now, i a speakers. candida moss isuniversity of bi.

she previously ht university noe dame. the award ar coauthor seven boo. she has also served cbs and writes a regular column for the daily in addition to regularly on religious affairs for cexperd has ap■]peared in documentaries for the likes of cnn nbc and national geographic. she is joined in conversation tonight by dr. shibley tj smithw testament at boston university school of theology, and the thor family, diaspora and first peters invention of god's candida moss is presenting her new book, god's ghostwriters enslaved christians and the making of the bible. for the■ past 2000 years christian tradition, scholarship and pop culture have credited the authorship of the new testament to a select of men. matthew mark, luke, john and

paul. but hidden behind these names and sainted individuals are a cluster of unnamed enslaved coauthors andb■ collaborators. these essential workers were responsible for producing the earliestanuscripts. the new testament making the department which the texts were written. nd refining the words of the apostles. reza aslan writes, quote at once eminently readable and rigorously researched god's moss as the most compelling the role of enslaved people in writing and disseminating laminating t gospelsignored far. we all amass a debt of gratitude l and eye opening work. we are so pleased there was this please me in welcoming candida mossndjason. thank you so much. i'm so about the conversation that we're going to have together about. your book, god's ost writers,

christians and the making of the bi to my colleagues in affirming how important and■■ significant work is. so one of the think is important from my reading is how you leverage the authority already assigned to the sources early christianity like the gospels the book of acts, th pae have those names andto show us writings to speak of today because. you call them you say servile workers and reading and writing or enslaved literary workers made it so and so. i real wan start by asking you a question about. this making it so dynamic that you're claiming in the book, why tackles the phenomenon of enslavement in the literary

production of the new testament and the spread early christianity feel compelled to write it now? well, thank you so much,hapely for that introduction. it means a great deal to me from you bein■tar with your work. so thank and in truth, i was supposed to be writing different book. ias supposed to be writing what now feels? like a very boring biography. the gospel of mar and a few things came together for me. the first was that i reached that where i needed reading for the first time. i have a lot of medical, but i d glasses beforehand. and as i'm getting these nding things on screens, getting external monitors thin', because i write about disability. how do peoe do thi in

antiquity? that's right. yeah. and realized they had to use and as i dug into that, i realized they were. by and large, you really using enslaved people to read and write, especially at nighttime whenis meeting. right. when it's dark. i'm the one who gets at my flashlight at the■ and i realized they're using enslaved start reading in classics where scholars of classics started to think a workers, space.ally in this l and as far as this historical momentwo things happened. i've taken longer to write and research this book than a ofe sy before this. two things happened. the pandemic started and i you. i stayed home with my family. immunocompromised was feelgbut t

because of other people. other people who are delivering things placed in way on my8e acknowledn the way i was speaking. i was delivered something to my house right and just dropped it off and, you know there were people that was obscuring and it struc thing to. wow. to obscure the ltalk about havis like renovat. kitchen. i am not a construction worker. plumbing. there's. there are all kinds of decisions made. i'm taking ownership of. and alongside that, ofnt in hisy where everyone is having a reckoning with their past. i think christians in particular are to rec with the bible's

that's right. in the history of colonialism and enslavement in this■[ll sayt paul's fault that his works were put to this. mm hmm. mm hmm. but the new testament, as a collection of ancient texts, produced by people living in a world, in which slavery was for grte yeah. encodeueused to support strrere. yeah in this country and aand 't themselves. but i think that no one is well-served when we obscure that. so i would say it was sort of like a woe wind of things. those the the particular history of atlantic slavery iththere wah an inability to read. there's all of done in classicst

is borrowing from histories of . and then with my own realizing dinah mix despotic dynamics. it comes to labor. yeah. yeah. i really love the way in which you're talking about enslavement and. this matter of invisible labor, right? mean. so this is a differentt way when think about our field and how it talks about matters ■:t$of enslavement in the new testament. so we're we're very comfortable talking about enslaved as a metaphor for that shows up paul inus christ and slave servant justorking with how obvious we want to be about enslavement where we are we are ac encountering the enslavement institution, although we're not going to want to really call that when we get to the parables oft? because it's really about the parabolic speech of real way. it seems to me that for you, you

are trying to have a different. invite us to have a different conversation about where literature andin testamt how it is sform that we're justt accustomed to engaging. can you tell am i reading you right on that? ihink right whei think about the book and what it is a book about credit. and i think viitself subversive, to seminary if you learn about the bible if you're in the pews on a s■dare thinking about what does this mean. that'rithe person who wrote it down and in writing book, i wanted to show the enslaved people formernslapeople that were involved in composition. the for if if you're a kind of traditional christian.

