The Eric Metaxas Show - Titus Kennedy

Episode Date: June 16, 2020

Discovery Institute favorite and archaeologist Titus Kennedy shares the historical reliability of Scripture from the dawn of civilization through the early church with his newest book, "Unearthing the Bible."

the announcer and Eric is the host, but they name the show after the host. You have no idea who I am, do you? Well, do you? Mommy. Papa, do you know who I am? Mommy? Now your host, Eric Mataxis. Hey there, folks. Have I got a show for you? One of the most important things to me as a Christian, and I do claim to be some kind of Christian, is whether the Bible is true, whether we can know whether the Bible is true. whether the Bible, you know, is something that has what is called historicity, that when you read it, you are reading history. Archaeology over the last 200 years has proved over and over and over stunningly that the Bible is accurate. We sort of shouldn't be surprised, and yet we should be surprised. in any event, it's something I've gotten really excited about, particularly recently, not least because there is a brand new book called unearthing the Bible,

how archaeological, 101 archaeological discoveries I'm trying to read it, that bring the Bible to life. I have read it. It's wonderful, but I have not yet had a conversation with its author, Titus Kennedy, who is my guest. Right now, Titus Kennedy, welcome to the program. Thank you, Eric. It's great to be here. Well, listen, you're kind of hard to explain. You're a professor at Biola in what, field archaeology? In archaeology. In archaeology.

What got you interested in archaeology? When I was in elementary school, my teacher gave me a book about Heinrich Schliemann on the excavation of Troy. and that was the first time I had been introduced into the discipline of archaeology. Before that, I was interested in ancient history and history in general, but I didn't really know how they got all that information and that people actually went out and were digging up these cities. So I read that. I was fascinated by it. And from that point on, I just continued to do more reading in archaeology. And I liked it more and more. And I said, saw how it can be a really useful field for acquiring new information. And later on, I realized

how much archaeology connects to the Bible. Well, it's kind of funny you mentioned Schleeman. I'm actually really involved in something related to Schleeman. And for those folks who don't know who Schleeman was, he was the man who in the middle of the 19th century, a crazy, wealthy German genius decided, hey, I think. Homer was writing about a real world, and I want to prove it. And so he goes to Hisarlic and Diggs where they said Troy should be. And he does a really sloppy job, messes up a lot of stuff, but does prove that the Mycenaean era existed more than a thousand years before classical Greece. And it's just mind-blowing stuff.

He never discovered Homer's Ithaca, which, just what I've become involved in. But it's interesting to me, Titus, how the world of the past becomes more real, the more time passes. In other words, people 300 years ago had no idea that we would be able to know the detail of things that we know. So in your book, unearthing the Bible, you know, what are to you the biggest things that prove what we call the historicity of the Bible. I think we could pick out a few things from different areas because the Bible is covering such a long period of time. But say we went back to the time of the Israelites in Egypt. There's this papyrus Brooklyn that has several biblical Hebrew names on it. I think that's very powerful

evidence for showing the Israelites were in Egypt. If we skipped ahead to the time of David. Hold on. That's already too interesting. It's called a papyrus Brooklyn. Why is it called the papyrus Brooklyn? Because it is ended up in the Brooklyn Museum in New York and

they were the institution involved in acquiring and publishing that particular text, which was found in the Thieves area in southern Egypt probably, but it's also one of these that sort of appeared and wasn't in a regular excavation.

Now, did you say that it was in Hebrew writing, or it was an Egyptian hieroglyphs? It's in Egyptian hieroglyphs, but many of the household servants on that list have biblical Hebrew names. And what is the approximate dating of this manuscript? It would be in what's called the Second Intermediate period, and we might put it around 1,700 B.C.

in that period, roughly. And it's a manuscript or is it a graven on stone? It's a manuscript. It's a papyrus document written in ink. You said that. Okay. Now, I want to explain to my audience why this is insane, why this is big news, because there are tons and tons and tons of scholars who, for generations,

now centuries have claimed that the whole story from the patriarchs through Moses and the exodus, you know, the slavery in Egypt and the exit, all of that is mythical. And we know it's mythical because there's no evidence and there never will be any evidence. You're telling me that right around the time that the Hebrews would have been slaves in Egypt, boom, now we have a document from Egypt in the right century, in, you know, recently found with Hebrew names. I mean, this is huge news. I mean, is this the kind of thing that should be on the cover of newspapers?

