Transcription
Ladies and gentlemen, it is my privilege today to introduce to you Helen Bond. Helen is professor of Christian origins at Edinburgh University. Her many excellent books include *Women Remembered: Jesus' Female Disciples*, *The First Biography of Jesus: Genre and Meaning in Mark's Gospel*, and *The Historical Jesus, a Guide for the Perplexed*. Her research focuses on the social and political history of first-century Judea, the Historical Jesus, and the Canonical Gospels. She is host of the Biblical Time Machine podcast, and I will leave a link to that in the description below. So Helen, thank you so much for joining me.
Thank you. It's, it's great to be here.
It's great to have you, and we're going to talk today about this book, which I will hold up at the beginning. I'll hold it up at the end, too. Um, but this is the book, *The First Biography of Jesus: Genre and Meaning in Mark's Gospel*. I, I've gone on a bit of a gospel kick over the last six months, um, as I've been doing my my YouTube channel. And I've, this includes, like, I've looked at manuscripts of lost gospels. I've, um, done a little bit on, like, content in the gospels. I've talked about Q, you know, done this kind of stuff. Um, and I think Mark is just such a fascinating gospel. And when I came across your book, I had to read it because it was such a great guide to Mark. And I also, like, I bought a few commentaries on Mark, and most of them are, especially the the Adela Yo Collins one, is about this thick.
Um, and it just, it was such a great guide to Mark. And I wanted to start, >> by kind of sharing, like, a big-picture thought that I had as I was reading your book and get you to react to that, and then maybe we can get into some of the content. But >> that was scary.
Um, well, I think what I, the one of my big takeaways, um, is that often Mark has almost been treated as if it's not enough. That there almost has to be more there. And that goes from, like, right when, you know, Matthew and Luke used Mark as a source and expanded it, um, right down through the history of biblical interpretation, where often people have looked for these, like, hidden meanings or character developments or narrative arcs and all, like, or different sources behind the Gospel of Mark. There's been almost a constant, um, habit of trying to make Mark both more than, more than what it is. But I think in doing so, perhaps make Mark a little bit less than what it actually is. Um, I'd be curious to hear your reactions to that, and then tell us what Mark actually is, and what prompted you to write this, write this book.
Well, I, I think that's a really perceptive thing, actually. And, and I think, I think Mark himself, or the author who, you know, unknown author, um, really ironic, I think, that this is an anonymous text, but we spend all our time thinking, who wrote this book? Um, so we call him Mark, obviously, because that's the name that we're used to. So this anonymous author, I think, is, is sort of deliberately mysterious, elusive. He never quite kind of ties things down. He talks, he talks about secret teaching that Jesus has to explain to the disciples when they're in the house. You know, there's always that, you always get the impression that you've not quite grasped it. And then, of course, it ends in that sort of strange way. You know, the women run away, and the tomb is empty at 16:8, and is that it? You know, where we want it nailed down. We want an appearance. We want everything kind of, you know, nice and a line under it. The end, you know, we want it nice and clear. And I think, in a way, you know, that's that's his genius, but it's also the thing that has encouraged people to, to, to rewrite it, to rephrase it. You know, I mean, sometimes when Matthew is rewriting Mark, he, he makes things really clear that are sort of mysterious in, in, uh, in Mark, or he changes things. And, and the same goes with the other gospel writers. So I think, I think you're right that that there's, right from antiquity, there's this feeling that, oh, you know, we, we need to make things a little bit clearer, or we need to tweak that. And, and then I think in the modern times, the problem is, you know, Mark is our earliest gospel, probably from sometime in the 70s or something. But then, you know, it's a natural reaction, particularly from scholars, but also just people who are interested in Jesus, we want to get back beyond that. And so we start thinking about, you know, what sources might Mark have used? What, what's he working with? What, what's the traditions? What's the oral environment like? And so we're always trying to push back. And, um, yeah, sometimes you just need to say, okay, enough of all of that. Let's just have Mark as he is. Let Mark be Mark. You know, don't, don't try anything else with him. Um, and I think, I mean, but part of what I was doing in the book, a large part of what I was doing in the book, is is saying scholars have known for a while that that or argued for a while that Mark is an ancient biography. So, let's just read him as an ancient biography and, and see what it looks like when we do that. And I think a lot of things look a bit different because, because we're so used to reading the gospels, all of the gospels as modern texts, you know, with our own modern interests. And of course, 2,000 years ago, things were very different.
Yeah. Um, are biography and history the same thing in antiquity?
No, but they're very close. Um, so you get this whole sort of genre of writing called history, um, which is often, uh, connected to, you know, a great nation, a history of Greece, or something like that. And, and history is different to our idea of history because it, it's, it's got a lot of morality in it. It's all about, you know, learning from history, I suppose. And the difference with biography is that it is basically the same as history. It's just about a person. Um, and so, in a way, you know, I, I, I'm fairly sympathetic towards the people who say Mark is a history, but I just think it's a particular kind of history called a biography because it's about one person. But, but again, ancient biography is really concerned with morality and, um, and that's what sets it apart from our ideas of biography today. You know, we would normally kind of expect to be fairly, fairly unjudgmental. You know, a good biographer would have good sources and they would, they would try to chart things in an objective kind of way, in so far as that's ever possible. But, um, ancient biographers didn't do that at all. You know, it's, let me tell you why Jesus is the greatest and the best, and everything. And I'll quietly not mention anything that doesn't fit in with my general thesis.
And then with that, you, you talk a lot in the book about different things that, um, aren't there. You know, we don't get a physical description of Jesus. We don't really get big setups for the scenes. Um, this is both kind of idiomatic and it's weird for the way we think about biography. Um, but quite normal, I think, with ancient biography.
