Episode 147: Benjamin Laird on the Formation of the Canon

Join us as we delve into Dr. Benjamin Laird's latest book, 'Creating the Canon' (IVPress, 2023), offering a comprehensive exploration of the intriguing journey behind the New Testament's origins. Dr. Laird focuses on the pivotal concept of apostolic authority and unravels the challenges and rewards associated with emphasizing this narrative in the New Testament's formation. 

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Timestamps:

3:01- The Composition of New Testament Writing

15:44- The Tension Between Historical Concepts and Universal Truths

27:20- Apostolic Authority and the Early Church

48:23- Divine Inspiration and its Mysteries

Charles Kim 0:00

Hello and welcome to history of Christian theology. My name is Chad Kim. This week I'll be talking with Dr. Benjamin Laird. Dr. Laird is the author of the new book creating the Canon with IV press. And in this work, Dr. Laird goes through many aspects of how the scripture was, well, especially the New Testament was written, how it circulated, and then ultimately how we come to think of it as the canon or as the Bible. So Dr. Laird is a professor at Liberty University, and really enjoyed getting to talk with him a little bit about this book. I also have been doing some studies on this at my church for our, our Sunday morning, Sunday school. And so I may be releasing some of my own conversations that I basically cover a lot of the stuff that Dr. Laird covers in his book, so it's a sort of an extended format from this book, but that will only be available to patrons. So if you find us on Patreon, we are at a history of Christian theology dot. Well, we're at patreon.com/a hocked a history of Christian theology. And if you become a member on Patreon, we're going to start offering some different things to our members there, including access to recordings of other teaching that I've done, and even some conversations between Tom Trevor and I. So on this podcast, we will link our Patreon, you can also find it on our Facebook and on our website. So do look out for that. And if you'd like some more content, related to the kind of stuff that we put out on the podcast, I highly recommend becoming a Patreon supporter. I will have some more episodes coming out later from Jacob rights. And from Ben, an Andrew Hofer. So we kind of a lot coming up sorry for the delay. It's been kind of a crazy semester. So without further ado, here is my conversation with Benjamin Laird. So today on the history of Christian theology I have with me, Dr. Benjamin Laird, and Dr. Laird is Associate Professor of Biblical Studies at Liberty University. He has also recently written creating the Canon composition, controversy and the authority of the New Testament. And that will be the topic of our conversation today. This is out with IV pret IV press. And so I appreciate IVP providing me a copy of the book, which I found very illuminating. Very helpful in some ways penetrating in its the questions that it asks, and also, at the same time, a good overview of some of the issues involved, and trying to think through what does it mean, to talk about the New Testament? Where does this come from? And so, yeah, so thank you for coming on. Ben. Dr. Laird,

Benjamin Laird 3:00

thanks for having me. Appreciate it.

Charles Kim 3:03

Um, so if you if you wouldn't mind, we'll just start kind of with the sort of general topic. So if you tell us a little bit about the composition of circulation of the New Testament writings, what what complications does this bring to the question of the inspiration of the original autographs?

Benjamin Laird 3:23

Yeah, those are a couple of really good questions there. So there's more of a I guess you could say a process question, right? How did the writings actually get composed? How were they composed? Then? Also, how does that relate theologically to the idea of inspiration? So I'll try to quickly address both of those. I've always been fascinated by the historical questions. I remember the grad students, doctoral student, read a lot of folks like Harry gamble. And Larry Hurtado. And he Randolph Richards, and really just became fascinated by the concept of writing in the first century. And a lot of dissertations have been written on this subject. But I just found it interesting that writings were often composed in very different ways than we might suspect. And whenever I bring up the subject of the New Testament Can I think what I find is that a lot of people have the idea that maybe letter writing was similar to the way it is today, just maybe slower, more archaic as far as the mechanisms that were used, the instruments that were used, but generally an isolated enterprise, right, individual kind of activity, where someone like Paul is going to sit at his desk and compose something in solitude, and then you know, he's gonna send it out. So it may have took a long time to get that letter to where it needed to go. But writing is basically the same as it was, you know, 2000 years ago today, as today. So what I've actually learned, and what I think we can find in history is that letter writing was actually a pretty complex interplay, enterprise activity, and I say complex because it wasn't always, sometimes it was but in many cases, it wasn't the isolated activity that we might think. So there We're many, many people involved. And in the first couple chapters I get into this, there are books that that get into this much more detail. But I just wanted to provide readers with a broad survey of how letters were written how gospels were likely composed, and focus on in one of the chapters there at the beginning of the book on all the individuals that could have had a role in this in this process. And so I talk, for example, about the different sources that could have been used, and many people that we don't even know, you know, we don't even know their names. But they would have played a role in providing the authors of the New Testament with information that would have been used in their works. So the works in New Testament are what scholars often referred to as occasional in nature, they're writing to address specific concerns, specific situations to address, maybe theological misunderstandings, but they're going to need to know what is a concern or problem among their readers. And so they're going to need information. So that may come from maybe there's written texts, like in the Gospel accounts, maybe they're familiar with earlier writings, or maybe they're in contact with their associates who have actually traveled to a location and they visited there and ministered to the locals. And those individuals have passed on their concerns, and somebody will return something like Titus or Timothy might return to Paul with the report. And tell Paul, you know, Paul, we actually need to deal with this situation. And they're really confused about spiritual guests or the Lord's Supper, or I've watched their worship services. And I noticed that they completely misunderstand this subject, or how to do this or that, or, you know, the point of this or that. And so Paul, then might address it, as well. And there could be also eyewitnesses, and then that would be more of the case with narrative. So gospels and acts, you're going to need a source of information for the miracle accounts are Jesus's teaching or some event that is described. And so certain individuals, many individuals, in fact, likely served as informants, or sources for the gospel writers and even for someone like Paul. So that's just the first step. And then we're going to go on to the actual composition. And what we know is that oftentimes, not always, but oftentimes, writers would make use of a personal secretary to compose their works. And we know that this actually took place in the New Testament writings, because we actually have explicit reference to at least one, and that would be tersus, who identifies himself by name at the end of Romans. And so we often know, well, we can observe in many cases that Secretary would have been used, Paul would have dictated the content of a writing to him, and that individual would have composed the text and ventually that would have been approved by the author. So someone like Paul isn't just going to dictate the text, and then you know, Turks is going to run with it and crafted anyway, he feels led to and then, you know, put his own kind of twist on it, and then send it off, it's going to be approved and authenticated by Paul at the end of that. But it's really fascinating to learn how secretaries function to the Oxy Ryan case letters, for example, that have been discovered over the last century and a half. And a lot of them indicate that secretaries were used not just for literary compositions, sophisticated works like we have with Paul are the Gospels of everyday letters were often they often use secretaries to compose those as well. So that's another individual who may have served in that capacity. We have letter writers, we have informants, we have secretaries, oftentimes, you would have letter carriers as well, right. So can't just send an email and hit send and or text message and send it instantly and arrive at the place through electronic means. Instead, letters had to be delivered works had to be disseminated. And so all that took place through letter carriers, and there's been a lot of activity in the last couple of decades just discussing the function of Letter Carriers, as well, then, once the writing gets to where it needs to go, we often have, we also have the issue of circulating those works. And so we're going to have many people who serve as copyist of the writings. And so that's, that's a lot of different people write that all played some kind of role in the the process, the literary process here, when we go from just what we might call the research phase, or the planning phase, and then all the way to the transmission of the text after it arrived where it was intended to go. So a lot of different people played a role. So I would say that was that's something that is often overlooked. We just forget oftentimes, how many people were involved in this process. It wasn't just an individual fair, like I said, but it was more of a team effort, especially in the case of, I would say Paul's ministry there. And to kind of segue then to your question about inspiration, my understanding and there's different perspectives on this, but my understanding is that we can affirm inspiration. I think we have the legitimate reason to affirm inspiration? I think it's a crucial doctrine. But I would say inspiration does not preclude the notion that the author's used the conventions of their day to produce writing. So we shouldn't assume that because say Romans was inspired by God, that somehow the process the compositional process was different. I think that Paul and the other authors, the gospel authors, the other authors of the epistles, they would have used the standard means of book production and letter writing the standard conventions that we know about the first century, they, they would have followed those as well. Yeah. So I would say that we have a very human process. But I do believe that the content of the work was was indeed inspired by the Holy Spirit, as we read in Scripture, and his was, and also was affirmed by the early church, as well. So that's kind of a broad overview of the process. And and also, I kind of threw out the idea of inspiration there. And, and made the case that I think that inspiration is not at all in conflict with this idea that they used human beings. So

