Hey everybody, it's Matt. This is the Ten Minute Bible Hour podcast, and this is what we call a bonus episode, which you probably figured out from the music that played right before we started talking in this bonus episode, and where the lyrics are basically just bonus episode over and over and over again.
SPEAKER_02Come on now.
SPEAKER_00Oh, there is come on now. Uh yes, that's also in there. It's just the right kind of awful, buddy. Thank you. So, for those of you who are maybe new around here, my buddy Jeff Foote, who I've been friends with since college, he's great at music and he's great at Bible stuff, and he's great at editing, and he's a great friend. And he helps me out with this podcast and has for ages. He's just vital to the thing. All the fun music that happens at the end, that's all Jeff. And as we are going through the book of John, we have decided that it would be fun to include what's really going to be two bonus episodes as we finish each chapter on a pair of back-to-back Saturdays. One of those bonus episodes is just going to be me reading the full chapter we just got done with in light of all the time that we put into it. So you just have it if you're interested in that to kind of reflect and meditate on the passage in light of the work we've done. And then the other bonus episode at the end of each chapter of John is like what you're listening to now, which is me and Jeff gaming it out together because he sat there and edited the whole thing and made silly music to go with it. And we talk about it offline as well. And I just think it's kind of fun to do a conversation episode like this. What am I missing, Jeff?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I also spent the last two years at our church teaching through John. So it's kind of fun for me to hear your perspective after I've done prep work on my end. And so going through each of these chapters is kind of fun for me too, because it's like, oh, here's something I noticed that I put into what I was doing that I didn't hear from you, or here's what I think about a controversial issue that you covered. So it's kind of fun to engage as a fan and a John student as well as your editor.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Is there anything in chapter two that you might take on it was like greatly deviated from yours?
SPEAKER_02Not greatly. I think the rundown on Mary's other children was really important for the audience here and the historical stuff you like to do, but I didn't really focus on it at our Protestant church where it's not controversial if the text says that Mary has other kids.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it makes sense that you wouldn't squander the precious time that you have with the sermon. That's a very different, you know, it's a different thing. You don't have much time to to talk Bible like that in front of everybody with your church every week. Whereas here, oh my friend, we've got forever. We can work on it as long as we want. And I think the reason that I felt like it needed to be covered is because on the internet, we're just all in a room together. And obviously, I'm very unthreatened by the reality that there are different historic expressions of Christianity. But I don't want to do the thing where I also pretend like we're gonna read each passage through the exact same lenses, and I think it's very fair to disclose to people here's how I'm coming at it, and also here's my strong conviction. It's not a light historical biblical church history conviction for me that Mary and Joseph were married and had other kids. I think it's highly unlikely that we're talking about, you know, cousins or whatever the later interpretation is that came along. This is just a place where certain high church types and Protestants just disagree. And I don't think I don't think it besmirches Mary's name in any way to suggest that God blessed her with a marriage that was happy and additional children, and that she lived a rich, full life in this way. I don't think anything about Mary not remaining a virgin within marriage perpetually is a criticism of Mary. Yeah, it's just a place where we we're really wired very differently.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and I think you got there at the end of that rabbit trail that this really is an indicator of where the authority lies. Is the authority in the text or is the authority in the leadership of the church? Because the text is pretty explicit, but if there was some church leader that said, no, it's going to be this, it's going to be our doctrine, then of course you're going to be loyal to which authority you really are locked in on.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, which is why I'm in terms of early church history and the text, uh, it it strongly favors the position that I articulated. However, and this is where I think it's really easy to be charitable and understanding with particularly Catholic brothers and sisters, but also Orthodox, and and that is just to say um I get it. Your church was born in a very different time where there were different stressors, there is a different ability level on the part of the laity to participate in this conversation. I mean, I'm I'm doing a bunch of work on Greek New Testament stuff right now. It is very, very hard. We totally take for granted how nimble we are with the Bible because of the masterworks of translation that have occurred, particularly over the last 500-ish, 600-ish years. It's an unbelievable cheat. It's an unbelievable unlock to give the text to the masses. And well, I mean, the Catholic Church did not grow up in that environment. And it is unsurprising, giving the social and political circumstances of the day, that especially starting in the 300s AD, that you start to see the medieval Catholic Church take shape the way that it did. And look, historically, we're all painted a little bit into our corners. And that's why this question of, well, do we think what the text seems to obviously say about Jesus and Mary and the nature of their family? Or do we go with what how the church interprets that, which is not the natural read of the text? Well, it's a litmus test for where does the authority come from? And I understand and respect how Catholics and Orthodox get to where they are. I'm just not from the same part of the family tree.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and my background is in interpreting text, you know, with a literature degree and a hermeneutics focus and seminary, like the idea of whether or not the text says what it says is kind of my home turf. And so I love that you bring out so much of the church history stuff. I love that you bring out so much of the differences between uh medieval Catholicism versus post-Reformation Catholicism or early church fathers, that kind of stuff that, yeah, I went to those classes, but I don't live in that world the way you do. And I think that's a that's definitely a bonus of how we get to do this in these unlimited time little 10-minute increments. For me, that's an education too.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Well, you living in the world of the text is part of what makes it fun to hang out with you because we live in the world of the text when it comes to movies and TV shows and books and songs and cultural texts of all types, too. And I think it's really fun to practice on that stuff. What does this mean? I'm having fun listening to people practice hermeneutics interpretation on the cultural text that is Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey.
