00:00:08 Speaker 1: This is me eat your podcast coming at you shirtless, severely, bug bitten and in my case, underwear listening podcast. You can't predict anything, all right, Bracy V. Hill. The second, we're gonna role play for a minute. You're you're at a party and you're you're up at the punch bowl and someone comes up and they say, no, what do you what do you do for a living? And you tell him what I say, I'm a history professor, kind of okay to continue role playing. Then I'll be Then I'll say I'm I'm your interlockate tour at this party. I say, well, what like what? And I go, you know, I did my dissertation on British rational religion in the late seventeenth century and early eighteenth century, but I teach American hunting history and particularly how it intersects with religion. I'm tracking what most people don't at that point in time. So they've gone up there, so my my character has now left. They answered the question I could also is they go hunting? And I say yeah, and they go hunting. Yeah, there's a lot to study there. And I started going off into my spiel about how that hunting culture, particularly in America has transformed over centuries, adapted itself to various peoples and animals that have been present on the continent. Uh, and that it continues to change even to today. And so what I do is I look at how American culture of hunting, really cultures of hunting have changed throughout the years. And I actually teach classes at my university on the history of hunting, in which case, well I teach to I teach a senior level of course that is nominally called the History of Hunting in North America. And then I teach you you know that I've got, you know, this great subtitle that no one ever prints. Uh, you know, it's it says something about from basically from survival to controversy. Uh. And then I teach a freshman only version, which is it's a they walk in the door, it's called a freshman Academic seminar, and they get me and I don't even get to pitch the class to them. They they sign up for a doing orientation, so I don't know who's selling it, but they walk in and we do a freshman version of it. So it kind of teaches them how to write, etcetera. But they engage the idea of that there's a history of this cultural phenomena in America. They get credit for their American history for it. But this is great, right um. And you know, if I get a chance to tell them first aimsod you know, yes, we're gonna watch Bambi alright, and we're gonna watch a little Ted Nugent because I have to our roll some Doug dynasty And that's my in a way of trying to bring him in something that they may have seen before. I said that this is real history. We're gonna look at primary sources, gonna people's experiences. Uh and in particular because of my focus, we're gonna at least look at how religion plays into this, from Paleo Indians, Native American tribes, the arrival of Puritans, don't forget the Spanish already here too, write the French as well, and how that plays out as particularly Anglo Americans sweep westward across the continent and encounter new people's, new animals, economics, and how all plays together. Now, I'm not sure that actually fulfill that, and of course the semester, but that's my grand goal. That's the that's the ambitious grand ambitious game. Would you mind there's a lot I'm already backed up in my mind, but real quick, can you can you tell people? I don't think we've ever talked about this before. Can you explain a people the difference between the primary and secondary resources. That's a great question. Um. So, a primary source is material and it used to be just texts. But historians are not opening their minds to looking at things more than this text we talked about like a material culture, so we'll look at things. But an artifact something that humans have modified, they've created from a particular time period, and that's the time period that we're investigating. That's a primary source. So a primary source can be a diary entry from eight and I'm studying eight. A primary source could be a computer if I were studying a particular period where that computer was relevant. Uh So, primary sources are in some ways limitless, but not really because primary sources have a tency to disappear, right so paper hesitency to wrot, mold, disappear. Would if you're studying paleon Indian cultures, you don't find their their their homes that are constructed of wood. What you find, at best is the hollow that was left by the post, right, that's filled in with a different type of We perceive it as a history that's written in rock exactly because everything else is gone. So most of what we find in our our our blade technology, right, so your Clovis technology, etcetera, folds and stuff like that, and that stuff has intensity to last. So that's a primary resource. But so is UH Patagonia, coats, um or textbooks. If I'm studying a period and those are resources that tell me something about that culture of that time period, etcetera, that's a primary source. So primary sources, uh can be stories that were told and recorded, whether they were written down or recorded literally on various types of technology. So someday this conversation could be a primary sources primary sources. It's exactly right now, it's so what if loose the Clark journals, primary sources, um, undaunted courage secondary source? Right, well, secondary secondary source is uh a Julian. We take about the secondary source as a secondary history, secondary source for history. So that what happens is it's where the historian intentionally or unintentionally analyze is material that's in front of them, and so she she has these various types of data in front of it that are primary sources, and she analyzes them, determines their importance, and in most cases weaves them into a narrative. Now many times the historian then will not just use primary sources, but she'll also use secondary sources. So if I were writing a history of hunting, which I'm supposed to be doing right now front undisclosed University Press, I hope to finish it a history of hunting of U culture in Texas, then I would look to histories of Texas. That's a secondary source. But that's useful to me as I construct my narrative of hunting cultures in the state of Texas and the Regian Texas. But I also would turn into primary sources as I write my secondary source. So the secondary source is this analysis and report, because this is what historians do. Historians have to communicate. That's what we do. We communicate by speaking, we communicate our writing um and if we fail in that venture, of course, then we failed to as a historian. But the historian distills places importance on certain data ignores others. It's science and art. The art is the idea that I have to communicate to you whatever my audience is that I perceive, I communicate to you what I think is important about this period. And I take many times in all this various data that doesn't seem to fit together, and I make a coherent, I hope story for you to understand the past. But of course ignore other stuff too, and that's where scientifically I have to be very careful. I'll go into archives, I look at paintings, Um, I look at guns. Although us last summer I spent time in a museum and a fellowship just basically mess around with knives and guns, particularly from Texas in the nineties. Entry. It was fun, it was great. But I've got to give meaning to that thing. So we tell the story. Um, and that's that secondary source, whether I'm telling you about it myself or I'm writing it and presenting it to you as an audience. Okay, now can you humor from me me from it? Like while I have you here? Yea, there's there's three trying to think there's a few areas that in past episodes we've touched on matters of a biblical nature, didn't have the expertise. Okay, so we should say that, right. So my expertise is right. This is where I like pull out my union card. So I am a historian, but I have a master's degree in theology, and I have a PhD in the religion. So for the audience, who's going So why are they asking his story and about the Bible. I'm still not the best source, but in theory, someone educated me on these things to a degree in the past. Alright, this, I'm gonna ask you some trust me up questions. I'm gonna ask you some low level because this is just cleaning up some messes we've made in past episodes. And I want as a way to introduce you and just to bring a thing up because we got a lot of feedback from this recently. Okay. We have a friend that we work with, Mark Kenyon, and Mark Kenyon has been trying to kill the same deer for years, okay, And I was explaining to him one day that he was gonna have a saul on the way to Damascus moment where he saw the light and decided to not shoot this deer. After all, I was predicting that this would happen, And I said, I can't remember if it's if the dude's name was Paul or Saul, and a lot of people wrote in to say, what, Yes, it's a tricky question. It's the same guy. Okay, it's the same guy. So if you look at the So the story takes place in the Book of Acts, which it's a history, by the way, it's a two part history. So the Book of Luke, which you may have heard of the Gospel Luke and the Book of Acts are one book. It's just in two parts. So you can tell because the intro it says, dear theophilis in the beginning of Luke, that's a guy's name like lover of God. And we don't know if that's really a guy or if it's just this, you know, this character he is writing out there for the because he says, basically, Luke. The writer of Luke says, so you know that there's been these other histories written about our faith, but it's I'm paraphrasing these they this they're a mess, he said. So I've done is I've tried to put together for you an orderly history. So that's his intro at the beginning of Luke, and then you get to Acts, and actually chapter one says dear theophilis part two. All right, now, I'm gonna tell you about what happens after Jesus goes. Now, he starts with the resurrected Jesus and acts number one. And then of course Jesus goes. You know, he's gone. Angels go what are you doing here? And he lays out They lay out the thesis. They say, basically, why are you still standing here? Basically go tell the message from Jerusalem to the ends of the earth, and gives a lot of other place names in there. And so he lays his thesis out number one. I'm gonna tell you about Jesus, and we're gonna do an orderly fashion. Is the basis your faith, Luke number Luke, Chapter one, Acts Chapter one. You say, but why aren't they next to each other? Don't ask me about the cannon. Alright, but the canon is a mess. But anyhow, they separated in the stick all the little biographies about Jesus together, and they separated these two books. So the second chapter, if you're the second part of this history by this writer, which is historically, or i said, traditionally called Luke, describes the story of really kind of two major characters in the formation of the early Christian Church. The first is Peter. So Peter gets like the first couple of chapters, and then they shifted this guy named Saul, all right, a great persecutor, great persecutor. He's he's he's born in southern Asia minor Turkey, Tarsus. Uh. He comes to get educated in Judea. So he's a he's a pharisee's he's a bright guy, trained at the best school, if you will. All right, So he's a persecutor. The early Christians famously overseas, Oh man, you're making me pull the stuff in the back of it. He oversees the martindom of Stephen. Right, Okay, what's my name? Right? There you go. It wasn't for him, I wouldn't be named me. There you go. Yeah. So in or out Damascus, which is the capital of Syria, Soul has his experience. The resurrected Christ somehow speaks to him and calls him Saul, Soul, why do you persecute blinds in basically knocks him off his ass or blinds him for the rest of his life. Oh no, no, no, no, no no no, to be a miracle. Alright, So so I don't know if he's on an ass or a horse anyhow, knocks him a right, So he's he's blinded, and he goes in and there's a fellow who's part of the Christian community who basically praise for him, and he's blind for a little bit and then his side his gang. So there's a miracle. So he gets this divine this uh, the christophany, what if you wanna call it, this vision of the Christ are the voice of the Christ, his appearance. And this is how Paul later on we'll talk about his names. This is how he validates he was an apostle because while the other guys that there were twelve, right, they were close, one of them apparently got it wrong. Right. So the eleven that the close associates of Jesus, Uh, they're the apostles. They're called their commissioned to go out there. And there's a lot of others who were as well. But Paul says, hey, Jesus called me himself, all right. If you go through the Book of Acts, as the writer Luke, let's just call him, is working through his thesis of showing how the Christians take the message from Jerusalem to Judea to Samarian, to the ends of the earth. He picks it up with Paul, who goes by Saul. But Saul uses the name Saul and Paul back and forth. Actually, the end of Acts, he still calls himself Saul. He tells the story that Jesus appears to him and calls him Soul. It's Luke as he tells his story that shifts to Paul. In fact, once Paul leaves the area of Jerusalem, Luke subtly shifts from Seul to Paul. Now here's my theory on why Saul is a Hebrew name. It's the first king of Israel, right the United Kingdom there of Israel, uh, and that's a good Hebrew name. But he was born in Asia Minor, in a Roman city, and that's why he has Roman citizenship. Now he comes to jude all that kind of stuff, but he has a Roman name. So Paul or Paulus is his Latin name, and so he goes by Paul, just like you would go by Soul. Just like there are other characters in the New Testament, like this guy named um Thomas who's also known as Didimus the Twin. So there's people who have multiple names. So what you see is the shift from Saul to Paul in the Book of Acts to fit the historians thesis. So as he leaves the center of Judaism and moves into the gentile, the world of the Goyem, the gret a Roman world, he shifts to Paul to show how Paul is taking the Gospel to the ends of the area. As a long answer, that's good, I liked it. Can move on to the next part. My next question, blue laws, Oh, just real quick to touch on this with your expertise. A guy was pointing out that we had something terribly wrong. He says, one, okay, all right, let me let me get this right here, he says. Here in North Carolina, as Janice might be able to tell you, we have recently modified the laws for Sunday hunting to be much less restrictive. And to the listener, there are states in the American South and elsewhere you're not allowed to go hunting on a Sunday, although there are still certain prohibitions, especially to your normal Sunday morning church service hours. One minor correction to Steve's point about the Sabbath is that Sunday isn't really considered to be the Sabbath. I was saying the Sabbath