Alastair's Adversaria - Symbolic History in the Gospels

Episode Date: January 23, 2025

The following was first published on my Substack: https://argosy.substack.com/p/19-symbolic-history-in-the-gospels. Lydia McGrew, 'Explaining away and symbolic details in the Gospels': https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vnz6-WR21H0&ab_channel=LydiaMcGrew Jonah Schupbach, 'Conjunctive Explanations and Inference to the Best Explanation': https://www.jstor.org/stable/26874516 Jesus the Bridegroom in John and Revelation: https://argosy.substack.com/i/135349926/jesus-the-bridegroom-in-john My discussion of Joshua Berman on scriptural history: https://argosy.substack.com/p/11-venetian-sojourn Follow my Substack, the Anchored Argosy at https://argosy.substack.com/. See my latest podcasts at https://adversariapodcast.com/. If you have enjoyed my videos and podcasts, please tell your friends. If you are interested in supporting my videos and podcasts and my research more generally, please consider supporting my work on Patreon (www.patreon.com/zugzwanged), using my PayPal account (bit.ly/2RLaUcB), or by buying books for my research on Amazon (www.amazon.co.uk/hz/wishlist/ls/3…3O?ref_=wl_share). You can also listen to the audio of these episodes on iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/alastairs-adversaria/id1416351035.

The following reflection is entitled Symbolic History in the Gospels, an earlier version of it was published on our substack. I have previously commented upon the nuptial motif in the books of John and Revelation, exploring some of John's uses of the Song of Songs as an intertext. Although he doesn't discuss the connections with the song in much detail, I referenced the work of Warren Gage, who argues for pronounced thematic, literary, and theological bonds between the books of John and Revelation.

Such work strengthens the plausibility of my argument for unifying nuptial themes from the Song of Songs in John and Revelation. Gage, among other things, makes the startling claim that the Samaritan woman in John Chapter 4 is related to the Harlot and the Bride in Revelation chapter 17 to 22. He observes the presence of a cluster of verbal parallels between the figures. Here's Gage. The Samaritan Woman,

Chapter 4 verse 7, the Samaritan woman who has come to draw water says, I have no husband. The horror of Babylon, in chapter 17 verse 1 of Revelation, sits upon the waters, says, I am not a widow. In chapter 4 verse 18 of John, Jesus describes the Samaritan woman's old life in the city. You have had five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband. Jesus remained there two days. In Revelation chapter 17 verse 10, the angel describes the life of the Babylonian harlot in the city. Five kings have fallen and one is. The other has not yet come. When he the seventh comes, he shall remain a little while. In chapter 4 verse 21 of John, neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem.

In chapter 16 verse 20 of Revelation and the mountains were not found. Chapter 4 verse 27, his disciples marveled that he spoke with a woman. And in chapter 17 verse 6 of Revelation, John the disciple writes, And when I saw the woman I marveled. Later on, in chapter 4 verses 29 to 30 of John, the Samaritan woman calls for the people to come and they came out of the city. And in Revelation chapter 18 verse 4, a voice from heaven calls, Come out of her, referring to the city of the harlot, my people.

John chapter 4 verses 10 and 28 to 29. I would have given you living water. So the woman left her water pot and went into the city and said to the men, come. Revelation chapter 22 verse 17, and the spirit and the bride say come, and let the one who thirsts, come. Let the one who will take the water of life without cost. To some these supposed parallels seem ridiculous and forced. Surely John's Gospel is a relatively artless account of historical events. To suggest such elaborate literary artistry, symbolism and typology

is to treat it as something quite different from what it is, straightforward reportage. A particularly vocal critic of such an approach to the gospel narratives is Lydia McGrew, a philosopher and apologist and the author of The Mirror or the Mask, liberating the Gospels from literary devices and the Eye of the Beholder, the Gospel of John as historical reportage. Within McGrew's work more broadly, she has been concerned to defend the historicity and reliability of the Gospels. Challenges to the historicity of the Gospels are perhaps most common and pronounced when it comes to the Gospel of John. Much of McGrew's work has focused on John for this reason.