It seems to me it's that big. It seems to me also, and yet it's been known for decades. And while some see it as very compelling evidence, others have just sort of ignored it. That's kind of the point, right? This is why I'm writing my book right now where I touch on some of this stuff. Because, you know, as I was looking at your book and other books, I thought to myself, wait a minute, this is huge.

This is huge, huge, huge news. Why doesn't everyone know this? You know, it's kind of like we discovered Pluto in 1930. Everybody knows that. It's not on the newspapers today, but the point is that we discovered this, this planet, now it's a planetoid, whatever you want to call it. But it's common knowledge. The idea that we have historical evidence, as you just said, papyrus evidence, written in Egyptian hieroglyphics from around 1700 BC with Hebrew names, this is major stuff. And as we are

saying, nobody seems to know this stuff, including a lot of the Christians that are watching or listening to this program. Yeah, it's unfortunate. But I hope that people, will get interested in learning these kinds of things because the information is out there. Sometimes it's hard to find or excess, but it's not completely hidden from view. Okay, what else? You were just about to leap to to another object. Yeah, we went a little bit farther forward in time. The Merneptus-Stealy. That's actually very famous and well-known, but it's the first widely recognized inscription that contains the name Israel on it.

And it shows it in a way... Mernepta was a pharaoh of Egypt? Correct. He was a pharaoh of Egypt in the late 13th century BC. Okay, so... So this is about the time of judges and when Israel's settling the land. Right. In other words,

is after the Exodus, and Mernepta is a pharaoh in Egypt, and a steely, is it always pronounced steely or is it steel? I never get that right. It's S-T-E-L-E. Steeley or some call it a Stella. Or Estella, like Marlon Brando, for example, would call it a Stella. Okay, so if you don't get that joke, it's just because you're young and I resent you. We're going to go to a break. The new book is unearthing the Bible. We'll be right back. Hey folks, I'm talking about biblical archaeology. Amazing stuff. The book I'm talking about is unearthing the Bible. And I have Titus Kennedy, the author, with me. Now, let's just continue. You say that the Mernepta Stella Steeley is something from whatever, 1,300 BC, something, 1,200 something B.C. And it's the first time that the Hebrews are mentioned as a people. Is that what you're saying? Yes, it's the first time that we see the name Israel outside the Bible, and it's written in such a way that we know it's a group of people. It's not a location. It's not a personal name. It's this group of people, and they're situated in Canaan.

They're the most prominent group of people in Canaan, so we know they've established themselves there. And that fits very well with the narrative that we read about the settlement of Canaan and the Bible. So what other kinds of documents along these lines are as impressive? Because I think, you know, the more – the farther back you go, the less you expect to find, right? Like, it would be really, you know, awesome to find the skull of Moses. But the fact of the matter is that a lot of these things will be lost to history. But we do keep finding things. So let's keep going.

What other stuff have we found that, I guess, we could describe as shocking to the biblical skeptics? To tell Dan Steeley, when that came out, when that was discovered, that made huge news because in the 80s and early 90s, most ancient historians and archaeologists were starting to lean towards the view that King David never really existed. He was some legendary or mythological king because we had no contemporary inscription. That is no inscription from around his time that mentioned him. And then while digging at the site of Dan and northern Israel in this courtyard area in front of the city, they unearthed this broken piece of a steely. And part of it mentioned the House of David in the context of the dynasty of Israelite king. I mean, look, I remember reading about it at New York Times. This came out in 1993.

I had not been a Christian for too long. And I remember reading this and thinking, what? You mean to tell me that David, who also, like Moses, has been written off as mythological. We have no evidence of him. He's kind of like King Arthur or whatever. Suddenly, we find in 1993 a steely at the Tel Dan that says the name, the House of David. I mean, that's huge news. It was big news at the time, but that is one of the big ones because, again, David was considered mythical. I mean, once you go back 1,000 BC and before, you know, the skeptics are kind of pretending like, well, we know we're never going to find anything from that because we know that it actually never happened. These are just stories.

Right, right. And there was another steely that had actually been known for a long time that Some epigraphers reevaluated, and they found that the same phrase, House of David, also appeared on it. So now the debate around David is centered archaeologically over the extent of his kingdom. Does it match the extent that the Bible talks about? And they're digging up more and more cities every day and strong evidence for that. Can we talk about the Sinakarib prism? Absolutely. It's one of my favorites.