SPEAKER_02Oh, sure.
SPEAKER_00I think it's been really interesting to see, you know, while we've been here in John chapter two, that's been what's going on, you know, in real time in the background here. There's been a huge cultural dialogue about this mega movie. And dude, I think it's gonna pass a billion dollars. This could be the most successful movie of all time. Have you seen it? I have not. That's kind of crazy. And it is it, I think it's rated R, isn't it?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and the whole plot is this happens, then this happens, then this happens. Uh-huh. Yep. It's it's not like there's a a twist that you can't see coming.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's three hours of literally the oldest well-known story in Western civilization apart from the Bible. Like it's it's really hard to spoil, it's pretty well known. But it's rooted in ancient 8th century, 7th century BC texts that describe something that happened much earlier in a version of the language that we study behind the New Testament that is an earlier iteration of New Testament Greek. And it's been fun to see people engage with it and fight about it a little bit and try to think through, you know, to have to wrestle with these values are very, very ancient. And, you know, even Christopher Nolan, it's like, I couldn't show the ending. You know, Homer's ending is like there's entries coming out and people getting hung, like all the servants of the court who betrayed Odysseus' family, like even the women. Like there's a real scouring, a real scourging that happens at the end of things. And Nolan's like, it just doesn't translate, it won't work. Well, it's kind of fun, isn't it, for somebody like you to watch society wrestle a little bit with something akin to your world where normal everyday people are thinking through the implications of an ancient text and a set of values that feels familiar on some levels, foreign on other levels, and how do you talk about it now? Have you tracked with any of that?
SPEAKER_02Oh, yeah. And what it looks like to bring your own biases to something that tries to be objective because it's so ancient, but you just can't. And is there a desire to understand it in a historical context, or is it just 2026 that we're worried about? All of that is yeah, that's interpreting the text. I don't know if I want to say 101, but maybe 201 or 301. How do you take something from a historical context, get the interpretation of the text in its own context as correct as possible, and then apply that meaning to today, as opposed to everyone before me was dumb and and my way is right now, and I'm just gonna take this and twist it into that, which I think we see way too often. You know, we have to update it for modern sensibilities. It's like, well, get it right first and then apply it to modern sensibilities. But that takes extra work, and I and like you said, I think with the Odyssey, you're seeing I think the best and the worst.
SPEAKER_00Well, what's what is the best and the worst that you've seen?
SPEAKER_02I like the idea of here's a man who is spending all these decades trying to get home, he's probably battle weary, and it's it's weird to just treat him as if he's a goofy protagonist. If you're looking at the actual story and the text, and you're saying, okay, he's a funny guy, he's a shrewd guy, but he's going through a lot of dark stuff. It should have an effect on him. Modern sensibilities say, yeah, PTSD's a real thing. And it sounds like he put that on the screen.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I would say so.
