Multipals 02: Aaron Higashi (transcript)

Chris Sims: Hello friends and neighbors and welcome to Apocrypals. It's the podcast where two nonbelievers read through the Bible and we try not to be jerks about it normally, but we are in a very special series, side series. We've got different episodes that we're doing. My name is Chris Sims with me as always, the other set of footprints, Benito Cereno. Benito, how are you?

Benito Cereno: I'm good, Chris. I'm doing good.

C: I've been podcasting for like 14 years.

B: Right.

C: You would think I would know how to introduce one by this point.

B: I think you're doing great.

C: Hey, thank you.

B: Hey, you're welcome. And thank you for coming along with me on this wild journey together through Bible. And now, yeah, we're doing a little series where we have a different person also come along. It's Multipals.

C: It's Multipals.

B: And yeah, we have a great guest this week. We have Dr. Aaron Higashi, another really great public facing scholar with a sizable TikTok presence. I promise not everyone we get is going to be a TikTok person.

C: I am kind of hoping we are because that's where culture is going.

B: Yeah. I mean, there are more TikTok people I'm definitely thinking about trying to get on the show. So I mean...

C: Podcasts are over, buddy.

B: Yeah.

C: I hate to say it.

B: No, no, my livelihood. Anyway. Hey, yeah. We have a great guest and you might be wondering how much Multipals is there going to be? Well, as I told editorial deacon Lucas Brown, the Multipals will continue until Chris reads the Didache. So.

C: You were so nice to me when I was doubting my ability to introduce the show. And then it's boom.

B: Look, Chris is very busy. He has a real job, unlike me, a bum.

C: But I do want to point out when we started this show, I was a full time freelancer.

B: Right.

C: Which is basically not having a real job.

B: Right. Which is I mean, that's where I'm at right now. Right. So which is why everyone needs to go subscribe to my Patreon right now.

C: Exactly. Yeah, they should. They absolutely should. However, that is no longer the case, which does mean that I have sold my time to someone else.

B: Yeah. And I'm just gently teasing you about the Didache. I came up with this idea of doing Multipals essentially to make it easier for us to get episodes out with minimal prep time for both of us involved. And because we can bring in actual experts to share their expertise. And so I hope you guys are enjoying this series. I think we have a great discussion today with Aaron. And I'm really looking forward to some of our other guests that we have lined up a couple more interviews over the next couple of months. So hope you guys are enjoying these episodes. Chris, what's going on with you? You got anything interesting?

C: Nope. All that said, let's get right into our interview with Aaron Higashi, where I will make no judgments about his appearance.

B: Yeah. OK. Yeah. We'll just ask him some questions. And who knows, maybe we'll get to some questions from our users on Discord. Maybe there's a question from Brad in the Discord, even though he laid a grievous insult on me in the War Rocket Ajax Discord. Maybe we'll have a chance to get to his question. Who knows?

C: Hang on.

B: Maybe we'll see.

C: Lucas, stop the tape. Is there drama of which I am unaware?

B: He might have strongly implied that I was engaging in Yankee behavior.

C: OK, well, that's interesting because you are from Kentucky, which I would not consider to be Yankee adjacent.

B: And also, this is the northernmost I have ever lived. I have moved north, steadily north across my lifetime, and this is as far as I've made it.

C: I will say I also moved north and I moved about as north as you can go in the country.

B: Anyway, I drank unsweet tea and he condemned me. So we'll see if maybe we get to maybe we get your question this time, Brad, because you asked a great question last time. We didn't have time for it, but maybe this time, fingers crossed.

C: You know, there was someone else who was betrayed by someone he thought was a friend.

B: Who is that?

C: Robin from the Teen Titans.

B: Yeah, yeah, that did happen. Tara, man.

C: Yeah.

B: She was a real Judas.

C: And or as I like to say, a real Brad.

B: Yeah, a real Brad, a real Brad. But anyway, hey, maybe we'll get to your question, Brad. Who knows? We are definitely recording this linearly, so I have no idea if we get to your question.

C: All right. Enough. Enough talking. Have at you.

[MUSIC: "We're Gonna Be Friends" by the White Stripes.]

B: Chris, we're back. We're here. We've got another guest. A very fine guest it is. Indeed. We've got with us today another TikTok superstar. And I promise, not everyone we're going to be talking to is a Tiktok person. It just has come out that way.

C: I'm very excited to learn how to "hit the whoa."

B: My own personal obsession: BibleTok. Right now, can't stop that biblical studies TikTok. That's just what I'm gonna be recruiing guests from, so we have another one, I'm very pleased, and you know what, I'm going to settle the controversy, Chris, and I think you'll agree with me here. I think we have the handsomest person in Bible TikTok.

A: Oh Man.

B: ...on our show, like our listeners will be able to tell as soon as you start talking what a like a soothing and comforting voice you have, extremely chill. I'm gonna shepherd people to your channel by pointing out that the handsomest man in BibleTok, and I don't think it's close, I mean.

C: Wow.

B: I'm sorry.

C: I really hope Dan doesn't listen to the show.

B: Sorry, oh now, all right, Dan is pretty...

C: Brutal.

B: All right, sorry profesor Carnahan maybe, I don't know, look, anyway, you can decide for yourself, but anyway. Today we have with us Dr. Aaron Higashi. Welcome to the show.

A: Hello. Hello. Thank you so much for having me on.

B: I hope I did not start the show by making you uncomfortable by pointing out how handsome you are.

A: No, I'm... I, I feel so... I'm beaming over here.

B: All right, excellent, and that part is true. I'm gonna get you some followers, because people need to look at your face. I mean, your content is good. The content is good. But the face is on point is what I'm saying.

A: I'm happy to know that if this doesn't work out I can start a Bible OnlyFans and be just as successful.

C: OnlyPostles.

B: So yes, thank you for joining us on the show. Just here at the top, you know for the sake of our listeners who foolishly might not be following you on TikTok or your other social medias your also on Instagram and Youtube

A: Yes sir.

B: I noticed you've been reposting your TikTok stuff on your YouTube Channel. Can you briefly, or at length if you want, I'm not your mom, can you give us a bit of backgrounds on who you are and your specialties and interests and why people should follow you on social media. Just let us know, who is Dr. Aaron Higashi? That's the question.

Aaron Higashi: That's a deep existential question. My name is Aaron Higashi. I am on social media at adhbible, TikTok and Instagram, and as you said on YouTube.

I am a professor, well not really a professor, but I'm an adjunct faculty member where I teach biblical studies and some philosophy as well. My area of emphasis is Hebrew Bible and especially in ideological criticism and contextual theology, subjects we may talk about a little bit more as this conversation unfolds.

