← Ask NT Wright Anything
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- [00:00]
A
Hey, everyone, Mike Bird here. Just a quick heads up that we've got something special for our Ask NT Write Anything subscribers. It's our Halloween special bonus episode where Tom and I talk about all things spooky, spiritual and biblical, from ghosts in the afterlife to what Christians should make of Halloween. If you've not yet taken the plunge, become a subscriber today on Apple Podcasts or by heading to the bonus tab at askntirright. Com. If you put in the code Add10, you will get 10% off your ask NT, Write Anything subscription. Come on over. We cannot wait to see you there. It's that time of year again. Everyone knows that the holidays can become overwhelming quickly, so the sooner you get things done, the better. For both shoppers and businesses, the best time to score great deals during the holidays is Black Friday Cyber Monday weekend. Shopify is the commerce platform behind millions of businesses around the world, from household names to entrepreneurs who are participating in their first Black Friday Cyber Monday this year. This Black Friday, join thousands of new entrepreneurs hearing for the first time with Shopify. Sign up for your free trial today@shopify.com promo. That's shopify.com promo. Go to shopify.com promo and make this Black Friday one to remember.
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B
Long day, late night.
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A
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B
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None of that harsh rubbing needed, and you don't even have to rinse afterwards. It leaves skin cleansed, refreshed, and never dry. Head to Amazon to shop Garnier Waterproof Micellar Water now. Hello and welcome to the Ask nt Write Anything podcast, the program where we answer your questions about Jesus, the Bible, and the life of faith. I'm Mike Bird from Ridley College, and of course I'm joined by Tom Wright.
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B
From Wycliffe hall in Oxford.
- [02:16]
A
Tom, it is great to be with you once again. We've got some good questions this week on the authorship of Hebrews, who Goes to Hell, the Apocrypha. And I like, I like the one on Hebrews. I think, I think we need more Hebrews on this podcast because I've got your book here, the Vision of Ephesians.
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B
Right.
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A
I love it. And I mean, your. Your books have different levels. There's like the New Testament for Everyone series of commentaries which are. Which are very, very, very sort of light. Great for the lay reader. Something you can read.
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B
Bargain basement stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [02:47]
A
So Something you can read before you go to bed at night. It's great. It's not a dense. Then you got these ones which are not dense commentaries, but they're, they're kind of meaty enough that you get into. They're a little bit, a little bit more in depth than the New Testament for everyone commentaries. And I'm thinking, I think we need one of these on Hebrews because it would be. Because Hebrews is one of the books that confuses people. Tom, can we expect a volume on the book of Hebrews from you anytime soon?
- [03:16]
B
I'm afraid you can't. I've got two or three writing projects lined up. I am now much older than I was when I started in this game and I can see, if I'm not careful, promising projects stretching as far as the eye can see. And I don't see that's going to happen very soon. I mean, with the Pauline letters and Acts. I've spent a lot of time in my now old life studying these things and reading commentaries on them. It's a long time since I did any fresh work on the Letter to the Hebrews. I wrote the little commentary, Hebrews for everyone, oh, 20 plus years ago. And though I have preached on Hebrews, I have obviously read it in the regular cycle of readings and have read the odd article here and there. I haven't done any fresh work on Hebrews. I've had all sorts of other fish to fry. And so in order to get back up to speed to make any sensible contribution, that would be quite a lot of work, which at the moment I just do not have the time for. Somebody wise said to me many years ago that one shouldn't ret. Because you have twice as much work and no secretary. And that's exactly where I am right now. Seems to be no diminution in my work. I'm not sure what the word retirement is supposed to mean, but if it just means that I don't have any secretarial help, then don't expect anything out of the ordinary. At the same time, Hebrews remains fascinating. I did a lot of work on it when I was young because when I did the Oxford theology degree back in the early 70s, the two main texts that we had for the New Testament in Greek were Romans and Hebrews. We had to do the four Gospels in Greek, we had to do Romans and Hebrews. And they are hard. And quite deliberately, this was an Oxford degree, for goodness sake. And it was the kind of exam where you had passages for comment, where you had to comment on a bit of the Greek text. And there was no choice. It was comment on these passages. Bang, bang, bang, bang. Two from Romans, two from Hebrews. So you really had to know that text pretty well. And I enjoy doing that. But that is, I'm afraid, well over 55 years ago, I think, so something like that, anyway. 53, perhaps. And a lot of water has flown under the bridge since then. Plus, I also know the people who are working on the new International Critical commentary on Hebrews. That's Philip and Loveday Alexander, who are old friends of mine. And that will be a wonderful work when it comes out, I promise I will read it and maybe when I've done that, I will have all sorts of friends, fresh insights and ideas, but at the moment, there's lots of other things in the queue ahead. So sorry, long boring answer, but that explains where I am.
