Welcome to the Deconstructionist Podcast! Join host John Williamson as he embarks on a captivating exploration of ancient biblical manuscripts with esteemed guest Dr. Garrick V. Allen. Delve into the intriguing world of historical texts, their annotations, and the fascinating doodles etched by past readers. Discover the significance of titles and how they shape our understanding of the scriptures over time.
In this engaging episode, unearth the hidden stories and personal imprints left by individuals across centuries. From corrections and notes to lists and marginalia, learn how these elements contribute to the living and evolving tradition of the biblical texts. Gain insights into the communal nature of ancient writings and their lasting impact on modern interpretations.
With vibrant discussions and vivid descriptions, this podcast invites you to rethink your approach to sacred texts and appreciate the dynamic interplay between history, scholarship, and personal reflection. Tune in now and explore a new dimension of understanding the New Testament!
Garrick V. Allen is professor of divinity and biblical criticism at the University of Glasgow. He has written dozens of academic articles, popular pieces, and multiple award-winning monographs, including The Book of Revelation and Early Jewish Textual Culture, which won a Manfred Lautenschlaeger Award for Theological Promise, and Manuscripts of the Book of Revelation, which won the Paul J. Achtemeier Award for New Testament Scholarship.
(Select) Publications: Manuscripts of the Book of Revelation: New Philology, Paratexts, Reception; Son of God: Divine Sonship in Jewish and Christian Antiquity; Words Are Not Enough: Paratexts, Manuscripts, and the Real New Testament.
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This episode of The Deconstructionists Podcast was edited, mixed, and produced by John Williamson
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00:00:00 --> 00:00:11 Music.
00:00:10 --> 00:00:14 Welcome to the Deconstructionist Podcast. I'm your host, John Williamson,
00:00:14 --> 00:00:18 and it's hard for me to believe that it is 2025 now.
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00:00:39 --> 00:00:45 What is Deconstruction in the basement of my old house. We've come a long way since then, hopefully.
00:00:45 --> 00:00:48 Adam and I were just hanging out the other night and laughing about the fact
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00:01:20 --> 00:01:23 enjoy the content I'm putting out there and Adam says hello.
00:01:24 --> 00:01:29 So with that having been said, welcome you back for part two of my interview with Dr.
00:01:29 --> 00:01:34 Garrick V. Allen. And if you heard that, that is my new dog barking in the background.
00:01:34 --> 00:01:39 Yes, we rescued a doggy and he's very sweet, but very mischievous. So sorry about that.
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00:02:01 --> 00:02:05 to it without further ado i give you garrick b ellen.
00:02:05 --> 00:02:12 Music.
00:02:12 --> 00:02:15 So I always feel really bad for the Catholic epistles.
00:02:17 --> 00:02:22 It's interesting you bring that up. I just recently interviewed John Dominic Crossan again. Okay.
00:02:23 --> 00:02:26 And he's got a book on Paul coming out, or might have come out already,
00:02:26 --> 00:02:27 called Paul the Pharisee.
00:02:28 --> 00:02:34 Nice. And it looks specifically at Paul's role in the early Christian church.
00:02:34 --> 00:02:37 So it's kind of interesting you brought that up. But talk about the fact that,
00:02:37 --> 00:02:41 because you also mentioned listen, and I had a question written down about that as well.
00:02:41 --> 00:02:45 Because, you know, between, as you said, prefaces, prologues,
00:02:45 --> 00:02:50 and lists, all of these things signify some level of importance to the things
00:02:50 --> 00:02:53 that they're pointing at by the person who's providing this commentary.
00:02:53 --> 00:02:58 Talk a little bit about that. And also, you give an example of how over the
00:02:58 --> 00:03:02 centuries people have written sort of their questions, thoughts,
00:03:02 --> 00:03:06 and experiences into the margins of not just the Bible, but books in general.
