← Misquoting Jesus with Bart Ehrman
Misquoting Jesus with Bart Ehrman
The U.S. as the "New Jerusalem?" Revelation's Influence on Immigration
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- [00:00]
A
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B
hello everyone and welcome back to Misquoting Jesus, this time without Bart. Now, as you can probably tell from my incredibly strong accent, I am an immigrant to the as such, the US Immigration system has been a rather large feature in my adult life, but I've never before considered the relationship between American immigration and the Bible or more specifically the Book of Revelation. It's never really occurred to me that such a relationship even exists in complete contrast, my guest today has written an entire and absolutely fascinating book on the subject, and we're going to be diving right into it. We'll be exploring how Revelation has been used throughout US History to categorize, demonize and vilify immigrants, while also painting the US as the New Jerusalem sanctuary for God's chosen which must be defended at all costs. Welcome to Ms. Quoting Jesus with Bart Ehrman, the only show where a six time New York Times best selling author and world renowned Bible scholar uncovers the many fascinating little known facts about the New Testament, the historical Jesus and the rise of Christianity. I'm your host, Megan Lewis. Let's begin. My guest today is Dr. Yijian Lin, an historian of ideas and Biblical texts. She's the author of Immigration and How the Book of Revelation Shaped American Immigration and the Erotic Life of Manuscripts, New Testament Textual Criticism and the Biological Sciences. She's Associate professor of New Testament at Yale Divinity School where she teaches the critical study of ancient texts and their interpretation, especially in relation to race and gender. She has made numerous appearances on radio podcasts and documentaries to comment on race, immigration, apocalypse, and gender. Born in the San Francisco Bay area to first generation immigrants, Lynne studied English literature, earning her bachelor's degree from Pomona College and master's degree from the University of Chicago. Shifting her focus to ancient and biblical texts, she graduated with her PhD in religious studies from Yale University. No stranger to the life of an immigrant, she has lived in Taipei, Taiwan, Heidelberg, Germany, Exeter, England and Beijing, China as faculty at Yale. She is currently based in New Haven, Connecticut. Yijen, thank you so much for joining me to talk about your fantastic new book today. I'm really, really thrilled about.
- [03:43]
C
Thanks so much for having me.
- [03:44]
B
And for those who are interested by the topic and by the conversation that we have, it is actually being released today, so if you are interested, go buy it. I was lucky enough to have a look at some proofs in preparation for this interview. It's really a fascinating book and very, very thorough and extensive and has so much amazing information. So yes, highly recommended. So the book itself is looking at Revelation and immigration and how those two things intersect. What prompted you to take up this particular topic?
- [04:19]
C
Yeah, it does seem kind of strange to juxtapose these things together. It started in around 2014, 2015. I was actually teaching then in Berkeley, California at the Pacific School of Religion at the time. And you know, I'd grown up in the San Francisco Bay area at the time. I'd been asked by a faculty at the school to do some reflection on a group of texts and they were quite apocalyptic. So they're From Mark chapter 13 and also Revelation and think about them in in terms of Advent to share with a group of Asians and Asian Americans as part of the reading. And I thought this is a really strange juxtaposition of ideas. We have something apocalyptic also related to Advent and how to think about those things. And also the place itself was feeding into my ideas at the time. I had grown up in the Bay, as I said, and the names around the Bay Area are very evocative of heavenly places. So we have the Golden Gate and the Golden Gate Bridge. San Francisco is called Gold Mountain in Chinese and still called Old Gold Mountain. So Zhou Jingsen. And the state itself is called the Golden State. So there's this golden aura, sense of entry. And it's also a port of immigration and has been historically. The island where Asian immigrants came through from the west is angel island. And so there are all these very heavenly, apocalyptic names that got me thinking about the act of immigrating itself as somewhat apocalyptic. You don't know to what future you're arriving at. And also, I mean, the US Plays up that kind of arrival sense of, you know, this is the promised Land, this is God's country, and all that kind of thinking associated with it. So that's how I began thinking about, does this metaphor of, you know, immigration as apocalyptic as entering a new heavenly paradise? Does that carry out in U.S. history? And that's when I started digging around to look for more.
- [06:14]
B
Now, do you see, when you're reading Revelation, it's not like immigration as a concept doesn't necessarily pop up. So how, for you, does that concept or experience of immigration, how is that reflected or referenced in the book of Revelation?
