One Rinthies, Baby (Transcript)

Chris Sims: "I say to the unmarried and to widows, it is good for them, if they remain as I am. But if they do not have self-control, then they should marry, for it is better to marry than to burn with desire." Paul's letter to the Corinthians, chapter 7, verses 8 and 9.

[Music: "Modern Love" by David Bowie]

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 Sins. And the other set of footprints is here with me, the newly married, Mr. Benito Cereno. Benito, congratulations!

B: Hey, thank you very much. Yeah, for the first time, Mr. Benito Cereno, yeah. Yeah man, thanks. I appreciate it.

C: You've never been less like Paul.

B: Little less like Paul. A little less like Paul every day, I feel like.

C: In every way, a little less like Paul.

B: Every day, in every way, a little less like Paul the Apostle.

C: I mean he calls himself an apostle, but that is highly debatable.

B: Yeah, well, you know, this is kind of what kicked off the show, the discussion that Paul's an apostle the way that Captain America is a founding Avenger. But yeah man. Got married. We did the thing. It was pretty good. It was pretty good. It was pretty good.

C: Pretty good.

B: Yeah, no...

C: Pretty good. Does Sarah listen to the show because maybe she shouldn't. Or maybe you want to take another take on that one.

B: No, it's fine. Like it was it was pretty good. It was good. And actually Sarah has started listening to the show because she got her own car and now she listens to podcasts in the car, and so she has listened to some episodes of this, which was very surprising to me. 'Cause generally she does not concern herself with my creative output. So anyway, yeah, no, it was good, man. It was small, like it was very intentionally very small, like otherwise obviously I would have wanted you to be there, but I didn't want anybody to travel. I didn't want anybody to have to travel because like for the this there was no ceremony.

We just went to the courthouse, we went up to the judges' chambers, which was cool because since it was late October, her office was decorated for Halloween. And so like one of her clerks was in there and they had like a chalkboard in the shape of a casket that they wrote Just Married on and we got to hold that and there was a life-size witch that we did a bunch of selfies with. That was pretty cool.

But you know we only had four people in there for that, you know, like legal witnesses and two friends to take pictures basically and then after that we went to go have dinner later and it was like no one should have to travel to come just eat dinner with us at a place we go to most weeks anyway. Like I didn't even have any family there except for an aunt and uncle who were completely randomly in town did not even know I was getting married. They my aunt texted me on like Wednesday that week and she was like, "Hey we just happen to be in Lexington. We've got some things going on this day and this day but was wondering if you might want to get lunch on Friday," and I had to text back like, "I have a thing on Friday. You can come if you want." And so randomly I had an aunt and uncle there, but otherwise I wouldn't have had any family. And so it was just small, but it was good. We had local friends come in. We kind of packed out a restaurant and then a bar. We ate a bunch of donuts. We didn't do cake. We just got like four dozen Krispy Kreme and piled those up in a bar. It was pretty good, man. It was a good day.

C: Yeah, when I got married, I demanded people travel. Actually.

B: Yeah, that's true. Part of the thing with the real small wedding is, if I can be frank here for a second about my personal anxieties, is that we were worried that if we did have a party where we invited a bunch of people from across the country to come, no one would be willing to come to Kentucky just for our wedding. So it was a little bit easier if we just were like nip that in the bud. Nobody travel. If you can't walk to where we are, forget it. So...

C: That's good because what you really want to do is base all your major life decisions on your fears.

B: Yeah, it has worked out great so far. It's worked out really great.

C: Like my fear that one day someone would ask me something about Bible and I wouldn't know the answer, hence this podcast.

B: Yeah, look, you're bettering yourself in a way, I suppose.

C: In a way. In a way. So yeah, in honor of your wedding, we're reading the wedding book. We're reading First Corinthians.

B: We sure are. Yeah, so after a couple of episodes digging deep in the weeds of the weird and the occult and the strange, we're getting back to canon. To Pachelbel's Canon – in D. That's the song they play at weddings. Paul's first letter to the Corinthians. Well, first one that we still have. What we call his first letter to the Corinthians. The first still extant letter to the Corinthians, maybe that's how we could put that.

C: That's a lot to fit on a title page.

B: Yeah, it really is. So maybe it's better. Maybe it's better. But yeah. We got to it. Like we've done all the narrative bits of the New Testament. And honestly, all that's left now is letters and then revelation. And so we got to do these letters. Eventually, despite my strong preference for doing narrative books on this show.

C: Yeah, we just gotta get through what I assume is about 800 pages of Paul telling you to stop being so thirsty.

B: Yeah. Well here's, I don't know, maybe you might think of this as good news or nat, I don't know. If you remember in our Romans episode, we discussed how the New Testament is arranged like each section is genre, and then within the genre It's like longest to shortest basically. And so Romans is the longest letter, and then first Corinthians is after that, then 2nd Corinthians. So actually once we get past like Second Corinthians, most of these letters start getting pretty short. Like for the most part, the rest of the letters are all gonna be like six chapters or less. And so probably we're gonna have to double up, triple up once we get to some of these letters, but that's for future us to decide. Who knows? But right now, yeah, we have Corinthians, which is not mega long, sixteen chapters. Yeah, it's definitely one of the longer letters, and then of course once we get to the general epistles, the ones that are not attributed to Paul, you know, Hebrews, James, and so on, those get really short. We've definitely already covered the bulk of the New Testament.

C: Which is great because here's a fact about your boy.

B: Mm-hmm.

C: Don't like Paul.

B: Sure.

C: Paul's a lot, and I don't like him.

B: Paul. Paul is a lot.

C: And I did not know that the New Testament was mostly Paul.

B: Yeah, it's true. I mean yes, in terms of the individual books, yes, definitely. I was trying to think in terms of like actual word count, in which case I think it might be mostly Luke. But I think we talked about that in either our Acts or Luke episode.

C: Yeah, we're all we're through the Luke stuff.

B: Yeah.

C: We are literally done with Luke.

B: We are done with Luke and it's all Paul and then and then a couple of other people who had only one or two chapters worth of things to say, and then John of Patmos, which who knows when we'll do, our special live episode or whatever, who knows?

C: It's very weird to me that we have so much from Paul and so little from Peter the first Pope.

B: True. Well part of it I think is that Paul traveled around a lot more His main thing was evangelizing and going around and founding new churches and then he's writing all these letters to check up on his new churches that he's founded, where for some of the other leaders like Peter and James, that's less of a priority. So I mean Peter's got a little bit. We've got two letters that are possibly from Peter. But yeah, it's just I guess, you know, it's just in his nature. We know about Paul. He once he's into a thing, he's mega into that thing. And so he just got some really nice stationery that he was very into. And so he just he's like, what if I just rip off a couple letters here? And he just couldn't stop.

C: Yeah. You know what he's not into?

B: Um, I have an idea.

C: Let me let me ask you a question.

B: Yes.

C: Just... This is this is gonna be an easy one. This is gonna be an easy quiz. So get the Guess-o-tron 5000 ready for everyone. Simple yes or no answer. Was Paul ever horny?

B: According to Paul, no.

C: Not even once.

B: Not even once.

C: Not even once.

B: Horny: not even once. Yeah, and we know and that's how we know he's not Simon Magus. Jonathan Stewart, no matter what you keep tweeting at me, we have the horny-based evidence that Paul and Simon Magus are two distinct individuals.

C: Yeah, Simon Magus was like the first century James Brown.

B: Yeah.

[Music: "Sex Machine" by James Brown]

B: Hey Chris, guess what time it is?

C: I believe I know what time it is.

B: Yeah.

[Music: "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)" by Darlene Love]

C: It's Christmas, baby.

B: Yeah, man.

C: It's Christmas time. "The snow's coming dow-how..." I mean it's a little rainy here mostly, but yeah.

B: But yeah, so obviously there's a lot of people who are very adamant that you do not start a single Christmas thing before you see Santa Claus at the end of the Macy's parade or whatever. I don't know. Like some people would be very mad at what I've been listening to in my car the last couple days. But yeah, if we look at things from a more liturgical perspective or even from a more folkloric perspective, we're getting up to Advent. It's Advent. How do I know that it's part of the Christmas season if we include Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, if we include that bit together there. How do we know? 'Cause it is Martinmas. November eleventh was Martinmas. It's the feast of St. Martin, St. Martin of Tours, and as they say, St. Martin rides in on a white horse. Which is saying that it starts to snow around that time, or at least in times when our climate was different. Although it did snow here. I didn't stick, but we had flurries the other night.

Martinmas, St. Martin's Day. St. Martin is a very popular saint. He's got a lot of parallels with St. Nicholas in a number of ways, and in some places he's celebrated Almost the same way. Actually, like West Flanders, kids do presents on Martinmas instead of St. Nicholas Day or even Christmas. There's processionals where you have St. Martin literally riding on a white horse, although not usually an actual white horse. They usually do like more like a hobby horse kind of situation or they construct a thing where it's like, you know, the fake costume horse around your waist or whatever. And he comes in and he's followed by a group of Pelzmartel. Pelzmärtel, which are like Krampus-like dudes. They're parallel to Pelznickel, who come with St. Nicholas, right? That should make sense, so Pelznickel for St. Nicholas and Pelzmartel for St. Martin.

But yeah, St. Martin was a soldier, Roman soldier, and the most famous story about him is that he cut his cloak in half to give to a beggar who was gonna freeze to death and then he had a dream of Jesus with his cloak wrapped around his waist going, "This is St. Martin, he did it. He did what I said and he clothed me. Good job." And there's that one. But yeah, a lot of parallels with St. Martin and St. Nicholas, the way that they traveled around destroying pagan temples and that kind of stuff. One of my favorite stories that I read in grad school was the story of St. Martin and a pine tree, where he's trying to destroy the sacred pine tree, and the people say, "You can destroy it as long as we chop it down and we decide where it falls," and the idea is they're going to push it over on him. And they do that, but as it's falling towards him, he makes a sign of the cross, and then it just deflects like he's got a force field. So there's a lot of cool stories about St. Martin.

