will cause fire to go forth from Him, and it will consume all the godless, and they will be as though they had not been created."

B: Dope.

C: Pretty good. Pretty exciting stuff.

B: Yeah, that's really nice stuff just name all the elements of the world: the mountains and the hills and the oceans and the park and the Walmarts and all the White Castles. They'll be destroyed in fire! And so yeah, then we get to the end we get the end of the testament there which is the apocalyptic bit the future, the end of the world, the Beloved versus the incarnation of Beliar. And then and then we get Isaiah's death. He gets sawed in half with a wooden saw

C: A wooden saw?

B: Yeah.

C: So not like a saw that one would use on wood but a saw made of wood?

B: Correct, yeah.

C: That does not seem like an effective tool, nor does it seem like it would be exceptionally effective for murdering someone.

B: Yeah it doesn't, and here's the thing: in one of the greek fragments of this there is an additional bit where basically they bring out an iron saw, and they try to cut him, and it won't cut him and Isaiah says "yeah you idiots that my destiny is to be cut in half by a wooden saw," and so they're like "oh okay," and then they get a wooden saw and they cut him in half.

C: Oh so he's water type.

B: Yeah, yeah, there you go. And yeah, basically he keeps prophesying up until the moment that he's split fully in half.

C: Specifically, "When isaiah was being sawn in sunder he neither cried aloud nor webbed but his lips spake with the holy spirit until he was sawn in twain."

B: "Sawn in twain." And yeah, so that's the end of the martyrdom passage and that leaves us now with the vision which, like we said, is a flashback. it flashes back to the 20th year of Hezekiah's reign. The setup is a little bit weird. Isaiah comes in and he sits on the king's bed and the king is like, "would you like a chair?" and he's like, "no thank you I'm just gonna chill here on your bed. p.s Forty of my prophet friends are here also they brought their sons."

C: "Also all of us are naked, so thanks for the offer of a chair, but I am good sitting here naked on your bed"

B: Yeah. And then while he's sitting there, he has a seizure or he has an ecstatic moment. This is where his vision begins. Like he's just sitting there on the king's bed, and then suddenly an angel comes down and takes him up through the seven heavens. And so, this is a thing that is new to the show, the concept of the seven heavens, which it's actually a thing in cosmology. It's not just, Seventh Heaven's not just the title of a popular show where the dad turned out to be a pedophile. It's not just that.

C: Yikes.

B: Truth bombs on this show only. Seven heavens's a common thing in ancient cosmology. The Jewish cosmology has it. They all have different names. I do not have them memorized. But other Mesopotamian and Middle Eastern societies also have the idea of the heavens divided into seven. The reason for that is probably related to the fact that prior to the invention of telescopes, there are seven visible heavenly bodies, right? You got the sun, the moon, and you got Venus, Mercury, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, right? Seven things. Those are also the seven things that the seven days of the week are named after, right? So that's why we have seven days of the week. And that's why they're called what they are, because it's those seven things that you can see in the sky that are not stars, except the sun is a star. But you know what I mean?

B: So you get seven heavens from that. There is one mention in canonical New Testament related to the seven heavens. Paul mentions the third heaven in the book of second Corinthians, his second epistle to the Corinthians. So we know it's there. We know it is an element of the cosmology. It's just not laid out very clearly in canon, but here it's laid out. We get very good descriptions, if very similar descriptions, of the seven heavens.

C: I mean, yeah. Basically what happens is that Isaiah goes to heaven. And first of all, a couple times they ask him for the password, which I think is amazing.

B: Yeah. What do you think God's password is?

C: I mean, it's got to have all kinds of special characters.

B: Does it? My thought is God's pretty old guy. The oldest guy there is, right? Seems pretty likely his password is password1, but there's multiple passwords, but only on the way down. That seems weird, right? Like he, they get asked, they get asked the password and like the starting in about the fourth heaven going down fourth, third, second, first, and then into the firmament, but not on the way up.There's no password. It seems like they'd be like... You would think it would be like the, the Mexican border where it's easier to get in, but much harder to get out. It seems like it would be harder to get into heaven and to ascend. And yet the password is only for the way down.

