Welcome back to season five of Enter the Bible, a podcast in which we share "Everything You Wanted to Know about the Bible...but were afraid to ask."

In episode 7 of season 5, Pastor at Tokyo Lutheran Church and a Visiting Professor at the Institute for Ecumenical Research in Strasbourg, France, Sarah Hinlicky Wilson returns as our guest. Her most recent book is "A Guide to Pentecostal Movements for Lutherans." She lives with her family in Tokyo, Japan.

Today our theologians will be answering the listener-submitted question, "Why Does God Only Heal Conditions that the Body Has the Capability to Heal Naturally Such as Cancer, but Never Heals Conditions which the Body Does Not Have the Capability to Heal Naturally Such as Loss of Limb?"

Watch the video version on Youtube.

Dear Bible question seekers - if you would like additional resources, here are a few blog posts that might expand your knowledge on this topic. We hope you enjoy and continue to ask your Bible-related questions!

Healing - https://www.workingpreacher.org/culture/preaching-when-the-pastor-is-sick

Our Bodies and God - https://faithlead.org/blog/what-im-reading-now-hurting-yet-whole/

Resilience - https://faithlead.org/blog/resilience-as-imagination

Mentioned in this episode:

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Kathryn Schifferdecker: Welcome to the Enter the Bible podcast where you can get answers or at least reflections on everything you wanted to know about the Bible. But were afraid to ask. I'm Kathryn Schifferdecker.

Katie Langston: And I am Katie Langston. And today on the podcast, we are joined by a very special guest and a very good friend of both of ours, the Reverend Dr. Sarah Hinlicky Wilson. We were actually, we were debating pre podcast whether you could say the Reverend Dr. and I and we think only Episcopalians are allowed to say that. So Reverend Doctor Sarah Wilson, the most honorable, the most very reverend, the most reverend. And she's associate pastor at Tokyo Lutheran Church in yes, Tokyo, the one in Japan, and is also the co-host of the Queen of the Sciences podcast, which is a theological podcast with her and her dad, Paul Hinlicky, who we have had on the podcast recently. And it's an awesome it's an awesome podcast, so you should totally look it up and listen to it. So anyway, hi Sarah, Welcome.

Sarah Hinlicky Wilson: Hi, Katie. Hi Kathryn. Thanks for having me back. This is my second appearance on Enter the Bible.

Kathryn Schifferdecker: It's it's what is it? You and Allen Padgett and Cameron Howard, I think are our only other repeaters so far. So. Wow.

Sarah Hinlicky Wilson: Am clearly the reverend then? I think that that's what catapults me into the articulate category.

Katie Langston: Thank you for joining us again, Sarah. We really enjoyed enjoyed talking with you.

Sarah Hinlicky Wilson: Yeah, me too. And we've got a good one today.

Kathryn Schifferdecker: We do. We've got a great one. So this is a question that came in on our website and you, dear listener and or viewer on the YouTubes, if you would like to ask a question, you may do so by going to enter the Bible org and clicking on the little button at the top that says Ask a question and there's a form. You could fill it out. And this is one of the form fill outs that we received. And so here we are answering it. I love this question. Sarah: Why does God only heal conditions that the body has the capability to heal naturally, such as cancer, but never heals conditions which the body does not have the capability to heal naturally, such as a loss of limb. In other words, why doesn't God regrow limbs? And I think I have heard this as a kind of gotcha question from atheists who are debating believers. So. And also we.

Sarah Hinlicky Wilson: We should just pack it in and go home. It's over. Done. Sorry.

Kathryn Schifferdecker: Yeah, they win.

Sarah Hinlicky Wilson: Well, let's just say, first of all, that just.

Kathryn Schifferdecker: Even just fingers, right? We don't have to ask for.

Katie Langston: Right. I just. If you cut off your finger. Although my my husband once, he was very mean to a girl in elementary school and she slammed the door like a big heavy elementary school door in his face and his finger got caught in it. And it cut the top of his finger off. And he was able to get it stitched back on. So who's to say? Who's to say?

Sarah Hinlicky Wilson: Well, I think that was more like a matter of cosmic justice against his meanness. It was he deserved it. A healing miracle per se. Agreed.

Katie Langston: Agreed. He deserved. He did.

Kathryn Schifferdecker: He will admit it. He says, Yeah, I should have. I should have. All right.

