The Book of Enoch has exploded in popularity. Some people claim it unlocks the Bible's greatest mysteries, while others say it shouldn't be trusted at all. So, what's the truth? Today we're diving into one of the most controversial ancient books arguably ever written. Does it really explain the origin of demons? Can help us understand the mysterious story of the Nephilim in Genesis, or does it raise more questions than it answers? Back for the third time, by the way, is Dr. Joel Muddamalle, author of The Unseen Battle. You're a friend, protege of Dr. Michael Heiser. We talked about that before, who really has helped spark a lot of the interest in the book of Enoch and the Unseen Realm. Joel, I've wanted to talk about this topic for a long time. Thanks for coming on.
Joel MuddamalleOh, thanks for having me, Sean. I'm really excited. This is the one topic, Sean, by the way, that I don't think I've had an in-depth conversation with on any other podcast. Not in depth, like what we're about to do. So I'm excited for this one.
Sean McDowellGood. Well, we are diving in. And by the way, we just had a video we did on Angels and Demons, your work, Unseen Battle and Heiser. We're going on Book of Enoch. We're going to be going live soon on a Talbot Tuesday to take questions. So if people have questions from this, write in question in caps, list your questions, and we'll take as many as we can with that episode coming up. All right. Why do you think the Book of Enoch has become such a phenomenon online? Why are Christians just fascinated by this book?
Joel MuddamalleUm, I think part of this is the nature of social media. Uh, I think the clippable uh, you know, content that has viral capacity and capability is absolutely fascinating. Um, I also think that what the book of Enoch provides potentially, and this is debated, is it starts to provide some fill-in-the-blank dots for aspects of the biblical text that feel like have been overlooked or neglected? And then you start to wonder was this intentional? How come nobody ever talked about the Nephilim? How come we just go Genesis 6, 1 through 4, goes right into the flood narrative, but we don't really get an explanatory rationale behind there's just evil in the world, and so that necessitates the flood? Um, what do we do with angels and demons? And why does Paul use language like powers and principalities? I mean, there are these pieces of the biblical text that the longer you go, David and Goliath, was Goliath an actual giant? Was he not? What does it mean that giant that Goliath came from Gath? Uh, what's going on with Joshua and the conquest? Like, like we could just go on and on. And for me, I grew up in the church. So I would start to wonder: are they holding something back from me? Is there explanatory power here? Or are we just supposed to have blind faith that the Bible just says what it says, so just believe it? And I think what Enoch does is it is ancient, it's an ancient text. So that draw for tradition and something that is beyond just the modern conception, I think, is is uh appealing to many people. And then also, Sean, I think, and this is maybe a wild take on my part, we are spiritual beings. Like God created us to consider and to be drawn to the cosmic reality of the world. And so, in the way that Lewis famously talked about, you know, the desire of the human heart to have uh a longing and love for God, I think there's a desire in the human heart to want to connect to a spirituality that is beyond an earthly existence and to wonder, could it be true? We know that that can go sideways very quickly. Um, for Christians, I think they go, wait a minute, does Enoch give some explanatory power to these questions I've been wondering about that it feels like maybe people haven't talked about?
Sean McDowellThe idea that we have a book that can fill in the gaps of information we don't have is obviously nothing new. We have books about the infancy gospel of Jesus, what he was of Thomas, like what Jesus was like when he was a kid. Yes. We have the stories of the apostles going out in these apocryphal texts. So part of the question is does first Enoch fill in some gaps in a way we can trust, or is it purely fiction or some combination of the two? We will get there and get your take on it. But for people who have heard the name but know very little about it, what is first Enoch and what kind of literature is it?
Joel MuddamalleWell, first of all, I love your precision with the titling of this. Many people will notice that you have been saying first Enoch consistently. Uh, it is popular in modern vernacular to just talk about the book of Enoch or to just say Enoch. One of the things that I care about, you care about, is what are we exactly talking about? So Enoch can be split up into three actually distinct books. The one that for our conversation that we want to pay attention to is First Enoch. And first Enoch itself is split up into five distinct categories. And so um Enoch is uh and first Enoch uh is referred to as the book of the Watchers. So you've got um this idea, and when you think about the watchers, this actually isn't an idea that is separate from the biblical text. In the previous episode, though, we talked about about angels and demons, we talked about categories of spiritual beings. And in fact, watchers are a category. Uh, this is what Daniel 4.13 says. So the Aramaic text of Daniel actually uses the term watcher ear. Um, and so I'll just read it in Daniel 4.13 says, In the visions I saw while lying in bed, I looked, and there before me was a holy one, a watcher, ear, uh, a messenger coming down from heaven. So Daniel 4 actually places this watcher language in the cosmic supernatural context that we actually see in Enoch. So there's a connection that um it's doing. The other thing that we have to remind ourselves with is that um Enoch is literature. First Enoch is literature. And, you know, it's kind of the popular saying, uh, Sean, I will come and kind of comment to people, you know, the Bible isn't a book, right? And people are like, wait a minute, of course it's a book. It's got a front cover, a back cover, a table of contents. It's like, no, the Bible is a library of books. And if in this library, there's different genres. You've got history, poetic, you know, um revelatory information. You've got books that uh shift from song to historical narrative. Well, the kind of literature of first Enoch is referred to as apocalyptic literature. Uh, the English word for this uh apocalyptic comes from the Greek word apocalypsis. And um we think like uh gloomy end time. I know you're a Marvel guy, so I think of apocalypse from X-Men. You know, it's kind of like like doomsday kind of situation. The Greek term has in mind a revealing. So if I were to be like a magician and put this upright here and put a cloth over it, right? It would be like, watch the apocalypse, the revelation. This has already been there, but it has not been seen. So then you pull it off and you reveal what's actually taking place. And so um, this is apocalyptic literature that has a discussion of the cosmic realm, the relationship between heaven and earth. It has in mind the consequence of sin and how sin has impacted the earth in a negative way, and it has in mind the question of judgment, a final judgment, and um the enigmatic figure of the Holy One who uh does the judging and how spiritual beings are relating in light of all of that.
Sean McDowellSo, biblically speaking, you say the Bible, it's a library book, 66 books, there's history, there's poetry, apocalyptic literature, the old testament would be Daniel, New Testament would be Revelation. So it's that kind of literature, so to speak, not canonical, of course.
