What Are the Targums? The Ancient Aramaic Texts That Shaped How Jesus Read Scripture

Johnny Ova: Welcome everybody to the Dig In Podcast. I am your host, Pastor Johnny Ova, and we have the privilege today to be joined by Dr. Bruce Chilton. Dr. Chilton, thank you so much for your time today. I'm looking forward to our topic.

Dr. Bruce Chilton: It's a pleasure to join you.

Johnny Ova: Let's get started. I want to lay the foundation so we're all on the same page as we jump into the conversation. Let's start with something most Christians have never heard of. What exactly is a Targum?

Dr. Bruce Chilton: Excellent question, because you're right, the word Targum is an unfamiliar word to us. But it might help if I said that the word Targum in Aramaic means translation. It's nothing more than that. The reason the term came into usage is that by the first century of the Common Era, the period when the New Testament unfolded, the dominant language in the historic land of Israel was no longer Hebrew, but Aramaic. Aramaic had been inherited as the official language of the Persian Empire, which covered that entire region, including what had been Israel, with Mesopotamia, up to Syria, down to Saudi Arabia. It was one of the first of the global languages. It really set the pace for what later happened with Greek when Alexander the Great came.

Dr. Bruce Chilton: Aramaic being the dominant language meant that for purposes of worship, people who joined in synagogue in the ancient lands of Israel typically heard their scriptures recited in Aramaic, and that was how they were able to understand them. Usually in a synagogue there was also a reading of a given scripture in Hebrew, so people could understand the difference between the original text and the translation. But the version they would understand would be what they called the Targum.

Johnny Ova: Was Aramaic more of a scholarly language or a common spoken language?

Dr. Bruce Chilton: It was very widely used. It was adopted as the language of his empire by Cyrus the Persian, the same ruler who permitted the Judean exiles in Babylonia to return to their land. As a result, it was a widespread commercial language. In recent years we've assembled remains of documents, bills of sale, that show how widely Aramaic was used. It was also used for ritual. We have examples of what are called ritual bowls, ceramic bowls with Aramaic inscriptions on them. And over time it became a scholarly language as well. But initially, the reason the scriptures were translated from Hebrew into Aramaic was so that they could be understood by most of the people living in the historic lands of Israel.

Johnny Ova: Now, you wrote the first critical commentary on the Isaiah Targum. How did these texts even survive for 2,000 years, and when did scholars rediscover them?

Dr. Bruce Chilton: It has been an extraordinary story. The Targums are literally a thousand year tradition. They unfolded over an extremely broad swath of time. At the earliest level, some of them, like the Isaiah Targum, represent traditions from the first century. Others were produced at a late stage, even during the Middle Ages. Fortunately, all of the Targums were assembled at various moments. For example, we have manuscripts of Targums from an ancient collection found in the Geniza, the storage house in Cairo, which give us fragments from between the seventh and ninth centuries. Then during the Middle Ages, as a result of an extraordinary increase in Jewish learning, the Targums were produced and printed in Aramaic.

Dr. Bruce Chilton: Amazingly, they were not immediately translated. It literally took centuries before they were all brought out. The series in which my translation of the Book of Isaiah appears is the first time in history that all of the Targums were translated into another language, in this case English, so that scholars who didn't have the resource of the primary language would have a way in to these extraordinarily rich sources.

Johnny Ova: When I think about the preserving of the word and of these texts, it's really a miracle that some of them survived what they've survived.

Dr. Bruce Chilton: It certainly is. In the case of the Isaiah Targum, it survives in several manuscripts, so it's also possible to compare one manuscript with another to arrive at the best reading we can for what the intention was.

Johnny Ova: All right, I'm going to set the scene. Walk us into a first century synagogue in Galilee. What would a Jewish person actually hear when the scriptures were being read?