right for Sunday. Sabbath is just the Hebrew word for seventh and corresponds to the Christian account when God arrested on the seventh day. It is always Sunday. Christians worship corporately, corporately on Sunday and remembrance of Jesus resurrection. Now there are plenty of Christians that confuse the two, but nowhere does the Bible talk about Sabbath laws, rest from work, short distance of travel, et cetera. Applying to Christians on Sunday, this guy says, I don't see it why it should be mandated as free from all activity. I don't hunt on Sunday because that's because I'm at church. Does resonate with you at all? All right, So a little bit of a number of things going on here, all right. First off, there are number of states that do have blue laws. Uh. My best friend, his name's Josh. He grew up in Pennsylvania, a little place called Enan Valley, Uh, and opening a deer season it was like a holiday, like a holy day. But from what I gathered from the stories he's told, me it was a Monday, because in Pennsylvania you can't hunt deer on Sunday. So there are number of states. Yes, okay, so it which is interesting because this whole William Penn's experiment. If you're from me, he was a Quaker, right, and so Pennsylvania was supposed to be a place where freedom of religion took place in a unique and in brand new way. You know what William Penn wants describing that state, talked about how grouse would walk into his house. He had observations about wildlife, so that Benjamin Franklin, we should talk about him. He's got some weird views snakes anyway. Uh. Blue laws then ironically show up in places, and I believe Rhode Island which is as well, which is also established on religious freedom. I could be wrong with Rhode Island, so we're right in and tell me all right, But the point is, ironically that as we see the establishment and sometimes in places you would expect to see religious freedom and not expect to see religious ideas pervaded secular life. For lack of a better way of saying it, that's where you find it. So there are number states that don't allow hunting on Sunday. Why well, there was generally this assumption for hundreds of years among Christians that the Sabbath was Sunday. But the Sabbath isn't Sunday. The Sabbath is actually Friday night. Is when it starts sundown Friday to sundown Saturday. You got it right, And that's why that's like when like like Jews, Yeah, absolutely, you go to synagogue with Orthodox jewesday. That's when they do their honor the Sabbath from sundown Friday sundowns not just Orthodox but Reformed Jews as well. It's not infrequent we go to synagogue. Uh, the number of synagogues actually even in the town where I live, but where I've grown up, and it starts on Friday nights. It's your Schobat service. So that was the day of rest. And where does this come from? There's a couple of different hints about it in in in particularly the Penitute the first five books of the Hebrew Bible or the Old Testament if you want to use that if you're Christian first active. But the probably the most interesting one is of course the first chapter Genesis one, which lays out this creation story and it rolls into early part of Genesis too. Um, And do you have these these days in which God creates through various means, uh, the world. That is that he separates water from land, and he puts vegetation, and and then he creates uh, you know, he has light and darkness in it as the stellar formations, and then he has the birds and the four legged critters, and eventually on the sixth day he creates humans right along with other things, but humans and all these creations are basically good, but the ones with human it's it's very good. And then it says on the seventh day he rests now again, I'm gonna pull us in back of me. But I believe it's in the book of Exodus. You have a retelling of this, and it's etological, which is a fancy way of saying it's a story that has an explanation for why we do what we do. And there it's explicit because God sit on the seventh day, so we rest as well. Um. And there's two different ideologies going on there and the two books. But so it's established in in the in the Hebrew culture that you rested on the seventh day. It was a way of essentially, Um, I hate to say it, but mimicking God, but in a in a positive fashion. Um. And so on the seventh Day you rested, and there were certain behaviors you didn't do in the rabbis. Jewish rabbis years afterwards continued to comment on this. There's certain things you shouldn't be doing right, probably hunting, working, Um, off top of my head, cutting wood. You have sacks, by the way, on on the Sabbath. That's not work, that's that's okay. Uh, that's what I remember hearing in class. That caught my attention. I remember that in class. But so certain the fishing, fishing, fishing is okay. I don't know. I don't know what. To be honest, I don't remember. No state has outlawed Sunday fishing or Cinday sacks, I guess. But the point is you do have this intriguing extension then of and the Christian you say, why Christmas on Sunday? Here's the shift. They go back to the Book of Acts. Uh. These were Jews that came to believe them that this Jesus was the Messiah, the awaited One. Um. And they continue to do Jewish things. They still went to the Temple. It was there hadn't been destroyed by the Romans in the year seventy by the guy named Titus, So it's still there. Um and uh. They continue to do but they have to figure out who they are though, right. So there Jews, but they believe that the Messiah has come. Uh. They seemingly still are doing sacrifices in the Temple. They're still gathering. But you see in there early in the Book of Acts, increasing tension then between these Jews or followers of Jesus and Jews that didn't buy into the he was of Messiah, until eventually they kicked out of the out of the synagogues where they would gather, and they're essentially pushed out of the Temple region. And so they pick a new day to worship on Sunday. That's how that all came about. Yeah, and Christians have turned to the Sabbath Sunday not too as again as Christianity Christian Yeah, yeah, right now, so you have Seventh Day ad ventice for instance, if you're driving them, they follow more of a Herbraic code. It's I am a little picky choosing right there. Certain things there, for instance, most Sunday, i'd ben as I know, or vegetarian, right, um, And they have very strict diets, and so they keep many of the date of the Seventh Day had been this one time for a few days. I was gonna say, how did it go? Well, she didn't date Friday night to Saturday night. Yeah, and as a meat eater, I can't remember. Yeah, right, okay, so it's gonna be a problem. Possibly, so, but seven Day. Even so, there's groups of what you might consider radical Christianity. She was vegetarian, you're right, but it really date. It was like I was. I was, I was interested in trying to date her. Yeah, all right, so that's where you began to see and you still see written that said that particuarly in the nineteenth century where you see kind of utopian movements and more radical types of Christianity, and even in America go back and back to the old ways exactly. But whoever it was that said, hey man, we're gonna do some semblance of well, I'm gonna like exclude by law the most egregious things heavy drinking, hunting. Well, most people were Sunday people who were Sunday people, which I mean again, there's a lot of states you can't buy hard liquor on Sundays. It's the same principle. And then we call those blue laws as well. Yeah, but there's like I guess it's around a dozen or so states that still have blue laws for hunting. Okay, can you now tell me give me the quick wrap on your your your book? All right? All right? Is it? Can I still called a Newish book? Yeah? It came out in November of two. Yeah, I can see that friendly all right, so real quick? Um, the books called God Nemerod in the World exploring Christian perspectives on sport hunting. It's published by Mercer University Press, which has a Sports and Religion series. Yeah, Sports and religious and sports and religion like what Yeah, okay, so it's a competitive verb. It pulls it two together. So it's sports and religion together. Yeah, alright, printed, I don't have to yeah. Um, And so they've got books on baseball football. Yeah, well there's nothing to write. I don't know. I didn't read the book. Yeah, but as you as we learned in this book, there's all kinds of ways that hunting plays into the Bible. Is not a lot of baseball plays into the Bible. It's ridiculous idea. I didn't write that book. I did write this. If you have you step out the long as show it is what is there to be said? Yeah, I don't know. I didn't read the book. I didn't realize. I knew that there was a lot of hunting in the Bible, yeah, I didn't realize how much. And so I started looking at this book. Yeah, yeah, I mean there's a lot going on there. Um, so real quick. The story of the book was I was writing a dissertation and my dissertation was looking at radical groups in England and Britain. I started out with a law large, which is a group in the fourteenth century in England. I ended up losing my director from a distant religious group, radical religious. I like radical minority religious groups, all right, I just do um. And so then I ended up for various reasons, things got shifted around. Ended up working with a fellow from the University of Storily in Scotland. He was visiting in the United States as a distinguished scholar um and we we we found a topic that I could study with him that fit within his purview. So I started studying late seventeent century early eighteenth century radical religion we call rational religion. It's as a proto Unitarian. People who grew up within the Orthodox Christian movement actually were defending it against the Anglicans in Britain, and then suddenly came to the conclusion that in particularly things like the Trinity were problematic. One plus one plus one did not equal one. And so they were applying reason in the British Enlightenment to the religion of their tradition. As you can well imagine, they were soon ostracized by everyone. And so I particularly worked on a guy by the name of James Pierce. So I'm working with people on the edge um in two thousand and seven. Of course, I'm always for a diversion because I'm a procrastinator. Suddenly I'm walking with this guy across campus and me he's so cool. He's got the voice of God right with this British accident with the Cambridge. His name is David Bebington, and uh, David Bevington's is just fantastic. Uh. And we're walking across campus and I mentioned he mentioned he don't go to this guy's house for dinner. I said, I know him. Actually, my wife and I've been hunting white wing doves there and he stops, just stops in the middle campus on the sidewalk, and it looks at me and it's like he doesn't know what to say. He just we just had Thai food. He just invited me to do his distion, my dissertation with him, and he looks at me, goes, that's that's so French, French, French, he's British, and he's like, what doesn't America. Yeah, so and and we just kept walking along and I started thinking, all right here I am. I'm committed to doing Christian history within two degree with things on the edges, but also within Christian community on the edges. I thought hunting was okay. I mean, I knew there a lot of people didn't hunt, but I guess this is a big question. And so I started bouncing it around, came up the topic, found a guy to kind of work with me who's does sports, uh and leisure studies. We proposed I proposed it in particular to a number of presses, and their responses was sexy, but that ain't gonna sell, and so it didn't go anywhere. I finished my dissertation. I didn't want to work on my dissertation anymore. I still owe it seven years later to the publisher. But I started looking for a diversion. And I was in San Francisco and I had this idea of you know, about hunting. It's been bouncing back in my head to look at it from all kinds of different perspectives, from history, uh, from religious, theological, ethical perspectives, and clearly I couldn't do them all. So I needed other voices. I wanted other people to participate in this, but no one's really doing this um and the idea was it was? It was? It was nascent, shall we say. But I went to the session with this series editor of the Sports and Religion series, and Mercer was there already talking. Went up after him. I said, I had got this idea for this book. You listened to me. He said, send me an email. I send him an email. He said, see me a proposal, and he said I'll take it. So I started creating this book. And that is I wanted to write some some some essays myself. And there were people that I talked to of the last several years that were interested in writing about the ethics of hunting, the history of hunting, about why it was good while it was bad, how to do it better than other ways, but with a particular attention to religion, not just to ethics. Be there's a lot of discussion of ethics out there, but with a particular attention to history of the religion and the current situation of religion, particularly Christianity. And I began assembling these this group of more than two dozen people. UM. I eventually brought out a co editor to talk a little bit about sports, and he wasn't four hunting, if you will, and he brought in his friend Sean Graves UH to to do a kind of anti hunting piece. The main central anti like a religious based anti hunting and philosophy. It's it's a composite. So if you look at the book, it's into parts. The first eleven chapters are descriptive, they're historically descriptive. They talk about hunting communities today UH closely associated with religion. UM. They go all the way back to the Hebraic tradition as an essay front by a guy named Uh Basque can at bass hunting buddy of mine UH and also a scripture scholar, and we work away through the Middle Ages, we work our way to the early modern period, and then we work away to the President. And in that section with doing oral history, so recording primary sources from people who hunted to the last century, analyzing it, making report, and then allowing hunters from all types of walks of life. UM athletes in particual because of sports and religion, UH, musicians, artists, UH, teachers, academics, soldiers all kind of talk about their story, but just tell a story, have them right their essay if possible. There's a few celebrity hunters that you would see on things like the Outdoor Channel. UH, like Ralph since lur always been to pronounce his name from Archer's choice. Jason Robertson did an essay with him from the dynasty UM and to letting them speak. And then the last half is from the Ivory Tower. So if you will, the first half is about the field and the people who are in it, and the last half is people who live in the I retire academics who want to tell you the hunting is right wrong or this is a better way to do it. And then there's a conclusion. So the book is a composite of perspectives. Um And one would