You talk about it right now? Yeah. Could you talk about it? Sure. Tell my author who doesn't understand who was Sinakurib and what's the Sinakurib prism and what's Cuniform. Sinacurib was an Assyrian king who ruled in the late 8th and early 7th century V.C. So around 700 BC, around the time of Hezekiah.

This is when the Assyrian Empire was probably the most powerful empire in the world, certainly in the ancient Near East. And Sinakurip, in one of his many campaigns, he went down to attack Judah because he wanted to take Judah and have more control over this kingdom. They were already sort of a tributary state. But he launched this attack. He defeated the city of Lakish, and he went to Jerusalem and besieged it. If we read the biblical narrative, we see that Hezekiah paid him tribute, and then it talks about the angel, the Lord, destroying Sinakrib's mighty warriors and officers, and he goes back to Nineveh.

Well, if we look at the Sinakrib prism... Now, when it mentions... What's the date roughly that we're talking about? Go ahead. The date of the attack or the siege of Jerusalem, that's about 701 BC. Okay. And so the prism is from just after that. Yeah, it's a roughly 15 years after. So he's collecting all his campaigns and, or excuse me, about 10 years after.

He's collecting all his campaigns and he's memorializing. Your video is breaking up. Your, sorry, your audio is breaking up a little bit. So just repeat what you were just going to say there again. All right. So it's from about 10 years after the siege of Jerusalem, and Sinakur has decided to collect his campaigns and memorialize them, and he sends them around the empire on these prisms.

So we have a prism made out of clay, and they have written on it in Assyrian Cuneiform, which is this wedge-shaped writing. It's very difficult. to read and probably the most inefficient writing that existed, but it survived for many centuries. But he records the Assyrian version of these events on there. And of course he has the campaign against the kingdom of Judah. He mentions it by name. He mentioned King Hezekiah by name. He says that he defeated 46 strong-walled towns of the Judeans and that he went up to Jerusalem

and he besieged it and he and Hezekiah was like a bird in a cage, he says. And then he talks about the tribute that Hezekiah gave to him. And it even matches the biblical narrative in the amount of gold that is given and then excessive silver. And then the narrative for these Syrians just stops. He doesn't say that he took Jerusalem. And of course he doesn't mention that his army was partially destroyed or that. that any of his officers were killed, anything like that. It's just, it's over, it's done.

That's it. And that is the way that these ancient kingdoms and empires would render their losses or their defeats or even their draws. They tried to either make it sound like they won or they would just leave the information out. But the Sinacra prison has all of these exact parallels to the biblical account about Hezekiah and the Assyrians. Well, some of it's funny because, you know, to put it in context, some people will know this and some people won't. But, yes, all of these ancient rulers would dramatically exaggerate or boast about whatever they had done. They would exaggerate the numbers and so on and so forth. But in the case of Sinakarab, in this case, he doesn't say we defeated Jerusalem because obviously he didn't.

But he says we had Hezekiah trapped like a bird in a cage. In other words, we laid siege to the city, and so we trapped him in there for quite a while. But that was the best we could do. In other words, we made him miserable enough that he had to pay us some tribute. A lot of people will know also the famous tunnel. Is it called Hezekiah's Tunnel or the Tunnel of Siloam? Yeah, Hezakias Tunnel is usually what it's called. Well, it's fascinating that, you know, I've only learned this recently,

but the idea that there was some kind of a tunnel or something, but Hezekiah wisely saw that Sinakorib is going to lay siege to Jerusalem, and he says, we need to make sure that we cut off the water supply outside Jerusalem, so that all of the water that's coming, we want to make it stay inside, because if it goes outside, it will help refresh his troops, and he'll be more effective, and he can hang out longer. And so they dig this tunnel. And that alone is amazing because we know it wasn't until the mid-19th century that that tunnel was finally identified as such.

Right. And it was pretty incredible engineering for ancient times. And then they had this inscription near the end of the tunnel that talked about them actually cutting through the rock with the axes. And because of the analysis of the way that it was written in the style of the left, letters, then scholars were able to date that to approximately the time of Hezekiah also. So it just fits so well. And you know that that inscription was found by a kid playing hooky. Did you know that?