Joel MuddamalleYeah, we'll we can get we can get into that for sure. I think that's a that's a big topic of conversation. It is and in uh in the social media world, it is highly debated amongst uh some Christians, and uh in I think it's a fascinating discussion in itself. But yes, it is non-canonical, it is not part of the canon of you can't you're not gonna open up your Bible and look and see find first Enoch unless you're part of the Ethiopic tradition and the uh Ethiopic Bible, uh Ethiopian uh Bible, they did uh canonize uh Enoch, and so there is a tradition, uh I believe it's like the Gaz uh translation that um did see the value in it and canonized it. So outside of that, it is not considered canonical.
Sean McDowellSo when was it written? And do we know who likely wrote it? I know these are also debated as well, but give us a sense of some of the debate.
Joel MuddamalleOkay, so this is very highly debated. Um the first thing is I want to break down um a couple misnomers that end up happening with ancient literature. One is the presumption that our modern categories can uh conflate and lay on to ancient literature the exact same way. They don't. And so I want us to push to try to understand the ancient literature in their own terms. Same thing with the Bible. Want to understand the Bible in their own terms? It's very Hysirian of you to quote Heiser, but keep going. Yes, yes. Um okay, so uh uh when was it written? Who wrote it? Uh we would say scholars, uh specialists in Second Temple Literature would say that first Enoch is actually a composite work. So we've got five distinct narrative structures within uh the Book of the Watchers. Dating is is um uh so difficult to try to try to navigate. And you will open up Lauren Stuckenbrook or uh Susan Doherty or uh Vanderkamp, all these uh specialists, scholars, specialists in uh the Enoch tradition and Second Temple literature, and you'll actually notice a bit of variety in terms of uh when something was written, which fragment we're talking about, which section that we're talking about. So, in terms of uh a general idea, we could say that the Book of Watchers took its final form and shape somewhere around the second century, maybe even extending into the third century. Uh BC eight. BC. Yeah, right. So very little is known about the authors of who and notice I say plural, the authors. Very likely that uh Enoch and even the significant sections, the five subsections of the Book of Watchers, was written by multiple authors. Um uh Nicholsberg, who's an Enochic uh specialist, uh points out, I kind of love his language. I'm gonna quote him. He says, uh, there are cautious inferences that we can make about the uh the type of person that wrote this. Uh and so um I'm jumping a little bit around the place, but you will also know that Enoch is categorically referred to as part of the pseudopigraphical work. Um so pseudopigrapha uh comes from the uh pseudo, which means false, and then um uh epigraphical work, written work. What this could mean for people is this is false writing or a false author. And we again take a modern conception and we think this is a literary forgery. That is not what the book of Enoch is, first Enoch. Uh Enoch would not fall in the category of literary forgeries in that time period. There were literary forgeries, absolutely, but first Enoch is actually a um a stylized way of writing that is a category called a pseudopographical work, and the goal was anonymity of the actual authors, and they use a strategy to name the work after a biblical historical figure. And um, I believe it was Lauren Stuckenbrook who has a great uh book and uh on uh Second Temple Literature and Enoch, and he kind of gives 12 examples for why this might happen. The one for me that makes the most sense is, and again, different opinions, is you have the famous library in Alexandria. In order to get any spotlight for a book to get spotlight, it's gonna have to have some authoritative nature behind it, you know? And so it might be that one of the reasons why we've got this anarchic figure here, uh, and it's attributed, uh attributed to him, is so that there is um some novelty and some authority as well that's put behind it. Um and so uh Carson has a book called Pseudonymity and Pseudopigraphy, and he kind of works through the difference between the literary forgery and what's actually happening with uh the book of Enoch as a category of pseudopographical writing that doesn't demand for us to throw it out because we would presume that it's a literary forgery. That's not the function of the work as it's being written in the Second Temple period.
Sean McDowellSo it wasn't in the Second Temple period when it comes out, it wasn't thought like, oh my goodness, we discovered this secret book that was written by Enoch however many thousands of years before. That was not how it was supposed to land. It was understood that there's a different writer to it, but it's attributed to Enoch as a strategy. As a strategy. Okay, yeah. So remind us real quickly who was the biblical figure of Enoch and if there's any other connection we should be aware of to the book itself.
Joel MuddamalleOkay, so once again, some of this stuff is like it's gonna paint a little bit of a picture of the caution that we want to have with Enoch. Very little is given to us about the biblical Enoch. Uh there is a sentence though from Genesis 5.24 that gives us insight into Second Temple interpretations of what could have taken place and why Enoch was chosen as the uh the name figure for the the delivering of this literature. Uh and it's Genesis 5.24. It says Enoch walked with God and he was not, for God took him. So um the Jewish thinking about Enoch uh seems to have been also influenced by the ancient Near Eastern mythology that was also present at that time. So remember that the Jewish people are a product of their time, that there are competing ancient Near Eastern myths that are taking place. This is a big point when we get into the Genesis six and the Enoch connection point. If we're to have pillars of conversation, Genesis six is one pillar of literary content. Enoch is another pillar of literary content, but there's a third pillar of literary content. That the third pillar of literary content is the Mesopotamian literature, the ancient Near Eastern context and the mythos of that time period. Um what Enoch is doing is it's actually drawing sentence for sentence, word for word, thematic idea of both the Genesis 6 tradition that's shared with the Mesopotamian tradition, particularly the story of the Apalu. And so when you get back to the biblical Enoch and how Second Temple writers were uh re not, I won't say reimagining, but they were drawing on this figure. There's a hero or the Mesopotamian flood narrative, Atrocus, uh, for instance, and there is a connection with the flood and the deluge. And so my view is we have a work of polemic in front of us. It is an argument against the creation myths of the ancient Near Eastern worldview, and it's a reorientation to the ideal of God and to the one true story.
Sean McDowellOkay, so you might have answered my next question in terms of how widely was this read, how widely was this known, and do we have a sense of how early Jews and or Christians took first Enoch?