Charles Kim 11:06

yeah, well, that yeah, there. And I realize now looking back at that question, there's, there's a lot in there, that's like, tell me a little bit about your book. Essentially, what I just did so well, one thing that you mentioned at the beginning that, you know, is sort of interesting, and I mentioned this before, as we were kind of chatting before I started recording is that we kind of have, you know, sort of two different elements. When we think about Scripture, we have sort of the we might say the more explicitly theological considerations of like, Okay, what does it mean to be say, inspired? What would it mean for God to inspire authors or communities or all of these things, to bring the scriptural texts into the world as we have it, and you can sort of look at that as like a theological consideration. But as you noted, and I feel like a lot of your book really helps us think through those historical questions, right. So you bring all of that to the fore. Okay, how exactly what are the mechanics of this process? And that's, you know, it's one of those things, that's the hardest part to me, and maybe the hardest part about like, my even my own academic journey? Is this kind of balancing out? Okay, when am I asking a more explicitly historical question? And what am I really trying to figure out a deeper theological question? And I think those things could be easily confused.

Benjamin Laird 12:33

Yeah, absolutely. And the canon is an interesting subject in so many ways. And one thing I find fascinating about it, and why nobody has all the answers. And is because it kind of is at the, at the center of so many disciplines, it intersects theology, Biblical studies, history, I mean, all of these relate, you can't really understand the Canon without understanding church history, or you can't, it's hard to to study the subject, again, without getting too into historical issues, like the the background of the individual writings or how it works were composed. And also there's a theological dimension to this as well, right? You can't really think about the concept of canon without thinking about the theological nature of the text. So the I mean, these are inherently theological works. And if they do have authority, that's a theological question, not just a historical question. So you really can't just focus on one aspect of that, as much as we often want to do that. Right. Some, some are more comfortable focusing on the history, some more on the theology. But but really, they all play an important role in this. And and I would say, that's also a reason why there's so much confusion is because we have theological questions. We also have historical questions. And, you know, my book tried to shed some light on I don't know if I answered all the questions, but at least hope that I generate some questions. And sometimes the questions that we asked, I think are more important than the answers we're looking for. And so I'm at least hoping that we start to go down the right track and kind of like a dog going through the woods on a hunt. Right, we are on the right set now. And we're starting to think more about historical questions that we should be thinking about, but also not divorcing history from theology. I mean, we want to do that with the doctrine of Christ. Right? We want to, we want to just focus on well, some have, right, we know that from our study of the last, you know, yeah, we'll call scholarship and last couple 100 years, there's been some, you know, we needed to divorce the Christ of faith from, you know, the genius of history, we just need to focus on historical matters. Others have said, No, let's just focus on you know, the theology of the Gospels and leave the history to kind of go its own way and we'll neglect that and we've, we've seen that hasn't gone very well, and the lead to a lot of dead ends. So just like we when we study Christology, we need to account for the nature of Jesus, what are his attributes? What do we know about who he is as a person but we also want to look into his background and he was born Warren in a very typical Jewish village in the first century, what was life like for him? And what were some of the ways that the Jews thought about, you know, eschatological matters? And had they believed God was going to fulfill his promise and what? What were their expectations about a Messiah? And, you know, how are they? How did they believe they were to relate to the law and things like that? So those are historical questions that we'd want to know to be able to fit Jesus into his times. And so I would say canon is similar, right? There's there's theological issues, historical issues, and I've tried to kind of get into a lot of those in the book. And I'll let readers decide, you know, whether or not they're convinced by my conclusions, but I at least want us to get going down the right road on this.

Charles Kim 15:44

Well, and one of the things that I appreciated about your book is you sort of it is it feels like, it feels like I'm reading with a teacher who is like helping me like, Okay, well, if you consider this, then this is going to result from that. But if you consider this perspective, this is one of the things that you have to take into consideration, which is, you know, that's kind of the the kind of the mentality, or the mode that I often have, when I'm in the classroom is I'm not trying, at least at first to like, give this is the definitive way that you think about it, all others of them are wrong. It's like, Hey, okay, if you if you make this move, then just recognize that some other things are going to result. And that's kind of how you walk through each one of these things. I feel like it is kind of that much more like a teacher.