I came to TikTok in the midst of the pandemic. First out of boredom, and then probably out of a masochistic desire to maybe try to express myself in the midst of this sort of horrifying time in our collective lives. But it seemed like kind of a fun place to spout off some hot takes about this or that topic in addition to you know, just dancing, which there used to be a lot more of and now we're seeing a bit less of. I thought it was fun. I thought to myself, you know, I get paid a very small amount of money to talk for long periods of time. I could probably talk for three minutes at a time about different things. And at the time, there wasn't a lot of Bible stuff on TikTok. So I thought maybe I could make my voice valuable over there, bringing academic biblical studies to the average person who's just sitting there scrolling through stuff.

And that's what I've been trying to do for a couple years now, making videos almost every day. I've been slacking lately, but almost every day, mainly answering questions that people have about the Bible from an academic perspective. That's what I be doing.

B: Got a lot of videos, like a lot of videos. I was scrolling through your profile last night, trying to go back and see like, what are the earliest videos? And it just kept going. Like it feels like, are you still uploading daily or?

A: Nearly daily.

B: Yeah. Okay. But it feels like you must have been keeping pretty close to a daily schedule for a while, considering how much stuff you have on there.

A: Yeah, I think I got like 600 or something videos. I'm not sure how you can see a number somewhere, but yeah, it's been almost daily for a couple years now.

B: Yeah. And there are varying lengths for anyone listening. I mean, not all of them are take up the full three minutes or do you have, I don't know. Some people have 10 minutes. Can you do 10 minute videos?

A: I used to be able to do 10 minutes and I don't think I can anymore. I'm not sure what happened to that feature. I usually do not go, I probably like 90% of mine are less than three minutes. I have a handful of 10 second videos.

B: I suspect a lot of our listeners perhaps have the ADHD, so they probably prefer that the shorter videos.

C: I honestly cannot imagine watching a 10 minute TikTok like that. You might as well have said that there are aardvarks with wings.

A: It's definitely got to be a special occasion for me to sit down for a 10 minute TikTok.

B: There are, and I won't name any one, but there are definitely some people in the circles of Bible TikTok who, when they have a video that pops up on my "for you," I have to go, I don't have time for this right now. I cannot devote a full sixth of an hour to this at the moment. I will return to it at a later time.

A: That's right. You got to pour yourself a glass of wine. You got to draw a bath.

B: Light some candles. It's an event.

A: It is.

B: Again, not going to name this, but how are you posting three or four 10 minute videos a day? How are you doing it? How are you doing it?

C: That is a prime time drama.

A: It's a gift.

B: I know you have classes to teach. I know you have academic articles to write. You can't just be arguing with people on TikTok all the time. I'm not going to name names. You might know who I mean, it might be somebody I've already said their name earlier. It's not Dan.

Anyway, okay. Okay. One thing I think that a lot of our listeners are curious about that Chris and I as, you know, dilettantes as we are in the biblical world, and so that we can't, you know, properly answer, but is the different ways that Bible can be studied at the university level. Like I feel like it's easy to assume that just because someone is an expert in, for example, biblical Hebrew, that they might also have thoughts on theology or know a great deal about material culture or the ancient near East or whatever. And sometimes there is that overlap, but it doesn't exist by necessity. Like people obviously have their own specific fields. And so that's what I wanted to ask about, like, what are the main fields of study for people who want to do deep dives into Bible? And what are the major differences between them? If that question makes sense, right? What are the different ways to approach?

A: Definitely. And I think it's something that people often get confused about on a lay level, because if you have any familiarity with Bible and with religion, you're probably encountering it all in the same place at a church or whatever religious community you happen to participate in. And so it all sort of funnels through that one spot. And so you tend to think of it as a single thing.

But on an academic level, it's broken down into several different subjects. You could be a scholar of religion and do religious studies. And this is going to take sort of a social sciences approach to the study of religious belief and practice, almost like a kind of specialized cultural anthropology or a sociological survey of the phenomenon of religion. There are people who call themselves biblical scholars who do approach the Bible from that perspective. What did ancient Israelites believe? How can we sort of best reconstruct what their religious practice was like? Those are the kind of questions that religious scholars are going to focus on.

And there are biblical scholars sort of proper or people who are focused on biblical scholarship in particular. And that's what I do. And this is less like a social science and more like a field in the humanities. It's the study of Bible as literature, the study of Bible as history and historiography, the study of Bible as sort of an art or a cultural product. So it's looking at it more from that perspective, reading the stories linguistically for their literary value, those kinds of things.

You can also be a theologian. That's different from both these other two things. Theologians begin with the assumption that God exists and then they do theology. They do their talk about God, their study of God, usually from a confessional perspective. So they're approaching the study of God as a religious person who has religious convictions. They often interact with the Bible. They may interact with some ideas from religious studies as well. But ultimately their goal is to understand the nature of God and human beings in light of their relationship with God.

And then even still further, I mean, if you want to go even farther, there's philosophy of religion, which is a field in philosophy that sort of studies the nature of God and claims about God from sort of a more abstract philosophical perspective. Like is the idea of God internally coherent? What can we say about God's attributes? How do we give philosophically precise definitions of those attributes? Can you have arguments for and against God's existence? Those kinds of questions.

So there are at least four broad academic fields involved and then they overlap with each other sometimes in obnoxious ways and sometimes in fruitful and constructive ways. But I really only do one of those and I only have read like one or two books in the other ones. You only get a PhD in one and then you just make up and pretend like you know things about the others.

B: And so, yeah, for people listening, we on this show tend to take the biblical studies approach to things, looking at the Bible as literature in a historical context and that kind of stuff. So if listeners like the way we do things on this show, if you like Aaron's approach to things on his TikTok, that would be the field that you want to do. Because I know we've got some younger listeners out there who are like, what am I going to do with my life? I'm going to model it on this podcast.

C: Please don't. Don't put that evil on me.

A: Got to aim high.

B: But also, let me say I appreciate you following my lead on just calling it Bible and not the Bible, which is what we do when we refer to biblical literature. We just call it Bible. What are we doing? We're reading Bible. Because Dan, a wonderful guest last time, would not buy into any of our bits.

C: Not good looking though.

B: Dan, fine. Dan is – he is. I love his beard. It's very – it's very – rugged...

A: It's a beautiful beard. It's a very nice beard.

B: It's a really good beard. Really dignified.

C: You drew this line that you did not have to draw. That's all I'm saying.

B: Look, it was meant to be a compliment to our current guest.

C: We only had two people on the show.

B: I didn't say of our guests. I said of biblical studies TikTok.

C: You're not wrong. Aaron, I'm not saying he's wrong. I want you to know that.

A: No, it's okay.

C: Personally, I agree.

B: He just wants everyone to know he also thinks Dan is handsome, which is fine because he is. He's got a very nice beard with very dignified patch of white on the chin. Really nice. I went on record on air saying I like Dan's beard. That's a fact.

A: You have to get lucky to get that patch of white. That patch of white is pristine.

B: It really is. It looks very scholarly. It gives him that like gravitas of like Paul in medieval art.

C: It looks like he's going to give you a quest.

B: Anyway, but yes, thank you for buying into the bit because Dan is a professional who refused to buy into any of our clown stuff that we do on this show.

C: But why are you conducting this episode like you have a real grudge against Dan McClellan?