that's right you know do you ties could have written alone without. in their nineties. hmm. they needed help and that's just ve credit to. we know that enslavedimproved te style of text that they were for and this is active work and once a text is written it has to be copy. that's almost always by sleepwalkers because it huts. mm hmm. if you ever had to write at ngth know? yeah, i did. and no one wants to do that. and then when a text is read aloud, it's read ausually by anr who is prepared and tone of voi. their people gesticulate wildly reading. in the ancient world their facial keys

for interpretation are the faces of the gospel. and when those texts are carried ere, it's enslaved and enslaved people them. when we talk about missionary expansion of early we tend to talk about this a group of sort of 12 people. that's right. about dozens perhaps hundreds of enslaved and curious who are carrying tes thg questions abouthe be determinatr újhearing. that's right. this is notthese are the first s of scripture. and. and what does that mean in canada when we think about imagine that the expansion of early christianity and the social project this relig■kiousroas prt

carried by these free agent apostles, just moved by the it like what you're indicating and pointing to is a reckoning with the history that begins to say, enslaved literary labor is the reason why far in this. ■xknow initial context and origins and it is part of that bor that invisible. how does it historical work to imagine that people who are servile literary readers and writers to others? yeah. and i, i do want to be clear. i'm not saying that the emperor constantine was an important right. right. right. well, saying origin wasn't imrt might not have been a heck supplier, which is like his. he has just liken edition of the hebrew bible

might not have been possible without his workers. what i'm saying is we have just broader pool of people. and if we want to tell an honest history of who was important, we have to have a broader group of people. but i wouldn't even just say it's in slave labor. i would say. it enslaved genius. enslaved in ingenuity. because this is work. this is not just, younow a■f machine copying attacks. that's right. where do you that right we already knew the changes in the manuscripts. this is intellectual. that's right. and so is what i want to change that slavery isn't ju '■■s no just the thing. the new testament is sort of help create that text, help bring the■ and spread christianity itself. and it's that person had that i

want to draw attention to. so let's talk a little bit about ate, i don't know, some distance and maybe meso to talk about what the history let's talk what the history of enslaved and thy christianity origins similar and distinctnd y kind went there earlier but similar and distinct from our understandings of england. take enslavement, history and practices. so here's the question we think of these two enslavement systems enslavement in antiquity and in slave meant in the atlantic's as entirely different from each othe a misstep when we do this? and how does your book help us think these connections and distinctions? yeah. so obviously this is a complicated topic, a very complicated and to sometimes you'll see kind of crass

generalizations about it. so both the roman slavery and atlantic slavery have been identified as slave societies? just they didn't just incidentally have people. that's right. society for propelled forward by structures ofg diffee often talk about is that, as we all know, atlantic slavery is grounded. particular/us, racial theories that emerge support colonialization and the enslaved being structures that follow inf race, theories of race that we have that emerge in that moment, that persisted into to this day don't exist in antiquity in the sameay. but but there are still some stereotypes ast have the

same structures of race doesn't mean that they don' estereotypi. when you think about how roman slav forward by war and conquest. and that might mean that sometimes. slavery took on kind of phenotypic contours. so, you know, after julius caesar conquered goldman de see a million celts brought into t cen■r of the roman empire. many of them didn't reach rome. they were dropped off mines. but this is of their red wavy locks that comes through in e roman architecture. so that's a different structure. th difference, this difference and also the fact in roman slavery, youre more likely to be freed in your lifetiman slavt letsometimes this is where it g. it's like there is atlantic sla,