- [06:29]
C
Right, so it's not, of course, explicitly referenced. I mean, the. But there is a sense of Exodus, right, of migration. And there are scholars out there who have read Revelation in comparison with the Exodus story and also with an idea of exile and return, as we have in prophetic books like Isaiah and others. And so there is a sense of movement, if not literally, at least figuratively, or in a heavenly sense. So where a group of people arrive into a new place, ultimately at the end in Revelation, chapter 21 and 22, when they arrive at the new Jerusalem, and there's a sense of movement into that place. And so there's migration in that sense. And then there are all these other parallels to migration in that when you're entering a new place, when you are fleeing, for one thing, right? The destruction of a place, you can think of it really, quite literally as climate disaster, when you have rivers turning into blood and becoming polluted and fire raining from the sky, those sorts of things, right? There's a movement into a place of refuge and then a new sense of citizenship because there's membership that's recorded for that new place. So all these factors that are part of ancient migration and also part of current migration are factoring into the book of Revelation.
- [07:47]
B
So if there is a sense of movement, figurative or literal, within Revelation, how are those who are moving, the individuals being displaced, being forced to migrate, how are they represented in the book?
- [08:00]
C
In quite opposite ends of a spectrum, right? So you do have those who are chosen. You have 140, 44,000 that are chosen of symbolic 12 tribes of Israel that are chosen and are wearing white robes and are chosen in the saints as well. There are also the enemies of God who worship the beast, who are allied with the whore of Babylon. So there's quite starkly two sides. One side is displayed as clean, as wearing white robes, as washed in the blood of the Lamb, as having been faithful, having triumphed on the side of God, and who will join others in the city of God to worship for eternity and to be healed, et cetera. And on the other side, you have the enemies of God who are struck down by plague. They are described as dogs, as fornicators, as those who practice idolatry, sorcery. They're murderous. So you have two opposite descriptions of those who are within and those who are without, those who are chosen and those who are not.
- [09:01]
B
Thank you. And later in our conversation, we're going to be getting into that a little bit more specifically how it relates to the the United States. But before we get to that, I wanted to ask you, because this is something that comes up throughout the whole of the book. What is this New Jerusalem metaphor that you speak about?
- [09:20]
C
Yeah, so the New Jerusalem in Revelation is presented as the ultimate destination that the saints and those who are faithful are able to arrive at at the very end of the narrative, if we could speak of really a coherent narrative, because it is quite strange and convoluted, but it is presented as the ultimate hope, an idealized heavenly, divine place to inhabit after all of these different trials and tribulations. So the New Jerusalem presents that. There's also, of course, references to a New Jerusalem in other apocalyptic and prophetic books in Hebrew Bible from which Revelation borrows so much. In that sense, there's also a sense of return from exile or a hope that what was not realized on earth or what was destroyed on earth. So thinking of the first and second temples of Jerusalem and also the city that there will be a place to return to, that's a renewed or a completely new heavenly divine manifestation of that memory. So there's all those things working together in Revelation that then gets picked up as we start talking about American history and thinking about that metaphor of destination that promises a divine realization of what really should be in terms of polity, in terms of church membership, et cetera. We can get into that. So it expands quite a lot as it's being used and picked up politically throughout the centuries and especially in American history, as that place of refuge, as a place, a destination, a place that's God ordained and given and justified to be given to a specific population.
- [10:56]
B
How early in history do we see this identification of the US as the New Jerusalem?
- [11:03]
C
So I would say I'm going to answer your question obliquely at first to think about Columbus. So Columbus did not think of where he was headed in his travel, ultimately to the Caribbean as the destination of the New Jerusalem, but he was thinking in terms of apocalypse and the end of the world. And so there was already from that journey and that mission that he thought of himself as bringing about eschatological events. Right. So thinking about finding paradise in the Far east and finding that highest point nearest heaven that's supposed to be rich in treasure and et cetera, and bringing all of those riches back to be able to fund a crusade to take back the Old Jerusalem, which would ultimately bring down the New Jerusalem from heaven and cause the culmination of events that we see in Revelation. So that kind of apocalypticism and belief and sense of mission was already in place at the time that America and those lands began to form in European imagination at the point of discovery. So it was already bathed in that apocalyptic light. Specifically, though, in thinking about New Jerusalem, I would say when we get to the journeys of the Puritans and the new Congregationalists, who are leaving Europe to come to America to establish new communities, there was a sense that this is a New Jerusalem, both metaphorically and perhaps literally. So you find those strands of discourse already in the 1600s when those colonies are being developed and churchmen are coming to the colonies to establish their congregations.