Sarah Hinlicky Wilson: Well, we should say, first of all, that starfish and geckos can regrow their limbs naturally, and that happens to them and they don't need a miracle for it to happen. So we'll at least grant geckos and starfish. That's. Yeah. And then a theological point of order question before we proceed, which is that any time we ask why doesn't God question, we do not know the answer. Just by definition, you can't ever answer that question, at least conclusively. So we are going to be exploring ways of understanding the ideas behind this question and possible solutions. But there is no such thing as a conclusive answer to a "why doesn't God" question?

Katie Langston: Okay, fair.

Kathryn Schifferdecker: That's that's a good caveat, right? God is God is other. We are not God. We don't know all the mysteries of God. And perhaps this will be on the list of questions we ask at the pearly gates.

Sarah Hinlicky Wilson: I figure that's why heaven will last for eternity because we'll have so many. But why didn't you? questions. It'll take him all of eternity to answer them.

Katie Langston: I think that's fair.

Kathryn Schifferdecker: Honestly, I have never thought of this question, so I would be really interested in knowing what the you know, what the background of this question is like. Did this person lose a limb? I don't know. Yeah.

Sarah Hinlicky Wilson: Well, I think actually the fact that we have never thought of it before is itself. It tells us that we already have an internal operational logic of how healing miracles work. So I think the way to get into this is to look at the miracles Jesus did actually perform. And I'm just going to focus this on Jesus' miracles rather than like any possible miracle that God could cause to happen in the world, you know, like, you know, because God is God, He could like make the earth spin backwards like he does at the end of the original Superman movie to like have Marians or no, that's not Marian. That's the same actress though. Like have her car come out of the San Andreas Fault line. But God evidently doesn't do that. So anyway, so we're not talking about the whole category of possible miracles. We're talking about the miracles that Jesus did to kind of give us a template for what kind of healings God does like to dabble in.

Kathryn Schifferdecker: Okay.

Sarah Hinlicky Wilson: So I was just kind of like I went through the gospels just to have a look. And here are the basic miracles we have reported. So Jesus casts out unclean spirits and demons. We could consider that a healing, but so we'll just set that one aside. But that is a possibility. Then he so he heals people with diseases not any more specified than that. He cleanses a leper. We should note that leprosy at that time was not what we mean by leprosy. It's a persistent skin condition, but it's not the one that makes your nose fall off that maybe didn't even exist in biblical times. Well, what we have.

Katie Langston: Really? Yeah, actually. What? What we. So leprosy.

Sarah Hinlicky Wilson: A little diversion here. But if you're really into Leviticus like I am, you, like, get into stuff like leprosy.

Katie Langston: So I just read Leviticus and was confused. So about the whole leprosy thing because it came up a lot. I was like, Man, they must have had a lot of leprosy back in the day. But no.

Sarah Hinlicky Wilson: Right, but they didn't. So what we we now like modern science calls it Hansen's disease. And that's the one that like is the slow rot and makes your digits and your facial extremities fall off and, you know, puts people on colonies. From what I've read, it may not have even existed in the Middle East until several hundred years after Christ's time. But it's derived from a Greek word that's similar to leprosy leper. And it appears to mean something like a persistent skin condition. But so still, it could be very gross and unpleasant, but not not what we call leprosy today. And I think in Leviticus it's functioning more like a medium for integrity, bodily and spiritual integrity. But you can invite me back to talk about Leviticus sometime.

Katie Langston: Which I would love to.

Sarah Hinlicky Wilson: But we won't get to two waylaid by that at the moment.

Sarah Hinlicky Wilson: So then we have the woman with the issue of blood, you know, so it's some kind of chronic bleeding condition. We have cases of muteness, deafness, and blindness, including blindness from birth, which would suggest the optic nerves never worked at all rather than someone having like an injury that took the blindness away. Seizures, maybe something like epilepsy. That's kind of overlaps with the demonic possession cases. So it's hard to tell. Um, Jesus brings back to life Jairus' daughter, the son of the widow of Nain and Lazarus. Though this is worth noting, those are all fairly recent deaths. He's not like saying, Let's see what happens if we bring Elijah back to life or, you know, right. King David So it's not like zombie reanimation. It's people recently dead. And it's quite important, actually, in biblical imagination that Jesus body did not see corruption. So the idea that like, like the worms didn't take over his corpse, so he was definitely dead, you know, beyond any natural means of revival, but had not passed into the state of rot. Um, so hold that one in reserve. I think that's sort of relevant here. Then there's cases of paralysis. So I think we're getting a little closer there. And then finally a withered hand is restored. So this is a pretty wide range of conditions of various types, various durations. Um, but then I thought the one thing that Jesus could have done that didn't that he didn't do was after John the Baptist's head was lopped off by Herod's soldiers, Jesus did not go and reattach it. John's head, once removed from his neck, stayed off. And I mean, maybe Jesus didn't have access immediately to the body that we know that John's disciples took at least his corpse. We don't know if he got the head to because, you know, little Salome ran off to show Mommy the cool thing that she'd done. So maybe they didn't even have a chance to get the head and put it back on the neck. But evidently that was not a miracle Jesus was invested in.

