Right? Now, one could read this in context and say, aha, well, see, what we read later clarifies what sanctify means in this verse. But then you're not a contemporary biblical scholar. Because remember what we've talked about before in terms of the Torah, right? That they have this view that this is all of these little bits and pieces from these different ancient documents that have all been kind of shoved together. Right? And so the theory is, well, no, this part is the old original part. But then later when they edited together, they said, oh, no, they're going to find out we used to sacrifice babies. That's a bad look. So let's add this other part saying, well, no, we didn't actually sacrifice the babies. Now it seems to me to be much easier to like, I don't know, add a few words to this verse, leave it out, and just leave the clarification. Like these seem like really simple solutions to me. To any sensible, reasonable person. Yes, sir. So when I hear you say things like this, there's a presupposition that there was at some point where the person said, this is how we're going to put it all together so that we hide all this stuff. So do they actually have a time that they think this happened? That varies. Are there a group of people that they think did this? That varies a lot. In terms of when the Torah achieved its final form. And the dates they give are usually somewhere between 900 BC and the late 6th century BC after the exile. But that doesn't tear it down. Exactly. It doesn't seem to me that if they were sacrificing the children, that time period doesn't seem like a time period where they'd be too ashamed of it. Right. Right, well especially since in that period, later in the Hebrew Bible, it makes clear that they were sacrificing children during that time period they just weren't supposed to just it says that was bad but it admits they were doing it if you had the conviction to do in the first place why would you then be like oh I was right and that's what I mean by it seems like a presupposition. And they tried to argue that, well, okay, well, they didn't feel like they could just edit it out. And again, it's like, why? And they'll say, well, this piece, these verses, they're so ancient, they thought they were sacred that they had to preserve them exactly as is. But then they felt free to write like five times as much text to explain it away right afterwards. It's very anachronistic. Yeah. Like it just, it makes, it makes no actual sense. Right? Like you could get in a room with like three other biblical scholars who are all there because they have to present papers to keep their jobs in academia and kind of vaguely convince each other of this stuff but like it doesn't pass the smell test for any normal person and if you had to take a logic class to get your phd you probably wouldn't fall into this kind of stuff but you usually don't need to take a logic class to get a phd aside from just there are people who will just state this as fact. Who will just say, right, this represent, they used to sacrifice their children to Yahweh, right, they'll just say that. This is also an exemplar of the whole problem with how these folks read the Old Testament in particular. In that the assumption is that the author, any author, any writer has an agenda. Right. That they are actually making claims. Right. He has the goal of trying to get you to believe something is true. Why would he want you to believe that this is true? So in some cases, you can give them the benefit of the doubt and say, oh, well, they actually believed that that was true. And that's why they want to convince you that it's true, right? Like, you know, the guy who's gone vegan, right? The guy who does CrossFit, right? They're trying to, who does keto. They're trying to convince you, right? They believe in it. They're trying to convince you that you should too, right? And that's sort of the benefit of the doubt, right? But it's very rare they give someone the benefit of the doubt, right? It's very rare. More commonly, right, they look with total suspicion, right? The assumption is they're trying to get you to believe that this is true because something else, sometimes the opposite, is what's actually true. And so if they say X, then the truth must have been Y. then there's this whole industry of fill-in studies, right, where you go and read, try and read the text, quote-unquote, against the grain. You try to read it from the opposite perspective to discover the truth, right? an example, a real article in the Journal of Biblical Literature years ago from a women's studies perspective, right? We're going to read this passage in Ezekiel from the perspective of the witches that he was condemning. man this male prophet had to condemn them means they must have had these these women these wise women must have had this position of power and authority and respect within the the judean exilic community or he wouldn't have felt the need to attack them right and criticize them right so the reality is you know they're the the ex-jewish exiles of babylon were quasi matriarchal right and this whole theory is spun there's no actual evidence for anything in this theory right the only evidence is well the opposite of what the text says must be true. Right? Like, literally, that's the whole argument. And that's what's really going on here, too. Right? It can't just be that God here makes a summary statement, and then that summary statement is explained in more detail. Can't be that. Right? The explanation has to be explaining away something. Or covering up something. Or hiding something. So the opposite of what it says must be true. Isn't there a laugh on everyone being a bad faith actor in writing? Yes. Yes. Yes. I think some of this may come from internalized Calvinism. Right? Even though these people are atheists, they think everyone's totally depraved, right? Like, just assume everyone's a bad actor, right? Except the people the text calls bad actors, right? Like, Jezebel clearly was a virtuous woman, right? But yeah, and so what that does, that really wrecks any sense of history. Because let's take it outside the Bible. How do we know anything about the history of the ancient world? I mean, really anything. Yes, you can dig up pottery. Yes, but I mean... Writings. Right? Texts. That's what you have. You have texts. Well, if texts are all to be distrusted, and all to be read in various ways against the grave, then we just, we can't have any actual knowledge of the ancient world. So Alexander the Great was a win. Right, right. Oh wait, there's a documentary. You know, and right, you just flip everything around, flip everything on its head. And so you have no actual knowledge. You just have a whole bunch of people making reconstructions, right? Throw out the text, make our own reconstructions based on our own personal perspectives and theories. Of the text. And there's no way to really discriminate between them and so this is the sorry state of old testament studies now new testament studies has gotten to a better place but old testament studies now you read journal articles it's like a blank reading of this text a reading an african-american reading a queer reading this reading read that read right of this text because you can't discriminate like what is correct and what is not what is better and what is worse no it's just here's a thousand different readings of this text not even enjoy because nobody reads them. More like, now I can keep my job at this university, right? Because I have published this year, right? That's right. And so, yeah. So another reason I talk about this is not just because you'll find this if you go out and try to read or watch a documentary or do anything about the Bible. But there is a temptation for us as contemporary modern people to do the same thing. This is a constant temptation. right we've talked before like when we were in the early chapters of genesis about how modern science comes along various modern people apply modern methods and say oh see this is all nonsense right all this stuff in genesis is all nonsense. And the conservatives respond by trying to use the same methodology and come to the opposite results. They don't say Genesis isn't a science textbook. They say it is a science textbook, and it's actually right. It's a modern science textbook. It conforms to modern science. Of course, modern science changes completely every 30, 40 years, but you know, the Bible's always teaching it, whatever it is right now, right? And we can do the same thing, right? We can end up, here's a traditional reading of the Bible. Here's an Orthodox reading of the Bible, right? Where we just add one more to the big list, right? And there's no real differentiation. It's just, well, this is the one I personally find compelling, right? And so this is the one I'm going with, right? And that's not what we're trying to do when we study the scriptures right we're not trying to come up with a reading from our perspective that reinforces our perspective or empowers us or whatever right we're trying to arrive at what god is saying through the text By reading it in its historical context. In its context in the church. How it's been read and applied in the church for centuries. And these are objective things that we can actually find out. There's not an objective like, oh, this is what this text means. But the actual history. Right. The actual history is actually relatively objective. If we accept that the texts actually come from a historical time period and reflect reality. and are not just lying to us and are not right they weren't all written by michelle foucault in in the 1940s right or 50s right but they were written by ancient people with an ancient perspective and we can read them in that context and then we can see how they've been applied and we can locate ourselves within that tradition. So we're not just doing a fill-in with a different filler-in We're talking about the text itself. And this is why New Testament Studies is now in a better place, because sort of everybody has agreed with New Testament Studies that we're just going to talk about the text. Right? So an atheist and I can agree that in Romans, St. Paul says blank. I'm going to believe it's true. The atheist is going to believe it's not true.