Joel MuddamalleSo First Enoch definitely had value in the Quran community. So the Qur'an community is the um society where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found. You've got um within the Quran community the Essenes. Um it just was popular apocalyptic literature. So, you know, specialists in in the Jewish tradition would point out that there was no monolithic Jewish tradition. It wasn't just one idea, like you had streams of Jewish thought. Even today, we have that as Christians, right? Um, you can have uh a stream that is denominationally more conservative, more liberal. You have um even theologically doctrinally oriented. So we have streams of Christian thought. It actually gives a little bit of anchoring. Like if you're just saying, hey, I come from a charismatic Pentecostal tradition, you start to fill in your brain with information about that, or from a reformed tradition or a Calvinist or an Arminian tradition, you go, Oh, yeah, I can start to fill in the dots. The same thing is happening in the Quran community, and something to remember. Uh, this is something that Heiser actually said that I thought was like, yeah, this is kind of fascinating. Um, the Essenes in the Quran community were not liberals, they were actually probably like extreme conservatives. Like we might call them fundamentalists, you know, like they were super, they thought that the Pharisees and Sadducees were a bit too liberal. So, like, you're like, whoa, you know? Um, and it was this community that held first Enoch in high regard as apocalyptic literature. Um now, fascinating. One of the reasons we know this is because in the um Dead Sea scrolls, uh, one document that was found, it's 4Q 180 and 181 for any nerd out there who wants to go and actually find the document. Um, a thing called a pesser was written about first Enoch. Now, a Pesher is a document that is essentially in the same category that we would call today a commentary. It is an interpretation of a text. More often than not, it is a canonized biblical text like the Hebrew Bible that would be present. So to have a Pesher on first Enoch starts to build a conceptual framework that says amongst at least this stream of thought, not every stream of thought, but at least amongst this stream of thought, Enoch was important, first Enoch was important enough for somebody to put together a pesher, an interpretation of what is taking place. Um pesherim are texts that interpret other texts.
Sean McDowellUm before you go on the next point, so that's like a biblical commentary that you tr typically would only do on a book you hold in such high regard. No, we could have a commentary and say the Gospel of Thomas, but that'd be a very nuanced scholarly commentary.
Joel MuddamalleYeah, in the ancient world, this we're talking about Hebrew texts or like the Hebrew community, the Jewish community that was writing interpretive content based off of what they viewed as scripture. So you would not find a Pesher for that.
Sean McDowellRight. Yeah, that makes total sense. Yeah. A qualitative difference between, say, Gospel of Thomas and first Enoch. So I guess it's hard to know when we're getting in the weeds. It's one thing to say we value a text because it's interesting. Like, for example, the apocryphal books of Acts I studied because of my work on the apostles. Yeah, they have value, but everybody knew that they were fiction. Right. And they were just kind of almost pieces of entertainment on some ways about these fanciful tales of the apostles. So the value doesn't mean you would have thought they were historically true in their entirety. You're saying this Pesher suggests that they not only valued it, but thought there was some more truth akin to a biblical book. So at least we have some in Crumeron that likely took it early as a not only a kind of a reliable but authoritative text. That's a kind of argument if I'm tracking with you.
Joel MuddamalleYeah. So I I I I, you know, my nightmares. You want to know what my nightmares are, Sean? My nightmares are are uh being misunderstood and misrepresented on social media.
Sean McDowellYeah, that's not fun.
Joel MuddamalleNot right. I'm like, oh, I've kind of setting myself up a little bit for that. So I actually wrote down how I want to summarize this so people can understand where I'm coming at, okay? So um this is how I would want to summarize everything we just talked about. What is the impact of first Enoch on the Qumran community, the Essenes and a tradition of uh this community? We would say that that this tradition of community highly respected first Enoch and possibly even viewed it as scripture. I'm hedging my bet here a little bit.
Sean McDowellThat's fair.
Joel MuddamalleYeah. Um, but the point is the fact that the Enoch the Enoch texts were found at Qur'an, I believe it's caves one and four, uh, might be one and three, gives us evidence that they were used, they were accessed, they were distributed, um, at least in the Judean Hill country of where uh the Quran community uh resided. Now uh we can get into the Christian usage, the first century uh church usage as well. Uh there's a little bit of a bridge that gets us there, which is the fact that Jude, First Peter, and 2 Peter all allude or at least quote uh the Enoch tradition, which as Christians puts a little bit more of a um intentional consideration that we need to wrestle with.
Sean McDowellYou're being very careful and judicious with your words, which I appreciate. Now we're gonna come to how the New Testament uses it and what that would mean for first Enoch. But we we've done three interviews before this. We had the live stream, oh, yeah. Our very first interview on your book, The Unseen Battle. I got a question back that somebody emailed me, and uh, here's what they wrote because this ties to how Heiser helped bring first Enoch into mainstream evangelical discussion. So person said, Thanks for the episode with Joel Muddamalle, really enjoyed it. My biggest critical point is how heavily Dr. Heiser relies on First Enoch and acknowledges that it isn't scripture, but treats it almost with the same authority. First Enoch is an apocalyptic text written hundreds of years after Genesis, so giving it interpretive authority, suggesting that the community that Produced first Enoch somehow had special access to the original meaning of Genesis six, especially written in apocalyptic genre, involves a methodological assumption that is worth questioning. So partly, I don't know, where do you agree and disagree with Heiser? And do you agree with this email that it's at least worth questioning? Give us your response.
Joel MuddamalleI think I one, I think this was like a class act in uh in question asking that is uh thoughtful, charitable, uh, but critiquing, right? To the point, not two pages of text up. So kudos, like we should teach uh a class on on this. In fact, we should teach everybody who does social media comments about this right here, because that would that would make the world a better place. Uh I would say, yeah, absolutely. It requires us to question the methodological kind of assumptions. Um, I'm not Mike. I can't speak for him. I wish he was here uh to be able to answer this question. I believe that he would have a coherent answer or at least response to this. Um so I'm gonna tap into my inner Mike the best that I can. And the good news is that uh Mike wrote a lot, and there's so many interviews that are out there that uh you may be able to find some clarification on this. But I would say that your instinct uh for the person who wrote this, the instinct to question the methodological um emphasis on the on first Enoch as an authoritative interpretive uh resource is is valid. I would push back and ask another point of consideration, and it goes back to what I said earlier. What if part of the authoritative nature of this is less about Enoch in isolation, but more about the representative uh literary framework that it puts in front of us that is a retrieval of the Mesopotamian ancient Near Eastern context that was presumed in the Genesis 6 narrative? So um, I think first Enoch, I know first Enoch, I believe first Enoch, what do I want to say? I believe first Enoch, I think it's the right phrase. I believe first Enoch is doing three things. I believe first Enoch is preserving a oral tradition that was representative of the time frame of Genesis six. Absolutely, first Enoch was written well after Genesis. I still go back to the first interview that we did, and there was a clip that was posted, and there's like a famous historical, and he like critiqued something I said. I was like, that's a good critique. Like, I really appreciate that because the misunderstanding could be I'm saying that first Enoch provides on its own background context to Genesis six, but how could First Enoch provide context to Genesis six when it's written way after Genesis six? And my response to that is it's less about providing background context and more about um re-presenting to us a oral tradition and a literary framework that Enoch keeps preserved for us. So Enoch is doing three things it is um uh preserving a calu Mesopotamian story of a delusion, a flood. If you were to take verse for verse, Genesis 6, 1 through 4, and then you took the Apkalu narrative of the new Melis, the uh Mesopotamian mythic story, and then you take the Enochic story uh of the Book of the Watchers and you line them up, they are they have all correlation with each other. They're all hyperlinking back together. The difference is Genesis six and the Enochic tradition are critiquing the Mesopotamian mythic story. And the reason why they're critiquing it is because in the Mesopotamian story, the Apokalu are good guys. The Apcalu are like these culture heroes, they're these people that are saving humanity. They're being framed as positive beings that are for the good of humanity. Whereas Genesis 6 and the Naka tradition are saying, hey, don't be deceived. Those folks or those um types of spiritual beings, they're not after your good, they're actually after your destruction. And so you should care deeply about that. And so I would say that if you interject the Mesopotamian context that first Enoch is retrieving, preserving, and now transmitting to us. Those are the three things. It's retrieving a story, it's preserving that story, and now it's transmitting that story to us, uh, it then gives more authoritative interpretive evidence for what's taking place with Genesis six.