00:03:06 --> 00:03:09 This is sort of a common practice, which i
00:03:09 --> 00:03:12 think probably most people listening can remember
00:03:12 --> 00:03:16 if not themselves doing it but relatives books
00:03:16 --> 00:03:18 i've got a copy of a of an old bible from the
00:03:18 --> 00:03:21 1800s i mean not old i guess comparatively it's pretty
00:03:21 --> 00:03:24 old that's old enough yeah yeah it's got all sorts
00:03:24 --> 00:03:27 of notes in it dedication notes in the in the very front and
00:03:27 --> 00:03:31 just so you can tell what verses they were really interested
00:03:31 --> 00:03:34 in just by virtue of like underlines and notes
00:03:34 --> 00:03:37 off to the margin that was really a big thing because you share
00:03:37 --> 00:03:40 a lot of photos of some of these ancient manuscripts in
00:03:40 --> 00:03:43 the book and there's everything from like doodles to
00:03:43 --> 00:03:45 really bad artwork all sorts of stuff in there
00:03:45 --> 00:03:50 yeah there's a lot of good artwork too but i like the funky stuff the people
00:03:50 --> 00:03:55 people tend to avoid i mean i mean the first thing i'll say is in spaces where
00:03:55 --> 00:04:00 there's not many books in in most of these communities the biblical texts are
00:04:00 --> 00:04:04 going to be fairly important and so they're the things that that people are gonna use,
00:04:04 --> 00:04:07 and it's the thing that you know will probably outlive you.
00:04:08 --> 00:04:13 People will repair it, pass it on. It's a space where you can leave a little
00:04:13 --> 00:04:16 part of yourself, whether in an intentional way or a silly way.
00:04:17 --> 00:04:22 The New Testament's manuscripts are full of these funky annotations.
00:04:23 --> 00:04:28 Pictures of people with underbites or a picture of Jesus with really tiny little hands.
00:04:28 --> 00:04:33 Or ships and monasteries. I know. They're very cool, very cool stuff.
00:04:33 --> 00:04:37 There's a whole set of little doodles that I have no other word for except like
00:04:37 --> 00:04:39 weird little guys, like a guy,
00:04:39 --> 00:04:45 a triangle with a little head and someone's foot, a sort of angel's wings.
00:04:45 --> 00:04:51 All these sorts of things appear everywhere. There's one manuscript that's at the monastery of St.
00:04:51 --> 00:04:55 John the Theologian on Patmos that has two people fighting in the margins,
00:04:56 --> 00:05:00 people shooting at each other, shooting bows and arrows, and these sorts of things.
00:05:00 --> 00:05:03 So people use these in their sort of everyday lives.
00:05:03 --> 00:05:07 I mean, the other thing you see a lot of is people learning to write the alphabet
00:05:07 --> 00:05:12 by copying the letters on the page and writing alpha, beta, gamma,
00:05:13 --> 00:05:18 so on in the margins, or trying to do some of the scribal flourishes that you
00:05:18 --> 00:05:21 see and writing these over and over and over and over again,
00:05:21 --> 00:05:26 or copying the first line of a page five or six times to do these sorts of things.
00:05:26 --> 00:05:30 So these are spaces where people learn to do human things, to read and write.
00:05:31 --> 00:05:35 Not only for spiritual sustenance and liturgy and so on.
00:05:35 --> 00:05:38 But it's an interesting sociological thing.
00:05:38 --> 00:05:43 And it's not surprising that Bibles of all types and manuscripts of the New
00:05:43 --> 00:05:47 Testament are the places where people play these things out.
00:05:47 --> 00:05:48 They write prayers in the margins.
00:05:49 --> 00:05:54 There's a manuscript in Dublin I really like, a gospel manuscript where a guy
00:05:54 --> 00:05:58 called Peter the Shoemaker prays for his wife Anastasia and their children in
00:05:58 --> 00:06:00 the lower margins of Luke.
00:06:00 --> 00:06:06 So you see like little bits of people's lives kind of deposited in these spaces and,
00:06:06 --> 00:06:12 And then, you know, like more intellectually or scholarly, you have a lot of
00:06:12 --> 00:06:14 lists in there everywhere.
00:06:15 --> 00:06:19 Dozens and dozens and dozens of lists that do different things that list out
00:06:19 --> 00:06:25 Jesus's miracles or the patriarchs or the write the 10 commandments again,
00:06:25 --> 00:06:29 or one that's really prevalent are lists of quotations.
00:06:29 --> 00:06:32 I mean, if you've read the New Testament in any serious way,
00:06:32 --> 00:06:37 you know that it is constantly quoting parts of Jewish scripture of the Old Testament throughout.
00:06:38 --> 00:06:42 And people make lists of these things and catalog where these quotations come
00:06:42 --> 00:06:47 from and mark them in the margins so you can see, again, the broader network
00:06:47 --> 00:06:52 between different parts of scripture that are kind of in conversation with one another.