- [12:41]
B
Thank you. So really, we're looking at a foundational myth of American identification. Is this an identification that has persisted through to modern times?
- [12:52]
C
Oh, I would say for sure. And I think part of that is you touched on it saying myth, because the Puritans and then also the Pilgrims, a separate group at Plymouth Rock, have become part of this American myth of origin. It's become part of American culture. Right. So when we celebrate Thanksgiving and when we think about the founding of the nation, it becomes tied in with these particular tropes of fleeing and exile, of finding a new promised place and refuge. And so that New Jerusalem metaphor becomes really handy as part of an origin myth to keep going back to. And we see political figures using that throughout US History to speak of the Puritans, to speak of city on a hill, which gets picked up also later by JFK and others in the 20th and 21st centuries to think of the US as a new Jerusalem or as God's city. So that's used throughout US History up to the present day.
- [13:48]
B
Do you think that political figures are using this reference consciously, deliberately, or is it something that's just become so ingrained in political discourse and the identification of the United States that is just kind of something that gets repeated.
- [14:04]
C
I think both. I think there are those who know specifically what biblical texts they're using, and that's been true for a lot of US History when there have been religious figures who are figuring prominently politically and using this kind of language. I also think, for example, one of the clearest uses of the New Jerusalem metaphor is in Ronald Reagan's farewell speech to the Nation in 1989. And he was known as, you know, the great friend of the evangelical right at the time and also himself quite interested in apocalyptic readings of Scripture and thinking about history in that particular way. And so when he uses Shining City on a hill and talks about the US As a strong city with open gates, but there's a wall, I mean, it mirrors. Mirrors the Revelation 21 description of the New Jerusalem quite explicitly, I would say, with many parallels being drawn there. And I think that's also speaking toward his faithful audience at the time in the 1980s, where we have the Moral Majority in the Christian right becoming, figuring very prominently in politics in speaking up and having, you know, the Bible as the forefront and thinking about how Christianity should be shaped. So that's definitely present. And I think there are on the other side of that, where Shining city on a hill has picked up Ronald Reagan. It's been used ever since. So it began being used more prominently first with JFK and then definitely with Ronald Reagan, who loved that phrase. And then ever since that, political figures have been picking that up. The shining city on a hill, of course, comes from Matthew and the Sermon on the Mount, but it shows an apocalyptic city in a sense of, you know, sitting on a hill that's shining out for everybody's sea. And then used in apocalyptic city sense as a destination, as a place of example, but also as a place of refuge and also to be defended. And so that's been used ever since, thinking or unthinking, intentionally or not, I think in political speech and reflecting also that train of thought, right. The metaphor that's being used of the New Jerusalem will enfold other parts of the metaphor from other parts of revelation, of we need to defend this city, right? We need to keep people out. And so that's been used by politicians explicitly with revelation and also in a way that simply uses that metaphor and language that's very handy all the time in the discourse that's in the water, so to speak.
- [16:21]
B
Thank you. We're going to take a very brief break, and then we're going to be back to talk about really how this identification has impacted US Immigration policy with some more concrete examples for people. What makes the Gospel of Matthew truly extraordinary? While many know it for the Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes, and the Lord's Prayer, there's much more to this first gospel than meets the eye. Hidden within its pages is a literary genius that often goes unnoticed even by avid readers. In the Genius of the Gospel of Matthew, join New Testament professor and scholar Dr. Bart Ehrman as he reveals the intricate details and scholarly insights that make this gospel so unique. Across eight engaging lectures, you'll explore how Matthew reshaped the Gospel of Mark, the surprising ways he used the Old Testament, and the complex relationship between its Jewish roots and anti Jewish interpretations. This course examines the controversies, mysteries and profound teachings that have shaped Christianity thought and history. Ready to uncover the hidden genius of Matthew's gospel? Visit barterman.com Matthew to learn more or sign up today. Use discount code mjpodcast at checkout for a special offer. If the identification of the US as this New Jerusalem that must be kind of defended but is also a shining beacon of hope for those who need it, who are fleeing persecution, what impact has the identification had on U.S. immigration policy?