Sean McDowellNow, this might lead us astray, but I would want to see some of the historical case lined up, lined up for the existence of that oral tradition to be convinced of this. And maybe it's maybe it's just the way you described it. It's just comparing the the text, the way we compare other texts. Maybe there's other strains of this tradition. I don't know, maybe someone's done that work, maybe they haven't done that work. But I think maybe that's a dissertation to be to be done. It would be fascinating, even if somebody, and I don't know anything about Enoch in tradition and research, but even if somebody came back and said this is something we cannot ascertain historically, there's value in that. I conclude that about a few of the apostles. I'm like, we literally don't know where history ends and tradition begins, as far as I can tell. But that feels like a very valuable piece of the contribution that could make the case for Heiser and you understand your case even stronger if it was potentially there. So if somebody's watching this is aware of somebody who's done that or try to do that, write it in, put it in the comments. We would love to pull that up. And if you have a case for it or against it, we could get your take on that as well. Okay, so one of the big reasons people read first Enoch is because of Genesis six. So we talked about a little bit in our last interview. You've been talking about some here. What are the major interpretations of Genesis six, one through four? What do you find most convincing? And how does Enoch play into your interpretation?
Joel MuddamalleSo um I go through this in in in pretty detail in Duncan Battle. You laid out.
Sean McDowellSo maybe just kind of give us the bullet point main ones.
Joel MuddamalleYeah, I do I do want uh I want everybody to go look at it, follow the footnotes, because I do one thing that Sean that's very important to me is I want to represent the opposite position or an opposing position, not as a straw man, but as a steel man. Like I want to give it the best fair reading um that we possibly can. So, you know, you've got the um the setite view, uh, which is one of the popular ones. Um you've got a divinized ruler view um as well. And uh then you have the supernatural reading view that these are spiritual beings. So I opt for the spiritual beings uh view. The the soup the setite view, um, for me, there's a lot of things about the Sethite view that are challenging, extremely challenging. Uh one of them is that Sethites are never referred to as sons of God. There's a there's a linguistic um absence of connecting the righteous line of Seth with the phrase sons of God, that they are equal to the sons of God. Um the other problem that you have is the uh the question about the daughters of Cain. How do we know that these women are coming from the unholy, unrighteous line of Cain? We're we're having to impose uh other traditions or other ideas into the text. Uh then the divinized ruler view, I think Meredith Klein is the one who really popularized this. Um, once again, I find that unconvincing, both for the human ruler view, but then also the lack of the reference to the sons of God. And then also the big one with the Divinized ruler view, and same with the Sethide view, how do you have a human-to-human cohabitation equal the Nephilim, which are translated in the Septuagint as giants, as um these massive figures that cause chaos and problems. So you have almost a genetic kind of uh inconsistency or incongruency that takes place. So my uh the option that I opt for, that the Enochic view elaborates on, is a spirit is a spiritual being's view. And the reason why is there's a hermeneutical method where you want to take the clear reading of scripture and you want to apply that to the unclear reading of scripture. Agreed. I want to actually apply that right here. Um, what is the clearest reading that we have of the Hebrew phrase Beneha Elohim? Uh, in the context that it's used, the clearest reading is Job 1 and Job 2. In both Job 1 and Job 2, the Hebrew phrase Beneha Elohim is used in reference to the sons of God who present themselves in the divine council of Yahweh, where the Hassan shows up. In both passages, chapters 1 and chapter 2, in the opening scene, you have their presence. But the real kingpin is Job 38, because in Job 38, you have the morning stars that are shouting for joy with the sons of God who are singing this exact same Hebrew phrase, Bene ha Elohim. Now, we're gonna have to do a lot of theological linguistic gymnastics in order to make an argument that the sons of God in Job are human beings. Then you're saying that there's a subset of human beings that somehow got transported into the divine council of God in Job 1 and 2. And so now you've got a commingling of human beings and spiritual beings where the Hasitan shows up. And then secondarily, in the beginning, at the creation of all existence, right, there's a subset of human beings that were with the morning stars that gave witness to Yahweh creating and these, right? So you have some incoherence, actually, not some, you have a significant incoherence. So if the sons of God are clearly spiritual beings in Job 1 and 2 and Job 38, then I want to take the clear reading and say, well, what happens if we allow the clear reading in this passage to be applied in Genesis 6? It creates challenge. There's no doubt about it. But the challenge I would argue is less about the coherence of the text and much more about our comfortability with what the implications are. And so the coherence of the text is, well, how do you have spiritual beings who procreate with human women and then produce these hybrid beings? This sounds like a scene out of the Greek mythology. We talked about this a little bit in the Angels piece, right? But I would use the same rhetorical argument of how do you have spiritual beings who um walk and talk with Abraham? How do you have spiritual beings that sit and eat with Abraham? Which presumes that they take on corporeal form, and in their corporeality, they then have a digestive system in order to be able to eat. How do you have spiritual beings with Lot where they can be recognized when they walk into Sodom? They they're they're recognized as masculine figures, masculine beings, so much so that the men want to do harm to them, want to assault them. But then how do you have them grab Lot, physical, there's a physicality to it, and drag him back into the room. So you have example. Exactly. So it's not either or it's a both. And so all I'm saying is just because it's uncomfortable for us to consider doesn't demand that it is, it is, it is not true. Uh it probably means our paradigms are being challenged. Now, the most common response to this is, well, don't you know Jesus says that we'll be like the angels in heaven, not given over to marriage? Notice what Jesus says and what he doesn't say. This is one of the things that Mike said that I thought was so winsome. Jesus says um they're not given over in marriage. He has nothing, he doesn't say anything about their ability or inability of uh of procreation or physical physicality.