- [06:07]
A
Well, we'll see how we go, Tom. I may. I may start a petition or maybe even get a legal injunction. We'll see what happens. Anyway, we have our first question today from Patrick Hardy in Hackney in the uk. He's got a question on the authorship of Hebrews. He asks. We were discussing the authorship of Hebrews in relation to where we go next in our parish Bible study, and my priest asserted that some believe in a Marian authorship. That's authorship by Mary. Who do you believe wrote the Epistle to the Hebrews? And was it the Virgin Mary? Now, Tom, I've got to confess, I've never heard that one before, that Hebrews was. Was written by the mother of Jesus. Look, maybe Priscilla, maybe Mary Magdalene. I don't think it was written by Paul. The Greek is way too different. Even if the author may have been influenced by Paul, I mean, Luke could be a potential long shot. Tom, do you have any ideas, suggestions or helpful hints on who wrote the Book of Hebrews?
- [07:12]
B
Like the Church, Father Origen, I want to say the only person who knows who wrote Hebrews is God. God knows who wrote Hebrews and the rest of us don't. People have speculated about it being written by a woman. I have no idea how you would discern that. But of course there were some highly educated women in the early Church. But in general, education, certainly in the Judean world, was largely a male thing, though, as I say, there were some educated women. But there's nothing in the text, I think, to suggest that this was written by a woman and nothing in the text to suggest anyone else either. So the trouble with guessing is that there are far more people around in the early church than we have evidence for. Yes, we know about the 12. We know about. We know about a few others, but there are lots more other people who flit through the pages of Acts or the greetings at the end of Paul's letters. And it's quite possible that it was one of them, or quite possible that it was one of a great number who are already out there in the early church. And we can't be too sure. I mean, one interesting guess from a generation or so ago was that it might have been Apollos. Apollos who turns up in acts and in 1 Corinthians, Paul and who is moving between Ephesus and Corinth and so on, and who is a man who knows his Jewish scriptures well and who is in touch with Paul, although the relationship between them is a bit conflicted here and there, because I used to set my students an essay sometimes to write on. Was it such a silly mistake to think that Paul wrote Hebrews? Because there are themes in Hebrews which are very like similar themes in Paul. The place of Abraham, not identical, but it's close up. Or the use of the quote from Habakkuk 2 about the righteous shall live by faith. Well, Paul is very keen on that. And here it is in Hebrews as well, and sundry other passages where you think, well, there's a sort of dovetailing there. And some people have even suggested that maybe 1 Corinthians and Hebrews have a kind of symbiotic relationship, that they're coming back at similar questions from converging angles. That's possible. But again, in ancient history, all sorts of things are possible, because in ancient history, we know very, very little. We actually know quite a lot about the early church compared with many other movements of the time before and after, because there's a sort of a bright light through the New Testament on the very early church. But as in most of ancient history, there are all sorts of people, movements, things, places, developments, all for which there is no evidence now. So that, for instance, when the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered two generations ago, all sorts of things came to light which had not been guessed at before. Nobody knew that there was a group of people like this, with these beliefs and using the text in these ways, it's perfectly possible that somebody will come upon another cache of documents. I mean, the library at Herculaneum, which just now, through contemporary technology, they're able to get at some of the. I saw in the paper the other day, there's a text by an early Stoic which we've known about, but we haven't had the text before. And guess what? That was in the library at Herculaneum. There might be lots of other stuff. There might be all sorts of Christian literature. That's one of the exciting things about being an ancient historian, the possibility of new things turning up. But at the moment, just speculating, perhaps it was Luke, perhaps it was Apollos, really doesn't get us any further. I think what I really do want to say is if it was important for our understanding of the letter or for our understanding of Jesus and God and God and the gospel, that we should know who the author was. I think we would have been told. I think this is one of those puzzles that we ought to say. Actually, I think we have the Bible God intended us to have, and this Bible does not have a name for the author of Hebrews. Therefore, as far as I'm concerned, it's fascinating, but ultimately, for practical purposes, it's a non question.
