Ep 136: Close Encounters of the Catholic Kind

00:00- For those of us who don't know,

00:02talk a bit about what that means.

00:04- Oh yeah, sure.

00:05Explain yourself.

00:06- You have a very educated audience.

00:08I can't just say quasi-Marcy and I,

00:10and walk away from you.

00:11(upbeat music)

00:14- Hey everybody, I'm Dan McClellan.

00:18- And I'm Dan Beacher.

00:19- And you're listening to the Data Over Dogma podcast

00:22where we increase public access to the academic study

00:25of the Bible and religion,

00:27and we combat the spread of misinformation

00:30about the same.

00:30How are things today, Dan?

00:32- It's a good day, it's a good day

00:34because we get to interview somebody

00:36and that's always fun having a different voice on the show.

00:39It's always a nice time.

00:40So why don't you introduce our lovely guest?

00:44- Happy to.

00:45Today we have the pleasure and the privilege

00:47of talking with Dr. Michael Pepper

00:50who is professor of theology at Fordham University,

00:53as well as associate director

00:55of the Curran Center for American Catholic Studies.

01:00Michael, thank you so much for being here.

01:01Welcome to the show.

01:03- Thanks so much for having me.

01:05I'm excited to talk about some data

01:08and actually a little bit of Dr. maybe two.

01:10- We'll get all of it, we'll just squeeze it all in.

01:13We'll figure it out.

01:14- And there are actually two books

01:17that I hope we get to talk about a bit during the show today.

01:20I'm holding one up that doesn't have the dust cover

01:23because I am not pro-dust cover,

01:26but this one is called The Son of God in the Roman World,

01:29which is what, 14 years old, something like that by now?

01:33- Yeah, that's right, that's right, 14.

01:36- Wonderful discussion of Christology in Mark,

01:40which I think does a wonderful job on some stuff

01:43we'll get to later, but much more recently

01:45and much more topically and relevant to today's show

01:49how Catholics encounter the Bible.

01:52Both of these are with Oxford, aren't they?

01:53Yes, they're both.

01:54- Those are with Oxford and then the middle book.

01:55- The Oxford University.

01:56The world's oldest church about Dury Eropos was with Yale

02:00in between those.

02:01- Oh, was it the library that that was?

02:04- No, no, it just would made sense

02:06considering their role in the excavation there

02:10for book number two.

02:10- Yeah, I have missed that one somehow,

02:14but Dury Eropos is such a cool, such a cool place.

02:17I'm gonna have to circle back around for that one.

02:20But I think what we're most interested in tonight

02:24is how precisely Catholics encounter the Bible,

02:27which is not how Catholics read the Bible,

02:30which is something that you actually made a point

02:33of explaining why that was the title

02:37that you chose in the book.

02:38Could you explain for those who are wondering,

02:41why would you write the title that way, Michael?

02:44What was the logic here?

02:46- Sure, happy to.

02:48The way this book came together was,

02:51I mean, it in part goes all the way back to my childhood,

02:53which I also talk about with some trepidation

02:56on page one, basically.

02:57But the more proximate cause was an email

03:01from OUP, from Oxford University Press,

03:04from Steve Wiggins, the editor for Bibles

03:07and biblical traditions.

03:09And he kind of said,

03:11we don't have a book about Catholics on the Bible,

03:13about Catholic biblical interpretation.

03:15And that seems like we should.

03:18And we've heard that maybe you'd be a person

03:21who might write one like that.

03:23There aren't actually that many

03:25practicing Catholic biblical scholars,

03:27even though there's a lot more than there were 100 years ago,

03:29there's still a relatively smaller number

03:31than some other faith traditions

03:34or those of no faith tradition.

03:36So they got my name and they said they wanted it to be called

03:40how Catholics read the Bible.

03:42And I just kept pushing back and saying,

03:46I'm not gonna write a book called that.

03:48And I might write a book about Catholics and the Bible,

03:51but they don't read it.

03:52And Steve laughed and he said,

03:55I don't know, that can't be true.

03:56And I said, well, it's kind of true, Steve.

03:59I've been out there in the field.

04:01And I said, I'm willing to grant that 5%

04:04of Catholics globally do something

04:07like pick up a copy of the Bible,

04:09open it and read it as an individual act.

04:12But I'm not willing to go more than 5%.

04:15And so if you want a realistic book

04:17about Catholics on the Bible,

04:19reading will be there,

04:20but it's going to be kind of subordinated

04:24to a lot of other modes of engagement with the text.

04:28And we settled on the word encounter

04:31because I thought it was capacious enough

04:33to bring in lots of different modes of engagement

04:38and different types of hermeneutics.

04:40And I also thought Pope Francis uses the word encounter a lot

04:45and that's kind of apropos of the Catholic moment.

04:48So that's kind of how it got in there.

04:52- I love that.

04:53You know, you open the book by sort of setting a scene,

04:56an average traditional Catholic church

05:00and you sort of, you have us,

05:05imagine this church as we sit in a pew

05:08and sort of the service is about to start

05:12and you look around and ain't no Bible there.

05:18And then even when the service starts,

05:20a big book is trucked out, still not a Bible.

05:25What's going on with that?

05:27Talk a bit about that and sort of set that scene for us

05:30and talk about why that's not a Bible.

05:33Like what are we looking at?

05:35What's happening?

05:36- Well, what are we looking at?

05:40So there's the kind of phenomenological answer

05:43to your question of what's happening in the room.

05:45And then there's the historical answer to your question

05:47of how did it come to be this way?

05:50I mean, the phenomenological answer,

05:53kind of the religious experience answer to that question

05:57is that most of the world's Catholics

06:01don't have any texts at all in the room.

06:04If you think about like when I'm visiting in Latin America

06:08or visiting a church, a Catholic church

06:12that doesn't have a significant budget,

06:14there's frequently nothing printed at all.

06:17There's no pretty materials anywhere.

06:18When you are there to pray, you listen and you look

06:23and you kneel and you smell and you taste

06:28and you're having a multi-sensory experience,

06:31but you're hardly ever reading anything.

06:33So even the idea that there would be a Pew Bible so-called

06:38or the idea that someone might carry their personal Bible

06:43with them is very much a Protestant framing

06:47of what happens when one worships,

06:50a traditionally Protestant framing.

06:52I also need to add for your listeners right away

06:55'cause I haven't read the book yet,

06:56that when I talk about Protestant framing

06:58and make this a book that does kind of draw into contrast,

07:02Catholic encounters with the Bible

07:03and Protestant encounters with the Bible,

07:05I do so out of a position of love

07:07and a somewhat divided identity,

07:10having a very devout Protestant evangelical side

07:14of my family and a very devout Roman Catholic side

07:16of my family.

