Exercise, thought exercise. We're gonna open with an exercise. Sometimes we do this. We're gonna have fun. This is fun. We're having fun. Have fun with me. Okay, we're gonna imagine that we are sending a text on our phone. And the text has a lot of words in it, but there's one part of the text that is very, very important. And you want to make sure the recipient of the text understands that this is the very important part. What do you do? You have all the formatting options in the world available to you. What do you do? Okay, we're thinking, we're thinking, I'm letting you think, I'm letting you think. I'm no longer letting you think. Here's what I came up with. One, even though it's a little bit older millennial, young Gen X, and kind of going out of style, you might use an emoji in a text. You put some kind of little face, making a face or something on there. That could work. Maybe you would use the underline function to say this part's important, but underlining in a text message, I don't even know how you'd do that. I'm sure it's possible. I don't think I've ever sent anything underlined other than a cut and pasted URL. So I'm you're probably not going to underline, but it's an option. If you saw something that was underlined in a text message, you'd one marvel that they figured out how to format it. And two, you'd be like, oh, that's probably important. I'll pay attention to that. Okay, a third thing you could do is bold. I also don't know how to bold things, and I've never had an occasion to need to learn how to bold things in a text. And I'm sure it's like two clicks, I can figure it out, but nobody does that. So you go to the emoji, you can go with the underline, you go with the bold, you could go with italics. I know how to italicize things. It's got to be in the same menu. Surely I can bold and underline things, but italics from time to time, probably the number one way that most people would come up with would be an exclamation point. If you put that at the end, but the exclamation point has been cheapened. It doesn't hit as hard anymore because we use it all the time for everything. And if you use AI at all, oh my goodness, does the AI chatbot when it's constantly cloyingly, sycophantically affirming every single thing you say to it? Boy, it uses the exclamation point all the time. You're great. That's awesome, wonderful point. Nice catch. So maybe you wouldn't use an exclamation point now because it just doesn't mean anything anymore. Like if you send a text and you're like, thanks, period. There's a certain age of people in the world right now. It makes them mad. They're like, Why are you mad at me? Why did you say thanks? Period. You should have said thanks, no, period. Or thanks, exclamation point, because that just means neutral thanks. I guess when all your punctuation is special, none of it is. So I don't know that exclamation point really gets the job done anymore either. I'm gonna go with this for the number one answer that would actually work and that is easy to do formatting-wise. You've probably already thought of it. I'd go all caps. You just double-click the shift button, the left thumb, and then type whatever you're gonna type. It's big and it stands out. And it works if you're somebody who isn't the grammatical equivalent of the boy who cried wolf. If you always text in caps, then this isn't gonna do anything for you. You've left yourself absolutely no option to say this part is important. But if you're a dignified human being and you conduct yourself properly, even when banging out quick texts, and you don't always text in all caps, then all caps would say to the recipient, this really, really matters. Okay, you probably thought that was a thought exercise, but it was only half of the thought exercise. Now let's say that you're writing in a language where you generally only write in all caps and where the exclamation point does not exist. Why that what do you do now? How do you how do you stress to somebody that this part is really, really important? I'm talking about first century Greek here, and I'm specifically talking about the book of the Bible that we're working on, the book of Galatians in this season, season five, which is almost over here of this podcast. The book of Galatians was written once. You probably knew that and you've probably thought about it, but let's just think about it a little more. At some point, Galatians didn't exist. At some point, Paul, the guy who wrote it, thought to himself, there should be a Galatians. And then he roped in his buddy, and we'll talk more about that in a minute, but he roped in a scribe. This was a very common practice for people who wrote lots of letters or epistles in the ancient world. They would have somebody who specialized in quickly and very legibly recording what uh an orator or a great leader was saying so that they could really get that out quickly, clearly, readably. And uh, these people tended to be pretty good, I think, also at writing small, still legible, but little, so you could get a lot into whatever size of parchment or scroll or papyrus or whatever you were writing on at the time. So at one point, there was no Galatians. Paul became aware of what was going on with the Galatian churches. He's like, there just has to be a Galatians now. I have to write this, and it's a big deal, but I have to write it in such a way that there's sort of an emotional ebb and flow to this thing so that the people will hear me and stick with me. If it's just one giant wall of screaming text, we all know that's not particularly persuasive. Paul was a great orator in the tradition, really in three traditions the Greek tradition, the Jewish tradition, like a rabbinical tradition, that is, and then also kind of in the Latin tradition. I don't know that Paul did much of anything in Latin. He wrote in Greek, but he was a guy who had his two feet in three different worlds in this regard. And one of the most revered uh uh roles or jobs that you could have in the ancient world was being a master of words, somebody who could stand up in front of people and friends, Romans, countrymen, the situation. We see Paul in so many different moments just jump in front of people, important people, angry people, rioting mobs, and start talking, and it's