but that doesn'tte good. slavery. that's right. there's no good think there is n analogy that's made by a particular classicist who says that roman slavery is like an a finance company. no, i hear they work long hour'. own theirps children are still their children. they're not they don't live in fear it's not the same. it's not good analogy. and icomparative vortex is the problem and only ever serves to let other systems of02■r8 that people want to hold on to because they really like the nk about the roman empire a lot off thea primary d. it was instrumental for this book is that when people think

atlantic slavery, they know that used a literacy as a tool of control. that's rigy would that they would harm people in to prevent them from reading them, writing. didn't have printing presses, they didn't have reading glasses, they needed enslaved workers to do this kind of w and that's one of the things that i found so helpful was thinking about how your book talks about this language enslave literary workers and you begin to talk about the different kinds of literary ■dlabor that are taken up. one is the writing, one is the transcribing and dictation. you begin to talk about the careers at our parof this, start talking about those who are the oral readers that are ae education system, this literary educational system, one that serves the sort of elite group. and then there's this■p parallel

education system around letters and the literary arts. i would like to say that, you see happening in the inith this enslaved labor group that thatopped up. can you talk a little bit about what it means to be talking educate in a literary systems that are running side by side and actually seem to be interacting with each■5yeah so. romans do educate enslaved workers to do this kind of they do have dedicated enslaved workers. we have them archeologically. we found them in a whole school for enslaved workers on h property. but often they're enslaved alongside one another. and what that means is, you know, you have an enslaved child or even an adult accompanying, a wealthy child to and maybe taking notes for them. and one of the wchildren and wed

learned or writing was they were actually being taught to dominate a lot of th■reexerciseo your enslaved workers. andyou can picture one child that is there hearing how the rs how to threaten them with crucifixion and then another child there. that's right. who internalizing the risks and threats all around them. so it's kind of experience depending who you are. yeah, that is soove a little bir conversation and sort of start thinking passages of your text. so in the book in chapter three, which is a chapter i really love rereading the story of describe one of the classic storieof jesus healing about paralytic man and his four friends, and i want to h that '. so you include the accouterments ofhe story, the bed to the

roof being torn away,nds are lip and setting him down in line of sight of jesus, jesusp performing, healing. so i'm thinking matthew nine, mark two here and but for you else this as a healing story a lot of peop hh jesus on healing the paralman we great strides to give him to jesus, as you describe it, ensl. so the question why for you is it necessary to consider are these four friends are enslaved, saved to the paralyt■g man, and how does it offer an alternate pathway for understanding the representationjegospel?

yes. yeah. i think you this is a story that i thinke grew up in. a christian family has heard many before. that's right. and i've translated many times in greek and with my stu i may , but i thoughten friends they're not even actually identified as peo do that and so when you go look at the ancient evidence for who get carried in antiquity, it's two groups of people. it's people who cannot it's people who can pay not to have to walk. so a lot of people get carried around in litters or chairs. and in the greek,being carried , it can mean litter or just a stretcher. the simple pall school. and so there four men carrying him and they dismantled someone

ton' roof which is which is quie a bold thing to do. would ey let down and jesus first looks at them and thur thh has saved them. he then has a back andorth with the his sort of assembled group and he then to the man you're a of forgiven we don't know what those are and take up your bed and walk he walk but if he's a man who's also wealthy jesus is now saying toght back r now that you canthis a story t's right? that's a doorway people can't get through. there's now like a skylight in the in the roof of this house. we don't know anybody's name. that's right. and we all fill in gaps in this story. we're building materials we bring from our own world.

yeah. there is one bible commentary published by a un that just say that their friends, when it has itsthat's right. puts friends into the translation as if it was inpsal. that's how much it assumes that they're friends. but that';d■'s that's what's ine texts seem tong person who's like it doesn't say that the gek you read it that way when you think about the is and enslaver who's st now seeing t's right drawing attention to them ing how their loyalty saved, turning e man forgiving the man's sins and then telling him, do your own work. well, it's a very different story now. yeah. and it's so powerful because in this story, in this instance, it like this is the disruption in, the sort of

discourse, right? the invitation for us to automah unconsciously i imagining are te identities the state, the opportunity or challenges or lack6, t it seems like in a cern way a part of. this booisimagine an invisiblers we think. right. so do we, in fact, have a story in this case? and when matthew mark and luke break through the gapsto leverat they're audience would de t status of the identity, the role of these four four people in a way that history for us we have we are sort of imagination deficit we cannot