07:17So I do have significant religious experience

07:21of both traditions that I can draw from

07:23and also a lot of participant observation

07:26in all kinds of different Christian denominations

07:28over the years.

07:30The historical answer, I go into much more in the book,

07:32but in short, three-fourths of Christian history

07:36has not had a printing press.

07:38And so if you're gonna say that you need a printed Bible

07:41to be Christian in worship,

07:42then you're saying three-fourths of Christian history

07:44didn't have it and many of the worship experiences today.

07:48So yeah, as you both well know,

07:53the combination of the printing press

07:55and the reformation, they go hand in hand there

07:59in the 1500s.

08:01- It does make sense, right,

08:04that the impetus for the Protestant reformation,

08:09Martin Luther takes the Bible and starts to say,

08:15"Hey, we need to center onto this."

08:18And so yeah, Protestantism is basically

08:23suddenly a laser focus on the Bible itself

08:27where traditionally, for centuries before that,

08:32the church, the sort of Catholic unified church

08:37had been something less focused on the Bible itself

08:42and more sort of the Bible is something

08:45that props up the church

08:50or that informs the church,

08:52but the church is the thing.

08:55- Well--

08:57- Did you say that that's correct?

08:58- That is part of the truth for sure,

09:02that the church is the thing

09:03and that ecclesial structures

09:06and ecclesial structures of authority

09:08have interpretive magisterium, we would say,

09:12in the Latin West, have magisterium.

09:15But, or and in addition to that,

09:18I would say that Catholics have always been

09:22a people of the word

09:24and they've always been a people of the story

09:27and the word and the story are a mode

09:32of encountering having an encounter

09:34with the person of Jesus Christ.

09:36So the Bible is a means of doing that,

09:41but the Catholic tradition has not been

09:45solo scriptura, right?

09:46So there are other means of doing that.

09:48That person of Jesus is encountered in the Eucharist,

09:53the body blood of Christ, the Lord's Supper,

09:54that person can be encountered in mystical prayer

09:57that person can be encountered through the visual arts,

09:59that person can be encountered in pilgrimage,

10:03that person can be encountered

10:04in all sorts of other ways besides the printed page.

10:08So, yeah, so that's kind of where I would go with it.

10:13I'm not telling Catholics not to read the Bible,

10:17I mean, I still am a biblical scholar

10:20in the Catholic tradition at a Jesuit university

10:23who tries to get my undergraduates

10:25to read more of the Bible.

10:26It's not that I'm pushing them away from that,

10:31but I try to be honest in a kind of lived religion approach

10:36about what actually happens in the Catholic tradition.

10:42- Well, and like you said,

10:43three quarters of Christian history

10:45has not had a printed Bible.

10:47The lived experience of Christianity is a rich tapestry

10:51that I think a lot of people do a disservice

10:54to particularly on Twitter when they reduce it

10:58to just get a Bible, read the Bible.

10:59That's all that matters when that's in,

11:02which is a misrepresentation of their own lived experiences

11:05and the way the Bible,

11:07they're engaging the Bible themselves.

11:09But you use a, you kind of take a metaphor,

11:14a John Dominic Crosson came up with in the book.

11:18Can you talk a little bit about the altar,

11:19the sides of the altar and how this informs your discussion

11:23of the different ways that one can engage the Bible

11:27in the Catholic experience?

11:28- I would love to.

11:30I think John Dominic Crosson doesn't get enough credit,

11:34honestly, I think he's so brilliant and he's so clever

11:37and his terms of phrase are just amazing.

11:40So when he wrote a memoir called "A Long Way From Tipperary",

11:45I went out and got myself a copy

11:48and I wanted to see what this man's life was like,

11:51how does an Irish monk end up

11:53at the Paul University in Chicago

11:55and writing seemingly a book a year for many, many years,

12:00filled with great insights.

12:03So I said "The Origin Story" was kind of my parents

12:08and also OUP asking for this book,

12:11but honestly, this one line in Dom Crosson's memoir

12:15is also another part of "The Origin Story"

12:18when he's talking about his experience

12:20with growing up Catholic in mid 20th century Ireland,

12:24pre-Vatican II, which is in the 1960s

12:26and did a lot of church reform, the surgical reform,

12:29but a Catholic church.

12:30So growing up pre-Vatican II, he says,

12:34"When I first heard the words "epistle and gospel",

12:38they were not parts of a book but sides of an altar."

12:41And he becomes a New Testament scholar.

12:48Like when I picked the book up,

12:49I knew of him as a New Testament scholar.

12:51So the fact that he then goes on to say

12:54he didn't even know "epistle and gospel"

12:57as in book form until he went to seminary, right?

13:02He didn't think of it that way.

13:04And so another thing I do in the book is that my,

13:08well, during, right before the writing of it,

13:10my father on the Catholic side passed away in 2019 and he,

13:17so I was going through all of this stuff

13:20and deciding what I might bring to my house.

13:22And one thing I grabbed is this little book

13:26called "Consize Catholic Dictionary".

13:29And it was clearly from his childhood.

13:32And I thought I'll just grab that

13:33and didn't, you know, put it on the shelf for later

13:36with some other of those kinds of items, rosaries and whatnot.

13:40And then when I was writing the book manuscript,

13:43I'm like, I wonder what's it says in this dictionary?

13:47Under the word "epistle".

13:49And it's sure enough, you go there

13:51and you look up what it says for "epistle"

13:52and it does not refer you to, you know,

13:54one of the 13 letters of Paul or anything like that.

13:58It refers you to the liturgy.

14:00It refers you to the reading.

14:03Like when the reading happens during the Mass.

14:06- Oh, interesting.

14:07- So talk a little bit about that

14:10because you did, in the book, you talk about,

14:13when you're talking about that sort of epistle

14:18and gospel being sides of an altar,

14:20you go through what the Catholic Mass kind of looks like

14:25in terms of the readings of the Catholic Mass.

14:27So just give us a sense of that

14:28because this is kind of the first way

14:31in which a Catholic does,

14:33and maybe the primary way in which a Catholic does

14:36encounter the Bible.

14:37- Absolutely, absolutely right.

14:41So you're right, I should have said more about to close the loop

14:44on that epistle and gospel point

14:46because in a traditional, now you need an asterisk here

14:51because there's a lot of Catholic church architecture

14:53that is not this way.

14:55But if you take a kind of traditional Catholic church

14:59with a linear nave and a central altar,

15:04there were two different pulpits,

15:07two different places from which one could read and speak.

15:11And one was for like announcements and the Psalm

15:15and the, if there is a first reading

15:19from the Hebrew Bible Old Testament, it would be there.

15:22If there's an epistle reading, it would be there.

15:24And then the other side of the altar has a more ornate,

15:28usually taller, usually grander pulpit

15:31from which the gospel is proclaimed,

15:33meaning a reading from Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John.