argue from about years of experience. What first got me interested in the idea um that there was something to think about here is I was reading years, many years ago in Barry Lopez's Arctic Dreams, and in the epilogue to the book, he's hunting walrus with Alaska natives, though he's actually in Russian Wars, and they're slaughtering walrus on the ice and the smell of blood and gunpowder are still lingering in the air. And Lopez doesn't get into it, but he alludes to the reconciliation or the need to reconcile Jacob and Esau, or this reconciliation that occurs. I remember thinking, like, what's that. So I go and look at the story of Jacob and Esau, which I interpreted. I've been told by people that it's not I interpreted it to be a story about hunters and non hunters. I'm gonna tell you, like my understanding of um and and I want to get it. I want to touch on Nimrod to who I wasn't even aware of. Okay, but Jacob and Esaw, here's this mother. She's pregnant with twins, and the first baby passes out, and it's Harry, covered in hair and clinging to his ankle is a fair baby. The hair covered baby that comes out first is Saw. And the fair, non hairy baby that comes out clinging to his ankle is Jacob. He Saw becomes a hunter. He's a savage, and he hunts with his bow, and he Saw the hairless one, it's an agrarian. Oh sorry, Jacob. The hairless one becomes a farmer. Their father likes wild game and often sends Saw with his bow to go scrounge him up some wild game, and he Saw, being the eldest, is entitled to the birthright. The old man grows old and blind and sends Saw off with his bow to kill him some wild meat. Jacob goes and kills one of his lambs, drapes it over his shoulder, cook some lamb for the old man. The old man eats it, likes it, touches, feels the fur, thinks it's Saw, and bestows upon him his birthright. I took it to mean that this was the moment when God gave favor to the agricultural people's and shunned the hunters through trickery, and it's telling because Jacob is second born. But this is clinging to the ankle of the hunter. So I couldn't see it any other way. That it was sort of a way of pointing out that the the Christians were a grarians, they were pastorists, they weren't wild savages, they weren't out hunting. And here's a story to sort of account for how God's favoritism was granted to the agricultural peoples and not to the wild savages. But I've been told that that's not how that's not how you should look at it. The great thing about it as is up for interpretation, right. So so the story you're looking at is in Genesis chapter twenty five. Uh. And so Jacob and he saw born and he saw is described then as being uh he comes out red and he's hairy, right, and it says he's harry like a garment like like a I don't know, mo hair suit, I don't know, right, And and and then there's Jacob um our body dirt looks like this. Yeah, So did you got two stories? One of course is that has been out hunting and it comes in he's famished, and you know what that's like, right, he's just gonna eat anything. And he comes in and uh, Jacob says, basically, I'm cooking. No interesting thing is you think about cooking, and some cultures of course cooking, well, so cooking. It's interesting. We cook in American culture, and I know things are shifting. Gender roles are are malleable. But I would see in the twentieth century if I said, oh, look he's cooking stew, you would go mm. Because the image we have post Victorian era is of the woman cooking in the home. Now that's we we play with that because if it's something large and muscular translation meat men have taken this over and by the way, man, I think you've always done this. If they can make it difficult, they will, right. So we get smokers and we slap slash slabs of of a hog and and all kinds of other things are sausages on a smoker. And suddenly the masculine, right, we allow that to come in. Yeah, you know this is it's funny been because like an interesting thing with in our home Thanksgiving my mom, Right, we'll take the turkey, do all the work on the turkey. Okay, cook the giblets, rolls, the whole damn thing, make the stuffing stuff and all that kind of stuff. But my old man, who had nothing to do with this all day, all day, you just do whatever you want hunting usually would come home at night and be like, I will carve the turkey. Yeah exactly, because like clearly you'd be incapable woman of now slicing it. You've done all this but your skill set and somewhere and we've found the moment. We've got that, we've got the tool that the symbol of, if you will, of life and death. That not the blade, right, whether it's electric knife or it's this big chef's knife and the and the masculine takes over and Jacob's cookinge. So he's cookinge, he's not hunting. And so you get this idea of Esau who's on he a liminal character, liminal not like you know, like the thing that's sour, but l I M E N on the limits, on the edge. Hunters are always there. They have to be there on the edge, right, I mean, even if it's on the edge of suburbia, your bow hunting, you're still on the edge. So hunters are always a marginalized group. Because as we see the domestication of the earth by way of the Neolithic agricultural revolution and continuing agriculture, we all these are pushing wildlife to the edges. Now I know, some do well, right, So white tailed deer have done exceptionally well with some of this type of edge, if you will, kind of environment. Others don't write migratory animals generally don't. Whether we're building a road or doing something else, we're disrupting their patterns of migration. So hunters are always liminal stalls, a liminal character. And he's all on the edge. Jacob's at home, Jacob's hanging out with the women, all right, that's what Genesis says. He's a mama's boy. He's breaking some gender roles of sorts. He's breaking some gender roles here. And Isaac the Dead has a taste for venison he saw his first born provides into this. So what you get it's almost kind of like a hunter gatherer myth in conflict with this movement toward a grarianism and the domestication of animals, and so comes up and he ends up selling his birthright to Jacob for this poor rige for this because he's so hungry. He's so he's famished, right and Jacob, it says uh, And Jacob gave esau bread and stew of lentils. Think about it. Both those things are products of agriculture. Lentils you're growing from the earth. And bread is a product of course growing grains and cereal milling producing bread. So Esa brings meat, Jacob brings Neolithic agriculture. Here it is. But there's also a comment here too, where a criticism when you do have hunter gatherer cultures up against agrarian cultures. From the agrarian perspective, a criticism of the hunter gathered culture is the feast and famine, the highs and lows exactly, so the fact that he's coming back, he's coming back starving from an unsuccessful hunt. He's this guy like right here, bro bowl lentils, small produce it just so you get the second story that shows up, the when you alluded to, and it's like a second story about how he loses this. I didn't catch this though, a right, and I forgot it. Yeah, that he already bought it fair and square from his brother. He bought the birthright, fair and square. All right, So when the great things about looking at the Revival in particular is it's woven together over centuries, and so a lot of times we get these stories that seem to to be redundant um and many times there and there's all kinds of arguments among biblical scholars, and they get all they know they're right, and they get in their little schools of thought. But you likely have here are two different myths, two different oral traditions that were floating around one, which explained then how you saw is marginalized in Jacob becomes the one who inherits not just the birthright but the covenant that's made with Abraham and passed down to Isaac and then to Jacob um. And so you get these not that you shouldn't be seen them as competing stories. It's like the story of Noah, right, how many animals did Noah taken through the ark? When one account says to the other, thing says seven. Well, what it is is probably stories woven together. Is the genesis one account different than the genesis to account to creation stories. So we probably have here are two myths, two stories. And by myth, I don't that he bought it one that he got tricked out. You got it right. So again when I say myth, I should say that's not to say a story about something that didn't happen. It's a story that a culture tells over time, and that story encapsulates what it means to be us. It's it's what ties us together. Hunters do this really well, right. We tell stories. We tell stories, and we tell the next generation how not to act and how to act by way of the stories. Sometimes we laugh at him, sometimes we mock characters and the story. But you know then the cultural values. So these are stories that were told. That's a myth um and mythology has that two elements logos, that reason, rational, kind of coherent nous. And the myth is the good story that he's told well over a fire. And so we had two stories. So the second story, so you've got Isaac and he likes his innocent, he likes his his his serabids, and so you right, good whatever um he sends, he saw out and sa is his favorite. But then the mother of Jacob uses deception. She takes first she places on his arms. Oh the ma, it's Mama's in there too. I mean he's a mama's boy. So she's the one that favors the egg guy. You got it, exactly, the big egg. And so you get them this story about how she dresses him up in the to make him seem like the Harry Hunter. So what you get then is this story about the Hunter literally being carved out of the Covenant. The trickster Jacob ends up getting the Covenant blessing. Now, I gotta I gotta warn you here. I think the stories of the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob should not be used as and this is how you should act, because they all do things not so great. Um. But the the story from the break to is not to emphasize the behavior of the patriarchs, but emphasize the faithfulness of God still dealing with these miscreants and still continuing to promise there's a lesson. But embedded in there sure sounds like a little hunter and gathering, passing away and putting forward the idea of these pastoralists that eventually become urbanites. Um. And that's the story that's that wins after all. Think about it. Christianity is an inheritor or a descend of Judaism. And Judaism is a story written by domesticators, and it's a domesticating story. God wants you to be domesticated and that I don't mean that in a bad way, but to submit yourself. It's a story that comes out of the agricultural revolution. It's a story written by pastoralists and urbanites. It's written by agricultural interests. And it's not surprising that you don't see hunting Lionized put forward as a model. Well but in your okay, hold that thought, because I'm only gonna I'm only gonna counter it with what I learned from the book. Go for it. But first I got another thing I got like coming from Judy. Are you mean with the Hobad the Orthodox? There's like a there's thing called Hobbad House, right, and it's like some strain or sect of ultra Orthodox Jews who have a sort of ministry. Were they a sort of ministry to wayward or what they would regard as wayward reform Jews. So anyways, I used to go to these Habad lectures because it's really interesting. Okay, no background, no not, you know, you go back as far as you want. My family's history is not a Jewish character in it. But one day said to him, considering the dietary laws, like if you look in the Old Testament, what it says like you you do and don't eat, I'm like, seems to me that it rules out wild game, Like if you look in the Old Testament, you can't go near wild game because it wasn't killed in the way that they say animals should be killed, which is to have them be totally healthy and have their throat cut. And in fact, it says in the Old Testament you can't eat carrying, which is taken to mean you can't eat crippled up animals that the animal like to the point where they would take the lungs out of the animal to make sure that it hadn't had any lesions from having been sick in the past and recovered from it is taken that literally. So you have to have a super healthy animal that you kill with a special knife and you cut its throat. So I said, so, how can how could a person eat wild game at all? And he said, I guess you have to catch the net, catching the net and then have and then do the sacramental like the ritualistic slaughter of the animal is what he explained, and the net thing caught me because this is the thing that surprising about your book, and I'll explain what it's surprising about this and then you can speak on it. But one of the writers in the book, early on it goes on to a staff She's like, listen, the intended audience of this book was intimately familiar with hunting, because when you're writing something, you take for granted what your audience knows. And he goes into looking at metaphor and similarly in the Bible, and just to explain in metaphor, like his metaphor, he chooses as the metaphor time is money. Okay, now this is like the metaphor time is money is a is a way of explaining time. You're like saying time. I'm gonna try to define and help explain time. To explain time, I'm gonna use something we all know about and we all understand money. So here you're using, like using this thing we all agree on the parameters of it to explain something that we don't that we might not or he's assuming is is a little bit our understands a little more flaccid. So then he goes on to say how many times explain how many times in the Bible there are metaphors that are like, you know, like when you're out net and birds, or you know, when you get like a bad hit on something with your bow, again and again and again. The way most people won't even like see that this is going on, and so you kind of make this assumption that they were speaking to people who they like knew would get all this exactly. So this is the essay by Kenneth Bass and uh again, Bass is a scripture scholar. Uh he's a professor at Central Texas College and um, so it was just an idea he had, So we kind of developed as almost all these essays that kind of worked with the authors try and find something I could do. So he thought he'd just kind of go back and explore where's hunting in the Old Testament, because I mean, you think about it, the hunters that are named in the Old Testament the Hebrew Bible by name are a guy named Nimrod. Yeah, I forgot, because I forgot to have even talked about the name of the book god Nimrod in the world Esau. And then the hunter who appears the most who is named is Yale. God is the most prominent hunter in the entire Hebrew. God is hunter, God is hunter. So the question is how is God hunting and how these people hunting? So what he uses is this audience response criticism where you expect then your your audience to get the metaphor and