Well, certainly the, the lack of setting for some of the scenes. So, so Mark has, um, I mean, open the Bible, any, any page, and an English translation, and you'll see these little, um, paragraphs. And, um, an earlier generation used to say they were little bits of oral tradition floating about that were sort of captured by Mark and stuck down. Nowadays, I think there's far more, um, interest in seeing these as, um, an ancient form of sort of anecdote writing known as *chria*. So these are little anecdotes that that people were taught in the schools. So the, you know, we know a lot about the educational practices of the day, and people are taught to write these, these little sort of sayings. And, and often they, they have very little in the way of setting. They don't tell you who else is there. They just kind of get straight into the story. They're focused on Jesus. What did he do? What did he say? And they're just really quite brief. So, so it, a lot of ancient biographies are made up of just kind of, you know, one anecdote after another, one *chria* after another. So, so that's quite normal about, um, about Mark. What, what is less normal, I think, is not having, uh, an account of what Jesus looked like. Um, some, some biographers are really obsessive about this. There was a whole sort of science of, um, of, of, of what you looked like. Um, and Suetonius really, really gets into this, you know. So, I mean, he gives a physical appearance of all of the emperors and, um, I mean, all sorts of sort of strange things like the monobrow, you know, where your eyebrows make it is a sign of kingship. I mean, you wouldn't imagine that. Being short, as well, isn't necessarily a bad thing. And, um, so all of these sort of physical attributes translate very easily to characteristics that people can kind of see. So the idea is that you can look at a person and know their character straight away. It's written on them. Um, so not all biographers did that at all. Um, in, in fact, I mean, some who knew their subjects even didn't really say very much about them. But it's, it's uncommon to have nothing. And, and what I think is also odd is is that, you know, when Matthew and Luke and John kind of rewrite Mark, they also don't slip in a few little bits. I mean, even if you didn't know, and, and it doesn't matter that you don't know what your subject looks like, you know, you can still say, "Oh, he was, you know, he was tall and imposing, and he had flashing eyes, and he had, you know, he was beautiful." It was very obviously, you know, in the ancient world to be beautiful meant that you, um, was a sign of good character. So, it's sort of strange that none of those little bits that we also find in the Hebrew Bible, um, none of those are just sort of slipped in here and there. Nobody says anything about Jesus's appearance.
Like they added the, the later gospel writers add all this nativity stuff, but they don't think to add, like, "Oh, by the way, he was, you know, he had a unibrow, and that's really important."
Exactly. Or, you know, he, yeah. I mean, they could easily have said he was, he was a head and shoulders above the rest, like, you know, um, Old Testament characters, you know, a sign of kingship. And they're very keen on kingship. But, um, they don't.
Or even the opposite. I know you mention a few cases in the book, but, um, of people who are, you know, maybe traditionally ugly, but but who who actually, you know, are are quite, uh, are quite noble in their own way.
Yeah, that's right. I mean, you know, that, there are places where Isaiah's suffering servant is sort of drawn on, and again, in Isaiah, it says, you know, he had no, he, he wasn't com, he wasn't attractive. So again, they could have quoted that if they'd wanted to, but no.
Yeah. I was thinking of the famous, >> I was thinking of the famous story, *The Acts of Paul and Thecla*, which has this really nice description of the Apostle Paul as being like bald and hooked nose and bent knees and but he looked like an angel or something like that.
Exactly. It shows how fashions change.
Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Yeah. Not always what I would think about when I'm thinking about somebody angelic. But, um, it's so, so I guess one of the obvious things that you've already kind of mentioned is this is really about character. And we drop off a lot of things in the service of kind of portraying this character of Jesus. And I think, um, when, when we read other ancient biographies, um, there are, there are other characters like Jesus. Like, how, how do we make those comparisons? What kind of stories were floating around about noble characters, and how does Jesus kind of line up with maybe people like Socrates or the Caesars or, or different kinds of noble people?
Well, I think, I mean, what, what ancient biographies tend to do is sort of, they, some of them, some of them kind of tell you the virtues. So they're very interested in character, character traits, virtues, really. Virtues. I mean, you do get, um, biographies that are full of bad characters and telling you about vices, um, to largely, again, the idea is morality, to warn you off, you know, don't be like Antony, look what happened to him. Um, most of the time, um, biographies are written to inspire you to, to follow them. And, and particularly biographies of, of great teachers, like, as you say, Socrates, or Pythagoras, or, or, um, other, other sort of, you know, philosophical figures. So, um, yeah, sometimes they do sort of list virtues and then sort of give you an example of them, but more commonly, they will just sort of tell you stories about them. And the idea is that you sort of see them in action and pull out the virtues yourself. Um, so, um, I mean, the, the, the virtues that tend to be around are are things like, you know, uh, self-control, manliness, uh, generosity, compassion, um, you know, these are the things that that most people in the ancient world are thinking are are good things. Um, and, and you get these in, in Jewish sources too. When, um, when Josephus talks about Moses, for example, he has a life of Moses, and, um, he presents him very much in a, in a way that, um, that, that Greek and Roman readers would, would find attractive. Um, often you're sort of quite manly. Um, and, and we get this a little bit, I think, in, in Mark's gospel, where we have the Legion story. You know, Jesus sends the Legion away into the pigs, and, and there are links there, I think, with the, um, with the Legion that that, uh, that, uh, destroyed Jerusalem, which was that whose symbol was the pigs. So, you know, read after, after the Jewish war, you can sort of see these, these signs, the Legion, the pigs, and Jesus is this kind of great general, even, um, in his exorcising there. So I think when you kind of look at the stories and say, you know, what, what are this telling us about Jesus? He's a great benefactor. He acts with compassion. Um, he's in control of himself. He doesn't kind of lose control. Um, many of these are virtues that other people would have, um, thought of as good. Um, and, and I think one thing too is obviously that the, the gospels are coming from a, a Jewish background. And, and I, I think that's perhaps something I didn't make as much of in the book. Um, I mean, one of the problems is, you know, you write a book about one thing, and people say, well, why didn't you write about something else? And I thought I was kind of parking the Jewish side of things and saying, well, obviously, you know, uh, this is all happening in a Jewish environment. But perhaps I could have said more about how the, how the gospels are a Jewish version of ancient biography, because, um, clearly they're picking up their whole thought world and environment is, is informed both by their Jewish background and the kind of Greco-Roman world in which they're living.
That's such an, that's a really, a really interesting place to go, because I was going to say, um, I, I actually wrote my, my master's thesis on Josephus and *4 Maccabees*. Um, and one of the things I found looking at those two texts, um, was that when I went back in the history of interpretation, people are constantly asking, are these more Jewish or are they more Greek? Are they more Hellenistic? Or like, is Josephus more allegiant to like a Jewish identity or Hellenistic identity? And the thing that you have to come back to is like, it's always both. But in a really interesting way, because they're obviously writing, um, in such a way that they can take both cultural, I don't, we probably can't think of this as as two unique cultural milieus, but like, they can take everybody's categories and say, our guy fits it better than everybody, whether it's like the, you know, the Jewish prophet, or whether it's the, um, the, you know, the seven brothers dying in *4 Maccabees*, that they perfectly embody Stoic virtues.