So hopefully you guys took the time to eat some goose. That's a traditional St. Martin's thing because that's also from a story that when they were gonna make him Bishop of Tours, he was so humble he didn't want to accept the position, so he went to hide in a barn, but a bunch of honking geese gave his position away and they made him bishop anyway. And so you eat a goose, I guess, in revenge or something, I don't know. But St. Martin's Day, it's a Thanksgiving-like feast in that it's kind of an end of the bounteous part of the year, right? And you're about to start the fast for Advent. And so this is kind of your last big hurrah. And so goose or beef or pig, some kind of rich meat usually you're gonna have at this time. Glühwein, which is like a mulled wine. You guys probably know what Glühwein is. Bonfires are very popular across the world. There's all sorts of different traditions, like St. Martin, like I said, is so popular that every country's got their own little tradition. But you have a big feast, bonfire, eat goose if you can. There's actually because of the fact that you're supposed to eat like a big meat meal, there's a saying, I'm gonna get it wrong because I don't have it in front of me, but it's something along the lines of "He'll have his day just like every hog has his Martinmas." With the idea that like he's gonna get what's coming to him. You know, so it's kind of the opposite of every dog has his day, right? Like every hog has his Martinmas is it's not gonna be a good day when that comes for you. So I don't know. It's a cool one, but it kind of kicks off Advent and that means it is officially Christmas. You cannot give us any lip about this, unfortunately. Let us enjoy it. St. Martin is here. St. Nicholas is coming. And then the big day. A little later after that. So anyway, yeah, that's kicking off the official holiday season as far as I'm concerned.

C: Well as you know for me it starts on All Saints Day.

B: Sure, of course.

C: 12:01.

B: Oh yeah, I mean, me too. Me too. But there are many people who are vastly anti-that. And so I'm just pointing out that you can't argue against November 11th as the official start date because St. Martin is here and he has a pack of angry furry dudes who will rip you up for giving them lip. So you just don't. Let us enjoy it. Let people enjoy what they like. That's what I say.

C: So with that, now do we want to talk to about any background here? I assume there is no debate over whether this was written by Paul. It's very Paul.

B: It's very Paul. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm sure there's somebody out there who's shouting like, "oh, this was actually" or whatever, but no, overwhelming consensus is that this is a legitimate epistle of Paul.

So yeah, Corinth. This is his letter to the church at Corinth. Corinth is a city in Greece. If you guys can like create a mental picture of Greece in your head, you know you've got the main mainland part and then you've got the second big chunk and the big chunk and the mainland part are connected by a thin strip of land. Well that thin strip of land is the Isthmus of Corinth, and that's where Corinth is. And so that places it about halfway between Athens, which is on the mainland part, and Sparta, which is down in that the big part hanging off that's called the Peloponnese there. And so Corinth is that city right there on that strip of land, right on the isthmus of Corinth.

And about 50 CE, Paul went there and founded a church. And then after that he sailed from Corinth and went on to Ephesus, which is on the western coast of Turkey. Then of course, you know, there's an epistle to the Ephesians as well. So he wrote letters to them as well. But it's about I think I want to say 180 nautical miles or something. Like if you sail from Corinth to Ephesus, it's about that much. And so he goes to Ephesus and then from there he moves on. And so that's his like second missionary journey.

Then when he begins his third missionary journey, he returns to Ephesus, and there he hears some disturbing news about the state of his church in Corinth about things like questions of idolatry and sexual immorality and that kind of stuff. And in addition to that, he gets a letter from them full of questions about how do we do church. And so this letter was probably written during his second stay in Ephesus, sometime between 53-57 CE. You can compare if you want to the life of Paul as described in Acts of the Apostles, chapters roughly 18 and 19 is going to cover the grounds of what we're looking at right here.

However, like I hinted at before, we have two canonical letters to the Corinthians, First and Second Corinthians. However, there's significant evidence within the text of the canonical letters themselves that Paul wrote at least four letters to the Corinthians and we lost half of them. This First Corinthians is at least the second letter that Paul wrote because he references an earlier letter in First Corinthians. And then Second Corinthians that we have in the New Testament is almost certainly the fourth. And so there would have been a third one in between. Neither of the lost ones are actually the third epistle to the Corinthians that we covered in our...

C: That was in Thecla.

B: That was in Paul and Thecla. Okay. Yeah. So none of those are the third letter to the Corinthians that we covered in Paul and Thecla. There's actually at least four letters to the Corinthians. We only have two of them, so we probably have the second and the fourth of those. And there's no question the canonicity, like every ancient canon list lists First Corinthians, like even the Marcionite canon, from Mars, lists, First Corinthians. So yeah, no question that this is Paul. There are actually some questions, however, about certain sections that may be interpolations that somebody later came in and was like, "hmm, what if it said this though?" And we will 100% hit those as we cover the text. So I don't feel like I need to cover those right now because we're gonna get to them and you're gonna say, "what is this nonsense?" And then I'm gonna say, "well, some people think," and that's what's gonna happen. But otherwise, yeah, pure Paul, pure canon, as canon as can be for New Testament.

C: You know, I'm really surprised to hear you talking about Paul traveling around so much and founding so many churches.

B: Are you?

C: Yeah, I wouldn't have expected him to take so many missionary positions.

B: Oh, you did it. You did it.

C: Three pointer, swish.

B: Oh yeah. Absolutely. From downtown. Very good. Alright.

C: You want to get into it? Are we just gonna go for it? Let's get it. It's it's Rinthies, baby. It's time for Rinthies.

B: Yeah, we're doing we're doing One Rinthies. Like the president, we have to call it. We can't call it First Corinthians. We gotta call it One Corinthians, Two Corinthians. That's the president said. So yeah, on this show though, Rinthies. One Rinthies. Two Rinthies. One, two, Rinthies kneel before you. That's what I said now.

C: Just go ahead now.

B: One's got diamonds in his pocket.

C: And one has never been horny.

B: Yeah.

C: What can you tell me about the a new character that appears who is if Simon Magus is Paul's arch nemesis, like the Joker. Then we are now meeting Paul's the penguin, who is Apollos.

B: Oh. Okay. I thought you were gonna talk about Sosthenes, who's mentioned here at the beginning, and I was like, "they don't have a difficult relationship." Sosthenes is just...

C: Nope,

B: You know, this is another situation where Sosthenes is the guy who's actually writing it down, right? He's the scribe, he's the amanuensis is the actual term.

C: No, I want to talk about Apollos.

B: Apollos, yeah.

C: Who Paul is like, I mean, "I don't know why people keep asking if you follow Paul or if you follow Apollos. Because we all follow the same person. I mean Apollos is wrong about a bunch of stuff and not as good as me, but I mean we're all in this together, except that dude who sucks."

B: Yeah, no, okay, so I mean obviously this part is yeah, so the overall theme of this letter basically is like "Corinth, you heckin' up so bad." And the first issue that he chooses to address is divisions within the church where people are building these factions where there's like, "oh, but I was baptized by so-and-so." And Paul is like, "this is why I don't baptize. I don't baptize people because I don't need this nonsense in my life." And yeah, Apollos is the main guy who's brought up here. Paul mentions him elsewhere. In Titus? Titus he's mentioned. I don't remember if he's in Acts or not, but yeah, so he's clearly another disciple, not an apostle, but you know, disciple or a deacon going around and baptizing. We also get Cephas mentioned several times here, which of course we know is our boy, Simon the Rock John's son.

C: Right.

B: And so he gets he gets name-dropped a few times here.

C: Now why is he called Cephas in here? And not by the name that he is mentioned everywhere else in this book that is on my desk currently.

B: Yeah, sure. I mean it that just means the rock, right? Cephas also means the rock. It's just that's the Aramaic translation rather than Peter which is the Greek. So it's the same nickname, just different languages is all. Yeah, he's addressing this division and he's like, "look, yeah, I'm not here. I didn't come to baptize because I didn't want this nonsense." But yeah, Apollos, you're right. He does come up. He must have been a major presence at Corinth as well. For Paul to keep mentioning him as often as he does. Which implies that the people of Corinth are mentioning him a lot in their letter and their questions and complaints to Paul.

C: Okay.

B: Yep, I don't know. I don't have much more for you than that. I don't know much more about Apollos. I guess I could look and let's look at Titus 3:13 and see what he says there.

C: Look, it's very much a, "hey, it doesn't matter if it's if it's Peter. If it's Apollos, if it's Paul, we were all, you know, it was none of us were crucified for your sins, except for Peter. Peter was, in fact. You know, it was Jesus. You were baptized in the name of Jesus. Also, I mean, you know, Apollos is wrong about a couple-" like he smooths it over here in Chapter one, and then takes a couple of broadside shots at the guy.

B: Yeah, that's true. So he's very positive here. Titus 3:13. "Diligently help Zenas the lawyer and Apollos on their journey, so that they will lack nothing." So, I mean clearly they're on the same side, but you're right. Yeah, it is supposed to be a message of unity. Like don't worry about who the person was that baptized you. Worry about the person in whose name you were baptized. Yeah, that's that's the lesson from that bit.

C: So we've got that. And then, well I think we get some pretty good language in here. And you and I talked about this before we started recording, but One Rinthies is very quoted.

B: Yes.

C: I'm not even gonna say it's quotable in the way that like Isaiah is quotable. It is quoted. You have heard most of this book.

B: Especially chapter 13. Like the entirety of 13 is quoted, which is of course the reason why we're doing this episode now. But we'll talk about that when we get there.

C: But there's some there's some good writing here. I really like chapter one, verse 18. "For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but it is God’s power to us who are being saved." Like Paul very much has his us-versus-them attitude in here, which, to be fair, is understandable in the mid-50s CE. Sure.