15:35And then that's where the homily or sermon is delivered

15:38about, usually about the gospel reading.

15:41So prior to Vatican II, there's hardly any

15:44Old Testament readings at all in the Mass, hardly any,

15:48a few a year, it's really, really limited.

15:51So there really is a big change after the Vatican II

15:56about that, but that's why the readings were called,

15:58the size of the altar gospel and epistle

16:00'cause those are the two main readings.

16:02So there's, the ghost of Marcian

16:04is always with us.

16:06And there was a bit of a Marcianites liturgical expression

16:11of what was in the word.

16:15So for those of us who don't know,

16:17talk a bit about what that means,

16:19what Marcianite means.

16:20Explain yourself.

16:21You have a very educated audience.

16:23I can't just say quasi-Marcianite

16:25and walk away from me.

16:26They are, but you have to at least bring me back

16:29into the conversation 'cause I'm easily lost.

16:34No, I mean, to put it simply, Marcian is known

16:37for two main things.

16:39The second century ends up being kind of like an archheritic,

16:43but he's a very popular at the time as a lot of followers

16:45and very seems to be a very innovative

16:48and intelligent early Christian who thought

16:52that the revelation of God in the old,

16:56what was called the Old Testament in Hebrew scriptures,

16:58the revelation of God that came there

17:00was revealing a different God

17:01than it was revealed by Jesus in his person.

17:04And so Marcian was the first real canon maker

17:08and created an early Christian canon

17:11by eliminating what we think of as the Old Testament.

17:14So that's what I meant by.

17:16- So talk about how that comes into play during a cat,

17:21in the sort of the Catholic, you go to church

17:26and you hear a couple of readings

17:29and somehow this Marcian idea comes out.

17:33So how does that play out?

17:35- Sure, so I should divide kind of pre-Vatican II

17:38and post-Vatican II because they're quite different.

17:40So before Vatican II, I would say the liturgical expression

17:44was, I don't know, was Marcian.

17:47I mean, it really had supported the Old Testament so much

17:50that hardly any practicing Catholics knew the stories

17:55or knew these prophetic teachings.

17:59So part of the Vatican II liturgical reform

18:02was to provide, as they say, like a more rich,

18:06a more rich treasury of the word of God

18:09and they say that they want all the principal pages

18:12of the Old Testament to get their moment during the Mass.

18:17So post-Vatican II, there are three main readings

18:22and a Psalm.

18:24So if you count the Psalm as a reading,

18:26then you have four main readings at every Sunday,

18:29Sunday Mass, weekdays is less.

18:32But you have an Old Testament reading,

18:34a Psalm, an epistle, and the gospel.

18:38So on the face of it then, you'd be like,

18:42this is great.

18:43And in fact, when Protestants come to Catholic Mass with me,

18:47one of the things they often say is like,

18:49oh, actually there was quite a bit of scripture read.

18:52That was more than I thought there would be.

18:54And actually, a lot of time at Pross,

18:56like at an evangelical church, you just have one reading.

18:59And so actually you're getting four readings,

19:01that's pretty good.

19:03And I said, true, but they almost never preach

19:07on the non-gospel readings, still.

19:10Every once in a while, you'll get a Catholic homeless,

19:14who will preach about one of the other readings.

19:17But the whole thing liturgically is designed

19:22to culminate in the proclamation of a story

19:26from the life ministry, death, resurrection of Jesus.

19:29So that absolutely is the framing.

19:31So in chapters one and two,

19:33just to bring it back to how I structure the book,

19:35I decided to structure the book

19:37in terms of descending frequency

19:44of the modes of encounter.

19:46Meaning, chapter one is,

19:49how does a Catholic encounter the Bible at a Sunday mass?

19:52And that's the one thing that you can pretty much guarantee

19:56if a Catholic is practicing Catholic, they're doing that.

19:59And you can't guarantee much about anything else in the book.

20:02(laughing)

20:03They're doing.

20:04So it's structured that chapter one

20:06is about how is what's called the "lectionary" structured,

20:10which is a cycle of readings.

20:12How is a lecture organized?

20:14And how do people then experience it?

20:16And then chapter two is called

20:18the Old Testament and the Gospel.

20:19And it's about this foundational juxtaposition

20:24of text pairings, right?

20:28So a Gospel text is chosen for the "lectionary"

20:32and then a text from the Old Testament from the law

20:37or the prophets or the writings is chosen

20:40to thematically correspond in some way.

20:42(upbeat music)

20:45- And are these, did I understand it correctly

20:50that these are actually chosen not by the priest

20:54at that parish, but by a larger organization

20:57within the church?

20:59- Yeah, well, yeah.

21:00And they were chosen at the end of Vatican II

21:03and haven't changed really too much since.

21:06So they were chosen by a group called Study Group 11,

21:10which was Study Group 11 of the Second Vatican Council.

21:14And when I was researching the book,

21:16I went to a Vatican II archive at Notre Dame

21:20and photocopied, they have all the notes,

21:22all the meeting minutes from Study Group 11.

21:26We didn't have them here in New York, so I went there.

21:29And it's all in "Neolatin."

21:32And the version they had actually have a lot of marginalia

21:36too of notes in French and German

21:38and various people who were part of the meetings

21:41on these meeting minutes.

21:42So they, I came away quite impressed actually

21:45with the scholarship.

21:47They really were studying what scholars were saying

21:51about the Bible and were trying to incorporate it

21:54into the structure of the electionaries.

21:56So in fact, the very idea of synoptic gospels

22:01and John, meaning synoptics being one unit

22:04and John being another unit,

22:06that finding from the world of scholarship

22:09is reflected in the Sunday electionary

22:12of the Catholic Church in the sense

22:14that there's a three-year cycle of readings

22:16with Matthew in your A and Mark in your B and Luke in your C.

22:20And then John is like, John is like a free-floating

22:24spiritual master who just like it's plugged in.

22:28You know, the Bread of Life discourse gets plugged in

22:31in part of Mark and the, you know,

22:35Sumerian woman at the well and man-born blind

22:38and Lazarus get plugged in during Lent

22:40during scenes of special kind of heightened attention.

22:43And so, so they really did, you know,

22:48they draw a lot from scholarship

22:49in the construction of the electionary.

22:52Sorry, I can really go down a lot of rabbit holes here.

22:56So do you want to bring me back to your question?

23:00- Well, you did, I just wanted to briefly,

23:02'cause I've got it pulled up here in the book.

23:04I want to, you did talk about how where,

23:08what Old Testament books they drew from

23:12for their Old Testament readings.

23:13- Yeah.

23:14- And it's like, it's all Isaiah.

23:18Like it is so much Isaiah.

23:20And then a little-- - It's just Deutero Isaiah, even.

23:22- Deutero Isaiah.

