you're reading a book like "pride and prejudice", you're not astonished or even dismayed to hear that mr. darcy or mr. bingley never existed. [inaudible] we're reading scripture in a very factual way. we're with factual people in the early modern period, we started turning, in europe and over here in the united states, towards reason, logic, enlightenment, all of these things, science particularly have done wonderful things for the world, but it's no good reading scripture or say the stories of scripture as though they were factual, any more than bride and prejudice is, before about the 18th century, it was impossible to write history as we know it today. because it's only since the 18th century where we started to learn about ancient cultures, we learned to develop the science of archeology and learned how to decipher ancient languages as if we could recreate the world of the past. as human beings, as perhaps the older members of the audience will agree with me, it's more natural for us to forget, rather than to remember. [laughter] >> and scripture tells us what we should remember, and it doe