similar And when he began to explore it, he began to track, pardon the pun things that really he had never found in print before. That is that there is this continual, well frequent reference to hunting culture. Now it's almost always negatively spun, and most of the time it's spun from the perspective of the prey. So the metaphor in the assembly that show up in the Hebrew Bible expect you to understand the whole idea of hunting, and that you understand both sides, the hunter and the hunt head. And it's used many times to pull out the poignancy of that relationship and to project in particular the the the plight of the not so much to strength of the predator. And in this process he begins to look at how did they hunt in the ancient Near East? And yes, they do use the bow, which is most commonly used to think about it. When when God Yahweh places the the the rainbow in the sky at the Noah Uh covenant in Genesis, and he says, by the way, among other things, I'm gonna judge you how you treat each other as humans and also animals as animals treat each other, but then gives permission to eat animals. This is in the storyline, is to shift away from vegetarianism. Presumed the vegetarianism. He puts a weapon in the sky. It's a bow in the Hebrew. It's the same word bow weapon. He places a weapon of the Yeah, and what he doesn't say is ain't gonna be no death. What he says, I'm just not gonna kill anybody anymore this way. But it's a bow. So what Bass does is he works his way through it. When he finds is that the Hebrew people, while they didn't hunt, they were familiar with it and as no cable TV. So how did they know about hunting? How do they get all these metaphors the stories are still being told. People on the edges must have still been hunting. And as he looked in particular at the laws the political laws uh in the Hebrew Bible. In those first five books, there's this book called Leviticus that has all the things you should and shouldn't do as part of the cultic practice. What he finds is there's a lot of animals that are permitted for you to eat. You could only get by hunting. They're not domesticated animals, Ibex and the like, these gazelle types, these are all viable foods, but you had to course hunt them. So what he recognizes is is that Hebrew scriptures seem to be anti hunting because they give you these metaphors and similes that play at the poignancy then of the prey being captured or sometimes of course bad people falling into their own traps, etcetera. And when he recognizes it's not the weapons of hunting, as we would only think of them just the bow and arrows, spear or javelin, But their nets, their pits, these are the things that they could use. There would be walls where they drive animals into them, into the pit, or into a reason they called a kite, that they could capture them and net them. These were actually quite frequently referenced in the Hebrew Bible. The Hebrew people may not have hunted that much, but they knew about hunting culture and that whole react relationship then between the hunter and the prey, the hunter and the hunted, was pivotal to understanding who they were, who they were in relationship to each other, and most importantly, how humans related to their God, because God was a hunter. But when you say that it's it's negative. Yeah, but doesn't the author explain that, well, he's not. They don't. Really. They don't like then go and condone agriculture either. They sort of use it in a in a similar way, like it's not like hunting is bad relative to other stuff. Think about the most if you've read the Hebrew Bible and the Christian New Testament, probably the most poignant symbol is one tied to an animal. Now it's not a wild animal, it's a lamb, the lamb led to the slaughter. It's a sacrifice lamb. If you get to the final end of the story where the Christians win revelation, right, it's a sacrifice lamb that appears that is triumphant. So in the Hebrew Bible there's also this focus on the killing of domesticated animals for cultic practice or for food, So hunting and animals dying and being captured, animals being led to a slaughter, ignorance of their fate which is about to come. The writers use those metaphors and similes to pull out, if you will, what he calls the target. That that that emotion, that relationship, that idea that was hard for them to teach, so they did it by way of this analogous language. So yeah, it's not explicitly anti hunting. But a problem is what the writer's turn to was that point in the hunt, the trap, the capture, the animal cause in the net at that point in time no longer able to flee. That's what they turned to most often, and that comes across as being negative. What's interesting about that is it gives us the idea that there was that level of sympathy and regret and empathy about animal life even then. Yeah, exactly, why can I ask? What did that lamb? Ca? Yeah, hey, this is Michelle. He might have heard some giggles in the background, but uh, what did that lamb represent? Like? Symbolically? Well, at various times it represented number of things. It depended upon the symbol right or or this similar um, and sometimes it represented those who were ignorant, who were going into trouble. In many cases, of course, the innocent lamb, the one that had no blemish, no spot, represented something that willingly went. Of course, most famously, it's going to be used by the Christians to represent Christ who knowingly in some ways went to right, willingly gave itself up for the redemption, to the accomplishment of something a blood sacrifice. And then I'm perceiving it not so much as what Steve said, We're like you're thinking about the plight of the prey. I'm seeing it as like this is what's at steak. And a lot of times again, even in the hunting metaphors, there's what's at steak as well. So you get people who dig pits to trap their neighbor. That's not literally right. It's not like you don't want your neighbor to phone to a bit. My neighbors are pretty decent. I wouldn't want that to happen to him, you know what I mean. But it's this is what happens. Or most famously, of course, is there's this this uh saying that Jesus has he's got his disciples around. He says, you see the sparrows. No sparrow falls without God seeing it. No, you think, what's the sparrow falling for? I always wondered about that as a kid, and I heard it in church. What's bass pointed out? The sparrow is the cheapest animal that would be eaten. You could get a sparrow for a penny. Even spells out what sparrows, what dead sparrows call exactly, so you can even get like in bulk right, it's like going to Costco or Sam's or something. You can get your sparrows. They were cheap food. Notice that God doesn't stop the killing of the sparrow, the netting of the sparrow, but he's observant of it, he sees it, he's aware of it. So what makes them you get by the assemblies is an awareness of like how no turkey dies about is hearing about hearing about it? And where it happened, you know, and and but God doesn't not empower the hunter. But think about it and the story of Esaul and his father Isaac, it's made very clear that you don't always get game, and if you do get game, it's made clear it's by the blessing of God. God blesses the hunter and empowers him, allows him then to find prey for his own. So God's mixed in all that's the God, the Nimrod in the world. It's the idea of looking to the divide and and looking in this this faith or multiple faith traditions, the idea of the hunter. Who's this character Nimrod? So if you will the divine now right well and then and then the world. And an environmental approach, which I gotta say most Christians don't pay any attention to to the environmental and most hunters, I gotta tell you thing that they don't go to a church or synagogue and find a recycle bin at the back. But you're not this counters um, this counter something that was in an email just got no, it's not in this one. Do you think about like the creation story in the garden and being tenders of the garden and like Stewart's like, it seems like how are they missing that big point? And this is the huge issue, And that's the question of dominion and the question this is one that gets bounced around with multiple interpretations. And you're gonna talk about Nimron and there's a connection I got a ton of questions about what you're talking about, cause you talked about you talked about Elder Leopold, and yeah, okay, well here's here's the thing. The guy wrote in this is the guy that wrote in about Paul and Saul all right. Goes on to say a lot of Christians, myself included, have a passion for caring for our world and are very grateful. And he goes on, let's say some nice stuff. All right, So there's one. So so one of the things I particularly look at my own studies, um, and look at in my classes, but it shows up in this book, not just in my essays, but in some of the latter half from the academy, where you begin to see people who embraced an idea of hunting, but they want to do it in particular way. So, for instance, you have the Roman Catholic priest. You're not hitting me with nemrod right now. I'm weaving it back, I promise, um. And they're going to turn to Aldo Leopold um, and so Ted vitally he's at St. Louis University. Um, you've got uh, we've got a pacifist uh from Chicago, and he's gonna write in particular, he hunts any hunts with a bow. And the question is, you know, how can he, as a pacifist embrace this? And so he his name is Greg Clark. He turns to Aldo Leopold. So a number of Christian writers from the Academy are very much acquainted with Leopold, particularly San County Almanac. If you've read that and you know the story, it's the story of the wolf, right the green Eyes, right as as they just kill the wolf for the sake of supposedly increasing numbers of deer, and it begins to realize you can't look at hunting and at game management uh and managing resources with the idea of immediate gratification of increased populations. You have to see it like the Mountain sees it. You've got to think long term. So many Christian ethosis have turned to this, but what they're they're encountering is the challenge of the question of dominion. So one of the problems for people who want to be positive about hunting and they're looking for role models in the Bible is there's not that many. One of the interesting characters, the guy Iman nime Rod here we Go I promise you follow that rabbit. Thank you. There. It's an interesting character. He shows it just for a few verses. In Genesis. He's he's early, he's early, he's early on alright, So he's after Noah, after the flood story, and he's from a descendants of Ham. Now there's a whole story, uh Noah, and they all get the promise. Yehaw. He starts growing grapes. He gets drunk off his ass, he gets naked. Um, is you remember this story? And unfortunately you gotta read the Hebrew Bible. Well no, no, no, that's a lot. That's that's grapes Fermentum gets drunkunk, gets drunken, naked, gets drunken naked, and his his son shows up and sees his nickeheadedness. Right, this is nakedness. This is good stuff in the Bible. There's adultery, there's murder, there's nakedness, there's there's just all kinds of great stuff. Their myths, their stories that had I mean they had traction around the fireplace, um and the heart. So anyhow, he gets drunk. He has a son named Ham, who sees his nakedness, goes back to his brother's dude dad's naked and drunk the other two brothers, and we don't know exactly what that means. He's all kinds of different interpretation that he saw his father, you know. Uh. The two other sons come in and cover the nakedness of their father. They showed their respect and for this, then Noah curses his son Ham. Now it gets tricky because suddenly it goes from curs did nothing to help, who did nothing to help? Ends up shifting to cursing descendant he has gotten named Canaan, and then it gets ideological and then can enabled Canaan, No Canan, Canaan. Okay, So all this is Nimrod is a descendant of this cursed lineage, and then light shows up. Nimrod is a descendant of the cursed lineage of the guy that saw Noah drawnk and just ran off to the squeal on him right right, So it's really it's a short section, so it goes real quick. It's in Genesis chapter Tennis is coush Hey, great names right there, Cush, Spaghett, and Nimrod. He began to be a mighty one on the earth. He was a mighty hunter before the Lord. Therefore it is said, like Nimrod the mighty hunter before the Lord, and the beginning of his kingdom was babel eric a cod Kalna in the land of Shinar, and from that land he went to Assyria and built Nineveh, and it goes on. So what you get is this interesting character who was a mighty hunter before the Lord. The god saw him and seemingly empowered him and noticed it's proverbial, it's like before the Lord means in view of in view of Lord. And again interpretations very but many scholars will say that actually he was empowered and successful because of the gifts from Yahweh. But what he does is intriguing. He's a mighty hunter before the Lord, but he begins civilization, he starts founding cities. So you have a liminal character who's powerful and at the same time then goes and establishes these major kingdoms that you become aware of in ancient or Eastern history, most famously of course the Syria Um. So there's not much there. So Nimrod becomes an intriguing touchstone for both people who are positive or negative about hunting and culture. If I do this just serving is not much to go off and it's not. But if you read my entire chapter you'll find there's tons And what happens is the Rabbis talk about it and they have their own commentary. So this is kind of extra biblical commentary that floats around as well. But if I were to turn to Janice and say, dude, you're a Nemerod, I don't think it's going to be perceived as a positive evaluation. Definitely not. But isn't that like like I think if you look in the Urban Dictionary talks about like Elmer Fudd, like right, because the blundering hunter. But if you were to look at a a journal, a sporting journal in the early eighteen hundreds, early hunters and early hunters, I should say, hunters in the British and American traditions, we're calling themselves nemerods based on that little dinky messters because how is that more important than because he was a mighty hunter before the before the Lord. So what you get his nimrod, where there's so little there becomes either the wonderful argument against hunting look twisted into the negative and then twist in the Historically, what it was used is it was interpreted that he was one who was a hunter, and not a hunter of animals, but a hunter of men. That he subjugated men and people's and thus became a founder of empires. Empires by the way that we're not democratic republics, right, these were tyrannical empires. And so it's perceived then that Nimroid becomes then this symbol of oppression. And so that's what he was. And they don't give that power to him by God. They simply say that God observed and or saw him the positive