C: So that makes me think and get ready to have your mind blown. What if heaven was like a prison for God? Can I have a contract for a Vertigo book in 1996 please?

B: Yeah, we'll get on that.

C: Basically what happens is that Isaiah goes to a heaven and he's like, "wow this must be the for real heaven that must be god that's the dopest thing i've ever seen," and this angel who's with him is like, "nah man god is way cooler than that" and then they go to the next heaven and Isaiah goes, "wow that must be god because that guy's even cooler than the last guy I saw" and then this repeats four more times.

B: It does yeah so one thing I got to throw in here is that on each each level until you get to the sixth one each of the first five heavens, the setup is basically there is a throne with a lowercase-t throne on which sits a capital-T throne which is an angelic rank, and so there's a high-ranking angel sitting on a throne and then you've got other angels to the left and to the right who are worshiping this throne and the ones on the left are kind of sucky, and the ones on the right are better. But they're all together glorifying the God of the seventh heaven. So the first heaven is like that. Second heaven is like that, but the angels all together are a little bit better. The third heaven is the same, but here by the time you get to the third heaven, they're not talking about earth anymore. They don't care about earth at all by the time you get to the third one. Fourth is about the same as the third. Fifth is the same as the fourth. But the first five heavens can only kind of a little bit partially communicate with the sixth and seventh heavens. You get to the sixth heaven, which does not have a throne. And all the angels left and right are both equal in their glory. And they all praise the seventh heaven. They're all directly controlled by the seventh heaven. And here...

C: it's like the VIP. Of heaven.

B: It is, because this is the place where you can call the Trinity by name. They're actually able to say the names of the Trinity. And then you get to the seventh and that's where God lives. And so the seventh heaven is where the Trinity live and not just them, but also the righteous dead. And so we see Adam and we see Abel and we see Enoch and we see a bunch of Old Testament dudes who are up there and they're in spiritual bodies. And generally mortals cannot come in to the seventh heaven. Isaiah has special dispensation because Jesus wants him to. And so he's there. But there's also there's all these garments, meaning kind of like this spiritual, eternal heavenly bodies that will be for the righteous of Earth after the resurrection.

B: And also there's a book there that's got everything in it, literally everything. It's like the junior woodchuck guide for heaven.

C: So what are the what are the ranks of angels? Do you know off the top of your head?

B: There's nine of them. So they're in three separate spheres. So the spheres have to do with their different influence. So there's three that deal with just heavenly stuff. There's three that deal with human stuff. And so the three that deal with human stuff are angels, archangels, lowercase-a archangels, and principalities. And so those are the three like terrestrial ones. The heavenly ones are the seraphim, which we've seen, the cherubim, and then the thrones. And those are the heavenly ones.

C: So, pause, hang on. We know what seraphim look like.

B: Yeah.

C: Six wings.

B: Yeah.

C: Lots of eyes.

B: Yeah.

C: Covering up their hands and possibly ding-dangs.

B: Yes.

C: We know what cherubim look like because those are little babies.

B: Well, that's what they look like in medieval and Renaissance art. Well, Renaissance art, because they've been, they get conflated with putti, which are Italian, like cupids. And so actually in the Bible, the cherubim look way wilder than the seraphim. They have like, they have four heads, like they're the source of what the four symbols of the four evangelists are. So they have like a human head and then a bird head and then a cow head. Right. And then, but then they have flying wings. and all the wings have eyes on them. Cherubim are way weirder looking than even the seraphim.

C: Okay.

B: Yeah.

C: So what do thrones look like?

B: Thrones, it's a little unclear which, because thrones comes from a Greek term because it shows up in the New Testament, but they're associated with a Hebrew term for angels. I can't think of what it is. That means wheels. And so they're generally depicted as being wheels within wheels that are covered in gems and eyeballs.

C: Wild.

B: Yeah, angels are crazy. Angelology is weird stuff.

C: So what are the last three?

B: Do not remember. Those three are all just normal nouns. They're like dominions and something. They don't have other names. I cannot think of what they are right now.