imagine or have a blot to imagining and rlly means to say that the enslaved system in the roman empire it was so we'll say everywhere slave enslavement a part of the roman militar arithmetic world. but it seems to me that we say that asans and interpreters of the text. but your book is actually calling us to actually see that ubiquity to see how pervasive and everywhere it is in these gospel accounts. yeah, i mean that that is what i'm trying to do a about. but the key thing that the bible translationt friends in was imagining as well. mm hmm. that's is, how do we imagine responsib ourselves imagining with? how do we do that in a rigorous way that can truly be called history? that's right.

that. think erys i read a sociologist, early 20th century sociologist amy tana, who went undercover as a like 1909, and she■i when she finally quit, her job was like actually, i'm and r t her, the working conditions she had been in. her employer said, well, no, you plenty of time. she said, no, i'm working 14 hour days. it'sy my back hurts my arm, but and tana summarized it byimary send then was a failure of ation she says she had done this work, but she couldn't imagineand i think that's what'm hoping we can all do now. yes, we can recognize where what ready. bringing assumptions to our and we can try to imagine in new ways that are reparative for people. i love it.

you actually havef a quote. i want to read some of this, the sort of related to this. so one of the things you say beginning and the book is you identify that the of the project is dealing with limited direct source and attestation available from quote the enslaved coal authors and collaborators hidden behind our new testament heroes like peter, paul, john and to this point, you say ■hthis, the fact that they are t well known today is no accident, since in the ancient world, enslaved literary■@ workers stas entailed and ensured visibility they were according to the logic of slavery extensions, of the more powerful followers of jesus, or of thoser borrowed and as such, thei idea as in their labor belong to quotes. i'm going to stay here for a minute onquestion.

how do you excavate a only hiddt perhaps keven erased? yeah, it's challenging. ■:and this, i guess is where someone might accuse me of hmm.ulation. and what iid was i read really this is why it took so long to do. i read in the histories of cognitive in histories of medice to see what to body. i read a lot of history of atlantic slavery which is so far ahead of us. and that's why i read your work and scholars you i work in classics and i read a lot in his labor. so sometimes people like to say, well, can you prove toe that a secretary did anything?

i'm already a little bit like really? you think i've done clerical labor? i was doing something, but when i read and, book labor, there is noiod time where they are not contributing to the texts that they're producing. that's right. so would be oddly i tried to fin my imaginationay not be very good. this is where i wanted to go and read other things. and in order to prove that i had some kind of basis for things that i was making up,website wie notes. and so you can she's saying that. and here is where she it's not as good as we. and i did that to transparent as i did that, i became aware of sloppy some of the more kind of traditional history writing

was. so, in fact, so many dominant about how the gospels were so the gospel of john, the o fourth gospel, when i was in high school, i learned this y: this how dominant it was. a german scholaresized that thet he had sources, pieces of paper like this, and he was writing with alone looking heaven with maybe with some light. yeah, with light. and then he had sources and a gust of not the sheets of the table. and they gotd up. and this is why the gospel of john has the form that it has is that? yeah, i don't have a problem with the fact that this is speculation, although i'm sure. you will appreciate that when you're talking■= about minor meteorological event we'rencula.

my problem is it's not it's not good and the reason it's t becat john is supposed to be in his. that's right. alone and he's supposed to be using a desk. and they don'tcient world and if all, he's supposed to have loose leaf pieces of paper in his sources that have been scrolls or like format codices like this though don't getnogust of wind. that's right. at no point did he walk across thetrch to to the manuscript experts anday this. that's right. he didn't do that that was so there's a lot of speculation that ex■ócehistory n scrutinized. i try to do my best with the website but i guess if someone said this to me i would say we dothe time. what we need to interrogate are the assumnsndheal forming imagi. yeah, tha y push a little bit

and stay here on another example wheri ■! pointing how our lack o oassumption havef the with. let's talk about paul for a second a■dnd t conversation about paul's imprisonment and paul's psoso one of the things i found provocative of t you resn context for rmatter. paul and paul's imprisonment in paul we the carceral setting of paul at four letters of paul are written from priscolossians so i lehman and u call this sceepeatedly the paulranean chamber which i was like i love thisuramñchamber. so here's the question. cau about,

