Hello and welcome to this very special episode of The Bible Venge. I'm one your host Knox McCoy.

And join me as always keeping watch over her flock at night in St. Louisville!

Okay guys, so here's the deal. The Bible Venge is a show where we take stories from the Bible and we recap them as though they were a movie, a book or a TV show.

And we say movie-book or TV show because that's what we usually do on our other show about pop culture, the pop cast with Knox and Jaime, where we talk about popular culture, sacrilege, every Wednesday.

And before we begin, we just want to be clear that the Bible Venge has no agenda. The show isn't meant to be evangelical or adversarial.

We just think that the Bible has some super dope stories and we want to talk more about them and a voice that is less Bible scar and more every man or every woman.

The conversation will take place in this episode is meant to be more casual, not out of disrespect, but in an effort to better understand the story.

And this episode is the third episode in a season-long celebration and examination of Advent and the Nativity.

So make sure you get each installment of the season head straight to wherever you listen to podcasts and subscribe to the Bible Venge.

Plus don't forget to follow along with us on Instagram and Twitter at the Bible Venge. Finally, here at the Bible Venge, we urge you to love others as you love yourself and share the Bible Venge on social media.

And if you want to follow along as we go, the main biblical scripture of this story will cover is Luke 2 verses 8 through 20.

All right, Jaime. This is actually in the Nativity and Advent and the Christmas season. This is one of my favorite stories.

Oh, really?

Because I don't ever feel permission to think of Mary and Joseph to let it run. But you've got these three shepherd guys.

I don't know a lot about them, so I feel like my imagination can run wild with these characters. So I'm excited to do this.

No, this is really it. So we're picking up where we left off. And our last episode, Jesus has been birthed and he's been wrapped in swaddling cloth, which, let's be honest, he probably immediately pooped in.

So that's what they do. That's what they do. Here's the thing about angels and shepherds. One of my favorite things about this part of the Nativity is that you know that angels and shepherds get mentioned in more Christmas songs than Jesus does.

Oh, come on. You're fateful. Angels from the realms of glory, the first noelle, which child is this? God rest you, Mary gentlemen. Angels, we have heard on high silent night all like the top hits. And like Jesus occasionally, like he gets referenced as like a boy child or a babe.

But like it's rare that you actually get his like straight up like hello. I have a lot of names. If you were at the Nativity, you would know that it's not a really sexy name scene for Jesus.

It's like you went over and babe and just with a lot of stuff. That's the biggest problem. And he doesn't say anything. That's a good, that's a really good point. That's a really good. Yeah, he doesn't say anything, whereas like goodwill to all like that's like, oh, that's catchy. We could put that in a song. He's like aslan in the first part of line, which is wardrobe. He's there. But it's like, look, there's other cooler stuff happening. I'm just going to be honest with you. So he's no Turkish delight yet. You know, so okay. We've got we've got some new characters to talk about. We've got some old ones. So Mary and Joseph will be here. And that's feel

of Davis and Joseph is the tooch. I'm just going to call Stanley to you that from now on. No, it's right. No, it's right. Yeah, I think it does. But we've also got those aforementioned three shepherds. Do you want to give any context on these guys before we cast them? Okay. So we know they're working at night. They were in a flock nearby. They were in a field nearby. But what we know about just thinking about the Palestine economy at the time. It was very much drenched in agriculture, right?

And so tending flocks, you would raise sheep on a hillside. You would often have to move them because you're trying to find water. And so oftentimes shepherds would spend a lot of time in the wilderness alone because you would often have to move sheep to places far off from your home because you're looking for water. But there's a lot of theories and a lot of scholars who point to that these particular shepherds may have been carrying for temple flock because they were so close to Jerusalem at the time. And so they would have been caring for lambs that later

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