B: Yeah.

C: When this was essentially a cult.

B: Yeah. And a criminal one at that.

C: Yeah, an illegal messianic cult.

B: Yeah.

C: But it is, you know, I like the language in this.

B: Sure. "God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength."

C: Yeah, which is the recurring theme in this book, and that we've gotten so many times in going through Genesis, so many times in going through the Old Testament books, the Tanakh books, which is that God is so far above us that we cannot understand God.

B: Right.

C: So, you know, at his worst he is better than us. Which is, you know, an interesting a concept that we get over and over and that we're gonna have to eventually confront in things like Job.

B: Right.

C: Which is gonna be a real bummer of an episode.

B: Yeah, probably. One thing that Paul does to really drive home the message about how much greater God is, God and Christ are, than us is repeated use of slavery language, he uses a lot of terminology that refers to how we are the servants of Christ. And so he uses a lot of terminology and language that would be understood to refer to slaves and so the idea is that we are Christ's slave and so we need to act like it basically.

C: Yeah we got that back in Romans too and we got that with Thecla as well. Like there's a lot of, you know, like the first Romans chapter one verse one "Paul a slave of Christ called as an apostle and singled out for God's good news."

B: Right.

C: Like right at the top he is using that language.

B: Yeah, and of course this bit here, you know, he talks about how the only thing that we have worth bragging about is our connection to Christ. Like we have nothing on our own. Anything that we have that is worth boasting about comes from Christ. And so...

C: I saw that on a license plate last week.

B: Yeah.

C: I sent you a picture because I was out, I was literally driving to therapy. And I saw a license plate that said 1 COR 4 7 And I and I texted it to you because I didn't know what that was. And that is, "For who makes you so superior, what do you have that you didn't receive it? If in fact you did receive it, why do you boast as if you hadn't received it?" Which is an auspicious thing to see on your way to therapy, I assure you.

B: Yeah, that first kind of rules though, actually, like...

C: It's a good verse. You know what that verse is? You can do that verse in two words, which is stay humble, which is another license plate that exists in Durham, North Carolina.

B: Sure, nice. But, when I see Paul say, you know, "why do you boast as if you weren't given this thing?" What I think about is people standing out there chanting like, "we built this, we built this." No. You had help and you know it.

C: Yeah.

B: You're already full, you're already rich. Well, that's later. That's Paul getting getting sassy and sarcastic. But um... yeah.

C: Yeah. And then also at the end of chapter 3, towards the end of chapter 3, we have actually... I didn't even notice this. It's Corinthians 3:16, which is, "Don't you yourselves know that you are God's sanctuary and that the Spirit of God lives in you? If anyone destroys God's sanctuary, God will destroy him, for God's sanctuary is holy, and that is what you are." Which on the one hand is the... Boy, there's a lot of Corinthians in the in the film Constantine starring Keanu Reeves as DC Comics character John Constantine.

B: Yeah, it's got some extra ones. They got some extra ones in there.

C: As DC Comics character John Constantine.

B: Yeah.

C: Who is who is in the movie as John Constantine. But this I assume is the suicide as a mortal sin verse, right?

B: Yeah, I think this is the source of a lot of that. I mean there's this plus elsewhere the "your body is a temple." Right? So you've got that concept that your body is supposed to be this sacrosanct vessel for the Lord, and so as a result, yeah, you should take care of your body, and of course, yeah, suicide is a bad thing, which of course, yeah, that's the major plot point in the Keanu Reeves film, Constantine.

C: Yeah, which on the one level is like that is one part of it, but I find myself drawn much more to the part of "the spirit of God lives in you, and your body is God's sanctuary, and God's sanctuary is holy, and that is what you are." I find that very affirming, actually, as opposed to the prescriptivist way that it is usually presented to us as.

B: Right.

C: Can we talk about Paul's example of humility, which also comes in chapter four? This was almost the verse that I read at the top of the show.

B: Yeah, okay. Okay.

C: "Even now we are like the world's garbage."

B: Yeah. It's big mood. Big mood for twenty eighteen.

C: Big mood. "Up to the present hour we are both hungry and thirsty, we are poorly clothed, roughly treated, homeless. We labor working with our own hands. When we are reviled, we bless. When we are persecuted, we endure it. When we are slandered, we respond graciously. Even now we are like the world's garbage, like the dirt everyone scrapes off their sandals." Which again is a verse I have mixed feelings about.

B: Sure.

C: Because again, looking at this in the context of the time, right? Mid 50s CE: outlaw criminal cult. Outlaw offshoot in which it all leaders thus far have been put to death.

B: Right.

C: Which will include Paul eventually, after he knocks some demons out of the sky. And Simon Magus explodes into four pieces.

B: Right.

C: And all of the wives of Rome stop getting down.

B: Right.

C: But like that kind of you know, "we are the most persecuted" has existed to today.

B: Yeah, it hasn't stopped. That hasn't stopped even as they have become the majority of the world, that they have gained control of like all branches of the US government, and they're still like, oh poor, poor us. We are the world's garbage.

C: Which I think is one of the reasons that I have a hard time with Paul as someone living in 2018.

B: Right. Yeah, this is another one where like yeah, we talk about how commonly One Rinthies is quoted a lot. But just like in our Romans episode, we have to keep in mind that like this is a letter that a person wrote to a particular group addressing particular problems. Again, this is not supposed to be a generalized user manual for the universe. It's a specific letter that addresses specific problems and these things that we so constantly pull out of context, when you look at them in the greater context of what Paul was doing, what the church was doing, and then even in the surrounding chapters, suddenly a lot of these verses become transformed, especially chapter 13, of course, which the most quoted part would we'll get there soon enough. But yeah, when you look at the context of these letters, they're boy, are they just vastly transformed in their intent and their message.

C: Yeah, because the sentiment here is look, everybody hates us, but we're going to have to endure it because our concerns are beyond. Like we're the world's garbage. But the very next part is, I'm not writing this to shame you, but to warn you, because you know, like what we need to be doing is following the teachings of Christ, regardless. But there's, you know, even in the HCSB, there's a hard break, new verse, new paragraph, new header.

B: Right Just a quick linguistic note. The word garbage here is the Greek word perikatharma, which actually refers to what you shake out of a chamber pot. So that's where we're at. 2018, big mood, world's garbage.

C: Looks like the church of Corinth got some problems, according to Paul.

B: They sure do. Yeah.

C: This is this is coming up in chapter five. "Y'all too horny. Stop it!" That's chapter five.

B: There's specifically a man is living with his father's wife, and this is causing a great scandal. This is a sexual immorality that's not even tolerated among gentiles, which by the way, people at Corinth would be gentiles. So worth noting there. And oh boy, yeah. On that note, he definitely, talking about the division among the church, because there's obviously some, you know, there's some ethnically Jewish Christians as well as the many gentile Christians that would be present. And there's some divisions there about circumcision, of course, there always is. And he sure does describe the process of being uncircumcised or being like decircumcised, which

C: I have a lot of questions about that.

B: Yes. Yeah, it was apparently...

C: How do you put it back?

B: Apparently that was a thing. Like I don't know what it was. The only note I received on that was that it's very painful, which sure? Like I don't, like who knows?

C: I really want to know. A couple things that caught my eye here in chapter five though, "When you are assembled in the name of our Lord Jesus with my spirit and with the power of our Lord Jesus, turn that one," by which he means the sexually immoral, "over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh." Well, okay, Paul. Okay.

B: Yeah

C: Maybe we don't just hand people over to the devil, Paul.

B: Yeah, so if the flesh is destroyed, then his spirit is saved is the idea there. But yeah, I don't know. Let me just, let's see. "Paul declared that the assembled corporate body was capable of judging the offender in the name of their Lord, because he, as an apostle, had already rendered his legal decision as though he were present. Paul's legal perspective on this case would have supported the church body that possessed the authority of the Lord Jesus to render a decision on this sin. They had the authority to remove him from their midst for the destruction of the flesh. This may refer to physical judgments such as sickness or even death. If the person were a true believer, banishment to Satan's domain would cause misery and possibly repentance. Paul expressed hope for the guilty person's ultimate restoration with the legal phrase, so that his spirit may be saved on the appointed day of the Lord." Okay. I'm not sure how much that helps, but sure.

C: This is in chapter five. This is verse eleven. "But now I am writing you not to associate with anyone who claims to be a believer, who is sexually immoral, or greedy, or an idolater, or verbally abusive, a drunkard, or a swindler, do not even eat with such a person." And that really caught my eye. And I really wish there was someone that we could use as an example, someone who was claiming to be a believer, but was immoral and verbally abusive and greedy and a swindler, 'cause I think this language here in 1 Corinthians could really be applicable to someone if we had an example of that.

B: It seems like there should be like a really prominent example of that kind of person, and yet Nothing's coming to my mind, which is weird because I have one of the greatest memories of all time. Right?

C: It's it's so big.

B: Yeah, it's really really fine minds, the best minds on this show. And we can't think of an example. I don't know.

C: Yeah. It's huge, your mind.

B: Yeah. Huge.

C: It's very it's very good.

B: Yeah.

C: Here's a thing that I think I want to mention. One of the reasons that I wanted to do this, this show, and one of the reasons I wanted to dig into the Bible. You and I grew up in the South.

B: Right.

C: We have seen a lot of examples of weaponized scripture in our lives.

B: Absolutely.

C: And we read this, and even though we are not believers, although my wife does still believe I will be dunked in a river eventually, I do have volunteers to do the dunking. I was literally walking around downtown Durham after the convention a couple nights ago, and I was talking to Chad Bowers about the Bible. And I was approached by a homeless person asking for money, and I gave him five bucks because I couldn't justify walking around talking about Jesus and not giving this guy money because "that which you do to the least of these you also do to me."