C: I think all of those rankings are in the video game Bayonetta.

B: They probably are, yeah.

C: It should be considered apocryphal.

B: Yeah, like powers, like some of them are just called powers. I don't, yeah, I don't, I don't know. But anyway, yeah, so we've got thrones. So yeah, we've got wheels inside wheels sitting on chairs that are getting, yeah.

B: Anyway, so yeah, Seventh Heaven. It's where the righteous are. They're chilling. They're ready to be the army of the beloved. They're going to be his army when he goes down to storm... Hell, that's right. It's Hellwatch.

[Music: "Runnin' with the Devil" by Van Halen]

B: So we get Sheol mentioned a few more times, but the really interesting distinction that we get here is when we get this prophecy of the Beloved being incarnate and then being crucified and then during that time descending into hell. We see him descend into Sheol it says you'll go down there, but you will not go to Haguel. Haguel, which appears to be associated with Abaddon, which is the hell of destruction. It is where cursed evil souls go. So he goes into the waiting room, the Beetlejuice waiting room, like we talked about. And he goes down there and he grabs up all the good people that have been down there waiting, ready for the resurrection or assumption or whatever - going up to heaven - but he will not descend into this separate punitive afterlife that here is called Haguel h-a-g-u-e-l. so yeah slightly more development there. Now we definitely have a distinction between just the grave and the afterlife and then a separate place of punishment for criminal souls.

C: By the way, just so nobody is yelling at their phones right now: dominions, virtues, and powers.

B: There we go. I had two. I got two out of three. So anyway, yeah. So Isaiah meets the beloved, aka the spirit who will become Jesus. And then they travel down, they descend through the seven heavens, and Jesus shape-shifts on the way down so that none of the angels know what is happening. Once they get to the fifth heaven, he makes himself look like a fifth heaven angel, then a fourth heaven angel, third, second, first, and he transforms himself to one of the firmament Satans. And then obviously he gets to earth where he's going to be a human. And so that's where we get the passwords incorporated in.

B: And, and yeah, then we get a, we get a retelling of the life of Christ that maybe is not super familiar to people who go to church like Christmas. Yeah, so it's probably a good point to bring up. Like, if you read the vision of Isaiah, it's probably pretty easy to see why this one did not make canon. And it's because of, #VariousHeresies.

C: Yes.

B: Yeah, so the vision portion is hecka-hecka-gnostic. Elements of that include the fact that the earth and physical bodies are evil, as mentioned by the fact that Samael, the Demiurge, is in charge of them. This bit about how after Jesus's resurrection, he's on earth for 545 days instead of 40 days. That comes from Gnostic tradition. Also, generally, the idea of a preexistent Christ who comes down from the seventh heaven and then comes into a human body and then leaves at the point of the crucifixion and returns to heaven. That's a very Gnostic idea.

B: But in addition to that, we also get this docetic view of the birth of Christ. And so docetism or docEtism, some people will say, is a very early heresy that gets knocked out at the Council of Nicaea. The view is basically that Jesus is just an illusion, Michael, that there was no physical Jesus. He was a ghost the entire time like Bruce Willis. And we can see that in its depiction of the Christmas story here. And keep in mind that this is very early and probably written before Matthew and Luke, where we get the nativity narratives, right? So he didn't have those as sources to check his facts. And so that's where we get things like Mary is pregnant for two months and she doesn't know it. And then the baby just teleports out of her in a glow of light and there's no pain. And so this idea of Jesus as a ghost or a phantasm and that all of his suffering is illusion, that's what docetism is. And that's a very docetic idea. And we definitely see it represented in this version of the nativity.

B: So... and then you've also got the really weird take on the Trinity here. Like they're all there. And if you just kind of skimmed it, you'd be like, hey, God, the father, the son, the Holy Ghost are all there. Cool. Good and good. But like you obviously see the beloved, the son and the Holy Spirit worshiping God. They're below God. They're a lesser thing. And also the Holy Spirit is always, always referred to as the angel of the Holy Spirit.

C: You need to watch out talking about that because Santa Claus is going to punch you in the face, my man.

B: Oh, no.