view, Okay, would the Bible have let that happen? That they meant hunter of man? So is there a precedent for using hunter to mean hunter of man? Well, what happens is you begin to get these commentaries and then among other people, there's a guy by the name of Augustine. You may have heard of him. Augustine's a theologian uh in the late three hundreds. I think he's born in three fifty four and he dies in four thirty a d uh. And he lives in North Africa. He's from a place called Hippo, pretty cool carthage Um, and he ends up writing some really important books and commentaries. He writes an autobiography called Confessions, and he also writes a way of trying to figure out what's going with Rome because Rome is sacked by the Visigoths uh in four ten. And he writes a book called basically Two Cities. So Augustine's really really important. He also gives the West it's clear view kind of about sin, original sin. They're all born busted. Thank Augustine for this. It's an Augustine the world view. But Augustine spends Nimrod as well in this perspective, and so you get this tradition that builds on other you can say, bills on other ignorances, but essentially begins to expand it. And you have the Nimrod disinterpreted in many different ways. And this idea of posts or should say extra biblical commentary that's floating around that many of these early Christian scholars tap into have him being in this empire founder not necessarily a hunter. And so I mean, you just gotta scrape away at the layers, going through all those primary sources, right, and you begin to see how you work your way to this. Now, what happens is in the eighteen hundreds, while early sportsmen who are particularly moving then towards the idea of sports hunting and developing it into something that we began to write about in Europe or in the US, both because it starts in Britain in particular, but a lot of Brits come over in the eighteen forties and eighteen fifties and they bring with them hunting sporting culture. They begin to create journals like the Spirit of the Times is probably the most famous ones. It's coming out from the East Coast, but the major writers are actually British sporting writers couldn't make it in Britain to come to America, and they began to push america uh sportsman into a new perception of hunting because up to that point in time, hunters were basically what we might call pot hunters. They were there to hunt for meat, et cetera. The Daniel Boone's who's the hero? Right that Davy Crockett's even right, sorry about the Alumo, but he nonetheless was a guy on the edge. So you see them moving forward. The kind of cuts point out real quick like the differences there because Boone and Crockett are often like discussed together, they're very different people there. They are really are Boone was a market hunter. So talked about a guy on the edge, right, he spent his whole life chasing the edge, um, the edge of civilization, right. But he was a market hunter. Hunted bear meat to sell the meat, hunted deerskins to sell the highs, and that's how he made his income. Crockett was attached to military campaigns and would hunt to feed people out in punitive expeditions against the Indians. But that you gotta eat, right, and so Crocket would higher on to go and meat for these expeditions. Both are associated with the frontier. Oh yeah, absolutely, And this is this isn't this isn't trying to take apart what you're saying was pointing out to people like what sort of hunting they were up to to be, like they were commercial individuals, pot hunters, meat hunters, market hunters. Well, what you get here is just basically hunters, um. And you don't get the whole idea of pot hunters until you have sport hunters. So what sport hunters began because they invite the distinction exactly. So rather than so it's like we were talking about earlier, there's you can be a hunter, but there's a better way to be a hunter. Right, So and so today we have the same distinctions. We have things like meat hunters and we have a right and then how does that work out? That's another ethical thing. We can show that the side. But we come back to it. By the way, it's a great book came out around the year two thousand, two thousand one. It's out of print now, but I courage you anyone to read. It's called Hunting in the American Imagination. It's by a guy named Daniel Justin Herman. He's a professor, do you good? Right? So he develops this distinction. Quote him, I don't want to oversell it. Um. I mean, there's some things I don't agree with, but he really does something pivotal in the discussion hunting cultures in America. It's his dissertation. But he wasn't a hunter, and someone basically said, oh, we don't have a topic here right on this and it worked and I'm so thankful he did this. He laid the grandmark. But he describes that these British hunters come over, they develop a sporting culture by way of particularly periodicals, and Americans as we continue to push the frontier further and further west take up this sport hunting. And cand I had another thing in here. Man Boon's people were from his family was British, not at all hunters when they came well, they had they discovered hunting in a very practical way. So these people you're talking about, our our upper like Boons people were working people. These British sport hunters are are the genteel. It's so particularly that come to America year afric But these are like wealthy individuals. They've been doing this for centuries in Britain, but in America we see this cultural shift towards sport hunting and there in bracing even if they're not wealthy, they embraced this idea. So for instance, there's this is this poem I found in Spirit of the Spirit of the World, uh, Spirit of Times from I think it's from eighteen fifty two, and of course I do Texas history as well, and uh it's it's Scattering the Morning Do and it's by an anonymous author and it's from It's just like it's eight years before the Civil War. It's written along the mouth of the the mouth of the Brases, if remember correct. So at the Gulf Coast. They're in Texas and it's a bunch of guys talking about getting drunk and tomorrow they're gonna go hunt. But it's sport hunting. Now eighteen fifty two, Texas has only been a state for seven years. It's only been a republic and then a state for twenties. Someone vanquish command commanches are are fixed the gang get territory during the Civil War. They're gonna push in back into central Texas. So Texas is just really East Texas and the coastal region. But they're already distinguishing themselves as sport hunters and the writing poetry and getting it published in New York for the journals. They are the periodicals that are coming out. So we have this birth of sport and they turned to nimerod As as their kind of their hero. He's a gifted hunter based on Yeah, it's just because he's hairy and red. Not think about that one for a minute. You're talking about racism and and things that are going on with the Native Americans, etcetera. You can see why they wouldn't write no, No, we're not nimerod We're mighty hunters. Just it's a mighty hunter, mighty hunter. Yeah, and so they that one adjective, that is it. And that's how the r now nimerod then becomes a reaction again, a pejorative, an insult, because it begins to be seen, particularly in Britain. When it comes over to America in the twentieth century, people would be called nimerods. But they were being seen in as a bunch of country gentlemen who wanted to be like the wealthy of previous centuries who around road to hounds, right, chase the fox. And there were these new gentry. They're bunchly, a bunch of rednecks, rubes, country folk who basically trying to act like gentlemen. And so they would be mocked then as oh, you nimrods. And you begin to have just as you have the use of the name as this um positive no man, if you will have taken on by characters, you also have this pejorative that the critics on the outside are using. Also economically, it becomes like the term fake news, where you take something just turn it around on itself. Yeah, and so of course, fud right, thank you. Let's personify hunters as idiots, as rubes as people who can't actually get the rabbit, and so you get the fud kind of approach. Um the Nimerod, Yeah, man Nimrod gets a lot of traction. Thing is, and if you read my essay in the book, he's been he gets traction. Not just recently, he gets traction for centuries. Yeah, there's not much there, but you know what, if you're trying to make an argument, it helps. If the not a lot of evidence, you know what I mean, you can make it what you wanted to make it. It's kind of like what you're always saying about Laramie, and uh, who's Who's Who's like a great Western Oh, the mountain man Laramie, Yeah, he got everything names shows up out west, promptly gets killed and stuff down through a hole in the ice and the beaver pond, and it winds up at half the damn state. Now, no one knows. No one knows where this dude came from. Nothing's known about him. It's just that somewhere someone's like, oh and some dude named Laramie couldn't find him. Sure enough, I found him dead in the beaver pond. The less you know, the more you know. It just winds up. It just gives you a lot of room to run. See, now, here's a question I want to ask you towards them, but I almost want to ask it to you now, but it's like it's too big of a question. Tell me this is too big of a question, all right, because there's a lot of stuff from the book that I want to get into. But I need to ask this in your world, in the world of biblical scholarships, just a hard question to ask because it's like you need to have it be this way or else they wouldn't be biblical scholarship. Is it? Is it discussed how the Bible is too open to individual interpretation? Meaning there are those who look at the Bible and the main thing they see is by God, I should persecute gay people. Some people look at the Bible and they see I should do everything in my power to alleviate suffering. Like how right? How is it so big and so open to interpretation? So what you're asking me right now, is you see this land mine? Would you like to step on it? Okay? Okay, let me find let me okay, how could it be? Okay, let's let's not even go big. Let's go small Nimrods good? How could it be like what do you see when you begin to see that that some people in some time? Because here, let's let's bring it even more narrow. I'm sure that when that was, when that was being told around the campfire as a story to explain who we are, what we believe, what we ought to do, there probably was not a lack of clarity around how you're supposed to feel about nimrod Okay, that's okay, So let me let me touch it and and we'll see. I don't want to go too far with it. This is a huge question. It is a big question. Um, and it's a question. Okay, it's a big question. Let's see what I can do with it in my American history courses. Can you ask my question real quick? Do That's why I'm gonna read it. I want to make sure it's clearly I've I've muggied the waters when it was when it was a narrative, like when it was a narrative that people were telling in real time to explain who we are, what we believe, what our traditions are, and it was being impactful in the intended way. Do you feel that it was confusing then or is that? Is that not answerable? I think it's not answerable, not answerable. I think it's not answerable. I mean the Bible itself is a composite composed for centuries. And at least this is the prospective historians and bilbl scholars, okay today um. And as a result of that, many times the beginning, the origins have been lost. We don't we don't know how it started. Now, historical criticism many times tries to work its way back to figure out where this came from, how it originated, what its import was then, and why it finds its way into the stories in the Hebrew Bible. What There's a guy named Lhausen in the nineteenth century puts forwards something called the documentary thesis. And what he argues is, if you look, for instance, just at the pentitute, this first five books we've been talking about against the word pentitude five books, Genesis, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy, is that the Old Testament, No, no, you got like a butler a ton more, a ton more books than the Old Testament in the here re Bible. Now, in those first five books, in particular, what you see than are various layers of sources being brought together. The sources themselves, many times were composites of oral traditions, maybe written traditions that were being brought together. Now he he defines them. He particularly looks, and he's saying, I think that these patterns are there, and that these sources can be looked at chronologically so famously. If I can do this right, it's j E p D. I think it's rights p D. I have to look it up. So what he has to see as the y'all list, the elois uh, the priestly source, and the deuteronomous. So what he looks at is he looks at the scriptures and he looks like, for instance, what name is used for God? So in Genesis one you see one name for God, and Genesis too you see a different name for God. Well, what is it, hit, You have two different creation stories. What this hints to the scholar who looks at it from a critical point of view is you have two different stories from two different sources. They even call God two different names. Once Eloheim, the plural of l or God. The other is Yahweh, this particular personal name that the Hebrew people had for God. So these seem to be two dishes to do, two different traditions that existed that were pulled together by an editor at various times, maybe multiple editors, and they're brought together because they're seemingly tight enough to communicate the story a salvation story, perhaps right, but at the same time that you get them many times, or where these stories originated and how they started in what their original meeting was. One argument is, if you read the story of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, is that really these actually weren't father son and grandson. There were three different stories about founders of tribes that as the Israelites came together, Hebrews came together. There they said, well, let's put them together, and somebody began to The stories began to grow and meld, and surely then Abraham had a son whose name was Isaac, and Isaac had a son whose name was Jacob, and the stories get melded together. Well, when you meld all that together, assuming you don't have divine inspiration, it gets complicated and meaning gets lost there. And that's what you get is the argument of these faith communities that brought these texts together. The Hebrew people who brought their texts together, and then the Christian community that took centuries. By the way, we don't the Bible that we have, that is the New Testament today was not really kind of brought together, and in the arrangement we have today to almost four hundred, it takes basically three hundred and fifty years for the New Testament to get there. There are