- [11:29]
A
Okay, so we can take it then that it was not written by Mary, the mother of Jesus. Fair enough.
- [11:35]
B
You can't prove a negative, but it seems to be highly unlikely. Yeah.
- [11:40]
A
Well, we've got a second question as well from Patrick Jones, someone I see around the social media sphere a lot from Northpole usa, who's got a question about the kingdom and the final things he asks. Proclaiming, anticipating and willingly allowing God to bring about his kingdom in and through Christians is a major aim of our discipleship. That is so much more than just telling people to repent and be baptized, to be saved from hell. Although obviously sharing the good news of Jesus includes a message of salvation. Given that, what then, from an eschatological standpoint happens to those who do not follow Christ either because they have not heard of him or because the proclamation of the Gospel that they have heard is so distorted by party politics, hatred and personality cults that it's completely understandable why they might reject the caricature of Christ that is presented. In other words, who goes to hell and why? I'll be in a sense damning people twice if they're presented with a distorted version of Christianity. Will anyone be judged for rejecting a false gospel, a false Christ, or a really bad synthesis or syncretism between Christianity and some kind of political culture? What are you, Tom?
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B
I think the first thing to say is that thank God that I am not God, and that neither Mike nor I are God and it isn't up to us who God ultimately welcomes and calls his own. And how that plays out these are mysteries which, just as Jesus himself said about the great coming day, he said of that day, no one knows. Not the Son, not the angels in heaven, only the Father. So in the same way, I want to say there are all sorts of things about the ultimate future of all human beings which are known and will be known to God and which are hidden from us at the moment. I think what's happened here is that people who have preached the gospel and have seen people come to faith and have seen a genuine change in their life and a new love of God and Scripture and so on, and see, that's what being converted looks like. Well, supposing they hadn't been converted, supposing they'd stayed in the sort of people they were, what might have happened to them then? And when you get that, then people say, well, there it is. If you're going to be saved, you've got to have all this stuff happen to you. Do you know, I've hung out around church circles all my life and there are many people I know of whom I want to say this person, I'm quite sure has the heart of the matter in them. But because of muddled teaching, because of bad examples, because of all sorts of things, they are not presenting in the way that a good modern Protestant, evangelical Christian might expect them to. Now, this is not a cheap way of sliding down into some sor of universalism. I've never been a universalist. It seems to me that the New Testament presents us with a fairly stark choice, that there is the possibility of final loss. The question then is how would we describe that final loss? And how might we hazard a guess as to what constitutes candidacy for that final loss? I mean, that's the question. And I think again, I want to say, I don't want to be too dogmatic about this. I don't want to be undogmatic and say that we don't know anything at all about it. Because I think we do know some things. I think we do know that anyone who comes to Jesus and says, lord, I believe, help my unbelief, that person, they will embrace Jesus, Jesus will embrace them. And even if things look a bit rocky and dodgy on the way, well, things look a bit rocky and dodgy for most of us at certain stages in sooner or later we hit patches like that. Does that mean we've fallen out of God's goodwill and pleasure? Probably not. It might do. But you know, we have to be able to look in the mirror and say, am I fooling myself? Have I just been a hypocrite all this time? Is this really who I am or am I just making it all up? I think we all need as a regular spiritual exercise, to go through that kind of thing, like a spring cleaning. But then I do want to say that when you look at the other end of the scale and look at people who systematically corrupt, deface, distort, destroy other human beings, other countries by their political actions, communities of people, including Christians, because they behave in such a way that it turns people away from the faith, et cetera, when you look at people like that and say, is God gonna say at the end of the day, well, okay, nevermind, I love you all any then I find that very difficult to believe. Now the danger with that is that I then sit on my high horse and become judgmental and say, well, I know I'm okay, but obviously Adolf Hitler isn't. Well, we choose the easy examples to fire off our salvos at. But it does seem to me that when people initiate or collude with thoroughly wicked, dehumanizing public or private behavior, I think I want to say they are in effect spitting in the face of the good creator of God himself and saying, yeah, maybe you did make this world like this, but I don't care. I'm just gonna go my own way and you can sort that out. And I think, as C.S. lewis said once, there are only two sorts of people. Those who ultimately say to God, your will be done, and those to whom God will at the last say, your will be done. Now, how that great divide falls