B: I don't. I'm saying he's a great guest, but he always kept a...

C: He bought into plenty of our bits. Please continue the interview.

B: All right. Fine.

A: Consummate professional.

B: Fine. Okay. All right. Aaron, you yourself went to cemetery. A cemetery. Lord. I'm not going to say that. God help me.

A: I try to avoid it as often as possible.

B: Lucas, please take that out. Okay.

C: Leave it all in Lucas. People need to know.

A: No, leave that in. We're going to talk about vampire slaying. I was there to kill some zombies. I was ready.

B: You went to seminary. Is that correct?

A: Yes, I did.

B: Is that something you would recommend to people interested in biblical studies?

A: That would depend a lot. I mean, something that even I was told and I think it's only become more true in the past 15, 20 years since I've started thinking about what I want to do with my life. There aren't very many careers on the other side of a seminary education. It's sort of interesting. A lot of the people I've taught at a seminary in an adjunct capacity, I taught at Chicago Theological Seminary where I went to get my degree. Many of the people I was teaching are older. They're coming back for a second career. They're coming back for fun and enjoyment just to learn. I think that's a totally valid reason to come to seminary later in life as sort of just an exploration or as part of your own personal education in a topic that interests you, although it is a bit of an expensive hobby, I suppose, at that point.

But if you're going to seminary with the intention of, I want to be a professional biblical scholar or theologian, that's a difficult thing to do because there are very, very few jobs on the other side of it. So you sort of need to sit there and think very hard to yourself about what the practical dimension of that's going to look like. How are you going to pay your way through this? What are you going to do for money in the meantime? And I feel like the people I had advising me in my life said that same thing, but said it very gently. And so I would say the same thing, but say it a little bit more firmly. They're like, no, really, unless you probably have somebody else working in your house or you're sitting on a big pile of cash or something, you really ought to consider very hard whether or not this is going to be economically viable for you.

So with that sort of huge caveat put in front of it, if you want to go to seminary, if this is your vocation, if this is really what you see yourself doing, if you can't imagine your life in any other way, then by all means go and chase that dream. You just have to recognize that it is like chasing being a rock star or chasing being an actor or chasing being like a New York Times bestselling author. You have to think of it like that because the likelihood of being able to sort of make financially good on it is probably roughly the same percentage chance as these other big things.

B: Yeah, that's a great answer. And as someone who has an advanced degree in classical languages, I can understand your perspective on that. What's the saying, the saying, the joke that two types of people come out of seminary? Do you know what I'm talking about?

A: I don't, but I'm anxious to hear what the answer is.

B: I can't remember the exact wording, but it's like two types of people come out of seminary, atheists and liars, I think, or atheists and people in denial or something like that. Because it's the idea that you learn the things, you learn how the Bible sausage was made, right?

A: Yes. Yeah.

B: And for some people that's disillusioning and for the other people, the idea from that statement is of course, you have to be in some kind of denial. So I didn't know if you had a perspective on that. Actually, we'll come back to that topic later on. I was curious if you were familiar with that.

A: I'm not familiar with that. I'm familiar with the sentiment. I hear that a lot, especially on TikTok. I hear and see people who I repeat that a lot.

B: Yeah. I can't remember where I heard it was definitely somebody on TikTok, but I couldn't remember who it was. But speaking of potential career potential or directions you can take with an education in this field, you yourself have taken on the role, which is an increasingly common, but I would still say relatively rare role of being a public facing social media biblical scholar.

A: I'm trying.

B: Yeah. Like we've had you, we've had Dan. There are others who I won't mention because people will realize I was talking about their videos earlier. But what would you say are some of the rewards and challenges of being like social media Bible guy?

A: Well, I'm still pretty early on in it. So it may be the case that my sense of the pros and cons sort of changes over time. A number of things as far as the benefits, I do find it more often than not to be very fulfilling.

You know, I get messages periodically every couple of weeks or so from people who will say things like, you know, your videos have really inspired me to take another look at the Bible again, or your videos have really helped me, you know, through this difficult period of deconstruction or your videos have even on some occasions, I'm going to church for the first time in my life, I feel like I'm on the verge of some genuine conversion experience as a result of your videos.

Or even, you know, as a result of your videos, I'm no longer religious, but I feel, you know, safe and liberated from a bunch of psychological stress for the first time in my life. And I appreciate no matter what sort of destination or conclusion a person reaches, I deeply appreciate all those comments that people send me. It's very fulfilling on a personal level to get that kind of feedback from people.

It's also, I think in a sense, it's just what I do. I mean, as far as I have a calling, helping people understand the Bible in new ways, I guess that's me. And so I think there's a certain sense in which I couldn't stop myself from doing this if I wanted to. I mean, I'm going to be invested in this conversation in some way, and it just so happens that TikTok and to a certain degree also other forms of social media are just the way that I go about doing something I would be doing anyway. So it's personally fulfilling on a number of levels. It's not, as far as cons are concerned, it's not like a professionally fulfilling thing. I'm not like building up my resume or anything. I can't put TikTok videos on my CV or something like that.

B: You should try it though.

A: Maybe, maybe.

B: Worth a shot.

A: I could put this interview right here, right next to publications and stuff and see if some Ivy League school is like, well, now, now we really want him to come, you know, give him tenure immediately.

B: Yeah. Career highlights for sure.

C: Oh, he was on that Bible podcast with the scholar and the clown.

A: That one. Get him now. Exactly. Yeah.

B: As appeared in the Guardian. Come on.

A: Right. As seen in.

B: Put some respect on our own name. But yeah, yeah. I mean, you know, we can empathize with the idea of, you know, yeah, the kind of fulfillment that comes from

C: Doing a bunch of work that doesn't necessarily advance your career.

B: Yes. That is not the direction I was going, but also that's absolutely correct.

C: As two freelance comic book writers.

B: Yes, that's right. Somehow I have not converted this podcast into professional success. Somehow doing this Bible podcast has not translated to me landing a gig writing Vampirella for Dynamite Entertainment.

A: But you got time.

B: My point was I was trying to say we definitely support the ideas of democratization of knowledge and scholarship. That's one of the kind of the unspoken mission statements of this show. And so I applaud anybody who does that, who can bring academia into the day to day world of general audiences. I don't, I know we say lay people, but in this context, it sounds a little insulting, but we'll say general audiences.

A: Yeah.

B: I mean, what kind of issues do you have with pushback from commenters and stuff like that? Does that stuff bother you? You let it slide off or how has that been for you, I guess?

A: The kind of pushback that I think would trouble me a lot would be like serious academic pushback from peers. If they're like, you got this wrong in this video, here's a list of reasons why, and a list of scholars who disagree with you. That's the kind of pushback that I would fret about and need to issue corrections about and would sort of keep me up at night. I haven't gotten any of that. I think in part because there aren't a lot of people who would even be qualified to do that to begin with. It would just be like Dan and he has been kind enough not to tear apart any of my videos. He probably looks at my follower count and sees that it's not necessary to... "you can fall no farther." But that's the kind of pushback that would disturb me a lot. And I just don't get that.