Sean McDowellThey're not sexed beings. Exactly.
Joel MuddamalleAnd here's the other huge one. Look at the locale of these beings in heaven. So in heaven is a location that is not consistent with on earth. So it is possible that as part of the transgression of boundaries, there's an abdication of their spirituality or the, you know, the nature of what they have, and they take on a corporeal form, which is what makes it a different uh contextual situation for the uh we'll be like the angels in heaven versus what about those angels that fell and went into rebellion on earth, you know?
Sean McDowellNow that that's actually a really interesting point. I hadn't thought about that because we're we're pulling from the book of Genesis, not from other biblical books when we say that angels took on corporeal form or these spirit beings took on corporeal form. So look at recognized, I'm working on it, I'm working on it, that were recognized as male, ate food. So that breaks down the barrier of sexual relations, at least being possible, although clearly twisted. The book of Genesis kind of presents other parts of being corporeal that would seem to lend towards that being possible. Our resistance to that is probably right, that it's either weird or we have a naturalistic understanding, which for those of us following the Bible shouldn't be what motivates us.
Joel MuddamalleAnd I just really quickly, the Sodom and Gomorrah one is really, really important because the argument could be made, well, you're talking about a digestive system versus a reproductive system. Those two things seem to be very different. Yes and no, we're still talking about what makes humans humans, right? Like what makes us interact with each other. But the Sodom and Gomorrah situation actually uh brings us into the sexual orientation situation where there is like if that was not possible, why would the spiritual beings blind blind the um the community that shows up at the house, right? So now it it puts all of the contacts clues in place. You've got a gendered spiritual being, um, the the community is able to see them, you've got physicality of touch where they grab uh lot and pull him back in, and you have a sp a supernatural act of blinding that takes place that categorically places these beings as not human.
Sean McDowellAnd the evil ones want to sexually take advantage of them. Like it moves it even one bar closer, arguably, in terms of intent.
Joel MuddamalleAnd some might even argue, and this is kind of a thought that I have, is that it's uh it's an it's a bit of a reflection of the Genesis 6 narrative, because in the Genesis 6 narrative, it's the spiritual beings who want to take the human women. And so here in the Sodom and Gomorrah, you have an inversion of that. You've got the humans that go they're seeking after um and trying to uh sexually assault.
Sean McDowellThat's that's a really interesting connection. Exactly. That's fascinating. Okay, now what what you're arguing is less controversial within the history of the church, as far as I understand, at least the first 300 years or so or more leading into Augustine was this supernatural interpretation, sons of God, spirit beings violating daughters of men, real women. Where it gets controversial is where the book of first Enoch comes in and ties it to the Nephilim. Yeah. Demons today make that connection and tell us where you land with that.
Joel MuddamalleYeah. So first I think it's helpful for us to recognize that the church also, the first century church, also has um a variety of views on this. Once again, they were not monolithic in their interpretation of this. Uh, I want to start with the biblical text. Let's start with the New Testament. You've got Jude 5 through 7, um, and you've got 2 Peter 2, 1 through 10. I'll just read them really quickly for us. Jude 5 through 7 says, um, um well, I'll summarize. It refers to the angels who did not keep their domain. Uh so where do we find angels who don't keep their domain? Genesis six. But transgressed boundaries and who are kept in eternal bonds, in deep gloom until judgment. Here's the challenge that we have. The angels who did not keep to their domain, you can draw a direct hyperlink line to Genesis six. This transgression of boundaries conceptually also works in Genesis six. This question of eternal bonds is like, wait a minute, what? What happened to those Genesis six beings? We we're not told, right? Like Genesis 6 1 through 4 doesn't give us that. Um, and then the context in Jude 5 through 7 interestingly shifts to the context of Sodom and Gomorrah and the issue of sexual immorality and unnatural desires and the judgment that's connected to it. So, where do you have sexual impropriety that takes place? Do you find that in Genesis 6, 1 through 4? Well, yeah, if you take a spiritual reading, but then it gets elaborated where else in the Enochic tradition. How about this, 2 Peter 2? Um, in this passage, Peter is talking about God who does not spare the angels who sinned. What angels are these? But are held in captivity in Tartarus with, and the language is chains and in darkness until they will be handed over for judgment. And then Peter connects that section right away with the angels, right, at the time of Noah and the flood. Well, what happens in Genesis 6? Genesis 6, 1 through 4, sons of God, human women, Nephilim, you go right into the flood narrative. So the early church actually interacts with Enoch, first Enoch, uh pretty uh intentionally. And we have a uh a summary of important early church fathers that uh patristic scholars would recognize that either, I'm gonna be careful, either give a high level of authoritative respect and influence, or even some that referred to it and viewed it as canonical. Now, a summary of these uh would be you've got the Epistle of Barnabas, which might be the earliest Christian source that cites the Enochic material. Um, you've got Justin Martyr in uh the Second Apology, who opts for a supernatural reading of Genesis six. He's drawing on the Enochic tradition. You've got Tertullian, who is the um early Christian writer from Carthage. Um, and uh he was actually the more aggressive uh proponent of Enoch being inspired. Uh so in his work on the peril of women in book one, chapter three, he actually calls first Enoch scripture and defends its status using 2 Timothy 3.16. You've got Irenaeus, Bishop of uh Lynd. Um, he was clearly aware of Enoch and he referenced the tradition in chapter 10 of Against the Heresies. Um, and you know, uh you go on and on. You've got Origen, you've got Clement, um, and what you find is a summary of these early church fathers who and patristic um influential um uh teachers that were at the very least, at the minimum floor, floor level, aware of the Enochic tradition enough so to presume in their writing an interpretive benefit of understanding what's taking place with Genesis 6 in light of the Anarchic tradition. At the highest level, you have inspiration, a claim for inspiration. This should be on par with the canon of scripture. And this is where I would say church history wins out. What does church history leave us with? It didn't make it into the canon. And so I would say that first Enoch should not be canonical, it should not be um included in the canon of scripture. I also strongly believe it is a it's an error, it is a um it's short-sighted to not give it uh how do I say it? To not give it author, not authoritative, but um um informational context uh that that helps us explain these other passages of scripture. Like like the best way I could do it is uh you've heard of the dream team from the dream team. Are you serious? Have I heard of the dream team? I know you've heard of the dream team. Who am I talking to? Uh you hear about that um that hidden video, that video of their scrimmage that they did. I believe it's the dream team. Um there's a scrimmage that came out much later, and it was like them, it was like the iconic who's who's of that era ever, the greatest of all times, right? And they scrimmage each other. One team is led by Jordan, the other team is led by Magic, and uh Christian Lattner uh is on the bench the entire time. He never gets any playing time, right? And it's this like video that surfaces years and years later, and it's like bootlegged and looks like grainy, but you can clearly see them, and it's like the most important game to answer so many questions of who the greatest is. But it wasn't on ESPN, it wasn't on NBC, it wasn't on, right? But we as enthusiasts would say that's a data point that we want to consider, and we don't throw it out the window because it's not got a NBC or you know, uh uh sports analyst host uh with production that we wouldn't throw it out the window. We'd say, Oh yeah, this is a data point that we put into that reminds us Michael Jordan is the greatest basketball player of all time. Because walking out of that, I believe this is where Larry Bird said uh like to Magic, it's his. Like we've handed over the we've handed over the keys, and Jordan's taking the league now, you know. Um, and so in the same way, I I really do believe that there is interpretive help that comes from Enoch that first Enoch that will be beneficial to us, and we shouldn't extend it beyond what even the early church extended it to.