- [18:02]
C
I would say because it's viewed as a chosen place, an exceptional place. It's fed into an idea of American exceptionalism. It's also fed into Christian nationalism and thinking about the US as identifying as a Christian nation. Therefore, those who cannot be allied in that way must be kept out. So it's been the language of the flip side of the New Jerusalem. And the other language we find in Revelation to describe God's enemies has also been picked up to use against immigrants throughout US history and also even before, in thinking about the colonies as well, of who was able to come in and out. And some of this of course mixes in with common sense and also other immigration policies that are anti immigrant. So for example, to keep out those who are diseased or those who are seen as a specific threat in terms of health or in terms of political threat and others being violent. Particularly the language of, of animality, of being non human gets used. So we see, for example, Revelation 22 we have outside the New Jerusalem, you know, are the dogs, the immoral, the fornicators, those who are performing sorcery, et cetera. So that kind of language also gets picked up. And I don't think it's a coincidence. I mean these are obviously xenophobic languages that are being used, but the whole constellation of the vocabulary works very well with the idea of the New Jerusalem and those who must be kept out. And so we see that used against people groups. You know, this entire people group is diseased, or these people are like dogs, these people are like rats. So being equated with plague or carrying plague becomes part of the language as well. Yeah. So all that sort of language gets picked up and used in that way.
- [19:47]
B
Could you give an example of how revelation and biblical texts have been used to explicitly limits immigration? You give several in the book that are really fantastic, and I think it would be helpful to. To go into those a little bit.
- [20:00]
C
Yeah. So one of the most explicit would be during the period of Chinese exclusion. So at the end of the 19th century, we have a series of laws. There's a growing fear in the west that with Chinese immigration and immigrants coming into the west to work and to labor on the transcontinental railroad and also in agriculture at the time, that there was going to be, you know, the stealing of jobs. And this sounds very familiar. It's still part of our immigration discourse. And so there's a series of laws that were proposed and enacted to exclude and restrict Chinese immigration. And the arguments in Congress and the literature that was being created, newspaper articles were written in a specific tone that was using all the language that I've described. But one of the most explicit was in something called Yellow Peril. Literature and novels. So we have novelists writing stories in which these heathen Chinese, as they're described, come in and take over the United States. And in that language, you have symbols and prophecies from Revelation being used. So a king rising out of the east, and he has the sword, and it is likened to different passages in Revelation, but depicting Chinese as the hoard of God's enemies in Revelation. So several specific places in which that's used. We also have cartoon illustrations of the time in which it's very handy to bring in the dragon from Chinese culture and to equate it with the dragon or the satanic beast that we find in Revelation as well. And so there are depictions of the threatening dragon of China, you know, being faced by Uncle Sam on his white warship. So there's a showdown in terms of the army of God and also the host of enemies that are about to invade. So there are those visual markers that are being published and also in literature form as well.
- [21:55]
B
Now, you mentioned a little earlier the idea of cleanliness and sickness and people within New Jerusalem, those who are granted entry being clean and pure and holy, and those outside being unclean and sick and immoral. Did these ideas come into the characterization of Chinese People as well during these periods.
- [22:16]
C
Oh, for sure. There are a couple of political cartoons I include in the book where you have the depiction of Chinese as basically a plague, literally. So there's. There's one where they're shown as grasshoppers or locusts with a human face. And this is right out of Revelation as well, in which you have a horde of. Of locusts with human faces and their hair, like women's hair. And so also in the cartoon, you have the long braid of the Chinese men, the Q traditionally called as they're eating up everything and about to invade the US to take over and eat everything that's available. So there's that kind of depict. There's also a cartoon of. Called the Three Graces in a quite satiric tone, in which you have three different diseases. I think they're leprosy, cholera, and something else, maybe yellow fever. Standing over San Francisco to represent the plagues that are about to take over the city. And right over Chinatown, there's like a flowing down of leprosy onto that place as specifically disease. So there's a sense that these people are particularly prone to disease. And also the threat of their spreading it as well is carried in that understanding.
- [23:28]
B
Thank you. Do we also see a gendered issue going on here? I'm thinking we have, obviously, the Whore of Babylon. Does that get brought into play as well?