the relationship between this ce that occupied thischamber, his enterf letter writing and his racket collaborations, secretaries or this ofd coauthors and collaborators you are referring to? how do pieces together in a different kind of fits configuration that is maybe truer to what archeology is telling us, truer to what we about the text and how writing is happening now. how do you reset our our imaginations about? paul is writing letters in prison. yeah. so thank you for about this cati deal this for my book so i'm always happy to talk aboutt. so i started the archeology and here i wt to signal my indebtedness to already published and future work by

matthew lawson and mark gladney on thee collected it all together and what they really make apparent to anyone is roman prisons are dark they are cold and they are underground and you cannot see down there, uh, you know, i've seen some 19th century picture+i ofys paul and you know, a secretary in this beautiful, high ceilinged prison with some great windows, lights. buactually they have like very small. so i consulted with them. i had them read the book for mistakes and i think it's not that the setting makes it impossible for, paul, to have himself, although it does. that's it■ i'm indebted to their work and to megan hennings, you start to look at how christians describe how health starts to look a lot like roman prison like what's with the worms.

you know what i'm talking about? the one die in the new testament. where did that come fro■xwork 'u see that there were no bathrooms in these prisons. and there are a lot of parasites. i realize it's before dinner. yeah. so there are lot of worms in carceral spaces, antiquity.a ise colonists were enslaved people were night or that the prison's uerground n you know that when it's damp ano this is these the spaces imprisonment that are being described the new testament map onto the experience of incarcerated andl people in the ancient world. our ideas about how that some peopley with this right are promising the levied only ot

marginalized for everyone. no enslaver ever would have seen one of these prisons, but might. and i think when you look throughout human there has been like an old correlation between punish people inshould make us . yeah. yeah. what how doou between and hiscoauthors as his co-writers? when youproduction in this space do where see and understand their to play out. if we're putting we're putting paul in this chamber space in this way paul is with other people who make it for him, stay in contact with his churches. dependent upon them.

but thing is them. that's right. he does talk about coaho that's right. it's up. it's where. the once. i don't mean the point of view. yeah. no, we're in this together. i'm just, you know,, paul letter. the romans. that's right. en?woman 1622 we have tessier saying trust you just wrote this we are the ones racing tertius where the and and all of these other lled it. that's what we've chosen. wow, wow. sk you one more question. i think i've got time. ask one more question. and it's sort of just the littlr boy. he'boy. to. about peter just a little bit. thinking about how you're restoring the footsteps and presence of enslaved persons to our imagination, oceans of early

riout, okay, now what stories do i need to go back and review and revisit recognizing these matters, enslavement and seeing what i notice? and so i went a very particular passage. so this is a moment with where peter and up encountering going tourion, core yes, and we to cornelius, his■á■ house. and here's what the text says. the text introduces the envoy that corneille sends after having a vision toer and the text says two, three people are in thisenslaved of his househol. so actually the greek word oikos so household enslavement and then is quote a devout soldier so we get this verse, verse

seven, three people, cornelius. and then the chapter unfoldsnd for the rest of the chapter. in chapter ten, we no longer hear it refers to all three of them. repeat as men. the men, the men took peter to s house. and so in some ways there's this real quick reference of household and action and activity, and then all of a sudden the text seems to kind of drop that language outand so h'. consider your how do some of the ■/stories of early christian interactions and movements and the act of presence, even your chapter worker now appear in wa t before, where these countlessople whom n talked about presence in

these stories enslaving and milc roman world. what where should we be looking as we revisit of our favorite stories andthat that's and the'e live person that's here where where are weà misng those footprints, first off, shively, i have to say,p. death was definitely a paper there. i can s it in want it to be documented. i a writer i think if we're where we haven't seen them, we should that it was done pilot had it written. do we really. i know pilot when he rcommissioned that little title that goes on the cross of jesus says what i have written iavwrit out paint. no and did andt think anyone ele does.