Sean McDowellOn the last dynasty, which was I think the 10 part series about the 98 season with Jordan. There was one The Last Dance. Oh, yeah, Last Dance. Yeah, good crack. They are the last dynasty. That would that would be another show. There uh there is a great. Rainy video, it might be a different one in which Magic is leading one team against Jordan. I think that's the one. And Magic, he says, we're up by like eight or something, and he says something to Jordan, and he just switches a gear, scores nonstop, beats him, and you see Magic booting the ball into the stands of like what is happening. Yes. And there were some comments of like, that's when we realized there's great and there is another level. So your argument with first Enoch is not that it's inspired, not that it's canonical. So you'd say Tertullian got it wrong. And there's maybe a few other texts, like at times, say Shepherd of Hermos. There's a handful of times, as far as I'm aware, people say it should have been canonical, but that's the exception. And so there might be some exceptions with first Enoch, but it wasn't largely accepted as canonical outside of that inspiration and authority, but still valuable. Yes. And certainly the early church, Irenaeus, uh, I think you mentioned Origin. Origin. These are some early significant writers considered the tradition of first Enoch. Now, do we know if they had the writing or like the oral tradition, or it'd be hard to just decipher exactly what they were using and referring to?
Joel MuddamalleAaron Powell Yeah, I think they they would have had the writing because the you've got um the community that has um the written work, at least the Greek text um is available at the time. There the Second Temple specialists typically say that because of what we found in Quran, that they're Aramaic, the it's probably Aramaic originals. There's some who still opt out for a Hebrew original. Uh we just haven't found any Hebrew originals. Um so it seems that it was written in Aramaic and they're found in the Quran caves. Um and so those uh accessible to them around the time, at least accessible to Jude and Peter uh for them. And there's also but the other really interesting thing about this, Sean, too, is um in in Peter, there's a ling the linguistic connection between what uh Peter is saying about the angels uh trapped in Tartarus, the tighter linguistic connection is to Enoch, not to Genesis 6. So that's also fascinating. Oh, that's super interesting.
Sean McDowellOkay, so this is this is really like the rub where the debate is at. Yes. And obviously, where you're seeing here with yourself, with Heiser, people like Clint Arnold differing on this, which is fine. I would love people watching this for or against. So list your questions, list your arguments for or against, including uh this the account in Enoch of the Nephilim, reliable or not. And we'll come back and we'll respond to them, we'll interact with them. If there's a point you think, hey, you've missed this, throw it in there, and we'll come back on our kind of Talbot Tuesday interact with it. But this is real, I mean, this is where the debate rests. Do we trust it as an account of the source of the demonic? Or is it more a tale that we can't trust? Now, tell me how this fits into your work, The Unseen Battle.
Joel MuddamalleYeah, I mean, one of the the big things that it does for us is that it uh provides the the playing ground essentially for Paul's language of powers, principalities, and authorities. So the sons of God language of Genesis six maps onto the sons of God language in Deuteronomy 32, 8 and 9. So we're building almost like these dominoes that are going together, where the the consequence of the sons of God of Genesis 6 is with in light of the Enochic tradition, they're cast into Tartarus, into Hades, and they're imprisoned there until the time of judgment. Um so that that's a distinct group of uh of spiritual beings, the sun, these sons of God. The sons of God of Deuteronomy 32, 8 and 9, uh they are the false gods of the nations. So Enoch gives us a spiritual being reading of the Genesis 6 sons of God, which linguistically and conceptually should then be translated over to how we understand the sons of God of Deuteronomy 32, 8 and 9. While they are the same types of beings, their judgment is different in that they're not trapped in Tartars, which means where are they now? And what are they doing now? So in my book, The Unseen Battle, the second half of the book, what I try to argue for is that Paul has particular language that he uses when he's referring to the gods of the nations. And Paul's language of powers, principalities, authorities, he uses the Greek term stoicha, elemental spirits. When he's referring to them in Colossians and in Ephesians, the beings that he's talking about are not the beings of uh the demons of the gospels. You can refer to the angels episode that we that we did. Um, but he's actually talking about the sons of God of Deuteronomy 32, 8 and 9. These are um spiritual beings over geopolitical areas that have a level of authority that are creating chaos uh in the world. And then you have Colossians 1 uh that says that the dark powers, these powers, principalities, and authorities have been stripped and disarmed. So then the question is what have they been stripped and disarmed of? But they're still active and they're working and we feel their oppressive power in our world together, right? So in my work, I try to point out spiritual warfare is actually about gospel proclamation. The thing that they've been stripped and disarmed of is their ability to blind the nations. They can no longer blind the nations. And in light of that, this is why Jesus gives us the Great Commission. And so the the background that Enoch does for us in creating clarification for Genesis 6 and those spiritual beings can be mapped onto Genesis 11 and the Tower of Babel story and the division of the nations, which just reinforces a supernatural reading of what's taking place. That these are mythic stories that were well understood in the time of the Greco-Roman worldview, Ephesus, Temple of Artemis, the Artemisian. I mean, all of these things are interrelated and interconnected. Um, these are not new and novel ideas.