Benjamin Laird 16:31

Well, that's, that's good to hear. You know, sometimes we're afraid that when we write that we're overcomplicating something, because can, as I said, it's inherently complex subject, and there's so many rabbit trails, we could go down and so many obstacles that we can easily trip over. But what I'm hoping for is that we're at least able to, in this book, look at key issues that may be misunderstood, or, or maybe even overlooked. And as we start to focus on the right things, I hope that our kind of vision becomes a little more clear, as we start to think through maybe the process that took place, but also theologically what separates these writings from other writings in antiquity and other Christian literature. And so I'm trying just to focus on those major questions that we should be focusing on. And not to over oversimplify as well, because we can easily do that. Yeah, we can easily say, Well, you know, inspiration is something we should affirm. And therefore, we can neglect all these historical, I don't want to do that I want to look at those historical issues, while at the same time thinking about the implications of our conclusions as well.

Charles Kim 17:43

Yeah, yeah. And the other thing I was thinking is you were just sort of laying out your thesis a little bit. And I kept coming back to one thing that I encountered more in grad school was got hold blessings, ugly, broad ditch. And and so this is this thing that he's sort of uses to explain, like the difficulties of the Bible as historical text. And so it's occasional, it's particular, it's, you know, part of a time and place. And and it's only part of that time of place in some respects. But it's also Well, the question would be, then, how does it convey and this is, I don't know if Lessing really solved the problem. But lessons question would be okay, so how does a particular text within a specific time and place? How does it then communicate universal truths? And so what what does that mean for the Christian scriptures? To be in so many ways? Very, I mean, it's, so it's a useful historical text, and these sorts of things. It's not just, it didn't just fall from the sky, as timeless truths. And, and so that sort of that always raises problems, and I think, you know, you brought up Christology, and but but as you say, you know, as much like the Canon here, you're always going to be kind of pushing in both of those directions. Like we, we, you know, especially as a person of faith, you know, we're gonna say, especially, you know, Christian faith, we're gonna say that the Scripture does convey something of the revelation of God. But it's kimete communicated in historical circumstance, as well. And that's a that's a really difficult thing to hold. Intention. And it can be easy, as you say, to just say, alright, fine, I'm gonna run away and just do the history. And because history has, you know, these other corollaries and yada, yada, yada, or you want to go pure, sort of analytical and pure kind of abstract, because you don't want to get dirty with the messiness of history.

Benjamin Laird 19:50

Yeah, well said and the lot of those issues you raised that are not just new issues that have all of a sudden come to the forefront and we're now just talking about it actually, all the way back in The early church, they were discussing these things, right. So how do you have a letter that's addressed to say, Thessalonica? Why is that relevant to me? You know, you might ask that if you're in the second century in another town. Yeah. And so how do we account for the occasional nature of these writings, but also affirm that they're universal? Yeah. And that's, that's been a challenge that we've had for a number of centuries, going all the way back to the early church, they were debating this even. And it's interesting to see how they work through these issues. And early Christianity, maybe a little different than we're working through today. Today, I think maybe we have the opposite problem, we kind of viewed them as they're universal, and we forget the particular element. Right, that, you know, God just wrote this directly to me kind of thing. And, in fact, he actually wrote them to a specific audience in a specific place. And we need to know something about these people and the issues that were being addressed. So I would say one of the unique aspects of Scripture is able to hold two attributes, right? It's occasional, but it's also universal. Yeah. And so to properly understand scripture, I would argue, you need to first of all, ask what prompted the author to compose this in the first place, they didn't just decide, like we might today, you know, we have a good book idea. And we're going to, you know, advertise it and you know, publish it. And, you know, maybe a general audience would appreciate this, but they started off with some kind of problem or concern. And they wanted to address those issues. So Paul is going to address the Romans or the Ephesians, or the Corinthians for specific reasons. And so part of our job as interpreters then as readers to the text just is to discern what actually prompted the author strike in the first place. And then as kind of a I would say, a secondary step, but an important step is to consider okay, what are the universal truths that Paul presents are the authors present there. And so again, I would say scripture is unique, because it's occasional is written in real places, in real times by real people. But it also contains spiritual truths that are just as relevant today as they were 2000 years ago. Yeah, whenever we focus on just the universal elements at the exclusion of historical or vice versa, we focus on the historical at the exclusion of the universal, I would say, we get into trouble. So we need to really make sure we, we pay careful attention to both of those elements.

Charles Kim 22:20

Yeah, and sort of, as I'm thinking about this, almost maybe apologetically or something, you know, I can hear like, my sometimes my, my undergrad students are a little skeptical at St. Louis University of some of these sorts of things. And, you know, they're, you know, well, why would why would God communicate in such a particular circumstance? And I just think of it well, and sometimes I have them read Mere Christianity from CS Lewis, and he has that line about it has the, the queer ring about it that true things do? And, you know, using queer, obviously, in an ancient, or, excuse me, not ancient, in an old English way of speaking. Has that that oddity about true things, right, something that's true, it's, you know, true, things are never just so totally simple. That there would be you know, but also, they're not so complex that nobody could understand that, but they're just, you know, just sort of just sticky enough to make you really want to ponder it. And, but yeah, it's it is, it is that hard thing about particularity. And, you know, at first I think, you know, part of me, like, you know, wants to go to that universal, but but I like the particular because that's what's compelling. You know, it's a story for a reason, it's a narrative for a reason. And it's hard to tell a universal story without any particulars. So, you know, you just will know, I could give you the outlines of what makes a plot a plot, but that's not compelling. That's not a story. And, you know, I think sometimes I think, yeah, our storytelling is, well, anyway, that's my criticism of modern storytelling, but but having that, you know, you don't want just like an outline of a plot, you want to get to know a character. And, and so yeah, anyway.

Benjamin Laird 24:10

Yeah, exactly. And we could, you know, fall into the trap of thinking that the particulars of our situation are different than maybe in the first century, you might be tempted to think, well, you know, we're not dealing with this or that issue, like they were in Corinth, therefore, you know, I don't really need to read First and Second Corinthians. But on the other hand, if you realize that Paul is going to actually emphasize spiritual truths that are universal, then you'll know that yeah, the situation may be different for you than those in Corinth. But there are actually some spiritual truths here some instruction that remains relevant to the church, right. So our situations may change, but that truth continues. But also you you would not want to make the mistake of ignoring the original situation in Korath because then that might confuse you on on the other side of things which is The way that Paul treated it, you might be confused as to why he addressed situations the way he did or why he laid out certain principles. And so I would say the more we can learn about the original context, the better equipped we'll be, the better informed, we'll be as readers today.