Yeah. And I think that was my, one of the things I was getting as I was reading your book, too, that it's almost like Jesus is both, right? Like, he fits both kind of perfectly. Is that a fair assessment?
Absolutely. I think that, that, you know, you just can't say that enough. We, our field is obsessed with binaries. You've got to be one thing or the other. You've got to be, you know, and, and I'm seeing at the moment with these sort of people who say, you know, Mark is within Judaism, or he's not within Judaism. You think, well, what on earth does that even mean? So, you know, all Jews at the time, even, even the ones in, in rural backwater Galilee, have some smattering of, of, of Greek and Roman-ness, even if it's only because they go to Sepphoris now and then and they think, oh, you know, look at that different kind of architecture, those different designs. So, I mean, Hellenism had come right over the whole of the sort of the Greek East. Everybody knows about it. Um, and, and, and particularly when you're a Jew writing in the diaspora, as is, I think, most likely for, for all of our gospel writers, you know, the, the kind of the boundaries of what's Jewish and, and what's what's Hellenistic is, is just so uncertain. I mean, it just, it just doesn't make any sense to try and pull them apart. I mean, you're much better off to say, this is a Jew living in a Hellenistic milieu. And, um, and, and, and, you know, reflecting both of those things. Um, and, and, and just because you get quotes from the, the, the Hebrew scriptures, you, in the form of the Greek scriptures, doesn't mean that you're not also going to find Stoic virtues. I mean, you know, those two things can very happily coexist. It's just that people seem to be obsessed with, you know, either or, and, um, in a very sort of unhelpful way, I think.
Yeah, absolutely. Can you say more about Roman-ness? That's an interesting take, and I think people don't, I mean, I, I read, I read the Bible my whole life and never clued in that there was a Jewish revolt, and that, you know, like, why are these gospels so cuddly with the Romans? And what, you know, like, it's, it's interesting that I don't think people realize, like, Sepphoris was absolutely destroyed just around the time of Jesus' birth, and that was the next big city over from Nazareth. Like, we don't always see this context. And then as such, we, we don't realize how surprising it is the way that the gospels are are oriented to Roman, Roman-ness. Like, could you talk a little bit about that in Mark, and maybe even if it fits the Roman characters in Mark, or like, what, like, what's the relationship there, or the veil of the temple?
Yeah. Well, I think it's really difficult because I, I'm absolutely persuaded, um, as I think is the sort of the general trend nowadays, that Mark's gospel comes from after the fall of Jerusalem. So, so you have, you know, the revolt of the Jews against Rome in '66, um, you get this, this long, drawn-out siege of Jerusalem, and then finally the city falls in 70 CE, as does the temple. And that's a massive, massive thing, um, because, you know, the temple is so central to everything. But the weird thing about it is that I think Jews could sort of get over it because it had happened again before. They'd had, they had all the resources from the first time that it fell to the Babylonians, and so I think at that time, in this sort of early 70s, you get a lot of people sort of looking back to, you know, how did we deal with this before? And, um, it, the, a big takeaway for me in this is that that people seem to have looked for for blame. You know, who was to blame for this? I mean, there's this, um, Deuteronomistic, um, expectation that if bad things happen, somebody sins. So, you know, who did it? For Josephus, it's, it's the, the guys who sort of, um, fermented revolt against Rome. For Mark, though, I think the reason why he thinks, um, the temple has fallen is because the Jewish leaders put Jesus to death. And that's, or, or the complicity, as he sees it, of the Jewish leaders in the death of Jesus. And I think that's his, that's a big thesis for him, and he wants to kind of push that. Um, and then again, it doesn't make any, it wouldn't make any sense really to say Jerusalem fell because the Romans were bad people. You've got to explain why is it that God allows the Romans to, to kill, um, to kill people and to destroy, um, Jerusalem. And, and the way that Mark gets over this is to say, well, it's our own fault. It was the leaders and what they did to Jesus. Um, and so I think that explains that sort of hostility and the negativity to the Jewish leaders in Mark's gospel. Um, but then, of course, you've got a bit of a problem because, um, what are you going to do with the, the Romans? Um, Jesus dies on a Roman cross, of course, the Romans must be to blame for that. But at the same time, most of the new converts are coming from the, the Roman world. Um, and so I think that the gospel writers, starting with Mark, are in this sort of predicament that they have to accept, you know, they have to, that the storyline means that Jesus has to be sent to the cross by Pilate in the end. But they try to kind of make out that he's sort of pushed into it by the Jewish leaders. Um, and although I don't think that Mark actually does present a very positive picture of a Roman governor, I mean, he's, he lets the people decide. He's pushed about, um, in the same way that Herod Antipas is earlier with, um, with his wife Herodias. So, this is a very emasculated, um, weak kind of character. I mean, of, of Pilate, he keeps trying to be, he keeps trying to manipulate people. But, um, I think it's quite a complex picture that in the end isn't all that positive. But what it does is to, the important thing is to say Jesus has not committed a crime against Roman law. Whatever it was that led to Jesus's execution, it's not because Pilate thought he's a lawbreaker. He needs to, you know, he's a troublemaker. He needs to be put to death. So, um, so I think they've got quite a complex picture. Um, and you don't actually have very many Romans in, um, certainly not in, in Mark's gospel. You have Pilate. You also have the centurion at the end. And, um, there's a big discussion about when the centurion sees the way Jesus dies and he says, you know, "Truly, this was the Son of Man, the Son of God." Um, is that, is that a serious thing? Is he being sarcastic? Um, I, I argued in the book on the basis of, of ancient biographies, that that it's likely to be, um, uh, a sincere, um, confession, because there's quite a strong theme within, um, ancient biographies whereby the executioner at the end suddenly realizes that, you know, the person is actually not a, not a troublemaker, but is, you know, this great God, or it's, or, you know, they're, a great person. And you do get that. I mean, um, Philostratus's *Life of Apollonius of Tyana*, and, um, in Plato's *Phaedo* about the death of Socrates. So, um, so that is quite a common trope in, um, biographies. So, so I think those are the only, only Romans, um, in, in Mark. So that he doesn't have many of them. But I think, you know, you just need to be remembering that it's written against this backdrop of, um, >> of the terrible things that Rome has done to the temple. But, um, but in which, sort of strangely, people are interpreting it in terms of, >> what did we do >> that that meant that God then sort of used the Romans against us.