always pretty dang good. So Paul was really good with words. People in the ancient world who were good with words had a scribe. There's a fancy word for that, like aminenusis, but we'll go ahead and stick with scribe for the sake of our conversation. So there's no Galatians. Paul is like, this is very important. I gotta write something good here. I have to outmaneuver people who are in Galatia, actively worming their way into these churches, infiltrating them, screwing them up. They are going to be there when these letters get read. I can't be there. This has got to be a good letter. It's got to be tight, it's got to be emotionally punchy, it's got to have a clear argument. I have to address quickly the things I've been accused of, and then I have to pivot it around to get ahead. And then I have to try to practically mentor these people so they come away with something they can really sink their teeth into and do in order to move forward as a Christian. It's a tall order for Paul. So there's just a blank page sitting in front of him. He's pacing around in a room somewhere and thinking, all right, what do we need to say here? And he just starts going. I don't know if they had erasers back then. I'm guessing they didn't really have like it was kind of a full send sort of situation. Maybe they did a couple drafts on this, but Paul is pacing around. He's got this outline in his brain. Maybe he sketched out the outline first, and he's processing this through. Now, Christians believe that he's doing this under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, and that this is exactly what God meant to communicate in this situation. But that, you know, the whole Bible is very incarnational. God is doing this with a human author. And as he's going along, Paul gets to the end of it and he said pretty much everything he meant to say. He's accomplished all of it, but he needs this last little part to pop, to stand out, to jump off the page, so that if people were a little overwhelmed, that can happen sometimes, and they're starting to space off. They've been given too many things. They're like, I can't hold anymore. My brain holds five things, and we're at six. That's too many. I'm done. Paul needs something here at the end to reset it all and to basically say, if you missed it all, get it right here. Like, listen to what I am about to say, and that's why we've been doing this thought exercise. What are the punctuation options, the indicator options available to him in the language he was writing in? Okay, there weren't any emojis. Uh, it's more of a Middle Ages thing, I guess, but it maybe people drew stuff in the margins back then. But emojis is probably not an option. We don't have any of those in the Bible. Underlining, maybe there's underlining. I've never really thought about whether the Bible at any point describes or hints at underlining. Huh. That's a fun thought exercise, but it doesn't look like underlining was the option. Bold, I guess you'd just have your scribe write thicker. Would that work? Maybe that was the thing. Italics, it's all sort of in italics the way it looks, especially Latin. You know, Greek's a little more up and down, I guess. You know, all caps doesn't work because it's already in all caps and it's all mushed together. So what do you can do? Make it more in caps? No, that's not going to work. And exclamation points didn't exist at all. Those weren't invented until the Middle Ages, late Middle Ages, 1300s, 1400s, 1500s, or something. And it took a long time for that bit of punctuation to even get a wieldy name. They called it punctus admirativus for the really long time. And the exclamation points don't even appear on typewriters until like the 1970s. So, no, an exclamation point's not gonna work. What's your only option then? Write really big. This part is huge, like John Hancock style. I want the king to be able to see this signature without his spectacles on. John Hancock. There you go. It looks like that's the strategy Paul employs right here in the final push, the last seven verses of the book of Galatians, which are entirely consequential. He's really doing something here. And it looks like here in verse 11 of Galatians 6, as he introduces this final little block of thought, it looks like what Paul is trying to do is he's saying, This next part is really, really important. Pay attention, don't space off. If you didn't get anything else, at least really get this next little bit. He says, quote, see what large letters I use as I write to you with my own hand. So in this moment, Paul goes over, he's like, get out of the way. Just move, just move. I got to write this part of the Bible. He takes the pen from the scribe and he's like, see what large letters. And some people think that Paul had a vision issue. Maybe we'll talk more about that tomorrow. And so some people look at this passage and they're like, oh, well, see, this proves that Paul had an eyesight issue. And so he wrote with large letters because it was hard for him to write small. That could be, that, you know, that could be part of the deal. But I don't think it's all of the deal either way. I think he's using the ancient equivalent of all caps or an affirmative emphasizing emoji or exclamation points here to really grab his audience by the shoulders one last time and be like, listen to this. So there's some fun novelty to the fact that we get a Bible verse that says literally, see what large letters I use as I write to you with my own hand? I mean, that's a verse of the Bible. You don't memorize that one at camp. But it's awesome that it's there as just a reminder of how human this whole document that is from God is in its presentation to us. But it's also an interpretive cue for you and me who already have so much time in the book of Galatians that we should really pay attention to what happens next and not go into autopilot mode and be like, he's probably just gonna say hi to a few buddies and be like, pray for me. I'm trying real hard. You believe in God, okay? Cross symbol, bye. No, he's really gonna do something here, and we should pay attention to it. And that's what we're gonna do over the next few episodes. All right, that's good for now. I'm Matt. This is a 10-minute Bible hour podcast. Let's do this again soon.