Jimmy Akin joins Cy for a conversation about the historicity of the Joseph story in Genesis. Is the biblical depiction of Egypt believable? What does modern scholarship add to the story?
Cy Kellett: Hello and welcome again to Catholic Answers Focus. I am Cy Kellett, your host, and last time we had a today’s guest on, Jimmy Akin is our guest, and the last time he was on, we talked about ancient Egypt and it turned out that was very, very popular. People really enjoyed hearing about that and it’s something that Jimmy knows a great deal about. So we asked him back to talk about just that. First of all, Jimmy, welcome back.
Jimmy Akin: Thank you. How are you, Cy?
Cy Kellett: I am very well, thank you. If you don’t know Jimmy, he is Senior Apologist here at Catholic Answers. He’s the author of many books and he’s the podcaster behind “Jimmy Akin’s Mysterious World,” where I assume you have talked about, I think I remember you talked about ancient Egypt.
Jimmy Akin: Oh yeah. We’ve talked about it a number of times. I think most recently, the theory that King Tut was murdered. There’s actually a good case to make for that.
Cy Kellett: Talk about a cold case though.
Jimmy Akin: Yeah, really.
Cy Kellett: Well, nothing’s that cold in Egypt, but this time we talk about Joseph in Egypt.
Jimmy Akin: Yeah, so this is a story from the Bible.
Cy Kellett: Yeah.
Jimmy Akin: It takes place in Egypt.
Cy Kellett: And I find all of this interesting because there’s that, you know, the Bible taking place in a place that now we’re getting so–I mean by “now,” I mean that was over the last century or so–more and more insight into Egyptian history. That means it gives us real insight into certain parts of the Bible.
Jimmy Akin: Right, that nobody right before the mid-1800s, let’s say, or more recently, would have had that extra context because we couldn’t read hieroglyphics.
Cy Kellett: And so first of all, maybe just tell us a little bit about who this Joseph guy is.
Jimmy Akin: Yeah. So he’s the founder. He’s, kind of an unusual guy. So when we hear about the Old Testament Patriarchs, we always hear about three of them: Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
Cy Kellett: Right.
Jimmy Akin: And Jacob is also known as Israel. That’s where the name Israel comes from. It was Jacob’s other name. And then he had 12 sons who became the Patriarchs of the 12 tribes of Israel, except for Joseph. Joseph is kind of an unusual case. There is no tribe of Joseph in Israel.
Cy Kellett: Yeah.
Jimmy Akin: What happened is Joseph was a child born to Jacob in his old age and he was kind of his father’s pet, you know, his favorite son.
Cy Kellett: Right.
Jimmy Akin: And by the way, you want to read this, it’s all in Genesis 37 to 50.
Cy Kellett: Okay.
Jimmy Akin: That’s the Joseph Story. And in terms of when this, well we’ll come back I guess and talk about exactly when this was in history, but what happened was Joseph kind of tattled on his brothers and gave Israel or Jacob a bad report about what they were up to. And that didn’t endear him to the brothers. Also because his father liked him, he gave him this special robe. In the King James version, it’s translated “a coat of many colors,” but it’s not exactly what the Hebrew says. In fact, the Hebrew is kind of ambiguous. So …
Cy Kellett: Can I just guess at the Hebrew?
Jimmy Akin: Okay.
Cy Kellett: Does it say “amazing technicolor dreamcoat?”
Jimmy Akin: It does not.
Cy Kellett: Oh, okay. Yeah. Alright.
Jimmy Akin: The words are a little obscure. Some people have translated it, “a coat or a tunic with long sleeves.”
Cy Kellett: Okay.
Jimmy Akin: Or “an ornamented tunic.”
Cy Kellett: Okay.
Jimmy Akin: And it’s unclear what it means, but it some kind of fancy robe or fancy tunic, basically.
Cy Kellett: Okay.
Jimmy Akin: So he got the special clothes and that didn’t endear him to the brothers.
Cy Kellett: Right.
Jimmy Akin: And then he starts having dreams. And dreams are really important in the Joseph Story. Joseph has this connection with dreams. While he’s living on the Ponderosa there with his 12 brothers in Canaan, he has a dream that he and his brothers are out in the field and they’re harvesting grain and the sheaves of his brothers all bow down to his sheaf. And, and then to make matters worse, he dreams that 11 stars and the Sun and the Moon are bowing down to him and the symbolism is obvious. And he tells his brothers in essence, I mean, “You’re all going to bow down to me one day.”