23:23- Deutero, that's right, it's Deutero Isaiah.

23:25And then a little Genesis, a little Exodus,

23:27and then the rest is like, yeah,

23:30it's some paltry things here and there.

23:34From, and some, from some books that I didn't grow up with

23:37because I didn't, it was very late in my life

23:40when I learned that Catholics had a different Bible

23:42than I had, that was surprisingly late in my life.

23:46But yeah, that's interesting.

23:48- One gets the impression from this.

23:50You talk with respect, if not reverence for this process,

23:55but at the same time are kind of,

23:58to some degree critical of the way,

24:00this is a very carefully curated experience

24:03through carefully curated lenses,

24:06designed to present the biblical texts

24:10in a rather limited and narrow way.

24:14And do you find this as a,

24:17obviously if only 5% of Catholics

24:19are regularly reading the Bible,

24:22their biblical engagement is already,

24:25could be called a bit of a liability,

24:27but do you think that this in some way

24:31kind of is a bit of a hermeneutical straight jacket

24:34when it comes to the way Catholics,

24:37if they do get into the Bible,

24:38are going to where they're gonna go,

24:41what they're gonna read,

24:42how they're going to interpret it?

24:43Does this kind of pigeonhole the Bible for Catholics?

24:48- That's a good question.

24:52Yes, so I'm gonna answer it in a few different ways.

24:56Well, the first is to say that Catholic knowledge

25:01of the Gospels is pretty solid.

25:05For if you're looking at practicing Catholics

25:07because of how the liturgy is structured

25:09and how the year is structured

25:11and how Holy Week is structured.

25:13And one thing I say about talking about my dad in the book

25:16is when I'm kind of comparing him to his wife

25:20who reads the Bible every day and my dad never did,

25:23and I say, you know, as a teenager,

25:26like, well, how do you know what's in it,

25:27dad, if you don't ever read it?

25:29And his answer is I know the stories.

25:32And he thought he was telling the truth.

25:36He's like, I know these stories.

25:37I went to the Catholic school with my whole life.

25:38He went to Catholic Mass every week.

25:40He's like, I know the story, I don't need to read it.

25:42And I think about the Gospels, he was telling the truth.

25:46But if you ask my dad to tell me the story of Esther,

25:50he literally would be like, what?

25:52- Well, that is what like the blind spots--

25:55- He literally would not know what you're talking about.

25:57- You point out that one of the big blind spots

25:59is that women are not centered in this.

26:03- So I tried to choose my spots very carefully

26:08as we do when we are being critical scholars

26:18about a living tradition.

26:19And a tradition that I don't have an interest in it

26:24being less alive, I don't have an interest in it being harmed.

26:29I really don't.

26:32I have an interest, it's like patriotism,

26:36like you want your country to be better

26:38and call it back to its ideals.

26:40You want your church to be better

26:41and call it back to its ideals.

26:43And so I try to choose my spots very carefully.

26:47And what I chose was in one of the legendary chapters,

26:52I choose its presentation of Jews in Judaism

26:55and the way in which the presentation

26:57of Jews in Judaism falls short

26:59even of falls short of the ideals of Catholic theology

27:05as articulated by official Vatican documents.

27:09So I'm not even calling for some radical revolution

27:14in the Catholic theology of Judaism

27:16or the Catholic theology of the Old Testament.

27:19I was calling for just to line up the lectionary

27:22with what you're already saying

27:24in your theological documents.

27:26So I believe that,

27:27I mean, I believe that that section of criticism

27:31is I hope it's unimpeachable

27:36because it's really intra-Catholic.

27:37It's about getting Catholic theology

27:40and Catholic hermeneutics and Catholic liturgy

27:42to talk to each other and be coherent.

27:45The second spot I chose not everyone

27:49in the Catholic church will like

27:51which is the treatment of women in the lectionary.

27:54So if the lectionary,

27:56well, I argue that the lectionary

27:59is functionally the Bible for Catholics.

28:01So if it's functionally the Bible for Catholics,

28:04then we have to be much, much more careful

28:07about representation of stories.

28:12So I go through in some detail,

28:16and it's not like I'm the first to do this.

28:18I mean, I'm standing on shoulders of giants here.

28:21But I kind of go through and say,

28:26here are the patterns of omission of women

28:30in the Sunday readings,

28:32and often even in the weekday readings.

28:34And you look, it's just very hard not to see it as,

28:42it's hard not to see it as intentional dance.

28:45It's very hard.

28:48I mean, I would love to believe some of it's subconscious,

28:51but some of it just feels very, very intentional.

28:54The exclusion of Phoebe from the whole lectionary

28:57just feels like too close for comfort.

29:01We don't want it in there.

29:02We don't want.

29:04- Nevermind, Junior.

29:05- Nevermind, Junior, right?

29:07- Yeah.

29:10But yeah, but just because of the living office of Deacon

29:14and the questions about ordination of women to the diaconate,

29:19that one is really hard not to see

29:20as an intentional omission.

29:22But there's also, in that chapter with,

29:25it's something I didn't even notice until I wrote this book.

29:28And I was teaching Proverbs 31,

29:34is it about, about the--

29:38- The Eshakayil.

29:39- Yes, exactly.

29:40So when I was teaching that text,

29:45it was a similar time to when that text

29:49appeared in the lectionary.

29:51And I actually had the experience just as a churchgoer

29:54where I was like, "Wait, what did they leave out of?"

29:56They left out some pretty interesting stuff.

30:00And so--

30:01- Can you, sorry, can you elucidate what the stuff--

30:02- Yeah, sure, sure, sure.

30:03- That was left out is just so that I know Dan

30:06would be able to figure it out.

30:08- No, no, that's fine.

30:09So there's this section in Proverbs.

30:13I think in my Catholic study Bible,

30:14the subtitle is The Ideal Wife or something like that.

30:17I mean, that's the kind of heading you get.

30:19And this is a pretty amazing person

30:21as it exists in Proverbs, right?

30:23This is someone who is organizing a domestic life.

30:28This is someone who is, I would say, running a business.

30:34- I think of the cake song.

30:36- She is touring the facilities and picking up slack,

30:40but yeah, she's managing the household,

30:43she's going off, she's making business deals,

30:45she's buying properties, she's doing all this kind of stuff.

30:48- And she's doing all the works of Mercy II

30:50and she's bringing good names

30:52or husband at the city gates.

30:54I mean, this is amazing stuff.

30:57And when you go to look at the part,

30:59the ex-circuit in the lectionary,

31:00she's not a global business leader.

31:04She's not buying property.

31:06She's not an international,

31:08making international land deals.

31:09She's not bringing that kind of honor.

31:11And it really made me mad, it made me mad

31:16because this is not necessary.

31:17This is not, you don't have to omit this

31:20to like make, and what it makes the reading what?