Charles Kim 25:16

Yeah, well, and so to kind of move the conversation forward a little bit, one of the things that, you know, you just use the idea of Paul there, but we have Peter, we have the the gospel writers, you know, some of whom have very obvious connections to the disciples, some of whom are writing sort of in the disciples name. But what, you know, can you tell us a little bit about the idea of apostolic authority? What does what does that mean? Why is that an important consideration? Right, so, you're rooting, we're rooting, you know, one of the questions about canon always comes back to the authority. So who wrote it? And why does that kind of matter for the consideration about whether or not something would be considered scripture?

Benjamin Laird 26:04

Yeah, excellent question. So many ways I could go with that. But I'll try to be concise here. But if we look at early Christian testimony, we find that apostolic authority was crucial. And that was often at the center of debates over whether or not certain works should be accepted. It wasn't the only factor. But it was the most important factor. And so we don't have any examples, right of a text that was widely considered to be written outside the apostolic community that was still embraced by Christians, when there was dispute, it was whether or not it could actually go back to an apostle. So if there was dispute about Hebrews, for example, or maybe, you know, Second Peter, or something, the primary matter of discussion was whether or not it was actually apostolic that is, whether it could actually be attributed to one of the apostles in the first century. And other issues tended to be related to that. So even if they were to discuss a, the use of a writing or the theology of writing, that was not something that was entirely disconnected from apostolic authority, because it's understood if, if a work was written by an apostle, then it would be Orthodox, it would be relevant, it would be of use to the church. So all these attributes were connected in one way or another, to apisto Olicity. But there's a huge a very clear connection, I would say, between inspiration and apostolic authorship. And so we need to think, too, about just how they use that language, because it's used differently today. Oftentimes today, for example, we might say that, well, this this practice is apostolic, we might say, the Lord's Supper community, it's an apostolic practice. Because it goes back to the the practices that were, that could derive from the apostles are practiced by the apostles. Or we might say a certain doctrine is apostolic, we might say the resurrection is apostolic, because it was something that was proclaimed by Peter and John and, you know, the all the apostles. And that's, that's certainly a legitimate way to use the term. But there's also another dimension to this that I think is often overlooked. And that would be the historical issue of apostolic authorship. So they actually placed a great emphasis on this. And sometimes I think we're tempted to overlook that or to think maybe they didn't care about authorship, for a couple of reasons. One is there are several writings in the New Testament that some scholars today believe were not written by apostles. And so when people hear that when they hear well, maybe the pastoral epistles, or second Peter or something was not or maybe even James, if these were not written by the individuals that are there in the text, right, the traditional authors, then maybe the early church actually didn't care about authors so much if they let these works in, right? Well, the problem with that is they actually did carefully vet these works to make sure they go back to apostles. So that's that's one issue. Then another issue is the idea that presented much scholarship today, that apisto Olicity is something that can be disconnected from authorship. But in the early church, they always made the connection. But here's the kind of confusing part about it. Or maybe it says, this is the element that will give us clarity, right? They often understood the apostolic community in a broader sense than maybe we do today. And that's, that's kind of a key point here. Because a lot of times people will go to the Gospels, for example, and they'll say, Wait a minute. This one's written by Mark, this one's written by Luke and I've read the gospels. I've read the list of the 12. And I don't need Mark's name there. I don't see Luke's name there. So the church affirm these is apostolic, but these were clearly not in the 12. Or they might even do the same thing with Paul because he was not at the 12 even though of course, he was commissioned by Christ directly on the as we read multiple places. So I think because we have so called not apostles write individuals that we would not think of directly as apostles who were responsible for the composition of these drawings. And we might think that apostolic authorship is maybe not important. And maybe that's not how we should use the term. But what I find is that they understood apostolic authorship a little more broadly, the community a little more broadly than we do. In fact, we go to places like x 14, you find references to people like Barnabas as apostles there. So it seems that we have the 12 we have Paul, and my understanding is that we have many individuals who work side by side with the apostles, Paul is not a lone ranger who's out there, you know, going to one city after another by himself, he works with a team. And people like Timothy, Titus, Barnabas, Silas, let's keep going on these individuals work directly with Paul, they're part of his ministry, Paul will often send out individuals to different cities to learn more about them, to get an update about their situation to instruct them, to encourage them to edify them. And they're going to often come back to Paul with reports, as we talked about earlier, in our discussion, and so many individuals are actually part of Paul's ministry or part of the apostles ministry. And so they're part of this broader apostolic community. And so what we don't have in Scripture then are works that were written by individuals who were somehow separate from that community. Yeah, individuals in the early second century who had no connection to the 12, or no connection to Paul, every single one of the writings in the New Testament, were in by either the 12 by Paul or individuals who are right there in the middle of the Ministries of these apostles, they work side by side with them. Yeah, it could be apostolic. In that sense, that's still a historical way of thinking about it, because they're part of that initial apostolic community, not individuals who are, you know, self proclaim apostles down the road somewhere?

Charles Kim 31:49

Yeah. Well, and one of the things that has, you know, I mentioned in some of the stuff when we were writing or writing to each other was this idea of the the Latin word that that comes up in Tertullian, someone you cite in the book is outdoor, and it, which is interesting, right, so it's the root of our English word for author, as well as our root for authority. And, you know, we don't, we don't necessarily think that every author is an authority in English anymore. But in Latin you would write you would say that, you know, those are essentially connected. If you're an author, it's typically because you have a kind of authority, and especially when I think when we think about this idea of, you know, going back to the the apostolic authority, the apostolic author, it is because they have an authority, but it's interesting, and in the ways in which it sort of bends our normal notions for this, because we also think of an author, like, you know, you have this book that we're taught, we're discussing, I have a book supposed to come out in November, but it won't come out until November. And I will have the final say over the last little bits, and it will be done, it will be complete. And it's supposed to be mined in some sense. And, but in this case, there isn't the same like, okay, there's a specific date, and we're going to wait and note, you know, it's not going to go public. Until No, you know it but there's not that same kind of idea. So the the text even is a little bit more fluid in the in the way that it's being, you know, written down by a scribe, maybe, you know, maybe in some ways interpreted maybe by the carrier of the letter. I know Augustine is correspondence better than I'm, so by training. I'm a patristic scholar. So that's kind of more my books about Augustine. So that's more what I that's what I know better. But I know that he had these problems where you know, you will, okay, there was sort of some interpretation going on with his letter carrier that maybe was confusing matters. And so there's, you know, there's like, lots of different things that kind of get in the way. Some of I think, if some of de tren gets out before he's ready for it to get out. And people are upset, you know, because like, the book has kind of been released, as it were, and he wasn't ready. But like, so the idea of like, you know, the text isn't the fixed thing in the mind of the of the author.