out, it's really quite difficult to see. There are times in the New Testament when we can see people turning very definitely away from God, away from Jesus. And Jesus appears to be saying they are on the way to final loss. Now, I mean, Judas would be the obvious example when Jesus says it would be better for that man if he'd never been born. He could hardly say that if he knew that Judas was going to spend all eternity rejoicing in the presence of God. It really implies that Judas is not among those. But what does that final loss look like here? Our medieval imagery of hell really doesn't help. Where I know many people in America, particularly these days, but in other parts of the world as well, are brought up thinking that believing in Christianity means believing in heaven and hell, that you either go to heaven or you go to hell. And I've spent much of my life arguing it's not what the New Testament says. New Testament is about new creation. And then the antithesis of new creation is to lose out, to miss out, not to be part of the new world which God is making. And from one point of view, the best way of talking about that is destruction or death. So that there is a sense in which the theological position known as annihilationism has something going for it, that when people ultimately turn away from God and say, I do not want anything to do with you, whether explicitly or by implication through what they do, then that person simply ceases ultimately to exist. Or we could say, and I've tried to argue this here and there, they cease to exist as an image bearing human being. They're saying, in effect, I no longer want to be somebody who is called to reflect God's wisdom into the world and reflect the praises of the world back to God. I just don't want to be that sort of creature anymore. And it's possible that they might then be told, you are still a creature, you are still existing in some way or other, but you are no longer an image bearer. That's a difficult and strange thing. It's difficult partly because we're talking about people who we know who seem to be going that way and love and prayer would want to reach out and embrace them and say, please turn back from that way. So that's why this is a difficult conversation to be had, because otherwise we can very easily come across as we're the high and mighty ones who've got it all sewn up and that lot out there don't get it. I want to say, no, it's not like that. Once you look at the big issues, we all need to embrace humility and say we don't know and we are clinging onto Jesus. And if that is the case, it's by grace, through faith, and not because we're making ourselves clever or know it all or whatever. So that's where I would be a sort of of a position which is like annihilation, but which may allow for some continuing existence in a sort of post human or less than human way. That was very difficult. As I say, this is not a happy topic to discuss, but it is a way of saying we can't assume, and we should not assume that in the end God will say to everybody, from Hitler downwards upwards, whatever, yeah, it's okay, that was just a game and some of you lost the game. But never mind, you're all coming to the party anyway. I just don't think that's the message that we get in the Bible.
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A
Yeah, well, there are difficult texts in the New Testament and difficult conversations, but those are the things we're trying to answer on this show on the Ask nt Write Anything podcast, and we hope you answered your question. Patrick. We're going to take a break and when we come back we'll be talking about the Apocrypha and the Christian canon.
- [21:41]
C
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- [22:52]
A
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- [23:36]
C
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- [23:40]
B
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- [24:10]
A
Welcome back. We have a question from Sydney, Australia. From my compatriots down under. Harrison Baker asks. I have greatly enjoyed reading through Dr. Ross Christian origins and the Question of God series. Me too. It has had a profound impact upon me and my theology. I would like to inquire, however, as to the position of the Deuterocanon in Christian belief and practice. Now, that's the body of writings called the Apocrypha. As members of the worldwide Anglican Communion, I assume that you both hold to a 66 book canon, but seeing the wide use of the apocryphal and pseudepigraphical books in texts, in their recognition as historically important in first century Judaism, I must ask what place should the jitter canon occupy in the life of a professing Christian? So I think that's a good question, Tom, because our 39 articles of the Anglican Communion list for us the 66 books of the Biblical canon. But it does talk about the Apocrypha still being useful to read. And I have seen some, shall we say, Anglo Catholic churches within Anglicanism where they will do readings and sometimes even preach from texts in the Apocrypha. So if I could make this practical, if you were in a church service, would you do, say, a reading from one Maccabees and would you preach from one Maccabees if so asked? So I, I, I think so. I mean, would you do it if you're in, if you are just invited to, I don't know, lead a service, maybe you're being like an interim vicar in somewhere like a CC or somewhere in the remote Scotland, you know, would you read from one Maccabees or preach from one Maccabees if asked?