The style, form and content of John, which have generally been regarded as markedly contrasting with those of the synoptics, have been adduced by many scholars and commentators as reasons to doubt the historical reliance. of the book. Taking the work of Michael Lecona as her primary foil, McGrew has written detailed responses to claims that the gospel authors, especially John, employed fictionalizing literary devices in writing their accounts of Christ, operating within literary genres with relaxed principles when it came to the facticity of historical details. Against this, McGrew insists that the gospel writers were relatively artless practitioners of historical. reportage, something she believes to be evidenced by numerous details in the Gospels that are

oddly specific, yet seemingly unrelated to any literary or theological purpose, precisely what we might expect to find in eyewitness testimony. In a video which I'll link in the show notes below, Maghru challenges attempts to find symbolic details in the Gospels. While she makes clear that there is no logical inconsistency in reading gospel details as both historical and social. symbolic. She references the principle of explaining away, citing the work of David Glass and Jonas Schubach, whereby two potentially true and even potentially compatible explanations for some evidence can nonetheless be in competition with each other. In many respects, this could be seen as an application of some form of Occam's razor. Where there is a simple explanation that is

sufficient to account for some phenomena, it is to be preferred over unnecessarily elaborate ones, and it dispenses with the need for additional explanations. Because we should prefer simpler explanations, two or more plausible hypotheses can compete for the force of the evidence, as one hypothesis becomes more persuasive. Other hypotheses can be correspondingly weakened, as it is more likely that we will abandon them as unnecessary. To connect this principle to her claims about reportage and the gospel accounts,

Magrou gives an example of a husband describing witnessing an accident to his wife, in which a red car ran a stoplight and hit the side of a green car. McGrew imagines the wife speculating whether her husband mentioned those specific colours in order symbolically to reference the Christmas season. Yet even were it possible her husband intended some additional symbolic point in mentioning those details in his account, as the husband's intention to indicate the actual colour of the cars is sufficient explanation, the wife's speculative theory of some additional symbolic meaning is greatly weakened. While logically compatible, the theories of symbolic and concrete

literal meaning are in competition for explanatory force. Part of McGrew's concern is that theories of symbolic meaning in the Gospels, even though theoretically compatible with it, compete for explanatory force with the hypothesis of accurate reportage that she is committed to defending. The more open we become to the explanatory force of intended symbolic meaning, the more the force of claims of historical accuracy can be weakened. While there are those who argue for symbolic meaning instead of historically accurate reporting, even those who seek to maintain both symbolic meaning and historical accuracy together end up weakening the claims of historical accuracy.

To McGrew, most random details in the text, the sequence of days in John 1 and 2, the Five porticos of Bethesda in John Chapter 5, the Greengrass and Mark's account of the feeding of the 5,000, are nothing more than the sorts of incidental yet sometimes indirectly confirmatory, details characteristic of faithful eyewitness testimony. The gospel writers are not writing sophisticated literary or esoteric theological texts, but straightforward and relatively artless reports. The moment that we start to admit theological symbolism,

into our readings, we open the door at least a sliver to doubts about the historical reliability of the text. Besides this, Maghru argues, theories concerning theological symbolism are typically highly subjective, fanciful, and lacking in controls. Rather than trying to read between the lines of the text, we should just read the lines themselves. Around the 19-minute and a half mark of her video, McGrew makes a key concession. There are some occasions when the gospel authors do indicate some symbolic or deeper theological meaning, in addition to mere literal reportage of concrete events. She gives the example of John chapter 19, verses 32 to 37,

where the fact that Jesus' bones were not broken after his death is presented as the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy. In this instance, John is quite explicit that he sees some theological meaning in the historical detail. We should, Maghru argues, require high standards of evidence for any such claims, and when the gospel writers engage in such symbolism or deeper theological meaning, they are not shy about telling their readers. McGrew's concern for the historical reliability of the Gospels is laudable, and her work is valuable, even if one recognises the very serious problems with her approach to symbolism in scriptural narrative. However, her position has critical weaknesses.