books that Christians in the early centuries held us being inspired and and and guiding that are not in your Bible. Books like the Book of James was troublesome, but because the books associated the letters associated with Paul seemed to be in juxtaposition to the themes that are found in the Book of James Revelation. Revelation almost didn't make the cut because if you've read the Book of Revelation, who knows what it means? That was written by a guy in prison on the island right there, John, right John on patmos So. But the point is it's so out there that many Christians like, this sounds like good stuff, but I'm not sure what it means. It could be interpret a lot of different ways. I'm not sure we want to keep it in the cannon. So the cannon tics forever for it to be formed. Well, basically three fifty years the Hebrew cannon, it depends on the interpreter, but years for the Hebrew cannon to be finalized. So so your question is excellent, how can you have different interpretations? And the answer is huge, and that is you're going to so me do it this way. I'll give you a short example to show how complex this issue is. I teach American history. Yeah, I know, I have degrees in theology, but I'm made my way over to history and the historians kind of taken in. They slap cultural historian tab on me and they're like, hey, you're good, stay over in your corner, all right. So I teach American history and I focused in particularly on the various interpretations of freedom in the years leading up to the Civil War in particular. But you look at slavery, the issue is and it's a thesis that was put out there by a number of historians, uh, and I think it's got a lot of value. Is that what you see is that in America, the interpretation of slavery as America is eight And I'm gonna put quotes around this because please hear the quotes Christian nation. That is the myth that ties Christian primary America together is that of Christianity. I don't think that wrong, But the point is that story of Christian story. Even people who would never go to a church, we're still familiar with the Biblical Yeah, yeah, I mean, but I mean if you look like the founding of like the Euro American tradition was guided. They knew the stories and the morality was defined many times about the stories that they heard or at least as interpreted. What you find is that Christianity, particularly the Bible. I should say the Bible loses its traction in American culture as a document that is an authority for making policy and determined the most important issues in the eighteen fifties. And it's not Darwin's Origin a species that kills it, which comes out in eight it's the problem that the Bible failed to properly answer with one answer only is slavery right or wrong? And what you get then are very I would argue good arguments that say slavery is a biblical institution, that God allowed it to be formulated and created in the Israelite communities, and that God even set rules on it looked from the Leviticus, etcetera, and that the New Testament provided no caveats regarding the extension of slavery forward. In fact, there's a little book that no one ever uses. It's called the Book of Phileman or Philaman. Uh, get bored in church, go read it. You can do it. It just takes a minute. And it's written to a guy who's lost the slave of a fugitive slave. He ran away, became a Christian, came to Paul. Paul sends him back, buddy, Paul. Paul sends him back to his owner, who's Philamen. The slaves a guy named Ossimus, and says basically, look, Fleaman, you treat him like a Christian brother, and if you can't, you send him back to me. But Paul never says don't. Well, Paul never says free him, keep him as your slave, but treat him like treat him. If you can't do it, sending back. So what many of the Southern theologians argued was, and they were politicians as well, as that slavery had a biblical foundation. Northern increasingly rabbis and Christian ministers began to argue that the particularly the New tests Men offered critiques, notably that Jesus came to set the captives free, give sight to the blind, and that the Golden Rule was this ultimate challenge to slavery. Why would you enslave another man or woman when you wouldn't want that done to you. So the spirit of the New Testament was against slavery. So by the time we get to the eighteen fifties, the nation is ripping itself apart. The compromisers like Henry Clay and John C. Calhoun is not a compromiser, but he's dying the whole generation of men that had held the nation together over this issue. We had the Missouri Compromise of eighteen twenty, where we keep compromising. The Compromise of eighteen fifty brings California in and all those Southwest territories. There's nobody there anymore. And no longer does the Bible give a valid or acceptable answer to the huge question, because there's multiple interpretations about the most critical thing. If you want to put it this way, the country's facing is a black man, a man as in all men are created equal. And if it can't answer that simple question, is the black man a man and his slavery of valid institution or invalid institution, what good is it for making public policy? And so that example demonstrates how our nation itself, which was at least of some historians evangelical at the time and turned to the Bible as its main authority, couldn't find an answer or by the way of saying it, without multiple answers. And then they go out and kill more of each other than we lost in all of our other wars combined, somewhere between six hundred and six un Now there's a great history, and he's just retired. His name is Martinel. He was at Wheaton and then at Notre Dame. Who uses a line I'm gonna paraphrase, I'm gonna do a horrible job, he says. Basically, the matter is decided by the great theologians. William to come to Sherman and Philip Sheridan. If you know those names, you're buffalo stories. You know those names, they're not theologian what they are or as there are men of war. And so the decision about how to interpret the Bible was decided on the battlefield God. If God is a god of time and history and a providence determined what was the right interpretation. Yeah, he did. He did it through a proxy. He did it through a proxy for a sun that which is not surprising because he does a lot of things to So. Yeah, so scripture has been interpreted in any different ways, and for our own nation, it points them to a major major issue. Man, Okay, can be back up now. Sorry, Okay, you talk about perceptions of hunters, and when I say you talked about I mean people. Yeah, like your your book is structured and people you have, you know, people that are contributing to your book that this idea the perceptions of hunters comes up. But do you feel that there's a religious perception of hunters that gegorically differs from a secular perception of hunters? Meaning, Okay, our attack attack hunting from a religious perspective. That's probably a better way to get what I'm getting at, because I could do it very well. I could attack hunting from a secular perspective because I would just go borrow all the secular arguments I know that are out there about right suffering of any form and sentient beings and no, no, no no, no, right implications of wildlife management. How hunting has been unregulated, hunting caused all these you know, catastrophic losses in the wildlife world. I could do it all day long. Um, I understand all the arguments. I don't agree with them all. There's a lot of caveats, but I get them. So hit for me what a religious critique of hunting would look like. Okay, so let me answer me answer a question you didn't ask, and then try and get at it. So why is it even a valley question? Why should we be asking do Christian hunters have why DoD Why do we even want to talk about them? Did they have a different world view? Well? I think it's I think it's important. Are you asking me to know? I'm saying that's I'm gonna answer. That's rhetorical. Sorry. So in one of the chapters it's called Hunters of the Past and President all right, I look at some sociological instruments. In other words, they went out and the questionnaires about all kinds of things. But one of the things that they point out is if you go through and I analyze the data, is that hunters in America not surprised. And of course we just had the new report that came out. Then hunters in America are just we're just losing numbers. We're losing only percentages, but we're losing We're losing hunters. This in the last two years, dramatic loss. And so the question is why is this culture we need to save? How can we encourage the identity or formation of an identity of this culture? And this is, by the way, is this is when the underlying objectives of my book is I want hunters to realize they have an identity. They need to figure it out. But there's no way for this culture to survive if they don't have a common identity. They don't identify who they are, what they are, who they're probably what they're doing in a relationship both to the rest of the world and the natural world as well. So you've got to formulate. But by looking at the data that came out and analyzing it, when the fascinating things I discovered was that according to the questionnaires, while hunters are dropping in number, hunters that remain are increasingly religious. Now that doesn't mean they go to church all the time and they're the questionnaires address this. Many of them are just what I would call religious, and that is that they identify themselves as being religious, believe in a God, uh, go to service occasionally, maybe once a year, et cetera. That's what you get then is this very large number of hunters every year in a decreasing minority that are overtly religious. So if we're gonna talk about hunters in America, we need to recognize that more and more hunters, as the numbers draw, are going to be religious. To continue. Another question is if there's going to be a debate about hunting, whether it's a valid enterprise or not, then there's going to have to be the only philosophical or ethical kind of secular arguments. But if there are people who see themselves as doing something that is religiously approved, divinely appropriated, you're gonna have to argue against that as well. And a secular argument may not cut to the roots of where they see as maybe their prerogative or even their responsibility. Okay, all right, So why is it do hunters see the world differently? Um? The answer I think is complex. The problem I find with the Christian hunter is to still align from Martinel as well, from a different book he wrote called Scandal the Evangelical Mind, where he said, the problem with the evangelical mind is there is no evangelical mind. What I would argue is the problem with the Christian hunter is the Christian hunter doesn't think. What do you mean? I mean just that they don't think. In other words, what I found when I interviewed Christian hunters is they didn't think about being Christian and a hunter. Only a minority did so. While they identify trying the two things together now, so they're not so. While they supposedly have a worldview that should be dominated by their identity as a Christian in particular, they don't actually take that Christianity and think about it in an enterprise that many of them choose as being Yeah, their father, perhaps, their wife, their spouse, their mother, their whatever they happen to be. But the next thing they're gonna put on theirs and I'm a hunter, but they're Christian, probably was before that. But they don't think about it um and so should they. And so I'm gonna give you a quote here from a book just came out. It's called Knowing Creation Prospectives and Theology, Philosophy and Science by guy named Andrew Torrance. Sees the editor and Thomas McCall I like to think this is spectacular because I actually taught Andrew Torrance was human his ninth grade, and so everything he says that's brilliance belongs to me. He's a lecture at the um in Scotland at I think where he's a He's at St. Andrew's University. Okay, So, but he makes this quote, and he's talking about science, but it's applicable to the Christian hunter. The Christian, he writes, believes that the natural world is created, ordered, and maintained by God, who acts in its history in special ways. As I've been arguing, there's no reason for the Christian scientists, nothing from an Hunter, but in her capacity as a scientist, to think that maintaining those beliefs would get in the way of the scientific task. She should, and now I'm summarizing, do her job as a scientist, but she still needs to do it as a Christian because, now skipping of page furthermore, the Christian believes that God is actively involved in history, creating a faith that can serve as a witness to God's creative, providential, and redentive activity. For this reason, there should be a difference between the way in which the Christian scientists insert historian Promman Hunter here, and the naturalistic scientists approach and interpret the structure behavior in history in the natural world. If a Christian is truly a Christian and believes that there's a world that has been created shaped, has a narrative that's tied to a god, that is whatever they see in scripture, then they should act according toly accordingly. So for the critic who turns to the Christian Hunter and wants to argue ethics, they should if they're arguing with an intelligent and reflective Christian Hunter turned then too ethical questions arguments that challenge them the basis of that Christian interpretation. What I discovered is Christian sea hunting a lot of different ways, and actually from critics, they would see it many times just like kind of slavery. And that is what you get are people who say, I look at the story of Genesis one and Genesis too, and what I see is that humans are empowered to have dominion, to be not just simply, if you will, cultivators of the earth, but to subdue it, and therefore I can do with it as I will. I find these people don't recycle good all right, now, not all of them do so without thinking. Perhaps from the best arguments I've seen is by a um, a theologian and a biologist by the name of Stephen van Tassel, and he has he's extraordinarily erudite. Uh. He teaches at a school in Britain, but also works in the West here in America dealing with rotents. By the way he deals with his stick stick is how do you kill things? Are a pest um? So he does it from a very erudite approach, but it's rare. The problem is when you begin to question how then humans should relate to the natural world. If you believe in the Christian view that somehow the incarnation of Jesus Christ as the Divine now within the human somehow, giving both approval to the divine creation that we know however that happened, but also that the sacrifice of that lamb on the cross somehow brings about a new reality. Does that new reality of the crucifixion and the resurrection change how we should relate to the natural world. Does it bring about a new covenant? Doesn't bring about a new