Dr. Bruce Chilton: Absolutely. We would assemble, and together we would recite the Shema Yisrael, the "Hear, O Israel." Then, depending on the time of year, we would hear a portion of the Torah, the first five books, read out. We would hear that in Hebrew. Some of us who were learned would be able to understand it, but most of us would not. In fact, most of us in Galilee were also illiterate. Then, after that reading aloud in Hebrew, we would hear the passage in Aramaic. Interestingly, the person who gave the Targum would give it from memory. The reason was that you wanted to make a clear distinction between the written word and its translation or interpretation.

Dr. Bruce Chilton: We would also hear from the prophets. Over time a coordinated system evolved, as exists today in many churches, for reading on a regular basis: which parts of the Torah, which parts of the prophets, and in synagogues, which part of the writings, because those were the divisions recognized in the Judaism of the time, Torah, prophets and writings. As time went on, rabbis also permitted more than one translation of a given portion of the prophets and writings, because there was more than one Targum around. So the congregation could enjoy different interpretations by means of the Targums they heard.

Dr. Bruce Chilton: That's important, because the Targums as we have them are not what we would call straight translations. They really are paraphrases. They sometimes introduce fresh ideas into the original text. And those fresh ideas can be compared to concepts that emerge not only within Judaism, but also within Christianity, since Christianity was the sister religion of Judaism. For example, in the Targum of Isaiah, chapter 4, there is a prediction that doesn't appear in the Hebrew text: "In that time the Messiah of the Lord shall be for joy and glory, and those who perform the law for pride and praise, for the survivors of Israel." This is referred to as the consolation of Israel and also the promise of eternal life. We have concepts unfolding within the Targum that also appear within the Christian tradition, some from an early period. Sometimes you can see the crossover from a later period.

Johnny Ova: That's amazing. So this raises a question. If these Targums included interpretive expansions and weren't word-for-word translations, how do we know what's expansion and what's the Hebrew text?

Dr. Bruce Chilton: This is how we developed it in the series in which my translation and commentary appeared. As we translated, each of us had in front of us the texts of the Targum we were reading, and if there was a difference in their readings, we had to decide which to prefer. I would have on the desk in front of me the Book of Isaiah in its Aramaic Targumic version, and I also had the Hebrew in front of me. That way I could discern when there was a direct correspondence between the Hebrew terms and grammar and the Aramaic. When that happened, we printed it in ordinary type. But when the Targum developed a different idea, for example when the word Messiah is put in at chapter 4, verse 2, we put that in italics. That way, the English reader today can understand the relationship between the Targum and the Hebrew.

Dr. Bruce Chilton: Now we can ask how much of this would have been appreciated by the Galilean peasants in the synagogue you referred to earlier. They're in no position to read the Hebrew and the Aramaic. Most of them can't read, but they can hear. They would know that they heard the word Mashiach, Messiah, in Aramaic, and that they had not heard Mashiach in the Hebrew. So in several cases they would understand that an expansive interpretation was going on. And at times the expansion is such that the passage in the Targum becomes much longer.

Dr. Bruce Chilton: I'll give you one example I've especially enjoyed over time. In the Hebrew Bible, we're told that Cain and Abel went out into the field and Cain rose up against Abel. We know the background. God had accepted the sacrifice of Abel and had not accepted the sacrifice of Cain. But the Aramaic interpreters felt there was a lack here, that there really ought to be an argument between the two of them. So they developed one. You have Cain saying, "There is no judgment, there is no judge, there is no other world. There is no reward for good deeds or recompense for evil deeds. That is why your gift was accepted and mine was not." Cain, in other words, is depicted as a kind of primordial nihilist who completely denies the justice of God, and this is why he himself acted unjustly.

Dr. Bruce Chilton: I personally find that a very powerful interpretation. Of course it's not the original Hebrew. I'm not saying that. But it's a very interesting and compelling idea. And anyone in a synagogue would instantly realize, "Whoa, this is a lot longer than what we had in Hebrew. What is going on?" So they would understand the nature of the translation being given to them.

Johnny Ova: Fascinating. So let's get specific about the life of Jesus. Growing up in Nazareth, learning in the synagogue, would Jesus have memorized these Targums the way he memorized Hebrew scripture?