Yeah, absolutely. Um, well, okay, let's, let's go back to the beginning of Mark, not of our conversation. Um, because I think that's the place where Mark starts is interesting. Um, different than the later gospels. Um, you have this sort of thing, "The beginning of the, what is it? The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, maybe Son of God." Uh, there's a text critical problem there. The quote from Isaiah. >> And then when you read Mark, um, in Greek, especially, >> you don't, the language is shocking. That the spirit comes down into Jesus and then drives him out into the wilderness. And like, how does that kind of fit? Like, how does this set us up to read this as a biography?
Well, it is, I mean, it is diff, one of the difficulties is that, you know, obviously we only have certain biographies from the ancient world that have, uh, survived. Most of them are written by elite members of, um, literary circles. Um, so what I think Mark is a really interesting example of is, is a more middlebrow kind of literature. And I think it's written not so much for elite literary circles, though I mean, I think it's written, you know, a lot of the people listening to it probably did have a level of education, as, but, but mainly, I think most of these people are, are people who are largely illiterate. They're listening to it. Um, and I think, I mean, what I argued in the book was that, um, this is, this is a sort of an oral narrative. Uh, Mark is writing it in a way that that is going to be easily grasped by people who are just listening to it. They don't have the ability to go back over passages and, and pour over them, or, or even to say to somebody, "Can you just read that again?" You know, they get one chance of listening, at least at this sitting. They might hear it read several times. And I think that's why he, he groups certain types of story together. So you'll get a whole load of conflict stories, and then you'll get a whole load of, um, uh, uh, miracles, and they get a whole load of, um, parables, and a whole load of stuff on purity. And in a way, if you kind of zone out a little bit, um, it's fine because you know, you can come back again. And he has lots of little summaries as well. Now, I don't think that's because this is an, an oral piece that has now suddenly been written down. I think Mark is, is a, a very able writer who knows that people are listening to this, and so he's going to tailor it for them. And I think that includes the style of writing. I mean, he likes the, the present tense. Jesus comes and he goes, and this happens. He likes to say things happen immediately. You know, there's that sort of sense of inevitable moving towards this goal in a very sort of fast-action way. And, and, and as you say, you know, the spirit comes in, Jesus is cast out, in the same way that he'll later cast out, um, the, the devils, where, where the demons, when he's exorcising people. So, it's, it's very sort of emotive, strong language, but I think it's, it's lively. It's entertaining. It's, it's, it's his style, you know, and I, I can imagine people kind of listening to it and, and, and getting swept up with it.
Yeah. I've been, I've been guilty of saying that Mark is kind of rudimentary, or that Mark had Greek, or. And really, I think, especially reading the book, it's just Mark's a genius in a lot of ways. Like, there's, there's a lot of really cool things happening.
I think so, too. I mean, it, you know, you've got to sort of take a breath and think, well, am I just finding more in this text? You know, it's, it's easy to, to find guilty of doing the same things that everybody's always done with, >> Mark. But I, I do think, I mean, at the same time, you know, the form critics could be very, sort of negative about these, um, texts, saying that that the, the gospel writers were just editors, and, um, you know, they got all these traditions, they must put them down. They don't really know what they're doing. Um, you know, Rudolf Bultmann, Rudolf Bultmann said Mark isn't sort of, he's not master of his own sources. You know, this idea that kind of the gospel writers are really very low down in the pecking order of, of literary people. Um, but then you have to just think, well, they've survived for 2,000 years. That's, that's pretty good going for something that's a bit of a rubbish.
If only we could hope for the same, right?
Well, exactly. Exactly. They won't be reading, um, most scholars in 2,000 years. So I think I think people can be a little bit snooty about them, and, and also, you just need to remember they're written for such different people to us, and in such a different situation.
Um, and, and whatever it was that captured people's imagination then, I think has been able to capture people's imagination over the, the last 2,000 years.
Yeah. Absolutely. Okay. You use the word there. I should pull it out. Let's, let's talk theory for a minute. Um, you use the word form criticism. Yeah.
And then there's narrative criticism. I don't want people to glaze over, so people need to pay attention to this because it's important. Like, you actually will get something really interesting out of it. Form criticism, narrative criticism, and then genre criticism kind of in the middle. Can you explain, like, in really general terms, like, what those movements are, and maybe what the sins of, for both form criticism and narrative criticism might be?
And they are many. I, I am really not, I mean, I, yeah, I, you know, I, you know, I grew, I went to, to university at a time when the form critics were sort of everywhere. And basically, these are people, early 20th century, largely Germans, um, though it did sort of come, come over this way too, um, so, so largely Germans, and they're very interested in the oral period before the, the gospel. So, to go back to our sort of earlier conversation, it's, it's not Mark, but what comes before Mark. So, so they look, they see these little sort of, um, paragraphs in Mark, and they think, "Aha, those are little bits of tradition that were floating about, and Mark sort of captured them. He just wrote them down. He's a bit stupid, but he can write, and he puts them all together in any old order because, you know, silly old Mark." Um, and, and, and so they think that, you know, if you kind of analyze these little bits of these little paragraphs, um, irrespective of where they appear in the gospel, you can sort of peel away some of the later layers and get back to earlier material, which is what they're always wanting to do, you know, get back earlier, earlier, can we get before that? That's what the form critics are always after. Um, and, and, and their argument was that the later material is just shaped by the later church to speak to their needs. Um, which is not daft, but, you know, it's just this idea that you can peel off. Ah, that's a late bit. That's an earlier bit. That's a late bit.
And there's the real historical Jesus looking back at us, right?
