Inside Writing a Scholarly Article on Ancient Greek Literature

Well, greetings, welcome to The Dividing Line. It's an early edition. I even forgot to tweet this. Probably absolutely no one listening at all, but, um, oh well. Rich said we needed to go early today, so we're going early today.

We've got a trip up to Prescott this weekend and he's packing all sorts of stuff up and, you know, I just drive up, I do my thing and leave, and then he gets to pack all that stuff back up and bring it back.

Poor guy. Anyway, and probably doesn't get to listen to anything that I have to say, but he's heard it all 10 ,000 times before, so if there is, like, you know, getting up to Prescott on a Saturday during the summer can be a little tricky if they have any problems on the 17 northbound.

So if I can't make it, Rich needs to realize he's heard all this a thousand times before, so he's got to do it himself. So that's just all there is to it. So, um, that's what we're doing, uh, this weekend.

And then, um, like I said, Lord willing, uh, starting toward the, um, middle later part of July, got a trip up to, uh, Colorado, get up into the high country, the very dry, dry high country. I, I'm telling you folks, um, this summer is going to be rough.

It really is. Um, you know, you're talking about $6 gas. How about $6 water? Uh, that's, that's, that's a real reality. That's a real possibility. Uh, people just aren't talking about it. And I don't know why.

And I do need to say, I tweeted about this. Let me just say this real quick. You know, we complain about everything and often appropriately, but when things are done right, we almost never say a thing.

You know, I try when someone really does a good job, you know, in a restaurant or a business, something like that, you know, I try to give them kudos, some type of encouragement, you know, people have to deal with the public all the time.

Um, you know, when I would, when I used to fly, um, now my wife worked for the airlines. I didn't talk a lot about that while she was working for the airlines for obvious reasons, but she did. Uh, she wasn't a stewardess or anything.

She worked in management, uh, in a bunch of different areas, reservations primarily. Anyway. Um, so I, I had a soft spot for them anyways, but man, if you want to see someone's heart melt, you know, see someone there's a flight, they're not, they're not being given information.

People are just angry and ripping into them. And you say something nice to them, you know, uh, compliment them on the job they're doing their patients, something you want, they will do anything for you.

They, they, they will, they will make sure you're the first one on the plane. You know, once it gets ready to go there, it's just amazing. Just little things like that, trust me, can, can get you a long, long ways.

So month before last, I get my water bill and it's three times the normal, and I'm doing everything I can to save water. And so I'm like, oh great. Either the meter got read wrong or I've got a leak someplace.

And of course, what are you afraid of? My house is, uh, uh, 57 years old. Yeah. 57 years old. So you can have slab leaks. You can have all sorts of fun, stuff like that. And, um, so I'm like, let's see what next month looks like and see if this continues.

And, uh, I went for a run yesterday morning. I'm not doing long runs. Not yet. You know, I don't even, I honestly don't even know if I'm going to get to a 10 K again. I really, really don't. I used to be something I do like every week.

Um, I don't know. We'll see. Uh, I just don't want to get injured. So anyway, uh, I get back from a run and I see water on top of, you know, that metal thing out here, we have this metal thing on top of the water meter out toward the street and there's water on top of it.

And of course I pull it off and it's just full of water. And, um, so I wait until I figured places, you know, government agencies are open and I go online and lo and behold, didn't not take much work at all to find myself on this page where you can report a water leak.

It's the very first selection where it is. Uh, you can upload a picture, you know, stuff like that. And I'm like, okay, I guess this is how you do it now. You know? Um, and better than sitting on hold forever, like calling the motor vehicle department or something.

And, uh, so I snap a picture of it and upload it. And I'm like, I wonder how long before I hear back from anybody on this. And so that afternoon I hear a noise out front. Well, my wife comes out and she says, something's going on with the water.

I can't get the water to work. And we sort of looked at each other like, huh? And we look out front, there's a city water department vehicle sitting in front of our house. And he said he rang the doorbell.

It's one of those ring things. So, you know, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Um, we didn't hear it. And by 2 .30 in the afternoon, it's 8 .30, I filled out the form. By 2 .30 in the afternoon, we had a brand new water meter, all fixed, leak gone.

And he gave us something to where we can call the city to have them adjust our water bill for the last two months, uh, to make up for, I mean, it wasn't, yeah, it was a lot higher, but you know, it's not like $1 ,000 or something.

It was, you know, might've been 50 or 60 grand total. Um, but he was really nice and he cleaned up the place and he was jovial. He's out in the sun. It's just like, you know, when you meet somebody that actually seems to enjoy their job, does a good job and is out there the same day you filled out the form and gets it taken care of, we complain about everything.

If you're going to, if I'm going to feel right to complain the next time I get mistreated, then you gotta, you gotta give kudos where they're due when someone just obviously did a good job and he did.

So congratulations to the City of Phoenix water services department or whatever it's called. Um, they did a good job. Uh, you know, government normally doesn't, uh, but in this instance, got it done. Now, of course, since it's water and it's Phoenix, uh, that's probably a little higher priority than, than in a lot of places.

Um, because we are going to be more than a desert, uh, this, um, this summer. No, no two ways about it. Uh, that's scary. Um, okay. So this afternoon, um, three 30 hour time is five 30 central daylight time.

I had to correct Jeremiah Nortier because he put out the, he put out this flyer. You know, he does all these AI generated flyer things. Everybody does now. Um, and he, he put, uh, five 30 PM CST. And I'm like, Jeremiah, no one's on CST right now.

You're on CDT daylight time, not standard time. Nobody outside of people who live in Phoenix who don't do daylight time understand this. I got an email today for a online doctor's consultation. And guess what it said?

It said, please make note of the time zone. And what did it say? CST. So I can't help myself. I respond and say, well, the irony here is you folks need to be noting the time zone because you're not on CST you're on CDT.

And the reason I know this is because I don't do what you do. Isn't that weird that the, the one, the one group of people that have stood up and said, we're not playing with our clocks are the only people that understand how clocks work.

It does drive me just a little bit batty. Um, so at five 30 central daylight time, which is six 30 Eastern daylight time, three 30 Pacific daylight time, uh, which is three 30 mountain standard time, which is what we are always on.

Stop it. Um, I'm going to be joining Jeremiah Nortier and we're going to be making a debate announcement and he's put up a, uh, uh, graphic. And since the graphic has the guy I'm going to be debating, but in outline, uh, there's been a lot of guesses as to who it is.

So I, and, and, you know, someone has mentioned, uh, latent flowers. I'm just like, what program have you been listening to? And you look at the picture. It's like, really? Um, no, um, it it'll be, uh, it'll be very interesting.

And so you need to tune in to, uh, the apologetic dog, uh, YouTube channel, uh, this afternoon, I'll be coming back to do that. Uh, we were going to do it right after this program, but Rich needed to move it up.

So that's why there's a time gap there. So make sure to be watching for that. We'll, uh, have a fun time discussing that particular issue. Uh, so there's continues to be a tremendous amount of discussion going on, uh, in social media prompted by Senator Lee.

Um, even more conversation than was prompted by, did you see that clip from the, uh, senatorial baseball game last night? That, I think that guy is a Senator from Missouri because, because he was wearing a St. Louis, uh, cap.

So I, I, I, I asked Ken and he seemed to know who he was. So I think, I think he's from Missouri, but one of those senators got on his horsey last night. I didn't know senators could run that fast and made a major league level diving catch.

I mean, smashed his face into the ground. Um, but he caught that fly ball. What, what? Oh, got back up and went back out in the field. Yeah. Obviously I didn't look it up, but I, that guy played at least college ball.

Um, because, uh, and he's sore today. I can guarantee you that, but that was impressive. I, I, and then of course, as soon as I said that people, well, but if, if they would have passed the SAVE Act, okay, I know, I know, I know.

I'm not even, I'm not even talking about that. Good grief. Can we at least go, Hey, that was good. That, that, that was laying it out there. Um, yeah. Uh, if you haven't seen it, check it out. It was, it was major league level.

It really was. It was very, very good. Can't we, can't we enjoy at least something? I mean, like last night, uh, I guess the, the Spurs just collapsed. I think they were up like 29 points in the fourth quarter and let the Knicks come back and win it by one.

Uh, they're going to lose the series now as, as a result of that complete collapse. Um, but man, the behavior of New Yorkers, I mean, it's almost like ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK is already real without putting the walls up.

You know, I mean, it's almost like when they made the movie ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK, they could not have realized that in only a few decades, that was going to be what New Yorkers is normally like all the time.

And by the way, I, I did do a, I recorded a program not last night, but the night before last, um, for some young guys, they're literally they're 20 and 20, 20 years and 22 years of age. So the youngest one's only like three and a half years older than my oldest granddaughter.

And so, you know, and they're literally the whole program is we're interviewing older men to gain wisdom from them. And so they wanted to ask me about Islam and we did two hours where it was just simply a core dump.

It was just sort of stream of consciousness. Let's talk about Islam. Let's talk about debates I've done. Let's talk about this doctrine, that doctrine just for two hours, I just blah, blah, blah, blah.

They hardly got where the edge was, but you're going to love this rich. Um, I was telling them about Akhmed Didat and Akhmed Didat is still, as far as I know, the most listened to Muslim speaker in the world.

And he died 21 years ago. His videotapes were distributed everywhere. And, um, so I'm telling him about his, uh, crucifixion or crucifixion presentation and how he's a showman, but he would, he'd really keep people's attention and all this stuff.

And then I said, now he always, he was very careful about who he would debate to make sure he'd always win. And so I said, he only made that, he made a mistake one time. He debated Joshua Dall, who crushed him, crushed him in that debate, McDowell did.

Um, and then I made this statement. Now, if you really want to cringe, if you really want to see something painful, then you need to watch the debate Akhmed Didat did with Jimmy Swaggart. And it got silent.

Neither one of them had ever heard the name Jimmy Swaggart. Had no earthly idea. Think about it. He crashed, what, in the early nineties? So that was, you know, eight, 10 years before they were born. So why, why would they have ever heard of Jimmy Swaggart?

But they had no earthly idea. And my response was, okay, I'll get it started here in a second. Hold on. Self CPR. Good, good skill to have. Um, it really makes me think how many of my favorite illustrations just don't work anymore for a growing percentage of the audience.

I mean, you know, we had all the stuff. Yeah. Amongst Christians, that shouldn't be an issue. Uh, you're supposed to, uh, respect the gray hair and stuff like that, but who does that anymore? But, uh, yeah, I, I, I lost it when I'm going, wait a minute, wait a minute.

You don't know who Jimmy Swaggart was? And then I started thinking about it. There was no internet then. And the reason we knew him was he was on TV. He had a major TV network presence. Um, there isn't even a TV network to have a presence in now.

It's gotta be Netflix or Discovery or, uh, you know, whatever. Uh, everything has changed, but they had never heard of Jimmy Swaggart. It's like, well, not that you're missing anything. It's just, just missing, you know, the last decades before you were born.

Um, so anyway, um, anyways, back to what I was saying, so much discussion going on about Mormonism and how to define Christianity. But what's become fascinating is how do you even define Mormonism? This was not something I saw coming.

Um, I mean, we've always known that Mormonism has an extremely subjective element to it, but you still had an organized leadership and you still had documentation. I mean, the Mormons like to write books.

I've told about how we'd, we'd go up to Salt Lake City for the conference and we'd, we, you know, one of the fun things to do at lunch after you went and hit taco time, um, at the mall across the street was to get to the LDS bookstore.

And it was a two-level bookstore. It was huge and we've just packed people everywhere. And the theology stuff and the LDS scriptures, they had a huge, really nice LDS scriptures section, all sorts of different versions of the triple and the quad and stuff like that.

That was downstairs. So you'd go downstairs and we're looking for the new books from the apostles and all this kind of stuff. And there was a, there was a body of doctrine that if you knew it, you're going to be talking about it with everybody who stopped to talk to you during the conference.

So we're passing out the first vision track, the idea of running across a Mormon that would go, oh, come on, he was, you know, prophets make mistakes, you know, um, yeah, his 1832 diary didn't have the same story and yeah, it evolved.

No, you're not going to run into anybody like that. Not back then. Not going to happen. Yes, sir. You raised a microphone.

Oh, don't forget the basement. There was a basement down there where the used books. So I used to go running down. You guys are going looking for the new stuff. I'd run down to the basement. That's where I found my 1833 book of commandments.

That's where I found.

A bunch of old stuff. Well, I'm wondering if we're talking about the same thing. There was only one set of stairs to go down that I remember.

Yeah. But there was, when you got to the first level, there was one below that. Yeah. And it was the basement where they had all the used books.

Well, yeah, it was, you haven't been up there believe, and it's been three years to two years since I've been up there and actually went downtown. It is honestly, if it's a quarter of the size of the store that we would go to, I'd be surprised.

And now precious moments. The theology section could almost fit in the studio here. Really could. It was like four or five shelves, four or five cases. That was it. And yeah, it was, Mormonism has changed.

I don't see how a religion can survive what is happening in Mormonism right now. When you can literally have every student that walks off the campus of BYU become his own prophet and pick and choose what he's going to believe.

And Blake Osler is responsible for a lot of this. But he's been given that freedom by the leadership of the church. Bruce R. McConkie would not have allowed any of this to happen. No way. If McConkie was alive today, he'd be starting a new church.

He'd claim to be the prophet and start. Well, if he could do it, but if they wouldn't allow him to, he'd be starting a new church. He'd be like, I know what we've believed. There isn't any question about this.

And there's plenty of old-time Mormons up there in Utah doing the same thing. The guy you mentioned years ago, it's 10 times worse now. This isn't what I've ever been taught. This isn't what I've ever believed.

What are you people babbling about? So we really are watching a situation of the de-evolution of a modern day cult. We really are. I think some interesting books, if we can still write books in the future, once our freedom of expression is taken away, which is happening in the UK, and that's what they want to do here.

So just be prepared. But I think some fascinating books may be written in the future documenting the de-evolution and the destruction, the self-destruction of Mormonism. Because it's getting to the point now where there is no way to say this is what the Mormon Church teaches.

Because if you can take the King Follett Funeral Discourse, if you can take the Sermon on the Grove, and the hundreds and thousands of times that those have been quoted in LDS writings, I saw something recently, I think Blake Osler was involved with it, there's actually, because I mentioned this and someone directed me to it, there are online databases of all of the General Conference talks.

Because General Conference, again, this isn't official theology. Well, what is official theology anymore? But there has been, anyways, the idea amongst Mormons that the General Conference is sort of a time of semi-revelation.

You have the presence of the Spirit, and you have the leadership of the Church, and the gathered saints, and the King Follett Discourse was, no, Sermon on the Grove was at conference time. So there's always been this idea that the General Conference is a time, a special time of spiritual leadership and stuff like that.

And so, someone pointed out that there have been fewer and fewer references to the plurality of gods as you get into the modern period. And that database seems to back that up. Now, of course, in old time Mormons would say, that's because you don't have to keep repeating the basics.

I mean, we're all reading teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith. We all used to read Mormon doctrine, and articles of faith, and doctrines of salvation, and stuff like that. That used to be what we were all looking at, and it's right on the surface of all of those things.

And there's this thing called the Temple Ceremony that sort of makes it real obvious as to how this works. And but the argument being made now is, well, but you see, it's being de-emphasized. And then I read this guy.

I still got it up here. That God has always been God as far as I, along with all my scriptural canon, I guess section 132 doesn't exist in the scriptural canon, and the overwhelming majority of all ecclesiastical leaders of my faith, I'm concerned.

That God, in my belief, taught that man is not complete without the woman for a reason. So this Neo-Mormonism, this guy's a Neo-Morm. These people would have been excommunicated in the 1990s. They would have been.

I don't, there is just no question in my mind. They don't run any risk of that now. What has happened, and what is the leadership thinking? But one thing's for sure, it makes ministry to Mormons really hard now.

I mean, we used to, we used to do training before we'd take people out. We've got old pictures of all of us as kids, basically, in somebody's living room someplace, doing role-playing. Remember Kevin Johnson and I?

Because Kevin looked like a Mormon missionary. Put him a white shirt and a dark tie, and he could have gotten on a bike, and they never would have suspected anything. He would play the Mormon missionary, and we would do role-playing for everybody to prepare them to go out to the temple, and Mesa, Salt Lake City, whatever.

And it was valid training. Why? Because that's what they'd end up hearing. We knew what the Mormons would say. Now, who knows? You're going to run into every variation, and, well, I'm not sure I accept that.

No, you know, my seminary teacher says, we don't really believe that anymore. And it makes evangelism tougher, because you have to make a Mormon, you got to get them lost before you can get them saved, I guess.

But the reality is that the religious system cannot hold together if there is not a fundamental core that holds it together. Um, and I think Mormonism is losing it right in front of our eyes. It's an interesting day to be alive.

And this was not something, you know, I always wondered about, you know, subjectivism and things like that. Yeah, it's, but I didn't see social media coming. I didn't see the internet coming. And the kind of pressure that that would place upon all of us, really.

The Southern Baptist Convention and the Mueller Amendment

Speaking of which, changing subject real quick. Wow, what happened at the Southern Baptist Convention? Basically, Tom Buck said, best convention in a decade. The two big priorities for everybody who at least wants to tap the brakes on the direction the convention has been going.

And the convention really hung a hard left during the J .D. Greer years. Remember, he got an extra year because of COVID. And they used that time to get their tentacles into all of the institutions. And I feel sorry for Willie Rice on one level.

When you come in after years and years and years, I mean, look at the ERLC. The people who work for the ERLC do not represent your average Southern Baptist. They're progressivists. And they tried to do something about the ERLC at the last convention and couldn't get anything done.

Willie Rice has very limited powers. You know, he can't do the Trump thing. So, there's reason to be thankful that the conservative candidate won handily. But part of me just wonders if that's not because the progressivists know they already have all their people in place and there's no way he can get rid of all of them without splitting the convention.

And then the other thing, of course, was the Mueller Amendment. My understanding from what I've been reading is that it passed by a wide margin this year, but it has to pass again next year to become permanent.

And fundamentally, it just says that the Baptist faith and message limits the office of pastor, preaching, the eldership to qualified men. And hence, you can't be considered to be a Southern Baptist church in communion with other Southern Baptist churches under the Baptist faith and message if you have female preachers, pastors, teachers in your church.

And various people have been documenting for ages now the reality that there are all sorts of Southern Baptist churches with female preachers. And there was a debate. What year was it that Tom Askew debated that one fellow who I've tried to have some communications with, and it's just next to impossible.

I forget what year it was. It was probably, what, about four or five years ago? Somewhere around there. On this very topic. So, it's been ongoing. And so, in 24 hours, less than 24 hours, you could say there was minimally a major speed bump laid down.

Will it be a real fundamental change of direction is the real question. That's hard to say. Organizations don't turn on a dime. And it does seem to me that the Pressler-Patterson conservative renewal movement of the past has definitely run its course.

Certainly, the people that ran it have run their course. But we'll see. I mean, if the progressive guy had won and the Mueller amendment had been defeated, I think a lot of the last standing conservative SBC stalwarts would have gone, well, that's the end of that.

Let's consider something else. But, you know, got to be thankful for what you get, even when you get a two-year slowdown, speed bump, something like that. We'll see what comes of it. We'll see what churches leave.

We'll see what movements start. We'll find out. We'll find out. Okay. So, on the last program, and I have the Allie Beth Stuckey, Jacob Hanson thing queued up, but I want to get to this instead. We've been talking about Mormonism, and again, the problem is when Jacob started talking about theology proper on that, she didn't realize she's talking to a Neo-Mormon, and so the language gets challenging to explain.

Anyway, as I've mentioned, and I've mentioned this in the program, and on October 17th, I'm debating Craig Trulia. The thesis of the debate is icon veneration as defined by the Second Nicene Council in 787 is apostolic.

And as I've said, for the vast majority of Protestants, that sounds like one of the most boring topics they've ever heard, probably the most boring topic I've ever chosen to do a debate on, and they have no earthly idea why we're doing it.

Every well-read Orthodox person knows immediately that that goes directly to the central authority claims of the Eastern Orthodox Church. Absolutely definitional. If Isaiah 2 is wrong, Orthodoxy is wrong.

Period. End of discussion. So knowledgeable people go, ooh, going for the home run on the first swing, as far as topics are concerned. In preparation for that, I'm writing an article for ProPastor, the journal of the Grace Bible Theological Seminary, and I think I'm late on it right now, but I am making progress.

Spent five hours on it yesterday, I would say. And the topic of the article is two articles that Craig Trulia and a fellow by the name of Nikotopoulos co-authored. As I've mentioned to you, this is about, and this is what I held up for the cameras in the RV, which, by the way, they think they found the leak.

I'm concerned when they say, we think we found the leak. I'd like to hear, we found the leak, and it's fixed. We think we found the leak is like, you know who's the only person who's going to find out whether they're right or wrong is?

Me. In the first big rainstorm in July, if we get rainstorms in July, which we really, really desperately need. Anyways, so in the back of our beautiful new mobile command center, I held this very book up, and I read to you an entire section called The Mystical Theology.

And I read, yes sir? Pronounce the name of that book. We had a caller call last week wanting to.

Find it. Oh, well this is just a complete works of Pseudo-Dionysius. Pseudo-Dionysius, that's a good shot right there. Pseudo-Dionysius, I'll say again, this is a corpus of works. So there are 10 letters, and then you have the main books, the divine names, and then after the divine names, you have the Mystical Theology, then you have the Celestial Hierarchy, and then you have the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy.

And then you have the 10 letters. So these, this corpus is called the Dionysian Corpus, or in Latin, Corpus Dionysiacum. The reason it's called Pseudo-Dionysius is that since the late 1800s, minimally, it has been the scholarly consensus that this body of literature was written around the year 500, though it claims to have been written by Dionysius the Areopagite of Acts 1734.

His name is mentioned, just the name is mentioned, we're told nothing about him, but just the name is mentioned in the scriptures. Tradition says he became bishop of the church in Athens, but we are given almost nothing more about him than that.

There is no reference to this material whatsoever for 500 years. Around the year 530, it explodes into the East. Commentaries being written about it, all of it as one corpus, one body, it's already all put together in one place.

There's nothing in history about, you know, one of the letters over here, one of the letters over there. No, it's all this. It appears as a whole, and starting in 530, it starts having a huge impact, primarily on the Eastern Church, and then over time through Albert Magnus and Thomas Aquinas in the Western Church, but that's, you know, 700 years down the road.

But the Eastern Church, Maximus the Confessor, you would not have Maximus the Confessor without Pseudo-Dionysius. Maximus the Confessor is probably the most important primitive theologian in the development of Eastern Orthodoxy, and Nicaea II quotes this as authoritative.

So everybody, with a few exceptions, there is one fellow that went, why have we never heard this before? But he was quickly forgotten. For 1400 years, everybody believed that Dionysius, that this literature was written in the first century or the beginning of the second.

That it was literally the guy who was converted by Paul. Now think about that for just a second. How important would this literature be if it was actually written by the first generation? I mean, think about how often you hear, well, Polycarp knew the disciples, and Ignatius was trained by people who knew the disciples, and when you talk about the early Church, the closer they are to the disciples, wow, the more authority is given to them, right?

So if this guy actually becomes the bishop of the Church at Athens, and he is converted under the preaching of the Apostle Paul, this becomes second only to the New Testament in authority. And so Thomas Aquinas quotes, the only people Aquinas quotes more often than this are Augustine and Aristotle.

That's how often this is quoted. All the medieval mystics that had such a massive impact on Roman Catholic and certain parts of Protestant theology eventually, all of them deeply influenced by Pseudo-Dionysius, and they all believe this was written in the first century, or if it was written toward the end of his life, you know, early second century.

It's still earlier than Ignatius. It's just as early as Clement or the Didache, maybe earlier, and it has a direct connection to the Apostles. So here's what happened. Last year, someone, don't remember who it was, thanks a lot whoever did it, given how many hours I spent on this, sent me a video with Craig Trulia.

No, this one was with Nicotopoulos. Anyway, it's still on YouTube. I think it's both of them actually come to think of it. Where they're talking about this new research that demonstrates, because remember, the scholarly consensus, Roman Catholicism, Protestantism, secular humanists, everybody calls it Pseudo-Dionysius.

They all date it to, at the earliest, 500. Okay, so it's not the convert of Paul. That's the scholarly consensus. It still is the scholarly consensus. But here comes these articles. Craig Trulia, co-author of two PDFs.

New research defending this. And how do you do that? The key thing that I immediately zeroed in on, as soon as I started listening to the, even before I had been able to track the PDFs of the articles down, they claim two citations of this material, one in Jerome and one in Gregory, within 20 years of each other, but in the 4th century, which is before 500.

So, now all of a sudden this exists before the entire scholarly consensus says it exists. Now, they, let me say this straight up front, because I know Craig has been listening to some of this stuff and somebody will tell him that I'm talking about this.

It's an ingenious argument. These guys have done their homework. I respect them both, as writers and researchers. They have thought about objections. They've tried to steel man the other side. They really honestly have.

I do not yet know of any Protestants, well, I can think of one, but I don't know if that person has written anything, that have attempted to interact with their arguments. I may be the first one. And Craig knows I'm writing the article.

I'm going to be sending Craig the article as soon as I finish it. But they make other arguments. It's not just the Jerome and Gregory citations, but I think they recognize they have to come up with something in the historical record that places this material in that time frame for anything else to matter.

You can talk about, well, look at this language and how it has parallels to what's happening in Alexandria, and the angelology, and look at the use of this term and the use of that term. All of that assumes that the corpus actually exists.

You can't do grammatical, syntactical, or lexical parallels to something you haven't established was actually in existence. And so I knew immediately, you know, there are some really serious challenges to their theory.

One of the most obvious ones is Eusebius. The first ecclesiastical history, the early church historian, the guy who more than anybody else gathered sources, gathered names, gathered documents, gives names.

Eusebius refers to all sorts of stuff we don't even have anymore. The only reason we even know of some people is because Eusebius gives us their name and the book they wrote. Nothing beyond that. We got nothing other than that.

But Eusebius is, and he's not always right, okay? But think about what it was like to basically be the first church historian. All the rest of us that do church history, we get to tap into everybody who came before us, you know?

We can quote Philip Schaff, and we've got, you know, I've got entire bookshelves in my office, church history stuff. He didn't have any of that. And he didn't have the internet. I mean, how do you gather documentary sources in that time period?

There's no interlibrary loan, if anyone even knows what interlibrary loan was. It still does exist. I'm not sure anybody uses it. But my goodness, the task! It would have been his. And that's why he can be forgiven for errors that he makes.

It's not like he could send it off to a bunch of colleagues and go, hey, check this out, from your own sources. It's just, it's not a possibility. So, here's the point. Eusebius quotes from everybody he gives book titles.

He's all over the place. Knows nothing of Dionysius outside of Acts 1734. Nothing he ever wrote. Now, he knows about Ignatius. He knows about the Didache. He knows about Clement. He knows about Justin Martyr.

It's interesting. The Pseudo -Dionysian corpus is very similar in size, number of words wise, to the writings of Justin Martyr, which was around 150-ish. And Justin's quoted by everybody. His works are generally known fairly quickly after his life.