Katie Langston: He wasn't into it. He did. He did put the ear back on.

Sarah Hinlicky Wilson: Oh, right. Yeah, I forgot about the one. That's right. Yeah. Yeah, right. True. Yeah. Okay. So that's sort of. I think that's more like the fingertip rather than like it is more like the amputated leg, right?

Katie Langston: Yes. Yes, I would agree with that.

Kathryn Schifferdecker: Yes. Okay.

Sarah Hinlicky Wilson: Yeah. So and but so this is a lot of stuff that Jesus does do. But I think it's also indicates that there is limited scope of healing within the possibilities of the natural world, that some healings are clearly eschatological and healing the vast majority of the human race from the condition known as death is an eschatological solution. It's not one for now.

Kathryn Schifferdecker: Okay, So define eschatological. So exactly.

Sarah Hinlicky Wilson: Oh, yes. Eschatological means the end of time after the normal conditions that obtain in our universe pass away, Jesus comes again in glory. God is all in all. We have very little data on that. Mostly promise a few glimpses. So there's very much not so much that we can derive from it except that all of all of Christian faith is connected to hope in the promise of what will be. We're not looking at a complete restoration of affairs right now. And so I think the the not grown back amputated limb is one of those signs that we are not yet living in a time of full restoration, like when Augustine goes into these wild speculations about the resurrection body he considers things like will damaged bodies be restored? And he thinks, yes, they will. On the other hand, he says you will not get all your fingernails and hair back once removed from your body. They will stay back. Otherwise you would have impossible fingernails in the life to come because you know an entire lifetime's worth of fingernails that would not be part of true human flourishing in the life to come.

Katie Langston: That's true. Augustine. Good thinking there, buddy.

Kathryn Schifferdecker: Never, never read that.

Katie Langston: But but. But the resurrected body will like in the resurrection. You do get your limb back, but not not all your fingernails.

Sarah Hinlicky Wilson: That's what Augustine believed. Yes. Yes. Okay. But when he's working from there is clearly like a sense of the the integration and wholeness and restoration of the human body as it is meant to be. And so, you know, clearly, part of the the tragedy of current existence is that plenty of people are born with fully functional bodies that do everything that they're supposed to do until a pretty ripe old age. But there are people who are born with bodies where some system is not working correctly. You know, we have infants who die in the womb or right after death, you know, or people who have persistent disabilities throughout life that are damaging to the wholeness that they would ideally have. And of course, they're fully human. And there's all the things that we do to, you know, honor that and integrate them into life as much as possible. And don't mean to make it sound like it's us granting them a favor, but you can imagine Jesus' time. It was much more a case of granting favors to people who were somehow seriously damaged in their natural development.

Kathryn Schifferdecker: So. So that idea of the resurrection body and of course, Paul talks a lot about it in 1 Corinthians 15.

Katie Langston: Right, is Oh yeah.

Kathryn Schifferdecker: And he you know, it's a mystery, right? Like what will the Resurrection body look like? But I like. Well, and Paul says it's like when you plan to seed and then a tree grows or a plant grows. Right. That that it's it's comes from the seed. Right. Like these bodies are the seed and then the resurrection body comes out of that. And what I take from that is there's a continuity right between now and what comes after that, that we don't all just become one, you know, homogenous mass of resurrected whatever bodies, Right. We don't all become one with the universe. But that.

Sarah Hinlicky Wilson: Right.

Katie Langston: There's a there's a particularity there.

Kathryn Schifferdecker: There's a particularity about our beings. Right. Right. So that so that we will be us in some kind of resurrected, transformed bodies. So. But like they like what you say, Sarah. But, but those. Right, but there's a kind of wholeness about those bodies, too, right?