I do get both from the sort of internet atheist end of things, which is like a very meme sort of reactionary atheist audience who like to post about sky wizards and stuff like that. I do get that stuff every once in a while. And I do get on the other side from very hardcore fundamentalist Theo bros who are like, they're very committed to Calvinism or to like some fundamentalist evangelicalism who will post things about me being a heretic and going to hell and stuff like this. But both that feedback on either side, it does nothing. I've been on the internet too long to care about that kind of feedback.

B: That's very admirable. Chris, tell Dr. Higashi about your Bible tattoo, please.

C: Oh, I have a Bible tattoo.

A: Wonderful.

C: I got last August, shortly after my 40th birthday. It is my, I would say one of my favorite Bible verses, definitely top five. And the Pokemon Honedge, who is a sword, an alive sword that can be your friend.

A: That's the best kind of sword.

C: Hard agree, honestly. It says no weapon formed against me shall prosper.

A: That's nice.

B: Right.

C: Which was difficult to explain to my mother. Her atheist son, after turning 40, got a Bible verse tattoo of a Pokemon.

A: Honestly, one of the most innocent midlife crises you could possibly have. I think that's well done. Well done.

C: It's also my entire calf. It's a very large tattoo.

B: So my point in asking Chris to point that out is to point out a difference between Chris and myself, which is that for Chris, while no weapon formed against him shall prosper. When it comes to me, every weapon formed against me has prospered, is prospering and will continue to prosper. And so I have to say I admire your ability to kind of let internet criticism roll off your back because I take every comment extremely personally.

A: It's hard. It's probably like, I don't know, it's probably like a sign of like mild sociopathy on my part. So I don't know if it's necessarily something like worth aspiring to. But I mean, back in when I was in like early college, I mean, like in the early 2000s and stuff, I mean, I was agnostic and I was like reading new atheist books and I was arguing with Christians and people on the internet. And I've just been doing that for so long. And I guess at this point that it just I've sort of seen it all and you develop a certain kind of skin for it, I think maybe.

B: Yeah, for sure.

C: I feel like the real turning point for me as a former angry atheist and former teenager was realizing that referring to something as a sky wizard just makes it sound awesome.

A: This is better. You're improving.

B: Yeah, you're selling me on it.

A: Right.

C: That sounds dope, actually.

A: Sign me up for the sky wizard.

B: And in fact, actually, if I'm completely honest, one of our main selling tactics on this show is to say the Bible has a lot more wizard battles in it than you think it does.

A: Not enough. I mean, yeah, it's got a lot, but it could use more.

B: Well, the good news is we also cover hagiographies and the Apocrypha, so we get as many wizard battles as we can.

A: The extra wizard...

B: The thing that's really crazy is in our first three or four episodes without intentionally doing so, each one of the texts that we covered featured a person exploding, or I guess it was a dragon exploding in additions to Daniel, but there's some kind of explosion in like the first several texts we covered. And so, yeah, that's it. It's like-

A: Michael Bay.

B: The Bible, exploding people, talking animals, wizard battles. It's not just Noah's Ark. It's not just begats. There's other stuff going on.

C: Just ask someone, hey, do you know what happens to Judas?

A: Also explodes. That's true.

B: Yeah.

C: Chris He hangs himself, right? Well, yeah, but-

B: In a different book, he explodes like, as I constantly put it, like a water balloon full of human viscera.

A: That's nice.

C: He's fully evil dead.

B: But yeah, still on the topic of TikTok communities and that kind of stuff. Are there certain, obviously, you take a different approach than Dan, and sorry to keep comparing you to Dan, but...

A: No, that's fine.

B: But he spends a lot of time doing stitches and debunking other people's claims. And you tend to be more like you answer people's questions direct and that kind of stuff. But do you find that there are certain specific misconceptions that you have to challenge over and over again or that people tend to have? For example, it hasn't happened recently, but it feels like for a stretch of time, every Bible TikToker I followed was having to deal with people claiming that the Bible does not condone slavery. And all the scholars were having to come on and say, no, it absolutely does. So like, are there other like common, you know, misconceptions and misunderstandings of the Bible and of Christianity and Judaism that you find you have to confront more often than other topics?

A: Something that I talk about a lot is contradictions in the Bible. People will be very confused, surprised, angry, defensive about the idea that there are contradictions in the Bible. This is usually part of a larger conversation about, you know, how the Bible is put together and how the Bible functions and how it's different stories compare and contrast with each other, which sometimes you want to sort of use the fancy where we talk about how the Bible is a multi-vocal text. It has many voices speaking about the same topic in a lot of different ways. And a lot of people aren't used to thinking about the Bible in its diversity. They're used to thinking about the Bible as a repository for a single set of doctrine that also happens to be whatever their doctrine is. And there's a lot of different things in academic biblical scholarship that are going to push back against that. You know, how the Bible was edited together, the different dates of compositions of different parts of the text.

From time to time, people will say, you know, they'll believe as a result of tradition that Moses wrote the first five books of the Bible or that Paul is the author of all the epistles that bear his name in the New Testament or that the gospels were written by the same people who have their names on the gospels. So there's a lot of different ways that that underlying topic of the Bible's diversity and multi-vocality comes up. I do spend a lot of time talking about that from different perspectives.

And then I think maybe because the evangelical audience is more engaged or they comment more, I end up talking about evangelical sort of approaches to the Bible a fair amount. The doctrine of inerrancy, I just recently did a video about the biblical perpiscuity, which is the idea that the Bible is very clear doctrinally. I've talked about the Chicago Statement on biblical inerrancy a couple of times, which is very influential for evangelical biblical scholars and then through them evangelicals in general.

So those are probably the topics that I see sort of circling around the most. Sometimes we talk about differences between Catholics and Protestants as far as the way that the Bible is constructed. Catholics and Protestants have a different Bible from one another and there's some misconceptions about why they have a different Bible. Usually these misconceptions are formed in a very polemical environment where everybody's trying to say like, we may have different Bibles, but mine is the right one for these reasons which are almost always just false and made up way after the fact. That's probably what I end up. But it is strange.

Now that you mention it, there really was a time when that slavery thing was, it's strange. I don't know if it's something in the algorithm or if there's something happening off social media that's driving these conversations, but I've definitely noticed on occasion where everybody on like religion/Christian/Bible TikTok will be talking about the same thing at the same time. And I don't really know where that comes from. I'd be curious.

B: Yeah, it does definitely seem like there are waves where it's like, everyone's doing videos on slavery, everyone's doing videos on homosexuality, everyone's doing videos on whatever. And so yeah, it's weird. And it's weird to think that somehow the algorithm is directing...

A: The true God,

B: Yeah, right.

C: Do you have a favorite misconception that keeps coming up despite all efforts? Because I think we have a few pet ones on this show that we like. I think we even talked about it in our last episode, but we're big fans of snakes or druids.