00:06:52 --> 00:06:56 Or before chapter and verses existed, people had chapter lists,
00:06:56 --> 00:07:00 a different set of chapters than we have today for each book.
00:07:00 --> 00:07:05 And these often appear at the front with little titles telling you what each
00:07:05 --> 00:07:07 section is about and so on.
00:07:07 --> 00:07:10 And these lists go on for pages and pages and pages at the front.
00:07:10 --> 00:07:15 So these things are just everywhere. So like these residues of intellectual
00:07:15 --> 00:07:20 engagement with the Bible that then forces you to look for those features in the text as you read.
00:07:20 --> 00:07:27 And also the sort of daily life, ubiquitous, everyday playing in the margins,
00:07:27 --> 00:07:31 doing normal human things with these sacred texts, I think is a really beautiful
00:07:31 --> 00:07:34 expression of the way that,
00:07:35 --> 00:07:37 human activity influences.
00:07:38 --> 00:07:42 Preserves, transmits these sacred texts.
00:07:42 --> 00:07:49 And you can see these are not like objects that aren't necessarily untouchable or unchangeable.
00:07:49 --> 00:07:52 People are always manipulating them and doing things with them along the way.
00:07:52 --> 00:07:56 Yeah, it's just a really cool way to historically.
00:07:57 --> 00:08:00 Helps you kind of understand the people in that time
00:08:00 --> 00:08:03 period and how they interacted with the text as well and
00:08:03 --> 00:08:06 like what things that they thought were important to them
00:08:06 --> 00:08:10 in that particular moment in time it's it's kind of this cool insight that we
00:08:10 --> 00:08:15 don't get in our like i said our very kind of sterilized versions of the bible
00:08:15 --> 00:08:20 today you know yep i actually it puts our own reading we do with the bible today
00:08:20 --> 00:08:25 what you know wherever we're at in faith no faith deconstructing whatever However,
00:08:26 --> 00:08:30 you can read a biblical text and see yourself as part of a biblical story.
00:08:30 --> 00:08:34 It gives you context for the things you're doing, shows that you're not the
00:08:34 --> 00:08:38 first person to not understand what this passage is about or what this part
00:08:38 --> 00:08:43 of the text is or why this weird thing here matters or how it relates to other parts of the Bible.
00:08:44 --> 00:08:47 So it really gives us some leeway, I think,
00:08:47 --> 00:08:53 to give ourselves the space and the time to to engage these texts however we
00:08:53 --> 00:08:58 need to at that moment and see ourselves as part of a much bigger story that
00:08:58 --> 00:09:03 goes all the way back to the first century that we have just these tiny little traces of.
00:09:04 --> 00:09:10 I try to think of the Bible as a film that's been going on since the first century.
00:09:11 --> 00:09:13 And every time you see a manuscript or you pick up a modern Bible today,
00:09:14 --> 00:09:20 you get a real good frame of the film, but there's a lot of black parts, a lot of obscure parts.
00:09:20 --> 00:09:25 And so trying to find your way within that bigger narrative is something that
00:09:25 --> 00:09:27 we do every time we pick up a Bible.
00:09:27 --> 00:09:32 Yeah, absolutely. And one thing that we touched on that I would like to just
00:09:32 --> 00:09:36 talk a little bit more about is that we kind of references the role of titles.
00:09:36 --> 00:09:38 And you mentioned this book as well.
00:09:38 --> 00:09:44 There is a specific role for the use of a title, especially in these types of manuscripts.
00:09:45 --> 00:09:50 Absolutely. Oh man, I love titles. We have a project here where we've digitally
00:09:50 --> 00:09:53 edited every form of every title in every Greek New Testament manuscript.
00:09:53 --> 00:09:55 We have over 30 annotations.
00:09:56 --> 00:09:57 It's been a big five-year project.
00:09:58 --> 00:10:01 We're nearly done. But I spent a lot of time looking at titles in the manuscripts
00:10:01 --> 00:10:04 as a result. But, I mean, we see really interesting things.
00:10:04 --> 00:10:08 You know, the way that we know these books, the titles we know these books by
00:10:08 --> 00:10:12 today, you find them in the manuscripts, 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, and so on.
00:10:12 --> 00:10:15 But you also find a whole range of other titles.
00:10:15 --> 00:10:19 So the book of Revelation has over 50 different titles in Greek alone.
00:10:19 --> 00:10:24 They're all kind of of a kind, but they give different descriptions to John
00:10:24 --> 00:10:27 or locate him on Patmos or talk about what an apocalypse is.