- [23:37]
C
Yeah, and I would say that works in two different ways overall. I would say the depiction of the Far east, as it is called has many overlaps with the description of the Whore of Babylon and with Orientalism in general. So thinking of the Far east as particularly decadent, as also sexually corrupting and depraved. There's also understanding of being addicted to opium. Right. There's lots of depictions of men in opium dens wasting their lives away. So the effete Chinese person who is depicted as decadent, luxuriating, and, you know, all the wealth that the west is very interested in, but at the same time is repelled by as particularly unseemly. So silks and porcelains and all of those things become part of this whole picture of the depiction of China and also Asians and what were called Orientals. Right. In a particular light. So that has overlap with the depiction we find in the Whore of Babylon, where she's exoticized, she's wearing scarlet and purple robes, and she's drunk on fornication. So also sexually immoral, sexually corrupting. At the same time, this also works into the depiction of Chinese women who are understood by default to be coming to the US to be prostitutes. And that's part of the first federally enforced law against a specific group ever. So that's the page act in 1875, which assumed that all Chinese women coming in were there for lewd purposes, for prostitution. And so there is a conflation of what I would say, all these things describing the Whore of Babylon and sexual corruption and, you know, Jezebel, we can throw in there, too, as part of revelation, and these threatening Chinese women who are coming in to corrupt pure American men and communities as well, and also to be bearers of disease and feared in that way as well.
- [25:35]
B
Now, it's. It's difficult to talk about American characterizations of Chinese people in this negative light without, at least for me, having COVID 19 be brought to mind. Do we see a similar link to revelation in how that discourse occurred as well?
- [25:53]
C
I think so. I think there's a bit of change in development, but it's not surprising because it's been used so successfully, right, against immigrant groups. And so immediately, because we had origin stories coming from Wuhan, that was a very easy target to mark. And China has also, in the US and international political sphere, right, has become one of the rivals for the U.S. and so immediately, it was going to be very easy for politicians and others to speak of disease as linking specifically to an identity, unfortunately not to a geographic area, but to Chinese and Asian bodies and also those within the United States, right? So we see the rise in hate crime and hate speech against Asians and Asian Americans in the US that there's also an apocalyptic overtone because we're speaking of pandemic, right? And so immediately, if you. If you look up COVID 19, end of the world, et cetera, and you'll bring up all of these things along with cartoons of Chinese markets, because this was associated with wet markets and different animals that were being sold in the markets in China at the time. And so that's also part of a trope that's quite old of. Of thinking of eating things that are unspeakable, right? And that's, of course, been in the news recently as well, of linking immigrants with eating things that are unspeak. And that pops up in Revelation as well, when you have God's enemies who are cursed and they must drink the blood of corpses that are flowing in the rivers, or the Whore of Babylon who has a goblet of abominations of her fornication. So there's a sense of consumption that is disgusting and is supposed to repel and that discourse gets picked up a lot.
- [27:29]
B
Now, when you go through all of this fascinating information from Revelation, you don't just restrict yourself to the Book of Revelation. It's the main biblical text that you do reference, obviously, in this conversation and in, in your book, but you bring other biblical texts in as well. Would you mind talking about some of the other texts that have had an impact on U.S. immigration?
- [27:52]
C
Sure. One of the earliest texts that would be used for some of the first immigrants to America, to the colonies, is the Book of Exodus. So thinking of the US as, or America at the time as a wilderness place, a promised land that was promised. And so those who are coming to America to seek refuge understood, or use the metaphor of journey, promised land, et cetera, wilderness, to understand America and their destination in that way, to flash forward to our current time. Most recently, I can think of the text of Nehemiah being used in describing who Donald Trump is. So when he was elected president in 2016 and on an inauguration in January 2017, Reverend Robert Jeffries gave the inaugural sermon, and he compared Donald Trump to Nehemiah as building walls. And so there is a pickup of immigration language and thinking about Trump as not only restoring right to make America great again, so restoring, so following the story of Nehemiah and rebuilding Jerusalem, but also rebuilding and enforcing a wall as part of the Trump wall and project. And so that biblical text gets picked up as well to use to describe that entire project and understanding. Thank you.
- [29:13]
B
I have a couple of final questions about going back again, circling back to the New Jerusalem metaphor before we, we wrap up. You spoke a lot in the book and, and previously when we were talking about how the New Jerusalem metaphor kind of came to be, how it's a foundational myth really, for, for the U.S. do you see it still serving the same purpose now as it did when it was first kind of brought into discourse?