B: Yeah, St. Martin would tell you to cut your cloak in half. Pull out your military grade Roman sword. Cut your military cloak in half. Give him half the cloak.

C: Okay, to be fair, that was Friday night and I made $9 at that con, so he got more than half of the Friday take.

B: Nice! Hey, great job.

C: But one of the reasons that we approach this show with the idea of not being jerks about this is that I'm tired of letting jerks have it.

B: Yeah.

C: You don't get to have the Bible anymore, jerks.

B: Yeah, we're taking it back. We're reclaiming it.

C: It's not yours anymore. And that includes Paul. That includes Paul, whose words these literally are. But yeah, anyway, if only we knew someone like that.

B: Yeah.

C: Unfortunately, by the time we roll into chapter six, I wrote "Yikes." And then I wrote down at the bottom of the page in much bigger letters, "YIKES," and underlined it twice.

B: Yeah, okay. Yeah, because of course we picked First Corinthians because of the relationship to weddings, which is primarily from the fact that every white person has First Corinthians chapter 13 at their wedding. I should... White Christians, sorry.

C: Did you do any did you have any Bible stuff at your wedding?

B: No, no. We just, it was completely, we were in the Judges Chambers, it was like two and a half minutes was the entire thing. There was no readings. We just did the vows. We exchanged rings. Then we took witch selfies. That was it.

C: Well, did you find, because Aiden and I also got courthouse married because neither of us is particularly religious yet, but I remember being kind of surprised at the intensity of even getting married by a judge.

B: Yeah.

C: That he did give us a little speech about, you know, the standard, you know "marriage is a contract not to be entered into lightly etc. etc." and we had to do the I Do's which I was actually not expecting and was like super emotional.

B: Yeah we did those too. Yeah we had the standard the standard vows. The richer for poorer bit we had that. Yeah.

C: But yeah, so this sure is read at a lot of weddings. Not at mine though, not at yours.

B: Yeah. But anyway, oh yeah, so I was saying, yeah, 13 at a lot of weddings, but the fact is this also is the book where he talks about marriage a lot.

C: It's rough.

B: Yeah, especially here chapter seven, or, you know, end of six through seven. Chapter seven here at the beginning is where you can see that he's switching, he's transitioning from starting with his own issues that he has with the things he's hearing out of Corinth, right? "I heard this about the sexual immorality, I heard this about divisions in the church." Now he's starting to address their letter specifically when he says, "Now in response to the matters you wrote about." And so from here until I don't know, about near the end, about chapter 15, I guess, as he switches topics from question to question, he'll say, you know, "now about marriage, this," and then he'll say, "now about eating and temples, this," "about spiritual gifts, this," right? And so from now on, for most of the rest of the letter, he's addressing their specific concerns. And so yeah, one of their big questions was about marriage. Like, do we get married? Should we or not, right? And well, as we've kind of referred to in past episodes when we talked about Paul, we talked about it in Paul and Thecla, Paul's answer is like, get married if you have to. But if you are of superior flesh and can avoid the temptation, then you can remain celibate, like your boy Paul.

C: He does literally say, "I say the following as a concession, not as a command. I wish that all people were just like me."

B: Yeah. Don't we all? Don't we all wish we were just like Paul? Yeah, so...

C: Now, here do you want to know what I wrote "yikes" about here?

B: I have a guess. Is it is it the bit about "a wife does not have the right over her own body but her husband does"?

C: That was the all-caps underlined yikes.

B: Yeah, yeah.

C: Which, to be fair, the next sentence is "in the same way a husband does not have the right over his own body, but his wife does," but still iffy territory.

B: Right, yeah. It's not purely against women. It's the idea that if you are married, then you have responsibilities to the other member of that marriage, right? You cannot just go out and do the deed with whoever because technically your body belongs to your spouse, which, okay. Not great, but not as bad as it could be, for sure. But yeah, "do not deprive one another sexually except when you agree for a time to devote yourselves to prayer." So just take some prayer breaks every now and then. Otherwise the bone zone is your area to explore.

C: You left out my favorite part of that.

B: Oh yeah?

C: Yeah, I highlighted it. This might get cut out. "Do not deprive one another sexually except when you agree for a time to devote yourselves to prayer, then come together again." That's Paul's words. Paul, not me.

B: Hey, that's that's good advice from Paul. That's good advice. He's not privileging one over the other.

C: Yeah. The other the other yikes was obviously for how anyone practicing homosexuality will not inherit the kingdom of God. That's a rough one.

B: Yeah, sure. Oh yeah, yeah, that's a bad one. Yeah I mean it's definitely one thing where we can say like Jesus never talks about homosexuality and he doesn't, but Paul does, and here's probably the key one that's gonna get quoted. When he when he lists homosexuality here, this is in this is in chapter six he lists it among a list of sexually immoral practices among idolaters, adulterers, homosexuality, then thieves, greedy people, drunkards. They're all the same, I'm guessing. Yeah, let's see. The word here is not actually homosexuality. This word refers to, he says, "don't be a bottom," actually, is what he says. It's the word that used that's referred to passive homosexual partners. Which honestly is actually what, for the Greeks especially, that's the shameful thing, right? Obviously the Greeks were pretty into two dudes to the point where like that's what the word Greek still kind of refers to that in some circles. But yeah, the thing that was shameful for the Greeks and for the Romans subsequently was being the passive partner. The idea that submission was the bad thing rather than the actual rest of the deed. I don't know. That's a whole other can of worms that we don't need to discuss, I suppose.

Anyway, my point is even the language here that Paul's using is not exactly the same concept as what we would think of today. It's still problems. It's still hecka problems. So I want to be clear about that.

Alright, yeah, so I mean plenty of stuff about marriage. The idea is that marriage is a good outlet if you need to exorcise your sexual impulses in a virtuous way. Right? So there's a lot of stuff about that. About if you're unmarried, it's better to stay unmarried. If you're widowed, stay widowed. But being widowed is the one circumstance in which it's okay to remarry. Then we have the bit about the various situations in life. This is where he talks about circumcision versus getting de-circumcised.

C: Still have a lot of questions about that.

B: Like literally, all that I have on this is that "such a man had the option to remain circumcised or become uncircumcised, that is, to undo his circumcision by undergoing a painful operation as some secular-minded Jews did in the first century, according to Josephus." So it was an actual thing that people were doing. Weird. But you know, the bodymod community's been a thing for a while, so...

C: What is the process? How do you do it though?

B: I don't know, man. Like I don't know. They...

C: Is it glue or is it needles? It's gotta be needles.

B: Feels like it's gotta be needles. And Yeah.

C: That's bad. That's a bad scene.

B: It's bad. It's a bad scene. Anyway, again, you know, it's talking about like how Christ should be the change in you, not necessarily how you need to make physical changes in your life. Lots of stuff about marriage. There's a weird thing here that reads really strange here at the end of chapter seven. "If any man thinks he's acting improperly towards his virgin, if she is past marriageable age, and so it must be, he can do what he wants, he is not sinning they can get married. But he who stands firm..." Okay. That might be talking about a father with a virgin daughter that he's giving in marriage to someone else. Maybe. This is another one where there is no circumstance in which it's not at least a little bit weird.

C: Yeah, because it sounds like it's a lot of weird, if you get what I'm saying.

B: Anyway, hey, let's move on to chapter eight. Let's talk about food offered to idols. Let's do that.

C: You should eat it. Or should you. I was very unclear on this, honestly.

B: Right, the idea that you have to understand is that sacrifices made to Greco-Roman gods, they're basically barbecues, right? You kill a bull or a pig or a ram or whatever, and the gods get the inedible portions. Thanks, Prometheus. Shout out. You burn the bones and so on for the gods. They eat that smoke. That's how gods do.

C: What if you eat the bones, like in that great advertising campaign?

B: For KFC? "I ate the bones!" Then Zeus would come with a mighty vengeance upon you?

C: Don't want that, obviously.

B: The bones are for Zeus. Actually the bones' smoke. The guys just inhale the smoke. And anyway, so then what you have left is basically... You've got a cookout. You've just cooked all this you cow meat and you gotta do something with it. So you have you have a little party, everybody eats a sacrificial animal. And so the question is, is it cool for me as a Christian to eat an animal that has been sacrificed to say Zeus or Poseidon or whomever? And Paul's answer is like, yeah man, it's cool because Poseidon's not a thing, so you're just eating a hamburger. That's pretty chill. But...

C: How many parties do you think Paul went to? And he just grabbed...

B: Very few.

C: I mean, yes, in general, very few, but like percentage-wise of the parties that were attended by St. Paul, how many of them do you think involved him like picking up a hamburger and then going, I'm gonna eat this now, 'cause Zeus is fake.

B: As like out loud, as he's taking a bite.

C: Yeah, no, like saying that too, I don't know, what's a what's a good Greek name? Agrippa. Saying that to Agrippa.

B: That's a Latin name, but I'll take it.

C: You know what I mean.

B: Yeah, sure. Yeah, exactly. He just turns to his pals, Aquila and Priscilla, and he's like, ?This doesn't count. This is not Zeus meat. This is just regular. This is regular. Zeus is not real." And then he's like, "Hey, remember that time? Remember that time when everybody thought I was the god Hermes? That was pretty cool. He's not real though. I'm real. I'm eating this hamburger."

C: Yeah.

B: But yeah, yeah. So basically his..

C: And then he tips his Fedora.

B: Yeah. Yeah. But his take on it is go ahead and eat it because it's not a thing, it's just a hamburger, unless there's somebody nearby who would be confused by this and caused to stumble.

C: So every time you go to a party, which for Paul is, I'm guessing it's Pentecost and Hanukkah and that's it.

B: Yeah, probably. Yeah.

C: Every time you do that, you gotta go, "Hey, is it cool if I eat this hamburger?"