SPEAKER_02I'm not a fan of the there aren't enough women in this story, so let's tell it from a woman's perspective. That seems a little twisted. And I don't know if he did or not. I just have seen those kind of uh chatter pieces on social media.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that's the criticism, and I don't think that criticism super holds up when you watch the movie. I I know why people, speaking of PTSD, still kind of have it from the ludicrous excesses of the 20 teens. I mean, that is a decade we will look back on and laugh for a long time. I mean, just there are moments in history where really goofy ideas get a foothold, some institutions behind them, and people say goofy things in order to fit in. And when it's over, it's really over, and then you got to fear the backlash. And I'm a little troubled by the backlash right now. I feel like on this particular movie there were a lot of people who probably go to church. We probably have a lot in common with, who just knee-jerked immediately to, oh, I see three things with the casting, and therefore this is bad, and just offered withering critiques that I I don't know. We're children of the light. I want people from our ideological neck of the woods to be thoughtful and to not just endlessly play the internet game. The world is not Twitter. I still don't know what I think of the movie. I've watched it twice. I think it was really good and also really flawed, and I really appreciate it, and also I don't know how you do it different or better. It's just it's very, very difficult. I kind of feel the same way I feel when I watch most Old Testament Bible shows and movies. I'm like, oh okay. Like on the one hand, I'm measuring this for fidelity to the text and the story, but also the text is a different medium. It's the Bible's not trying to be a movie at all. So you have to insert all of this drama that kind of messes with the meaning a little bit. People are figuring out that this is not as simple as they might imagine. And I like that the Odyssey is just kind of sticking in everybody's craw, in that nobody seems to know what to do with it, but it's beautifully shot and it's compelling. It's that's it, that's the word. It's compelling, and it's okay that this ancient work is just sticking with people and forcing people to reckon with something that you reckon with for a living every day, all the time, and have for your whole life.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and I think there's there's room for disagreement, but you you can't play fast and loose with the text. Like you say, stuff means stuff, it means what it means. And there is a science behind understanding it. Does that mean every verse is abundantly clear and can only mean one thing? Well, no. But when we just kind of arbitrarily project our own meaning on things, or pretend we don't know what words mean because we're trying to make a point, that's just disingenuous, and it needs to be wrestled with. So that is usually what sets me off is the perspective that, well, it can mean whatever I want it to mean. No, that's not how language works. That's certainly not how written language works. Author intent means something. Uh, historical context means something, the words mean things. Yeah. If words don't mean anything, and this was a big thing C.S. Lewis wrote about in uh The Abolition of Man, this idea that if words can mean whatever we choose them to mean after the effect, and author intent means nothing, then nothing means anything. He uses the phrase men without chests to describe a society of people where language becomes that corruptible and it's you just can't communicate ideas, everything then becomes meaningless. And I'm not saying that as a society, I don't know, he thought society was going to get there. I think we're certainly closer than when he wrote that, what, 80 years ago. But I do think something like the Odyssey or something like this podcast helps people understand this should be work. This should I I don't want to say arduous, it can be fun.
SPEAKER_00I hope so. I mean, I literally say it's fast, fun, free daily deep dive Bible, and it's fun right in the tagline.
SPEAKER_02But it's not something to be taken lightly.
SPEAKER_00Says the guy who composed the song Clownhammer. I'm pretty sure that was you, and I'm pretty sure you did include a clown honk in your song. Aouga honk, yeah. Oh crap. That's right. You did that. Okay, we don't get into all the t the the Greek behind the text. I think it's alienating. I think that completely changes the equation when you do that. And I'm not trying to make it sound like you and I totally get it. It's very, very technical, but it is known. And you dropped the word science talking about the text. If you even take like a high school level introduction to New Testament Greek class, it's only gonna take a couple weeks, and you're gonna see that this is a science, there's art, but this is a science. These words all mean something, it is well established. And a lot of the people who do play fast and loose with the text, and you know, well, if you look at the original language, you know, this could mean either thing, and then you go and look at it, you can just say scientifically, no, it doesn't. Look at that. That's a genitive, that's possessive. If I can tell you that because look at the ending, that's what that noun means. That's in the genitive case, and you're trying to say that it isn't to change the meaning. Well, you're just wrong. And it can seem like well, the Greek could mean anything. You know, we lose so much when we translate. But part of the thing, you know, in Galatians, we talked about that fullness of time principle, that that's when God sent his son. Koine Greek, the Greek the New Testament happened in is a big part of that fullness of time. If it was written in Homeric Greek, I think you got more wiggle room. I don't know that for sure, but I've been reading about that classical Greek that came before the version of Greek that the New Testament is in. And I think that version of Greek plays better for poetry, but the more I learn about it, I think there's more play in that.
SPEAKER_02Well, even Hebrew is way more of a conceptual language than Greek. In Hebrew, double meanings happen all the time on purpose. Like the word for glory is the same word as fat. There's so much concept behind the language. Whereas Greek, it's no, there's one for one here for the most part. Uh sure, the authors can still use figurative language, but the words themselves mean what they mean.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And we're not going to do the Greek behind the text thing very often. I mean, occasionally we'll mention a word or whatnot. Because it's it's kind of overwhelming, it's kind of intimidating. But dang, if you even dip a toe into that world, you quickly realize you can know what the New Testament means. This isn't like some sage you don't get to meet in 1850 sat down with a sloppy Greek text based on nothing and was like, How would I like Christianity to be? What would I like the religion to look like? It isn't like that. And when you start fumbling through it for yourself, you you feel like it could mean a lot of things, but the more you look carefully, the more you realize, yeah, that's that's pretty much the only way to render that turn of a phrase right there from the Greek to the English. So I like that you broke out the word science. That's a big swing to use that word, but I think you have a point.
