Bible misinformation is going viral... & scholars have thoughts

Added: 2026-06-09

[00:00:00]Dan Mlullen, thank you so much for joining me today.

[00:00:03]>> Thank you for having me. I appreciate it.

[00:00:06]>> I'm excited to talk about this book and I feel like I'm probably about a year late, but I'm going to hold it up here.

[00:00:10]The Bible says so. What we get wrong, sorry, what we get right and wrong about scriptures, most controversial issues.

[00:00:17]Um, I was really I read it all. Really enjoyed it. Um, lots of uh wonderful insights. I I love hearing you talk about all this stuff. Um, as I'm sure a lot of people do all the time in your videos. So, I was thinking about like how to interview you about this book because I know you've talked a lot about this stuff in videos, talked a lot about it in other interviews. So, I do want to touch on some of the issues, but I was also hoping we could do some of the like kind of meta conversation about biblical studies and the role of apologetics and misinformation and all that uh all that good stuff. One of the things that I wrote down quick when I saw it in the first chapter because it was really uh really poignant for me was that a lot of folks have an idea that they need to spend a lot of time figuring out what is biblical. And this idea of what is biblical, I think maybe opens us up sometimes to um potentially being vulnerable to people online praying on that kind of idea that there might be this thing that's biblical that you're not doing that you didn't know about.

[00:01:09]Can you talk about can you talk about that and how that kind of that the role that plays in people's understanding of the Bible?

[00:01:16]>> Well, I think the the idea of biblical is is problematic. one, it's not always clear exactly what people mean by that because, you know, if if by biblical you mean it's in the Bible, well, there are lots of things that are in the Bible and and I think there are things that contradict the other thing that's in the Bible. And so, uh, you can say lots of things are biblical. You can say, you know, the command to multiply and replenish the earth is biblical, but so is Paul's advocacy for celibacy. And you have a lot of different ways what is biblical might contradict what also is biblical. Some people I think I probably the majority of people when they say this is biblical they're talking about a single unified and consistent principle.

[00:01:59]In other words, this is the Bible's position on a given issue. And that, as I point out in the book, is always something that's negotiated. There's very little at all that is consistent throughout the entire Bible. And so when when people are talking about something that's bib biblical, more often than not, they're talking about something they have negotiated into the text, whether it's there and they just are using it to overrule the other things that disagree or it might not even be there at all and they're just reading it in rather arbitrarily. Um, abortion is a big one. James Terico right now is just sending Christians into conipions all over the internet right now because he said Jesus never talked about abortion.

[00:02:41]that's not a big priority for him. And everybody's just going nuts about how no, it's in there. It's in there. It's in there. No, it's not. And so, like, when people are like, well, the murder, abortion is murder. That's biblical. No, that is somebody trying to arrogate to their own position the authority of the Bible so that they can say it's biblical. Uh and so I I think people are not thinking very critically about about their their hermeneutic about their process about how they understand the the nature and the function of the Bible and the authority of the Bible.

[00:03:20]And they're just using this as kind of a rhetorical trump card >> uh for primarily online discourse, but but just public discourse in general.

[00:03:30]It's a way to say I have an inscrable authority backing me up on this. And frequently that's not remotely the case.

[00:03:38]>> It's interesting like with the Taro example, a lot of what we think of as biblical is also actually just signaling identity and belonging in a certain community and sort of like the way that we draw boundary lines as to who we are, who other people are and how how there's a disconnect between the two. Can you talk about that because it's a lot about identity more than anything, right?

[00:03:57]>> Yeah. When when people talk about these things that are biblical, frequently what they're what they're doing is towing an ideological line, there is is some kind of position that the social identities that are important to them have indicated are important to belonging to that those social identities. And so in order to signal to others that you belong and that you merit the access to power and resources that membership and that group affords, you need to be able to signal uh that endorsement of those credences. And these things can take on a life of their own as uh costly signaling as credibility enhancing displays. And so for instance, we're talking about abortion. Prior to the 1970s, this was mostly a Catholic issue. The evangelicals were kind of uh split on the issue. When Roi Wade was decided, the majority of evangelical pastors and organizational leadership that commented on it said, "This is fine. We agree with this. This ought to be between a a woman and her doctor and God and and the church shouldn't be stepping into politics this way."

[00:05:10]And then over the course of the next decade, you had folks like Paul Hyrick and and um Fwell who latched on to opposition to abortion as a as an identity marker. And they went around the country on a campaign to try to get evangelicals upset about abortion. And um and what that did was that turned abortion into a central identity marker to the degree that you can have evangelical Christians and and others today who and and I know this uh because I I uh had two uh campaigns for my state legislature in 2018 and 2020 and I've knocked on hundreds and hundreds of doors and talked about this.

[00:05:51]Somebody can agree with every last part of a progressive candidate's platform and then be like, "But >> you are okay with abortion and I can never support that and so I will vote for the person I overwhelmingly disagree with as a result." It's it's a way to say you have to answer a specific way on this issue or you don't belong. You're not one of us. You don't get to participate in our community. and and that function as an identity marker then becomes a bigger issue than the identity marker itself. Then you know because if if you want to reduce abortion there are a handful of things that more effectively more efficiently reduce the occurrence of abortion and that is uh greater access to women's health care that is uh comprehensive sex education that is uh the just greater access to contraception and things like that. all things that are opposed to that that evangelicals overwhelmingly are opposed to. So they speak as if the the priority is abortion, but then when it comes time to actually do the things that will reduce the occurrence of abortion, their identity politics compel them to uh to say no to those as well. And so it's really identity markers that are >> their function as identity markers is is the most important thing. It's it's used as a way to to say look at me. I'm one of the good ones. I I belong. I should have increased access to power and authority within the community. And and this occurs in all social groups.

[00:07:31]Nobody's immune to this.

[00:07:33]>> Um and so even even we scholars have things that we will say because we know other scholars are are going to be like no even if uh if if maybe that's uh not supported by the data or something like that. So, um I think there's I I have said before it's identity politics all the way down.

[00:07:54]>> If we're not thinking critically about why we are endorsing the positions we're endorsing and how we arrive at the conclusions at which we arrive, we're going to be uh tossed about by the winds of identity politics. We're we're not going to be guided by reason and logic and data and evidence.

[00:08:13]I it was just a footnote in your book, but I didn't realize that the real issue there was actually racial segregation of evangelical schools. Just like one minute on that cuz that was a fascinating.

[00:08:24]>> Yeah.

[00:08:24]>> Yeah. So, this this is all coming uh within the decade after uh Brown v. B.

