Book Interview 2: Patristica with Jack Bull
A second YouTube interview about my book City of Gods has appeared, this time with Dr. Jack Bull of Patristica . Jack and I met at the recent NAPS conference in Chicago, where he and I talked over breakfast about scholarship, the methodological use of AI in research, and, of course, his and Markus Vinzent's ongoing (and controversial) work on Paul's and Ignatius of Antioch's literary output. We also talked about my research and the recent book, which is what brought about his invitation of me, deep into our second round of pastries, onto his podcast. It was a wide-ranging interview, but we focused especially on the earliest and most enigmatic authors that I wrote about: Hermas of Rome and Papias of Hierapolis. We covered an immense amount of ground, and we got into all kinds of speculative lines of thought (not least when we were talking about Jack's own research, the conclusions of which I admit to having severe reservations about). This, of course, made it a deligh...