SPEAKER_02And you don't even need to be educated deeply into Greek or hermeneutics or anything to just notice, even in English, there's certain words you could say, okay, why did why did he use this word and not that word? So let's get back to John chapter two. Why does he call these miracles signs instead of miracles?
SPEAKER_03Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_02Because sign means it's signifying something. And they are miraculous, but John constantly is saying, This is the first sign he did, this is the second sign he did. So my brain goes, why did he use the word sign? I don't need to know the Greek, but that word pops. So what is it signifying that he turned the water into wine? And now you're starting to interpret the scripture from the perspective of what words he picked. How would you answer that question, by the way? What is he signifying through the water into wine?
SPEAKER_00I'm gonna break that down into two parts. One, the difference between sign and miracle. I have no problem with just using the term miracle as we see in other places in the New Testament. But again, so much of how I interpret John has to do with my assumption and the assumption of the church fathers that Matthew, Mark, and Luke already existed, and that John is the last of generation one of Christianity, and that he is writing after the fact. There are a lot of hints in here, even in what we've looked at in the first two chapters, that tell us that. For example, John chapter one, after you know John the Baptist says for the second time, that's the Lamb of God, it takes away the sins of the world, and those initial disciples go and track down Jesus. You can see in verse 40, it says, Andrew, Simon Peter's brother, was one of the two who heard what John had said and who had followed Jesus. Why are you introducing Simon Peter like that, John? We've never who is that guy? He hasn't come up. There's no antecedent here. He hasn't been mentioned in any way. What does that tell me? John is writing later, and everybody knows who Simon Peter is. Matthew, the last time we see Simon Peter, he runs out into the darkness. That's it. John seems very interested in speaking to particularly two characters that everybody had heard of, and they're trying to figure, they're trying to figure out how do those two characters fit with Jesus, and how do those two characters fit with the emerging, you know, early church here. One is John the Baptist. John the Evangelist just talks about him freely, like clearly, the followers and disciples of John the Baptist had persisted. We see that later in the New Testament. So John the Evangelist is writing into a world where everybody's heard of John the Baptist. Not everybody's clear on where he fits with Jesus. He is also clearly writing into a world where everybody's heard of Simon Peter, but they're trying to figure out like, was he rehabilitated? Was he I mean, should we actually follow the teachings of Simon Peter? Didn't he betray Jesus? Isn't that isn't that bad? Wouldn't he be a bad guy or like a deceiver? Wasn't he at odds with Paul even? So John, one of the last guys who knows Peter, just assumes the audience knows him and seems to be trying to clarify who the guy was and what the relationship is between the two. Jesus looked right at Simon and said, You are Simon, son of John. You will be called Cephas, which when translated is Peter. That tells me people had confusion about whether Simon Peter and Cephas, like, are these all the same guy? What do we do with this? John is writing, I'm sure, more sure than ever, after two chapters, that John is writing at the end of his life and as the last surviving firsthand witness, which is why he emphasizes so much of the stuff about you know, we saw this with our own eyes. I saw this stuff. So, in light of that, what else would he want to clarify here at the end of his life? Okay, miracle versus sign. All of the gospels, like we talked about here through chapter two, have some kind of tension with people coming to Jesus and being like, Show us something, give us a miracle, and then we'll believe. And Jesus, he's already done a bunch of miracles. How many do you need? I suppose even if somebody was raised from the dead, you wouldn't believe, he says at another point, right? So there must have been this widespread Simon the Sorcerer style. There is this assumption that magic was real and people could do it. And I think that reading between the lines here, the message went out, the church caught on, people like Simon tried to buy the power because it was better than the magic scrolls they were working with. They were totally misunderstanding the point. And I think John wanted to clarify you guys aren't understanding what we mean by miracles. When we say miracles and we're talking about Jesus, we mean a sign. It is a theological breaking of the laws of time and space, statement of fact about the truer, greater reality and the truth that Jesus is the Son of God and God in the flesh. It isn't a trick, like you guys do with your magic scrolls and things like that. I can't help but think of the line from uh Job and Arrest of Development, but I'm not gonna say it.
SPEAKER_02But it's not a trick, Michael.