[00:08:29]Well, u couple decades after that, but the civil rights movement in the in the mid60s where the government began to um withhold federal funding of like grants and and uh things like that to universities that um practice segregation. And so like Bob Jones University wanted that money but didn't want to uh allow black folks in. And so part of the the motivation for this was Bwell and Hayrick and these others were trying to figure out a way that they could get more conservative Christians into government and they could uh basically jin up a religious right and and gain more access to political power. And I think they realized that white supremacy was not going to be as appealing an identity marker as uh you know as as one might think. And so they they actually had to find something else that would be their rallying flag that they could they could jin up this uh this religious right. And and over the course of the 70s uh you know you had things like opposition to the equal rights amendment the RRA that became one of the identity markers. Opposition to abortion became one of the identity markers. It's in the 70s when extremists took over the NRA and Second Amendment rights, this this uh reinterpretation of what Second Amendment rights are, that became a central identity marker. All of this was part of this campaign to try to get more evangelical Christians into government power so that they could overturn these things. And in the short term, their their main goal kind of failed. Like, you know, they did not succeed at at um uh at bringing back segregation.

[00:10:14]However, in the long term, I'm curious if ultimately things are going to come back around to them succeeding because right now uh you have an enormous push against equality in uh in education and there are a lot of ways that that I think the ghosts of of Fwell and Hayrick are um are meddling in uh government still today.

[00:10:35]>> Yeah. So, ironically, one of the things that you need then if you have this abortion position is an idea that the Bible is clearly against it and that may not have been something that was always clear to people. I mean, we do have some cases in early Christianity of people talking about it, but how how have people kind of built this modern case that abortion is not biblical?

[00:10:53]>> That it's not biblical or that it is biblical >> that is prohibited by the Bible.

[00:10:56]>> Oh, yeah. Yeah. Um Oh, right. Opposition to abortion being biblical. Yeah. the really you have to try to well one of the things that that people have done in the modern um world is is retreat from the centrality of personhood. And so now we talk about oh it's a human life. It's a human being. It's living. Therefore it's a human life. When for more than 2,000 years since before Jesus when when abortion has been an issue it has been about personhood. when does a fetus become a person, a legal and moral person who merits all the these rights and everything like that? Um, and so that's one of the things that that people today have have tried to find in the Bible and they'll go to like Jeremiah 15. Yeah.

[00:11:45]>> Uh, you know, before I formed you in the womb, I knew you and before you came forth, I consecrated you to the nations.

[00:11:54]They'll go to Psalm 139 uh 13. Yeah. I uh you knitted me together in my mother's womb. They'll go to Luke 1 with John the Baptist. His his fetal leap for joy uh upon recognizing the voice of Mary, the mother of Jesus. Those are the three main ones I see being brought up over and over and over and over again uh as an indication that a fetus was a person to God, known to God, loved by God, cared for by God.

[00:12:26]Therefore, that's a person. And then they'll they'll also obviously go to the Ten Commandments. Uh you shall you shall not murder or kill depending on what translation uh they're using. And and that one obviously just begs the question. I mean, if if you say you shall not murder and abortion is murder, therefore you uh the Bible prohibits it.

[00:12:48]Well, you got to establish that abortion is murder first. And and I think the Bible actually says no, abortion wouldn't be murder. Uh because the very next chapter, we have this law about what happens if two men who are fighting accidentally injure a pregnant woman and cause her either to misaryry or to die.

[00:13:09]And in the first instance, a fine is imposed that is uh paid to the father and is adjudicated so that it's not exorbitant. And then in the second instance the uh talionic justice is activated retributive justice life for a life which which I think quite clearly indicates that a the mother was considered a full legal and moral person and the fetus was not. It was considered more property. And usually when you get into arguments with folks about this they'll um come back and say no the the two outcomes are different. And it's actually the first outcome is that it causes the premature birth of the baby and then no harm comes to the baby and the second outcome is miscarriage. And that is something that originated with John Calvin in uh like around 15 30 something I think. He basically said that would mean that a fetus isn't a person and that's obviously false. So that's not what this passage means. And he came up with this new interpretation.

[00:14:09]Uh but you've got when you look up the arguments that have been published for the the Bible's opposition to abortion, the the three main ones are are Jeremiah, Psalms 139, uh Luke 1, and it's trying to build the case that uh God considers if he a person and it overlooks that Jeremiah 15 is talking about God knowing Jeremiah prior to his conception. You just got to ignore that entirely. And it ignores as well the position of uh the authors of the Hebrew Bible that breath was the fundamental constitutive element of life that we see in Genesis 2:7 where God also formed Adam from the dust of the earth. Like that is God taking care and and doing something themselves. Uh but Adam did not become a living soul until the breath of life was breathed into his nostrils. And and you have reference to breath of life and uh with the flood where the flood killed everything in which the breath of life was. And you've got breath as the the thing that that uh brings people to life. Job talks about it like a dozen times and a number of other passages throughout the entire Hebrew Bible. Like even the words nephesh and ruach which are commonly translated life in contemporary Bible translations. Uh ruach is spirit, breath or wind. And then nephesh is neck, throat, breath or soul. And so um the the idea that life is fundamentally constituted by breath is is pretty clear throughout the entire uh Hebrew Bible.

[00:15:56]So yeah, I I don't think the argument has much merit. But it's certainly not taking seriously uh the position on personhood, the positions on installment, the the anthropology of the Hebrew Bible. Uh, and I think once we get to the New Testament, I think the best you can do is say, well, John the Baptist was a person when he leapt in the womb, which would be a postquickening personhood, which would agree with uh the the three main kind of philosophical positions on ensulment that had happened at conception, which was the um Epicurian/Pythagorean position that had occurred when the fetus was fully formed, which is the Arisatelian position, and that it occurred when the baby was born and made contact with the outside air, which is the stoic position. And so in the Bible, the best you can do is basically the Roie Wade position that around 20 weeks or so, that's where viability kicks in and and that's where um the fetus becomes a person. And I just I I don't see much thoughtful engagement with uh the Bible as a whole or in its constituent parts on the part of of folks arguing that uh abortion is condemned in the in the Bible. And I'm sorry I ramble an awful lot. I hope you're you're I figured that out by now.

[00:17:23]>> No, I love it. Um, I think uh the really one of the really big pictures that I take away from that is what you say repeatedly in the book is that we always negotiate with the Bible. And one of the things that I thought that really jumped out at me as I was reading is that even the editors of the Hebrew Bible are negotiating with the Bible. Like they're already doing that, too. Um, on two really big issues. One, the issue of child sacrifice and the second the issue of whether God had a wife. Both like super super interesting. Um, can we talk about those two arguments? I know you've made them a lot on on your TikTok as well, but um, why don't we start with child sacrifice? Like, is child sacrifice in the Bible? That's probably shocking to a lot of people.