Benjamin Laird 34:23

Yeah, very good. So a lot of different kinds of things you mentioned there. So I'll do my best to kind of go right to the center of that. But you know, when it comes to authority, I mentioned people like Barnabas, and Mark and Luke, I should have mentioned Mark and Luke first because they're authors. Yeah, it was understood that they have authority because of their connection to authoritative figures. Right? It wasn't as though Mark and Luke are just authoritative. You know, it had this intrinsic authority, but they were connected to the apostles. And I'm kind of working through this backwards but maybe I should But the other direction, someone like Tertullian would argue that the grace authority would be God the Father, the Creator. Yeah. And then what God the Father does is he sends Jesus Christ who was actually mentioned in Hebrews as our great apostle, which is a fascinating title for Christ, we only find there. So Christ is the apostle, the one sent directly from God, he's commissioned by God to proclaim truth, right? He's sent directly from him. So he bears the authority of the one, he bears his own authority, of course, but he also has the authority of the one who sent Him God the Father. So we have God sin, Christ, our foremost apostle, Christ's then commissioned the 12, he commissioned Paul personally, to go out and testify to the resurrection testified to the gospel message. And so the 12 and Paul, we would say they have authority because not because they are somehow separate ontologically from us are unique, but they they have an authority that comes directly from Christ, because Christ commissioned them to go out. And then we have kind of another dimension to the next level, the next tier would be those who serve alongside of the apostles. And so we have someone like Barnabas, or Timothy or Mark or Luke, who they they serve directly with those who are commissioned by Christ. So they're almost like apostles of the apostles is kind of the way to kind of the way to think about it. So Tertullian recognizes this. And if you could, if you understand that, that kind of connection between those different tiers there, it'll help you understand, I would say, how Tertullian articulates his understanding of Scripture and how that's different than say, Marcion, whom he's, you know, castigating is this heretic, right? So, someone like Marcion, who defiles, the gospel message and is innovative, you break the link, then is what you do, right, because now you you break the link, where there's the apostolic community, because your writings can't legitimately be described as apostolic anymore, because you've just defiled them. And so they're your own creation. So if you break the link of the apostles, then you can't really get back to Christ. And you can't get back to God, you're now guilty of heresy or idolatry, or you're responsible for an innovation is what you're responsible for now. Yeah. So that's why the link is so important, and you can't have in other words, you can't have pure doctrine that goes directly to Christ derives from Christ is faithful to the teaching of Christ with and break the the apostolic link as well.

Charles Kim 37:34

Yeah. I have, yeah, talking about this stuff just generates all kinds of questions. But what one of them, like, okay, so I haven't read Bultmann in years, but I remember when I was first in my master's program, where we talked about boatman and he would talk about the Johannine community. And these sorts of things. Does he have in mind what you were talking about? I don't even like I mean, I'm so far from does he have in mind this sort of idea of the people working with John or I feel like I understood it very differently. Like it was like, Yeah, but now I'm like, well, could it could he have meant something like what you're describing? I don't know. You may not know that. I don't know. It was just something that was pinging in my brain. I'm like, well, that's kind of you can use that word. But that's, I feel like that's different. From what boatman, Rudolf Bultmann. And for the listeners, Rudolf Bultmann was a German New Testament scholar. And he would talk a lot about like, well, we don't know who wrote what, but maybe it came from the community of so and so. And that I was like, I don't actually remember ever parsing exactly what that meant. Yeah,

Benjamin Laird 38:41

well, they would use when I say they, I mean, both mine. And then those who were his students, and many of the inheritors of, you know, his ideas. They, I would say, use those terms in a broader sense. Yeah. So it's not just those who are personal assistants, you know, with Paul or John, but it could just be those who were inspired by his message and sought to carried on so this, you'll see this in Pauline studies. For example, someone might say, well, the pastoral epistles were written late first century or early second century by someone who was a or a group of people who were disciples of the apostle Paul, in some sense, they were devotees to Paul, and his idea. So what they did was maybe preserved the writings, and they might expand the corpus of writings to include works that they created that were, they believe, consistent with Paul's legacy and his own teaching, that kind of thing. So oftentimes, when people talk about his school, right, like a public school or a Johannine school, they they might mean, oftentimes, they'll mean a subsequent generation after the death of that individual, you know, the next generation or two, they're, they're crafting additional works in their name, and that individuals name that they believe is somehow consistent with There's their follower. Yeah. Or their, their original leader, whether it's John or Peter or whoever.

Charles Kim 40:05

But what you've been talking about is, is not quite that loose, right? Oh no, you want a much tighter bond between the APA, APA Felicity, as in having been sent directly by Christ, or someone immediately within the orbit, like, as you keep using the Timothy's of the Barnabas is or the, you know, Luke's or you know, all of these people as like they're still within that generation, they're still within a much tighter network. I'm trying to think of what what language to use here, but go ahead,

Benjamin Laird 40:38

you're exactly right. Well think about the example with Mark. And I should probably go back and preface this by noting why this is an important subject. It's because many times people will discount the importance of apostolic authorship again, because just reiterate this point, because we have non apostles, right, Mark, and Luke and that type of thing. So they might say, well, what's the difference between Mark and say, first command or second command? Are the nation letters? I mean, if as long as they're Orthodox and edifying, that's all that matters. So what is so unique about these writings? There's different ways you can answer that. But I would say the issue is not exactly the same here, we have actually two different scenarios. I would say, you know, work like the Apostolic Fathers, late first century, second century, those are disconnected from the apostles. In fact, Ignatius even says that he even emphasizes how his, his work was disconnected from the apostles, right? Because I'm nothing but a slave. And you know, but these, these are apostles who wrote these words over here. But to go back to Mark, as an example, Mark, very close relationships. He's not just someone in a community, right? 3040 years later, this is someone who, well, the term the early Church used was hermeneutics. He was the hermeneutics of Peter. So this is not just, you know, one obscure reference is something we find in a lot of early Christian testimony that Mark was the interpreter, the hermeneutics of Peter. So he is actually responsible for composing a written document that is based on Peters eyewitness testimony of Christ. So it actually goes back to Peter, but you have someone who is a close companion of the apostles, not someone who's a second or third or fourth century writer, you have a right hand assistant of an apostle, who's writing his work under the influence of the apostle at the direction of an apostle, then so it's all based on eyewitness testimony of an apostle rather than just someone's, you know, ingenuity many years later, or someone who is just simply taking traditions it passed down from generation to generation, it actually goes right back to the apostles.