Dr. Bruce Chilton: At the level of his oral repertoire, the things he was accustomed to saying, the evidence we have is that he was a great folk interpreter, as I would describe it. His parables are magnificent examples of how you convey scriptural and theological thought without a direct quotation of scripture. His oral memory and his great competence in that medium are shown by the parables. That's why the parables have the enormous sticking power they have.

Dr. Bruce Chilton: Having said that, his teaching as a whole, including his parables, often includes terms and concepts we can find in the Aramaic Targums. There's evidence that he is using an understanding of Aramaic that we also know comes from the first century. From time to time we actually find an overlap between Jesus's teaching and what we find in a Targum, and it so happens that this most frequently occurs with the Isaiah Targum, which is exactly why I concentrated on it when I began my work on the Targumim.

Johnny Ova: Now, you've argued that Jesus's understanding of the kingdom of God was actually shaped by Targumic theology. Pretty bold, which is great. This is why I love these conversations. Can you walk us through an example from the Isaiah Targum that shows this?

Dr. Bruce Chilton: Absolutely, and I'll give a bit of background, if I may. The reason I came to argue this is that when I first began work on my PhD thesis at the University of Cambridge, which was some time ago, in 1974, the conventional wisdom I had been taught in seminary was that the idea of the kingdom of God was unusual with Jesus, that it was not widely found in the tradition of Judaism. In particular, it was thought that referring to God's activity with the phrase "kingdom of God" was unique to Jesus.

Dr. Bruce Chilton: So imagine my surprise when I started reading the Targums. In the Book of Isaiah, chapter 31, verse 4, God is described as descending like a lion upon Zion to bring about justice, and in the Targum that's referred to as the kingdom of God. Or imagine my surprise when I read the Targum of Zechariah, chapter 14, verse 9, with a reference to the kingdom of God directly related to Zechariah's prediction that when the temple is ordered the way God wants it ordered, there will be no merchant in the temple. In other words, what we see in the Targumim is a precedent for Jesus referring to God's kingdom as a matter of God's personal intervention. We also see a connection between that intervening action of God and a protest against commercialism in the temple, which of course was the driving force behind his action in Jerusalem and his crucifixion.

Dr. Bruce Chilton: So I think we've seen a reversal of opinion since 1974. You do not find scholars telling people what they told me when I was in seminary. We don't see Jesus as totally different from his Jewish environment. We see him using elements from that environment. And one of those elements is a profound commitment to the idea of God's kingship, which is not only a matter of what God did in the past, but gives precedence to what is about to occur, and to the kind of demands that makes of people who understand it's about to happen.

Johnny Ova: One of the most quoted Old Testament passages in the New Testament is Isaiah 53, the suffering servant. How does the Isaiah Targum interpret this passage, and does it match how the New Testament writers understood it?

Dr. Bruce Chilton: The Targum develops in Isaiah 53 quite a distinctive understanding of the servant, one that reflects the trajectory of how the Isaiah Targum was developed. There are two major phases of its development. That corresponds to the fact that when Targums were produced, there was no reason to translate the whole thing at once. It was used portion by portion in the synagogue, and it was simply the portion you were using. So part of the Isaiah Targum reflects the situation in the first and second centuries, the period leading up to the destruction of the temple. Another part represents a much later period, the same period when the Talmud was being formed.

Dr. Bruce Chilton: In that later period, and here we really hear from Isaiah 53 for the most part, there was a concept of a messiah, but as a messiah who was going to rebuild the temple. In the Targum that's exactly what the messiah does. He rebuilds the temple, he causes people to be dedicated to the law, and that is how he redeems them. In that section, in most cases where there's a reference to suffering, the suffering is not applied to the Messiah, but to the condition of the people whom the Messiah redeems by his action. So here is a case where we can see that at a later, Talmudic stage, there's a well-defined messianic teaching.

Dr. Bruce Chilton: Now, one might feel a little disappointed, because that doesn't tell us about the first century. But hang on just a moment. First of all, it means that during the early Talmudic period there was a dedication to an idea of a messiah that was very strong in the Targum. That's fascinating, because messianic teaching in the Talmud is difficult to come by. In the Targums it's right at the surface. That suggests to me that the Targums are actually helpful to us because people ignored them. Because people ignored them, they left them alone. They didn't censor them as much as they censored other literatures of Judaism.