Yeah, that's right. That's right. You, you clear it all away, and there he is, you know. Um, how exciting. So, I mean, obviously I'm caricaturing, but, um, there's, yeah. So, I mean, people do still think there's some value in the, the form critics, but by and large, people have kind of moved away from that, um, that, that way of looking at the gospels. Um, and certainly that way of, of thinking that you can kind of divide material into authentic and inauthentic. I mean, obviously everything we do is just so kind of muddled together that, that, that anything that anyone writes is a mixture of tradition and, and later interpretation, all the rest of it. So that's the form critics. The narrative critics, um, they treat, and, and they've been very busy with Mark, because, uh, I think narrative criticism really came into the New Testament with Mark, and, and they said, "Let's, let's treat Mark's gospel like a short story, and let's read it like that. Let's look at the plot. Let's look at the characters." Um, let's look at, at, you know, the settings and things, and how it functions as a short story. And there's a lot of really good stuff in narrative criticism. I think it makes you focus on the text. You're not always saying, you know, "Where did it come from? Let's get back." Um, so, so that's really good. That, I guess my my only critique, and, and not everyone would, you know, not everyone will be bothered about this, is that, um, I think if you're trying to read a, a piece of literature from 2,000 years ago, you need to look at the narrative conventions from 2,000 years ago, not our narrative conventions. So obviously, the, the characters are quite flat in the gospels. They don't really have much kind of development and stuff, and I think that's largely because biographies tend to have flatter characters, and because they're, they're about values. They're about, they're teaching you about morality, and, you know, they're, they're not, they're not kind of, I don't know, they didn't know about Freud and stuff like that. So, you know, they're not, they're not exploring people's inner angst, really. They, they, they just say, "Look, you know, this guy was very compassionate. Look at him here. Look at, look at his, uh, moderation here." So, um, so, yeah, I think I think narrative criticism is really good, and it's very good if you want to read a text to see what is it saying to me today. I think, you know, it's very useful, and it's a really good way into the gospels for people. But, um, but I'm more interested in, in reading this as an ancient text in terms of genre criticism. Well, um, yeah, people write stuff about genre. Um, and bizarrely, I'm not somebody who's that interested in genre, which is kind of strange to have written a book about it, but, um, I mean, people try and pin things down, and I, I never like to pin things down. I think, you know, I think a certain amount of, you know, you, you can read stuff on genre, and you can read, um, you know, what makes a biography a biography, what makes a history a history, how do you know a poem when you see it, and, you know, there's interesting sort of discussion around that, but, um, I'm not somebody who wants to spend a great long time, sort of in, in the thick weeds of genre criticism. It seems to me that, um, the, the, the gospels function pretty well as, as biographies. And one of the things I wanted to do with the book was to say, well, let's just test it, too. Let's see what it looks like when you compare it to other biographies. And I, I still think it, it shapes up pretty well. Um, so, um, so, yeah, that's,
I guess the risk of genre criticism would be the same as narrative criticism, that in both cases, you can kind of end up reading things into the story that aren't there because you're kind of making these comparisons and thinking you're seeing something that maybe you're not seeing.
Yeah. Yeah, that's true. That's true. And, and of course, I mean, it's much better to start with a text and say, you know, "What are we getting from the text? And how is the text sort of guiding the reading or the hearing or the understanding?" rather than saying, you know, "I'm, I'm going to impose this on it." So, I mean, I hope, you know, although my book obviously is about reading Mark as a biography, I, I didn't just decide it was a biography and do that. You know, it was years of sort of working with it and, and, and noticing things that were similar to to biography, and obviously reading a lot of stuff like Richard Burridge, who, you know, is a very big name in this whole area, David, um, people who, who'd written a lot on, on biography more recently, Thomas Hey, who's a classicist who's written a lot of stuff on ancient biographies, and just kind of seeing that, you know, time and time again, you think, "Oh, you know, that's, that's something that Mark does as well." So, um, you know, maybe there are similarities there.
Yeah. Okay. I, so let's come back to characters because this is a really interesting, it plays a big role in the book. Um, and let me, let me say, here's a, here's a story to set up what I was thinking of this, because when I was a kid, we used to have a book called *Blind Barabbas*. And there was this really nice story about Blind Barabbas, who lives in his house and gets up in the morning and puts on his clothes and goes out to beg, as he does every day. And all of a sudden, somebody's coming, and there's something happening, and he cries out, you know, "Jesus, have mercy on me." I forget exactly what he says, but, and that's the all from the perspective of of Blind Barabbas. And I think that's, it's just a funny little children's story I read when I was a kid, but it's, it's a really good indication of like, how we've read these, that we see these characters, and we build these elaborate stories or character arcs, or maybe it's about Peter and how he, he messes up, but then he gets it, and he's reinstated. And so one of the things I think that is probably the most important part of your book, in terms of characters, is that you're undoing a lot of this, that really, we're reading a lot of things in that just aren't there. Could you say a little bit more about how characters function, and, and maybe even some examples of characters that we, we've maybe taken too much away from?
Yeah. Well, I, I know. Yeah. So, like, as you say, this is a very different way of, of reading it, and, and perhaps I, I accept a way that that people may not be very keen on. They may prefer the way that, you know, you've just outlined. And, you know, you just need to look at the chosen, all of those backstories that, you know, that's kind of, you know, the, the approach you've just said on sort of steroids, isn't it? Um, so, so what I think, what I think, well, certainly what ancient biographies do, and what I think Mark is doing, is the whole focus is on Jesus. I mean, he is the subject of nearly every verb. Everything is about Jesus. On the rare occasions when it's not about Jesus, you look at it again and think, actually, that is about Jesus. So, um, so we're not really focusing on these characters. They come in because they can sort of act as a, as a, as a contrast, as a foil to Jesus. So, blind, blind Bartimaeus comes in, Jesus can heal him. Um, it leads to to certain sort of things and certain discussions. Um, and, and, and obviously a display of Jesus's, um, miraculous abilities. Um, but we're not particularly encouraged to sort of to think with, with Barabbas. I mean, he, sorry, not not Barabbas, to think with Bartimaeus. He has his one little, um, paragraph, and then he goes. He's, we never see him again, you know. So people will, people will say, "Oh, he becomes a, a disciple. He skips off after Jesus." Um, but we don't know that. I mean, we don't know anything about him at all. Maybe he just, you know, disappears somewhere, somewhere else. We just don't know. Um, and, and we get lots of characters like that. Lots of characters come into one episode, one anecdote, and then they go, and, um, and, and that's it. So I do think that's very different to, um, the way we normally think about them. And maybe it's human nature, and maybe that's perfectly fine to kind of think, you know, around these characters a little bit more, and to, to give them more of a backstory, to give them more sort of agency in their own stories. But I think by and large, that's, that's not primarily their function in, in the gospel. Primarily, they're just there to enable Jesus to show you what he can do. You know,
the word I was, the word that I thought of was props. I don't know if that's the right word. Almost props.