B: Yeah.

A: Snakes or druids.

B: That St. Patrick driving the snakes out is a secret metaphor for pagan genocide, which

A: – Oh man, I never even heard that before.

B: You never heard that?

A: No.

B: Well, good news. It's not true.

A: I am relieved. I am relieved, Aaron.

C: You go ahead and read that story. They're not shy about talking about the druids. The snakes are snakes. The druids are druids.

B: Yeah. One thing we talked about with Dan last time is how a lot of people try to view particular biblical texts or they try to read into certain biblical texts some kind of theological meaning. The snakes must be a metaphor for druids or there must be some kind of meaning behind why does Lot's wife change into a pillar of salt? The answer is a lot of times it's just an etiology. It's just a just so story, right? It's just that how the zebra got his stripes kind of story. The answer is why did Lot's wife change into a pillar of salt? Well, because that valley has a big weird rock in it and they wanted a story to explain where that big rock came from. And sometimes it's just that. And so, yeah, the same thing. It's an etiology. Why are there no snakes in Ireland? Well, obviously because St. Patrick got rid of them all. That's all it is. There's not a deeper meaning. And it makes St. Patrick look cool, which is in a lot of times that's just the most important thing. Yeah. Sometimes people are looking for deep meaning and it's just it's because it's cool. I don't know. You may disagree with that. I don't know.

A: I think that especially for some of these stories in the in the early parts of the Hebrew Bible, they often have etiological functions and trying to and you're exactly right. I mean, trying to make them play some significant role in like contemporary Christian systematic theology is just it's not going to work. It's an entirely different world. They're writing for an entirely different audience with different expectations who want answers to different kinds of things, things that are in their world then that just aren't in our world now. And so, you do a lot of violence to the text to sort of pluck these things out and then coerce them into being relevant like that for us today.

B: Yeah, for sure. This is a tangential kind of question, but like something I'm interested in that as a scholar and your answer may be no and that's fine also. But as a scholar, do you have any positions where you like differ from the majority view of scholarship? Because, you know, I feel like a lot of biblical studies people on TikTok talk about this is the overwhelming academic consensus. This is the majority view. But also I feel like there's got to be maybe something where you don't necessarily agree with the majority view. Do you have anything like that? One where you're like, no, you guys are wrong.

A: I think those kinds of things are really for like the, I'm too young. I'm too young to have anything like very strong about that. That's like an older scholars game where you can really sort of break out. I imagine there are some, there are probably not too many. I am a big proponent of what's called the neo documentary hypothesis, which is a theory about how the first five books of the Bible came together. And this, there are some significant biblical scholars who are on board with this, but it is a minority of biblical scholars. But that's so, that's kind of so parochial and specific to like, super nerds would even care at all about that sort of thing. So like people don't, even though I'm like really into it, nobody else on Tik Tok would really care about it. And nobody's going to come after me and be like, you know, why do you disagree with whatever the consensus is?

B: All right. Just going to scroll down into my questions document and cross out the question about documentary hypothesis.

A: No, no, no, you can. It's, it's, it's, it's.

C: Only super turbo nerds.

A: Only a super nerd would care that I'm invested in that rather than something else.

B: I do actually literally have a question about documentary hypothesis later, but...

C: It's fine if you don't, but I don't think we actually got your favorite misconception if you have one.

A: I don't know if this is a misconception, something that I'm very sensitive to, I guess, that I will sort of stop everything else I'm doing to try to fix is where there's implicit, sometimes explicit, but usually implicit antisemitism in people's readings of the Bible. My wife and children are Jewish. I work part-time in a synagogue. Judaism as a religion is an important part of my life, even though I am myself a Christian. And I think it's very easy for many Christians to often accidentally indulge in antisemitic readings or antisemitic characterizations of God or the way that the Bible functions or antisemitic conceptions of the relationship between Jesus and the Hebrew Bible or the New Testament and the Hebrew Bible. So I will often sort of stop in the middle of sort of thinking things to either address that via comments or to make videos about it. And I see it. But I don't have like a funny thing. You guys had such a great example of like a fun, upbeat kind of misconception. I wish I had like a fun thing that I'm like, no guys, it's not actually like that. But no, it's all serious stuff.

B: No, I mean, no, that's, I mean, don't worry.

C: Oh, don't worry. We also have a lot of bummers.

B: Yeah. I like that our upbeat example was a genocide.

A: An upbeat genocide. I don't know.

B: It's upbeat because it didn't actually happen.

A: Yes. That's always helpful.

B: The best kind of genocide is a fictional one. I mean, I think that's a great point. I think it's very easy for Christians and modern Christians to like innocently and unwittingly to fall into supersessionism and not being aware that there's like antisemitism baked into that, like not even realizing it.

A: Exactly.

B: That's a great answer.

C: For, I mean, I know obviously, but for listeners who might not know what supersessionism, I guess that Christianity supersedes Judaism.

A: Yes.

B: Yeah.

C: All right. Yeah. Like I said, I knew it all along the whole time.

A: It's not just a theology. It's also a way of sort of interpreting or thinking about the whole of the Bible from a Christian perspective. So both the Old Testament and the New Testament, it's a way of interpreting the whole thing and really just invalidating any theological significance that the Old Testament could have apart from how it's related to Jesus and the crucifixion and resurrection. So although it can be simply stated as the relationship between God and human beings sort of created through Jesus replaces the relationship between God and human beings represented in sort of the Mosaic covenant or through Judaism, it has pervasive effects on the way that we think about the Bible and theology in general.

B: Yeah, for sure. I want to change tacks a little bit because I got a topic I definitely want to hit upon here that I know our listeners want to know about and that I think you can provide a nice perspective on. Because one of the topics that you have addressed in your channel, especially recently, are some of the different approaches and categories of theology. And again, we talked about how you're a biblical studies person and not a theologian per se, but you have discussed categories of theology apart from the more generally understood systematic theologies, you've looked at contextual theologies like feminist, womanist, queer, liberation theologies and so on. And I know this is something our listeners either are interested in and would like to know more about or have not heard of and would be interested in, not even be aware that such approaches and contexts to theology might exist. Can you give us just like a basic breakdown of some of these different contextual theologies that people might want to know about that might not have heard of them before?

A: Sure. So, contextual theology in general is theology. So it's talk about God, discourse about God, the study of God's nature, but it's sort of led by or begins to do this discourse on God from the experience of particular communities, hence the contextual theology. It is a theology done with a particular social and historical context in mind. So rather than being categorized by like topic, like this aspect of God or that aspect of God or historical period, like this is a theology of the patristic period or the theology of the modern period, it's instead categorized by the social and historical experience of different groups.

So, for example, black theology, Latin American theology, Native American theology, Asian American theology, these are the kind of categories that are going to be discussed in contextual theology. And because it's specific to contexts, it doesn't attempt to be comprehensive. It doesn't attempt to give sort of a full account necessarily of who God is or a full account of sort of all Christian theological claims. It really only attempts to be useful in a very pragmatic sort of way for the spiritual life of the community that it's addressing. So black theology, for example, its primary goal is to make Christian theology usable for black people first and foremost, and other people benefit from this for sure. But its sort of highest responsibility is to the spiritual life of black communities.