[00:18:03]>> I mean, within the Jewish and the Christian traditions, child sacrifice is central >> to uh to the whole project like what is Jesus if not a child who was sacrificed?

[00:18:15]and uh and the uh the yakada, the the tradition of of Abraham being commanded to sacrifice his child Isaac. Uh in the story as it comes down to us, Isaac isn't sacrificed. However, there are medieval and even ancient Jewish traditions that were like it kind of seems like maybe he was sacrificed or they say he definitely was sacrificed and spent two or three years in heaven before being plopped back down on earth.

[00:18:43]uh or you know the the uh the ashes were strewn about the grasses and the dew of the grass mixed with the ashes and and Isaac was reconstituted because when you when you look at the story it it is kind of emphasized um that Abraham and Isaac went on and they they went up the mountain and the two of them traveled and the two of them did this and and then at the end it says so Abraham returned to his young men his naim, his his servants, and uh it's like, well, two went up, only one came down uh in at least in the the narrative. Um so so child sacrifice is obviously a big part of what's going on here. But when we look throughout the Bible, there is this abhorance of child sacrifice. But when we look at the end of Exodus 22, we see this weird command where it says um your your firstborn uh the the males who open the womb uh you will give to me. You will do the same with the firstborn of uh your cattle and your your oxen.

[00:19:52]And in the reference to the animals, it very clearly has to do with sacrifice.

[00:19:57]It seems like that's what's going on with the firstborn child as well. and and but the covenant code doesn't dwell on this. It just moves right on um past that, which is enigmatic to say the least. But then we've got another reference in uh Exodus 13 and another in Exodus 34 to the idea of um redeeming the child. So, it's kind of like the firstborn is on the way to sacrifice, but then no, just kidding. We're going to we're going to take a hard left and we're going to redeem the child. uh you're going to pay some money for it. And then we've got a few other passages in Numbers where it's either redemption or the idea is to give the child to me is God demanding children for the priesthood. So that you're committing your firstborn to the priesthood.

[00:20:46]And and what's peculiar is that even in I would argue along with I'm going to hopefully I'm going to find out that it's the majority of scholars. I could be wrong about this, but definitely a representative. Yeah, >> definitely a representative portion of scholars believe that Exodus 13 and Exodus 34 are coming from long after Exodus 22 and are negotiating with it and are saying, "Oh, we this is this is a little uncomfortable. So, let's add another layer on to it and say, "Haha, just kidding.

[00:21:17]>> You're actually supposed to redeem the child."

[00:21:19]>> But even in those renegotiations, the foundation is very clearly firstborn intended for sacrifice. Even though you've slapped on a haha just kidding layer to it, you that does not get rid of the underlying firstborn is intended for sacrifice reading of this passage.

[00:21:38]And so I I don't think you can say ah Exodus 22 29 and 30 was not about sacrifice at all when the other passages that are grappling with it say, "Yeah, it's about sacrifice initially, but we're going to we're going to button hook you. we're going to um come over the top and we're going to actually have you redeem the child. Um and and some folks would say that uh that the story of Abraham, some scholars have argued that the story of Abraham and Isaac is actually a kind of narrative accomplishment of the same thing. A narrative way to say there was a command to sacrifice. Haha, just kidding. Uh so uh that could be going on in the in the composition of the the Akadada as well.

[00:22:24]So I I think you see a very clear indication that the authors are grappling with a an a rather uncomfortable proximity to God requiring child sacrifice uh in the Hebrew Bible. Um, so yeah, the the idea that no, no, they've always thought it was abhorrent and they never would have dreamed of of child sacrifice is just demonstrabably not the case. They're very clearly getting very close to uh requiring child sacrifice. But again, coming back around and saying, "Haha, just kidding." Um, and then the the uh >> erasing God's wife was a second >> erasing God's wife. Yeah, that's that's one that uh that I think it's so so much fun how few people are aware >> that that this is kind of a you know this is uncontroversial for scholars but uh ever since >> ever since Israel became a a modern nation state and now we have funding to do archaeological excavations and things like that. We've discovered an awful lot of stuff including a lot of inscriptions and uh a lot of them refer to not a lot of them a handful of inscriptions refer to Adonai and his Asher or refer to Asher or depict Adoni and Asher or just Asher in you know the stylized either date palm or almond tree with the ibixes on on either side of it. And so, uh, there seems to have been a a market for, uh, Asher in, uh, the Iron Age prior to, uh, the Babylonian exile. And when we correlate what we find on the ground with what's going on in the Bible and particularly as critical scholars have uh kind of compartmentalized the literary layers of the Bible, what we see is that uh pretty much every last negative reference to Asher, whether as a a cultic object or as a goddess, dates to is is Deuteronomistic or later.

[00:24:32]meaning it it dates to around the time of Josiah depending on when you uh date the Deuteronomistic project uh or after.

[00:24:40]And so it seems to me and and a lot of others that if you've got no negative references to Asher in the pre-socianic literature from the Hebrew Bible that they must not have had a concern for it even though the archaeological record shows that that's when it is quite common which I think indicates that you didn't have really any institutional opposition to it. And the fact that the two are considered a pair that they're consorts that uh which is what we find in the egaritic literature. It's L not Adonai in the Ugaritic literature who is conflated with Adonai in the Israelite pantheon. But that's L's wife or consort or partner. That's the mother of the gods. Uh and and we have this idea of the bene the children of God in a number of different places throughout the Hebrew Bible. So it seems to me that the worship of Asher as the concert partner or wife of of Adonai/L was normative, was not widely challenged, was not uh something that was considered um impious prior to Josiah. And there are a lot of scholars who have talked about the motivations for Josiah's reforms to the degree they're historical and um his attempt to try to centralize worship and shut down ancestor worship, shut down the use of of uh the worship of female deities, shut down female priests, um shut down a lot of the worship and the cultic practices that were focused on the household or the individual or focused on the the divine. feminine or that at least didn't focus any resources or attention on the king and his priesthood and his temple in Jerusalem. We have recovered multiple temples from the first temple period that indicate uh the use of non-Jerusalem temples was seems to have been uh fairly normative. And so, uh, I think the the nature of Judahite and Israelite worship, uh, was changed a lot by, uh, Josiah's reign and kind of put everything on an entirely new trajectory that would ultimately, uh, end up with monotheism.