Even if we were to grant that a historical reported account of the Gospels and an account of them that sees lots of symbolism genuinely compete for explanatory force, a combination of the two may well prove to be the strongest and indeed only sufficient explanation for the evidence, Jonah Shubak, whom Maghru cited in laying out her account of explaining a way, observes in a paper which I'll link also in the show notes that two explanations that are truly in competition taken independently may both be validated by the evidence. He writes,

If there are net explanatory gains to accepting multiple distinct explanations, then IBE or inference to the best explanation, should allow us to accept multiple explanations, nations, regardless of whether they compete. This is precisely what we find in the case of the Gospels. Both symbolic meaning and accurate historical reporting are independently supported by the text at many points, and even if each of these were to weaken the strength of the case for the other, only the combination of the two provides a sufficient account of the texts in front of us. Maghru is on strong grounds when she claims that the Gospels are accurate historical accounts,

and that they bear hallmarks of and concern for trustworthy reporting. She is also correct in believing that, since this is the case, details should not automatically be presumed to be symbolic. However, her claim that the Gospels seldom engage in literary artistry or theological symbolism in crafting their accounts, and a relatively artless reportage is an exceedingly weak one, and seems to serve more to protect her concerns for historical accuracy than as an attentive account of the scriptural evidence.

Her acknowledgement that there are rare occasions when gospel writers might also be communicating symbolic or theological meanings within their reporting of concrete historical facts is worth considering more carefully. She gives the example of John chapter 19, verses 32 to 37, where the trustworthiness of the witness born to Jesus' unbroken bones and the blood and water from his peers' side is stressed, and that Jesus' bones weren't broken, is presented as a fulfillment of Scripture. It should be noted that the fulfilled scripture in question is Exodus chapter 12, verse 46, coupled with Psalm 34 versus 19 to 20. In its original context, the verse from Exodus is not presented as the prophecy,

but is rather within the instructions for the celebration of the Passover, that the manner of Christ's death might be the fulfillment of the scripture rests upon, and gestures towards a deeper theological and symbolic connection between Christ and the Passover sacrifice. Such a connection is, of course, both treated more explicitly and developed in places like 1 Corinthians chapter 5, verses 6 to 8. Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? Cleanse out the old leaven, that you may be a new lump, as you really are unleavened. For Christ our Passover lamb has been sacrificed. Let us therefore celebrate the festival, not with the old leaven, the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.

If Christ is the Passover lamb, then the church is the community celebrating the Passover and the feast of unleavened bread. The leaven that we need to purge out is the old sinful manner of life. The typological connection that Paul identifies invites considerably more elaboration, not least in the underlying exodus associations. Christ accomplishes his own exodus in Jerusalem, as Luke chapter 9 verse 31 suggests. What such passages might suggest is that overt typology in the text manifests and expresses an underlying typological root system, within which many implicit typological connections may support and strengthen the explicit ones, collectively bearing the weight of broader theological associations.

If this were the case, the presence of an explicit typological connection is an invitation to consider this broader implicit root system. So in John's Gospel, the connection between Jesus and the Passover lamb, implied by a likely allusion to Exodus chapter 12, might lead us to reflect upon the significance of the fact that Jesus' death and resurrection occurred during the Feast of Unleavened bread, or that John the Baptist referred to Jesus as the Lamb of God. such connections are not limited to the world of the text. Indeed, John's peculiar concern with the trustworthiness of the eyewitness account of the manner of the death of Jesus suggests that the historical accuracy of the reported events mattered so much for John, in large part because they were symbolic and not merely incidental details.

Another good example of the way that an explicit connection can open up broader connections is found in Matthew chapter 2 verse 15. This was to fulfil what the first of the way. the Lord had spoken by the prophet, out of Egypt, I called my son. In a use of Hosea chapter 11 verse 1 that has puzzled many commentators, Matthew takes a statement that refers to the deliverance of the Exodus in its original context and treats it as a prophecy of Jesus being brought back from Egypt as an infant. Putting the surprising use of the Hosea text to one side for a moment,

the connection between Jesus' return from Egypt and the event of the Exodus doesn't stand alone in the context of the opening of Matthew, but is surrounded by several further literary and typological connections. There is a man called Joseph, the son of Jacob, chapter 1 verse 16, who had several dreams and led his people down into Egypt for protection from a tyrant. There is a tyrannical king killing baby boys. There are also further episodes that are reminiscent of the Exodus narrative, for instance, chapter 2 versus 1921. But when Herod died, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt saying, Rise, take the child and his mother and go to the land of Israel,