Exactly. Exactly. I think, I think that's right. I mean, clearly in the case of someone like blind Bartimaeus, where, where we're given a, a name as well, um, the name means sort of "son of honor" or something like that, and, and we're told that he's got this sort of grubby, um, uh, shawl, the cloak thing, and, um, we've got a few little details about him, so, you know, maybe we are invited to kind of to picture the scene a little bit, and, and to imagine what it's like. I mean, Mark is very good at bringing things to life with just a few little details here and there, but, um, but I think, and, and this is one of the things that Richard Burridge always says, you know, he, he made his name by telling people the gospels were about Jesus, and I kind of think about that quite often, too, that, you know, it, the focus is so much on Jesus, and sometimes I think we just kind of get a bit, a bit blasé about that, because, you know, we're so familiar with these texts, we're sort of, "Well, tell me something else. Tell me something about some of these other characters." But, um, and the most, the most ambiguous characters of all, I think, are, are the disciples. And, and what's interesting about them is that they're not just confined to one paragraph, but they, they stretch out throughout the whole of the gospel. And then, of course, people start to say, well, okay, so what's the narrative arc of the, um, disciples? And it doesn't look very good, because they start off all right, then they start asking questions all the time, and then they run away at the end, and that's not good. But again, if you sort of shift the focus and say, well, actually, there are sort of three phases. In the early phase, the go, the disciples are props to allow us to see Jesus as a, an effective teacher who gets a crowd of, uh, followers, and their their purpose is to be, you know, a disciple. And then you move into the central section, which is all Jesus's teaching, which is complicated, hard stuff, you know, "Deny yourself, be the last, be the servant of everyone." That's, that's not an easy message. And of course, they're asking lots and lots of questions in that section, because then Jesus can carry on and tell you a bit more. And then when it comes to the last bit, um, although Jesus's death, I think, is to some extent a model for other people, there's also a sense in which Jesus has to die alone. And so, of course, the disciples are going to go. They're going to leave Jesus on his own. And so when you sort of look at the disciples' arc through, through the lens of what's happening to Jesus in all those places, then I think it becomes fairly clear that that that's what they have to do. And, and I, I wouldn't dispute that, you know, readers probably from quite early times did want to, um, to somehow see themselves in the disciples, and to identify with them in some way, and they maybe found that tricky in some bits, and, and maybe they found it easy in others, because they thought, "Well, the disciples also failed, and, you know, that's quite reassuring." So, I wouldn't say that that's, that's, you know, a reading that's outlawed. Any reading is perfectly possible, but I just think when you look at Mark as a biography, and, um, sort of compare it with others, this, this kind of using characters as, as props, um, I think is, is, is one that I think kind of works across the whole, the whole gospel. It's often like, I think, I think people might read the gospel and say, like, "I identify with so-and-so. I identify with..."
You know Peter, or something. But really, you're supposed to identify with Jesus, right? Like, that's kind of the point. Is that about Jesus, not about Peter?
Yeah, but again, I think that's maybe a post-creedal thing. You know, maybe it was easier to identify with Jesus in the earlier days. And I wonder too, whether that lack of a physical description of Jesus is partly because, I mean, we hear nothing about Jesus. I mean, in Mark's gospel, we don't hear anything about his age. We don't, I mean, he's a man. We know he's a man, but we don't hear about a wife or a family or anything like that. I mean, there's something very sort of untied down about Jesus. We don't know what he looks like, anything like that. And I wonder whether that's part of this thing that biographies do, which is to kind of rub away anything that's too idiosyncratic because what they're essentially wanting is for people to kind of to follow the hero, to to model their lives on the life of the hero. And that's a lot easier to do if the hero isn't too specific.
Let's talk a little bit about contrast and about kind of the way that Mark sets up different dualities. And there's a few different ways of doing this. One is synchresis. There's the kind of comparing two stories to each other by kind of interweaving them. And then I guess the other way that I was thinking of, because we've kind of already mentioned the disciples, would be like juxtaposition of somebody like Peter and Judas, who both screw up, but Peter turns around and kind of fixes it, and Judas. I see I'm reading too much into the characters already here, but Mark does use these kind of contrasts all through. Could you say a little bit about what that kind of technique does and how it, how that contrast helps us to, helps us to get maybe get it a little bit more?
Yeah, I've got a dog here who's asking where her tea might be. Down, girl. So, yeah, it was actually contrasts that got me into this whole thing first of all, because I do think that Mark operates largely on contrasts and juxtapositions. And when you think about it, this makes sense because if you have little isolated sort of anecdotes, kerygma, and the name of the game is to put them together in a particular order, then actually it's that order that's really important. What I, so I think you should always when you're looking at a passage in Mark, you need to always say, what's before and what's after? How does the meaning of one bit sort of spill over onto the next? So, I think that's really important.
My original idea for this book actually was going to be about the passion narrative. I was going to go through the passion narrative and really highlight just how juxtapositions and contrasts and synchresis, as you say, which is the technical sort of educational name for this thing of contrasting one character with another. And my plan was just to look at the passion narrative, and the rest of it was just going to be an introduction. But the introduction just got very, very long, and so it ended up taking over. But yeah, so I think all the way through, you get really interesting things. And I mean, you know, Mark is known for his Mark and sandwiches, as they know. You know, you start one story, you go to another, and you finish the other.
Um, that's a very unusual way of writing up a synchresis, but it does seem to be broadly that. You know, you're invited to contrast them and to see kind of meanings from one story shading into the other. But all the way through, you have different stories that are put together. I mean, one of the interesting ones for me that I hadn't noticed before, and now I think, how stupid was I? But the story of Jesus, where John the Baptist's death, and that has a story. It has a very, very sort of small story around it of Jesus sending out the disciples. Then you have the story of John the Baptist's death. And then you have just one line where the disciples came back and told him everything that they'd done. And then you go off straight into the story of the feeding of the 5,000. And I mean, a lot of commentators don't seem to notice this either, so I wasn't alone in this. But when you look at those two stories together, you have King Herod, who kills John the Baptist, and then the story of Jesus feeding in the wilderness, behaving as a great benefactor in many ways, behaving as a great kingly figure. And you have all the stuff about sheep without a shepherd, which sort of evokes David. You know, I think it's really interesting that you have a tale of two banquets. So you have Herod's murderous banquet, where the only thing offered is the head of John the Baptist on a platter. And then you have Jesus's great banquet, where everybody is fed and there's more. So again, that's nothing is said there, nothing clear, but it's just looking at the juxtapositions. And as you say, later on, you've got Peter. I mean, what's interesting about Peter is that he's there denying everything at the same time that Jesus is in front of the high priest accepting everything. "Are you the Christ, the Son of the Blessed?" "I am, and you will see the Son of Man." So you've got these interesting kind of comparisons. And again, it's when you notice them, the idea is that you reflect more on them, and they mean more than the sum of the two halves.