Charles Kim 42:42

Yeah. Yeah, that's very, that's very helpful. It Yeah, just also makes me think about this book by Brad East about the relationship between church and book. And I was just thinking, like, you know, I like this notion of Ms. apostolicity. Rooting one in Christ, because you know, and when we think about, you know, it's an interesting phrase that we use Word of God, right. And so Word of God in Psalm as Bart pointed out, word of God has kind of this threefold sense. But But it's always rooted in Christ. So I like I don't know, it fits well to think about a past apostolicity as being rooted in who Christ sends, as Christ as the word sends out the word. And, you know, it has a nice kind of tie in to this as the basis, you know, and then the, the fight for BART, Bart talks about the three fold word for I'm sure you know this, but for the listeners, right, so the final one would be preaching. And so what is preaching? Well, preaching is sort of the next step past Christ, sending His Word into the world through the apostles, and then that word being further sent out by the preacher, and obviously derivative and in the right way further derivative, not the same as Christ himself or not the same as the apostles.

Benjamin Laird 44:13

Yeah. And you see that language even in the early church, don't you? It's not just Bart, you know, years later, it's even in the early church. You see, a lot of church fathers refer to scripture in that way, and the importance of proclamation. There's a heavy emphasis on that. And for them, it goes back to Christ as well. So yeah, John

Charles Kim 44:33

bear has said some good stuff on the Yeah, the proclamation of the gospel and things like that. Yeah. Very good. Awesome. Okay. This is my change gears question that can be related to the book. It doesn't have to be, but I always ask my guests. What is one thing that you once thought was true, and now think is false? Or one thing that you think is false but now think is true? And I like this question because sometimes it shows like what happens when you're doing research. For a book like this, like, sometimes you find out things that you just, you know, well, when I was going in, I thought one thing, but by the time I was done, I realized something else. But it also can just sort of generally be in the life of a scholar or a theologian. You know, you, you, you're, you're pursuing truth and wherever it is to be found. So I'm always curious how that what that process looks like for people.

Benjamin Laird 45:27

Yeah, good question. I'm not trying to dodge your question entirely. But I would say maybe the biggest surprise, the main surprise for me is not just so much what I found in my research on a certain subject, but really, I I've been surprised by the way most readers think about these subjects. Sometimes we just kind of assume that everybody thinks like we do. And something might seem obvious to us, but maybe others have a different opinion. I of course, I know. There's different opinions out there. But I guess I was surprised by the different notions people have about the implications of authorship. I was surprised by that. And the more I talk to individuals, the more I see that there's there's a general I would say ambivalence towards the subject of authorship. A lot of people don't understand why it's important. And I think there's different reasons for that I did once I started to see this, it kind of led to my discussion in the last couple chapters of the book where I get into authority. So I kind of raise my my arguments against these kind of initial premises that you know, people might have, or these certain mindsets that people might have. And I think that for a lot of people, if they hear constantly, that there's non apostolic works in the New Testament, right, that we have works like the pastoral epistles are Second Peter, that were not written by the individuals that are ascribed in the text. If, if they think, well, we don't know who wrote this, or they think that maybe we even have someone else in the second century writing these, then I think it's a natural conclusion for them is to say, well, authorship really doesn't matter. And instead of a crisis taking place where they say, Well, you know, I guess the entire New Testament is not authoritative, because it doesn't actually go back to the apostles. Rather than going down that road, making that conclusion, they actually make it very different conclusion in many cases, and they'll say something like, well, but it's God's word, it's inspired. In his providence, He's given us these texts. So even if a work like Second Peter is actually not written by Peter, then we can still hold that it's authoritative today. So in other words, authorship just doesn't mean anything anymore. It's, it's inconsequential entirely. So I guess I was just surprised. Because I always thought that, you know, maybe you have some historical critical scholars out there who are going to just view these as ancient documents, right? So they're not going to hold inspiration. So authorship really doesn't matter, except for historical reasons. But I've noticed that in the evangelical world, in the more conservative world, there's a lot of people who are, I would say, confused on this, or maybe they're they haven't thought through it clearly enough, at least. Yeah. And they haven't thought about the implications of authorship very much. And they've greatly discounted, its importance. Yeah. When we go back to the early church, as we mentioned, that was actually a crucial subject.

Charles Kim 48:23

Yeah. Well, and one thing, I feel like I could step on some toes with this question. And I don't mean to, I'm merely just thinking out the implications. But you know, sometimes you hear this phrase verbal plenary inspiration. And it's, you know, it's when you start talking about how kind of negotiated a text was, it starts to make you wonder, well, what what exactly do you mean? I mean, you talk a lot about autographs. Like, this is something in the Chicago statement is like this idea of autographs. But and which also raises sort of problems as you as you note in the book, but yeah, it was also just thinking about like, well, what, what do you actually mean, if we say that God by words, smoke, you know, through Paul to write something down? You know, is it's I start to, and again, I'm, I don't mean to be, I don't know, in pious or something or disrespectful. But it starts to like, it's like, well, this feels like a really modern way to frame this. And so, you know, and it's not wrong for modern people to ask modern questions. But it's just hard then to say, Okay, well, well, what does it you know, how does that help us to understand an ancient text?