relationship to animals? Two to the Flora and fauna of the earth if it does, and it particularly many times critics of of of hunting turned to the Book of Isaiah and they see this kind of messianic where the lamb lies down with the lion, that this is the way it was and this is the way it should be. They're going to argue that you are a new creation in Christ. So the world also participates in that covenant, just like the world participated with the covenant and Noah's covenant with God. So it wasn't just Noah who was going to be protected from the flood, but the earth was, and the animals are going to be protected from that kind of flood uh and destruction. So that covenant extends then to the entire world, natural world, animals, etcetera. So stop killing animals. Now that's a horribly simplified view. But if your creation, new creation in Christ, quit sending live properly inappropriately with your fellow humans, and live appropriately in a non violent way with the flora and fauna around you. But the problem is the reality problem is a number of things. One is, does that mean then that I have to make large cats vegetarians? Is the natural world of view a window through which I can see the divine plan. That's been a long held claim of Christianity. It's called natural theology. That I can look at the world and I can see, in its magnificence and its complexity and its diversity, the hand of a divine and providential, divine hands working in this world that, even if I don't know or can't see a God, the magnificence, the beauty that I see when I see a waterfall or a mountain, when I'm sitting up there and not having seen any game animals, moves me to what we might call a religious experience, the idea there's something greater than me, a greater than human reality. So I may not know that there's three and one trinity, I know that there's this thing, this greater than thing, greater than me, thing that has provided, that has created me, brought me into being in some fashion, whether evolutionary theory or whatever you have. So if there's a new creation, is therefore the predatory world that is reality that all things consume all things. We die, and if they can get to the steel, they're end up, worms are gonna get me, etcetera. We all get eaten. Is that not really God's plan. And if that's so, isn't this world then something that's not really the creator God's isn't this and some nastick if you read, for instance, the essay by Nathan um And and the question is where do we go from here? Is the argument that we're supposed to be a new creation, and that we're supposed to see the world, the natural world, a new way live with humans and animals, and a new covenant of peace, tranquility, and of love. Most importantly, does that deny the world we know? We'll see answer. I don't know. I just write about this stuff. No, for me, it's it's a difficult question because I think about this and I look around and I see, I see that the world does consume. It just does. And I, as a hunter, feel I'll admit euphoria when I am, if you want to call it successful, when I kill, and at the same moment, I feel absolute guilt and loss when I look at that which was once beautiful no longer moving. I feel pride when I feed friends and family with the meat that I've taken. Ill even I even have pride when I look at the furs on my floor. The I don't have any great trophies, but the taxidermy amounts on my wall. I tell the stories about those things, and for that moment me, it's kind of sacramental that animal lives again when I tell that story. It's why to me, taxidermy amounts, by the way, mean nothing if if you find him in a junk store, because there's no story attached to them. There's no reality. That's no longer being it's no longer being associated with them. It's just plastic form with first stretched on it. But for me, all these things are going on, and as I read the scriptures there, they don't answer. To be honest, a lot of great questions they there's challenges, but there's a multiplicity of responses. For me, what I take away from it is I look to the natural world, a look to what moves me as a hunter who sees himself as one of his. You know, I hope when they put my gravestone it will be something like hopefully you know, faithful husband, good friend, teacher, hopefully good teacher, and hunter. Those four things would encapsulate who I am in so many different ways. I've hunted for grades, I've hunted for all kinds of facts and data in history, and I'm hunted for animals. But with that moment of gain, there comes loss. And I think that I can find an argument for hunting in the Bible, but it requires a hunting that is responsible, that is reflective, that looks then to the health of the entire go lee pulled on in biotic community, and that my failure to be responsible in both the kill, the hunt, and for simply trying to find the good of this earth. If I failed to do that, that's a sin, because that's a crime against what I know to be true and the God who gave this beauty in this world. So in the act of killing, consuming, I hope that I'm bringing life. Um And there's an article or a chapter who by a kind of Jim Tantalo, and Jim argues that even in the tragedy of death, I am transformed. If I'm reflective as an hunter, I'm transformed because in the moment of death, of killing something, I live more than I live before, because I recognize the reality of death for me to come. Yeah for for the hunter, because just as I kill, and just as I consume with joy, with poignancy, with sorrow, so I too will be consumed, whether by aberrant cells, clogged arteries, are something more violent, it's our end for the Christian. The hope is that there's something more. Because the covenant that embraced humanity in the very beginning of Genesis, one that embraces humanity and I don't know what the woe with Noah uh in Genesis, then is also the covenant that is going to embrace Christians, and if you will, in the sacrifice of Christ and resurrection, but also in Revelation, all those covenants also embraced the entire creative world. It's extended to the earth, to the soil, to the animals, to the vegetation. There's a redemptive process that goes on, and right now this is what we have. If I failed to be responsible, reflective, serious, right now, there's something that should also be going on. So that leads me to diet, tribes and class about other things. But yeah, well, I want to make sure I'm getting your last point that you say, right now this is what we have, meaning that you would feel is not the one. Can't just trash this knowing that you have the afterlife to fall back on. When I was a kid in church, we used to sing this song. This world is not my home. I'm just passing through. My treasures are laid up somewhere beyond the blue. The angels beckon me from Heaven's open door, and I can't feel at home in this world anymore. It's a great moving song, and I sang it for you know when I was in church as a kid. But now I think about it, that's not right. This is a creative world for me. It is a window to the divine plan. Yes it's predatory, but at the same time, out of death comes new life, whether it be Christ's story or what we see in the world around us. And so this is my home. I'm not just passing through. If this is where I have my beginning, whatever is beyond this life has to be built on this experience right here, right now. This is where I'm being formed. This is where I'm finding truth. There may be truth beyond, but this is what I've got and it can't just simply be a waste of time. So this world is my home. I'm not passing through. My treasures are here and beyond. Have you ever heard anyone talk about extinction, meaning that through human actions we would drive species extinction. Have you ever heard anyone talk about that and talk about Noah's Ark? Oh? Yeah, the pains that people went through to make sure that we were not losing animals. Oh, whoa, that's interesting. Oh I see what you're saying. Um, No, I never have. It's like, no, we will save two of everything. Yes, if it's result, I'll shoot it and I'll put it in a museum. The elker disappearing, But dad gambit I saw when I shot it. We'll put it in the Bronx Zoo. That's not an idea I've ever heard anyone bringer. I haven't. Actually now. It could be because I just don't read widely enough, but I haven't. Um. I got another one for you. Here's no and this is from this from your own Um, this is like an idea that comes up in your own book. How could a Christian reconcile the tension of embracing the bloody wild? I guess your words while finding salvation and a domesticating religion found by pastures. It's a hard question. And if you notice, I don't answer it, or you don't, I don't not me personally. Um, is there even attention there? Like do you be like I love the wild, like the fecundity and blood of it all? Right, Um, does that mean you're turning your back on this like pastoral history of of of the the early Christians, right, And the nineteen eighties and nine ninies, feminism reached into theology and women began to want to look for their places in Christianity. The problem is Christianity is the patriarchal religion, and it had been in patriarchal societies. So what they had to do is they had to go look, and they went back and they found women as best they could, who were influential in their own realms, who thought amazing things, and there was this kind of revisionist history. As a hunter and I read a religion that's based upon agriculture, domestication and pastors, I had to do that and kind of go back and try and find those spots because it's a minority perspective at least today, and I think it always has been, except in America. If you want to argue, basically during the mid nineteenth century, as we expanded westward, because we've been civilized, an urbanite, one could argue at least since the end of the medieval period and even then prior to that, when people got the hunt officially, of course we're royalty and the nobility, so that brief period. I have to look for those those answers to the question is this is there a tension between my religion or not? And I try and find those examples where there's not tension. Because in in the book there's a guy that comments, an American observer goes out to the edge, okay, the land of Boone and points out that man, guys that get out on the edge morally like, in a religious sense, they fall apart. Yeah, that was these guys that flirt with the flirt with the wilderness. The Puritans didn't like that. Puritans are agricultural. Let's just store the forest, right, burn the tree so we can have great agricultural land. Hunters were always problematic. They weren't in church on Sunday. They hung out with the Native Americans. They were always on the edge. They didn't come, uh, confine themselves to behavior that society approved of. Does does that mean that they could be not Christian? It depends how Christian was interpreted at the time. You ment being on church on Sunday, well, little house on the prayer there, damn sure, Christian, there's a there's the thing I mentioned. I feel like I talked about this in my Buffalo book, but I can't remember. And it's a letter when So, when the conquisators are in the American Southwest and they're, you know, subjugating Native Americans and trying to introduce them to like how you're supposed to be, someone writes back a letter to Spain complaining about the hunters, saying like, I don't get it. We've given them livestock, We've given them home, we taught them how to farm. They have all the stuff here, like, all the components are in place. But these people get wind overheard of Buffalo somewhere and they are gone, and it doesn't make any sense. It's almost like they want to be doing this. We've eliminated the need, so why if you can go buy beef at your corner store. They're like, what was what is the allure? What exactly is the problem with you people? And again I think that most anyone who's hunted and is again reflective they're looking at things, would argue that there's so much more than the acquisition of meat. And hunting. And I think some would argue that it's a religious experience. Now by religious, I don't mean like you you know, it's it's like going to church and at the homily. But in that in that moment of again pursuit the shot, the death and it may not be a prompt death, but hopefully were short in humane, that there is a sense of something greater than you, a power that's more powerful than you, a greater than human reality. And if you encounter that, you want to encounter it again. As at St. Paul's Cathedral in London one time and we were visiting and there was gonna be a service that evening and the choir was practicing as adults and children, and the place was fairly empty and they were practicing, and it was a religious experience. I was moved out of myself. What took place. The sounds it was, it was intoxicating, it was goose bump lee. I don't want to call it. It was something truly manniccent, and I wanted to recapture that every single time that's a religious experience, it's it's a sense of something greater than us. It's a sign. I would argue that there's a divine And I think hunters, if they are reflective and not just something pumping fists and slapping hands when they have success, or even when they fail, when they simply surrender themselves to nature, will begin to hopefully access that religious experience. So for me, that's addictive. If I went to a concert and I thought, man, that was the greatest Hi, not from you know, contact, talking about Hi, wouldn't I want to go to another concert? If I get a sense of the divine? Wouldn't I want to do that again? And a reality that you can't access by eating murders here or even going to church, because doesn't church essentially just try and grab that experience from many different types of denominations, and like, let's reproduce it. Let's have this music, let's have this coral arrangement, let's have this sermon, Let's have the great vaults right above us with the man magnificent building that tries to make you feel that religious experience. You can't be religious all the time, you just can't be. You can't always live in it. But hunting, to me is a religious experience. Some people starry interrupting. Some people have religious experiences at rock concerts. I'm not as a as a whole, but again but not from the high. But I feel like music can transports you. Sure it can. It can give you what you just described exactly what I might get when I'm out there on a unsuccessful or successful turkey hunt. You know. Yeah, I was listening to Rogan's podcast the other day and he had on Howard bloom Who's um this fascinating just certifiable genius, and he has tired, he's dead. Howard bloom Um specifically has researched these experiences that you are speaking of, this religious experience, this greater than you moment um, like this cohesion um that can happen in mass groups also such as concerts, rock concerts, and how they just grab hold of you and create this moment you'd like to replicate. Um. You know