And the same for these other communities, for feminist theology, it's for women and for Asian and Asian American theology, it's for people of Asian descent, for queer theology, it's people in the LGBTQ plus community. So these contextual theologies in a sense are trying to do, I guess, sort of less, they're trying to do something more specifically, and they're trying to do something more pragmatically.

And then there are a variety of these. I mean, you mentioned some of them, feminist theology, for example, emerged at sort of the same time that second wave feminism did in the 60s and 70s as an alternative to a very male dominated academic theology. And it was asking questions like, is it really the biblical text and the ancient world that is the source of contemporary patriarchy and religion? Or is that the way that we've been accustomed to interpret these texts? And how might we draw a line between what is patriarchal in the ancient context and what is patriarchal as a result of our interpretations today? And how might we then push back against misogyny and sexism that is a result of the way that we interpret the text today?

Black theology has often had the goal of trying to uplift communities of color in general and black people in particular, especially in light of segregation and a history of slavery and continued systemic racism in the United States. How do we do theology around those issues? How could Christian theology be useful to somebody who's been forced into a racial ghetto and deprived equal opportunities for education and economic life in comparison to people of other races? What kind of discourse about God emerges from that context?

I think one of the nicest things about these kinds of contextual theologies, well, first of all, they give us access to what other communities outside of our own are doing theologically, right? So, if you're coming from a white evangelical background, it can be nice to sort of hear how are other people talking about God because it's often radically different than the way that you're accustomed to. And so, it improves or sort of stretches our theological imagination and allows us to conceive and reconceive of God and the biblical text in a variety of different ways.

And so, I think there's a practical benefit for people to study it and it's also what I've had the opportunity to study from the perspective of biblical interpretation. I'm very happy that I've been able to do that. And I try and bring that, it's not well known. These categories of theology are not well known even among biblical scholars. It's sort of a minority area of interest, unfortunately. But especially for a general audience, people don't even know that there is such a thing as feminist theology or black theology or queer theology.

B: Yeah, I think you're right. And I mean, thank you for your excellent answer because yeah, I want people who listen to this show to know, right? I want to get that information out there. And so, in that same kind of line of thought, actually, you did a series of videos for Black History Month about like black biblical scholars, right? And so, I mean, I feel like most of the well-known Bible scholars are white, Chris and I, jugs of milk, and some way to try to counteract that. Who are, in your opinion, like the underrepresented black Bible scholars? Like who should we know? Who should the listeners know? Like, who are the superstars of like black Bible discourse that we should all know?

A: Historically, black theology in the academy really began with the work of James Cone, in particular, his book, God of the Oppressed. So if you wanted to sort of start to think about the trajectory of black theology, James Cone's God of the Oppressed would be a good place to start to sort of see what black liberation theology is like. James Cone is not with us anymore, but there are plenty of other, I mean, that's one of the reasons why I put together that series. Many of those people in that series are still alive and producing work today. I don't know how to answer the, who is a rock star amongst these. It's a different thing.

B: Well, I just meant like, you know, who, in your opinion, should people know? Whose work should they seek out, I guess, is really what I was getting at.

A: I am particularly interested in womanist theology, which is kind of a black feminist theology. So combining that concern for both race and gender, the work of Katie Cannon, who also just recently passed away, and Dolores Williams, and Jacqueline Grant are three important names of womanist biblical scholars. I regularly recommend a book by a biblical scholar named Alan Dwight Callahan. He wrote a book called The Talking Book, which sort of traces the history of African American communities and the Bible. It's sort of like a history of the Bible and that community, and how they've sort of related to each other for the past several centuries. That's probably where I'd start. I don't want to just like throw like a thousand names out there.

B: No, you're fine. You're fine.

B: It's a bit overwhelming, but. No, that's good, man. I think that's going to be a good starting place for a lot of people who are interested in pursuing those avenues. So thank you.

A: If you're really interested in contextual theology, the recommendation I would make is a book called Liberation Theologies in the United States, edited by Stacey Floyd Thomas and Anthony Penn. That not only has a chapter length introduction to black theology in it, but also chapter length introductions to the rest of these kinds of contextual theology. And that will very quickly put you in touch with some of the biggest names in all these fields. So if you're interested in feminist theology, queer theology, Asian theology, black theology, all of these things, I would refer you to that book as a perfect place to start.

B: Great. Thank you. Thank you very much. And I will ask you at the end of the show for some other book recommendations as well. But I think that's great. This is another topic, but I think something that you can bring something of a unique perspective to. So on your channel, you consistently present the majority view of scholarship that, as you've already said, that the Bible is multivocal, the Bible is not inerrant, and also that the Bible has no inherent meaning of its own, right? That we have to take meaning from it. We have to, as Dan would say, negotiate meaning from the text. So the hosts of this show, as we say at the top, as nonbelievers, obviously we're not going to disagree with these kind of assessments. But as you said, you yourself, you're a practicing Christian, right? Methodist, is that correct?

A: Yes.

B: And as you said, you went to cemetery.

C: Lord!

B: Send me to the moon, where maybe a moon person can teach me to talk correctly.

C: I thought you did it on purpose.

B: I did not do it on purpose. I don't know what is wrong with me.

A: They are very close.

B: Yeah.

A: And time spent in one can feel like time spent in the other. They're both sacred spaces. I mean, there are a lot of reasons to mix these things up.

B: Yeah. All right. So.

A: Dan There are a lot of dead white people in both of them.

B: Okay, let me get to my actual question.

C: Excellent. Truly excellent.

B: So how do you and how can any listeners we have who might be struggling with this idea, how do you find meaning and comfort in the Bible, even when you understand it as the product of centuries of fallible human hands and minds, right? Like, if we understand it as a human document, even Chris and I as people who do not believe in the, you know, the supernatural message of the Bible, part of the idea of this show is us still finding value in it as a literary document. But like as someone who is active in the Christian religion, I mean, how do you negotiate these things? How do you kind of reconcile your academic understanding of the Bible and a more sacred or spiritual meaning?

A: In a few different ways, sort of happens on different levels. But most generally, I see the Bible as an attempt to wrestle with the idea of God, not necessarily to provide answers, but to testify to a history of attempts to sort of reign theological answers from the hard stuff of life. And because that's the general way that I see the Bible, I see a lot of continuity between it and just our contemporary experience with the lives that we live today. We too are trying to wrestle meaning in an ultimate sense from the short time that we're given in life and often through a significant amount of suffering.