Yeah, yeah. And did you know that that kid was adopted by the man who wrote one of my favorite hymns? I don't know if you know the story. I did not know that part of it, no. The man who wrote the hymn, it is well with my soul. after his tremendous trials, losing his daughters to drowning and losing his company, everything. He moved to Jerusalem and had other kids and adopted a kid. And the one kid who he adopted was playing hooky from school, and they went to check out this tunnel.

And as he slipped, he noticed this writing on the wall. And of course, he told his schoolmaster about it. And the schoolmaster was like, I don't care if you played hooky, I want to see this. And so the rest is history. We're going to go to a break. It is wonderful talking about the historicity of the Bible. The new book by Titus Kennedy is unearthing the Bible. Folks, stay tuned.

We'll be right back. Hey, folks, President Trump's birthday is coming up June 14th. It comes up every year on June 14th Flag Day. And there's no better way to express your gratitude for him and the work he's done for our country than by taking a moment to wish him a happy birthday. All you have to do is text the word cupcakes to 8802. to wish the president a happy birthday. Again, that's cupcakes to 88022, to wish President Trump a happy birthday

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I'm talking to the author of a brand new book. It's called Unearthing the Bible, 101 archaeological discoveries that bring the Bible to life. And they sure do. The author is Titus Kennedy. Titus, welcome back. Thanks, Eric. We were just talking about a number of things. The Hezekiah Tunnel, as I've been doing my research into this,

it's fascinating how these things are discovered and when they are discovered. I mean, I realized that the Hezekiah Tunnel, which, you know, it's kind of a big deal, right? You were saying it's an engineering project. Hezekiah knows Sinakorib is going to lay siege. And, you know, so he builds this tunnel. And the tunnel is discovered, you know, at some point, but they're not sure what it is. And time passes and then somebody else looks at it. And then finally they realize, oh, my goodness, this is the tunnel that Hezekiah dug.

And then they find this plaque. And it, we just find more and more and more and more. And I guess that's why I find this so interesting, because the evidence for the Bible continues to increase, not to decrease. Obviously, you know that in the 19th century, and certainly before that, people never expected this stuff to turn up. Archaeology had to be invented, I guess, first, right? Right. And in the 19th century, that's when the largest movement of criticism, historical criticism towards the Bible had started and got rolling. And at that time, there just wasn't very much evidence in terms of archaeology and these facts from cities

and artifacts to show that it was historical. And so it was easier for people to critique it historically and it probably made more sense to them. But if we look at the last 150 years, the amount of discoveries which corroborate the narrative of the Bible, both old and New Testaments is just incredible and new things are being discovered every year, basically. So what are some of the other big ones that, you know, people who know nothing, they're just, you know, tuned in and they don't know anything. What else has been discovered that is really major proof for the truth of the Bible, the historical truth of the Bible? another one from the Old Testament that I always really liked.

It's called the Meshah Steeley. And this is one that also has that phrase, House of David on it. But the main content of this inscription is the story of how Meshah of Moab was under the control of Israel. And then he rebelled successfully. And this is a story that's found in Second King's Chapter 3. And you look at the two texts and you see this is exactly the same story. It's just from the perspective of the Moabite King Mesha. See, that's what I find funny is that you find all of this extra-biblical corroboration.

You find things all around the area that are corroborating things in the Bible and proving that the Bible doesn't exist in a vacuum. What about the city of Jericho? Talk about that. So Jericho is pretty famous because of the falling walls in the book of Joshua. And so many people went to Sunday school. They've probably heard of it. And yet Jericho became one of the most controversial digs or in some people's mind.

It became a case that showed the conquest wasn't historical. But if we go back and we analyze all the findings there, What we see is that the archaeologists, the various ones who dug there, they actually discovered that the walls fell down outward. And then there was a big fire that destroyed the entire city and that whoever was attacking, they didn't loot the entire city. They left so much of the material. They're like all of the grain stores and so forth. And then it was abandoned also for a long period of time. And all of this type of thing fits exactly with the story that we see in Joshua.

And so then the debate got centered on, well, when did that happen? Did it actually happen in the biblical time frame or not? And we can say from at least two lines of evidence from specific types of pottery and also Egyptian royal scarab seals, that it happened around 1400 BC, which is the time that the Bible tells us Joshua and Israelites would have attacked Jericho. It's funny, too, because if you're a betting man, I'm not. But you always bet on the Bible. I mean, because even when there's evidence against it, a couple of decades passed

and then suddenly the evidence changes. I know that there was a British woman archaeologist who in the 1950s seemed to conclude that, you know, it was about 1550 BC, therefore it's way too early for when, you know, Joshua was supposed to have been there. And then, you know, sure enough, we find she was kind of digging in the wrong part of the city. And what about the house? This is really freaky. The house of rehab.