00:10:28 --> 00:10:31 There's also a set of titles that we don't normally have in
00:10:31 --> 00:10:34 our at least english books anymore called the subscription or
00:10:34 --> 00:10:38 titles at the end of a book and often
00:10:38 --> 00:10:40 in the manuscripts these show us a lot
00:10:40 --> 00:10:44 of information they give us a sort of imagined context
00:10:44 --> 00:10:50 for how to think of the book so for matthew it's something like you know the
00:10:50 --> 00:10:54 book of matthew written eight years after jesus's ascension in jerusalem in
00:10:54 --> 00:10:58 hebrew now scholars don't think any of that is right like matthew was not written
00:10:58 --> 00:11:01 in the 40s. It was written much later.
00:11:01 --> 00:11:04 It was certainly not written in Hebrew and probably not in Jerusalem.
00:11:05 --> 00:11:09 But it gives you a context for understanding how people have read that book.
00:11:09 --> 00:11:12 And if you think it's very early, you read the things that Jesus says about
00:11:12 --> 00:11:14 Jerusalem in a different way.
00:11:14 --> 00:11:18 You approach the text in an entirely different framework. And so these titles
00:11:18 --> 00:11:24 do a lot of work of setting the parameters, particularly since the Gospels are anonymous.
00:11:24 --> 00:11:27 Like the text themselves don't tell us who the author is they don't
00:11:27 --> 00:11:30 care paul does in most of the letters but a
00:11:30 --> 00:11:33 lot of the letters are anonymous you know hebrews is entirely anonymous
00:11:33 --> 00:11:38 but these titles give attribute authorship so they give you a character to think
00:11:38 --> 00:11:42 about in their context and what they're writing and it gives you the space to
00:11:42 --> 00:11:47 consider these works within a broader historical or chronological context or
00:11:47 --> 00:11:51 whatever it is yeah that's that's really important to know and the The other
00:11:51 --> 00:11:52 thing that's important, I think,
00:11:52 --> 00:11:55 is the fact that you mentioned that a lot of these are anonymous.
00:11:55 --> 00:11:59 Even though I think we take for granted that they've always been associated
00:11:59 --> 00:12:02 with a particular author, and that was not always the case.
00:12:02 --> 00:12:07 That was a later, I think, adaptation, right, of like fourth century or so.
00:12:08 --> 00:12:10 I think it's quite, I think it's a bit earlier. I think it's,
00:12:10 --> 00:12:13 for the Gospels, it's probably second century would be my guess.
00:12:13 --> 00:12:14 I think it's quite early.
00:12:14 --> 00:12:18 I don't think the people who wrote the Gospels then turned around and wrote
00:12:18 --> 00:12:20 Gospel according to Mark at the top of it.
00:12:20 --> 00:12:23 You know, these are the products of tradition.
00:12:23 --> 00:12:28 These are the products of early Christian communities trying to contextualize
00:12:28 --> 00:12:31 what to do with these four books.
00:12:31 --> 00:12:35 And when you can attach them to particular personalities, that gives you context
00:12:35 --> 00:12:38 to think about them in different ways, to separate them off from one another,
00:12:38 --> 00:12:42 to give them their own independent existences, and to kind of foreclose the
00:12:42 --> 00:12:45 continuing development of gospels at that stage,
00:12:45 --> 00:12:50 putting them together in a nice corpus of four, which does a lot of symbolic work for you.
00:12:50 --> 00:12:54 So people are trying to shape these texts from the earliest stage,
00:12:54 --> 00:12:56 but none of this stuff comes from the authors themselves.
00:12:57 --> 00:13:02 Wow. See, that's funny. It's something that we've talked about in the podcast before.
00:13:03 --> 00:13:08 That's one of those things that we fight or wrestle with, specifically within
00:13:08 --> 00:13:10 Western culture in the United States.
00:13:10 --> 00:13:18 Everyone has been convinced that, oh, these have always been attributed to Matthew or Mark or whoever.
00:13:18 --> 00:13:22 That's just not the case. Nope. I mean, I think with Paul's letters,
00:13:22 --> 00:13:27 you can trace the majority of them to Paul himself. I think there's a good case there.