SPEAKER_00An illusion. It's not that either. It's a sign, it is a signpost, it is a thing meant to scream loud and clear, this is truth. And I think John would be incentivized based on when he's writing and what I think some of the misconceptions were that were still lingering by the time John wrote to really differentiate between the two or to sharpen the meaning of the word miraculous so that people would understand. These weren't just favors Jesus handed out sometimes for no reason if you caught him on you know in a good mood or something. It's all these miracles are signs. What do you think of that?
SPEAKER_02I mean, John and Peter and Paul were doing miracles as well in the first century. So even to differentiate what was happening in their lives versus Jesus is revealing himself to the world. And I mean, John he says at the end of the book, Jesus did all sorts of other things that I didn't include here, but I included these things, and so I think he picked seven specific signs or seven specific miracles and said, These are signifying something specific about Jesus. I want you to know.
SPEAKER_00But even then in John 20, 30, he says miraculous signs. In other words, John isn't saying the other ones were just miracles, right? Like, you know, cool tricks or favors to people. John is saying that all these other things that I'm not even telling you about were also serving the same purpose. They were also signs. But I gave you these.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and I gave you these seven on purpose. And so this first one of the water into wine, I think you hit it in the episodes, is about the purification situation that Jesus infects the impure with his purity. The fact that this is happening inside the hand washing purification water is a way of saying impurity affects people. You can catch it, and then you have to purify yourself. But with Jesus, his purity infects the impure and takes it over. Oh, well said, well said, well said. And I think that's the meaning of that sign. And I think you know, you you hit it in those episodes. But again, it's that's the question of why would he use the word sign there? And to me, sign means you're signifying something. What are you signifying? Well, let's look at the text. Oh, the the jars for purification. Okay, that must have something to do with it. Because grown up, and I suppose for most people, it's like, oh, he turned water into wine. Cool. Now people can have wine. Neat. And it's like, well, yes, that's the impressive piece, but in the text, John is saying, This is why I'm telling you this sign. That's why I think this is such a great exercise. Let's take the time we need in the text to figure this kind of stuff out, in goofy ways with fart jokes. Well, we're keeping the fart jokes.
SPEAKER_00I like the imagery of a mental workbench. You know, you got this big bench spread out in front of you. The healthier you are, maybe the bigger you can get the bench, the more things you can keep on it at once. But it's impossible to look at all of John at the same time. Obviously, you see me, you edit it, you see me frantically trying to do that. Like, hey, everybody, there's a pattern here. This is exciting. Today's gonna be like a Bible all over the place day. I mean, how many episodes have we done like that over the years where it's like, let's go look at the patterns of all the temple cleansings, for example? Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. What do we see emerge? Let's put them all on our workbench at once. And what some pattern is gonna pop here if we look at everything that falls into this genre of Bible story. And sure enough, the patterns always do pop. And in the case of the wedding at Cana, it's okay, this is a sign. What's it a sign of? Well, let's go look at other things that have to do with purification. And I think we made really good progress, but what I've found doing this every day with you and everybody listening for the better part of a decade now, is that you kind of need the whole book. We don't we're not gonna have the wedding on Cana at lockdown or on lockdown until we're done with John. So we gotta keep bouncing back. But there are more themes, more things are gonna get put on our mental workbench as we work through John, and more patterns are gonna pop later. But I feel pretty good about where we are for now.
SPEAKER_02Should we disclose that we're recording this before I've heard the last few chapter two episodes?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, because you've uh you got some travel coming up. I finally am doing a family vacation here.
SPEAKER_02So I don't know if you're going to dig into this before chapter two is done, but this idea of the mental workbench, one of the themes that is all over the book of John is the belief idea. And uh obviously chapter three, Nicodemus, it's a big deal. But even in chapter two, there are pieces of the disciples believed in him because he displayed his glory through the sign of the water into wine. And then at the end of chapter two, Jesus knew that the people weren't actually believing in him because he didn't need anyone to bear witness to him about their hearts. So bear witness is another theme in John. So this idea of how much do you need to believe? And is there fake belief and saving belief? All that kind of stuff is in John, but it's so subtle. Uh, it's not a big event that explains that. It's just after each event, John gives these little asides about oh, and then they believed. And and Andrew bore witness to Peter and he came and believed. And the people put their trust in him at the Passover, but he knew they weren't really believing.