[00:26:59]But I I think when Josiah was was uh, saying, "I want everything for me," uh, you know, he wasn't anticipating uh what would happen.

[00:27:08]>> Yeah. Fair. And it would probably be surprising to a lot of modern readers of the Bible who look at the Bible as essentially just a story of like what happened. And we probably miss the extent to which the Bible is constantly being edited and shaped by the needs of any given generation erasing the people from before who didn't agree with them and kind of like we're almost looking maybe propaganda is too strong a word but we are looking at the voice of individual groups carrying forward and erasing disscent. Is that a fair fair assessment?

[00:27:35]>> Yeah. Yeah. I think that's an important insight into what we have with the Bible that and and this is something I talk about all the times with how we negotiate with the text. We are receiving a tradition and then we've got to figure out how to make it work within our own social and historical and rhetorical context in light of our our goals and our needs and what kind of pressures are being put on us. Now, we live in a period where the the integrity of that textual tradition is sacrosanked. are not allowed to touch it. When they were writing it, they lived in no such period. And so every generation that received this tradition, there was probably quite a bit of fiddling with the text where editors are changing things and they're like, "Ooh, don't like that text. We're just going to leave that out." And you know, we and and we see this taking place formally with the the formalization of the canon in the early dec or early centuries of the common era. And so I we can see this going on and and even when it comes to um I discuss a bit the the Malik Adonai, the the messenger or the angel of the Lord and how that seems to originate in the editing of some stories that were originally about God themselves visiting people. Like we can see that taking place in the Samaritan Penetuk and in the Dead Sea Scrolls and in the Septuagent and in the Targum. uh we can see uh the translators and editors changing things and we've decided no no we we have the earlier text we're going to stick with the earlier text and the notion that nobody did that prior to these these translations the versional um changes the notion that that before that they were like hands off we can't touch this text is is ridiculous obviously they were at even greater liberty to fiddle with the text and so I I I think we have to engage with the fact that we're looking back on the end product >> of centuries of accumulation and curation >> and every generation was making it maximally useful and meaningful to them and then handing it on to another generation that was then going to renegotiate what they received. And so what what we have is is really a Frankenstein's monster of of um texts and and narratives and traditions and ideologies and and legislation and stuff like that that um you know we're we're forever going to be arguing about how to reconstitute or how to divide up into um into chronological layers and all that kind of stuff. And we only have material evidence from, you know, a certain point on. And and hopefully we I I hope we have another Dead Sea Scrolls type discovery at some point in my lifetime.

[00:30:23]I would love to see how things change if we suddenly found a new trove of of even earlier manuscripts that allowed us to uh to to take a few more steps into the dark.

[00:30:35]>> Yeah, absolutely. Maybe we just find out that they may maybe been magically preserved all these years anyway and there's no >> Yeah, we're gonna we're going to find an old Isaiah scroll from from 6:25 BCE and it's going to match word for word.

[00:30:51]>> There you go.

[00:30:51]>> Word for word. Uh the the maseretic text. It's even better preserved than one Q Isaiah A which even though it's less well preserved than one Q Isaiah B is still um you know superhuman in its preservation. You mentioned I I want to talk about apologetics apologetics in a minute but before we go there you mentioned canon which is probably important to say a few things about because one of the things that I see a lot is people saying well we have the original manuscripts we can get back to the earliest you know autographs pretty much what they said and like even if that were true I don't think people ever stop to realize the question is which books are we reading right like that's it's a really important question that I don't think people really get you talk a bit about formation of canon and how that shapes our idea of what's biblical and maybe a bit Even yeah, not in a couple minutes, I guess, which is a huge ask, but yeah, that something I talk about in the introduction is that there's no such thing as the Bible.

[00:31:46]>> Yeah.

[00:31:46]>> Uh and one of the I I mentioned three I I think I would say now there are four, but but I mentioned three questions that have to be answered before you can even whittle uh yourself down to this is my Bible. Uh but canon is is one of the main ones. And you know, if we're negotiating with the text and we have this corpus of literature and basically what we're doing is imposing a unifying framework on here and and saying we're we're looking for agreement, we're demanding agreements and when we find things that seem to disagree, we're going to negotiate and we're going to give something priority. We're going to say, well, this is obviously right and everything else needs to be reinterpreted in light of this. um the more or the less text you have available to you, you know, the process is going to go differently. And so if you've got first and second mcabes available to you, you know, your your understanding of oh, I don't know, something like purgatory might be different because in in second makabes 12 uh 12, I think 42 is the specific verse where it mentions Judah Makabe comes upon a bunch of his compatriots and they're dead and they have this uh this pagan contraband on them uh and they they pass around the hat to send an offering off to Jerusalem so that they can basically this sin can be purged postumously. So, so it's kind of it's like proxy uh postdeath um temple ordinances uh to purge sin.

[00:33:26]And and this is something that contributes to the idea of purgatory.

[00:33:30]And Protestants really don't like this idea. Really uncomfortable with with second Mcabes 12. But you know, whether or not that plays a role is depending on whether or not you think that's inspired scripture. And and so there there are but but when you say and you know you see this in in a lot of Protestant arguments for the Protestant cannon. Oh well obviously the the Apocrypha is out because they have these uh these silly doctrinal things like what's going on in second Macabes 12. So now you are you're taking your negotiation and treating it as a premise for the uh you know interrogating the canonical nature of the apocrypha. It's it's basically begging the question you're presupposing the conclusion in the premise.

[00:34:22]>> Well, how do I know if second Mcabes is canonical u so that I can determine my doctrine? Well, our doctrine doesn't allow for what second Mcabes has.

[00:34:32]Therefore, second Mcabes cannot be canonical. It's it's circular reasoning.

[00:34:36]It's trying to plug the power strip into itself. Uh so, yeah, when we again it's it's identity politics all the way down.