- [29:42]
C
I think the purposes have changed, but I think the metaphor is still very strong and still used constantly. So in the beginning, I think there was a sense of exceptionalism that is eroded today, for better or worse. So, for example, we have at the establishment of the Nation in 1776 and then discussion of citizenship in the years following of understanding the US should be a place that's held to a higher standard and that should be open, et cetera. Of course, we can't forget that the time is excluding people who are not white in that categorization of being able to naturalize or be citizens at all or have rights. But there was a guise of exceptionalism and that the New Jerusalem metaphor fit very well for that, especially this shining city on the hill trope in understanding it as a place of refuge. But also of example, right. That it needed to be particularly righteous because it is God's country. That's morphed quite a bit in the last 20 years or so, especially, I would say, on the extreme right and the discussion of America as God's nation. That nation is no longer supposed to be exceptional in the way that demands that it is compassionate or hospitable, even if it's in guise only. I wouldn't say that that's ever really carried through in US history, but even that is no longer a priority to talk about. Right. It's not part of the discourse. I would say that now it's a sense of defense. And so the New Jerusalem wall is very much played up its defenses and the understanding of invasion is played up as versus it's being an example to the world. Right. So it's no longer American exceptionalism, but rather America first. So that language behind the metaphor and has changed. But I think that the structure of the New Jerusalem metaphor still stays standing because it's very useful to be recycled for something else, which would be Christian nationalism, extremism and anti immigrant language that focuses on borders and focuses on walls.
- [31:43]
B
Do you see a future in which the US finally lets go of this New Jerusalem identification, or do you think it's here to stay?
- [31:50]
C
That's a great question. I would say that it's very hard to extricate a nation from a founding myth. And I was thinking beforehand of times we have seen that happen. And I think, you know, many nations and regions of the world have their favorite stories of how a people came to be, of its heritage, of its culture. And the US surrounds itself with an understanding of a Christian foundation of itself as being particularly chosen or exceptional of the first pilgrims and Puritans, et cetera. So even, even the understanding of pilgrim right of arriving at a holy place is part of the language of the US story. And the only times I think that we can think of a nation and a people rejecting a founding myth is after something ultimately catastrophic has happened. So for example, in Germany, in which we have to have a rejection of the understanding of the folk and of the fatherland. And I really don't want it to have to be the only way that a nation is able to extricate itself from a metaphor, from a founding metaphor. So I don't have any great answer for that. And I would say, judging from history I'm quite pessimistic of how that can happen, but I also think the communities and people of the US are changing, I hope, in terms of demographic and different cultural backgrounds, different religious backgrounds. In which case, if that origin myth can be left behind in some way, that might be a possibility, a more hopeful possibility.
- [33:30]
B
Do you think, if leaving it behind might be too difficult or too apocalyptic, for lack of a better term, do you think that it could be rehabilitated into something less exclusionary than it's currently being used?
- [33:45]
C
I think there's possibility. I think the danger, though, is that apocalyptic is so unstable in the way that it's. It's. It's been read and interpreted that it can always spring back. Right. And so when we have something that's seen as God's city, it's already carrying within it something exceptional. Right. And also the fact that there are walls and gates as consistent mechanisms of exclusion is dangerous to keep around. So I would say yes, possibly. And I think Revelation has served as a liberatory text for many, but the carefulness with which it has to be used, I think, for a broader nation, is difficult.
- [34:26]
B
Thank you very much for sharing your thoughts and sharing your really fascinating information, and I really hope that people go and take a look at the book. It is called Immigration and How the Book of Revelation Shaped American Immigration. And I believe that's actually coming out today, which is very exciting. So please go buy it, read it. It's wonderfully written. We've really, really just scratched the surface. I know this may have seemed like a lot of information to throw at people, but it's a large book. There are some fantastic appendices in there. There's an absolute wealth of information.
- [35:00]
C
Thank you so much for having me.
- [35:01]
B
It's been my absolute pleasure. Thank you. Misquoting Jesus will be back next week, everybody, and it will be Bart returning. I can't, off the top of my head, remember what our topic is, but please remember to join us next week. This has been an episode of Misquoting Jesus with Bart Ehr. We'll be back with a new episode next Tuesday, so please be sure to subscribe to our show for free on your favorite podcast listening app or on Bart Erman's YouTube channel, so you don't miss out. From Bart Erman and myself, Megan Lewis, thank you for joining us.