31:2322nd shorter, it's not, it's really not a big deal.

31:26And there's nothing doctrinally challenging

31:29about these sentences.

31:31It just gives a really full picture of a biblical femininity

31:36that in the lectionary version is a shadow

31:42or a sketch of that and it really bothers me.

31:47So those are my--

31:50- Is it focused primarily on domestic responsibilities?

31:53That's where-- - Yes, yeah, yeah.

31:56- Yeah, so it kind of makes that figure seem like

32:01she is in the home and not fussy and doing nice things.

32:05- Fair enough.

32:07- And so, you know, I came into it more mad about Phoebe

32:11and also the Hebrew midwives vanish.

32:15I mean, that one really got me mad.

32:16So when I started doing more research

32:18into like a Regina Boss Claire as a scholar

32:22who's written a lot about this

32:23and when I was doing research into her writings

32:26and kind of going through it all myself,

32:28I decided, all right, these are my two spots

32:30where I'm going to take this on.

32:32I'm going to let it, I have a lot of other things

32:34I could criticize, but I'm going to, you know,

32:36choose these two.

32:37- Well, I mean-- - As long

32:41as you had another question, Dan,

32:42or you had a different way of asking that

32:44that I've now forgotten.

32:45- Oh, if you've forgotten it, trust me, we've forgotten.

32:49(both laughing)

32:51- I need to take notes here, I'll come back to it.

32:55- It's fine, we're just jamming, man.

32:57- We're just having a good time.

33:00- Now, I wanted to, you talk about some things

33:04that I think Dan and I both appreciate.

33:07I want to share the first time I ever visited

33:10St. Peter's in the Vatican.

33:12I remember, I walked through the door

33:15after waiting in line for a very long time,

33:18walked through the door, and I was just kind of like,

33:20where to go, and I turned to my right,

33:23and there's the Pietà, and I was floored.

33:27I was like, it's right there, it's right there.

33:30- And went over, and the lighting was very dramatic,

33:34which I appreciated very much.

33:36It kind of heightened the experience,

33:40but Catholicism and art, obviously,

33:45this is something that a lot of Protestants

33:49are very unhappy about, but not just art,

33:52statuary, reliquary, all this kind of stuff

33:56is a central part of the Catholic experience as well.

33:59How is the Bible translated through artwork

34:03and presented to a Catholic worshipper?

34:07- Well, I start with, I'm glad you had that experience,

34:11by the way, of the Pietà.

34:13It is pretty exciting, especially if you don't know,

34:15it's going to be right there.

34:17- No clue, it sneaks up on you, he's got your hat.

34:21- Well, I start with the Pietà in the book

34:24because I would argue it is the most viewed work

34:29of biblical art in history.

34:34I think if you kind of run the numbers on who's seen it

34:37in person, on how many visitors to the Vatican

34:40there are each year, and then you kind of run the numbers

34:43on how many photos and reproductions of this there are.

34:46I think it probably, apart from the cross itself,

34:50I think it is probably the number one,

34:52probably our Lady of Guadalupe is one below that,

34:54but anyway, getting lost there.

34:57But so I start with the Pietà because it is that

35:02and it captures the two figures that are most emphasized

35:08in the Catholic biblical tradition of Jesus

35:11and his mother Mary.

35:13It also captures the two sides of the Catholic imagination,

35:18meaning grace and suffering.

35:22And those who study the Catholic imagination

35:24and the arts and literature and film often note

35:28that Catholics have a, they kind of can't let one exist

35:33without the other.

35:35They have to have these as two sides of the same coin,

35:37two sides of the same human experience.

35:39And you're never just gonna have grace,

35:41you're never just gonna have suffering.

35:43- And so this-

35:44- Let me just jump in and just say, sorry,

35:45that the Pietà for those who don't know

35:48is an image of Mary holding Jesus

35:53after his death.

35:54- Yes.

35:56- His dead body is laid across her lap and she's holding it.

36:01- Thank you.

36:02And it is, so Michelangelo-

36:05- Was it a 22 year old when he made the car of the Pietà?

36:10So don't feel bad about yourself.

36:12(laughing)

36:14- I'm a musical person, but I'm not a visual arts person.

36:18So it truly boggles my mind that any human can do these things.

36:24But right, so this type of image is a devotional prayer image.

36:29It has a forerunner, usually called the Vesper build in German.

36:34And you can see medieval versions of the Vesper build

36:37and medieval collections from the 1300s and so.

36:42But Michelangelo is of course the most famous

36:45and the most beautiful.

36:47What he does is he manipulates the ages that well,

36:53he manipulates the age of Mary

36:56by making her face very, very young.

36:58So that when you're looking at the,

37:00it's not intended to be historically representative image.

37:03It's an image that invites the viewer

37:07into a prayer experience that oscillates

37:10between two periods of time where you're feeling,

37:13this is a mother and child as when he is a baby

37:17and this is a mother and child when he is an adult

37:20who has just been crucified.

37:22And you kind of can't stay just in one,

37:25you're flickering back and forth.

37:27But if you ask anyone who's Catholic,

37:31who doesn't read their Bible,

37:34they would assume this scene happens in the text.

37:37And so the reason I start with it

37:38is that it's the most famous example of Catholic biblical art,

37:43but it's literally not in the Bible.

37:45And so how do you reckon with that?

37:49How do you reckon with that fact that Catholics

37:54traditionally imagine things between the lines?

37:58And this is where I joked about the data

38:00on the dogma part of your podcast title

38:02because there's no textual data

38:06of Mary holding Jesus' body off the cross, right?

38:09The body comes off the cross

38:11and goes to Joseph of Arimathea in the text.

38:15And Mary is there in the gospel of John right near the cross,

38:19but it's not narrated that she holds him.

38:24But this imaginative filling in the gaps

38:28is happening all throughout the history

38:31of biblical hermeneutics.

38:33And so if the mother's there,

38:36of course she would hold him.

38:38Of course she would.

38:39What mother wouldn't?

38:40I mean, that's, of course, it's not in a text,

38:43but yes, that is part of the story.

38:46And it becomes part of the story through the visual arts.

38:48So I decided to, well, when I started,

38:52I was gonna have one chapter on the visual arts.

38:55It ended up being two chapters.

38:56They're also very long chapters.

38:58So it's about 30,000 words.

39:00It's about a third of the, maybe more than 30,000 words.

39:03There's a lot of the book.

39:05And a lot of image permissions, Dan's.

39:08Don't write books with pictures.

39:10Oh, I was once in charge of getting image permissions

39:15for an illustrated Bible guide.

39:19So I know how much of a headache it is.

39:22And also I do, that's why I do my own artwork.

39:25'Cause I don't have to go get any permission.

39:27And now I've got friends.