for those who sought the child's life are dead. And he rose and took the child and his mother and went to the land of Israel. In Exodus chapter 4, verses 19 to 20 we read. And the Lord said to Moses in Midian, Go back to Egypt for all the men who were seeking your life are dead. So Moses took his wife and his sons and had them ride on a donkey and went back to the land of Egypt. Further possible allusions back to the Exodus narrative in the context could be noted,

but it is important to see the problems with trying to contain symbolism here. Any one of these details taken by itself might not be especially strong. However, when there is a more explicit typological connection given to us by the text, each of the other implicit connections with the Exodus is significantly more plausible, and collectively they are very strong. There is a cumulative case for Exeter symbolism, with the weight of plausibility distributed over several details. We should also consider that none of the other three Gospels record these episodes connected with Christ's nativity. The existence of four Gospels highlights that the story of the gospel can faithfully be recounted in several different ways,

with different episodes included or excluded, with different ordering of events, with different turns of phrase and terminology, and with different literary structure. The attribution of these differences to the natural divergences between four instances of relatively artless reportage and the downplaying of literary artistry and symbolism seems to neglect the evidence of the text themselves. It also seems to operate with a very narrow and more modern notion of history, a sort of history where bare facts are detached from meaning,

literary artistry, authority and exhortation. See my discussion of Josh. your Berman's treatment of this in an older substack post linked below. As I see it, the position arises more from a reactive fixation upon the threatening foil of fictionalizing literary devices than from close consideration of the character of the text itself. Besides this, we should consider why Matthew could use Josea 11 verse 1 in the way that he does in chapter 2 verse 15. Similar questions could be asked about some other fulfillment statements elsewhere in his gospel. such as Chapter 1 verses 22, 23, and Chapter 2 versus 17 to 18.

Josea Chapter 11 verse 1 isn't a prophecy of a future event, but a recounting of Israel's history. The best explanation for the use of such scriptures in Matthew and elsewhere requires recognition that history itself was seen to be typological in character, with former events anticipating later. To recount the history faithfully is not merely to give an artless account of a series of happenings, but to make plain to the hero how former events are being escalated and recapitulated in later events, or sometimes how earlier events are foreshadowing later events, and how unifying themes and overarching or higher realities are symbolically and otherwise present. To give a faithful account of Jesus' nativity and childhood, Matthew shows that Jesus was recapitulating the story of Israel itself,

thereby fulfilling it. The very beginning of Matthew's Gospel takes a key distinction. instinctive expression only found elsewhere at the beginning of Genesis, chapter 2, verse 4 and 5, verse 1, The book of the generations. The final verses of Matthew, the Great Commission, Matthew chapter 28, verses 18 to 20, are clearly reminiscent of the final verse of the final book of the Old Testament in some canonical orders. Thus says Cyrus, King of Persia, the Lord, the God of heaven, has given me all the kingdoms of the earth, and he has charged me to build him a house at Jerusalem, which is, in Judah. Whoever is among you of all his people, may the Lord His God be with him, let him go up.

2 Chronicles chapter 36, verse 23. Matthew tells his gospel story in a manner that frames it by the Old Testament canonical narrative. Does the neatness of the literary parallel that Matthew sets up between the end of his gospel and the end of the Old Testament canon suggests that the words of the Great Commission aren't real? By giving another possible typological meaning for the use of these words, may well slightly weaken, without by any means refuting the case for their historical reliability. But this inconvenience should not excuse a tin-eared reading of the text that refuses to pick up on their illusions. The idea that the gospel writers were fairly artless in their accounts seems to arise from a very inattentive reading of them. The beginning of John's Gospel is another case worth considering here.

Almost all commentators note the allusion to Genesis chapter 1. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth in John chapter 1. In the beginning was the word and the word was God and the word was God. This illusion strengthens the credibility of other connections, such as the description of the word in terms of light, in John chapter 1 verse 4, connecting the word with the first day of creation. Already this would suggest that John is doing something richer, more theological and symbolic than a simple historical record.