Dr. Bruce Chilton: So if we have this very vibrant conception of the Messiah among the early Talmudic rabbis, might we also have had it earlier? As it happens, there are other references to the servant in the Hebrew text of Isaiah that the Targum relates to the Messiah. So we can have an understanding of God's servant who fulfills God's purpose as being anointed, being a messiah, for that purpose. I'd say the Targum does in the end help us come up with a plausible reconstruction of first century usage, especially because we now have other usages to correlate it with, for example the finds at Qumran and those associated with Qumran.

Johnny Ova: I just find this fascinating. I don't know how you feel about this, but I feel like a lot of Christians I come in contact with have a misunderstanding of how the Bible was even put together and how to engage with it. When they hear things like this, sometimes it's just, "Nope, it's the word of God, it is what it is, it's always been this way." And I feel like you miss so much of the beautiful element of God's mystery and glory when you take this kind of thing away.

Dr. Bruce Chilton: I couldn't agree more, Johnny. That's an extremely good point. The Targums show us that people in antiquity understood this. They produced what are obviously interpretations as translation. It's so obvious that you literally don't have to be able to read to understand that these Targumic texts are being expanded and made more directly engaged with the lives of the people who heard them. The fact that there is more than one Targum for several Hebrew works shows us that the process of interpretation was held to be profitable. In many ways that's a different world from ours. I agree with you. There has been a tendency in recent years, and it is a rather recent phenomenon, to see the Word of God as having to be static in order to be the Word of God. Well, what if it's the opposite? What if, in fact, the Word of God needs to be dynamic?

Dr. Bruce Chilton: And this would also be why the kingdom of God is not simply something of the past. The kingdom of God is not infinite nostalgia. Rather, it refers to the way God is active at the moment, and that action will be culminated only in the future.

Johnny Ova: So good. In the Gospels, we see Jesus in heated debates with the Pharisees and religious leaders about how to interpret scripture. Were they debating different Targumic interpretations, or were the disagreements deeper than that?

Dr. Bruce Chilton: Sometimes, indeed, Jesus is able to sting his opponents by his knowledge of what's in the Targum and his awareness that they know what's in the Targum too. An example is when he's in Jerusalem in Mark chapter 12 and parallels. He tells the parable of a vineyard and speaks of the way the people keeping the vineyard are going to be expelled for not properly dealing with it. The close of that parable, in verse 12, says that the people opposing him, who represented the priesthood at the time, knew that he told the parable against them, and therefore they wanted retribution. Well, how would they know he was telling the parable against them?

Dr. Bruce Chilton: It turns out that in the Targum of Isaiah there is also a parable of a vineyard. That vineyard parable exists in Hebrew too. You can see it in chapter 5 of any translation of the Hebrew Bible. But in the Targum, it refers in particular to the temple. So now the vineyard parable really is targeted on the people in charge of the temple, the very people Jesus is opposing at this stage in the Gospel. This is just a chapter after he has gone into the temple and upset all the commercial arrangements there. So you can see how his actions are reinforced, to some extent motivated, and certainly understood in the light of Targumic interpretations.

Johnny Ova: Amazing. You've also written that Jesus wasn't just using the Targums, he was functioning as a rabbi who created his own Targumic interpretations. What does that mean? Explain that to our audience.

Dr. Bruce Chilton: Exactly. He's very allusive in his use of scripture. He'll use it, but it has a kind of hit-and-run quality about it. I'll give you another example, and it involves the reason for speaking in parables. Understanding how he uses the Targum here enables us to understand Jesus's own motivation in using the form of the parable. Again, it's in Mark's Gospel, chapter 4, verse 12. He says that speech in parables happens so that they see and don't perceive, they hear and don't understand, so they don't repent and they're not, he says, forgiven.