Cy Kellett: He is the pain in the neck little brother, isn’t he? He’s kind of that little know-it-all.
Jimmy Akin: He is asking for it.
Cy Kellett: Yeah. Okay.
Jimmy Akin: And he gets it.
Cy Kellett: Poor Joseph.
Jimmy Akin: Because they get so mad, they throw him down a well and then they sell him into slavery and take his amazing technicolor thingamabob and, and tear it up and smear blood on it and give it to the father and say, “Do you recognize this?”
Cy Kellett: “Ever seen this before?”
Jimmy Akin: And so, you know, Jacob is just incredibly grieved and he’s very sorry. And the brothers I guess mostly are enjoying their revenge. Although one of them, Ruben, said “Don’t do anything bad,” but they did it anyway. So the slave caravan takes Joseph down to Israel and he gets sold to a man named Potiphar. And Potiphar is a pretty well off guy and Potiphar’s wife takes a shine to Joseph and wants Joseph to do interesting things for her. And Joseph, being a righteous man, does not want to do those things. And so she frames him. She accuses him falsely of rape, which gets Joseph thrown in prison. And while he’s in prison, he meets a couple of high officials or officials anyway from Pharaoh’s court. They’re actually more servants than officials, but one of them is Pharaoh’s cup-bearer. And so he’s the guy that minds Pharaoh’s cup. This was actually a job. I mean it was a thing to be a cup-bearer.
Jimmy Akin: So whenever Pharaoh wants to drink the cup, bear gets the cup and fills it up and gives it to him. Also, Pharaoh’s baker is in prison and both of them have just had dreams, but no one knows what they mean. And they, they’re talking about this. As we’ll find out, this is a thing in Egypt. And so Joseph interprets the dreams for him. The cup-bearer had a dream about there were three vines, three branches of a grapevine in front of him. And he took the grapes off the third and squeezed him into Pharaoh’s cup. And, and so Joseph says, “Well, the three branches symbolize three days, and in three days you’re going to be Pharaoh’s cup-bearer again.”
Cy Kellett: Ah, out of prison.
Jimmy Akin: Yeah, “You’re going to be restored.” And so the baker says, “Ooh, that was good. He gave a good interpretation. I’m going to tell him my dream now.” So he says, “I dreamed I had three baskets of baked goods that I was carrying on my head,” presumably in a stack because otherwise it’d be really hard to keep them up there.
Cy Kellett: Yeah.
Jimmy Akin: “And the top basket is like stuff baked for Pharaoh and birds kept coming down out of the air and pecking on the stuff I’d made for Pharaoh and eating it.” And Joseph says, “I’m sorry. I’m really, really sorry. The three baskets are three days and in three days Pharaoh’s going to take your head off your body and birds are going to eat your flesh.” So …
Cy Kellett: “Thanks, Joseph…”
Jimmy Akin: Yeah, so then these interpretations come true. Pharaoh throws a big party. He restores his cup-bearer, he executes his baker and the cup-bearer had promised to remember Joseph and tell Pharaoh about him, but he forgets until Pharaoh has a dream and Pharaoh doesn’t know what it means. And he consults his magicians, whose job it is to interpret dreams, and they don’t know either. And that’s when the cup-bearer remembers, “Okay, so there was this guy back in jail who knew how to interpret dreams. Why don’t we ask him?” And so Pharaoh summons Joseph and he tells him the dream. There were two dreams. Notice how there’s two dreams in each of these cases. “I first dreamed that there were seven fat cows and seven scrawny cows came and ate them. And then I dreamed that there were seven ears of grain that were consumed by weak winds and stuff.” And so we have this recurring motif of seven good things being devoured by seven bad things. And Joseph says, “Well, here’s what’s going to happen. There are going to be seven really good years of harvest and then there’s going to be a seven year famine that undoes all that.”
Jimmy Akin: And so they decide to plan the economic policy of Egypt based on this interpretation. And they store up grain in the seven good years so that they’ll have it in the seven years of the famine. And Pharaoh actually appoints Joseph as a high official in his kingdom. He’s basically the vizier. Gives them a gold signet ring and lets him ride in a chariot. And whenever he’s riding in the chariot the crowds that people will shout, “Abrek, abrek” to him. And then when the famine hits, it’s not just Egypt that’s affected. Oh, by the way, I was once attending a synagogue and it was a learning experience and I was at one of their Bible study discussion groups and one of the gentlemen there described Joseph at this point in his career where he’s become the vizier as the Henry Kissinger of Egypt.