Sarah Hinlicky Wilson: And also in 1 Corinthians 15, there's also some kind of discontinuity because an oak does not look like an acorn. So I don't know what exactly that means or how far Paul wants to push that. But I think at least what it can reflect back to us about our time is that the difference between a completely whole, normally functioning body and one that is somehow damaged or disabled is actually not that great compared to what we will both be in the life to come. So there's more closeness among all human sufferers of the normal degradations, corruptions of physical corruption, of bodily processes than there is difference. You know, we're not able bodied people are not more like a resurrection body in that respect. There is some radical transformation that takes place that we can't imagine. But that still begs the question of why does God not regrow limbs right now when that would clearly be desirable for a lot of people. So again, without being able to answer conclusively, I have two ideas that are borrowed from C. S Lewis's book, Miracles, which I reread last year. My dad and I actually did an episode about miracles, and we use this book as a launching point.

Katie Langston: That's why I thought of you for this episode, actually, because I listened to that one and I was like, Oh, Sarah and Paul have thoughts about this?

Sarah Hinlicky Wilson: Yes. Okay. Well, I think this is one thing that I like best about this book is that Lewis emphasizes that, again, this that God, the creator, is the same as God the Redeemer. And so what's being redeemed is creation. And so I think a lot of people, especially in the modern era, come into miracles, thinking of them primarily as violations of the law of nature. And that's what is conclusive about them. But the problem is that then that makes the Redeemer somehow at odds with the Creator that God is like fighting against himself or thinks that how creation is set up is fundamentally flawed. And so it has to be altered or cheated somehow. And this takes us into so many theological and philosophical difficulties we cannot get into right now. But Lewis has a very good quote that I'm going to read to you here, which I think really points out the idea of a miracle being a restoration of creation rather than a violation of creation. So here's what he says. If events ever come from beyond nature altogether, she, meaning nature, will no more be incomoded by them. Be sure she nature will rush to the point where she is invaded as the defensive forces rush to a cut in our finger and then hastened to accommodate the newcomer the moment it enters the divine act, her realm, nature's realm, it obeys all her laws. So here's the point. Miraculous wine will intoxicate. Miraculous conception will lead to pregnancy. Inspired books will suffer all the ordinary processes of textual corruption. Miraculous bread will be digested. The divine art of miracle is not an art of suspending the pattern to which events conform, but of feeding new events into that pattern. So I think what that says to us then is that the healings that Jesus does are unsticking stuck creation and getting it back to doing what it is supposed to do normally, but it doesn't actually violate the rules of nature or creation the way we think of it. So for instance, when we talk about healing the body, let's say just from a medical perspective, when you take medicine, the medicine doesn't heal you. The medicine helps your body heal itself. Like any healing that takes place is always the body's own work of healing. And so I think we see something analogous going on in Jesus healing is he is entering something new, a divine unsticking process so that the healing can take place and the creation can be restored to how it is meant to be. But obviously, in a case like a limb being sawed off and, you know, whether it's, you know, after a landmine accident or being in war or a cancer or whatever takes it off, there is no natural human or no natural creative process in human bodies that regrows limbs ever, whereas bodies can heal infections. Bodies do conquer cancer. Um, I think maybe in the cases of like bringing back even something like an ear, like someone who's deaf, you know, maybe that would, we would think of that in terms of like healing a exploded eardrum or something like that or reattaching optic nerves. But it's not like you can start seeing out of your elbow. Like that is not the miracle that Jesus ever causes to happen.

Katie Langston: Right. Right. Yeah.

Kathryn Schifferdecker: That's really. That's good. Yeah. So, so and works within the pattern that God has already said in creation in terms of how bodies work and doesn't go against. Yeah. Doesn't go against natural law in that in that sense. Yeah.

Sarah Hinlicky Wilson: And I think also this is again using kind of contemporary medical terminology. But if you look at Jesus' miracles, he he deals with chronic conditions, not acute conditions. So interestingly, there's no case of Jesus healing a broken bone. So, okay, he doesn't regrow a lost limb, but he also doesn't set a broken bone. I mean, that's kind of interesting that that particular acute crisis is not dealt with or we don't have any cases of appendicitis where someone's appendix is literally exploding and Jesus, like rushes in there and does divine surgery or anything like that. When he's dealing with people at someone who has been blind since birth or for a really long time, or a woman who's been bleeding for 12 years or, you know what leprosy was then, it was still a very long term, persistent skin condition or seizures as like a long term problem. So somehow it also seems that Jesus' mercy and attention is really on people who have long term suffering. And, you know, even in the case of the woman with the issue of blood, it says that she spent all her money on doctors trying to get help. So she actually went to the doctors first, which is a sensible thing to do. You know, people out there start with a doctor. Right. But but but that's where Jesus' intervention comes as these chronic what we would now call chronic conditions.