[00:34:43]Uh what whichever social identity is is important to us, that's going to provide kind of the starting point, the foundation for the lenses, the interpretive lenses, the dogmas that we're going to bring to the interrogation. And then our interrogation is hopefully it comes as no surprise. Our interrogation is going to confirm precisely what we brought to it. That's >> how this so commonly works. That confirmation bias. And >> uh first Enoch is a fascinating example of this as well. You see apologists being like, why did Jude quote from First Enoch? Well, it could be that this was just an oral tradition and that was the only thing that was actually inspired that made its way into First Enoch. And so it's not the whole book of First Enoch or even the book of the Watchers that Jude was endorsing as inspired. It was just that one little verse. Or or they'll say when we look at the manuscripts, what Jude says is not exactly identical to what we have in and you know the the GZ manuscripts from a thousand years later. Therefore, it probably wasn't actually the Book of the Watchers that Jude was quoting. It was something entirely different. So they they know they hate First Enoch. they're not going to uh allow first Enoch to be canonical. And so they just have to come up with a rationalization for why it shouldn't be allowed in the canon. And you know, we we can look at uh one of their favorite uh uh trinitarians, Tertullian, one of the the innovators of the of the word trinity, uh who has a whole chapter in a book on on the apparel of women. An odd book, but these were odd people. Um he's got a whole chapter, chapter three of that book is all about why Christians should accept first Enoch as canonical. And and after he gives all these reasons, he concludes by saying, "Oh yeah, by the way, Jude quotes it." Boom. Roasted QED. That's that's uh you know that uh thus endeth the argument. So, uh, it's it's such a the waters are so much muddier than apologists would like them to be when it comes to the canon. And it doesn't get figured out until much later than they would like because you you have a lot of apologists who will say by the by 100 CE, by the close of the first century CE, the Jewish cannon at least was already figured out and and they'll insist the New Testament cannon was more or less figured out as well. But you see debates going on for for more than 200 more years after this. And the fact that there might be somebody who tripped over a cannon that closely matches what we have today doesn't make that a formal or official or normative cannon. Those were frequently the minority positions until the 4th century CE. So it's so much more of a mess than than apologists would um would like to believe. and and it wasn't, you know, the way it turned out wasn't inevitable. If if not for Athanasius of Alexandria, I don't think the book of Revelation would be in the canon.

[00:37:44]>> Yeah.

[00:37:45]>> Uh so I I think it's it's so much more incidental uh so much more historically and socially contingent.

[00:37:53]>> Yeah.

[00:37:53]>> Uh than than a lot of people would like.

[00:37:56]>> Like we do this thing where we look backwards and tell ourselves that it always had to be this way. That there was no other way. Essentially, Providence just won the won the day and the right things that supposed to win one won. And >> yeah, it's a very teological uh outlook that this was all this was all this this progression towards the way it was always supposed to be and the best way it could possibly be.

[00:38:17]>> Yeah. You brought up apologists. Um you do do you have a an apologist um that you spend the most time losing sleep over and responding to? Are there a couple names that you've had the most frustration with? I don't think I would say I've ever lost sleep over an apologist.

[00:38:34]>> I have I have jumped out of bed before in anticipation of getting to respond to uh a a ridiculous claim from an apologist. Um I would say that there are some that that frustrate me uh because of of a refusal to uh to engage in good faith. Uh there uh but yeah, I think the yeah, there's not really one that that springs to mind as as the one I'm focusing on all the time. I I I think I kind of stumble upon people and I'm like, "Oh gosh, I'm going to I'm going to have a lot of fodder here for uh for videos." And uh and so there are folks that I'll I'll make a handful of videos over the course of a few weeks responding to a given apologist. you know, a couple years ago it was it was some guy I think he went by VR, Voice of Reason or something like that and >> all he he was just railing against evolution and and how the you know the flood is historical and and all this kind of stuff, but >> just bafflingly uninformed about the science even though all he did was like you got to get the science right.

[00:39:41]>> Yeah. Uh, and you know, I I made probably a dozen videos about him and then uh moved on just because it was clear he wasn't capable of of engaging in good faith. Uh, there was one that I still get messages about. There's a Michael Jones who goes by or at least >> I would say he goes by inspiring philosophy, but I think inspiring philosophy is like the group or the the organization or whatever.

[00:40:07]>> I know. But I I blocked him a long time ago after I repeatedly said, "I'm I'm gonna need you to engage in good faith."

[00:40:13]And he just repeatedly refused. And up to this very day, I get people going, "Why'd you block inspiring philosophy?

[00:40:20]You don't block inspiring philosophy."

[00:40:22]And uh with and and the butt hurt about having blocked him is is is a thing to behold. Like I've I've blocked a lot of people. I have um a hair trigger when it comes to blocking folks who don't engage in good faith, >> but usually their fans get over it. Uh when it comes to Michael Jones, >> a lot of people just have not gotten over it. Uh and and so yeah, that's that's I haven't uh yeah, I I don't really think about Mike Jones until suddenly I see a surge of comments where people are going, "You need to unblock him." And I was like, he has the terms. I have provided my terms for getting unblocked. It's up to him. Let me know when he meets those terms.

[00:41:08]>> Right. Yeah.

[00:41:09]>> Oh, somebody somebody put Wes Huff in the in the comments. He's probably the um one that that frustrates me because um he's come the closest to actually being a credentialed expert. I don't know if he's ever going to get that credential uh because he's very very busy uh doing arts and crafts and um making uh papyrus faximiles uh which I mean >> I don't have one. I want a papyrus.

[00:41:37]>> I need a P-52 I can hold up.

[00:41:39]>> You need Yeah. Yeah. Um but uh he's one he's one that a lot of people perceive to have a lot of academic authority, but good grief does he get the scholarship wrong.

[00:41:52]over and over and over again. Um, and it's it's really interesting because the the amateurs and the almost scholars are a lot more online than the actual scholars.

[00:42:06]>> Yeah.

[00:42:07]>> And I think and I think there's even a degree to which the the actual scholars >> feel a little I don't know disincentivized to engage the online discourse.

[00:42:18]>> Yeah. And and I think that does a disservice because it it gives the impression that those apologetic voices are a representative maybe not majority but at least plurality or or a representative voice within the the broader world of scholarship and and it's just not the case.

[00:42:39]>> Yeah. And um I I would like to see more critical scholars online and and there are some and there are a bunch of wonderful uh folks friends and and associates and colleagues who who are online trying to to carve out a niche.

[00:42:52]Um and yeah I so the so Wes Huff is annoying because of the fact that people think he's representative of a scholarship of the scholarship and he so much is not. uh like yeh it's >> it's uh it's not even funny.

[00:43:10]>> That's it's probably part of the frustration is like you're saying like scholars don't always there was a time when scholars thought it was beneath them and I don't think that's even necessarily true anymore. I think for a lot of people they just don't know where to start or how to do it.

[00:43:21]>> Yeah.

[00:43:22]>> But yeah, I mean like for people if I if I ask the average person to name a Bible scholar they might say Wes Huff, right?

[00:43:28]Like it's hard to actually for people who don't know any better, they hear people who sound like they know what they're talking about. And in some ways that might be more dangerous than the wacky conspiracy theory people who are spreading things that even an average person could see through. But it seems like that level of apologetics where it sounds it sounds credentialed. It sounds like it's they're talking like scholars.