B: "Is anybody gonna think that this is somehow dedicated to the Greek pantheon if I eat this hamburger? No? Good? We're chill? Cool." Yeah, so here it's about setting an example and not being a stumbling block to other people because one of the main issues, one of the things that's one of the main issues for the Church of Corinth is that they're having a hard time transitioning from Greco-Roman stuff into Christian stuff and those things are still getting mingled up. And one of these one of these issues is people are confused about these sacrificial meals and what they should do. And he says, "Well, as long as your conscience is clear and you know that Zeus is fake, go ahead and eat it. But if you have somebody who's struggling with this, then don't, because it'll just lead them towards something bad, you know." "If food causes my brother to fall, I will never again eat meat so that I won't cause my brother to fall." Which, you know what? Kudos, that's a good one, right? Like if what you're doing is gonna be hurtful to somebody else or cause them to feel pain, probably don't do it.

C: Well, that's the one thing that we've said that we really like about Paul, right? Because he says that in Romans too about like, hey, whatever anybody else needs to do to get through the day, let them do it. If they need to fast, if they need to do whatever, chill out.

B: Yeah.

C: So can you tell me about how some people committed sexual immorality and in a single day 23,000 people fell dead? Which is like Gettysburg levels.

B: That is a lot. Okay, I see. Alright, so we're in chapter 10. Yeah. So this is...

C: This rolls right into chapter 10.

B: This is chapter 10. This is referring back to Exodus, right? He's like, "Take this as a warning. You had the people of Israel who literally got out of Egypt, Moses was there, brought the commandments and so they all ate the same spiritual food, drank the same spiritual drink, for they drank from a spiritual rock that followed them, and that rock was Christ." Okay, very cool. But then, like, yeah, then they became idolaters, and it was bad. And yeah, 23,000 people fell dead. I guess that is a reference to Numbers. Sure. Numbers chapter 25. I don't know. This is the Israelites from the desert times. And it's just an example of how especially in that time you have the ebb and flow of the faith of the Israelites. And this is an ebb period and the destruction of 23,000 people. That's a lot. You're right. That is that is an exceptionally large number.

C: That's a town.

B: Yeah.

C: Like that's not a big town, but that's a town.

B: I mean that's...

C: Back then it's a huge town.

B: Yeah, for sure. Like right now, there are certainly counties in Kentucky that don't have that many people.

C: So what do we have next?

B: Let's see. So here we have yeah, warning against idolatry. And here he comes back to the question of eating these things. So this is considered to be this bit here, chapter 10. Well, what we were just looking at, 1 through 22, is considered to be a possible interpolation, something that somebody later came and added in, because it seems to contradict what he was saying that we were just looking at in chapter 8 about how it's chill to eat that Zeus hamburger as long as you know Zeus is fake. And so here he seems to contradict that a little bit and say like just don't eat the Zeus hamburger at all. So this is one of the places where this is considered to be a later possible later edition. Not everybody agrees with that. A lot of people think that there's unity from chapter 8 through 11. So not everybody agrees with that, but some people think that this part is a later edition.

C: I have a question for you, Benito.

B: Okay, I'm ready.

C: Do you like rules?

B: Do I like rules?

C: Yes.

B: Yes. Well I don't know that I like them. Do I have a compulsion to follow them? Yes.

C: Do you like hats?

B: Oh man. I'm not really a hat person. I and you're not really a hat person either, in my experience.

C: When I am not at minor league baseball games, I am not generally a hat person.

B: Right. Yeah, yeah.

C: I will rep my beloved Durham Bulls when I'm over at DBAP.

B: Yeah.

C: But not otherwise, no.

B: Yeah.

C: Final question in this little string of questions. How do you feel about misogyny?

B: Oh, not a fan, generally speaking.

C: Okay, because I'm gonna guess that then you are not a fan of what we get here in chapter 11, which I described in the margins of my Bible as lots of misogynist hat rules.

B: Yes, so this is one of those sections, and of which there are a few throughout, where it seems on the surface very bad, and if we dig under the surface it might still be bad, but if I don't try to present a positive spin on it, we're going to get very many tweets where people are like, actually Paul was saying this, and that's why this is good. Anyway, so...

C: Alright, please, please give me the positive spin on "So if a woman's head is not covered, her hair should be cut off. But if it is disgraceful for a woman to have her hair cut off or her head shaved, she should be covered."

B: For people who have not read, the idea is that it's sinful for a man to cover his head in prayer. It is sinful for a woman not to cover her head in prayer. That's the gist of it. This is, according to some interpretations, this is Paul reacting to another thing where people are conflating Greco-Roman worship with Christian worship and he's trying to say, stop doing this pagan stuff. And so the example there would be, this is not a reference actually to a hat, but to the Roman practice of when they would bow to pray they would pull their toga over their head in order to prevent distractions. And so because this was associated with pagan worship, a male believer would be dishonoring his true head, that is Christ, the head of the church, by covering his physical head with a toga. So that's the men half of that, arguably, right? The reason men are not supposed to cover their head is because it's too much, it's too pagan-y.

And then in the first century a woman would only speak with her head uncovered in private settings. That is true. So for example, women would sometimes lead prayer with their head uncovered at pagan clubs meeting in private homes. So Paul did not give a reason why women in the church at Corinth were uncovered. It may be that they brought into the church religious practices that paralleled habits in the pagan meetings. And he explains that a Corinthian woman's uncovered head dishonored her head. A woman who prayed or prophesied with her head uncovered was one and the same with the one having her head shaved. Which a shaved head is something that pagan women would do to dedicate their shaved hair to a god. And so again, a head uncovered mirrors this pagan practice. And so it's not so much about the gender dynamics, but rather about not mirroring pagan practices, arguably. That's that's the defense on that one.

C: Can you maybe go into some detail on chapter 11, verse 10? "This is why a woman should have a symbol of authority on her head because of the angels."

B: Mo I cannot because nobody knows what that means.

C: Right, okay, so it's not just me on that one.

B: No, no, no. So like basically everything from ten to fifteen are described as being obscure and have yielded multiple interpretations. So nobody knows exactly what verses 10 through 15 here mean. It's very confusing, and it sure is. Angels, who knows? I mean, like, do the angels...? I don't know it's an outward symbol that signified to the angels her deference to leadership. Great. I don't yeah, I don't know. It's can these are confusing, yeah.

C: Well, I'm glad that you said from 10 to 15 because First Rinthies 11:16 is m my favorite verse in the book.

B: Uh-huh.

C: But if anyone wants to argue about this, we have no other custom, nor do the churches of God.

B: Yeah, you just dismiss whatever.

C: Yeah. If you want to argue about this, sorry, no.

B: Yeah. I know you want to argue about this. Oh my Twitter app keeps crashing. Sorry. Sorry.

C: Sorry, don't @ me. Don't @ Paul.

B: Don't @ Paul.

C: Please don't @ St. Paul.

B: @TheRealApostlePaul.

C: @TheRealPaul. PaulOfficial.

B: PaulOfficial. PaulOfficialApostleRealApostleNotFake.

C: What is the bio for St. Paul's Twitter account? Because first line is like "Servant of Christ," and there's one of those vertical lines.

B: Yes.

C: And it's like "#NeverHorny."

B: Yeah.

C: What else? Any thoughts?

B: Ooh, hmm. "Real apostle, saw Jesus. Jesus he gave me a mission. Real for real. Don't listen to James."

C: "Definitely, definitely, I'm definitely more Christian than Jesus' brother, James. "

B: Yeah.

C: "Jesus' for real, for real, actual brother, but aren't we all not brothers in Christ? Check out my SoundCloud," and then there's a link.

B: And Paul is definitely a guy where his following count and his follower count are the exact same number. He follows back everyone.

C: Do you think Paul's RTs equal endorsements?

B: I think no. No, because we see that. We see in this very book, we see his RTs frequently not equaling endorsements. "Everything is permissible," he RTs at least four times and says, "No, no. Everything is permissible, but not everything is helpful." So no, RTs do not equal endorsements.

C: Of all the biblical figures we have studied in our journey through Bible, are Paul's threads the most obnoxious? I say yes.

B: Oh, one hundo. Oh yes. Paul definitely does thousand tweets. He's like, "Oh, so you're concerned about eating meat sacrificed to idols, you say? Time for some game theory."

C: Paul's RTs are not endorsements, but Paul's opinions are those of his employer, Jesus Christ.

B: Yeah, that's right. Except for like literally twice in this book where he says, "This is just me, this is not Jesus speaking, but this is Paul's opinion. So I'm not speaking from Jesus here. This is just me. Don't get married. Okay, peace." Oh boy. Paul on Twitter.

C: I can't wait for someone to start @TheRealPaul.

B: I'm sure that somebody's got a parody Paul account, right? It's got to exist. There's one for Chaucer, there's got to be one for Paul.

C: Let's see, we've got @PaulMovie, that's for Paul Apostle Movie.

B: Yeah.

C: Here is St. Paul the Apostle, which, this does appear to be Paul's Twitter account though, because it's mostly the pin tweet is a quote from Romans, and there is nothing more Paul than your pin tweet quoting you.

B: Yeah. Yeah.

C: This account is literally just quotes from Paul's letters and then this one tweet says "to live is #Christ to die is King." I think we actually found Paul's actual Twitter account.

B: Yeah, I think we found it. Good job. Good job. We did it.

C: There are tears in my eyes right now.

B: All things are possible through Christ who strengthens me, even finding Paul's Twitter account. Paul talks about the Lord's Supper and he gives the exact words that we see later, of course, in the Gospels. So there must have been a strong oral tradition on this, or else people were even using the epistles possibly as sources for the... I don't know. That doesn't sound real. But anyway, yeah, there must be a strong tradition about the exact words from the Lord's Supper because we see them here in Paul. Keep in mind that Paul's epistles are, of course, earlier than any of the gospels. Any of the canonical gospels anyway.