Benjamin Laird 49:40

Exactly, yeah. And there, we have to have some humility here. And we don't want to be too specific on it. When we think about inspiration, for example, right? The specific mode that took place how exactly God through His Spirit inspired men to write Yeah, there is a mystery there. We don't have a full articulation of the process. We You know how writings were composed? I talked about that. But how inspiration, you know, actually works. You know, I think about Second Peter one. It talks about how there's no prophecy of you know, that's a private interpretation. But it says that God through humans spoke right as men spoke because they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. Well, I wish we would have had a little more information there on exactly what carried along means. Yeah, and what exactly we mean by that. So it's not exactly spelled out very clearly in Scripture, what carried on by the spirit means, but we do know that that took place. Right? Even if we're we have a very loose understanding of exactly the process there. i You mentioned the Chicago statement. I think if I remember, the Chicago statement says something along those lines, like, there's a mystery to the exact mechanism or mode that led to inspiration. So it's, we can't be too specific. We but again, we don't have to fully understand something to accept to do a so yeah, I would, I would caution us there if we don't fully understand exactly how something played out. That doesn't mean it couldn't happen. Just like we don't fully understand, you know, the mystery of the incarnation or the trinity or something.

Charles Kim 51:05

Right, right. Yeah, yeah. No, that's, that's fair. It's fair enough. And like I said, I really do want to, I do want to tread carefully. But it's hard, though, you know, so it's a weird thing. Maybe this is part of even for me, like, I have like, I have a very eclectic, educational background. Sometimes it's good. Sometimes it's bad. Because it means like, I've I like I was raised in a very conservative environment with kind of these things is just a given. And then I did my masters at Princeton seminary, which which came hard from the historical critical angle. And part of the reason I did Patristics for my PhD was because I was like, I've got to, I don't want to live in the pure historical world of German critical scholarship in the 18th and 19th century or whatever, like, that was just dead to me and lifeless. And so I liked going back to the patristic sources, because you definitely felt like this is a divine text. And so like, you know, when when I would read along with Augustine, or, you know, Ambrose or whoever I'm like, Yeah, you and I, we share this conviction about how God is speaking here. Even if I don't, you know, even if I don't have a very, you no explicit historical way to view, you know, what was going on behind the text. So I felt sort of solace in reading with the patristic sources. Because I didn't have to have all the very modern answers to these problems. Well, they just they were happy to say inspiration and talk about it being a divine tax. And I'm like, Oh, good. Let's do it. Yeah.

Benjamin Laird 52:46

That makes sense. And I think we need to revive that. And yeah, not just discount it and write it off, you know, entirely and say, Well, we're sophisticated now in the 21st century, I think we're doing ourselves a disservice when we discount any possibility of inspiration and say, well, these are just ancient documents. Yeah. And that's it. So

Charles Kim 53:09

yeah, yeah. And it's, I mean, just as a Final Coda on that, it always surprises me that, you know, one of the best textual critics in the history of the church is origin. You know, and so like one of these people that gets kind of chastised for being too allegorical, and, you know, all these other things. I mean, you know, he was, he was a very good textual scholar. Alright, so, I, you know, I'm realizing as I'm looking through some of these questions, well, one, one question I put there was like, you really push hard on this idea of authority towards the end of the book, I was kind of curious what what made you you know, as far as you're laying out the text, why you wait till the end, like that was that like, to me, that was the bit that I really wanted to get to? And I was like, Okay, well, so why is that at the end and not at the beginning? Like, why wouldn't you why? I'm just curious, like, as you were thinking through your own writing process, you you kind of left your big reveal, like maybe that's it, you just left your reveal to the end? I don't.

Benjamin Laird 54:15

Yeah, good question here. So my original idea, when I wrote this book was only to write on these historical misperceptions that people have about cancers, it was actually going to address just the issues in the first two units, not all three, but just the first two units. So an overview of the canonical process, a discussion of composition, like you see in the early chapters there. So that was the original focus of the book. And the publisher said, you know, it would be nice once they looked over the proposal. They said, you know, it'd be actually very good if you would discuss maybe in a preface, or an introductory chapter, or maybe even a conclusion chapter but maybe at least have something in the book about the idea of inspiration, or the concept of inspiration how all this relates to your work. So I said, Okay, that's fair enough. You know, I originally, again, didn't want to treat the theological issues, I wanted to focus. Not that I want to avoid it, I just wanted to focus on historical issues. So they said, well, let's, let's see if we can work that in there somehow inspiration. So I said, Okay, and so I started to work on these work on this subject. And eventually I just said, you know, this is, I just need to include two chapters on this. Rather than just, you know, try to cover this in a page or two in an introduction or conclusion, this is something that I think would tie the book together at the end and give it a great, I think, give it a little more, kind of broaden the scope a bit and kind of complete it, I think, I think it would help for that. So that's why I decided to write those last two chapters. And I think the sequence I kind of just followed my original sequence. And so it was going to start with composition, and then lead to formation. So the first couple chapters, three chapters how were works composed, then go to the canonical process. That is, you know, post composition, talk about that, because that's the next part of the chronological sequence. And then I decided, well, let's just put the subject of authority at the end, because it's kind of a, why does it matter to us today? Kind of thing? Yeah. And so I kind of went with that progression. I probably could have put that at the beginning, too. I think it could have worked either way. But I was just kind of going from I was thinking more of a chronological sequence. So we go from opposition to formation to modern relevance. It's kind of the way I was thinking through it.

Charles Kim 56:37

Yeah. No, that's, that's pretty interesting. Yeah. Cuz I'm with your editors, because I was like, Oh, yeah. Okay. This helps me see that, you know, the fullness of the of the story here. It's so I think, I think it's a good chapter, I think it's, it helps helps round it out. Because yeah, for me, if I think about canon, I'm always like, as I've said, I'm thinking about both of the historical question and the kind of theological question.

Benjamin Laird 57:05

For me, you know, the theological issues are actually much more difficult to write than the historical issues. And, I mean, something can be very obscure, historically, and it takes a lot of work to dig into it. But it might be a little more straightforward in the end, right? Yeah. Like, if I were writing about Jesus, it would be a lot easier to describe, you know, the archaeology of first century Galilee, even though it requires a lot of, well, I was gonna say digging deep is a bad. But yes, it would require a lot of investigation. But that's, that's a little more straightforward, isn't it, then discussing, you know, the incarnation or, you know, the resurrection of Christ, or those are very difficult subjects. And the theological subjects can often be very intimidating, very, very difficult. And so I actually spent more time writing the theology chapters in any of the other chapters, I mean, talk about just all the nuance, it has to go into something like that. It has to be very carefully presented. And so it took a lot of time to get my mind around how to present that those doctors but I'm thankful that they made that suggestion because I think as you said, it rounded off the book in a in a good way, and added a lot of variety to it. And, of course, it's essential. It's an essential subject anyway, so I'm glad I was able to work that in there.