C: You are dropping the Arian heresy on us.

B: I know. Yeah, that's true. That's what it is. It is the Arian heresy. It is Arianism for sure. And yeah, that's how you get punched by Santa Claus. But yeah, the Holy Spirit is always referred to as the angel of the Holy Spirit. And at least one or two spots is pretty clearly associated with Gabriel. And so, yeah, the son and the Holy Spirit are clearly lesser. And so this is a very skewed view of the Trinity that, you know, the Council of Nicaea would not have let fly. And so, yeah, pretty easy to see why the Ascension of Isaiah, while a compelling narrative, never going to make canon in a million years.

C: Yeah. So this is not counted as official by anyone. This is one of those like the Acts of Peter and Paul that is just right out.

B: Right. Yeah, yeah. Like it was popular and it influenced thought. But yeah, no, no one has ever included this in canon. Yeah, for sure. And yeah, I mean, you can see a lot of early church fathers talking about it. Like you can see it discussed in, I don't know, Irenaeus and Origen. They talk about it. So like it was a thing. It was a thing, but it was never canon for anybody. I don't know. You got anything else on Ascension of Isaiah? Are we ready to move on to Prayer of Manasseh?

C: No, but it is pretty wild. I will say that. Like, I'm glad that we're still going to be getting these narratives and that they are going to be very weird.

B: Yeah, that's not going to stop. We've got plenty to go. Like, even as they diminish within the canon, we've got plenty outside of canon to keep our weird meter high.

C: Yeah, letters can be a little dry. With letters, we mostly talk about who Phoebe is and whether we like Paul. With this one, we're talking about how many heads angels have.

B: Yeah, absolutely.

C: And that's fun. All right, so yeah, let's go on to the Prayer of Manasseh. It's a prayer, the end.

B: Yeah, not a whole lot to say. Yeah, so the prayer of Manasseh, originally written in Greek, first or second century BCE. It's basically read to fill in a gap from 2 Chronicles 33, where we see the death of Manasseh. So we see Manasseh converts. He repents. Here we go, 33:15: "He removed the foreign gods and the idol from the Lord’s temple, along with all the altars that he had built on the mountain of the Lord’s temple and in Jerusalem, and he threw them outside the city. He built the altar of the Lord and offered fellowship," blah, blah, blah. Then, "The rest of the events of Manasseh’s reign, along with his prayer to his God and the words of the seers who spoke to him in the name of Yahweh, the God of Israel, are written in the Records of Israel’s Kings."

B: And so someone was like, "oh, do we have that prayer?" "Oh, we don't." "Oh, we do now." "Here it is, 15 verses, Prayer of Manasseh."

B: And so I mean, I don't have much to say about it. I think it's pretty good. Like as prayers go, I mean, you got like, you got like eight verses of praise for God. Then he's confesses his sins. And then he says, he asked for forgiveness. And, but the language is pretty good.

C: The language is pretty good. I do think it's worth noting that, like you said, eight verses of praise for God. We've got five verses of supplication for pardon, two verses for confession of sins. Let's– we don't need to get into it. You know, you know.

B: You know, we all, we all know what I did.

C: We all know what I did.

B: We all know that I am weighed down with many an iron fetter. We don't need to name every link on the chain.

C: But we do– this is a very, to me, as someone who went to a Christian church in his youth, this is a very familiar prayer. Like it has the same sort of cadence as the Lord's Prayer. You talk about sinning and acknowledging your transgressions and then God's mercy and repentance.

B: Yeah, it follows a lot of that same template. Yeah, for sure. So just to talk about the canonicity of this thing, it's considered Deuterocanon in some Orthodox churches, I think not Greek churches, but in others. It's considered Apocrypha for Jews and Protestants and Catholics, but nevertheless, it's included in various editions of the Bible, usually among the Apocrypha. It's in the Vulgate. It's in the original King James Version. It was in Martin Luther's 74 book edition of the Bible, and it is found in the Ethiopian Bible. And in the Vulgate and in the Ethiopian Bible, it is just tacked on as the end of the book of 2 Chronicles. So not a whole lot to say about it, but it is worth reading. It's very short. It's 15 verses. I think it's worth a look. But it does help us get this one checked off, ticked off the list. So that's two down. Two down today. Good job.