Chapter 12, we get into spiritual gifts, which was a thing that was always weirdly focused on in my Sunday school growing up, you know, that everybody has talents and things, but they're separate from your spiritual gifts, which are, you know things that the Holy Spirit has bestowed upon you that make it easier for you to minister to other people. And so: wisdom through the spirit. Knowledge. So here we get even Paul making the distinction between wisdom and intelligence roles. Faith, healing, and faith healing, performing of miracles, prophecy, distinguishing between spirits, different kinds of languages, and interpretations of languages, which cool, I got that last one, which makes me feel I'm a little bit the Ma-Ti of the spiritual gifts tiers, right? Because there's definitely somebody over there doing fire-based miracles, someone can control the earth, faith healing, and me, I'm over here, I'm like "Well, actually, you see, this semantic root is tied to..." yeah, that's me over there.

C: I mean look, I find that – I don't want you to think that I don't think that's impressive about you. I'm very impressed by your knowledge of language – I do not know that I would call it miraculous.

B: No yeah, knowing languages? Yeah.

C: Yeah. I mean I feel like that's like saying if you went to school and studied really hard you could learn to bi-locate and fly and carry your own decapitated head down the road.

B: It's true. And because I know somebody's gonna shout at me if I don't It's like being the Doug Ramsey there. If you don't like Ma-Ti, there, I could be the Doug Ramsey. But then we get this bit here that's another kind of commonly quoted one that I like. I mean it addresses the idea of unity and diversity coexisting. Very good message that I think can be applied in a wide scope of things. I know we keep saying like these books are not universal user manuals for existence on Earth. But at the same time, some of these things are applicable in other circumstances outside of specifically a church in the Isthmus of Corinth.

C: Only a few things though.

B: Yeah, but I like the idea that you know we're a body, not everything is supposed to be the same thing, right? If all of my parts could see, I mean, what's the point of the eyes?

C: Yeah. I actually really like the language here because it's very evocative to be like, you know, the hands should not be like I'm more useful than the eyes, and the eyes shouldn't be like I'm more useful than the hands. It's a really good way to put it.

B: It's actually the other way around, right? It's not that I'm an eye and I'm more useful than the hand, but rather I'm an eye and thus am not useful because I'm not a hand. And that's the idea that a lot of people would have. But it's like we need the eyes, we need the hands, we need the ears. And I know I frequently reference the Christian rock of my youth. And there is a song by the band Johnny Q Public called "Body Be" that addresses this exact issue. I'll probably post it on the Tumblr. Where it's like "I can't see that something's wrong if all my pieces become pieces and not all one." And yeah, so that part's cool. You know, there's individual members. You should have both unity, everyone working for a common goal, but diversity within that group, which is I think a lesson that a lot of groups today could probably take and use to their benefit.

C: I believe that is the motto of the Vulcan confederation.

B: Is it?

C: Infinite diversity in infinite combinations, man.

B: Oh, okay. Hey. Well there you go.

C: IDIC, baby.

B: Yeah. Hey let's look at chapter 13, because that's the one. That's the one everybody knows. This is the one, of course, that everybody reads at their at their wedding. Not literally everyone, but you know what I mean.

C: Yeah, neither me nor you. Nobody reads this first line though. People come in at in verse 4. Nobody starts with verse 1

B: I've been to plenty of weddings that start with verse 1. They I've been to plenty that do the whole chapter. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

C: So they just straight up they're like, "Hey, thanks for coming to witness these two people get married. Let's talk about angel language."

B: Right. Yeah, cause that...

C: What's your angel language? Mine is acts of service.

B: My Angel language is that one where he's a puppet. Yeah, so this follows up the idea of different spiritual gifts. It's like everyone's got different gifts, but even if I have the power to speak the language...

C: Sorry, I literally just got a text from my wife that says, "what are you talking about in there?" Babe, we're just talking about angel language. Love you. Do go on.

B: Okay. Yeah, so this follows on...

C: Wait, now she's in here. If you're speaking angel languages, but you don't have love, that's just noise. That's what it should say in this Bible. That's what it should say.

B: Yeah, so this follows up on the bit where he's talking about all the different spiritual gifts, right, and the diversity there and he says, "But even if I have these great powers, if I have prophecy, if I have the gift to speak to angels," right? And the idea of these angelic languages, that's where you get the these ideas of speaking in tongues, right, where you'll have at certain church services where people will suddenly start speaking gibberish and the idea is that they're speaking some kind of celestial language, an angel language or something. I'll come back to that. I wanna...

C: Have you ever been to a church where someone started speaking in tongues?

B: Yes I have. I was gonna tell this in a second, but I'll tell it now since you're bringing it up. It wasn't a church. It was it was a coffee house, and my mom was like, "Hey, there's somebody doing music at this coffee house they're gonna do some Christian music you should go check it out," so I went and it was a place where the guy was doing music and suddenly the people all around me just started going [makes garbled word sounds] when they were particularly moved by the music. And I was like, "okay, this is strange, what kind of coffee house am I in?" And then It got super dope because the guy doing the music also revealed his spiritual gift, which was the gift of prophecy. And so for each individual in the coffee house, he gave each person a prophecy, which he recorded on a cassette tape and then handed each person their cassette tape at the end of the show. And so I left this coffee house, A) with a mega weird feeling, and B) a cassette tape that possibly contained my future on it that I have not listened to in probably some twenty, twenty-five years, so who knows.

C: But you did listen to it. You have to have listened to it.

B: Not since then. I don't remember what it says on there at all. I know I left there feeling...

C: How do you not remember a prophecy that someone gives you?

B: Well, because at the time I was very mad. I was like, "This is some kind of garbage weirdo coffee house that my parents sent me to, and I don't believe that prophecy is a thing that a person can actually do. And no thank you." And so, yeah.

C: I mean look, those are very good reasons, but also how do you specifically not pop that cassette in and then be like, alright, let's take a shot at this prophesy?

B: If I had if I had that cassette tape now, I would listen to it every day. Like I would wake up, look into the mirror like Stuart Smalley and play that cassette tape in the background and be like, "you are going to fulfill the prophecy of this crazy long-haired creature man in a coffee shop."

C: What if it was just his demo?

B: Yeah, just a scratch version. Like later he did he did a studio version with actually way too much production on it. Just too many squelchy beats in there. Just like this is not appropriate for the material.

C: Okay. Alright. So yeah, now can you talk to angels? Because you just said you had the angel miracle.

B: No, no, I have the I have the interpretation of language, miracle, I'm not even the speaking one. I'm the I'm the understanding one, but no. I have not to the best of my knowledge been able to understand angelic languages, but we haven't covered any text written in Enochian yet, so who knows, maybe, it could happen.

Hey, chapter 13. Yeah, so the idea is even if you have all these gifts, if you don't have love, these gifts are worthless. And then he lays out the idea of love. And this is one of those places where putting it in context totally changes the meaning of this thing, because when you hear it at a wedding and you're like, oh, "love is patient, love is kind," you're just like, "yeah, love rules!? But really, in the context, this is like a scathing indictment of the Corinthians because he's like, "You're supposed to have love, and you don't. You're supposed to be patient, and you're not. You're supposed to be kind, but you're not. Supposed to not envy, but you do. You're not supposed to boast, but you're doing it." Right? And so this is not him saying like, "love is dope," it's more like "Corinthians suck," is really what this chapter is.

C: It's not, "love is dope." It's "Corinthians suck."

B: While we're on the topic of my ability to interpret languages in this chapter, one of the things I used to do when I was in college and grad school, when I was more finely attuned to my powers of ancient Greek, much of which have grown quite rusty. One of the things I used to like to do is try to guess the secret Greek names of Greek organizations, fraternities and sororities, because like, you know, all those Greek letter names, they're abbreviations for things. And for most of them, those are like secret names and you're not supposed to know them and you're not supposed to share them and that's part of the mystery of the group is knowing what those things are. And so I used to try and guess and so I'd meet people from those groups and I'd be like I'm just gonna guess and if I guess right you have to tell me. And I'm like don't tell me what it is, just tell me if I'm right if I guessed it. So for example, and I'm gonna blow up that spot on this podcast right now, so get ready, Greek organizations. So for example, like SAE, Sigma Alpha Epsilon, is Su Adolfos Esa, which means "you are my brother," which is a very boring thing for a fraternity to be called, but that's one. Kappa Delta, that's a sorority. That one stands for Kala Diokomen, which means "we pursue the good things." That one may not be their secret name. I think they have a separate, more secret thing that they keep. But related to this, another shorty, AOPi, Alpha Omicron Pi. stands for agape ou perpereuetai, and that's this right here, "love is not boastful" or "charity vaunteth not itself," as the King James Version says. So there you go. Ruined your secret, AOPi. I don't feel guilty about it.

C: Please don't come after me. I have never been hazed and I am not eager to start.

B: Oh, one that I've guessed on that I've never had confirmed is I feel very certain that Kappa Alpha Stands for Kalos Agathos. If somebody was in Kappa Alpha, please let me know if I'm right that Kappa Alpha stands for Kalos Agathos because I'd really like to know. It means it means "good and noble." And the reason I really think it's that is because Kalos Kai Agathos, good and noble, was the phrase that was used in like ancient Greece to refer to kind of like good ole boys, and Kappa Alpha is like the most good ole boy style fraternity that there is, which is a very high bar to clear. And so I'm really interested to see if there is that tie between the current state of that fraternity and the ancient phrase, that term of like good ole boys. And so someone let me know if Kappa Alpha does stand for Kalos Agathos. I'd really like to know.

C: So yeah, "love is patient, love is kind, love does not envy, is not boastful, is not conceited, does not act improperly, is not selfish, is not provoked, and does not keep a record of wrongs. Love finds no joy in unrighteousness, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things." Very good reason that is read at ever wedding.