39:28I've done artwork for Francesca,

39:30Stavikapulu.

39:30I've done it for Canada Moss.

39:32I do artwork for lots of folks.

39:34So yes, I know how much.

39:36Well, I'm not cheap.

39:39Now it's all chat GPT, man.

39:41It's all the robots that'll do the art from now on.

39:45The real answer of why the visual arts

39:51is it gets back to an earlier part of our conversation

39:54that I think it's honest.

39:55I think it's honest and authentic

39:57about how Catholics encounter the Bible

40:00and how they experience it.

40:01And what I wanted to try to figure out was

40:07during the formative periods

40:10of Catholic biblical art,

40:13what kind of a Bible are they seeing?

40:17Like what is the biblical canon

40:20and the kind of hermeneutic that's suggested

40:22by the visual canon?

40:24And so I worked with Robin Jensen.

40:26I worked with Felicity Harley McGowan.

40:28I worked with a few other colleagues

40:31who are early Christian art nerds like me.

40:34And I said, this is what I'm putting together.

40:37It's kind of the visual canon of late antiquity.

40:40And they helped us.

40:41I know you take this one out, add this one.

40:43And I feel pretty confident that we're being representative

40:46of what was there.

40:48And so I kind of trace it up from late antiquity

40:52into medieval iconography

40:54and even into liturgical drama

40:56to try to get the pre-reformation sense of things.

41:01So that's why--

41:01- Before it all got, before it all got chucked.

41:05- They took it chucked, it's still there, but it's--

41:08- Well still there, but there were an awful lot of folks

41:10who said this isn't for us anymore,

41:13which I think is, I'm fond of,

41:15and I don't know if you think this rings true.

41:18I'm fond of saying that prior to the reformation,

41:22the main focus, not the only focus,

41:24but the main focus of Christianity

41:25was how genuine is your love of God.

41:28And then the reformation turned the main focus

41:30and do how true are your propositions.

41:33And the reformation, I think you lose so much

41:38of the experience of the lived experience of Christianity

41:42when you turn it into just about propositions and texts.

41:45And that's one of the things that I love so much

41:47about visiting places where Catholicism

41:50is a dominant tradition or some kind of orthodoxy is.

41:56I can still remember the first time I visited Athens,

42:00I got up in the morning to go for a run

42:02and went up Philipapu,

42:04which is I think the best view in Athens,

42:07but I was running around the Acropolis

42:09and there was this little like half submerged

42:14in the road church, just tucked up on the side

42:19of the northern side of the Acropolis.

42:21And I saw, and there was smoke coming out of the door

42:25and I heard like chanting, and I just sat down

42:28and smelled the smell of this incense

42:31and listened to these people singing.

42:33And it was an incredible experience.

42:35And I got up and kept running like, man,

42:37why can't our church do this?

42:39But I think it's more of an all encompassing experience

42:44of Christianity.

42:46It's something that touches a lot more of the senses.

42:48And I think resonates with a lot more of the human

42:53when it comes to trying to make this,

42:59trying to deeply entangle this within the human psyche

43:03and the human experience.

43:04I think the Catholic and Orthodox traditions

43:09are way out ahead, which is,

43:12I think one of the reasons they don't have to always

43:14be arguing about interpretations of the Bible

43:19and who's not reading the Bible enough

43:22and all this kind of stuff.

43:24So it's a frustration of mine that that is

43:29a source of criticism for a lot of folks

43:32when it comes to Catholicism.

43:34- Sure, sure, well, I appreciate that you have

43:38that sense of its beauty

43:42and of the power of ritual to form human lives

43:47and form human culture.

43:50You bring up the East and Orthodox.

43:53I mean, this book, you have to draw your boundaries somewhere.

43:57I'm already writing about how the world's largest

44:00human organization deals with the world's most famous book.

44:02So it was already a pretty donning task.

44:05But my Greek Orthodox colleagues that I work with,

44:10they've read it and they agree.

44:13Like there's many, many similarities.

44:16You could kind of write a companion book

44:19about Orthodox traditions.

44:22They would be quite similar.

44:23Honestly, there's a lot of the comparisons

44:24to Judaism as well, not the visual arts piece,

44:27but there's quite a few similarities

44:31in terms of the hermeneutics of encounter

44:34that my Jewish colleagues and I have discussed.

44:37- Can I?

44:38Sorry, there's a question that's been sort of needling me

44:42that I wanted to get to since we,

44:44as we were talking about the arts

44:46and about, you know, you call,

44:48you say in the book that Catholics

44:50are a people of the imagination.

44:52- Yeah.

44:53- And you know, these artistic representations,

44:56you know, the Pieta is sort of,

44:59as you said, reading between the lines of the book

45:02and imaginatively filling in

45:04scenes that should have been there.

45:07Like, why wasn't that there sort of thing?

45:10But I also think about ways that that could go off the rails.

45:14- Sure.

45:15- Because imagination is obviously boundless

45:18and, you know, I think about,

45:22there's a comfort in the sort of,

45:25the Protestant idea of like, let's nail some stuff down.

45:29- Yeah.

45:30- Let's keep it tight, let's keep it uniform.

45:34And so there's the beauty of the Catholic imagination.

45:38But then what happens when my imagination clashes

45:42with your imagination or, you know, you look at art

45:45and this imagining is sort of one thing

45:49and then there's, you know,

45:51Hieronymus Bosch just goes completely off the charts

45:54and gets crazy about things.

45:57So like, is there a downside

46:01to this imaginative encountering of the Bible?

46:04- Sure.

46:07I mean, in terms of conflict,

46:08you could say something like Martin Scorsese's

46:12version of "Last Temptation of Christ" in the 1980s,

46:16one of the most controversial films

46:17in the history of Hollywood.

46:19And so an imagination also that comes out

46:22of Kazuzakis' novel, right?

46:24So we have a Greek and a Italian combining their imagination.

46:29But, you know, an imagination of the person of Jesus,

46:32the person of Mary Magdalene,

46:34Holy Week, The Cross, that is so different,

46:40definitely leads to a great amount of conflict.

46:42Even as there's a lot of philosophical

46:45and theological depth to that story and that film.

46:49But Dan, I guess, you know,

46:53just the Catholic side of me would say

46:57that there is way more positives than negatives

47:01in terms of the imaginative process.

47:03And I would also say that Protestants

47:05are also doing it, they're not willing to admit it.

47:10And then it, because then it feels like, you know,

47:15aegesis or reading into the text.

47:16An example that I think I give in the book,

47:18I actually can't remember, but one that I use a lot

47:22is about the Annunciation.

47:24And I think I do say this

47:25'cause I closed the book with the Annunciation.

47:27You know, I say, so Annunciation is, sorry,

47:30in Gospel of Luke chapter one,

47:31when Angel Gabriel announces miraculous pregnancy to Mary.