you saw that in you know, certain speeches like he brought up you know, Hitler and talking about how the fervor of grabbing that that audience, um, and people just get addicted to that experience. So absolutely, yeah. And the question is in that case, the experience of scapegoading is the experience then something that is a valid experience? All Right, so that's where you begin to be reflective. Is what I'm doing something that is appropriate, is right, is redeeming, is fulfilling, is making me in the world. There's a utilitarian proprocious sorts, but making us better, making us happy. I think the Christian hunter and the hunter in general can make arguments like that, but they have to be careful. Um. I think when you mentioned how you have to be that reflective, I almost see it as achieving like a sense of purity to the moment. So I think there is like the validity in that. Yeah, I mean you see that in some some of them argue. David Peterson's famous for doing this right. So there's like hunters, the hunter, the hunter, and writer David Peterson exactly. So there's a hunter and then there's the right hunter who is reflective. He draws some he draws a lot of lines. Oh he does. And there's a lot of hunters who aren't hunters right. Might might just be one and maybe you'm my only but that kind of approach, and so you begin to draw those lines because you begin to say there is a better way, because there's a better way that makes you better, the world better, whether it be a traditional hunter with a bow, whether you keep seeking the greater challenge where you always allow of course, fair chase, you always allow the animal out. You only hunt public land for me people who have that option. So you find the other challenge, that pursuit of again the experience, but also something that you think may you better, transforms you into the better version of you and hopefully extends that. Then that's important. That makes you better than you then now right now? Not you better than everyone else? No, no, no, And it makes that that makes you a better person relative to your own experience right right. All the leopole would argue, are you making about it community better? Are you making healthy because, by the way, that's gonna have repercussions for you down the line. Ethically, are you being okay? Are you following fair chase? Are you seeking the good of the population, whether it be trimming down the numbers or allowing those numbers to recuperate. As a Christian, are you doing something that seems to be within the divine framework set up? Are you showing appreciation for the life that was there? You couldn't make that life, but you just took it. Are you showing you appreciation for the creator for the founder, if you will, are you recognizing the gift that was that animal? Do you continue to give sharing? I think so very important. Game dinners I think are really pivotal and sacramental events for Christian That's an interesting thing that I had never thought of. You talked ab up, was like that, there's a sacramental quality to hunting, but there's nothing like cooking your own food. But there's nothing like cooking it for someone else. And if you do it in the context of this is a gift from the creator, how much more so, and respect the life that was there. I know guys who want do taxing me right, they want they want to have them out. I disagree with that because I think I continue to give life to that experience by telling the story. But I understand to respect that because they do it out of respect for this beautiful creature. They don't choose not to have out of respect. Yeah, there are, Um it's silly to me. It's silly to me when someone's like, oh, I leave the antlers in the woods, because I'm like, but why not appreciate the whole thing? Exactly? But here's this thing that you could always have, right, But remember, But like I'm open, I don't agree with it, but I think that people arrive at these decisions in the way that that come from meaning and come from someplace honest. So whether I look at some of these things that people do um in order to acknowledge the importance of what happened does not light right. And people come up with these these personal ceremonies, um, a lot of them I look on like not for me, but I'm glad you did something and I'm glad you arrived somewhere because what we both see is it something important is happening here. So I understand the motivation. Alright, man, Michelle, We're gonna get around and make sure everybody knows what the book is. But Michelle, you got any rapper, uppers, concluders, goals and thoughts. Oh my gosh, this has been super interesting, more questions than answers, and really just I would like to just conclude by saying that I can't wait to read your book, and you know, really kind of trying to wrap my head around, you know, my motivations and I've thought a lot about that aspect um my motivations for hunting, and um, just what's going to keep me getting out there. And I do see a lot of alignment with kind of what the message you've shared here today, So thank you. M Yeah, I can say a couple of things. Uh, what I found what stuck and it was early on. There's a lot to take in today, but the fact that we've always been marginalized, a marginal group, and yeah, so it's kind of like we've been hanging on for two thousand, how many thousand years? Well it would be like, yeah, like a secular understanding would be the agricultural advent of the agriculture. So four thousand b c. That's when we again have Neil Thick agriculture. Since then, hunters have always been on the edge, you've been. Yeah, So for Harvard, Harvard long you define human history, it was strictly hunter gatherer cultures. And then all of a sudden, some guys like man, you know that grass that we're always bringing home and then we like eat the grass and then we go defecate down in the creek bed, and now that grass has grown, Dude, I'm telling you, look, there's a lot more there than there is everywhere else. The mint someone made that connection was the beginning of the end man, or you know that deer I found and brought home. We'll check it out. He's still here and had a baby and he's still hanging around. But I just feel like it's it's relevant to today because we have this conversation and it seems like there's this these fanning of the flames. Is like it's the end because we're pushed to the But it's true, it's there, right. I think people have been saying that for so long. I'm sure, but what I'm what I'm saying is they've been saying it for so long because it's the truth. And maybe that's just because that's where we're this group is supposed to be and it's always has been. Yeah, oh yeah, sure, so it's fine. There's nothing to worry about because we've been to ten percent for ten thousand years. I think like like the story of I've said, I thought that the story of Western civilization could be interpreted as a story of the gradual depersonal the the gradual de personalization of your food. Um, but yeah, I know what you're saying. They had it's been Yeah, it's a slow, seemingly never ending death. But yeah, but it's maybe it's not that. Maybe it's just like that's our place. Just it seems like it's seems to be always died. But that means something's gonna adapt. We adapted to the life of our frontier right by eighteen ninety Frontiers Gone Right in America. Alistair Drey he died unfortunately just after the book came out. He was from Scotland and he would go shooting, uh, Professor Sterling. But his type of hunting is he'd send me pictures of him and the guys. Was radically different than my type of hunting when I sent him pictures from me from Texas. But he was still hunting even with the restrictions in Britain and all that regarding firearms, and that they still found a way for his dogs for shooting birds, etcetera. Definitely on the edge at least of society, if not physically on the edge. Yeah. I think that the salvation or the path forward um was clearly articulated as long ago as it began to be articulated by Roosevelt. It was clarified and beautifully articulated by Leopold of what um, of what role this this discipline will have in the future. I just don't know that hunting will as democratic as it is so in Britain. Wild pigs, but who gets at the professional hunters? The hunt for cities, etcetera, hunt at night, suppressors night vision. So it'll still be hunters. But the question is what will be the population of those hunters. Yeah, that's a battle of the war. That's that's a portion of the war that will need to be fought. I don't mean to get to marshal and start using a bunch of marshals. Okay, here's my concluder. You are you good on concluders? Uh? I understand. I feel that there should be a law the academics write two books simultaneously. Okay, okay, while you were writing this book, working on this book, I feel that you should have simultaneously written a popular book. Now, my friend Dan Flores spent his whole life writing academic books. Then he retired, and now he's taking all of that wonderful information that he learned through his discipline and he's now saying to the guy in the bar, Hey, buddy, here's what I've been talking about. Here's all of these ideas I've been wrestling with, and I'm just gonna lay it out for you like a guy talking to an interested party. So do do you envision taking this and these ideas and just putting them out in a way that's that's and this is not a criticism, but in the way that's more accessible to the layman um or can't you because of your profession? Uh? No, it's possible. Uh. You know, I teach it a position where I am a professional teacher, so I teach four classes at least a semester. So it's hard to do research at all because because you do all kinds of research. Yeah, but no one's a word to mean my institution doesn't support me, Okay, So I do this on my own, so it's hard to do that. Right now, I'm working on a book for Texas A and M Press, a History of Hunting in Texas. That's going to be an academic book, but I do want to try and make it and I want some people understand the distinction here. And when you're writing an academic book, you have to be very forthright, absolutely transparent about where this information is from, and being very transparent about biases, and just very open to both sides, looking at everything right right in a popular book. You can be like, okay, WRONGNA cut the chase here and just give you kind of like, here's here's my view of Starr. There's here's my view of how this is going. I'd love to do that. I'm not there right now, maybe, but I don't even know. Like so, I wasn't saying that you should want to do that. I'm asking like, do you want to do that? Do you think you will someday do that? And I'm totally cool if you just say no, I don't really I think I'd like to h This is not anything I intend to do. This is not my in theory, my academic discipline. This was just a hair brained idea that took ten years to finally develop. Get all these people on board, right, essays, many of them didn't write about history from me about hunting, but get them to think about this that it took so much energy. Would have been easier just for me to write it myself. Yeah, but I wouldn't have I wouldn't have all these voices. Lord, I don't know if I'll ever added another book. Um, it is hard. It's hard for me though, because I haven't fully formulated my ideas. Essentially, what I need to do is mature. I need to mature another ten years or so. I need to figure out again who I am, and just like we see hunters mature themselves where you've seen these studies, how they mature to the age of basically, give me a gun, I'll kill anything that moves if it's brown. It's down to the trophy hunter, perhaps the one who seeks the ever increasing challenges to find, the one who's really only looking to just be with others, to hang out at camp. We met day. We spent some time with one of those guys who passed through Hey, the other side, and he was a hunter who does not hunt, but celebs. If you ask him what he is, he's honored. Only later do you realize, well, I don't actually hunt anymore. But yeah, I can tell you what I think about from time I wake up to the time I go to bed. Exactly. I think I need to mature a little bit. I have to come I need to come to grips with who I am and what I actually think before I write that book. That's going to be more of an apology, not like, excuse me, but this is what I believe an argument but from maybe not from an academic perspective, but from the heart. But instead of saying to the reader, hey man, here's a whole bunch of things you could believe. Here's some questions that you should answer, but I'm not gonna answer for you. Yeah, so give me a decade. Okay, now you go to me. My goal for writing this book was to simply encourage people to think and to create a conversation, because the conversation has essentially been so far people who said hunting is bad and leave me alone, hunting is just fine. God's that is okay if they thought about it as I see the decline of hunting, at least in participation. It bothers me because I think it's so important. It's who I am, perhaps too much, but it's who I am, and for me, it's my tribe. But my tribe doesn't have an identity, and I want the tribe to come to formulate an identity. Now, not everybody's a Christian hunter or religious hunter, but I think that we all could experience a kind of religious element to hunting. I think it's there, And like I ask you to believe what I believe, Sure what I do, but my goal is, and my hope is the hunters will simply begin to think, who am I, what am I doing? Why am I doing it? And in the process of thinking and reflecting, they'll tell their stories with greater honesty and with greater enthusiasm. That next generation will be fired up. That will create new generations of hunters who tap into the wonder and all it's splendor and frustration that is hunting, and that out of all of that will come another generation of hunters who think, who celebrate um and I think that we've been missing that for various reasons, partially because hunters haven't had to explain themselves, and now they do so. A reflective generation of hunters, people who recognize the beauty and the magnificence that we still get to play in, and that in process of play we find out something about ourselves, about the world around us, and even perhaps about our God, okay God nim Rod and the world. Exploring Christian perspectives on sport hunting Bracy V. Hill the second and Uh, if you want to check this out, how do they what? What's the best way to find it? The most beneficial to you? You know it? I'm probably gonna get very few royalties out of this. So you can get it on Amazon, Books, Barnes and Noble, most any type of mostly online. I haven't actually gone it's Barnes and Noble to see if it's on the shelf, but I do see that they occasionally lose, like nine, nine left, three left, two left, we're back, so somebody's finding. Yeah, that's great man. Thank you, thank you for coming on, Thank you for this opportunity. I thoroughly enjoyed it.