Sean McDowellMan, this is such interesting stuff. All right, so I have I have some apologetic questions for you. In some ways, you may have kind of answered these. You could just say, hey, let me let me sum up what my response would be here. But if we're looking at first Enoch, how does it compare and contrast with the books of the Bible?
Joel MuddamalleUm it it compares and contrasts in that it's literature. It is um referring to a biblical figure uh in Enoch. Uh it is um different in that it's a product of a period of time. And the it's a product of the Second Temple period, uh, roughly the time of Alexander the Great to AD 70 with the destruction of the Second Temple. And in light of that, we have to be aware of any literature, any writing of what is happening historically, socially, and culturally of that time period. So the Hebrew Bible is essentially closed by the time that uh the Enochic tradition, Second Temple literature is being put together and writing, and so it is drawing on an earlier biblical tradition, uh, and which is part of the reason why I think to the next question we're gonna get to is you get to issues of canonicity of how do you understand and and give value and authority to a work that is essentially in between the times.
Sean McDowellYeah, that's the trick. And I I remember when I was, I don't know, maybe I was in junior high or high school, and I was like, wait, Catholics have different books? Yeah. And the Orthodox Church, they have different books, and there's these deutero, canonical, pseudo-pigraph. My automatic mind was like, oh, they're bad because they're not in the Bible. And I was like, that's such an immature, simplistic response. Yep. So you've said that you don't think first Enoch should be included in the canon. I'd be curious why, and then if not, how should we view it?
Joel MuddamalleBecause I think we need to take church history seriously, and I think we should trust the providence of God and the sovereignty of God that the earlier that we get to there, while we get the canon lists coming together. And again, um Gavin Orland has done such excellent work on just, you know, the the canon of scripture, how it's come together. Um, there's great books that have been written on it, but you know, important for everybody to realize it wasn't like um we woke up one day and it's like done. All of these are are are set, established, 66 books and and we're done. There was a process that had to take place uh to present and um and putting these lists together. And so I think we should take that seriously. And we are products of a tradition. That's part of an, I think, unapologetic, that we're not creating new novel ideas, that we have been recipients of a tradition that has been passed down to us. And I kind of love the fact that Tertullian at some point has to back down. Like he's like, hey, I I I think this needs to be scripture. And he's like, Nobody else. It's kind of like the guy, it's the guy who says LeBron's the goat, and it's like he's by himself, you know, and nobody it's like at some point, you just gotta back down, bro. You just gotta back down.
Sean McDowellAnd it's like just lit up my followers that care about that stuff. They're dying. Now they're commenting.
Joel MuddamalleNo, I know, now they're commenting. But um, yeah, so that's what that's that's where I'd say that um we should we should trust the tradition and respect that. Um and and not overreact to that either. Um we ought to uh read it in its appropriate setting.
Sean McDowellSo you fear being misunderstood on your views on first Enoch on social media, but you're making them very clear on LeBron and Jordan.
Joel MuddamalleYeah, I just through and through.
Sean McDowellUh that okay, that explains it. All right, so we did you hinted at this earlier that we have both in writings of Peter and in Jude a reference to or a quote of first Enoch. What does that tell us about first Enoch and why would they quote this if it's not a canonical book?
Joel MuddamalleSo again, Jude and Peter are aware of Second Temple literature, they're products of their time, they're our reading and understanding. And um, once again, I think that it's important for us to recognize this is not something that is new and isolated to the New Testament. The idea of the biblical writers and authors being literate individuals. Um, for instance, the Old Testament covenants that you have, uh, they're actually structured based off of different types of ancient Near Eastern treaties. Um, is kind of fascinating. There's a brilliant scholar, Dr. Instone Brewer, who's done a lot of work on uh ancient Near Eastern treaties, particularly divorce certificates. And um, in some of the work that I've done in Proverbs 31 ministries, we've done a lot of work on um marriage rights and contracts and kind of what does that look like? And um there were there were contracts that were written and established in a very certain way amongst the ancient Near Eastern people groups of the Mesopotamians and uh Assyrians and the Hittites, and the divorce certificates that was unique to Israel. The other nations didn't have this, they're drawing on other writing, other contracts at the time. So Old Testament covenants, the prophets and the psalmists are actually uh at times quoting like Psalm 74, they're quoting from the bail cycle. Uh there's literary work that's around there. You've got Solomon who borrows material from the wisdom of Amenemope, I can never say that word, uh, Proverbs uh 22. Uh and then in the New Testament, this is famous. Most people know this, right? Paul's quotations of the Greek poets is so well known. Acts 17, Epimenides and Eretus, and 1 Corinthians 15, Euripides and Menander. So this isn't isolated. This isn't an isolated idea. Uh, and by the time we get to uh Jude and Peter, we go, oh, they were literate, they were reading, they were aware of the writing of the time, and they didn't find it a problem of as they're drawing on and doing a biblical theology, pulling from these this issue of of spiritual um rebellion and the contamination that it produces in the earthly environment and in our world and amongst people in our society in our culture, they're like this we can trace this back to an origin story, it's in Genesis six, and there's an elaboration to the story. And we find those details of Tartarus and imprisonment in the Enochic tradition. Um does Jude do Jude and Peter treat Enoch as inspired? That is a question for debate. That is a question for for consideration. I don't know that I'm convinced that they that just because it's quoted, that they viewed it as inspired. In the same way, I don't think that Paul views Euripides and Menendez as inspired just because they quote them, right? And so, in fairness, I think that we should have some caution when we think about how they're using it. They're contextualizing it, they're understanding it, and they're saying this provides some explanatory power for this. And so um, that's one area that I'd want to be careful about.
Sean McDowellIt just reminds me of a distinction that William Lane Craig will make as it's tied to the historical Adam. It's in certain figures will be referenced, like say Job or Jonah. And the question is, are they referring to the books? Right. The way you and I might quote a movie, or are they quoting them as if they're real historical figures that existed? Yep. And a quote itself doesn't answer that. You have to look at how it's quoted, how it's referred to. So in Paul's writings, of course, when it's like the first Adam and the second Adam, there's some serious parallel being made here, which points towards a historical Adam. Yeah. Or even in Acts 17, again, which you brought up earlier, from one man we all came, seems to indicate this is historical. So we don't have to answer this now, but I'd be curious if people could weigh in and give their two cents in terms of the way Peter and Jude quote, not just quoting, but is there a reason to think that the way they quote or reference first Enoch is not just as the tradition of it, but this is inspired and this is genuinely objectively true. One or both of those, I don't have an answer to that. I don't know if there's literature or people debating this, but that would be really interesting to know. Do you have a sense of that?