47:38And only narrated there.

47:40It's a one woman, one minute story

47:43that has an outsized influence in global history.

47:48Okay, so why do I bring it up here?

47:52If I take a room full of Christians

47:54of different denominations,

47:56fundamentalist textual Protestants included,

48:00and I say to them, you know the story of the Annunciation,

48:06imagine it in your mind, like where is she?

48:08What's, where's the story happen?

48:13And I'll tell you what, very few people will say,

48:18I don't know, if they're, if they're like the about Christians,

48:21they will tell you where it happens.

48:24The text does not tell you what happens.

48:27- Well, and this is in inevitability.

48:28Any time you want to try to represent it artistically

48:32in film and in song, any time you want to try

48:37to figure out motivations, what's going on,

48:39how to reconcile stuff.

48:41Like just, you know, asking a Protestant

48:43to reconcile the nativity accounts of Matthew and Luke,

48:46you have to be very imaginative.

48:48You have to fill in lots of gaps.

48:51And so when, you know, the chosen is a television series

48:56that is doing an awful lot of this.

48:59And it seems to me that it is aimed at a primarily

49:02Protestant audience.

49:04And so I think there's, it's an inevitability.

49:07You can't get around this and still actually make

49:12the Bible something that's informing your life

49:15and your experience.

49:16And so I think it's, there's some picking and choosing

49:19going on here when it comes to when it's a problem

49:23and when it's not.

49:24I love the Prince of Egypt.

49:26I, you know, when it opens up, I'm like,

49:28well, those buildings are on the wrong side of the Nile.

49:31Like, you know, I can be critical of that,

49:33but at the same time, you know, you have to fill in the gaps.

49:37And there's a, there's a point at which you go from

49:41seeing a bunch of pictures to seeing live animation

49:45and you just have to get to the, to the other side of that.

49:49And so yeah, I think that's, that's a kind of a silly

49:53complaint or criticism, but at the same time,

49:56I think there is value in recognizing,

49:58hey, just so you're aware, this is the product

50:01of Michelangelo's imagination.

50:04This is not actually something narrated in the text.

50:07And, and far too many people talk about, you know,

50:10the story of the Exodus and really they're just recalling

50:14the Prince of Egypt and.

50:15- Sure.

50:16And it's hard to imagine, it's hard to imagine

50:19even a Protestant whose idea of hell isn't informed by Dante.

50:24You know what I mean?

50:24- No, like these imaginative sort of speculations

50:29or elaborations seem to be just sort of a thing of humanity.

50:35- Or anybody really talking about Genesis six,

50:39two through four without filling in the gaps

50:41with first Enoch, which an awful lot of them

50:45don't think is real.

50:47- And with the, with the enunciation, you know,

50:52Dan, the, so most people say at home.

50:55Like if they say, where is she?

50:56They say, imagine at home.

50:57And I say, well, you're saying that

51:00because you've been in an art museum.

51:01That's likely why you're saying that.

51:03And you didn't realize that that's getting in your head.

51:05But if you go through the history of enunciation art

51:07prior to the medieval period,

51:09she's on a water well for a lot of it

51:12because of the proteome of James.

51:15And she's at the temple or she's, or she's weaving

51:19because of the proteome of James,

51:21which is a non-canonical text about the life of Mary,

51:23which is extremely widely distributed in early Christianity.

51:28And so you have water well, weaving, temple,

51:32eventually much, much later you get to her at home.

51:37- Yeah.

51:38- And, you know, so there's even a kind of visual

51:41or maybe not a competition,

51:43but a kind of different traditions of hagiography

51:47about Mary that are informing people's imagination,

51:50even when they're looking at the text in their new testament.

51:53- And, yeah, I mean, even Protestants today

51:56will have been so influenced that when they think of Mary,

51:59they think of a writing on a donkey.

52:01- Right, yeah.

52:02- Proteve and Gellium of James.

52:03They might think of them being in a cave,

52:07Proteve and Gellium of James.

52:08- Right.

52:09- Very few of them think of the midwife,

52:11ah, pulling back a hand that's on fire,

52:13but surely there are some out there

52:15that don't know that that comes

52:17from the Proteve and Gellium of James.

52:19But, yeah, that's how the discourse about the story

52:22becomes the story.

52:23- Yeah.

52:24- And it can be influenced by all kinds of different things.

52:27The notion that, and one of my favorites

52:30is the notion that Mary was delivered Jesus in a stable.

52:35- Yeah.

52:36- Which is based on an interpretation of a word in Luke

52:41that probably just means guest room,

52:46but we interpret it very differently.

52:49- Sure.

52:49- And that becomes the way we fill in the gaps in our mind.

52:53Yeah, fascinating, fascinating story.

52:57I wanted to, we don't have a ton of time left,

53:00but I wanted to briefly get to the son of God

53:02in the Roman Empire just because that was a book I really enjoyed

53:07as I was going through graduate school,

53:10particularly because Christology

53:12and the conceptualization of deity

53:14that was something so central to what I was working on.

53:18But can, do you mind just giving the 30,000 foot view

53:22of what you were doing in that book?

53:24- Well, I was looking for a dissertation topic, Dan.

53:28(laughing)

53:30New Testament's a pretty small book, you know, as per word.

53:35It's maybe the most interpreted thing out of, no,

53:38but honestly I was, the origin story of that book was,

53:46I was sitting in one of my required doctoral seminars

53:50and one of my professors was forcing us to read

53:53the lives of the Caesars and, you know,

53:56other aspects of Roman imperial ideology

53:59to kind of get the social setting of really Christianity.

54:02And I had not realized how many of these powerful Romans

54:07were adopted.

54:09I just, I knew that Augustus was,

54:12but I didn't realize it was such a dominant part

54:15of the succession of Roman emperors.

54:19And I started asking that same professor.

54:23I said, well, if that's true, and if this is one

54:26of the only other people called Son of God in the world,

54:30doesn't that seem relevant?

54:31That's how it started.

54:33And the professor said, I think that is relevant

54:36and you should look into that, so I did.

54:41And then I, and then I, the next thing I found was an old,

54:45well, these are all old books now, but Greg and Grow,

54:49we called it Robert Greg and Dennis Grow,

54:50wrote a book about arianism in the 1970s, I think.

54:55And arianism, a theory of salvation,

54:59I think it's called, and there's a footnote, Dan,

55:02and there's this, this is what you want

55:04when you're looking for a dissertation topic.

55:06They talk about the image of adoption

55:08and there's a footnote that says something like,

55:11it's possible that the Roman imperial conics of adoption

55:16is relevant for further study of this.

55:19(laughing)

55:20It's like this perfect thing, you know?

55:22- Yeah, yeah.

55:24Then you have to go make sure nobody actually

55:26already stumbled across that footnote.