00:13:27 --> 00:13:32 But you know we think about authorship as like the great genius writing a book,
00:13:32 --> 00:13:35 but i mean in antiquity even today but also in
00:13:35 --> 00:13:40 antiquity like writing a book is a communal project it's your like your families
00:13:40 --> 00:13:44 of time resources to give you space to do this your co-workers and the people
00:13:44 --> 00:13:48 who read drafts the publishers and whoever like this is all a collaborative
00:13:48 --> 00:13:53 process so even if matthew mark luke or john is you know responsible for the
00:13:53 --> 00:13:54 Gospels in one way or another.
00:13:55 --> 00:13:58 There's a whole range of other people out there, enslaved people.
00:13:58 --> 00:14:04 Servants, you know, whoever, who had a hand in shaping these texts that we have today.
00:14:05 --> 00:14:08 Yeah. Oh, that's good. That's good. Talk a little bit about,
00:14:08 --> 00:14:10 towards the end of the book, you talk about the role of corrections.
00:14:11 --> 00:14:15 So like the fixing of mistakes, the making corrections in these texts,
00:14:15 --> 00:14:17 but also just the common practice in general.
00:14:17 --> 00:14:21 Talk about that a little bit. Yeah, I mean, one thing that you see in,
00:14:21 --> 00:14:28 I would say, almost every manuscript of the New Testament we have are corrections where people,
00:14:28 --> 00:14:33 either the first scribe who is responsible for copying out the text,
00:14:33 --> 00:14:38 or later correctors or later readers, have changed the text in some way.
00:14:38 --> 00:14:41 So often this is fixing just
00:14:41 --> 00:14:44 normal mistakes so a word you spelled a
00:14:44 --> 00:14:47 word wrong you put it in the wrong case or or whatever
00:14:47 --> 00:14:50 or people in some instances correct
00:14:50 --> 00:14:56 the text to another manuscript which may have a slightly different version of
00:14:56 --> 00:15:02 that text and you do this because in an age before computers or word processing
00:15:02 --> 00:15:07 software you either had if you make a mistake you either have to throw away the entire page.
00:15:08 --> 00:15:12 And get a new one and start afresh or make a small scale correction and almost everyone chose.
00:15:13 --> 00:15:17 The latter so you know some of our earliest most
00:15:17 --> 00:15:22 important manuscripts like codex sinaiticus have thousands of corrections by
00:15:22 --> 00:15:26 multiple different people the earliest copy of paul's letters in dublin has
00:15:26 --> 00:15:31 dozens of corrections made by three or four different people so you can see
00:15:31 --> 00:15:34 like people not only actively reading,
00:15:34 --> 00:15:37 but engaging the details of the text.
00:15:37 --> 00:15:42 Smoothing things, crossing things out, adding things that have been forgotten.
00:15:43 --> 00:15:45 I think the vast majority of the time, these are just scribal mistakes,
00:15:46 --> 00:15:48 but other times they're textually significant.
00:15:48 --> 00:15:53 And what's interesting is in most cases, they give people who are reading the
00:15:53 --> 00:15:55 manuscript that has been corrected options.
00:15:56 --> 00:15:59 Like you can read the same passage in
00:15:59 --> 00:16:02 two ways because both readings are there are visible to
00:16:02 --> 00:16:05 you it's like reading reading a novel where
00:16:05 --> 00:16:08 the author has gone through and changed a bunch of
00:16:08 --> 00:16:11 stuff throughout but you see everything that they've done both the original
00:16:11 --> 00:16:15 and the changed version so it's actually a very cool experience of trying to
00:16:15 --> 00:16:19 work your way through some of these pages and see what happens if you follow
00:16:19 --> 00:16:24 this reading but not that one this one but not that one and try to make sense
00:16:24 --> 00:16:26 of what happened in this manuscript.
00:16:26 --> 00:16:31 What were people trying to do? Why would someone do this? And to what end?
00:16:31 --> 00:16:36 So these are the sorts of things that corrections give us a chance to explore.
00:16:36 --> 00:16:40 It's not only modern text critics who are interested in these things,
00:16:40 --> 00:16:46 people from the very earliest manuscripts we have were interested to engage
00:16:46 --> 00:16:50 the small-scale details of these texts, and we have the residues of their work.
00:16:50 --> 00:16:53 Yeah, I think that's the coolest part is you can actually see it's almost like
00:16:53 --> 00:16:58 my daughter right now is getting into ever more complex math, which I am no help.
00:16:59 --> 00:17:03 The system that they're teaching now is completely different than what I grew up with.