B: Yeah, I mean, it's nice, it's really good language. I mean, is it at this point cliché and trite? Yes, but at one point this was incredibly powerful. It's still has power. It still has power. And then again he comes back to these spiritual gifts, right? "Prophecies will come to an end. Languages will cease. Knowledge has an endpoint. Love is the only thing that lasts forever." And then of course we get this other very quoted: "when I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put aside childish things." And that one, obviously mega quoted, even also at weddings, right, especially ones that do the full verse, the idea that you know getting married is an important step towards maturity, so that's an important one there. Here the HCSB kind of loses the iconic translation here. "For now we see indistinctly as in a mirror." And of course the famous KJV version is "We see as in a glass darkly," right? So that's that's where that comes from.

C: On the subject of, here in verse 11, "when I became a man I put aside childish things," I'm just turning my head 45 degrees to the left. And looking at my desk where I record the show and I do a little bit of my work, my job that's been my job for a decade. I have a lot of little plastic people. I have I have Captain Jean-Luc Picard.

B: Yeah.

C: I have Bruce Wayne, the Batman.

B: Mm-hmm.

C: I have, not my uncle, but he is noted Calisotan businessman Scrooge McDock.

B: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

C: I have a lead statue of Dracula.

B: Mm-hmm.

C: A pewter statue of a wizard with a hologram on a pedestal that was given to me on the occasion of my wedding.

B: Yeah, yes, yes.

C: And a stuffed Bulbasaur.

B: Nice. So

C: Also a little tiny Sailor Neptune.

B: You put away the childish things and you have kept out the adult-y things. That's seems fair.

C: I have kept out the people we can learn from. Scrooge McDuck, Captain Picard, Batman, and Dracula, and a wizard. A wedding wizard.

B: Yeah. So yeah, more behind the scenes. I record in my bedroom and so just on my end table, I don't have as many figures because I keep most of those out in another room. But on my end table, I do have a Donald Duck. Donald Duck from the current DuckTales, so he's got a smartphone, obviously.

C: Yeah, this is a Scrooge McDuck that was given to me on my 36th birthday by my wife who knows I love Scrooge McDuck.

B: Yeah, yeah. So my Donald Duck is from the same line, right? Yours is from the new DuckTales, right?

C: Yeah.

B: Next to that I have an ornament of Santa Claus towing a kayak that was given to me by my wife that she got when she took a vacation in Maine. And then next to that, I have a plastic skull that I keep next to my end table as a reminder as St. Jerome did that I need to finish the great work before I'm a skull myself. And so...

C: Memento Mori.

B: Memento Mori, indeed. And so those are the things that I have next to my bed in addition to you know, my prescriptions and things. So.

C: Are you at least a little impressed that I pulled out a proper Latin phrase?

B: I am, except I'm not surprised because you're an educated person, Chris, so, I'm not surprised at it, but good job.

C: Okay. Alright. I will follow you around whispering that into your ear like the Caesars of old.

B: Thank you. Thank you.

C: If I turn my head to the right, I got Santas, by the way, but just that was straight 45 degrees to the left.

B: All my Santa stuff is in the other room. Including and

C: Well it's Christmas time. It should all be out.

B: My Santa Stuff is out all year.

C: Of course it is. Of course it is. You know what? Mine too.

This is another one that I almost read at the top of the show, because I really do like this. This is chapter 13, verse 13. It's the last verse of the chapter. "Now these three remain faith, hope, and love, but the greatest of these is love."

B: Yeah, and of course, again, in the context of what he's talking about, that makes sense because faith and hope have expiration dates, right? Eventually, in Paul's theology, faith and hope are going to be fulfilled and we don't need them anymore because God's kingdom is gonna come, but love will continue. And so as a result, love is the greatest because it's eternal even as faith and hope find fulfillment in the promise of God's kingdom. And so that's why love, love is the greatest of all the virtues.

C: You know, it does kinda make sense that faith would not be part of the equation for Paul.

B: Yeah?

C: I mean, 'cause cause he met her on the road.

B: Yeah, it's not blind faith for Paul because he saw with his eyebones. Yeah. Yeah.

C: Those bones fell right out of his eyes, I believe, is how that went. It's been a while since we did Acts.

B: Yeah. Yeah, that's true. There's we'll get to eventually where the idea is that maybe Paul's vision was actually possibly damaged by that. But that's in another, that's a different letter.

C: Alright, so after the part that's read at your wedding, we get a lot of talk about prophecy. That does not usually come up at nuptials.

B: A lot of prophecy talk as being the superior gift. And then in the back half of 14 we get another kind of controversial part.

C: Yeah, this I've written "yikes." I've written "yikes" and underlined it. And this one just says, "yikes, my guy." Now you don't care for hats.

B: Mm-hmm.

C: How do you feel about churches?

B: Like in general, like from my personal perspective, I've had what I feel is a sufficient amount of church time.

C: I mean your concept of churches does in fact include ghosts menacing you that can be that can be kept away with contemporary Christian music.

B: Yeah.

C: So we're gonna say that's positive though.

B: Sure.

C: Now remind me, you don't care for misogyny?

B: Not my fave.

C: Ooh, then I feel like verses 33 and 34 and 35 and 36 are probably gonna be a little rough for you to get through.

B: Yeah.

C: Please put the positive spin on these, because I'm curious.

B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So let's just, real quick, "As in all the churches of the saints, the women should be silent in the churches for they are not permitted to speak, but should be submissive, as the law also says. And if they want to learn something, they should ask their own husbands at home, for it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church meeting. Did the word of God originate from you or did it come to you only?"

Yeah, this one's a little rough to spin. So on the one hand, this is the other place that people think this is a later interpolation. Specifically because 14:34 and 35 directly contradict what he said earlier in chapter 11, where he talks about women prophesying in church. And so clearly he thinks there's a role for women to play. And so some people think that this is a later interpolation where they want to say, hey, no women actually.

Or, but of course, you know, the HCSB commentary, they don't want to spin this as an actual document that has patches in it, right? Because the HCSB, the commentators are Christian and they have a vested interest in maintaining the idea that the The Bible is the inerrant word of God, and that this entire thing is by Paul, so there has to be a reasonable explanation. And so they say, "During assemblies of the church at Corinth, women were not permitted to speak in the process of evaluating prophetic utterances. For the sake of propriety and order, they were to ask their own husbands in private at home about what was spoken. These verses should not be taken as a prohibition against women speaking in church. To say otherwise contradicts Paul elsewhere," as we said in chapter eleven, verse five.

Elsewhere I read a commentary that it's possible that women were chattering during services and this... whatever. I don't... there's not a real good spin on this one, but there have been a number of possible explanations that people have used to try and soften this a little bit. But on the other hand, of course, this is a big part of why you have a significant number of churches who don't allow women ministers because women are not supposed to be speaking during the service.

C: That's a rough one, buddy.

B: It's rough. No, it's hard to defend. That is a hard one to defend. Chapter 15 talks about the resurrection and why the resurrection is an essential idea. We get more talk about resurrection bodies.

C: We did. I wrote it down. There's a header in the HCSB. There's literally "The Nature of the Resurrection Body."

B: Yeah.

C: "Foolish one! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies." That is a pretty good– that's a Doctor Doom line.

B: That is pretty Doom-y. Yeah.

C: "Not all flesh is the same flesh; there is one flesh for humans, another for animals, another for birds, and another for fish."

B: Yeah, #NotAllFlesh. #NotAllFlesh.

C: #NotAllFlesh. That's in Paul's Twitter account. "There are heavenly bodies and earthly bodies, but the splendor of the heavenly bodies is different from that of the earthly ones. There is a splendor of the sun, another of the moon, and another of the stars; for one star differs from another star in splendor. So it is with the resurrection of the dead."

B: Yeah.

C: "Brothers, I tell you this: Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, and corruption cannot inherit incorruption." That is Gnosticism.

B: It is a little bit, isn't it?

C: That's what I've learned over the course of this show.

B: Yeah.

C: See how far I've come since April?

B: I know. Hey. Yeah, good stuff. Jonathan Stewart gives you a spiritual high five across the airwaves.

C: But not a physical one.

B: Not a physical one because the flesh is corrupt, created by lesser God. All right. Yeah, and so anyway, then he's like, "send some money to Jerusalem is a good idea." And then he tells him about his plans and what he's going to do. Blah blah blah.

C: That's that's that's Paul linking to his Patreon.

B: Pretty much, yes. Yeah.

C: Please go to Kofi dot com slash St. Paul.

B: Yeah. We get references to some other dudes we know from the Bible. We see Timothy who of course, first and second Timothy are letters to Timothy from Paul. We get Apollos coming up, "I strongly urged him to come to you with the brothers, but he was not at all willing to come now." Shade, okay.

C: Yeah, yeah. Where's Apollos' letters?

B: Yeah, man. Do you think you think Paul intercepted them, threw them in the fire?

C: I mean, I don't not think that.

B: Let's see. We get Name drops for Aquila and Priscilla, who we met in Acts. They're the husband and wife tent makers. The holy kiss, of course, Christian side hug here at the end. Oh, and then we get what we were talking about, right? So Paul dictates his letters, but then occasionally he'll jump in with his own, and that's what's going on here. "This greeting is in my own hand." So this is Paul jumping in his own handwriting. What's called an autograph, not in this modern sense, but the idea that it was "graph" written "auto" by himself. Paul, "if anyone does not love the Lord, a curse be on him. Marana tha, that is Lord come."

C: And "if anyone does not love the Lord, a curse be upon him," is like the second most Paul thing in this book.

B: Yeah, it's incredible. It's incredibly Paul. And so here we get this word. Two words really. It's written as one word in the Greek. Marana tha or Maranatha gets said a lot in English. And it's used commonly for things. There's Maranatha churches throughout. It's an Aramaic phrase and because it's written in one as one word in Greek, it's difficult to determine exactly what it means, because it could be "maran atha" or it could be "marana tha", and it's related either way. So it either means "Lord come" as a command, as it's translated here in the HCSB, or it might mean "the Lord has come." But anyway, this is the only appearance of that phrase in the canonical Bible. But it is it's one of those words that gets used a lot. You might see it on the side of a church bus somewhere, Maranatha Baptist Church or something like that. And then yeah, the closing, "grace of the Lord Jesus be with you." And that's it. That's one Rinthies.