So I think an emphasis on the human nature of the Bible and often the fallibility and the problematic dimensions of the Bible, to me that testifies to its reality. That's the hard real stuff that makes it valuable. Frankly, if the Bible were as like some fundamentalists imagine it to be like this divinely dictated instruction book, I honestly don't think I would find that much value in it. I don't think I would be able to relate to the God who communicates with the world in such a way. I don't think I would recognize myself in that text. But a text that is, first of all, a remarkable text insofar as it preserves such a long continuity of this wrestling, the Bible is quite special in that regard. That's inspirational to me. That inspires me to continue in a sense what the Bible has been doing for so long, to continue to wrestle, to continue to pry meaning and some measure of peace and joy out of the jaws of life as reluctant as life often is to give us that peace and joy. I sort of take it in that way generally.

As far as the academic side of things, I was not religious really when I started my academic education in Bible. It was really getting a master's degree in biblical studies that sort of pushed me to be a Christian in sort of the full adult sense of self-conscious religious belief. And I think a big part of that is because an academic education in Bible was empowering for me. I had been raised to sort of think through a variety of, you know, sort of pop culture, non-denominational evangelical churches, that the Bible is essentially a ready-made handbook of doctrines that you sort of just turn to. And as a result, all the interesting work on the Bible had already been done or never needed to be done in the first place. It was just a book that sat there as a reference text, like a dictionary that you would just turn to from time to time when you needed clarity about how this or that doctrine worked.

But through academic biblical studies, I came to discover that our knowledge of the Bible is constantly advancing. We know more about the Bible today than generations past for a variety of reasons, archaeological, historical, philosophical, theological, all sorts of different things. And as a result, I could contribute. I could contribute to this great human endeavor of trying to understand this culturally significant text. And perhaps at the end of my life, we will collectively know a little bit more about the Bible than we did at the beginning of my life because of my very small and modest contributions to that knowledge. And so, that felt very empowering for me. I said, I can do this. I can contribute to this. I can be, you know, one more building block in our sort of advancing knowledge of this field. So, the wrestling, the dimension of empowerment, both of those are very important to me. And I think both of those serve me well on a personal sort of spiritual level as well.

B: Man, all right. That is an amazing answer. Thank you very much. I hope some listeners got something out of that really great answer. With that, I would like to transition into our lightning round.

A: I'm ready. I'm ready.

B: So, these are just short questions where I'm gauging your opinion on certain possibly controversial Bible topics. You can answer in one or two words if you so choose, or you can give a more thorough answer. But let's start with this one. Does Jesus claim to be God in the text that we have, do you think, in your opinion?

A: The short answer is no. The slightly longer answer is no, but kind of, I guess. The most honest sort of straightforward answer is no. Nowhere in the gospels is out of the mouth of Jesus this statement, I am God, come. That might, for the sake of precision, need to be separated from a question, do early Christian communities understand Jesus to be God regardless? And I think the answer to that question is more likely to be some version of yes.

B: Yeah. That's kind of sort of the second half of that question, which is just that, do you think biblical authors claim that Jesus is God? Can you find textual evidence that even Paul or the evangelists specifically believe that Jesus is God rather than a vessel of divine power or something like that? Something like that. Do you think biblical authors would have claimed that Jesus was God himself and not the son of God?

A: Well, that adds sort of a further wrinkle. I mean, it depends a bit on what you mean by God. God can be so many different things. And especially in the ancient world, you can be God in degrees or in different ways. I think if you wanted to try and build a case that Jesus is God out of the text that we have today, I think the Gospel of John, in particular, the end, Thomas' confession that he addresses to Jesus, my Lord and my God, is sort of the closest out of the Gospels that you get to an explicit identification with Jesus as God.

A: And I think some of the imagery that Paul chooses to employ in Philippians, for example, or in the very end of 1st Corinthians, are the closest that you get. That's almost certainly not identical to what we sort of mean today in contemporary Christian systematic theology to Jesus being God with like the later, you know, Trinitarian theology, sort of that framework built onto it. But I do think it is beginning the work that moves in that direction.

B: Sure, makes sense. Next one. All right. United monarchy, historical reality, or political propaganda?

A: Yeah, I'm gonna go historical reality.

B: Wow, okay.

A: Some kind of united monarchy for at least a short period of time. A very qualified united monarchy. Did it look anything like the biblical narratives of, you know, the latter half of Saul's career at David and Solomon? Almost certainly not. But was there at one time a single king who claimed dominion over both northern Israel and southern Judah? I think for at least a fleeting moment, that probably was the case.

B: Okay, you're telling me you don't believe that there were rubies strewn as pebbles across the ground and people were just tripping over gold nuggets. You don't think that happened?

A: No, no, no.

B: Okay.

A: Yeah, no, it's not quite the dizzying heights of Solomon's group. But no, I think it is a much bigger conversation. It's sort of a strange thing to invent. I think it would have been easier from a polemical perspective to never have had a united monarchy, to say that they were always distinct. They were always up there, disagreeing with the way that we do things down here. That's been in their nature since the beginning. I think it's actually something of a polemical concession to admit to a united monarchy, and therefore to share some blame in how the nation split apart. So if I had to pick, I would probably land on the side of united monarchy for at least a moment. And I'd be very hesitant to say much more about what that moment looked like.

B: Okay, interesting. Interesting. Okay, one last lightning round question.

A: Sure.

B: Which you can just one or two words on this one will be fine.

A: Okay.

B: Synoptic problem. Are you a two source, four source, Farrer? Where do you land?

A: Two source from our time for just from...

B: Was there a Q? That's what I'm asking. What in your opinion? Q or no Q?

A: I think there had to be something like a Q.

B: Okay. All right. Dan landed Farrer, which I feel is a minority position. Very interesting. Also, I want to see if we can get Mark Goodacre on this show. We'll see if we can get that. Thank you for those questions.

A: Sure.

B: My last question, I did ask you if you had some book recommendations you might give to our listeners who might be interested. If you could just name off just like a couple of books for general audiences who for people who might be interested in your particular field of study.

A: The first two books I recommend are just a good academic introduction to the Old Testament and New Testament. And what I would recommend is Walter Brueggemann and Todd Linnefeldt's introduction to the Old Testament, Canon and Christian Imagination. And for the New Testament, I would recommend Bart Ehrman's New Testament, a Historical Introduction to Early Christian Writings. That would be first and foremost. If somebody was interested in thinking about how the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible is put together, which is something I talk about a lot, I would recommend Richard Elliott Friedman's Who Wrote the Bible. And then just again, to plug one more time, if somebody's interested in these contextual theologies, black theology, feminist theology, queer theology, I would recommend Liberation Theologies in the United States edited by Stacey Floyd Thomas and Anthony Penn.

B: Thank you for being on the show.

A: Thank you. It was a blasty blast.

B: Excellent discussion. Chris, do you have any final questions before we need to sign off?

C: Which Wolverine costume do you think is the best one?

B: That's a great question. Yeah. What's Wolverine's real clothes? A great question.

A: I don't have an opinion.

B: Oh man, we stumped him. All right.

C: Can we count that as a vote for the Cockrum yellow costume? Thank you so much, Aaron, for joining us on the show.

A: I feel like I dropped the ball at the very end. It's outside my area of expertise. I'll go with the scholarly consensus.