Cy Kellett: Oh yeah, fair enough. Yeah.
Jimmy Akin: Yeah. If you remember the 1970s and so forth, when Henry Kissinger was kind of an elder statesman. In any event, so the famine doesn’t just hit Egypt. It hits Israel also, where the family is. And so Joseph sends all of his sons down to Egypt with money to get grain, except he keeps Benjamin. Benjamin is Joseph’s younger brother. He was born even later in Jacob’s life. And so he’s even the more special son. And so all of them, except Joseph go down to Egypt and they end up meeting with Joseph who’s in charge of the grain, but they don’t recognize him. It’s been years and years. And so he’s grown and changed. He’s wearing Egyptian stuff and he’s not talking to them in Hebrew. He’s talking in Egyptian and using a translator. And so they don’t know that he understands everything they say to each other, but he kind of is testy with them.
Jimmy Akin: He accuses them of being spies and he eventually gives them the grain, but he asks lots of questions about their family. They’re kind of a little suspicious. Like, “Hey, is your father still alive?” and, “You got any other brothers?” and, cause you know, Dad and Benjamin aren’t there so of course he’d ask about them.
Cy Kellett: But I have to say in the traditional arc of a story at this point, Joseph would get his revenge on his brothers.
Jimmy Akin: Yeah, well he kinda is, but he’s setting up the revenge.
Cy Kellett: Okay.
Jimmy Akin: The revenge is not he’s gonna kill ’em all or sell them into slavery, but he is playing a trick on ’em and they’re gonna go through a little bit of anguish as a result of this trick. So he says, “Okay, here’s the grain and don’t ever come back and ask for more unless you bring me this other brother to prove me you’re telling the truth. I’m kinda trusting you on this one, but I want proof next time.”
Cy Kellett: Yeah.
Jimmy Akin: And so they go and on their way back, they discover “All of our money is still in our bags. It’s been secretly replaced and we could be accused of stealing this grain because they don’t have the money we agreed to pay for it,” but it’s a little late to deal with that. So they go back and they eat up all the grain and then they’re hungry again. And Jacob is like, go down to Israel and get more grain. And they’re like, “Well, okay, we would, but the man said we’ve got to bring Benjamin. And Jacob is like, “No way are you bringing Benjamin. I mean I would just die. You would bring my gray head down to Sheol in grief if anything happened to him.”
Jimmy Akin: And so eventually they get so hungry that they send him down and they send gifts with them to give, as well as all that money that showed up mysteriously and some of the gifts they give are almonds and pistachios. And I’m like, if you have the almonds and pistachios, what do you need grain for? Paleo diet, man.
Cy Kellett: I know, yeah.
Jimmy Akin: But presumably there weren’t enough to feed everybody indefinitely.
Cy Kellett: Right.
Jimmy Akin: So they, they go back down, they take Benjamin and this time Joseph has a feast, and Joseph is really having a hard time keeping it together. He’s so emotional about seeing Benjamin again and knowing his father’s okay. And he has to go off and cry privately, but then they have this big feast and he sends the brothers off again with more grain and has the money put in their sacks and his own silver cup is to be put in the sack of Benjamin. And then after they’ve left, he sends his guards after him to search their bags. And whichever one of them has the silver cup is going to become his slave. Oh, by the way, I forgot to mention one of the brothers after the first trip got kept back in prison until they would send Benjamin. So he was in prison for a good while. It was Simeon. But now Benjamin’s going to be the one who’s going to become Joseph’s slave because it’s in his bag that the silver cup is discovered. And at this point, Joseph reveals who he is and says, “Everything is okay, don’t worry. And you meant this thing against me for evil, but God meant it for good so I could protect all these people from the famine.”
Cy Kellett: Right.
Jimmy Akin: And so, you know, “Bring Mom and Dad on down. It’s going to be safe. You can live here in Egypt, we’re going to have lots of grain to eat.”
Cy Kellett: Yeah.