- [26:05]
B
Right. That's a great question. And the there are what Dominic Crossron once called shadows on the contours of canon, that there are books which some have thought were canonical, should be part of the Bible and some others have not thought that. And even within the Apocrypha itself, there are books which occur in the Septuagint, the Greek Bible, but which don't get printed in the English versions. I mean, I've got an nrsvue here, the updated edition which has, between Malachi and Matthew, the regular Apocrypha. So Tobit and Wisdom of Solomon and Ecclesiasticus and Baruch and so on. Doesn't have the Psalms of Solomon. I think the Psalms of Solomon are rather important, which are in the Septuagint. So there's all sorts of to's and fros. And I would refer anyone who wants to know more to either dictionary articles or Wikipedia or whatever, because there's lots of information publicly available about that. But I think.
- [27:08]
A
Or go searching for it through Logos. That's another place you can check all that stuff out.
- [27:12]
B
Absolutely. I think the key question is what are we saying when we're talking about canon? The danger is that in the 16th century people were lining up certain dogmas or doctrines and saying, is there a Bible verse which proves this? And then it became, well, there is a verse, but it's in the Wisdom of Solomon, or there is a verse, but it's in Second Maccabees. So then it's a question of if we want to have that doctrine, then we need the Apocrypha, because that'll help us prove it. Now, the Apocrypha I found enormously helpful, but not to preach from and not to theologize from, but to understand the world of Second Temple Judaism. And I'll give the example of that from the Psalms of Solomon, which is a fascinating Pharisaic prayer book or hymn book from probably the last century B.C. give or take, we don't know. Not quite sure about that. But when we look at the language of those Psalms of Solomon and then we read some of what Paul says in Galatians, there's all sorts of interesting crossover points which make me think Paul grew up probably knowing those Psalms, probably using them as prayers and hymns. And even though he now takes a very different view theologically from what was there, his way of expressing things and language was shaped by, in part by many other things, but certainly by those Psalms of Solomon. And unless we are prepared to see how that works out, there are bits, for instance in Galatians Chapter one, which I don't think we'll understand. And I've tried to bring that out in my commentary. And in the same way, when we look at the Wisdom of Solomon and look at the way in which it's dealing with some very similar issues to what we find in the letter to the Romans, it enables us to get some sort of critical these are issues which are out there, which 1st century Judeans are discussing. Here's one way that one writer does it. Here's how Paul does it. We can Compare and contrast. And that enables us to get a kind of three dimensional view of what Paul is doing. Now, I would say that Wisdom of Solomon is an odd mixture of biblical reflection plus philosophical and cultural reflection, culled particularly from bits of Stoicism and bits of Platonism. So that you can't simply lift up Wisdom of Solomon and say, there you are, this is the word of the Lord. But the thing is that because the Latin Church had its own canon in the Latin language, which used quite a bit of the apocrypha, I say quite a bit, but so you could check it out as to which books were used when, et cetera. Then of course, at the time of the Reformation, those who knew the Old Testament in Latin, including, including the Apocrypha, would just assume that's the Bible. And so then it was a question of Luther and others saying, hang on, here's the Hebrew Bible, that looks like the original thing and it doesn't have those later books. So we are going back to the original, which. That's always gonna be a bit of a polemical thing. It was partly driven, not least because there's an odd passage in the Maccabean literature about some prayers for the dead, people who had died in the struggle against Syria. And after they died, they were found to have under their clothes some little pagan idols, some kind of good luck charms. And the people who found them were horrified. They are martyrs for the cause, but they were secret idolaters, so what we gonna do? So we offer sacrifice for them because of the resurrection. In other words, we assume they will be raised from the dead. They were martyrs, they were good guys, God will raise them, so we will say prayers, retrospect of penitence for them. And then that was then used by some Roman Catholic theologians from the, I think 11th and 12th century onwards as biblical basis for the doctrine of purgatory. Now actually, in the Maccabean text in question, there's nothing about purgatory. The people in question are not being punished, they're not being purified. It's just, oh my goodness, turns out they were secret idolaters. We better say a prayer to make sure