When many commentators see the seemingly irrelevant sequence of days later in the chapter and speculate that rather than being an incidental detail of historical memory alone, some connection is being drawn with the days of creation. They are working with the fact that John has already been alluding to the creation narrative earlier in the chapter. They are being attentive readers, not pulling a random speculative connection from their hats. We could deal with a myriad examples across the biblical canon, but our treatment here must be limited. The proof of the pudding is in the eating,

and the strength of typological, symbolic and literary readings of scripture is seen in their fruitfulness and consistency across the canon, and many different readers, something confirmed by the fact that so many commentators, both Jews and Christians, for instance, can independently arrive at very similar typological readings of various texts. My own biblical commentary is designed in part to attempt this publicly. Let's start to move back towards consideration of the suggested connections between John and Revelation with which we have begun.

We should here consider that traditionally the books of John and Revelation have generally been regarded to have come from the same hand. Even were there no closer relationship between them than this, reflecting upon this perceived connection could prove instructive. To modern minds, the contrast between the two books are immediately striking. The one is a historical account and the other is a visionary text, dense with symbolism, typology, and illusion, and exhibiting elaborate literary structures. The Book of Revelation expects its hearers to reflect intelligently upon numerical details, most notably the number of the beast in Revelation chapter 13 verse 18, and to pick up on lots of non-explicit allusions and intertextual connections. Several commentators have observed that Revelation, while containing no direct citations, hardly has a single verse without an allusion to other scripture. The sort of hearers that Revelation seems to demand and to reward are precisely the sort of readers

that are likely to hear allusions and recognise symbolism in John's Gospel. Now, it could naturally be argued that John and Revelation are radically different genres of text and that the sort of reading that one invites is quite unfitting to the other. While there are undeniable differences in genres between the two texts, the existence of a significant relationship cannot be so easily dismissed. John and Revelation are traditionally associated with each other in their authorship. They are also connected in their hearers, both being within the New Testament canon. Different books imply different modes of hearing and types of hearers,

The density of biblical illusion in Revelation suggests that it was written for heroes who were attentive to echoes and more elusive references to Old Testament scriptures, not needing explicit citations to recognize connections. Revelation also implies heroes that were profoundly literate in the interpretation of symbolic and elusive texts with an extensive vocabulary of symbolism, familiar with things such as numerology. Further, the Book of Revelation evidence is an author who was a master of crafting texts, someone with capacities far exceeding those required for relatively artless reportage. Throughout Revelation, earlier historical events are deployed symbolically and typologically.

Bealum, chapter 2 verse 14, manor chapter 2 verse 16, Jezebel, chapter 2 verse 20, Sodom and Egypt, chapter 11 verse 8, and Babylon, chapter 14, verse 8, are all applied as symbols or types. of other things. We have symbols and archetypes such as the women, the bridal city, the lamb, the dragon, the beasts, the wine, grain, lampstands, the river of the water of life, etc, etc. The reader of Revelation is expected to see throughout the historical scriptures

as symbols and types of later escalated or heavenly realities. If you read the scriptures in such a manner, its history is unavoidably symbolic and typological. And this is quite in keeping with what we find in John itself. John's gospel has numerous allusions back to earlier events in Israel's history and to symbols as the means to understand the identity of Jesus. Jesus is related to the word of creation itself. He is like the light of the first day of creation. He is the Lamb of God. He is Jacob's Ladder. He is like the bronze serpent in the wilderness. He is like the manor as the true bread from heaven. He is the true vine elsewhere a symbol of Israel in places like Psalm 80 versus 8 to 16. Throughout the Gospel of John, Jesus performs signs and symbolic actions.

These actions are often associated with teaching material that elucidates the meaning in the events. The wedding feast at Cana is closely followed by a description of Jesus as the bridegroom. The cleansing of the temple occasions a revelation of Jesus as the true temple. The feeding of the 5,000 is followed by a discourse concerning Jesus as the true manner. The healing of the blind man is accompanied by a. teaching concerning Jesus as the light of the world. Jesus teaches concerning his death by washing his disciples' feet. Jesus often speaks symbolically about reality, rather than literally. He talks about a second birth and means spiritual resurrection. He talks about water and means the spirit. He talks

about food and means the will of his father. He talks about sleep when referring to death. Events and actions are symbolic and such symbolism can operate on more immediate levels, such as the presence of a charcoal fire at both Peter's denial and at his restoration. Once this has been recognised, however, it isn't hard to see further symbols and types. It is difficult to understand the way the Gospels tell their stories without consideration of the understanding of history in terms of which they are operating. History for the Gospel writers has a musical and symbolic character. The burden of the gospel records is not narrowly focused upon underlying brute historical facts to which they bear witness,