Jimmy Akin: And “Also, by the way, I married this Egyptian priest’s daughter and I have these two sons, Ephraim and Manasseh,” and they become the Patriarchs of two tribes in Israel. That’s why there’s no tribe of Joseph. There’s the tribe of Ephraim and the tribe of Manasseh. And so Jacob comes down, they bring all the rest of the family. They go to live in a place called Goshen and Jacob ends up dying while he’s there and they mummify him and it says they spent 40 days embalming him and 70 total days mourning him. And Joseph lives out the rest of his life. And this is all setting us up for the Exodus.
Cy Kellett: Okay, so when would this have been? Well, first of all, is this a parable or is this a real historical story? And if a real historical story to the degree that is, when did this happen in the Egyptian history that we know?
Jimmy Akin: Okay. So in terms of when it happened, the answer depends on the chronology you accept. There is a kind of an early dating and a late dating that scholars have proposed and according to the early dating, this could be somewhere around the 1800s BC. If it’s the late dating, it could be as late as the 1500s BC or so. And in terms of how that matches up to to Egyptian history, so Egyptian history had several major phases. The first one is called the Old Kingdom and that’s when the pyramids were built. Then everything kind of fell apart and we had a shorter period, like a couple of centuries or so, called the First Intermediate Period. It was a kind of time of anarchy in Egypt.
Cy Kellett: Okay.
Jimmy Akin: Then they re-establish things, they got everything back on track and we have what’s called The Middle Kingdom.
Cy Kellett: Okay.
Jimmy Akin: And then things fall apart again as they do, the center cannot hold and we have a Second Intermediate Period. Then we had the New Kingdom and the New Kingdom is where the pharaohs that you’ve probably heard of live, like King Tut and Ramses The Second and so forth.
Cy Kellett: Okay. Yeah.
Jimmy Akin: They live in the New Kingdom and so the Joseph Period, depending on whether it’s the early dating or the late dating, it could be either the end of the Middle Kingdom or the Second Intermediate Period or the beginning of the New Kingdom. It is not the Old Kingdom. The Old Kingdom was hundreds and hundreds of years before this. The pyramids had been standing for hundreds and hundreds of years, so none of these Hebrews had anything to do with building the pyramids at Giza, but that’s when it was. When it was recorded in Genesis is probably 500 to 800 years later. It looks like Genesis was written around the year 1000 BC. So about during the time of David and Solomon.
Cy Kellett: Is it fair to say these are oral stories then? Just passed down?
Jimmy Akin: These were family stories that were passed down and undoubtedly there’s some degree of literary license that’s taken with them because ..
Cy Kellett: To shape them.
Jimmy Akin: Yeah, because human memory doesn’t preserve exact detail over that period of time. Even in cultures that are based on oral tradition, like this one, where they take care in how they tell a story and keep the gist of it the same, the gist of stories will be accurately passed down, but the details that are used to give them verisimilitude will vary a little bit.
Cy Kellett: Can we recognize any of real Egypt in the story?
Jimmy Akin: Yeah. Egypt is all over this.
Cy Kellett: Oh, okay.
Jimmy Akin: So for example, you know the guy who Joseph gets sold to, Potiphar?
Cy Kellett: Yeah.
Jimmy Akin: That’s an Egyptian name. It’s probably Pa Di Re.
Cy Kellett: Okay.
Jimmy Akin: And it gets brought over into Hebrew and then into English as Potiphar, but it’s Pa Di Re. Pa means “that” and Di means “given” and Re is the Sun God.
Cy Kellett: Okay.
Jimmy Akin: And so his name would mean “that which has given by Re” or “given by Re.” And that’s a very typical type of Egyptian name. You’d have lots of names based on “this god is pleased” or “this god has given me this child” or things like that.
Cy Kellett: Yeah.
Jimmy Akin: So that matches up. Also, it’s interesting, there’s a short story that we have from Egypt called The Tale of Two Brothers, where one of the wives of one of the brothers takes a shine to the other brother, and when he doesn’t go along, frames him just like Potiphar’s wife frames Joseph.
Cy Kellett: Oh, okay.
Jimmy Akin: So this is not an isolated thing. This is something that may have happened in Egypt well enough to find its way into their literature.
Cy Kellett: Right. Okay.
Jimmy Akin: Also the dreams are a huge deal in Egypt. Joseph’s key function here is not that he has these dreams. I mean he did have a couple, but his key function is he’s a dream interpreter.
Cy Kellett: Right.