[00:43:48]We know this and we have these manuscripts that show this.

[00:43:51]>> Yeah.

[00:43:51]>> That's almost maybe more dangerous. Is that fair?

[00:43:54]>> I I think so. I think that's fair because it ends up getting a much larger platform. you know, you have these uh these podcasts with millions and millions of of subscribers with millions of views on on YouTube, whether it's Joe Rogan or this Diary of a CEO >> or Sean Ryan, I think is the guy's name, uh where, you know, they they say, "Here's Wes Huff, and and some of them have even called some of them have even called him like a a leading expert uh or the world's best expert on on stuff."

[00:44:26]and and um man, yeah, that just wildly misrepresents uh the uh the state of affairs to an enormous audience. And I and I do think that is that is phenomenally dangerous.

[00:44:38]And then and then he can get on there and say, "Oh, we we can say for certain that 99% of the the scholars with relevant expertise agree that all 27 books of the New Testament were completed by the end of the first century." And um and then you know the the actual like subject matter experts are like huh uh where did you get this? Um so yeah it's it's incredibly frustrating. Uh but yeah I I think if you ask a lot of the folks who are are terminally online and engaged in the theob bro um kind of discourse uh to name some scholars. I I I think they'll they'll name people who aren't actually scholars or >> um there's a there's another um scholar Jeremiah J. Johnston.

[00:45:27]>> Yeah. Uh JJ, Triple J, yeah, um Jay to III uh who talks an awful lot about the the Shroud of Turan has uh similarly gets up there and tries to speak on behalf of the the academy and and just >> just drops the ball every single time.

[00:45:47]Uh but also and now he he has a an a book that is number one New York Times bestseller >> because of Oh yeah. Yeah. and and I I I am I am somewhat ashamed to say I contributed to that cuz I bought a copy of his book. Um >> you were the one who pushed it over the edge if it wasn't >> Yeah, I was I was number whatever to uh over the edge. But um and yeah, it's you know the the arguments in there about like the the cup of Jesus. Have you have you seen that thing? Does >> I saw half of his interview I turned it off. I have less patience for watching this kind of crap than like I've talked to Kip about this too. just like how do you watch this all day? But >> I get this is there's I feel the same way like people send me stuff all the time and like somebody will send me a link to like a 2 and 1 half hour live stream and like it'll be like we're going to talk about Dan Mlen and and I'm like I'm not going to waste 5 seconds watching this because I'm going to uh yeah just implode from from how frustrating it's going to be. Um, so yeah, the it it is difficult to watch some of that and um and yeah, I think that that hampers my ability to to um kind of be aware of all the stuff that's out there.

[00:47:08]>> Yeah.

[00:47:09]>> But I I think I have to do it to protect my mental health >> as well. So, and and I think I have much a much higher um pain tolerance than than a lot of the the scholars out there.

[00:47:22]I have to ask you one more follow-up and then we'll move on from apologetics. But I this was I said this in the video once. I got some push back. Um and I think I stand by it, but I'd be curious to know where you stand on it. Do apologists lie to children for a living.

[00:47:35]the the place I landed on it, I said yes, but with the caveat that as a kid who was raised in a fundamentalist evangelical world and raised in apologetics, it wasn't that any individual point of data was necessarily a lie or that it's a lie that God exists, whatever. But it was the poisoning of the well to say Bible scholars are out to get you. Liberal scholars are going to try to trick you.

[00:47:55]We can't trust them because they have an agenda. It was that type of thing that I thought was as a kid reflecting back on it, I was like that was a lie because we were just like scholars weren't trying to trick me. No, they're just doing their work.

[00:48:07]>> I I think that's uh I think that's fair and it and it reminds me of um um the book God's Word in Human Words by uh Kent Sparks.

[00:48:18]>> Okay. I haven't read that one. where he um he talks about the and and this actually goes back to James Bar's book fundamentalism >> where he talks about how something that evangelicals do is uh in in starting out a potential career as a as a Bible scholar, they will frequently pick programs and universities and schools where they're going to circumvent engagement with the critical scholarship. uh Sparks talks about uh engaging in the soft um fields. I I I forget the exact term he uses, but that it'll be like, oh yeah, they go into textual criticism or they go into a seriology or they go into uh theology, something where they don't have to engage directly in their training, something like the documentary hypothesis or dudero Isaiah or something like that. But then once they get the piece of paper, they start declaring what the the reality is about the documentary hypothesis or dudero Isaiah and and that is and even um James Bar talks about that. Now he's talking about how evangelicals are frequently not as well prepared to engage all the stuff they engage apologetically because uh they do this um this kind of um tap dance around uh the critical study.

[00:49:44]I I think that there could be a case to make that that is a degree of dishonesty as well because they're trying to leverage the the authority of their degree to arrogate um expertise on topics in which they know they well hopefully know they don't have the expertise. So so I think that's something that that could uh play into a a positive answer to that question as well. M >> so so it's a mixed bag for me.

[00:50:15]>> That's totally fair and I I was the one who uh kind of framed it in a very controversial way, but I appreciate you reflecting on some sometimes we got to do that. Sometimes >> you just got to say yeah. Um okay, let's come back to the book. I've taken us a little bit away into apologetics. So I want to ask you another question about the book and then maybe after this we'll take some uh some audience questions.

[00:50:33]Um, this this is another kind of meta question, but it does deal with real questions that you talk about in the book, especially I'm thinking homosexuality and um some of the like purity culture stuff. But I think one of the challenges in biblical scholarship is that the work we do does have real impacts on people's lives, especially for people who take the Bible seriously.

[00:50:55]So, do you feel do you feel that kind of tension in a balance between both putting the Bible in its historical critical context, but also being aware that that could sometimes hurt people?

[00:51:06]Um, specifically like your homosexuality chapter was making me think about this, you know, this balance of like what does the Bible really say? But then also like even if it does say something about homosexuality, do we just accept that?

[00:51:17]Like >> Yeah. I and and that's that's something that I I sometimes have to clarify that and and I and I it's in the front of my mind so I will remember to clarify that.

[00:51:30]But I but I think it's it's something that it's one of those presuppositions that is so ubiquitous. It's it's you know a fish not knowing that they swim in water.

[00:51:38]>> Yeah. Just because the Bible might be homophobic or or something like that doesn't necessarily mean we we have to accept that that is the way God is or that that is the way things should be.