SPEAKER_00So, all of this theme, I think, this is the kind of stuff we can put on the mental workbench, and I'm not sure if you have as we get closer to chapter two, but I have, and just to give you the heads up, the audience has you at a disadvantage right now because they've already heard everything in chapter two, and you'll get to it soon. But I recorded a whole episode about falling in love with your wife or loving your kids and thinking that's the most I could ever love. And then some stuff happens and you're like, Nope, there was another level. And then some more stuff happens, and you're like, Nope, there was another level. Well, in John 1, Nathaniel's like, Oh, Rabbi, you are the son of God, you are the king of Israel. And Jesus is like, Yeah, you believe that because I saw you under a fig tree. You're gonna see greater things than that. And that prefigures what then happens in the next passage, which is that uh he thus revealed his glory, and his disciples put their faith in him. Oh, okay, well, now their faith is in him. But then you go to the next anecdote, and it's then they believed the scripture and the words that Jesus had spoken after they recalled what he had said about destroy this temple, I'll raise it again in three days. Oh, okay. So that's the hardest they can believe now. Right. So they just keep believing more, I guess. So there, now you're up to speed with the uh with with everybody else on this.
SPEAKER_02Okay, so bring me up to speed on your position. Was there one temple cleansing or two?
SPEAKER_00I think my official position on this is the same as the religious leaders in Matthew 21 who have to go huddle up when Jesus is like, I'll answer you, but you tell me where does John get the authority to baptize? And they come back and they're like, All right, we thought about it for a long time. Our big announcement, drum roll, please. We do not know. There you go. I think I mostly came down on we do not know. To me, I think whether there were two temple cleansings or not does not primarily hinge on chronological evidence in the four gospels. I think it primarily hinges on how much do you think John rearranges things thematically in instead of just sticking with a strict chronology? And how different is that from how much Matthew, Mark, and Luke are willing to rearrange things chronologically. So my argument is that whether you think there were two cleansings of the temple or not, you're just gonna beat your head against the wall trying to reconcile all of the chronologies because none of the four gospel authors give us enough to absolutely dial this in. Rather, if you look at the big argument of the book of John in completion on your workbench when you're all done and you're like, dang, it was just really important to put that cleansing of the temple in two because of the way thematically John develops this point about how Jesus is replacing old institutions, and John really wanted to throw down that gauntlet right at the beginning in chapter two, before Jesus even gets a bunch of lines or anything starting in chapter three, then I think there was just one temple cleansing. However, if you don't come away from John absolutely convinced that he has arranged things somewhat chronologically, but also thematically, well then there were probably two. I mean, if Jesus did it once and they didn't fix it, you know, the next time he was there for Passover and it was still stupid, well, I would guess he'd still be mad about it. I would guess he would want to do it again. So those are the two big um lines of thought I have in defense of each position. What's your read?
SPEAKER_02My read is John organizes his book on feasts. It's kind of like with the signs. He's like, I'm gonna pick these events to make this point about Jesus. So at the end of the day, I think there was one, but if it's two, and I'm wrong, I I won't lose a bit of sleep about it.
SPEAKER_00No, no, nothing about the nothing about the reliability of the book hinges on this at all.
SPEAKER_02Just to circle back to we need to really let the text say what the text says, then we need to be honest when the text doesn't say and not try to be dogmatic about something that isn't abundantly clear. And so it's I think it's okay to be like, hey, I don't know. And smart people think this and smart people think that, and the text just really doesn't decide for us on this one. So okay.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. I I'm very at peace with that. It's fun to wrestle with it. And so look at us here, you know, for the last whatever it's been, eight or ten minutes, we've been talking about this Bible controversy. Is there one or two cleansings of the temple? And all it's really done is given us opportunities to talk about how the text works, how John wrote his gospel, how Luke wrote his gospel, why these different gospels exist, what they do, how they all point to Jesus. I mean, I I just think there's a ton of opportunity in the quote-unquote controversial passage because it makes you think hard about how the Bible works and what it's actually trying to do.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and that's the kind of stuff that gets you and me out of bed in the morning.
SPEAKER_00All right, then we got one more thing we got to do before we get out of here, and that is uh we got to do a musical roundup. You were very musical through John chapter two. Do you do you have your stuff in front of you?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, you gave me you gave me good lead-ins. What did you do? Remind me, what what are your favorites? Well, we did Who's Johnny? Because that was the title of an episode. Yes, that's right. And I hadn't thought about that song in at least 30 years, so that was fun to dust off. We did Amazing Grace, and like the earlier hymns that we've done, I tried to mix it with Toto, but we were like, the famous Toto songs we've already done. Hold the line and Rosanna and Africa.
SPEAKER_00You haven't done Pamela, you know I like that is a good one.