Jimmy Akin: But everybody can have prophetic dreams and in the view of Egyptians, everybody did have prophetic dreams and every dream was prophetic and so they had these books of dream interpretations. One example I remember, I got this from Bob Brier’s course on the history of Ancient Egypt. In one of the dream interpretation manuals we have, if a man dreams of a dwarf, it’s a sign his life is half over. Cause the dwarf is like half a man. And if he dreams his enemy is making offerings, that’s bad because it means people are working against him magically and stuff. So they would have these manuals and the presumptive reason why Pharaoh’s magicians couldn’t interpret the dream is there wasn’t anything in their dream manuals.
Cy Kellett: Oh, that doesn’t fit.
Jimmy Akin: About seven scrawny cows eating seven fat cows or things like that. So also there’s the name of the magicians. So in Coptic, which is a development of the Egyptian language and it’s used by Christians in Egypt today, Coptic Christians. In Coptic, the word for magician is Sesh Pur Ankh. And that’s actually three words. Sesh means “scribes,” pur means “house.” And ankh means “life.” You know that ankh symbol?
Cy Kellett: Yeah.
Jimmy Akin: So the Sesh Pur Ankh were the Scribes of the House Of Life. And a temple was a house of life. And so they were the scribes associated with the temple, which is where you’d find the books of dream interpretation.
Cy Kellett: Right.
Jimmy Akin: Oh, also we have a record. So you know, you kind of wonder, “Would there be seven-year famines in Egypt?” Yeah, there would be and we have a record of one. There’s an island, Today, it’s called Sahel Island. It’s got all these boulders and people would go and carve memorable things on the boulders and one of the boulders there records a seven-year famine when the Nile didn’t rise high enough to re-fertilize the fields for seven years.
Cy Kellett: Ah.
Jimmy Akin: So, now that’s not saying that’s Joseph’s seven year famine, but it is saying we have historical evidence of seven-year famines in Egypt.
Cy Kellett: Right, right.
Jimmy Akin: So that checks out. So does the fact that Pharaoh gave a Joseph a golden ring as a seal. That was a real thing. They would do that. It’d have your name on it in hieroglyphs.
Cy Kellett: Okay.
Jimmy Akin: And you would use it not just to seal letters or documents, you’d also use it to seal jars of grain. Yeah, to keep them secure. So because Pharaoh owns all this grain, but it’s gotta be put in jars to keep it safe and dry and everything. And then you’d put a piece of cloth over the top of the jar and take some mud and seal it so no one else can break in and steal the grain without it being obvious this has been tampered with. And then the person whose seal is used is the one certifying, “I closed this and it was full of grain at the time.” And that goes along with Joseph being in charge of the grain. Also, when he rides on the chariot and detected genesis as people would shout out “Abrek” after him.
Cy Kellett: Yeah.
Jimmy Akin: You know what “Abrek” means in Hebrew?
Cy Kellett: No.
Jimmy Akin: It means nothing. That’s not a Hebrew word.
Cy Kellett: Oh.
Jimmy Akin: And so it’s given scholars a real runaround trying to figure out what this means. And there are some possibilities, but one of them, and this is the one that Bob Brier advocates, it’s Egyptian for “Ob,” that means “heart.” And then the “Re” symbol means “to,” and the “ke” in “Abrek” is … Hebrew had the same kind of thing. It’s called a pronominal suffix. And the “ke” in Egyptian means “you” so “heart to you” or “your heart to you.” “May you live.”
Cy Kellett: Oh, okay.
Jimmy Akin: You know, it’s like “life to you” and so forth.
Cy Kellett: Yeah. Right
Jimmy Akin: And so it’d be like an Egyptian salutation that you might shout at a high official that’s popular–and in charge of all your food–as he’s riding down the street in his chariot.
Cy Kellett: Yeah.
Jimmy Akin: So that fits. Then we’ve got Joseph’s silver cup and he uses the cup. Well, he obviously drinks from it, and the text says he drinks from it, but he also has his officials or his soldiers that he sends after the brothers say, “Not only does he drink from it, he uses it for divination.” And this is a thing in the ancient world, people would use cups to divine the future. How they would do it, there were several different techniques, but one of them is called hydromancy and they’d have like the cup filled with oil and then they’d pour in water and look at the patterns of the water. Kind of like reading tea leaves.
Cy Kellett: Yeah.