[00:51:51]uh because there there is a tendency I think on the part of of folks who are particularly when they're part of a faith tradition who are trying to critically engage the Bible and the public discourse about it uh to try to rehabilitate the Bible and try to make the Bible good even according to our own terms. And so when it comes to homosexuality, you know, I I I think there's I try to strike a a balance between saying, "Hey, it's not actually that bad in this part over here," without going too far and saying, "It turns out it's not bad anywhere." Because I think it still is bad in some places. But at the same time, I I think there are communities that are not going to let go of the Bible, but still need to to find a way around or or through that that complexity, that problematic part of it.

[00:52:46]Um, and so, you know, for instance, somebody like uh James Tarico, I mentioned that that people are freaking out about about him right now. I think I think James's position on homosexuality might lean a little too far towards the Bible got it right when when I think uh there are absolutely parts where the Bible does did not get it right. And and when I say, you know, that that Genesis 19, the story of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, is not a lesson about the evils of homosexuality, a lot of people, what they hear is the Bible doesn't think homosexuality is wrong uh anywhere. So, I I think that's a careful it's a it's a balance that I I need to try to strike. And sometimes I do a better job than than other times. I don't want to mislead my audience into thinking I'm arguing that the Bible is inherent and that people just get it wrong and need to understand that the Bible is fully confirming of uh homosexuality.

[00:53:49]I I don't think I would go that far. Um and and I and I do think that that's you know there there are people whose faces have dropped when when I've talked with them and and said, "Yeah, I think the Bible does have homophobic parts to it."

[00:54:03]Um, you know, I I think we need to qualify exactly how we understand that, but but I don't think the authors would have been affirming of uh same-sex marriage uh or or things like that. That does kind of cut the legs out from under folks who who want to engage the Bible critically, but also want the Bible to be um inspired and want the Bible to be uh something that's going to affirm and endorse their identity. And so I I I think it's unfortunately it's it's a part of the messiness that uh that we have to deal with and and I'm still grappling with with uh how to strike that balance and how to ensure that that I'm making that clear when you know uh the point of my video might be to be pushing back hard against the hateful leveraging of the Bible. Um, >> so yeah, it's it's complicated and I think sometimes I'm more thoughtful and more accurate about it than other times.

[00:55:06]>> Well, I think I I found the passion that came through in that chapter in particular on homosexuality. I found it too because I think until I I went through this, you know, deconstruction thing that everyone's talking about. And until that happened, I don't think I realized how often the Bible could use to hurt people. And, you know, even people who just didn't didn't even consider that what they were saying and doing was hurting people. Mhm. Yeah. I think that there are a lot of well-meaning folks out there who who leverage the Bible in things that in ways that they think are being helpful, particularly in raising kids, and they don't realize the damage that is being caused under the surface. Uh and particularly when it comes to purity culture.

[00:55:43]>> Yeah.

[00:55:44]>> Uh conditioning women to think that their bodies are are just a commodity, just an object that is intended to be enjoyed by somebody else and is not their own. And I like that can that can be phenomenally damaging to the psyche of of a young person. And and you mentioned deconstruction.

[00:56:03]A a lot of what it seems to me deconstruction is doing is is dismantling a world view that has been constructed probably for somebody's whole life. And and I think the the foundations that get laid in the early years up to adulthood, I think those are are the most difficult to to dislodge.

[00:56:24]um and disagregate from that that worldview that is that is overwhelmingly black and white and and tends to uh shy away from nuance and uh even even when people are well-meaning and and I'll give one example for my own faith tradition um uh purity culture uh is is a big deal for for Latter-day Saints.

[00:56:48]And so I can recall a leader of the LDS church at at one of the big conferences from the pulpit telling a story about a young man who was going away to war. It was probably World War II. telling his mom um I uh that you know he would uh make sure that he came back clean and clean is the uh is the uh circumlocution of still a virgin and uh and he says cuz I know you would rather I come home in a pine box than unclean. Wow.

[00:57:24]>> And the story is told so as to endorse that idea.

[00:57:28]>> And just how utterly abhorrent.

[00:57:32]>> Yeah.

[00:57:33]>> To endorse the notion that a parent would prefer their child be dead >> than have premarital sex. Like that's that that has led people to that has led children to take their own lives.

[00:57:47]>> Yeah. because what happens when they do have premarital sex and then they go, "I'm better off dead. I guess that's what I'll have to do." And um you know, and and I I know that it's well-meaning, but it's it's not very thoughtful.

[00:58:03]>> Yeah.

[00:58:04]>> And it is phenomenally harmful. It literally kills people, that kind of rhetoric >> about purity culture. And so it >> it really needs to stop.

[00:58:14]>> Yeah. Um, I have a question from Jeff, which is not a technical question about the book, but is there a chance of a sequel to this book? A sequel to this book? I have I I have in the in the back of my head uh a a volume two. Uh it's not on on the schedule with the publisher yet. I I think a a volume two is needed. Um cuz like the the instant I I hit send on the manuscript I as I was going through the manuscript I had a list of of chapters to do and some didn't get included and the one that after I hit after the manuscript was completed I was like >> it was a mistake to not include this one. I should have included this one was um was women and and ecclesiastical authority.

[00:59:01]>> Oh yeah. Yeah.

[00:59:02]>> Um and I've got a list of a dozen more uh topics that I could cover. So hopefully I'll get to do a volume two.

[00:59:09]Uh right now I'm working on a separate book. Uh but I do have a book number two uh in the pipeline where um I'm going to be talking about how and why the God of the Bible changes from the earliest literary layers all the way through to the latest. So um it's called God's Biography of Biblical History. So >> So that's the next thing that that will be coming out.

[00:59:31]>> Awesome. Um another question. How has your academic focus changed if at all since you become more involved in social media?

[00:59:38]>> It has definitely become more generalized. Uh because as you know I' I've set myself up as as the person who who tries to share what the the majority view is on all kinds of different topics, many of which are well outside of of my wheelhouse. And so I have had to read a lot more broadly and a lot more widely and have tried to become more of a generalist which is which has been a challenge. Yeah.

[01:00:05]>> Um and and I've got a I'm I'm trying to cheat though right now by uh putting together a a largecale state-of-the- biblical studies survey >> similar to one that is done within philosophy every few years. uh but it will have lots and lots of research questions on it and and it will be um mainly the the it will be oriented towards uh things that uh are of our interest to the general public. So I've uh I'm going to be working with the Society of Biblical Literature to disseminate that and I will be very very happy when I can hit send on that email and and get those uh those results back.