but also reveals the way those events meaningfully feature within the larger symphony of salvation, something manifest in symbolism and typology. Symbolism and typology were not a threat to history for the gospel writers, because history for them was symbolic and typological. The parallels listed by Gage, with which we began, taken individually, extremely weak, save perhaps for the very odd similarities between the statement about the husbands and the kings. However, without anything further, they could just be dismissed as a very strange and puzzling coincidence. The strength of such connections largely arises from a broader network of

connections and from the manifestation of their fruitfulness. The mere presence of weird common details does not take us very far. When those common details coalesce in larger meaningful, typological, and symbolic patterns, they begin to display their proper force. In an earlier reflection, I explored the overarching nuptial themes in the Gospel of John and the connections with the Song of Songs. The symbolic and typological connections in this case served to form a symbolic portrait of Jesus as the briderum, his people as his bride, and the Eschaton as a wedding. An episodes such as the encounter with the Samaritan woman employs the type scene of an encounter

with a woman at a well, leading to a marriage and or children, a scene familiar from several places in the Old Testament, and often commented upon by both Jewish and Christian scholars. Jesus uses the water as a symbol of the water that he will give, the water of the Holy Spirit, again observed the frequent slippage between concrete reality and symbolic reality. He also talks to the woman about her marital state, foregrounding the nuptial themes.

In the previous chapter, he was described, as the bridegroom, and in the chapter before that he performed one of the duties of a bridegroom in providing wine for the guests at a feast. How might this help us to understand the whore of Babylon and the bride of Christ in Revelation? The strange similarity between the description of the Samaritan woman's husbands and the whores kings will probably be our first tip-off to a broader connection. However, taken by itself, it might not be clear how it is fruitful. It could be little more than a very strange coincidental detail. Besides, the Samaritan woman is clearly portrayed as having a positive and blessed end while the whore is destroyed. How could they be alike? The reappearance of

water of life imagery at the end of Revelation is certainly interesting as that is such an important symbol in the Gospel of John. The fact that that is associated with marriage themes is also noteworthy. At this point, some might suspect that there is possibly a deeper connection to be found and we'll be trying to sniff it out. Gage's thesis is very expansive and far beyond the scope of a short reflection like this. He highlights the ways in which the horror Babylon recalls an earlier city. Another city associated with the harlot. Another city destroyed by the blowing of seven trumpets.

That city, of course, is Jericho in Joshua chapter 6. Rahab the Harlot was delivered from that city. Gage draws attention to the summons of God's people from out of the Harlot city. Revelation chapter 18 verse 4. The bridal city, he suggests, is formed out of people who formerly belonged to the Holat city. At this point, the fruitfulness of the connections might start to become more apparent. The Samaritan woman, like several other figures in the Gospel of John, is an archetypal believer, a historical person whose story is told in a way that enables others to see themselves and the people of God more generally in her. The Samaritan woman, though appearing in a

familiar nuptial type scene, is far from an ideal bride. She has had many men and is not married to her current man, besides Jesus's statement concerning her husband being evidence of his supernatural knowledge, it is also a jarring detail in terms of the nuptial type scene. Jesus' offer of water is an offer of the eternal life of the spirit, a scene that began with a request for physical water. has developed into a scene about Jesus as the true well of living water, symbolic of the spirit, with people coming out of the city to him. The movement from literal to symbolic occurs very naturally here. The Samaritan woman is a key to the conclusion of John.

She is related to both the whore and the bride, highlighting the fact that the latter comes from the former, much as Rahab, the harlot of the doomed city of Jericho, became the bride of Judah's prince. Once this is recognized, the connections that are, gauge recognises come into clear a focus, the linguistic connections whose force is very much collective and cumulative, find their import as they fruitfully explore a broader nuptial symbolism spread across both John and Revelation. Whereas we see parallels between her and the whore of

Babylon, it is in the figure of the bride on the true mountain of worship, drinking up and calling others to the true waters of life, that we see a glorified image of the Samaritan woman. And in it all, we gain a fuller appreciation of the wonderful grace of Christ. Thank you very much for listening. If you'd like to support this and other things that I do, please consider supporting me using either Patreon or PayPal. The links to those are below. God bless.