00:17:03 --> 00:17:08 But the thing, the commonality there is that they have to show their work to
00:17:08 --> 00:17:13 see how they exactly at the conclusion and see some of the thought process behind
00:17:13 --> 00:17:14 that, which is really cool.
00:17:14 --> 00:17:20 Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, I think it's fun to see the results of someone
00:17:20 --> 00:17:26 engaging their sacred text so carefully that they changed what they had before
00:17:26 --> 00:17:29 them, either based on some other thing they knew,
00:17:29 --> 00:17:32 some other manuscript they had before them.
00:17:32 --> 00:17:36 But it's fun to see people actually, like you said, showing their work and then
00:17:36 --> 00:17:39 giving us access to it is a very cool thing.
00:17:39 --> 00:17:42 So I think there's a lot more work to be done with this just because there's
00:17:42 --> 00:17:44 so many manuscripts. There's so many corrections.
00:17:44 --> 00:17:50 It would take you years to catalog all the corrections in some of these manuscripts.
00:17:50 --> 00:17:53 So there's a lot of work to be done in this space.
00:17:53 --> 00:17:57 Yeah. And then on top of that, you've got the complications of the fact that
00:17:57 --> 00:18:01 obviously, New Testament specifically was written in Greek, completely different
00:18:01 --> 00:18:07 language, which aren't always like for like words between when you're translating,
00:18:07 --> 00:18:10 between Greek and like English or any number of other languages.
00:18:11 --> 00:18:16 And so then it gets even trickier and kind of goes back to Jacques Derrida,
00:18:16 --> 00:18:23 where we kind of start our name from, who talks about how text loses meaning
00:18:23 --> 00:18:27 by the second, the further removed it is from the source.
00:18:28 --> 00:18:34 Absolutely. But these sorts of things, I think in my mind, bring meaning back
00:18:34 --> 00:18:37 to the text when you engage it in this way.
00:18:37 --> 00:18:43 When you look at the paratext, you see people trying to bring life and vitality
00:18:43 --> 00:18:45 to this tradition that they've received.
00:18:46 --> 00:18:48 It's in the changing that you do that.
00:18:48 --> 00:18:51 I've never understood anything that Derrida has ever written,
00:18:51 --> 00:18:54 but I think he would like that idea. So I hope so anyway.
00:18:55 --> 00:18:58 Yeah, absolutely. Well, I know we're getting close to time here,
00:18:58 --> 00:19:02 but I wondered if you could kind of leave listeners with, what's kind of your
00:19:02 --> 00:19:07 hope that people take away from the book and sort of maybe helping us to understand
00:19:07 --> 00:19:10 the New Testament a little bit? Sure.
00:19:10 --> 00:19:18 Yeah. I mean, my hope for the book is that it gives people the freedom to think
00:19:18 --> 00:19:20 about what the Bible is for themselves.
00:19:21 --> 00:19:26 So, you know, as a kid growing up, you know, be accidentally involved in an
00:19:26 --> 00:19:31 evangelical church as a high schooler, you learn lots of things.
00:19:31 --> 00:19:35 The Bible is the unchanging word of God. It's very clear and easy to understand.
00:19:35 --> 00:19:37 But every time I read it, I didn't feel that way.
00:19:38 --> 00:19:44 So I hope it gives people permission to take those feelings and do something with them.
00:19:44 --> 00:19:48 You know, even if you don't read Greek or, you know, you can't go to the British
00:19:48 --> 00:19:53 library to see a manuscript, you know, these things are online.
00:19:54 --> 00:19:55 They're very accessible.
00:19:55 --> 00:20:02 You can flip through and, you know, try to find some of these features as you're looking around.
00:20:02 --> 00:20:07 But I hope it gives people a renewed interest in considering what the Bible
00:20:07 --> 00:20:11 is in light of how other people have made it available to us.
00:20:12 --> 00:20:14 I mean, our modern Bibles don't exist without these manuscripts.
00:20:15 --> 00:20:19 Without the scholarly work that turns these manuscripts and their texts into
00:20:19 --> 00:20:23 critical editions, without the people who then translate those editions into our modern Bibles.
00:20:23 --> 00:20:27 So it helps you to get behind the printed book on your shelf,
00:20:27 --> 00:20:32 to get behind the scholarly tools we use to do interpretation,
00:20:32 --> 00:20:38 and get back to the very most primary sources that we have for these traditions
00:20:38 --> 00:20:41 that have been important to people for 2 years.