Yeah, I had never noticed when you talk about King Herod. I had never noticed in that how sort of weak Herod is portrayed, that he's being manipulated. He's obviously gluttonous, whatever. But he's, I think you even use the word like he's emasculated. He's maybe even like a feminine at some point. Whereas Jesus is kind of portrayed as the opposite. And I had never noticed that. So once you start doing these comparisons, you really do see kind of, actually, I think that is what Mark is doing. But I don't really notice it until you kind of look for those things.
Yeah, I think partly it's because we're so used to reading, you know, we're so used to our readings, and we're also used to just hearing it chunk by chunk. You know, you go to church on a Sunday, you hear a chunk. Nobody says, "Well, this is just after, and we're just going to go into." Even in a sermon, I think, most ministers kind of stick to their story because they are so neatly sort of packaged up as stories. And that's unusual for us. We, none of our books would be like that. Our books have long, sweeping stories, much more like Luke or John, who are sort of more along the lines of the kind of sweeping stories that we have. So, yeah, I think that's it. But like you say, once you start looking for it, Jesus sends out the disciples, he sort of commands them, and he's the guy in charge. Whereas Herod, it's, I mean, I love that passage actually. I'm probably shouldn't really say that, it's one of my favorites, but partly because it's got these scheming women. And the idea of a man who can't keep his women under control, it's one of the worst things you can say about a man in the ancient world. Josephus uses exactly the same rhetoric when he talks about Herod the Great. He says, "Let's just have a look at the women." You know, Herod also couldn't keep his women under control. And it's just that not-so-subtle way of saying this is a man who's, he's not really an alpha male, you know, someone else is wearing the trousers.
Now I'm thinking of my kids who go around saying "alpha" and "beta" and "skibidi." I don't know if you have any of this, like if you have a Gen Z in your home, but that's kind of what I hear about alpha males all the time.
Yeah, I think I have two Gen Zeds, we call them. But yeah.
Yeah, right. I should say "zed." I'm Canadian. I should say "zed" and "zed" as well, but yeah, sometimes we slip into the American. Okay, so sorry, that's a sidebar. I want to ask one more thing about the content of Mark, and then I have a couple of big picture questions that might be out of left field. But my last content thing, and I could talk about this, it's so interesting. I think Mark has so many interesting stories in it, but we should talk. You mentioned the story about Jesus' death, and often the crucifixion. I mean, going back to the form critics, I think there was often a belief that there was a different source here, that there was like a different crucifixion source behind Mark. You kind of put a pin in that and say, "Oh, we can't actually know, really." But actually, the crucifixion does fit within Mark. Like that, it all, all of this does fit really nicely within Mark, but it also, as you say, it sort of defies some of the ways ancient biographies would handle death. It's almost pathetic in a way, like there's a lot of really unflattering things about Jesus' death. Could you talk a little bit about how that fits within what Mark is doing?
So, I spent quite a lot of time looking at Mark's account of Jesus's death. And at first, I was, I think I was sort of playing around with this sort of noble death themes and thinking, you know, is Mark trying, you know, is there any way this can be read as a noble death? And I just thought, no, it can't. I mean, it's awful. Everything about this death is pretty bad, you know. And Jesus is passive by the end, you know. He says, he says something to the high priest, he says two words to Pilate, and then he doesn't say anything more until sort of this agonized, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" on the cross. I mean, that's pretty bad. People do things to him. He's passed over, handed over, sorry, handed over from one person to another. So it's very difficult to see this in a positive way. Also, I mean, by its very nature, crucifixion is a slave's death. It's the worst way to go. It's, there's also something feminizing about it. You know, you're staked up high, people that the soldiers are having fun with you, they make fun of you. They usually don't have a burial. You're just snuffed out. It's everything about it is horrible. And then actually, it suddenly clicked that the whole of Jesus's teaching in the middle of the gospel, when he has this long journey to Jerusalem, which is all the teaching, is basically in this sort of long journey to Jerusalem for Mark. All the way through, Jesus keeps saying, you know, be like a servant, deny yourself, be last. And then I sort of suddenly realized, actually, you know, his whole teaching is be like a servant and be like a slave. And then he dies like a slave. So, what's interesting about that, I think, is that Jesus sort of dies completely in tune with his own message. And there is a strand of thought within sort of philosophical biographies that the way you can tell a true prophet, a true teacher, a true philosopher, is where he sort of, he dies in accordance with his message. And a lot of biographies sort of imply that you really get the real character at death because you can't pretend anymore. The way you die tells you about the way that it tells you something about someone's character. So I think in Mark's gospel, what he's doing is to set up this teaching. You know, you have to be last, you have to be a servant to everybody. And then he has Jesus sort of go to his death as the ultimate example of what it means to deny yourself and be a slave. And Jesus goes through that in the full knowledge of what he's doing. And that's very clear from Gethsemane. Even if he has that wobble, he still says, you know, "Not my will, but yours." And at any point, he could have disappeared. You know, three times he predicts it. He knows what's going to happen. He knows this terrible death awaits him, and yet he still goes through with it. So I don't think that makes it noble, but I do think it makes it sort of philosophically sound in that, you know, he said this is the way to behave, and he demonstrates the ultimate way of doing that. And I think there's something admirable about that.
Maybe like in accordance with God's will too, that there's...
Yes, exactly. Exactly. I mean, the whole thing is God's will in all of this. And he goes as the obedient son of the Father. Yeah.
And then we don't even get the satisfaction of like a really nice post-resurrection, all these appearances, or the so-called vindication, is the word that scholars often use to talk about this. But how does the resurrection fit within that? Or the, you can't even say resurrection, the women at the empty tomb. How did that fit within?