Kathryn Schifferdecker: So I think that's true for the most part. So I would I think about like Peter's mother in law who falls ill, you know, with a fever and Jesus heals. So. And, you know, the diseases that that Jesus heals. As you said at the beginning, though, not really specified. So, I don't know, maybe he did set a bone. Who knows. But but I take your point. Did I take your your point that that Jesus has compassion, particularly on those who have suffered chronically, who have suffered for a long time with a particular body, bodily ailment. And those those are the ones that the text really focuses on. Those those healings.

Sarah Hinlicky Wilson: Yeah. It seems maybe that, you know, this fits well with a savior, right? That he's interested in lost causes. If nature and practitioners who look at nature and work on it can handle the problem, there's no reason for God to get involved because he set up the system of creation. It's not bad in itself. It's the lost causes. When you know to call on Romans 8, you know, the creation, groaning and labor pains and things not working as intended in creation. That's when God says, okay, at this point I may step in, though again, only maybe it doesn't obviously does not always happen.

Kathryn Schifferdecker: I think often the question that people have, or at least my students in my classes have, is, well, why not me or why not? Why not my loved one? Right? Because. Because you do hear about miracles today, too. Or at least what seemed to be miraculous healings that doctors can't explain, though often those healings come about through medical means. That and I see that as God's work as well. God's work through medical professionals. But but those you know, the miracles that still happen. Well, why not for me or why not for my loved one?

Sarah Hinlicky Wilson: Right? I don't think actually there's any reasonable objection to miracles. The reasonable objection is to not miracles. Yeah, that's the problem, right?

Katie Langston: That is. That is the problem, right?

Kathryn Schifferdecker: So do you. Do you have.

Katie Langston: So why so? So why not miracles then?

Sarah Hinlicky Wilson: Right. So back to the starting point, which is there is no conclusive answer to why doesn't God? I have no idea. I have seen things that I don't know how to account for other than miracle. And I have seen things that ought to have gotten a miracle and didn't. Right. I cannot explain the why or wherefore of either of them think the only the faithful thing to do is when there seems to be a miracle. And I don't think it needs to be competitive between natural means and divine means again, because if if the Redeemer is the creator, there is no competition. But anyway, if there's something we can't explain, it looks like a miracle. Give thanks for it. And if there should have been a miracle and there wasn't, then complain to God. There's lots of language in the Bible encouraging and inviting you to tell God that He is failing on the job. God can totally handle it, but I don't know what else you can do other than complain to God and carry on and await an eschatological healing. That is not going to happen in this life.

Kathryn Schifferdecker: I think. Oh, sorry, Katie, Go ahead.

Katie Langston: I was going to say we did have an episode with with Allen pageant pageant on on the kind of question of like, do miracles happen and why did they happen or why don't they happen like more broadly And he had some interesting thoughts about how it's sort of like a foretaste of the the eschatological end or whatever. I can't remember exactly what he said. Sorry, Allen, don't listen. Then you're like, why.

Sarah Hinlicky Wilson: Can't I have the foretaste?

Kathryn Schifferdecker: Yeah, right. No, right.

Kathryn Schifferdecker: That's where I was going to go to, I think. I think Allen had a really nice answer and. And yeah, it has to do with that. You know, one of the words for what we would call miracles in in the Old Testament is, is a sign. Yeah. So. Oh that's right. And so if miracles are signs then there's what are they signs of. Well there's signs. Signs of the coming kingdom of God, the eschatological reign of God. And so why, you know, they're not meant to heal everyone like our dear departed colleague Terry Frethiem here at Luther Seminary, wrote a well wrote on this topic, too. And he said, you know, Jesus heals a blind man, but he doesn't heal all blind men in his day or women. He calms the storm on the Sea of Galilee, but he doesn't eliminate all storms. Right? That even in Jesus' time. Even his miracles are meant to be signs and yea signs and in breakings of the Kingdom of God to give us hope, not to not to heal everything right now. It's not it's not the messianic age yet, but there are. But there are signs of it's in breaking. And that's what, as you said, Sarah, when when it happens, we give thanks. And when it doesn't, we can complain. That's.