SPEAKER_02But it's like, what Toto song can we mix Amazing Grace with? And then I I remembered Toto played all the parts on Michael Jackson's thriller, so why not Billy Jean and Amazing Grace?
SPEAKER_00And so we did that one, which is such a baffling contrast. The way I chose to interpret that work of quote unquote art that you made, is the subject matter of Billy Jean is kind of bleak. I mean, it's not a it's not a happy family situation that's unfolding in that particular song.
SPEAKER_02It's a family situation, but not a happy family situation, yeah.
SPEAKER_00No, it there is family involved though, and and so you know, I kind of like the way you mush the two together, you get the like you know, the problem and the solution there. I I thought it was funny.
SPEAKER_02Uh, well, the whole theme of a wedding opened up a lot, so I got to do white wedding. We did save the best for last mixed with Snoop Dogg.
SPEAKER_00Oh my goodness, that's right. That was crazy. I knew there was one that was just baller. Oh, oh, that's just wretched. That Vanessa Williams, she was like Miss America or something, wasn't she? That was kind of her agent, had her pivot to music, and she wrote these just milk toast, sapp squishy, early 90s pop love drivel pieces, and they played those things over and over and over again, and they just never got better. But at basically, I think at the same time, what's my name? The Snoop Dogg song that everybody knew back then. I think it was on the radio at the same time as that Vanessa Williams stuff.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and you kept talking about Snoop Dogg's wine and saving the best for last. It just was perfect match.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. I'm not gonna try it, but yeah, uh, people have encouraged me too since I uh since I mentioned Snoop Dogg's trash nine dollar Walmart wine. All inner city Snoop Dogg 90s hip hop. So weird.
SPEAKER_02Nice job, buddy. Somebody asked, how did uh how did we get Superman mixed with 90s Euro dance pop? Sometimes we come across an obvious song like the Superman theme, and I'll just reach out to you and be like, hey, what style do you want it in? And you'll just throw out a style, and that's what we do.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, there's no reason other than let's have fun.
SPEAKER_02You could have said like Gregorian chant, and we would have done it. You just happen to say techno. We did the He-Man theme.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Have you seen that movie yet? I have not. I took the family, we laughed hard. And then we watched it again the other night, and we laughed hard. It's just ridiculous. But I think the people who made that knew what they were doing. And I I think the internet decided early on, again, there's this is that overreaction that we're seeing to the excesses of the 20 teens. Oh, I saw something in the trailer that doesn't pass the new test for orthodoxy. We're mad. We're gonna make sure this fails and people know that it's trash. Well, it wasn't. It was really fun and silly. And I think a lot of people deprived themselves of seeing just a fun, happy, ridiculous fantasy movie. I know some people don't like that kind of thing, or you know, having a bad guy with a skeleton face, you know, that that looks too sorcery-ish or whatever. Okay, well, it's not gonna be for them, but I th I thought it was a treat and I highly recommend it.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and you and I grew up on the cartoons, so we're gonna be more Hey, that's nostalgic and fun. I hated that cartoon.
SPEAKER_00I thought it was so boring and dumb and hard. I just hated it. Had that stupid Orco thing in it. I never liked He-Man. If we got stuck with He-Man, that was such a disappointing concession. So no, I'm gonna push back on that. It did not have that credibility with me going in.
SPEAKER_02So He-Man didn't measure up to the high standards of Thundercats for you.
SPEAKER_00I liked Thundercats better than He-Man as a kid. It's the same show, it's the exact same show. Well, yeah, except the Thundercats are buck naked in the opening episode. Like, what are what is this? The Chitara character. I'm like, she needs clothes. This is an after school children's program that has like a little lesson at the end about integrity, it is very important, kids. Yeah, soul is covering your genitals. It's you should always wear clothing in public, kids. That would have been a better take-home lesson at the end of that one.
SPEAKER_02I don't know. They even Thundercats had an orco named Snarf. You remember that guy?
SPEAKER_00Of course, yes, yes. I don't know why they I think it was just an attempt to rope in like babies to get them to watch preteen shows as well to broaden the audience. But I think all it ever did was just infuriate 11 and 12-year-olds who were trying to figure out what cool was, and we didn't want a snarf or an orco on there, ruining our program.
SPEAKER_02So the last song on my list that we did was one I didn't get your permission on or let you know I was doing it. Which occasionally happens, and that was Bruce Hornsby. Because you were doing episodes on sometimes things just get to be the way they are and nobody stops it. So I got to do that's just the way it is.