C: So with that, I think that brings the ascension of Isaiah and the prayer of Manasseh to a close. You kind of did your reading already.

B: I did. I couldn't wait.

C: Yeah. We have a format here for a reason.

B: Yeah. And I ruined it.

C: Yeah. Does it feel good? Does it feel good to take this thing that we've worked so hard on and just ruin it right now?

B: It doesn't now. I feel terrible about it now.

C: That's what I thought. But no, that I think is the is probably the best. I jotted down a couple of notes, but they're mostly about the devil.

B: Yeah, okay.

I did write down the Ascension of Isaiah chapter 2 verse 5, which is just about witchcraft and magic just runnin' rampant. But it gets into like the specifics. But the thing I like is, "and witchcraft and magic increased and divination and auguration," fortune telling, and then "and fornication," which is thrown in there. That is not a magic. That is not– if you look in the Dungeon Master's Guide, that is not included as one of the nine schools.

B: Yeah, maybe how you do it.

C: Okay, fair, fair. All right. So that brings us to the end of the Ascension of Isaiah.

B: Yeah, man. And we'll have some of that art up. If you want to see a man getting sawed in half, we'll have that on the Tumblr. We've got some awesome quote unquote fan art from Tom Fowler.

C: Honestly, fan art in the sense that what Michelangelo did was fan art, except for we did not pay Tom.

B: Yeah, we didn't. And it is drawn in his sketchbook and not on a ceiling. But yeah, we have some very excellent art of Isaiah tossing out some screech owls and also a seraph. And so if you guys want to see some wieners on our Tumblr, this is going to be your chance.

C: Yeah, heads up. We try to keep things clean here on the podcast. You will see Isaiah full naked. Full naked. Talking about a screech owl.

B: It's canon accurate.

C: It is. He is definitely naked in canon and apocrypha.

B: Yep.

C: It occurs to me, Benito, we have never actually told people where they can find us if they like this show.

B: Why don't you go first, Chris?

C: You can find me by going to the-isb.com. That has links to Twitter and Tumblr and all that good stuff. I write a lot of comic books and I write a lot of things about comic books And I also do a bunch of different podcasts, including one that's like this, but for Sailor Moon and one that's like this, but for Xena: Warrior Princess.

B: You can find me on Twitter at Benito_Cereno. You can find me on Tumblr at Benito-Cereno, where I write about a lot of things, including the kind of things we talk about on this show, but also Latin and comic books and classic horror movies and that kind of stuff. I'm also on Instagram, Benito-Cereno, if you want to see pictures of my cat and my trip to Kings Island that I took this week. If you want to see that stuff, that's there.

B: And you can find our show Tumblr at apocrypals.tumblr.com if you want to see the different art and links to various articles that are related to the various episodes that we have done so far.

C: Next time we are together, we are going to be starting in. We're going to do all four of them in a row. None of this bouncing around from Testament to Testament. We're doing all four Gospels at a straight shot starting with Mark, the earliest chronologically.

B: Correct. The Euangelion Kata Markon we will be starting with next week. And we're going to see very interestingly what's there and what's not there.

C: As always, you can find multiple translations of the book of Mark. That's one that a lot of people have. That's one that's going to be in most things that are called the Bible that you just go to the store and buy. Going to have Mark.

B: Just walk down the street and just shout, anybody got the Gospel of Mark? and someone will probably put one in your hand.

C: I mean, look, I live in North Carolina. You live in Kentucky. So that's definitely going to happen if we do it.

B: Yeah, absolutely.

C: But yes, the Book of Mark is available at your local hotel bedside table or on BibleGateway.com. You can find the specific translation that we're using, which is the Holman Christian Standard Bible, HCSB. So check that out and be with us as we dive into the Gospels. That's going to do it for this week's episode. For Benito Cereno, I've been Chris Sims. Benito, peace be with you.

B: And also with you.

[Music: "God's Gonna Cut You Down" by Johnny Cash]