A: I'll go with the scholarly consensus if there is one on the best Wolverine costume.

B: David Well, I will say that Dan voted for the brown and tan.

A: Brown and Tan?

B: Yeah.

A: I'm going to have to go with the other one then. Whatever that is. I don't know.

B: The other one is the Yellow and Blue.

A: I'm going to be divisive.

B: It's the University of Michigan colors, yellow and blue. That's the classic one from the cartoon.

A: I like Wolverine in a kimono.

B: Great answer.

C: I have some great news.

A: That's my answer.

B: I like Wolverine as drawn by Paul Smith from his failed wedding to Mariko.

A: Perfect.

B: Thank you for such a great discussion, excellent answers. Thank you for taking your time out of your schedule to talk to us.

A: Yeah, I'm so happy to be here.

C: Thanks once again to Aaron Higashi for joining us here on the show. We hope you enjoyed it. I have been enjoying these conversations quite a bit. We hope you have. And if you have, there are perhaps some things that you could do to show that appreciation.

B: That is true. The number one thing you could do is support this show on ko-fi.com. Ko-fi.com slash apocrypals. The name of the site slash the name of the show. And you can leave individual donations. You can leave recurring donations. Those things all go to help support this show and make it possible for us to continue doing it. Thank you so much to everyone who has done that, to everyone who's become a sustaining member, as they would call it, on NPR. But also those of you who have made individual donations. Every little bit helps the show, helps us pay editorial Deacon Lucas Brown. You can help us out that way. Otherwise, if you can't help us monetarily, please help us by leaving a rating or review on whatever podcast app you use. But, you know, especially Apple Podcasts, because that's like the main one. Leave us a five star rating. Leave us just a few words of encouragement. Those also help. Otherwise, you can follow us on the social medias. We're still on Twitter for some reason. @apocrypals. We're on Tumblr.

C: Tumblr's back, baby.

B: Tumblr.com slash apocrypals. Tumblr is back. So they say. We're also on Discord, speaking of Discord. You can find the Discord invite link. Just Google apocrypals Discord. It'll come up. You'll find it. Join us there and you can do things like ask questions of our guests for MultiPals. Speaking of which, sorry, Brad, maybe next time. It's been a couple of days since we recorded the interview, so I didn't realize that was the joke. Yeah.

C: People keep...

B: Yep. It was.

C: I'm... I'm... you're mean. I'm not the mean one.

B: I did not. I did not intentionally skip Brad's question. I did fully intend to ask it this time. We did run out of time. We had a hard deadline for the end of this interview, and I actually didn't have time to get to listener questions at all, unfortunately. And I decided to use that...

C: To avenge a slight.

B: Exactly.

C: Maybe we should go back to reading Bible because I feel like you've maybe forgotten a few of the lessons that you could have learned.

B: Yeah, I've drifted from the path.

C: Each day you have moved further away from God's light.

B: So true. Anyway. Hey, join our Discord.

C: Yeah. What a great sales pitch for the Discord. Oh, my God. Like...

B: Just don't be like Brad. That's all. That's all I'm saying.

C: Hey, Brad, at this point, buddy, I'm on your side.

B: Brad knows he is my favorite member of our Discord. And so I feel like I have.

C: You don't. You didn't have to rank them.

B: I - he asked me. He asked. He's like, who's your favorite? And I said, well, obviously it's you, Brad. And then and then he betrayed me like Tara from the team Titans, who, as we all know, is in the ninth circle of hell.

C: Yes, I'm aware of that. I got that reference, even though I am merely a clown.

B: It's all clowns. Also, hey, we have merch and you can buy our merch. Use the link in the show description on the podcast app you are currently using. Or you can use the link in our pinned tweet. And speaking of, hey, somebody on Tumblr sent us a really sick design and I lost your contact information. Please reply to my message on Tumblr so we can get you properly credited because I really want to get that design up. But I don't want to do it without putting your name on it because it rules. It's from our Micah episode. It says I don't come to the temple where you work and slap the baals out of your mouth. It's very good.

C: That does sound very good.

B: It's extremely good. So, yes, I accidentally lost your contact info, please, because Tumblr doesn't have an outbox. That is a bad thing. And I have multiple times lost people's information by privately responding and forgetting to save their info. So, yes, please respond to the message I sent you so I can properly credit you. I'd love to get that design up. Also, check us out on apocryphals.wiki. You know, we've got Jemal Cole and a team of dedicated editors who are working to keep that site updated, including adding transcripts of episodes, which is great work. We get a lot of people asking for transcripts, and those are getting added steadily and slowly. Not every episode has a transcript, but quite a few do. And if you'd like to help creating transcripts of episodes, please contact Jemal on the Discord or on Twitter or via the Wiki. It has his info on the front page of the Wiki. You can contact him. If you want to support me individually, please do so by going to patreon.com slash Benito Serino. All one word. I have finished my King Arthur project. I translated the entirety of Geoffrey of Monmouth's History of the Kings of Britain all the way from the fall of Troy until past the Saxon conquest and all that stuff with King Arthur in the middle there in a large section of Merlin's Prophecies and that kind of stuff. You can get that by going to my Patreon. And I've started a new project. I'm translating the late Roman novel, The History of Apollonia's King of Tyre, which is a real pulpy melodrama about princesses and pirates and all that kind of stuff. So if you like weird adventures that are not particularly well written but fun to read, great news. Please follow me on Patreon. Chris, how can the people keep up with your adventures that include pirates, etc.?

C: You can go to the-isb.com. That is my website. It has links to everything that I do. That's pretty much it for me. I have a bunch of other podcasts that you could listen to, but none of them are about Bible. Although it does come up. In one of the podcasts, my co-host did tell me that there were no angels in the Torah and I was put in a very odd position.

B: There definitely are.

C: Don't – yep, there sure are. I'm still thinking about it. That was months ago and I'm still thinking about it. That does it. Again, thanks to Aaron Higashi. Thank you, dear listeners, for joining us. We will be back next time. Will it be Multipals? Will it be me reading the Didache? The Sean Combs Key?

B: The Sean Combs Key as it was originally known.

C: I used my better joke last time.

B: It's fine. It's all good. Far be it from us to reuse jokes.

C: Never.

B: It would never happen.

C: Hey, Roy Thomas, am I right?

B: Yeah. Yeah. Zinga.

C: All right, folks, until next time, don't forget Black Lives Matter.

B: Trans rights are human rights.

C: Abortion rights are human rights.

B: And all colors are beautiful.

C: Ha ha ha ha ha. Oh, they sure are. There's nothing I agree with more than ACAB.

B: As they say, all colors are beautiful. ACAB. Everyone remember it.

C: For Benito Cirino, I've been Chris Sims. Benito, peace be with you.

B: And also, with you.

[MUSIC: "We're Gonna Be Friends" by the White Stripes.]

B: Yeah, is that all the Apocrypals places? It seems like it is.

C: The Apocryplaces.

B: The Apocryplaces.