Joel MuddamalleOr do you think I think one of the big questions that comes up in this conversation is the is the nature of direct quotations of scripture and the um the introductory formula that's used when you're quoting something. So as the scripture says or as the word of God says, you find that missing in uh in these. And so there's a distinction between echoes, illusions, and um uh uh quotations. So you've got quotations, echoes, and illusions. And uh this is not a quotation, this is clearly an echo. Uh and there's elsewhere throughout the gospels, particularly, that an argument can be made for other allusions to Enoch. Um again, Lauren Stuckenbrook has has written uh a pretty, I think, uh helpful summary of where he sees echoes and allusions of the Enochic tradition in the Gospels themselves. Uh and so this this moves beyond just Jude and Peter, but it still centers in on the question of how do we understand it? Do we view it as inspired? What makes it tricky is you do then have somebody like Tertullian uh and uh others uh that are patri in the patristic era that do view it as scripture and they do give it introductory an introductory for formula and give it as as the you know as the scriptures say, or as the as the Holy Spirit wrote, and and you know, um so what gets authority? What who who gets who gets to win uh on that? Or could it be that, and this is where I land nuanced, that if you have enough folks on both sides, at the very like where do we put the bar at the minimum is we'd say it's helpful, it has some level of authoritative, um, contextual clues, but it's not inspired, you know, and so that's where I would leave it as.
Sean McDowellThat's really the interesting question to me. How does Peter and Jude and the rest of the New Testament reference first Enoch as authoritative, as inspired? How do the early church fathers reference as a whole? So somebody's watched this, like, wait a minute, you missed this quote, you missed this point, this study, tag it in there, throw your questions in there. I would love to get your thoughts on that uh for so many different reasons. And of course, as it ties back towards uh first Enoch, do we go to the position Clint Arnold was much more skeptical of relying upon first Enoch as a source to fill in the gaps? You and Heiser on board with it. What questions do people have or criticisms of that position? Throw your questions in there and we're gonna do a live QA. We will circle back uh to that. I'm looking forward to that because I'm trying to make sense of this in my own mind. All right, so last question. Uh, what would you would you encourage Christians to read first Enoch? Uh why, why not? And should, if they read it, keep anything in mind as doing so.
Joel MuddamalleUm okay, I'm gonna say something that I think is important. Uh you should only read or even consider this question if you've been reading your Bible. Oh, I like that. Like, honestly, you know, like the this is human nature. We have a tendency to be enamored. This is a personal conviction of mine, Sean. I find myself often reading more words about God than God's words himself. And I just want to be a person who's passionate about the scriptures. Like I want to know the Bible on its own terms. I want to read the text. And so there's a part of this that like I'm passionate about it, I love it. I think you have access to it, why not go after it? And then at the same time, if you aren't just reading your own Bible, like that's the place to start, you know? Uh and then the second thing too is I would say, yeah, if you have access to it, why, why, why wouldn't we want to? Again, I've got a sidepar in the Unseen Battle where I talk about our approach to to um to non-canonical scripture, to Second Temple literature, um, you know, and why should we read it, why should we not read it, and what cautions to have along the way? And I think that will be helpful for you as well. If you have a tendency, so here's like a pragmatic one. If if you start to read it and you have a sense of fear, anxiety, um, like stop reading it. You know, like it's probably not gonna be helpful for you. But if you get in there and you go, wow, this has some explanatory help. It's giving me context, it makes me want to read Genesis 6, 1 through 4 closer. I think I want to study the original languages. Heck, I might want to go to Talbot School of Theology. Like, like I think this is really I I would say, oh yeah, those are some good indications that you're reading in such a way that it is stirring your affections for Jesus. And so I want that to be the litmus test along the way. Should you read it? Um, sure. Contextually, is it the best thing for you? And what is it producing in you? Um, what is it creating in you? But the first things first, man, read read your Bible.
Sean McDowellJoel, I love it. Both our last two interviews at the end, you really brought it back to Jesus. So thank you. Love that about your writings, love it about your ministry. I wish I had been more aware of first Enoch when I taught Old Testament for a decade in high school. We would have studied this passage in Genesis 6 and probably pulled some snippets and said, What do you make of this? Like it would have just created interest and drama, introduced intertestamental literature and how we know it's historical, just would have raised really good historical theological questions. Yep. So I agree with you. I I want to encourage Christians against a feeling like, wow, first Enoch, it's almost like you have this Gnostic secret knowledge. That's really why there's so much talk about this on the internet. So I was curious, hence I wanted to do this, but also calm things down a little bit, put it into perspective. So I want to lean away from that, but I also want to tell people like sometimes the forbidden fruit, just read it and let's look at it. I would read atheist books to my students and say, let's just talk about it because they were interested. So read it, but in light of kind of the conversation that we've had, and definitely in light of scripture as priority, I think that's a great word. You have a good section in this. Uh, you covered in terms of the three battles you walked through three, six, and eleven in Genesis and talk about it as it lays into the rebellion in Genesis six. I think it's really well written, super fascinating. Love it. Good conversation. Want to invite people to write in their questions because we're gonna come back on a Tuesday soon. We'll give the date and we'll take your questions on our last interview on angels and demons, your questions on first Enoch, and we will be here live soon to discuss this. Make sure you follow Joel. You don't have a YouTube channel, do you?
Joel MuddamalleI mean, I do. Uh it's just all my stuff is Mudamalle. I do. There's just stuff that goes on there. It's just not as cool. I gotta do more cool stuff on there like you're doing. Uh most of my stuff is Instagram and Substack. Um, but yeah, everything is Muddamalle.
Sean McDowellYou're killing it on Substack, by the way. Oh, thank you. Instagram is awesome, and check out Unseen Battle. We will definitely have you back for a third time. Folks, make sure you hit subscribe and let me know this kind of in-depth conversation that I want to have here with scholars like Joel, with faculty here like at Talbot. What other topics could we explore? Is this a helpful thing on my channel? Uh, let me know and we can do some more of this. We'd love to have you come study with us at Talbot. It would be amazing. Joel, thanks, brother. This is fun. Always