SPEAKER_00You did? Yeah. Okay. Well, this is gonna betray something about our workflow right here. I did not know that. I record episodes and I send them to you. Sometimes we talk about the edit or the music, but other times you just have a life and I do, and it just happens, and you just publish them, and you know you have my absolute blessing to just have fun and do things. And so sometimes you do, and usually I listen to the podcast a couple weeks after. I I I'm always listening to the back episodes to just retain a lot of what we've already done to keep things, you know, on the workbench, to use the earlier metaphor. And then I'll discover these songs that you did that I didn't know existed. I don't think I've heard that one. That's something to look forward to. Did you do anything goofy with it, or did you just have fun on the piano?
SPEAKER_02No, just played it straight. Sometimes I'll be doing the edit and I'll I'll think of a song that's exactly the theme of what you're trying to say. If it's not too much of a left turn, I just know it won't bother you that I do it. So I just threw that together straight. I mean, that was one of the first piano things I learned when I was in junior high.
SPEAKER_00It's been a lot of old music lately. There for a while, we were kind of on a kick of doing stuff more 2000s, 20 teens, even a few things more recent than that. Yeah. I think we should do some newer stuff sometime soon, but also I I'm telling you, man, it this is the the decades of pop are not unfolding the way they did over the first 50 or 70 years of pop. Something broke, there just aren't shared songs anymore. If you want to play something that like everybody's gonna know, young, old, everybody, play Don't Stop Believin or Sweet Caroline or something like that. You just can't grab something from Dua Lipa and put it out there that people don't know.
SPEAKER_02There was definitely more of a pre-internet mono culture that helped us all share stuff. And I'm with you, I don't think the way Spotify works right now, not just because I'm a songwriter and an artist myself, but like the industry to support musical art is so broken. It's no wonder people don't have shared songs, shared experience of it. That stinks. I miss that.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah, that connective tissue that we used to have, not just on songs, but a bunch of other things culturally as well. I would like to see some societal healing in that regard, but I'm not sure how one makes that happen, other than what you do on this podcast, Jeffrey. I'm healing. I think that's the solution. That's our shining hope. Vanessa Williams Snoop Dogg mashups and clown hammer. Heal our world, that's the idea. Yeah, and of course, we should always note that none of these things are actually covers. They're all homages. What's the word you use last name? They're Jeffification. Sure. All right, this is fun, dude. Thanks for taking an hour to sit with me and game it out. You up for continuing to do this? We'll do it again after John chapter three. Yeah, yeah, this is fun. Right on, buddy. All right, things we need to mention. Um, Jeff gets paid by patrons. Uh-huh. So thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you to everybody who supports this podcast. I talked to somebody today who started supporting in October of 2019, which is when I started this podcast. There are still some of you uh who are supporting this thing and you have been from the very beginning. This works, this happens because of you. Sometimes people say that and it's probably kind of an exaggeration. It's not an exaggeration here. This exists because you support it. Thank you for doing that. We try to share the music with people who support on Patreon and the other platforms. We try to do stuff from time to time to not just say thanks, but show thanks for it. But I don't know, thanks from me and Jeff, because this happens because of those of you who support it. We're very, very grateful. Other stuff. Your music, Jeff, is on Spotify. Where do people find it again?
SPEAKER_02Rooktown is the name of the band, and you can find it on all of your favorite streaming services. My first album from 2020 is under my own name. That album is called Sea of Tranquility. You can find that under Jeff Foot.
SPEAKER_00There we go. Nice pitch. And then uh three, I haven't mentioned it for a while, but the Lightning Fast Field Guide to the Bible. Man, a lot of you have got that. Thank you very much. A bunch of you have bought a whole bunch of copies for your church or your school or whatever. Thank you. That doesn't go unnoticed. Also, I've read every single review, including the one that gave me a code word to make sure that I actually read every single review. And the code word is hippopotamus. Yes, I read every single review, and it means a great deal to me. Thank you for chiming in and supporting this project that I've had going. Uh, it's been a pretty cool thing, and uh, hopefully it'll make the Bible make more sense to more people when people encounter the Bible. I believe they encountered the God of the universe and life that's in it. And so, you know, all joking around about the pop culture and Snoop Dogg and Vanessa Williams and Clown Hammers aside. I'm in. I think this stuff is real and true, and I care about it, and I love it, and I love that you're here with us gaming it out like normal human beings with normal human being language as well. So I got a little squishy there at the end. Jeffrey, thank you for your part in all of this, and thanks for hanging out with us here. Always. Right on. Okay, I'm Matt. That's Jeff. This is the 10-minute Bible hour podcast weird bonus episode following John chapter two. We'll do it again after John chapter three. We'll see you next time.