they're all right. Rather maybe like 1 Corinthians 15 where Paul talks about people being baptized on behalf of the dead. We're not quite sure what that was about either. But you see, then the question about the apocrypha gets muddled up with, oh dear, we better not have the Apocrypha, because if we do, it'll be praying for the dead next and believing in purgatory. And as good Protestants, we don't want to do that. So these sorts of questions have really exercised Christians in what is basically an unnecessary. Because to understand the New Testament, well, the Old and New Testament, we need as much historical information as we can get. And the Apocrypha supply us with a lot of material about how Judeans in the period between, say, Malachi and Jesus, how they were thinking, the way they were praying, the ways in which they were taking some of the existing Jewish traditions and developing them. And that really helps to color and shape how we read the New Testament. So it's not that the Apocrypha is fully canonical and we can treat it just like any other bit of the Bible that we preach from, but that it really does help us to understand the bits that we do preach from. So there's a kind of a cheerful to and fro, give and take. Now, it's possible that if I was in a church where they said, we really want you to preach on Wisdom of Solomon Chapter three or whatever, then I might say, okay, okay, I'm gonna nest it within the larger biblical canon, but I will expound that passage and I will show what it's doing and how it works and so on. But I wouldn't, at the end of the reading, want to say, this is the word of the Lord or for the Word of the Lord, thanks be to God. Maybe I shouldn't be too worried about that. But you see, there are some wonderful bits in the Apocrypha, like the song of the three, all ye works of the Lord, Bless ye the Lord, Praise him and magnify him forever. That is actually in the morning prayer service in the traditional Anglican prayer book. I love that poem. I actually pray it day by day. I know it's apocryphal, but it's one of the great hymns of all time. Why should we not use it? And so on and so on. So you hear, I hope, a nuanced response coming through there.
- [33:55]
A
Oh, yeah, definitely. Like one. Esdras has got that great line, greatest truth and mighty above all things, which is on top of the entry to the University of Queensland, I believe, Tobit, chapter 14. Great summary of Second Temple eschatology about end of exile and so many cool things. So, I mean, I tend to say, you know, people should, you know, rather than read the Left behind series or prairie romance novels or the Case for the Purpose Driven Best Life Now Shame Shack Code of the Holy Jezebel Prayer Festival, rather than read that kind of stuff. You should probably read the Apocrypha for the great background it provides to both the end of the Old Testament, but also the beginning of the New Testament period.
- [34:43]
B
Absolutely. Absolutely. Good.
- [34:45]
A
That's all we have time for today. I hope you've enjoyed those answers to people's questions. Remember, keep sending us your questions. Go to askntierite.com, submit a question there. And we are positively giddy. We are evangelical about answering your questions. In our next episode, we're going to look at where do dead souls go? Will I be perfect in the new creation and biblical budgeting? But before you get into that, remember, you can sign up to our bonus episodes. Now, Tommy, you enjoy answering people's questions, don't you?
- [35:25]
B
You absolutely, yes.
- [35:27]
A
Yeah. And I enjoy feeding them to you. But in our bonus episodes, we kind of get a chance to do a deep dive into topics that we've come across things that we find interesting and exciting and we get to do a little bit of lengthy biblical exposition. I mean, we've been, we've been for ages. It feels like going through acts, we're about to finish it up, then launch into Ephesians. So that's some good stuff. Is that people who get the bonus episodes get some good material?
- [35:55]
B
Real? Yes, I think so. Hope so.
- [35:58]
A
Yeah. Indeed. Well, if you want to get into that, then go to askantyright.com click on bonus episodes and subscribe. And like with the price of like basically a coffee, you get four extra episodes a month. But otherwise we will keep answering your questions on Ask Anti. Write anything until then. I'm Mike Bird.
- [36:19]
B
And I'm Tom Wright and we'll see.
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A
You for the next episode of Ask N.T. wright. Write anything. If we knew more about our sleep, what would we do differently? Would we go to bed at a consistent time or take steps to reduce interruptions to our sleep? With the all new sleep score, Apple Watch measures your bedtime consistency, interruptions and sleep duration. Then every morning it combines these factors into an easy to understand score from 1 to 100. So you'll know how to take the quality of your sleep from good to excellent. Introducing the new sleep score ON Apple Watch iPhone 11 or later required.