[01:00:46]That will be um that will be huge because it will allow me to say uh 78.2% of of scholars and and we'll be able to drill down to uh a lot of different insights about um what kinds of degrees people have, how that correlates to certain positions, whether or not they have a faith statement that they had to sign off on. Yeah.

[01:01:09]>> Whether or not they're they're tenure tenure track or contingent or or what.

[01:01:13]So, I'm I'm excited about that. And that will allow me to um to actually just step back and and let the data do the work instead of having to go out and and pound the pavement, so to speak, and and find out what scholars are saying everywhere. I have to say I'm I'm jealous of your of your um broad base of knowledge at this point having read the book because I've been doing this for like a year and I didn't realize how illprepared I was even having a PhD to jump online and hearing all of the random things I have no idea about you know from the >> academic books I haven't read to the theories to the thousand years of history to the conspiracy theories I don't know how to respond to like there's a there's a lot >> yeah the it's such an odd dynamic because like when I do I'll do a live stream on YouTube I I haven't done one in a while. I need to to do one. But I'm on there for like two hours and anything could come up. Literally anything. And there and and I've been pleasantly surprised with how few times I've had to say I have no idea. I I don't I don't know. Um but but that does happen. And it is like as as much as it's impossible to know about every possible question, I feel bad when I have to say that. But um but but yeah, when when I started off, there was an awful lot of of me going, >> I've never heard of that before.

[01:02:28]>> Yeah, exactly.

[01:02:29]>> What's going on here? So, um yeah, >> that's cool. Um good to know if I if I keep going in and how how long have you been going now? 10 years or something or >> Oh, uh, I think I started >> Well, I got I I started the first video I ever posted was, I believe, >> March 30th, 2021. So, it's been a little over 5 years that I've been doing this.

[01:02:54]Yeah. But and and that was a video on the the Jordan cotices.

[01:02:58]>> Have you ever even heard of the Jordan No, I don't even know what those are.

[01:03:01]That that was a that was a hoax that was perpetrated by a man named David Elkington back in 2011 where >> he claimed to have discovered in Jordan 70 lead cotices from the first century filled with uh Christian iconography and inscriptions and things like that. And >> he tried for many many years to to make that sound real. And um but I was I some friends of mine and I uh were involved in an initial response to this.

[01:03:32]>> And so that was the first time I was felt willing to actually pull the trigger on a video and like hit record looking at my face realizing nobody wants this.

[01:03:42]>> Um it the only reason I I actually got over that hump was because I was like I was there at the ground level. I know exactly what's going on here. And so the first video I ever made was about the Jordan le cotices.

[01:03:54]>> That's cool.

[01:03:54]>> And then then it was off to the races after that.

[01:03:57]>> Now I know about them. So I'll add it to my list of conspiracy theories. Uh one quick one quick one. Uh what drew you to the field of linguistics in pursuit of becoming a biblical scholar. I have an undergrad in linguistics and so I'm a bit biased that it's one of the best fields of study.

[01:04:13]>> It was at Trinity Western University. My fir second, excuse me, my second master's degree. I wanted to write my thesis on uh the advent of monotheism.

[01:04:23]Where in the Bible do we have the threshold of monotheism? And I decided because I this was my second master's degree. I needed to be very methodological and careful and critical.

[01:04:34]And so I started with okay, what does monotheism mean? And then uh I I didn't really find any definitions that that satisfied me. But and so I took another step back and I was like, "Okay, what what does God mean?" And um and I couldn't find anything that that uh I felt satisfied with. And luckily I was on the same campus as the Canada Institute of Linguistics, what they call the Canil, and they do a lot of cognitive linguistics there. And I had a friend introduce me to uh cognitive linguistics through prototype theory.

[01:05:09]And um and as the more I looked into it, I was like this answers so many questions like it's it's very intuitive and it also makes very clear how language works and why it is so different from from person to person.

[01:05:24]And um you know why when I went into KFC on Corn Market Street in Oxford my first week at the University of Oxford, I I asked for a biscuit and they looked at me like I had sprouted a second head.

[01:05:37]They didn't know what on earth uh why they why I imagined they would be in the business of selling biscuits at KFC >> selling cookies.

[01:05:44]>> Right. Right. And so like cognitive linguistics just made so much clear >> and and I was like okay thesis changed and now and so I I changed my thesis to uh the conceptualization of deity in the Hebrew Bible through the methodological lens of cognitive linguistics. And it was just so revolutionary for me. And it also, I think, helped me make sense of what's going on with the use of terms like Ellen and Eloha and and Elohim in the Bible. And it it helped clarify so much that I had been unsatisfied with in in the scholarship.

[01:06:23]And and it also introduced me to the cognitive science of religion, which became the central methodology of my doctoral dissertation. But there's some cognitive linguistics in there as well.

[01:06:32]And so I I just because we engage the Bible on the level as a text because the words on the page are the primary vector of of our um interaction with the Bible.

[01:06:46]That was the the cognitive linguistic side of things. Uh has always been um kind of foundational for me. Well, not always, but but ever since I I um wrote my second master's thesis, it is it has been foundational for me.

[01:07:00]>> Awesome. Okay. Well, I should ask. I don't think people really need to hunt too far to find you online, but where can people where can people find you online?

[01:07:09]>> Well, I'm uh Mlelen and it's spelled M A K L E L L A N. That's a phonetic spelling of my last name that I used when I lived in South America on places like Tik Tok and Instagram and YouTube and Twitter and Blue Sky and Threads. Uh and then I also co-host the uh data overdogma podcast with uh my co-host Dan Beecher where we try to increase public access to the academic study of the Bible and religion and combat the spread of misinformation about the same. Uh where we're going to be doing two episodes, recording two episodes this week because I'm going to be out of the country uh all of next week, but we have episodes come out every Monday. And then um yeah, wherever uh I'm trying to think of the uh uh of the three amigos. Uh wherever there is injustice uh will be there. Uh I don't even remember the line, but um yeah, you can you can find me arguing about the Bible and religion uh online fairly regularly.

[01:08:07]>> And then I also have a a website, mlelen.org, where I have online classes.

[01:08:11]I just finished up teaching the first part of a two-part online introduction to biblical Hebrew. So, uh, I've got oneoff classes, topical classes, and then also, uh, biblical Hebrew. And I I'm thinking about, uh, doing biblical Greek next year. We, we will see how how motivated I am, uh, for that.

[01:08:32]>> Sounds good. Okay. The book is The Bible Says. So, one more time, I'll leave a link down below. A lot of people have read it already, but if you haven't yet, pick it up and read it. Dan McClullen, thank you so much for joining me today.

[01:08:42]>> Thank you. I appreciate your time.