so we're looking in passive verbs sometimes in active. that's right. and i think to the example you gave, whenever you find an apostle fdi and support in the household of a centurion, no less, they aenslas making the food, showing the ■ just arrived. how do we imagine that the newly blinde■b into the city of damascus, were it not for the peoplwhwe traveling with him? that's right. so think that's where we have to look. we just have to ask ourselves in every situation. how did that stuff get there yeah i love it. how do they get there? i've enjoyed having this conversation with you, my friend. thank you. we are going at this point what e to open it up. as for some q&a and invite others to join conversation. and ask us a question and so and ask canada a question. i'm just sitting here supporting ask canada a question about her

book and our research. we welcome you. yes. on second. so this maye supposition. there were other religions. competing, they i assume all had enslaved people who are probably helping to create some of the texts but christianity of the the slaves weren't getting a pay raise. christianity maybe resonated with them more and that they were more enthuas spread. so there has been since. thank you for your question. ■ antioch equity there's been this idea that christianity was a religion for women and. and i do's some

truth that that you can see the appeal of christni can the reade grain you see the power dynamics that are being said but it it'ss a religion of the oppressed. ickly that changes. and because of the ways in which it encodes some really structures. i do that christianity is a particularly bookish religion and gets textual very quickly d that way because that it is benefiting labor and it continus to do in allinds of context. so for example, all of the people who are reading in churches, those are children enslaved children. minute get no they were. we suddenly ■yar■yn just h young they were. there is there is a very idea

that christianity is just more egalitarian, neither slave either male or female. and it thread that i think probably does appeal to people. but i don't think we should be so naive as to think that when an enslaved person accompanied their enslaver a gathering of christians that, they felt that they were equal. i'm sure that when people left they picked up their traditional roles at the and. it is one of t schristianity di. and that's just a hard that we hae with. think others, please. one thing. yes. first, i want to thank you for this conversation. now i have that q■n image of thm lowering, you know, the man and

just to go back and read that, now that you've about it. but my question goes to your process. you talked about to have imagination when we're reading the text and also did so much research, which i truly appreciate you, know i'm excited now about reading the you find a preacher, anyone who's going to study theseo you say when more e some people that will will help you do it. thank you for your$clé question. that's such a difficult regardless of who you are. right. you know, and what kind of research you're doingse when you start researching it feels too soon and too. so for me when i stop is when i

'm reading the same thing over and over again. now in this case that was really hard to do, so. so there was some examples it's a story i tell it's from an rew and it's of maxim, ella, a christian woman, clear and maxia basically pimps out nuclear to her husband and and nuclear ets been a push from scholars and i consider myself a feminist to sort of be sympathetic maxim el byou know'd marriage you know sure she loves it's horrible thing happened to this young woman but you antiquy and that's true. and then i read this story it was actually in a in article about■1o gardenias were used on plantations in the south it was about a particular■6 enslaved

woman who's one of the rare cases where we this woman was a victim ofod abuse. what also know that garden, which were like sort of like fraternal houses for the children to enslavers that therd enslaved women. so we can imagine that these are sites for horrible atrocities against those enslaved women and you have this this enslaving woman who knows what it is to experience sexual violence participate in constructing one and that was really instrumental me it gave me this new light that i wanted that i could criticize maxim to empathize with her, predict it as as a woman in situation with no power in the ancient world still say as stephanie jonesers said, she could have done a lot and f,

it's when i run across tt thth'w i'mhidking differently about this. you you won't always have that, though. any other questions for us. ]u■iwell, thank you. here. so i could be mistaken, but in the ancient world, slaves weren't can they couldn'tlegall. so in the example you brought up of x ten, is it possible to that as giving those slaves status by calling them men? i kind of thought was where you were going to go. i was going to i was i was going you play with that. but this is y mind, my book is o y i think you could read it

that way. right. the sort of elevation of to the status of adulthood and full legal recognition. that'ri it contrast with the soo many examps thatws you h■ie in the roman literature of, you know, horus poet is walking alone when he gets interrupted by someone. and all of a sudden hear, actually, wa'e. right. and a bunch of enslaved people with him. and then suddenly appear. so it's so otrast that kind of encounter story really nicely if you wanted to break that in. yeah. i mean, so the other piece for me that that's at in that and a passage like is to think about e en a game and slave men in antiquity how it'srat in the atlantic sea when we start thinking about us, so the move towards an elici of household enslavement, which now what gets assignehis group, these or part of the envoy is humanity, personhood is