55:27- Sure, yeah, and there are people who,

55:30I mean, it's, you know, nothing's totally new

55:31under the sun, there are people who had kind of sketched

55:35some interest in this, but, you know,

55:38I thought there was enough to make a book-length argument

55:40out of it.

55:41So what I wanted to do then in the dissertation

55:44was really two things.

55:48I wanted to take as seriously as possible the fact

55:53that the term son of God, whether in Greek or in Latin,

55:58without a named God, right?

56:00Not son of Hercules, not son of Apollo,

56:03but just son of God was used for the emperor

56:08and for Jesus and for hardly anyone else.

56:12I wanted to just zoom in on that and say,

56:14this has to matter because this is the most known person

56:19in the world.

56:20And if you are walking along a Roman road, you know,

56:25in Crete or in Cyprus or in the middle of whatever,

56:32every mile, you're seeing mile Roman milestones

56:35that have this on it, right?

56:37That say, like the titularature of the emperor,

56:40which includes the utilities or son of God.

56:43So I'm like, this just has to be part of the visual oral

56:48ideological landscape that everyone's encountering.

56:55So how can I understand how that matters?

56:57The second thing that I wanted to do was to get deeper

57:02into the tension between begotten sons and adoptive sons,

57:07natural sons and adoptive sons.

57:09And then I realized that at the upper echelons of society,

57:14in elite father-son relationships,

57:16not only in the imperial family,

57:17but also in other wealthy families,

57:19that this tension is very strong

57:22and often adoptive sons have higher status,

57:25that they are often seen to, right?

57:28If like the problem of dynastic succession

57:31is that not everyone has a good son, right?

57:33So you have problems, right?

57:36It doesn't always work.

57:37And so the Romans, they know this

57:40and also there's a lot of, of course, mortality,

57:43but they kind of can get around this problem

57:48of dynastic grammar by the adoptive succession model.

57:53So you get some classic tensions between the two.

57:57And so I basically said,

57:58look, if the Roman imperial divine sonship is as well known

58:02as I think it is,

58:04and if the adoptive mode of sonship

58:06is the primary mode of gaining power and status

58:11in the Roman Empire,

58:13then let's read the New Testament with that in mind

58:17and see what happens.

58:18And I focus on the gospel of Mark

58:20for one long exegetical chapter.

58:22And then I also talk about,

58:25I talk about Paul and I talk about the kind of road

58:28to Nicaea in the last chapter

58:31and try to bring it up to that point.

58:34- Love it.

58:36That sounds really interesting, Dan.

58:37Thanks for cluing me in that we were gonna be talking

58:40about that so that I could be boned up.

58:42(both laughing)

58:44By the time we got to it.

58:45But yeah, that's a really interesting topic.

58:48I mean, we might have to bring you back.

58:50What about that?

58:51- Yeah, there's Mark in Christology,

58:55I argue about it a lot on social media, so.

58:59- It's like you said, 14 years ago,

59:02but it was one's dissertation

59:05and is always dear to the heart, so.

59:08- Yeah, yeah.

59:09- If it's not loathed.

59:11I mean, an awful lot of,

59:13I know an awful lot of people who are like,

59:14I never wanna touch my dissertation topic ever in my life.

59:17(both laughing)

59:18I feel grateful that I ended up with that one.

59:22There were many roads not taken before that one,

59:24so I'm grateful for it.

59:27- Well, if.

59:28- I'm sorry, go ahead.

59:29- I was gonna say it led to some significant arguments.

59:34Dan, you may or may not know about,

59:36but Larry Hurtado of Blessed Memory really hated the book.

59:41(both laughing)

59:43- Well, and you bring Larry up a bit,

59:46and he was always incredibly generous and nice to me,

59:51even though most of the time I was arguing with him as well.

59:54- Yeah, he really didn't appreciate my tone,

59:58and my own advisor who was Harold Atridge,

60:01Harry said when it was all said and done,

60:03he said something like,

60:06you might've had too much fun with that couple pages there.

60:09(both laughing)

60:12- I think a lot of that needed to be said.

60:14I think you brought up some stuff

60:16about the influence of platonic philosophy

60:19on the conceptualization of deity.

60:21I think you pointed to Clifford Ando

60:24and the idea of more of a spectrum of humanity and deity.

60:28That was something that was not being talked about,

60:31but I was working on a prototype theory

60:35and conceptualizations of deity in the Hebrew Bible,

60:38which is exactly how that relationship is just now.

60:44Naturally conceptualized, so that was,

60:46I thought that was very--

60:47- Where'd you like a Psalm 82 guy?

60:49- I'm a Psalm 82 guy, yeah, yeah.

60:52I've published on that as well.

60:54I'm working my way towards a book.

60:57There's an editor, I've promised a book on Christology,

61:01and I've become very focused on Johannine Christology right now,

61:06just because of how much out there,

61:08I think is missing the mark.

61:11Because of the retrojection of much later philosophical

61:14frameworks into the first century

61:16where they didn't really exist.

61:18So, but that stuff we can talk about in the after party.

61:22- Yes, yes, let's take this conversation over there.

61:27- But before we do that, before we do that,

61:30how Catholics encounter the Bible and the Son of God

61:32in the Roman world, two phenomenal books

61:35from Michael Pepper go out and they're,

61:37both Oxford University Press.

61:39So wherever you get your Oxford University Press material,

61:43you can find these two books.

61:46- And the newer one is priced to sell.

61:48They're very reasonably priced.

61:51- Well, and I do want to say, Michael,

61:54that it's written in a way that I could understand,

61:57so I'm sure our listeners could also understand it.

62:01It is not, it is not mired in academia so much,

62:09so that it becomes impenetrable.

62:11So I really appreciated that.

62:13- Yes, and not nearly as polemical

62:15as the first one, evidently.

62:17- All right, well, we're gonna end this.

62:22As you say, there's gonna be more conversation

62:25in the after party for our patrons.

62:28You're gonna wanna be there 'cause Michael has promised

62:30to take Dan to task for something he did

62:33in one of his videos.

62:35So we're gonna get all of that action.

62:38So you might wanna become a patron.

62:40Now's a good time to do it.

62:41Go over to patreon.com/dataoverdogma.

62:44Sign up at the, I think this is the $10 month level

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62:51That's bonus content.

62:52Helps us keep this thing on the air.

62:56It's absolutely necessary for us,

62:59and we thank all of our patrons so much.

63:02And Michael, we thank you so much for joining us today.

63:06Happy to be here. We covered some of the main topics

63:09and the rest of it you can find in here.

63:12- Go get that book, everybody.

63:14Thanks so much to Roger Gaddy for editing the show.

63:16And thanks to all of you for tuning in.

63:19We'll talk to you again next week.

63:21- Bye, everybody.

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