But you get these other little things. So, whilst you have this terrible scene taking place, you also get these other sort of omens. So, you know, the sky turns dark. Well, that is, people try looking for connections in the Hebrew Bible. But a dark sky is often linked with a solar eclipse, which is the sign of the death of a king. And I think, you know, that fits in so nicely with Mark's idea of, you know, the ironic king of the Jews on the cross. Surely that's what he's getting at there. And you have the tearing of the temple veil. And these sort of, these things that show you that despite appearances, Jesus might look like he's just been crucified like any old slave, but God is stirring. You know, things are happening. And then you get that very strange ending. Although I think it's perhaps less strange than we tend to think, because obviously we compare it with the other gospels and say, "Oh, Mark's missing something." But when the women go in, the young man at the tomb does very clearly say, you know, "He has been raised. He has gone before you to Galilee." So it's pretty clear, even if the women run off, and they also kind of desert Jesus. And there's that slightly questionable ending. The young man, who does seem to be some kind of angelic being, has spoken pretty clearly. And all the way through, Jesus has predicted that this is what's going to happen. So, I think it's perhaps less murky than we tend to think. But obviously, the other gospel writers didn't like any sense that things are left up in the air. So they added the traditions of resurrection appearances that we know of from Paul's letters, and really kind of nail it down. And they have the risen Jesus explaining things to his disciples. So, again, nailing it down.
And somebody would add an ending onto Mark as well to it, a little more satisfying.
That's right. That's right. Later on, much later on, people think, "Oh, well, you know, we need to just tidy this up." But of course, I think it's quite ironic in a way that to modern people, I think Mark's ending is much better because that mysterious ending, it sort of, it fights against our love of closure. And a lot of modern readers actually like Mark.
Yeah. Okay. Um, I want to end, speaking of closure, I want to end with a couple questions that might be out of left field, but these are kind of big questions I had as I was reading this. Let's start with this one. Does Mark have to be written by a follower of Jesus?
I think so. I did think about this, and I also thought about Mark's audience too, whether they have to be already sort of a little bit in the know. And I think they do. And I think he needs to know a bit about it because there's a lot of shared assumptions here. You know, he brings in John the Baptist. He talks about the Christ. I mean, what on earth does that mean? Smeared. What's that got to do with anything? He talks, you know, he just brings in Pilate. You're expected to know who these people are, and you're expected to know a certain amount about the story already. So I do think that Mark is somebody who's already a Christ follower, knows the stories, and he's writing for other people. But I do think he's got new information. I think he's packaging it in a new way. And I think that's what's kind of behind this whole sort of secrecy, mystery, Jesus telling the disciples stuff on their own. You know, I think he's sort of saying, "I've got this stuff. You know, I've got the secret stuff. Here it is, guys." So I think he thinks he's telling something slightly new and novel about this.
So that's a good segue into my next question, which is a lot of modern readers might say something like, "Well, I don't like Orthodox Christianity, but I really like the character of Jesus. I really like, you know, how much do we have Mark to thank for this idea of like a really admirable Jesus that we all want to emulate?"
Yeah, yeah, completely. And I think that was one of the things that struck me most when I finished this, that, you know, we talk about the historical Jesus, we talk about the Jesus of faith, the Christ of faith. And actually, I think both of those ultimately go back to Mark. Because I mean, I spent a lot of time doing historical Jesus work, and I love all of that sort of historical stuff. But it does seem to me that most of the time, what people present as a historical Jesus is Mark's Jesus. And inevitably, because they say, "Well, we've got Mark, we've got John, we've got these other people, but Mark comes first, so we'll go with Mark." And yeah, so much of our historical Jesus is Mark's Jesus. And then later on, because the gospels, all the other gospels are all basing themselves on Mark, including John, I think, you know, everything is essentially coming from Mark. All of those things, Mark joining Jesus up with John the Baptist, you know, maybe that's a Mark thing. So many of those things just go back to Mark, and we have no way of knowing whether Mark invented them or whether they actually predate Mark.
That's so interesting. It's like, it really is mind-blowing to think about that, because it's like, we again, yeah, we see this historical Jesus behind it. We think, but then it's like, well, these are literary conventions creating this, creating this really admirable man with all these really wise sayings who behaves all the right ways. And that's the person we want to emulate, which is, I mean, what Mark wanted us to do in the first place. So maybe obviously it kind of worked.
Yeah, it was a very successful book.
Yeah, that's right. Yeah. 200 years later, we're still reading it.
And talking about it. Yeah, that's right. Okay. Final question. Um, what would Christianity look like if we only had Mark? If Mark was kind of the source of everything we knew about Jesus or about how to follow Jesus.
That's an interesting one. I mean, I think some of the bigger additions to Mark are, you know, the birth stories in Matthew and Luke. And then the sort of the even further back in John's gospel, the idea of the incarnation. Which you wouldn't have an incarnation, I think, without Mark. And I'm not sure that you would find some of these things in Paul if you didn't have them in other gospels either. So this idea of, yeah, I mean, certainly, you know, that Johannine idea, if we never had that, the logos there at the time of creation. I wonder. I mean, I think the creeds would have been written up very differently because I think, I mean, it's really difficult to talk about whether Mark thinks Jesus is divine or not. And generally, I try to avoid that because I think modern categories are so far removed from the first century that it makes it not really meaningful. You have to kind of imagine yourself back in a world where there are divinities and deities and demons and sort of powers all over the place. Even in a Jewish context, you know, a lot of people have said recently, Paul Fredrickson in particular, you know, we can't talk about monotheism in the first century. Jews believed in all kinds of gods, but theirs was the best one. You know, so you've got a world where there are these different heroes, you've got divine men, you've got all kinds of levels of divinity. And I think Mark does think that Jesus somehow becomes divine through his death and resurrection. But that's very different to the sort of the stuff that the creeds are made of, you know, transubstantiation. What is it? No, not transubstantiation. What's the other one?
Well, I'm thinking like the nine, the Nicene Creed, Jesus like of one substance.
Yeah, one substance. Yeah.
That's it. I mean, I don't think you could get there from Mark.
Yeah.
Yeah. Oh, that's interesting. Okay. Okay. Well, on that note, um, we need to wrap up. But let me ask you, where people can find you first, if they want to hear more from you, and you have a podcast that they can go and listen to it.
Well, the podcast is the best place. We've got, oh, I don't know, over 100 episodes. Biblical Time Machine. We explore everything to do with the Bible, Hebrew Bible, and Christian New Testament. And we go back in our time machine, and we look at all sorts of stuff. We like social history as well as anything to do with the Bible, really. And I'm also at Edinburgh in the School of Divinity. So that's where I physically am, but I'm on the airwaves in the podcast too.
That's great. I will link to all that below. Um, in a couple episodes of Time Machine. So, Professor Helen Bond, thank you so much for taking the time to be here with me today.
Well, thank you. I've really enjoyed it.