actually a distinction between ties system of enslavement and when we think enslaveminsystem. so that move is so striking to me because i start saying, well, do we see enslavement as it is being talked and conceived in this particular historical pene of the defining pieces of this is in fact the absence of an explicit recognition for personhood that someone who is enslaved could actually qualify as man within this system, within this notion, when you think aboutand 1700s 'g constructed. and so 'ati think it's a great f the in which enslavement is being narrated, how it is act actingthe roman empire in a way that is different from how we see it necessarily being

narrated and described and played in particular us american discourse.t, context we will watch hyth we will watch this space. well yes. yeah. i just wanted to ask a if you could say about your process with regards to how your the you something along the lines of you want to ensure that when you're making comparisons that you don't do so in a cross way, right. you use the example of transatlanticry right? and that's where you have the opportunity to bring in imagination ho pulling from othn to construct this imagination. i for myself as a researcher

it' sometimes you know the imagination when i think about say you to hartman and critical tabulation i' thinking hortense spillers right like they give me an imaginary to think about enslavement in a very real intangible ways that i abhor the way enslavement is presented i n particular because it's not it it doesn't gie the the people that i'm are that that kjgerman guy that right you said he sat down and had a vision of of how john was written and it was this way and it was so of touch or not in in which, youprobably.

so you make the comparisons without being right while at the same time■o what you're doing is ultimately really subversive civ because you are saying that despite tools we have in our field that maybe maybe the know the training that we have don't actually give us the tools to talk or or imagine what actual enslavement look like or how it was experienced and that maybe we really should consider, you these other more comparative feel to go about really thinking aboelwh what did slavery look like then? yeah, it' question and it's hard. i think i have this focus. i was interested in literate workers, right.

and so i so having fohe write. soyo, it's not like i abandoned my field. i still did all of this sort of, you know, i ama to see what pron of them were in looked papyri ty hadwritn. i wrote a bunch of peer reviewed articles first. so there is that traditional at ay here, and there's the archeology that can be helpful. and■m then for me, and looking t literate enslaved workers bee ked disability before, it's sort of instinctive for me to say what does this do to a person how much sense how much do you need? would it be easier with a book like this or a scroll? and instinctive form of research for i would go and i would give talks and people would give me objections like what can't prove

right.e really doing and i was like, you know, ethically i have a problem with saying that a person is a machine but and so they just do work,uld hear that objection. i would go back and, i say, well, how am i going to go look cogtive science? you know, one of the things that tends to happen in antiquity is you only see enslaved workers when they'repeople when they ha. well, that's right. recognize people in order to punish them, that's when they become recognized. and soves like talking to people, getting the pushback so usually go back, reconsider my worry in writing project was. rst that i which is ventriloquists just my imagination which trust me you don't want and then ido t comparative work maybe i move from being aen now i'm just making from different periods speak to each other,uteandy i'm thçk;le one

doing it and. so my step at thatun people rea. experts about the impact on the bodies. i archeology. is this possible? is this how this works? a ce that cut from the book that was about how a reader might have felt anticipating reading a text aloud it ove i dinner party and something like felix was■j lucky that he felt fear in his stomach than his afternoon looking for the ancient texts that talk about people feeling feeling fear in their mouths.pl and at one point, i. was missing text. i knew it was a galen and galen is a medical writer whoserespsil ancient greek literature. so, you know, i minute. finally, i emailed friend o

happens to be one of the world's foremost experts on galen, was like, you know that. and she did know where this is. and so that was what i did. i then felt that sentence got cut. that's the whole day's work on a sentence that didn't end up it was worth .tha's right because e i wrote a bettebo i've written f history books. some have wonzes. people read them, i'm told. but this one is more rigorously aware of where i was whereas before i made all of these assumptions, it's well, gods goes, enslaved ns. the making of the bible my friend candida moss thank you thrknd forcontributing to our fa way that we required toin bibli. early christianistory and then

also around us. thank you. thank you for