So the house of rehab in the story that said that that one wasn't destroyed when the walls fell down. And it was built up against the city wall, which is something that they commonly did at that time because of a lack of space inside the city walls. But if you look at the excavation plans, you see that there. There is this one section of the city wall that was dug that didn't fall down. And so the theory was put forth that maybe that's where the house of Rehab was located because we had this small part of the city wall that wasn't destroyed like the rest. We're going to go to another break. Folks, I'm talking to Titus Kennedy.

He's the author of a brand new book on biblical archaeology called Unearthing the Bible. This is the Arkmataksa show. We'll be right back. Hey folks, welcome back. It's the Eric Metaxas show. We're talking about biblical archaeology. I could not be more fascinated. There's a new book called Uneerthing the Bible, 101 archaeological discoveries that bring the Bible to life. The author is Titus Kennedy, and I'm talking to him right now. Titus, what are some of the other things that, you know, people who know nothing about this subject, that they would be interested in knowing about discoveries, you know? the Babylonian conquest of Jerusalem and the whole Daniel period a lot of time in the Bible is dedicated to that story and if we went to look at archaeology we'd see not only is there evidence of the destruction of Jerusalem at that time but there are actually Babylonian documents that talk about the attack by Nebuchadnezzar on Judah taking away a king into exile giving him rations setting up a puppet king in his place, who of course was Zedekiah. And then we have all these exiles in Babylon.

And Daniel, the most well known of those, in his book, he talks about the fall of Babylon to the Persians and that there is this Belshazzar who is ruling Babylon at the time. And for many years, scholars who were critical of the Bible, they said, who is this Belchazar? We've never heard of him. He doesn't appear in any ancient records and any Babylonian documents. So the author of Daniel must have just made him up. It's not a historically reliable book. But then some things were discovered. Like these cylinders of Nabonitis, who was Belchazar's father. And it talks about how Nabonitis left. And he put the kingdom in charge of his firstborn son, Belchazar. And that's why Belchazar was the king of Babylon.

at that time. It's also why Belchazar said he could only give the third place in the kingdom to Daniel, because his father was still number one. He was number two, and three was the vacant spot next. Yeah, it is amazing. We haven't even touched on the New Testament. It just goes on and on. If we're to leap forward to the New Testament, what have we discovered that would surprise people from that period? The New Testament is different in that we have so much more information. Basically, all the locations that are talked about in the New Testament have been found. We know where they are, even if some of them haven't been excavated yet. We know that they exist. So many of the people mentioned in the New Testament are attested in Roman period inscriptions. You know, people like

whoever Paul ran into that was in some kind of political position, whether it's Erastus in Corinth or Sergius Paulus from Cyprus. The list goes on and on with all those people, Gallio and Corinth and so forth. But is Gallio the pro-counsel who, who, because I was reading on that, and it's funny how, again, over and over we discus. discover things that prove what the Bible says, that the historical accuracy of Luke is amazing in acts. I mean, every name, every person. And if you doubt, all you have to do is wait a little while, then, you know, it becomes clearer and clearer. The, the, the, the, the, the, the, the aschuary containing the bones of Caiaphas.

Talk about that. Yeah, Caiaphas, the high priest, who was involved in the trial of Jesus. He was a very prominent and powerful person for a while while he was acting high priest. And so he's some of that we might expect to have evidence of. And indeed, Josephus, for example, mentions him. Joseph Caiaphas was his name. but in the 90s, about 1990, they found the family tomb of the Caiaphas family, and inside there they found this extremely elaborate usherry or burial box. And on it it had the inscription that said Joseph's son of

Caiaphas, an Aramaic, which was his name. It's in Jerusalem. It's very elaborate. It's from the first century. There's some bones from a 60-something-year-old man in there. Really seems to be the usherry of that high priest. Now, more recently, something that connects to that was discovered, which was the ushuary of his granddaughter. And on that, she also says that the family is of the priestly line of Ma'aziah, which is mentioned in Chronicles. And so we know for sure then, okay, this was that priestly family. You said the granddaughter. And that must be fairly recent. When was that discovered? Because I've not heard anything about that. I believe it was a few or several years ago, not too long ago.