Katie Langston: We can be mad about that.

Sarah Hinlicky Wilson: Yeah. Yeah. And actually, that's a wonderful insight, Kathryn and that bridges me over into the other point because what you're saying there is basically that Jesus, miracles are signs of him there. You know, we are the happy recipients when a sign of Christ's love and presence and power touches us directly. But the purpose of the miracles is not to be a slot machine where you get lucky sometimes. the purpose of a miracle is to testify to the power and glory and grace of Jesus Christ. And so the other point from Louis that I wanted to bring here, which is again, another one of those things I never thought about before, is he points out how many miracles or signs do not ever happen in the Bible. So, for instance, in the Old Testament, we have the delightful story of Balaam's ass speaking to him. I love normally donkeys do not talk in human life. It's true that we can understand. True. So okay, that is a funny thing. But Lewis says, okay, Balaam's ass may talk in the Bible, but nobody in the Bible is turned into an ass, or it gets the head of an ass, which happens in Ovid's Metamorphoses, and which is what Shakespeare picked up on for a Midsummer Night's Dream. So all of all of this Book of Ovid's is about weird. One thing turns into something else. And actually we have no cases of something turning entirely into something else. That is not a biblical miracle. The Bible has no interest in it, or for another example, when the Holy Spirit causes Mary to be with child, it does not happen like Zeus turning into a swan so he can get at Leda or into Golden Rain, so he can get at Danny. He that is not the means by which the Lord God brings about a miraculous pregnancy. And, you know, it's obvious to us, right? Like we never confuse biblical miracles with these wacky stories of the Greek and Roman gods and all the other mythologies of the world. But it's worth reflecting, like, why doesn't it ever occur to us to ask that question? And I think it is because when you are formed by biblical literature, you, without realizing it, you have an operating hypothesis or a sense of the kind of things God is interested in doing and what he just isn't. So you would never look for like if you get really mad at your ex-boyfriend, you don't think, you know, if God really loved me, He'd turned this ass's head into an ass's head because then it would show the world what he's really like, you know?

Katie Langston: You know, I have a few ex-boyfriends that, in retrospect, I'm kind of pissed about. Why didn't.

Sarah Hinlicky Wilson: Yeah, well, you should have wish ed for them to lose a leg in a car accident and then it would never grow back. That was what you should have been wishing for. Oh, no, no, no.

Katie Langston: No, no, no, no.

Sarah Hinlicky Wilson: You can just trying to bring it full circle here.

Katie Langston: Yeah. So that's good.

Kathryn Schifferdecker: The point is that is that God acts in certain ways and not others in Scripture, and God is not the kind of capricious. Yeah, well, God.

Katie Langston: Created, God created and called it good, right? God created and called it good. And so God, you know it. God's work is toward the furtherance of the creation that he made and isn't about like mixing those kinds of things up because it was good.

Sarah Hinlicky Wilson: Right. So the miracles are not the complete set of all violations of nature that could take place. And so what we see, especially in Jesus' miracles, is signs of who he is that restores stuck creation to the creator's original intention, because Jesus is the creator and he is the son of the Creator and sends the spirit of creation onto creation all over again in the Pentecost. So that's why there's this kind of integrity, but very limited set of miracles that you see in the Bible that don't extend to all possible weird things that could happen.

Kathryn Schifferdecker: But signs of the signs of the whatever you want to call it, the messianic age, the the next life, the the time when God's kingdom, when God's reign and rule will be will be here. Yeah, that's really helpful, Sarah. Thank you for that. I have not read that particular book of C.S. Lewis's Miracles, but I'll put it on my list. That sounds like very insightful, very insightful. And you you added Augustine and others as well. Thank you for that. We knew that you would be the person to answer this question. So thank you.

Sarah Hinlicky Wilson: Very inconclusively as there's still no answer, really. But that's the best I got for you.

Kathryn Schifferdecker: That's pretty good. That's pretty good for a complicated question. So. So thank you, Sarah. Thanks for joining us. And thank you, listener and viewer, for listening to this episode of the Enter the Bible podcast. You can get high quality courses and commentaries, resources, videos, more podcasts and reflections at Enter the bible.org. And if you have a question of your own, please send it to us at Enter the bible.org. We can't answer all the questions we get, but we try to answer as many as we can. So thank you for joining us and we'll see you next time.