C: Oh, what a what a fun time we've had with Paul today. Benito, do you have a favorite verse out of this that we did not talk about?

B: Oh definitely my favorite one was the one from the from the license plate we already talked about, 4:7. "You didn't do anything on your own, so why do you keep bragging? You start you stupid bragger."

C: So when all is said and done, we're gonna have to determine which Bible verses we would get on our license plates.

B: Yeah, I think we can get there eventually, yeah. What about you, Chris? You have a you have a fave? I know we busted out a lot of really really good ones.

C: I do like The final exhortation of Paul, this is 16:13. Be alert, stand firm in the faith, act like a man, be strong, your every action must be done with love.

B: Yeah, that's mega good. That's a good one.

C: But if you really wanted to have something that you could put up on that picture of a mountain. That says determination under it.

B: Uh-huh.

C: Then you need to go to chapter nine, which– we didn't even talk about this. Chapter nine, Paul explains what a metaphor is to everybody. That's great.

B: Uh-huh.

C: Because they didn't know. Because Paul goes, "hey, you know when God talks about not muzzling an ox, that's not really about an ox? Do you think it's about an ox?" But chapter 9 verse 24. "Don't you know that the runners in a stadium all race, but only one receives the prize? Run in such a way to win the prize." Which is like that's on the back of his No Fear shirt.

B: Yeah, for sure.

C: The greatest of these is No Fear. The greatest of these is Big Dogs.

B: Oh.

C: Yeah, so that is that's that's One Rinthies, baby. That's First Rinthies.

B: Yep, that's one. We only have one Rinthies left. And then we got a bunch of other shorter ones that we'll get to eventually when we feel like doing letters and theology some more.

C: We've got Rinthies 2: The Eye of Braxus.

B: Yeah.

C: Actually, I guess Rinthies 2 would be Through the Portal of Time. Don't @ me.

B: Any final thoughts on that one?

C: Paul's a hard one to like. Like, I think we went it's very much what we went through with Romans, in that we have like, half of this is good stuff.

B: Yeah.

C: Half of this is good stuff, and then half of it is Paul being like, "I mean you really should listen to me. I'm Paul from the Bible."

B: Sure. And again you have, as we did with Romans, the specific issue of people in modern times pulling things out verses out of context and looking at them as if they're some kind of universal user guide to life as opposed to being a specific piece of advice to a specific church in a certain time that was having specific issues within it and so you end up with maybe some pretty sketchy behavior as a result of that. Plenty of stuff to like. Highly quotable.

Weird that the part that's actually about marriage is not the part that gets quoted at weddings. Actually not that weird considering what he says about marriage. Could you imagine? Like the someone gets up and it's like, "And now my cousin is going to do this reading from First Corinthians" and everybody's like, oh yeah, "love is patient." But then instead they're like, "only get married if you're super horny. Okay, goodbye everyone."

C: I wish everyone was like me, St. Paul. But since you cannot have the love of Christ then I suppose it is okay if you get married.

B: Yeah, yeah. Boy, that would have been something.

C: Congratulations are the meek.

B: Yeah. Congratulations, you meek. Congratulations. Alright. Yeah, anyway. Hey, yeah, so we did it. That's First Corinthians. Let's do our final exhortation, what say?

C: Yeah, what are we gonna be talking about next week? Or wait, do we do we do that before or after?

B: We usually do that first. That's okay.

C: So what are we going to be talking about next week?

B: Well, as we said at the top of the show, St. Martin has ridden in on his white horse. That means we're officially in the holiday season, and sorry if you don't like it because Holiday content for the next seven or so weeks. So get ready. Even though it's–

[Music: "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)" by Darlene Love]

B: Yeah, there it is.

C: It's Christmas, baby.

B: It is.

C: Don't fight it. It's Christmas. It's happening. So what are we doing for Christmas?

B: So we're gonna be dipping back into the Golden Legend for next week. And we're gonna read about the life of St. Nicholas. But also because we're still you, know looking at December Saints, we'll also take a quick look at the life of St. Lucy, which is fairly brief. Those two things together are actually pretty brief, so you guys can read those, but we'll have plenty of supplementary stories about St. Nicholas for next time. I understand St. Nicholas Day is the sixth, and so it seems like we're doing it a little bit early, but I promise when you see the rest of our holiday programming, it'll make sense to you. So yeah, Life of St. Nicholas, Life of St. Lucy. We'll post links to those for you guys to read. If you don't for some reason have your own copy of the Golden Legend that you can just bust off the shelf like me and Chris do.

C: If you are the kind of person who enjoys this show when we talk about eye gougings and dismemberment: good news. In fact, probably every time we talk about the Golden Legend: good news.

B: Yeah, absolutely. So yeah.

C: May I interest you in St. Sebastian?

B: Yeah, or yeah, St. Lucy, if you want to talk about eye gouging: it's happening. It's it's coming, it's coming, baby. Yeah, so that's next week.

In the meantime If you want to follow us, find us online. We've got all number of places you can find us. In fact, there's a new one. We've got a brand new place that you can find us online and follow our shenanigans thereupon. We're on Twitter now finally. We resisted it for a while and tried to just stick with #ApocryPals. Now we're officially @Apocrypals. You can find us there, follow us there.

C: Here's what happened is Twitter is a bad website and no one should use it. So if you're not on Twitter, don't get on Twitter. It's a bad website. But somebody said "@Apocrypals," and we were like, "we should probably get it before someone else gets it," and they're like "I wanna throw puppies in the sun or something," which is basically what is happening day in and day out on the bad website.

B: On the bad website, yeah. So but we are there. Please follow us there. We'll cross-post any of our other content. If you're not on Tumblr and I know increasingly every day there are fewer and fewer people on Tumblr. So if you haven't been going there for our Tumblr content, we'll be put cross-posting it on Twitter as well so you can see images, links. We'll talk about holidays as they happen. We posted about St. Martin's Day and so on. So yeah, you can find us there.

I mentioned the Tumblr. You can find us at apocrypals dot tumbler dot com. We post lots of supplemental material. We post every new episode there, links to readings, maps. We repost good Christian memes that people tag us in.

C: We actually do. There's a lot of good Christian memes that people like to tag us.

B: Every time I'm looing through Facebook and I see a religious meme or joke, I'm like, "somebody's gonna send that to us." And without fail, it happens every time. But we appreciate that. And so yeah, find us Twitter, Tumblr. Use #apocrypals when you post, or now you can just use @Apocrypals to tag us directly.

If you enjoyed the show, you want to support the show, help us keep it going, you can go to ko fi dot com, K O dash F I dot com slash apocrypals. You can find us. You can make a donation there. Just a little tip in increments of three dollars. As low as three, or we had a guy named Andrew, I won't point out his specific donation, but he gave us an incredibly generous donation recently, and we mega appreciate that. It helps us keep the show going, pays for hosting, any other resources and things that we use on this show. So we so we mega appreciate that.

If you want to help the show, you can't help can't help us monetarily. You can help us just by talking about the show online, on Twitter, in person, tell a friend, or you can leave us a rating and review on your podcast app of choice. Apple Podcasts especially is good. You can leave us five stars or you can write a quick review, doesn't have to be fancy. Those things help us be more visible. Either it helps us climb the charts or it helps us get featured or sometimes it just helps where we'll be associated with other Podcasts when people are looking like, you know, they look at a podcast and they see people who liked this one also liked that, right? Because they can look at what your history of reviews is and that kind of stuff helps the show gets seen.

C: If they're on iTunes, they're looking at Podifex, which is Francis' podcast.

B: Yeah. Podifex. Yes.

C: Which is weirdly enough, it's him reviewing every episode of Babylon 5.

B: Yeah. It's strange. He's a man of many interests. You can't put him in a bottle.

C: It's in Latin, though? So it's Babylon V?

B: Yeah.

C: Actually.

B: Anyway.

C: Is that the dumbest joke I've ever made on the show?

B: It's, it's among. It's among them. Yeah.

C: Please send in your ideas for what Pope Francis's podcast called Podifex is about.

B: And yeah, yeah. What am I forgetting? Oh yeah, hey, so yeah, if you wanna leave us a donation, that is great. But this week, if you want to do something else good with your money, some pretty wild and bad stuff has happened since our last episode. If you would like to be useful and helpful with your money in a positive way, maybe drop a few dollars to the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, a group that does such good work that they made a horrible person do a horrible thing. And I hope you can use your force of good to maybe counteract some of that. We make jokes on this show about ancient and medieval anti-Semitism, but the fact is it's very much alive and well on both the left and the right, and it's rough, it's a tough time, and we need to show support for fellow human beings, regardless of whether they're different from us or not. And Hebrew Immigrant Ant Society is good because it helps not only show support for our Jewish friends, but also shows support for a very good cause in helping people seeking asylum and that kind of stuff. So maybe drop them some help this week.

C: Absolutely. So we will be back next time with the lives of St. Nicholas and St. Lucy. I can't believe we're doing St. Lucy and St. Nicholas like we're not gonna have enough to talk about with the most popular saint in the world.

B: St. Lucy rules and also her life is only two pages long, so it'll be fine.

C: I mean yeah, that is true. I'm just saying her life is only two pages long. Nicholas is gonna take a bit.

B: Yeah, it's true. It's true.

C: Alright. Everybody, have a great week. We'll be back with St. Nicholas and St. Lucie. Happy holidays! Until then, for Benito Cereno, I've been Chris Sims. Benito, peace be with you.

B: And also, with you!

[Music: "Modern Love" by David Bowie]