Is that in your book? Because I must have missed that then. It's in a footnote, I think, on the Joseph Caiaphas Oshari. So what else is happening now that people just aren't aware of? I mean, what has been discovered that hasn't even been written up or, you know, acknowledged yet? The Praetorium where Jesus was tried before pilot, that's something that really hasn't had its archaeological excavation report published yet. It's appeared in a couple articles and in a book about Jesus, but the archaeologists who were involved in that haven't quite finished it. but it's a fascinating location. So the traditional...

That's putting a mile on theitis. You're telling me they've discovered the Praetorium where Jesus stood trial. They've actually discovered this. I mean, that's stunning. Now, that's not in your book, right? It's not in my book because I don't talk about locations. No, I talk about Pilot and the Pilot Stone,

which mentions Pilate as Prefect of Judea. But, yes, this Praetorium, not only the building, but actually the stone pavement that's mentioned in the book of John and the Bima seat on which pilot would have sat or stood. Those were also both discovered there. And this is kind of along the wall of Jerusalem on the western side of the city. It used to be the Palace of Herod, the Great. And when was this discovered, roughly? In the 1970s when they dug that. And it's just been lying fallow all this time, so to speak,

from a scholarly point of view. I mean, they discovered it, but no one's written about it in 40 plus years. A couple of articles and some mentions, but not an official report yet, correct? This is mind-blung. We're going to go to final break. Forgive me, folks. We're going to go to a final break. I'm talking to Titus Kennedy. The book is unearthing the Bible. Don't go away. Hey, folks, we're talking to Titus Kennedy, author of Unearthing the Bible, loaded with fascinating information. We're coming to the end of an hour, Titus. What else do we need to know about? Should we talk about the biblical, the discovery of Sodom and Stephen Collins, or is that something

that is not in your book? That's not in my book, but I was thinking, since we're on a New Testament, there is something that's been out in the news very recently called the Nazareth in Scripture. that I think people would find interesting. So this was a marble slab on which an edict of one of the emperors was inscribed, and it talks about how there's a new law that anybody who breaks into a stone-sealed tomb and takes a body out with wicked intent is going to suffer the death penalty. And this had been connected in the past to the passage in Matthew 28,

where the soldiers who were guarding the tomb were told, here's some money, now go spread the story that the disciples of Jesus stole the body so that they could make up this resurrection story. And this was seen as the Roman reaction to it. And I would say a lot of people agreed with that assessment or thought it was a possibility. But then we had this new study that came out where they tested a piece of,

the marble and said that it came from a quarry on the island of coast, just off the west coast of Turkey. And they said, oh, okay, then this has nothing to do with Jesus. And they came up with another explanation that it was talking about this tyrant named Nikius of Coase. It's just goes on and on. It's so fascinating to me. What is like the Holy Grail? We're going to be at a time here. What are some of the things that you think might be discovered, but that have not yet?

Maybe the Ark of the Covenant. Personally, I would lean towards it doesn't exist anymore, but obviously that would be a huge find. Everybody would recognize what that was. That's so well known. I think Noah's Ark would be extremely interesting, although, again, I'm not sure that any remnants of that are still in existence, and we do have ancient flood stories. but something else connecting to Jesus, some kind of inscription, maybe indictment against him from the first century in Jerusalem, I think that would also be huge. That's to me the joy of all of this, is that we don't know what's going to turn up next. I mean, I remember reading about the fall of the walls in Jericho, and that must have been around 1990, I think, when this big report came out.

in the New York Times that, oh, yeah, by the way, it is dated to the right period. And oh, yeah, there was a fire and the walls fell this way. And, you know, the more you learn, the more fascinating it becomes that they'd have this kind of big supporting wall and then another wall of bricks. And it's the wall of bricks that fell down, enabling people to climb over it. And it all comes together. And it seems to me that the direction is always in the direction of the historicity of the Bible, the veracity of the Bible, as historical writing. So you're in a really, really exciting field. I'm glad you're doing it. And I'm really glad that you wrote this book, Titus, because we need to know these kinds of things. It drives me crazy that so many of us who

we say we believe the Bible, we don't have a beginning of the knowledge of how much extra biblical evidence there is for the Bible, and we kind of need to know it. So thank you for writing the book, and we look forward to having you back to continue what's a very important conversation. God bless you. Thank you, Eric. I appreciate it.