00:20:41 --> 00:20:46 Yeah, absolutely. And it's just, I think it's really neat, and it points out
00:20:46 --> 00:20:51 a lot of things that I think, like I said at the top, that we take for granted
00:20:51 --> 00:20:54 that when reading our modern Bible,
00:20:54 --> 00:20:59 we don't consider in terms of how it sort of guides us and steers us in our
00:20:59 --> 00:21:01 understanding of the passage that we're reading.
00:21:01 --> 00:21:05 And even the fact that we have chapters and verses, those didn't always even
00:21:05 --> 00:21:09 exist in the form that they exist today. It's like little things like that that
00:21:09 --> 00:21:12 you don't even think about. Exactly.
00:21:12 --> 00:21:16 I mean, that's the thing. We consider chapters and verses an ingrained part of what the Bible is.
00:21:17 --> 00:21:20 You know, I mean, some publishers put out Bibles without chapters and verses.
00:21:21 --> 00:21:27 People tend not to like them very much because these paratexts define makes the Bible the Bible.
00:21:28 --> 00:21:32 And the same is true for these other things we've been talking about in the manuscripts.
00:21:32 --> 00:21:36 Like good paratexts, you don't even notice them. They're hidden in plain sight.
00:21:37 --> 00:21:41 They're everywhere, but nowhere at the same time, and you take on what they're
00:21:41 --> 00:21:44 wanting to tell you without even thinking about it.
00:21:44 --> 00:21:48 So when we are aware of these things, it changes the way not only you read the
00:21:48 --> 00:21:49 Bible, but a lot of other things.
00:21:49 --> 00:21:53 And once you see it, you can't unsee it. I haven't been able to anyway.
00:21:54 --> 00:21:57 But it's been really generative for my scholarly work, for this book,
00:21:57 --> 00:22:04 which is trying to cash out some of these implications for real people who are
00:22:04 --> 00:22:06 reading these texts in different ways.
00:22:06 --> 00:22:12 And I hope people can look at all the nice pictures and start to see what's out there.
00:22:12 --> 00:22:16 Yeah, I love that part, by the way. It's one of the things that I loved about,
00:22:16 --> 00:22:20 I mentioned John Dominic Crossan earlier. He did this really cool book on the
00:22:20 --> 00:22:25 resurrection at Easter years ago that is filled with pictures of frescoes and stuff.
00:22:26 --> 00:22:30 And I think it, as a visual guy, I love that. And so your book felt the same way.
00:22:31 --> 00:22:33 You put really cool pictures of these manuscripts throughout.
00:22:33 --> 00:22:37 So not only describing them, but showing sort of like, you know,
00:22:37 --> 00:22:40 some of the crazy doodles, for example, was really a neat experience.
00:22:40 --> 00:22:44 So tell people where they can get a copy of the book and also where they should
00:22:44 --> 00:22:46 go to stay up on top of what you're up to.
00:22:46 --> 00:22:50 Absolutely. Yeah. You can find the book on any place that sells book,
00:22:50 --> 00:22:53 Amazon, anywhere else you buy your books online, most bookstores.
00:22:54 --> 00:22:58 So keep a lookout. You can look up my, if you are interested in my scholarly
00:22:58 --> 00:23:02 work, you can find that at the University of Glasgow website by looking me up right there.
00:23:03 --> 00:23:08 I'm also just moved from Twitter to Blue Sky, so you can find me on Blue Sky, and yeah, I'm around.
00:23:09 --> 00:23:12 Awesome, yep, we just started an account on Blue Sky as well.
00:23:13 --> 00:23:16 Nice. Twitter's been a little weird. It's always been very angry too,
00:23:16 --> 00:23:20 which I've never liked. Yeah, gotten significantly worse. It's time to jump ship.
00:23:20 --> 00:23:25 Yeah, absolutely. This guy has all the best features of the old Twitter,
00:23:25 --> 00:23:27 I think, too. Breath of fresh air. Breath of fresh air.
00:23:28 --> 00:23:31 Yeah, so absolutely. So I'll put all those links in the show notes.
00:23:31 --> 00:23:34 So folks go out and follow. And like I say, grab a copy of the book.
00:23:34 --> 00:23:35 It's absolutely fascinating.
00:23:36 --> 00:23:39 I can't recommend it enough. And thank you so much for coming on again.
00:23:39 --> 00:23:41 Really appreciate it. Happy to be here. Thanks for your time.
00:23:42 --> 00:28:29 Music.
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