Charles Kim 58:23

Yeah. Yeah. Well, and even just to echo that I in my dissertation, that's like, the basis for this book. I like I like doing historical theology or Patristics. Because I can also say, Look, I'm just telling you what Augustine said. Like, I'm not putting my like, you know, two cents in here. I mean, I you do, you inevitably do but like, it's, it's a lot safer to just say, Well, look, hey, I'm this is just what this person said.

Benjamin Laird 58:55

Yeah, to go back to BART. I think he actually says something to that exact effect in his in the introduction to his Romans commentary, right? Yeah. He's kind of responding to his critics. Yeah. And his critics say all your Romans commentaries just see a logical it's, it's not as detailed as you know, like these exegetical commentaries, they really get in those historical critical issues. And he says, no, it's actually the opposite. Yeah, I'm not neglecting that he claims you can debate whether or not he did neglect, but he's gonna say, you know, I actually went a step beyond what you're doing. I'm not just talking about the history, I'm talking about the history, but also its implications today and the meaning of the text today, and that's, that can often be very difficult, much more difficult than just, you know, analyzing history, historical subjects.

Charles Kim 59:42

Yeah. Well, we are brushing right up on an hour here. I appreciate so much the time that you've given. And just for the listeners, you know, as always, it was a 250 some odd page book. i I can only ask so many quite She's there's lots of good stuff in here. A lot of stuff about, you know, misperceptions about Constantine's role. And, you know, some other things like that which I deal with all the time in, in my introduction to theology classes, if someone has any idea about the, the history of the canon, which is not often, but but if they do, they've read Dan Brown, and they want to tell me about what, what Constantine did or whatever. And I'm like. So suffice it to say that you lay a lot of that stuff to rest. So there's a lot of good stuff in the book, I did want to ask just one thing that maybe I missed, or maybe something that's just kind of a different angle on this. But one thing that like when I, when I think about the story of the candidate, I often think about what texts were read liturgically in the communities, and I don't remember you addressing that so much, but maybe I just missed it. But it seems like that's an important part of the question, right? It's not just for me, you know, apostolic authority may be a critical linchpin. But there's also this reality that like, well, you know, these are the books that were read in the communities, that doesn't mean that they're, you know, as you CBS says, that doesn't mean that there aren't other beneficial books, but these are just not what the church reads. And that's, and that plays a to me that plays another, you know, an important part in this whole process is, like, some of this is, you know, it's like a lot of times people will say, Well, how do we know what books went in and what they were thinking, and they weren't even thinking about it? As you you know, as you point out, like, it's not like, there's not like a treatise, here's how we chose the Bible. It's sort of like, well, these are this is just as we gather in a community, these are the things that we read on on the Sabbath, and in the in the, in the liturgy. So is that something that, you know, do I do I have that wrong? I don't know, care to respond to that. Or like what

Benjamin Laird 1:02:02

you said there? Yeah. It wasn't as though we have a pivotal event somewhere, maybe in the fourth century, where the church just had a moment of crisis. And they decided, you know, we need to decide what is scripture, and they all got together and somehow all reached a consensus on these 27 and then went out and proclaimed it in the marketplace. And everybody started to read these 27 books. What's the name of this one? Again? Oh, where do I find this? And all of a sudden, everybody starts to read these 27 that they weren't reading before? Yeah. But no, what we find is that these 27 books were the books that they were most often using in Christian worship context. And then probably the one who's written the most on this would be, it's unfortunately, not a lot of his work is not translated into English. But Theodore, it's on the German scholar. He wrote quite a bit about this a long time ago on just the early use of Scripture, and Christian worship. And we know that that took place just from so many different sources. But when we get to the fourth century, we start to see these canonical lists that become associated with these, with these different councils and centers and things. And these were not contrary to common belief, these were not dictates where they said, Okay, these are what you should start to read. Instead, they what they do is they reveal the consensus on what was being read. Yeah. And we also find that key concern was what should be read in public worship. So it's not just as simple as well, if these words are not to be read in public worship, then we should view them as heretical or suspect in some way. So like Eusebius will recognize certain Works has been edifying works, but not apostolic. That goes back to the apostles, like I said, so yeah, they didn't see everything quite as black and white as maybe we do today. They understood that there's a lot of Christian works out there a lot of writings that may have benefit in one way or another might be useful in one, for one reason or another, and Christians can benefit from them. But it is only those apostolic works that should be recognized as our authority. And so those were the works that were used and widely in Christian worship. And so if you go to a typical New Testament canon introduction, you'll typically see a section or a chapter in there on what's called the criteria of canonicity. And those are sometimes will say something like test, right? Yeah. And there's, there's problems with the language. But that's kind of for another discussion. But, you know, you'll see things like APA Felicity and catholicity, and orthodoxy that are there. And maybe wouldn't when you think about catholicity, the idea is that these were writings that they didn't just come out of nowhere in the fourth century, these were used in Christian worship, and have a long history of that type of view. So that that's different than say the non canonical works that often were sectarian in nature, right, like these non canonical gospels that might have been used in a Gnostic community or something. These are sectarian. and they're used in isolated places. But the four gospels were used in public worship from a very early time, and used in liturgies. And used in public reading and things like that. So kind of correlated with the Old Testament, right, the reading of the law, the prophets and in the writings, and we find the gospel start to be read in public gatherings as well. So there's a long history of use. Yeah, actually played quite a important role in the whole process. It was very natural. They didn't need a council in the fourth century to say read Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. They've already been reading Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John for a long time, right? In the context of local church.

Charles Kim 1:05:37

Yep. Excellent. Well, doctor, Dr. Laird, I appreciate you taking an hour of your time, maybe a little longer, and also for this great, this great book. So I would recommend any my listeners, sometimes I interview, people who publish and their books are like $100. So it's nice to be able to recommend a very useful book, even for the nonspecialist that gives a lot of the important ground to be covered in this question of where did the Bible come from, essentially? Well, especially the New Testament, right? So not don't really deal with Old Testament, but when you got to write that book.

Benjamin Laird 1:06:17

I wish I could give you a date for that. But we'll see there's there's a lot that needs to be said on the Old Testament canon, I would say.

Charles Kim 1:06:24

Yeah. Excellent. Well, thank you very much.

Benjamin Laird 1:06:27

Been a pleasure. Thanks for having me. Appreciate it.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai