Mysterious Texts

The world of ancient holy texts is shrouded in mystery. Where did texts come from? How were they transmitted? Were they altered, and if so, by whom? First this week, we'll be talking about 1 Esdras. It's a book you won't find in most Bibles these days, yet you will find most of the stories it contains. And if Esdras sounds a lot like the name of another Biblical book to you, that's not a coincidence. So what is Esdras? Why is it different from its biblical cousin, and why was one chosen over the other (unless you're in Ethiopia)? Then: it's something we've mentioned many times on this show, and it's high time for the deeper dive. We're talking about the Masoretes, and the creation of the aptly (but perhaps too literally) named "Masoretic text". This is a fascinating tale of dedicated scribes who had an enormous impact on how biblical texts were translated and transmitted. Their decisions and calculations affect how we read the Bible over a thousand years later. We'll explore their contributions, and the power wielded by this small group of meticulous ancient scholars. ---- For early access to an ad-free version of every episode of Data Over Dogma, exclusive content, and the opportunity to support our work, please consider becoming a monthly patron at: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.patreon.com/DataOverDogma⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Follow us on the various social media places: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.facebook.com/DataOverDogmaPod⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.twitter.com/data_over_dogma⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Have you ordered Dan McClellan's New York Times bestselling book ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠The Bible Says So⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ yet??? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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• 1:41Speaker 01

  It's the worst written sentence ever.

• 1:45Speaker 01

  Remember how you vowed a thing that you vowed to fulfill? And then you fulfill, I want you to fulfill the vow that you vowed to fulfill.

• 1:53Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:00Speaker 00

  Hey everybody, I'm Dan McClellan.

• 2:02Speaker 01

  And I'm Dan Beecher.

• 2:03Speaker 00

  And this is Data Over Dogma, where we increase public access to the academic study of the Bible and religion, and we combat the spread of misinformation about the same. How are things today, Dan?

• 2:14Speaker 01

  Things are good. It's a fun show we have planned for everybody today.

• 2:21Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:22Speaker 01

  In part because, even if you're familiar with the Bible, we're gonna be talking about things that you may not have ever heard of, and that's kind of interesting.

• 2:32Speaker 00

  I think so.

• 2:34Speaker 01

  So, we're gonna start off with a chapter and verse, but it ain't a chapter and verse like, for the most part, for most of the people who are listening slash watching this show, you're not gonna have it in your book. You can open your book, but you're not gonna find it.

• 2:54Speaker 00

  But you're gonna find a version of a lot of it.

• 2:57Speaker 01

  Well, that's true.

• 2:57Speaker 00

  But not the whole thing, yes.

• 2:59Speaker 01

  So, we'll get to that.

• 3:01Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 3:01Speaker 01

  And then, and that's gonna be, that's, well, I'll just say, it's First Ezdrus.

• 3:08Speaker 01

  So, we'll figure out what that is, and then, we're gonna go and do a what's that? It's a what's that that we have mentioned, that you have talked about briefly at various times on, you know, as we've done this show.

• 3:26Speaker 00

  It comes up from time to time.

• 3:29Speaker 01

  It's the Mazarites, and so, we're gonna do the deep dive that we've needed to do to really understand who these people were and what they were up to.

• 3:41Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 3:41Speaker 01

  So, let's dive in with chapter and verse.

• 3:50Speaker 01

  Well, Dan, we said it, it's First Ezdras. Apparently, there are multiple Ezdras's.

• 3:57Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 3:57Speaker 01

  Uh, but we're, we're just doing the first one. And as we said, it's not in my Bible. Uh, so what, what, what is this thing? Where did it come from? Why are we talking about it?

• 4:12Speaker 00

  So we, we generally find it in, uh, the Greek and Slavonic Orthodox traditions. It, it derives from the Septuagint, from the ancient Greek translation. And it's basically a version of Ezra Nehemiah that it's a Greek translation. And it's a little expansive. It has a little bit extra in it. But if you have Ezra Nehemiah, then you have access to something close to the majority of, uh, First Ezdras. And now, I, and, and I think there's a lot of fascinating things associated with the fact that this comes from the Septuagint. One, there are a lot of scholars who think it's a translation from a Semitic language, from either Hebrew or Aramaic.

• 4:54Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 4:55Speaker 00

  So it could have been originally composed in Hebrew or Aramaic before being translated into Greek. Uh, and it is only in those, uh, the canons of those traditions that adhered more faithfully to the Septuagint, whereas the, the broader Catholic tradition kind of fell away from giving the Septuagint preferential treatment. And, uh, you know, once we got to the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation, uh, then the, you know, the, the Apocrypha kind of became secondary. It's not part of the Apocrypha. Uh, it is something distinct from that. But if we look in like Josephus, Josephus is one of the earliest references that we have to the notion of a Jewish canon, where he talks about there being a certain number

• 5:40Speaker 00

  of books. But Josephus also quotes from, when he talks about Ezra Nehemiah, he seems to be quoting from First Ezdras. Rather than from the Ezra Nehemiah books, which suggests that maybe for Josephus, this was his canonical version of Ezra Nehemiah. So.

• 5:59Speaker 01

  So it, when you say Ezra Nehemiah, you're saying the book of Ezra, the book of Nehemiah.

• 6:05Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 6:06Speaker 01

  Cover basically all the same ground, uh, minus one little story or cover, you know, uh, as First Ezdras, is that right?

• 6:15Speaker 00

  Yeah, more or less. Yeah, there's a and there's a slight change in order. There are a handful of verses that are moved up a little earlier in First Esdras. In order to create kind of this poetic. I think a lot of scholars say there's a chiasm and chiasmus is this idea where you have like theme A, theme B, theme C. And then you've got your central theme and then you go theme D, theme C, theme B.

• 6:45Speaker 01

  This is the the the theory that they used to create the episodes of Seinfeld. Is that right?

• 6:52Speaker 01

  A story and a B story and then a C.

• 6:55Speaker 00

  But then but then you go B and A and there's a parallelism. So it's inverse parallelism. But anyway, the and and this became a thing in decades ago in scholarship where everybody is a chiasm's all over the place and even. Even in Book of Mormon scholarship, there's a lot of focus on on chiasm's, but they're they're not very common anymore to to talk about. But I think there are a lot of scholars who who recognize the the way that First Esdras is is set up. There there does seem to be an inverse parallelism, a basic inverse parallelism. Associated with the the alterations and a lot of that has to do with the the stuff that's added. But.

• 7:35Speaker 01

  Is it? It's sorry, it doesn't seem. It's it seems a little too coincidental that Esdras is so close to the word Ezra.

• 7:45Speaker 00

  Are they? Yeah, it's just the Greek transliteration.

• 7:48Speaker 01

  Okay, so that is so basically this is just Ezra.

• 7:54Speaker 01

  And yeah, I was.

• 7:55Speaker 00

  It's better is it's better than Ezra. I'm kidding. It's not better than Ezra. That's the name of a band.

• 8:05Speaker 01

  Is so is Ezra, are both these books in the Septuagint Ezra and Esdras?

• 8:13Speaker 00

  There are, there may be manuscripts where, where they are, but no, I, and one of the titles for First Ezra says Greek Ezra. Oh. Because it's the Greek translation. Okay. It was probably composed somewhere around the second century BCE. So it's coming around the time that the Septuagint is being prepared anyway. But again, it's, it's certainly plausible that it was originally written in Hebrew or Aramaic. And then you do have a little bit like the Ezra begins with the last two verses of 2 Chronicles, Chapter 36. So the very end of 2 Chronicles, the last two verses are the first two verses

• 8:56Speaker 00

  of the book of Ezra. But when we, when we look at First Ezra, First Ezdrast, no, that's not right. First, phew, the dental trays are tripping me up. One Ezra, it's the last two chapters of, uh, of 2 Chronicles are the first chapter of First Ezra. So it's, I still, I've got to find a way around First Ezra, because I keep wanting to put a T on the end of it. So we've got a slightly larger inclusion of kind of that introduction. And that has led to some people theorizing that, that maybe the books of Chronicles were

• 9:40Speaker 00

  a part of Ezra and Nehemiah, that it was one, all kept on one scroll or something like that. And so maybe when this was translated into Greek, they took a larger chunk of 2 Chronicles than, than the people who transmitted it in Hebrew. So that's, that's a possibility. But basically we're talking about the end of, we begin with the end of the reign of, of King Josiah, and we get the last king of Judah and the fall of Jerusalem. And then we get to Cyrus the Great, who, and if you weren't aware of this, everybody out there, Cyrus the Great is the, is called my Christ. Oh.

• 10:25Speaker 00

  By God in Isaiah 45. I was not aware of that. At least it's my Messiah. The, the Hebrew of Isaiah 45:1 is,

• 10:42Speaker 00

  My Messiah, Cyrus the Great, he's explicitly referred to as by name Cyrus, and explicitly called his anointed. The Hebrew is his anointed, I think. Is it the Greek that says my anointed? Yes. The Greek has Kyrios Hothos To Christomu. So that would be my Christ. God calls Cyrus my Christ. Persian king, this is the guy who conquered Babylon, the Babylonian Empire, 539 BCE, took over.

• 11:14Speaker 01

  Famously not a Hebrew.

• 11:17Speaker 00

  Yes. Yeah, don't know if his identity as non Hebrew is the famous part of it, but he was definitely very famous and was definitely not an Israelite. But yeah, this is, this is, this is kind of a, what is it, ex eventu prophecy, basically. Someone writing after this time period is looking back and having God go, yeah, the guy who conquered things, because that ended up being good for us, that was, you know, he was working for me. Yeah. Is basically what's, what we have there. And the first Ezra is trying to get us into the, the period when there's a return to Jerusalem, when they're rebuilding the walls

• 12:01Speaker 00

  of Jerusalem and Nehemiah, when Ezra is restoring knowledge of the law of the Lord. And then we also have some rather xenophobic, ethnocentric divorces that are forced upon the folks when they get back there. Everyone who married foreign, all the men who married foreign women, they have to divorce them and then send them, send those women and the kids packing. So that's a problematic part of this. But as we were mentioning before we started the show, there's this awesome story that gets added into First Ezra's that is not a part of Ezra and Nehemiah.

• 12:46Speaker 00

  And this story begins at chapter three, First Ezra's chapter three, where King Darius, now if we go look in the book of Daniel. King Darius is the one, Darius the first is, or the great is the one who conquers Babylon and Cyrus only comes later, which is not historical. But Darius had a great banquet for all who were under him, all who were born in his house, and all the nobles of Media and Persia, and the satraps and the generals and the governors were under him. In the 127 satrapes from India to Ethiopia, they ate and drank, and when they were satisfied, they went away. And King Darius, Darius went up to his bedroom. He went to sleep, but woke up again.

• 13:31Speaker 00

  Then three young men of the bodyguard who kept guard over the person of the king said to one another, "Let each of us state what one word is strongest, and to the one whose statement seems wisest, King Darius will give rich gifts and great honors of victory." Which is weird.

• 13:49Speaker 01

  It is weird. Like, hey, let's all three of us make a bet, and then that other guy has to give us the thing that we, that we demand.

• 13:58Speaker 00

  Yeah. Meanwhile, from the room, you hear, "Shut up, I'm trying to sleep."

• 14:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, it, I mean, the fact that it has the king waking again, maybe, I don't know. It's a weirdly told story. That's all I'm gonna say.

• 14:16Speaker 00

  Yeah, but it, all I could think of was Conan the Barbarian. What, what is best in life? Do you remember that scene from, from Conan the Barbarian?

• 14:26Speaker 01

  I'm not convinced I've seen that all the way through.

• 14:29Speaker 00

  You've not, oh, you made, you made him not have stayed through to the end of.

• 14:33Speaker 01

  I, well, and you know, if I've seen it, it was bits and pieces when it was on TV and I was a kid and it was like, you know, whatever, I don't know.

• 14:42Speaker 00

  It, it's kind of this trope where you have this, this bizarre kind of very abstract, open-ended question as, as part of, you know, a meeting or a dinner, party, or a feast or something like that. And here it's just three bodyguards standing outside of the king's chamber, you know, negotiating the king's good graces. But in, in Conan, somebody asks him, "What is best in life?" And, and he says, "To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their women." Only, only in that. In that probably at least partially fake Austrian accent.

• 15:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:25Speaker 00

  That that should have been gone a long time ago, but that's what I think of when when somebody's like, let's debate what word is strongest.

• 15:35Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, it's a weird, it's a weird question, but boy, does it just take over the entire house of Darius by storm. Boy, do they like, everybody's into this question. These, so these three guys each write their word on a piece of paper.

• 15:56Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 15:56Speaker 01

  And stick it under the pillow of the king.

• 15:59Speaker 00

  Yeah, sealed them up. And then like you, you haven't experienced this, anybody with kids out there has experienced being asleep and then sensing a presence or hearing the shuffling of little feet and opening your eyes and seeing a miniature human looming over you.

• 16:16Speaker 01

  Just staring at you.

• 16:18Speaker 00

  Yeah. I can imagine them being like, shh, just put it under the pillow, just go. And just slide it, don't lift it, slide it, slide it under.

• 16:28Speaker 01

  I think what I was imagining is that Darius was still awake and like getting his warm milk and they were just, and they just stuck it under there while he was gone and then he came back.

• 16:40Speaker 00

  What are you doing in here?

• 16:42Speaker 01

  Oh, sorry, nothing is under your pillow, so don't worry about that at all.

• 16:46Speaker 00

  It's called pillow talk, baby.

• 16:50Speaker 00

  And then they, they put it under the pillow and said, when the king wakes, they will give him the writing into the one whose statement the king and the three nobles of Persia judge to be wise is the victory shall be given according to what is written.

• 17:03Speaker 01

  Yeah. You're gonna see what the, what this is all an ideology for at the end, but it, this is a very silly story, especially considering what the, I mean, these are three.

• 17:16Speaker 01

  Strong guys, right? This isn't the, the three wisest guys in the kingdom.

• 17:21Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 17:21Speaker 01

  Together to have this, this competition. It's just the three tough guys.

• 17:26Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 17:26Speaker 01

  Who are bodyguards. Uh, and the first guy writes that wine is the strongest. The second guy writes, the king is, I like the second guy's approach because it is the brown noser approach.

• 17:40Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 17:41Speaker 01

  It seems like that is a smart way to go. Like you're never going to go wrong by flattering the king.

• 17:48Speaker 00

  Yeah. Particularly in a situation where you have already dedicated the king's resources to a prize he never agreed to.

• 17:55Speaker 01

  Right. Exactly.

• 17:58Speaker 00

  So we're doing this.

• 17:59Speaker 01

  It makes sense to say that. Uh, and the third one, now here's what I was thinking. I, I thought we were building to a very obvious third thing. As I was reading this, I was pretty sure it was going to say God is.

• 18:12Speaker 00

  Yeah. It goes wine, king, God. That's the, uh, you know, that old children's tale from the sea.

• 18:17Speaker 01

  Everybody knows that one. Yeah. That, that old canard. Uh, anywho, no, it's not God. It's first of all, the second guy, uh, gets two answers, apparently. Don't know why he gets two.

• 18:34Speaker 01

  Or the third guy, rather, the third, so the third guy writes, women are the strongest, but above all things, truth is the victor.

• 18:43Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 18:44Speaker 01

  Which, why does he get two?

• 18:46Speaker 00

  Yeah. I mean, I'm, I'm thinking of Gollum at the, uh, in the Hobbit going, his last guess is string or nothing. It's like, wait a minute. Whoa. Do you know how last guess works? Cause.

• 18:59Speaker 01

  But yeah, so.

• 19:01Speaker 00

  Yeah. And the women, I think it's, I think it will be interesting to just look briefly at the women answer because it's, you know, you are kind of like, oh, but also it's kind of pedestalizing, uh, and also, uh, patronizing or patronizing, excuse me.

• 19:19Speaker 01

  Patronizing if you want to.

• 19:21Speaker 00

  I distinguish patronizing from patronizing as patronizing is, uh, is going into a business and patronizing is the other thing. Now.

• 19:29Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 19:30Speaker 00

  Whether that is accurate or not, that's just how I keep them straight in my mind.

• 19:35Speaker 01

  I like it.

• 19:35Speaker 00

  Unless when I, except when I misspeak.

• 19:37Speaker 01

  It's like how we separate want from won't. Uh, and I won't be hearing any problems with that.

• 19:43Speaker 00

  And I won't be dignifying that with a response.

• 19:46Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 19:47Speaker 00

  He, and uh, who, who is it then who rules them or has the mastery over them? Is it not women? Women gave birth to the king and every people that rules over sea and land from women they came. And women brought up the very men who plant the vineyards from which comes wine. Women make men's clothes, they bring men glory, men cannot exist without women. If men gather gold and silver or any other beautiful thing and then see a woman lovely in appearance and beauty, they let all those things go and gape at her with open mouths and with open mouths stare at her. And all prefer her to gold or silver or any other beautiful thing.

• 20:26Speaker 01

  I call this the, uh, the James Brown argument. This is a man's world.

• 20:37Speaker 00

  So Dan, you've heard me talk ad nauseam about the fact that we've got construction going on at the house. We are-

• 20:43Speaker 01

  I've heard the construction.

• 20:44Speaker 00

  Yeah, you heard the construction too. Uh, we're, we're finishing our basement, we're actually adding on to the house. We're, we're, um, doing some stuff in the backyard. And I was thinking the other day about how nice it was to be able to do this. Cause we, I wanted to get a new car and I wanted to do these, these improvements to the house, but we had to pay off our, our old car and that took actual planning, which you know I hate. Um, and so I really had to shift my thinking quite a bit when it came to my finances. And we had to set dates and we had to create a budget and it was so satisfying to actually make a plan.

• 21:25Speaker 00

  And then even though it took some discipline and there were some bumps in the road, we actually succeeded and we're able to pay off a car, got a brand new car. And it feels so relieving to know that if we actually set these goals and plan for them and stick to them, it goes from, oh, this will never end, actually feeling like you have control over stuff. And that has made a huge difference to me and to my family.

• 21:52Speaker 01

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• 23:55Speaker 00

  A man leaves his own father who brought him up and his own region and clings to his wife. With his wife, he ends his days and no thought of his father or his mother or his region. Therefore, you must realize that women rule over you.

• 24:10Speaker 01

  We should be, we should be clear that this is, this is later. This is in chapter four. And this is the, what happens is that they put, they tuck their answers under the pillow and then the king wakes up and agrees to this whole endeavor and calls in the wisest people in, you know, the three wise men, not, not those three wise men, but, and then, and so they are doing the contest. The contest is on and each of them has to explain their answer.

• 24:43Speaker 00

  Now, now, funny enough, he calls these people in from across the entire empire. Which, which would take months for everybody.

• 24:53Speaker 01

  They were already there, right? They were already there.

• 24:55Speaker 00

  Oh, they were the, where the banquet?

• 24:58Speaker 01

  Yeah. So they, they were already, they were already hanging out.

• 25:01Speaker 00

  They ate and drank and there's, okay. You know, I, I completely did not connect.

• 25:06Speaker 01

  Sometimes Dan gets it wrong, you guys.

• 25:08Speaker 00

  I, I, more than, than I'm happy to admit, but yeah, I definitely got it wrong there.

• 25:16Speaker 00

  So, go ahead.

• 25:18Speaker 01

  So as long as the, yeah, as long as the wisest people in the, in all of the lands are gonna be around are hanging out, I might as well, might as well call them in for this bodyguard contest. And yes, so.

• 25:33Speaker 00

  They probably expected something different. The, the scholars, they're, they're like, hey, we need you to judge this bodyguard contest. And they're probably like, uh, okay. And then they're like, oh, they're gonna be reading us their responses to the question, what word is strongest? I have much better things to do with my time.

• 25:52Speaker 01

  Right.

• 25:52Speaker 00

  And oh gosh, this.

• 25:53Speaker 01

  But apparently they don't.

• 25:54Speaker 00

  Now we're getting to the dregs.

• 25:56Speaker 01

  So each of them, the first guy explains why he thinks wine is so strong because it makes everybody drunk and dumb. And then the second guy explains why he thinks the king is stronger than everybody, blah, blah, blah. He does the brown-noser play.

• 26:11Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 26:12Speaker 01

  And then, and then, yeah. The third guy starts with his James Brown, uh, this is a man's world, but it wouldn't be nothing without a woman or a girl. And, but then closes it out with his real answer, which is, uh, truth. Is that it? Truth?

• 26:31Speaker 00

  Um, the king and the nobles looked at one another and he began to speak about truth.

• 26:36Speaker 01

  So then he does it. Yeah. He, he, he says that truth is important. Okay. And everybody's just blown away.

• 26:43Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 26:44Speaker 01

  About truth.

• 26:46Speaker 00

  Now, if we go back to the beginning of the speech about women, the third bodyguard is identified as Zerubabel.

• 26:53Speaker 01

  Right. I did. I saw that and it does feel like it's like a big reveal, but I don't know who Zerubabel is. Who's Zerubabel?

• 27:00Speaker 00

  Zerubabel was, uh, governor in Jerusalem. Uh, sometimes the second temple, which is rebuilt as a result of what's going on in this story, uh, at least according to this narrative, uh, it's referred to as Zerubabel's temple.

• 27:14Speaker 01

  Oh, oh, and he started as a lowly bodyguard? That's so great. Good for him.

• 27:20Speaker 00

  He, he worked his way up. It was wine, king, women, uh, Zerubabel's temple.

• 27:26Speaker 01

  It's the, it's, it's that age old thing where it's like, you know, you start out as a, as a waiter and eventually you're CEO of the, of the company or whatever.

• 27:35Speaker 00

  Well, I think most of the time you just get stuck as the manager of the restaurant and then have, spend the rest of your life trying to get out of that job.

• 27:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 27:46Speaker 00

  Now it says that they're going to give, um, you know, the reward is that, uh, they will give rich gifts and great honors of victory. But then, uh, Zerubabel's reward in verse 22 of chapter four, the king says, what do you want? And, um, does he, he does not seem to say up to half of my kingdom, which needs to be how these stories.

• 28:08Speaker 01

  He says more than that. He says, ask what you wish even beyond what is written.

• 28:12Speaker 00

  What is written.

• 28:12Speaker 01

  And we will give it to you.

• 28:14Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 28:14Speaker 01

  So it is, it is kind of that even half of my kingdom.

• 28:17Speaker 00

  Yeah. It's the same, the same idea. It's like they're, they're offering what no king has ever offered anyone.

• 28:23Speaker 01

  Right, right. Yeah, exactly.

• 28:25Speaker 00

  And then we get to the part that, um, kind of it throws you off a little bit. Then he said to the king, remember the vow that you made on the day when you became king to build Jerusalem and to send back all the vessels that were taken from Jerusalem, which Cyrus set apart when he began to destroy Babylon and vowed to send them back. You also vowed to build the temple. And now, O Lord, the king, this is what I ask and request of you, and this befits your greatness. I pray, therefore, that you fulfill the vow whose fulfillment you vowed to the king of heaven with your own lips.

• 28:56Speaker 01

  It's the worst written sentence ever. Remember how you vowed a thing that you vowed to fulfill, and then you fulfill? I want you to fulfill the vow that you vowed to fulfill.

• 29:08Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 29:10Speaker 01

  Yeah. Anyway, there you go.

• 29:12Speaker 00

  Yeah. And this is, uh, no, it wasn't, it wasn't Darius who, who would have sent people back and, and authorized the rebuilding of the temple. It's supposed to be Cyrus. There's a little bit of a, um, uh, a little bit of historical, how, how's your father going on here?

• 29:30Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 29:31Speaker 00

  So at least as, as far as we know, but it says then King Darius got up and kissed him. Uh, probably closed mouth. We're not sure, but.

• 29:43Speaker 01

  We can't tell. Uh, look, we don't know what the customs of the time were.

• 29:47Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 29:48Speaker 01

  And he is the king. It's good to be the king.

• 29:50Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 29:52Speaker 00

  And wrote letters for him to all the treasures and governors and generals and satraps that they should give safe conduct to him and to all who were going up with him to build Jerusalem. And, you know, then we, we get Zarubabel, um, offers up a prayer, lifted up his face to heaven toward Jerusalem. And, and this is, this is something you see in, in Daniel as well. And what direction does Daniel pray? Daniel prays toward Jerusalem in, in, during the, the whole, nobody's allowed to pray thing. Uh, and which is indicative of this understanding that God is in Jerusalem or the Jerusalem temple, or at least God is, is,

• 30:32Speaker 00

  if not confined, at least home base is the Jerusalem temple and the land of Israel.

• 30:38Speaker 01

  We have talked about that being a feature, a function of that time of, of how they thought of their God in that time, which was, it was a regional God. It was a God of that area of that, of that place. And other gods were the gods of other places. So yeah, it makes sense that. You would aim your prayer at your God and just sort of shoot it back at them. I wonder if that's, if that's what the praying, the Muslim tradition of praying toward Mecca is.

• 31:14Speaker 00

  It's definitely related.

• 31:15Speaker 01

  Related to, yeah.

• 31:16Speaker 00

  Yeah, the, the intuition is, is definitely there, but it obviously conflicts with notions that, that God is everywhere and is not confined to a point in space and time. And so you, you have to kind of re-rationalize things when, when the original rationale becomes obsolete.

• 31:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:41Speaker 00

  But, but he prays, prays, praises God, "From you comes the victory, from you comes wisdom, and yours is the glory. I am your servant, blessed are you who have given me wisdom. I give you thanks, oh Lord, of our ancestors." So took the letters, went to Babylon, told this to all his kindred, and they praised the God of their ancestors because he had given them freedom and permission to go up and build Jerusalem and the temple that is called by his name, and they feasted with music and rejoicing for seven days. And seven days, we should probably do an episode at some point where we talk about the number seven, and I will have to, I will have to be prohibited from quoting "There's

• 32:22Speaker 00

  Something About Mary" in that episode, but, because the, the seven day week is almost certainly a result of the time spent as exiles, in, exilees in Babylon.

• 32:39Speaker 01

  Oh, interesting.

• 32:40Speaker 00

  So, yeah, I, I think I'd have to do a little prep to get a little more of the background of that, but I think that would be an interesting episode.

• 32:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, that would be interesting, and it, it plays, it ties into other sort of. What people would say is numerology. In and amongst the various writings.

• 32:58Speaker 00

  Yeah, we got, you got three, you got seven, you got 12, you got 40, you got 70. There's, there are a lot of significant numbers. And once, once we get to chapter five, the first six verses of chapter five are supposed to be unique to first Ezra's. And it talks, it talks about the ancestral houses, the priests and descendants of Phineas, son of Aaron, and Joshua, and the house of David, and so on. And then I think verse seven is where it starts back up with the, the genealogical list that we find in Ezra Nehemiah, which is just, yeah, it's just, it just goes on with so and so, and so and so, the descendants of such and such as servants, and the descendants of

• 33:43Speaker 00

  such and such. So the, most of the rest of first Ezra's is, is parallel to what we find in Ezra Nehemiah. But it is, this, this is the only Ezra Nehemiah, if I recall, I could be wrong, but I think it's the only historical narrative in the Bible that actually addresses what's going on in the Persian time period. Esther is set in that time period, but I think this is the only one that, that discusses kind of broader events that are going on, particularly related to the return to Jerusalem and the building of, of the temple. So first Ezra's is, is a retelling or, or a paraphrase or

• 34:27Speaker 00

  some kind of parallel account of, of this from two first, or excuse me, Ezra Nehemiah.

• 34:34Speaker 01

  All right.

• 34:35Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's.

• 34:36Speaker 01

  There you go.

• 34:37Speaker 00

  Yeah, if you're, if you're Orthodox, or if you're part of one of the Slavonic traditions, then, then you've probably, you're probably more familiar with this than, than either of us is, but.

• 34:48Speaker 01

  Well, I just think it's interesting that like, I guess, I guess if you're one of, part of one of those traditions, you have to read a lot of the stories multiple times. If you're going to read the same thing, if you're going to read the whole book. Other than the story that we just told of the, you know, the bet between the three bodyguards, you're just gonna have to read Ezra and Nehemiah twice, apparently. So, there you go. There's a lot of that in the Bible, a lot of retreading of ground.

• 35:18Speaker 00

  But, but I think it's interesting when you get into some of these, this, the, the stories that are written in this time period, there are so many parallels, like the, the court tale motif is so much of the apocryphal texts and, you know, first Ezra's, but also Esther and Dan, Daniel, excuse me, I called him Dan, Daniel.

• 35:41Speaker 00

  We're, we're close, so we, we can use nicknames like that. But, um, yeah, the, the whole, uh, the court tale is, is such a standardized motif from the, the stories of this time period that you can all, you can, you basically know what's happening before, before it happens. But, um, yeah, it's, it's a fascinating little story, an interesting piece of the Bible that a lot of people aren't aware of.

• 36:07Speaker 01

  Well, that is crazy and interesting and fascinating, uh, but we have more interesting and fascinating coming up. So let's dive into what's that?

• 36:21Speaker 01

  All right. So what's that? It's the Mazarites slash the Masoretic text. That's, those are phrases, the Masoretic text is a phrase that you have used many times.

• 36:32Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 36:34Speaker 01

  And so, so let's, let's talk about who and what we're, we're getting into here.

• 36:38Speaker 00

  Yeah. The, the Mazarites are a group of scribes that's where they basically produced the textual tradition that is considered most authoritative by the most Jewish folks, at least in terms of those who are approaching the Hebrew Bible from a Jewish devotional point of view, as well as most scholars. So the Masoretic text is considered the best single manuscripts of the Hebrew.

• 37:11Speaker 00

  Bible. Now, the the Masoretic text actually refers to a family of manuscripts, not just a single manuscript, but the the best representative, the oldest complete representative of the Masoretic tradition is the Leningrad Codex, which dates to like 1008 CE.

• 37:29Speaker 01

  And so this is well into the common era. We are

• 37:33Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 37:34Speaker 01

  Well, past the right like, like centuries after the writing of any of these.

• 37:40Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 37:40Speaker 01

  Original composition of any of these texts.

• 37:42Speaker 00

  Yeah. And and the Masoretic tradition, the Masoretic group is usually dated to between around 500 CE and around 1000 CE. So the Leningrad Codex would be like the apex, the culmination of all of their work. But they started in the middle of the first millennium CE.

• 38:03Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 38:03Speaker 00

  And

• 38:04Speaker 01

  Who were they? You said they're scribes, but like, are they? Was there just a tradition? Was it like a like a monastic group or like? Why? Why are they called the Maserites?

• 38:17Speaker 00

  Um.

• 38:17Speaker 01

  It's because it sounds like a group. It sounds like a like an ethnic group or something, but.

• 38:22Speaker 00

  It so it's it's dominated by um some specific families, but and located either in Tiberias, which is a city on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee, or a couple of cities in modern day Iraq, along the um along the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. So it's there's a there's one family within the Maserite. So it's not it's I don't I don't think you can call it an ethnic group, but it's more of like a tradition. But there are

• 38:55Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 38:55Speaker 00

  There are certainly representative families, just like folks who are, yeah, there there are just, there are prominent families. I'm not gonna go.

• 39:05Speaker 01

  You were about to go to the Godfather, weren't you?

• 39:09Speaker 00

  Not quite.

• 39:09Speaker 01

  The five families.

• 39:11Speaker 00

  Well, I was, I was trying to decide between that or, or the five boroughs. From a Kings of New York kind of, kind of approach. Or, or talking about Mormon wards that have, that have like the, the governing families. But Aaron Ben Moses Ben Asher is considered one of the most prominent representatives of, of this school. And I think he, he dies before we get to a thousand CE, so like between nine fifty and a thousand CE. But then there was also another name, Ben Naftali. And there are, I, I think there are slightly different textual traditions associated with these two different

• 39:54Speaker 00

  individuals who lived roughly contemporaneously. But yeah, this, this is something that's spread out. But they're, basically, these people are all united in their desire to transmit the, the manuscripts of, of the Hebrew Bible faithfully, but also they do, they do two big things, among the many things that they did. They developed a system of vocalization. So if, if you know about Hebrew, you probably know that there are no vowels that are written. The consonants that are written down do not have vowels. But as it began to be less and less commonly spoken, natively spoken as a living language,

• 40:39Speaker 00

  it began to need some, some supplemental help. So that you could understand precisely what was going on, what vowels were intended to be spoken.

• 40:47Speaker 01

  I guess I hadn't realized that it was, that, that the spoken language was falling so far out of use. Did?

• 40:56Speaker 00

  That, the degree to which that's true is, is kind of debated, but I think most folks would say by the time of the turn of the era. So like the first century CE, people probably spoke Aramaic more than they spoke Hebrew. There are certainly scholars who will argue that Hebrew was still a thriving, living language in this time period. And we have Mishnaic Hebrew, and we have, like, we have poetry from the medieval period written in Hebrew. The degree to which it became a dead language is debated. Certainly, there were people who were speaking it. It might have become more of a liturgical language, somewhat like ecclesiastical Latin or something like that.

• 41:38Speaker 00

  It, I'm not sure, I'm sure there are people who have stronger feelings than I do about it, but I think it is, it is still a little hazy, but...

• 41:48Speaker 01

  So is modern Hebrew that is spoken in Israel, is that a revival of a...

• 41:53Speaker 00

  That is a revival. In fact, it's considered the most successful revived language of all time.

• 42:00Speaker 01

  I did not realize that. I don't know why I, why that had escaped to me, but that's really fascinating.

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• 43:09Speaker 04

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• 43:31Speaker 05

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• 43:39Speaker 00

  When you had the Jewish diaspora where people were spread all over the place and you had a lot of Jewish folks who were speaking Russian and you had a lot of Jewish folks who were speaking German and you had a lot of Jewish folks who were speaking Portuguese and you had a lot of folks who were speaking Yiddish, which is related to German. And when there is a desire to recreate a Jewish homeland, it was like, hey, if we're going to be a single people and have a homeland, then we need to be speaking a single language. So Zionism sits at the root of the development of modern Hebrew to some degree. And that's

• 44:19Speaker 00

  not to say there's anything wrong with the revival of the Hebrew language, but the rationale was a single people should be identifiable by a single language. And so there was an intentional effort to revive Hebrew.

• 44:35Speaker 01

  Well, and as you say, it was probably carried along at least liturgically in most of these traditions.

• 44:42Speaker 00

  Yeah, literally, definitely literally to some degree, definitely liturgically to some degree. The degree to which, you know, mothers would speak to their children in Hebrew. I'm sure that was going on, but I don't know how prominent it was. But it was a slightly, you know, all languages evolve. So Hebrew is evolving over this time period. However, when we go back to prior to the Maserites, the first five centuries of the Common Era, there were a few different attempts to try to create a system of vowel notations. So how to- Add vowels so we can get a clearer idea of what precise words are being intended by

• 45:25Speaker 00

  these consonants. So you have a Babylonian system that develops and there are old manuscripts with prayers or parts of the Hebrew Bible that are written with the Babylonian notation, which is entirely written above the characters. And they're like horizontal lines, vertical lines. There's one that's kind of a diagonal line with a little smaller line going off of it. And then the series of dots. There's a Palestinian system that also develops, but it's really the Tiberian system. So the Tiberian system would have been the system developed by the Mazarites in Tiberias, that city on the western shore of the Sea

• 46:06Speaker 00

  of Galilee. And that's the one that dominates and ultimately becomes what is considered authoritative these days for most people who are engaging with the Hebrew Bible in Hebrew. And so that's one of the main contributions of the Mazarites. Just the preservation of the text is probably the most significant, but the development and perfection of, as some people like to say, the vocalization tradition is probably the next largest contribution. But then they did an awful lot of analysis of the text. And there's a saying that anything that could be counted was counted. So when you look in a critical edition of the Hebrew

• 46:48Speaker 00

  Bible, there are a couple of different collections of notes that are referred to as the Masora. You have the Masora Parva and the Masora Magna, large Masora and small Masora. And these are basically just annotations talking about how frequently things are occurring. So they counted up every word, every word form. And so you'll occasionally see a little letter in the margin of the Leningrad Codex, and that indicates this exact form of this word only occurs once. This is the only occurrence of that exact form of the word.

• 47:26Speaker 00

  They also introduce the Kative and Kere system, which is basically like, they're doing their best to try not to alter the consonants of the manuscripts at all. But there are times when it's very clear that the consonants Are incorrect. Right. Or they don't want people to read out loud what the consonants say because it could be a vulgarity or it could be considered blasphemous or something like that. And so you have in in many cases, or it could be that the vowels that they've added, they would prefer you not pronounce those vowels. They think it was probably originally something else.

• 48:07Speaker 00

  So they're trying to transmit the tradition as they received it. But they are adding notes where they think where they think like, hey, we actually think it's probably was intended to be pronounced this way. And so the kareh, which would mean read or said out loud, that is sometimes annotated in the margins. And so the reader knows, okay, the katev means written. So that is what is in the text. And then the kareh would be where they suggest you pronounce it a different way. Huh. And then you have kareh perpetua, which are the things that you always pronounce differently. So the divine name for instance, you would never pronounce, you would always say, I

• 48:49Speaker 00

  Adonai is one substitution, Hashem is another substitution. And then there, you know, like the name Jerusalem is, there's a, it's pronounced slightly different from how it's spelled in the in the consonantal text. So they did that. And then they also contributed a system of cancellation marks, which was intended to aid the reading, the liturgical reading, which was more of a, I don't want to say a song, but the the intent was to read it with specific intonations and and it was, you know, a cantor was supposed to read it a specific way.

• 49:33Speaker 00

  So it is a little more sing songy. You're supposed to accent things a certain way. You're supposed to. Keep certain groups of words together and separate other groups of words.

• 49:43Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 49:44Speaker 00

  You also have the addition of these cancellation marks. So if you look at a critical edition of the Hebrew Bible, or if you look at the Leningrad Codex, it can kind of be a mess. Because you've got, you have all these consonants, but then you've got a system of vocalization written around the consonants. And then you have cancellation marks written around the consonants. And then a lot of critical editions will also have footnote markers to tell you about, like, all variant readings and stuff. So you've got the text, you'll have one set of marginal notes, you'll have another set of marginal notes beneath the text, and then you'll have the critical apparatus, which is like the modern scholarly notes. And then the text is just, you know, a bunch of different annotation systems.

• 50:29Speaker 00

  So it can be a little overwhelming.

• 50:31Speaker 01

  This is what happens when you get a whole bunch of very obsessive people, like, obsessing over a thing for 500 years. You're just, you're gonna get every note possible in the world.

• 50:43Speaker 00

  And, and there are, yeah, we've, we've got other manuscripts that are, come from the Mazarites that are earlier. For instance, there is a codex that is probably about 100 years earlier than the Leningrad Codex, called the Aleppo Codex. But it's not complete. It's missing a large chunk of the Pentateuch. Some of it was lost in a fire. And every now and then, a chunk of the Aleppo Codex will, you know, somebody will be like, "I found it in my attic."

• 51:13Speaker 01

  Oh, really?

• 51:14Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 51:16Speaker 00

  And, you know, close comparison shows that of the hundreds and thou- hundreds of thousands of vowels, like, it differs only in, like, the use of a meth egg, which is kind of one of these cancellation marks.

• 51:33Speaker 01

  Oh, okay.

• 51:33Speaker 00

  And so, like, the, the differences are so, so minimal.

• 51:38Speaker 01

  Oh, wow.

• 51:38Speaker 00

  Like, like, people talk about how, how well the, the manuscripts show the, the Bible has been preserved. The Mazarites, like, if, if we want to talk about people who were very clearly, very, very committed to their craft, the Mazarites, I think, are, stand head and shoulders above any other known scribal communities.

• 52:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, that makes sense to me.

• 52:07Speaker 01

  And what, you know, one of the things that we've talked about when it comes to the Masoretic text is just that, you know, you mentioned that they invented the system for writing out vowels, which becomes really important. Did they ma- they must have had to make interpretive calls.

• 52:24Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah.

• 52:25Speaker 01

  Because, you know, we've talked about how, how many words you change the vowel, you change the meaning. I mean, that's, that's true in, in all languages, you know, if you, a cat versus a kit versus a cot, those are different things. But I mean, that could, that could have huge implications theologically and, and sort of interpretively in terms of like, you know, they, so, so, yeah, they, I guess, I guess my question is just how much of it was them just deciding which was the right vowel, or how much was traditionally handed to them, or, or, you know?

• 53:06Speaker 00

  I, I think the, the reading tradition would have been fairly firmly in place. So I think an awful lot of it was them just copying down the tradition as they received it. No doubt there would have been fuzzy edges to that. And no doubt there would have been controversial passages. But we can see that when we look at the Septuagint, the Septuagint helps us determine how they would have pronounced things based on how things were translated, as well as a lot of stuff in the Septuagint is transliterated. If there was a Hebrew word that they thought was a name, or they just didn't understand, they would transliterate it. And then, and that would help us see how they were pronouncing

• 53:48Speaker 00

  it. And there is an awful lot of correspondence between the Septuagint, which is coming from a thousand years before the Leningrad Codex.

• 53:57Speaker 01

  Right.

• 53:58Speaker 00

  There's an awful lot of correspondence between the two. Now, there are divergences as well. And so, one of the fascinating things to do in the biblical, Hebrew Bible scholarship is to look at those differences and, and try to figure out what's going on in the reading traditions. When did they change? Why did they change? And, and try to reconstruct whose reading is, is likely more original. And there are a lot of scholars who would argue that- When you look at all the differences between how the Septuagint translators are reading the text and how the Maserites are vocalizing the text, while there is an awful lot of correspondence, where there are differences, I think a lot of scholars would say the

• 54:43Speaker 00

  Maserites are probably correct more frequently than the Septuagint is correct. Now, that's just with vocalization, because when it comes to what consonants were there, there are a lot of differences there as well. One of the things I find hilarious is when apologists get up and say that, you know, "We discovered the Great Isaiah Scroll and, you know, it blew scholars away. They were just so shocked that it matched so closely the Masoretic text." It's like, the Great Isaiah Scroll is not even the best transmitted Book of Isaiah among the Dead Sea Scrolls. There are other manuscripts of Isaiah that are far more faithful

• 55:26Speaker 00

  to what we find in the Masoretic text, but these apologists never talk about, like, Jeremiah, because we have multiple different manuscripts of Jeremiah as well. They're very fragmentary, they're very small, but some of them show that the Septuagint reading of Jeremiah, which is one-sixth shorter than the Book of Jeremiah in the Masoretic text, is preserved in some of these Hebrew manuscripts, which suggests to a lot of scholars that the Septuagint version of Jeremiah was earlier than what we now have in the Masoretic text, that the Masoretic text reading is later, secondary. Now, we have some manuscripts of Jeremiah

• 56:11Speaker 00

  at Qumran that's witness to the longer Masoretic readings as well. So, it's like, what do you do with this? Which is more original? How and why did it change? There's even some changes in order of the verses between the Septuagint and the Masoretic text. So, it's just a giant mess, and I and a lot of other people think that trying to pick apart this knot... Is just some of the most exciting research that most people would just find be bored to tears by what's going on in this. But, but we have, you know, you, you, and you've been to SBL.

• 56:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:49Speaker 00

  You could go to SBL and you can, you can find something where it's talking about, you know, just one word in the Masoretic tradition. And there will be a whole papers just on that one word or one vowel change or something like that. So. The, the tradition of the Maserites lives on in the spirits of a lot of people who are just fascinated endlessly by the minutia of textual transmission of the Bible and other texts. So.

• 57:19Speaker 01

  So the Maserites weren't, uh, they, they weren't a sort of a clerical class. They weren't, they, they, they were, they were meant to be just sort of scribes trying diligently to transmit the, the, the old texts rather than, uh, rather than, you know, rabbis who were, who were there to, to interpret or there to like there. Is that right?

• 57:44Speaker 00

  It is definitely more scholarly a community than ecclesiastical.

• 57:49Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 57:50Speaker 00

  But, but certainly there, there's kind of, uh, it's more of a spectrum than a dichotomy, I think. Because you would, would have certainly have had people with authority among the, the Maserites as well. And, and the scribe scholars would have been considered to have their own kind of authority. That was, was not quite the same as ecclesiastical authority. And there are, there are debates. There are some folks who think that the Maserites were, um, were Caraites, which is kind of a minority branch of Judaism that's, uh, is looked down upon by, by some other, uh, groups within Judaism.

• 58:32Speaker 00

  And there are a lot of people who say, no, no way on earth that they, they were Caraites. So we don't know exactly the, um, their relationship to centralized authority and that kind of thing. But, um, there, there are different. Possibilities, but, but yeah, the, the Mazarites, when we refer to the Mazarites, generally it's referring to a group that is united by their scholarship and their scribal, scribal school, scribal training, scribal tradition, more so than any kind of liturgical or ecclesiastical authority.

• 59:08Speaker 01

  All right. Well, there you go. Now, now we know what we're talking about when, when you, when you start talking about the, the Mazaritic text versus the Septuagint versus whatever. Uh, I think, I think that'll, uh, that that'll be a good primer. We can, we can point people to this, to this episode when they're like, what are you talking about? Just go back and watch that one.

• 59:30Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 59:30Speaker 01

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• 1:00:09Speaker 00

  Bye, everybody.

• 1:00:15Speaker 01

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