Jimmy Akin: But with the liquid still in the cup. Or they do oilomancy where they’d have the cup filled with water and they’d pour a little oil in and look at the patterns of the oil. There was also winomancy where they’d use wine and things like that. So this is a real thing and so this cup is doubly precious. It’s precious in several respects and therefore he would want it back. It’s not just an ordinary drinking vessel.
Cy Kellett: Then people would know the value of it.
Jimmy Akin: Right, exactly. Oh this is his divination cup.
Cy Kellett: Come on, man.
Jimmy Akin: His personal cup. And the thing is it’s made out of silver. That’s significant because how valuable a metal is depends on how easy it is to dig it up out of the ground and refine it. People in America will be shocked typically to learn this today, but you know, we tend to think of platinum is really expensive. Gold is a little less expensive. Silver is less expensive than that. But you know what used to be more expensive here in America than all of those?
Cy Kellett: What?
Jimmy Akin: Aluminum.
Cy Kellett: Oh yeah, I’ve heard this.
Jimmy Akin: Yeah.
Cy Kellett: Because the top of the …
Jimmy Akin: …the Washington monument is a little aluminum pyramid and …
Cy Kellett: Yeah.
Jimmy Akin: And back in Napoleon’s day, they would eat with aluminum forks and knives.
Cy Kellett: Cause they were so fancy.
Jimmy Akin: Because they were so fancy. This is more precious than gold because aluminum is so reactive as a metal. It bonds with almost everything. So since it’s really common on earth you can, you can never find it in its pure state. So it’s really rare. Well, in Egypt, silver was more rare than gold, and thus more valuable than gold. So this is a really special cup.
Cy Kellett: What about Goshen?
Jimmy Akin: Oh, well Goshen is a real place. It’s up in the Nile Delta.
Cy Kellett: Okay.
Jimmy Akin: Which is where we know a bunch of Semites live, the Hyksos. Also, Goshen is a place in Arkansas that’s right next to the town where I grew up. And so I would go to the land of Goshen periodically.
Cy Kellett: Really?
Jimmy Akin: Yeah.
Cy Kellett: You sojourned in the land of Goshen.
Jimmy Akin: Yeah.
Cy Kellett: It strikes me that the part about embalming Joseph is significant, and we’re almost at the end.
Jimmy Akin: Right, sure.
Cy Kellett: So I want you to tell me about, what does this mean?
Jimmy Akin: Okay, so it turns out, and we didn’t really know this until recently, but that 70 day mourning process with something happening at the 40 day mark, that’s real. That’s how they mummified people. Mummification has two stages. In the first stage, they’re trying to dry out your body as quickly as possible so it doesn’t rot. And so they take out all the internal organs including the brain and they do various things and they bury your body in this stuff called natron, which is kind of like baking soda and salt.
Cy Kellett: Okay.
Jimmy Akin: And it helps get the moisture out of the body.
Cy Kellett: It desiccates them.
Jimmy Akin: Yeah. And you leave it in the natron for 40 days, but then you take it out and you do the second stage of mummification, which involves like putting it in the right posture and stuff cause it still has the flexibility. It’s not completely desiccated at this point, so you can still move it and do the other procedures including some magical ones that you need. And then, and then you wait another 30 days, at which point you bury it. And you have a farewell dinner when you’re burying it and stuff. We even have the stuff including the bird bones they ate at King Tut’s farewell burial dinner.
Cy Kellett: Cause they get buried with him or?
Jimmy Akin: No, no, no, cause they put him in a pit outside his tomb along with the like floral head dresses and stuff they were wearing. So the details of Jacob’s mummification match up to what the Egyptians actually did.
Cy Kellett: Yeah, and it’s interesting to me that nobody really knew that for a few thousand years until modern…
Jimmy Akin: Yeah. It was lost knowledge.
Cy Kellett: Yeah.
Jimmy Akin: So what this tells us is whoever wrote this story really knew about Egypt and how stuff worked. This story preserves accurate traditions of Ancient Egypt.
Cy Kellett: Jimmy Akin, thank you very, very much.
Jimmy Akin: My pleasure.
Cy Kellett: And thanks everybody who joins us here on a Catholic Answers Focus. Please give us a like or a share wherever you get this podcast. That really helps us to grow and invite people to join Radio Club at CatholicAnswersLive.com. We’ll see you next time on Catholic Answers Focus.