Dr. Bruce Chilton: Now, anyone who looks at the Hebrew of Isaiah will say, "Wait a minute. Isaiah 6:10 doesn't say forgiven. It says so that I don't heal them." So what happened? He's using the Targum, which says exactly that: this speech occurs in such a way that they are not forgiven. This would be a case of an early translation within the Isaiah Targum, already current in the time of Jesus, which is why he quotes it rather than the Hebrew, and by the way, rather than the Greek. The Greek also refers to healing, not forgiveness. Some of my colleagues love to think that Jesus spoke only Greek. That's because they don't want to learn Aramaic. I understand, it's a hurdle. But sometimes you just have direct evidence, as in this case.

Dr. Bruce Chilton: So we know he's referring to the way the Targum interprets this instruction to Isaiah to speak to these people in riddles. And then what does he say? Is it "in order that they don't get it"? Do you deliberately speak to make it impossible for people to understand you? There are people who have understood Mark that way. They take the Greek particle hina and rightly say it can mean "in order that." That is, the purpose is to speak in a way people will not understand. But that's not the only way to understand hina. If what is said here represents the Targum, the Targum uses an Aramaic particle, de, which can mean "in order that," "so that," or simply "that." Speak to this people, that they see and don't perceive, hear but don't understand, lest they repent and it be forgiven them.

Dr. Bruce Chilton: That interpretation makes much more sense within Jesus's overall activity, because he uses the same rebuke to his own disciples. He says to them in Mark, "You see but you don't perceive, you hear but you don't understand. What is going on with you?" So he can use it that way of his own followers, and of course he can refer to the same passage to explain why he speaks in parables. It's a test of the willingness to perceive, the willingness to hear, with the possibility of repentance, rather than a statement that he was somehow trying to prevent people from understanding.

Johnny Ova: You've given some really good concrete examples. I feel like people listening could test this for themselves. I want to take it a bit further. When Jesus, in his Nazareth sermon in Luke 4, says he's fulfilling Isaiah's prophecy while reading from the scroll, would he have read the Hebrew and then given his own Targumic interpretation? Is that what's happening in this scene?

Dr. Bruce Chilton: This is a very interesting and important question. First, we need to bear in mind that the Gospels as we have them are all written in Greek. Sometimes they literally incorporate individual Aramaic words, and that's an important index that Jesus and his first followers spoke Aramaic and that this was later translated into Greek. But the Greek Gospels themselves were composed in that language, and Luke in particular is an absolute master in understanding how synagogues were run in the diaspora, in Luke's world outside the historic lands of Israel. You can see this in the Book of Acts, chapters 13 and 14, where the activity of Barnabas and Paul within synagogues is described.

Dr. Bruce Chilton: Now, in the diaspora synagogue you didn't have a Targum, because who speaks Aramaic? In the diaspora, the readings in the synagogue happened from the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, known as the Septuagint. The Septuagint is different from the Targums. It is less interpretive. Yes, all translations are interpretive at the end of the day, whatever you may think. But the attempt at formal correspondence is greater in the Septuagint than in the Targums, and so the rabbis openly permitted the Septuagint to be used in the diaspora as scripture. There's no double reading, first the Hebrew and then the Septuagint.

Dr. Bruce Chilton: So what's immediately striking in Luke chapter 4 is that Luke's translation is not only of what people say. It's of the whole procedure in the synagogue. He has changed it to suit his own diaspora audience. That's why, when you consider what Jesus says in that synagogue and try to look it up in the Book of Isaiah, you will not find the citation. You will find different citations of Isaiah spliced together. What's going on? As I was saying earlier, this is how Jesus operated, what I refer to as a kind of hit-and-run technique with scripture, where you are seized by the way God is operating at the moment on behalf of his kingdom, and that is what you foreground in what you're saying.

Dr. Bruce Chilton: The result of that excursion to his hometown is that he's nearly killed. What is the offense? I think part of the offense is exactly that. He's in the synagogue and he's not giving a straight reading. He's giving a combination of assertions from Isaiah that correspond to his own vision of God.

Johnny Ova: I wonder too if these Jewish leaders weren't upset that Jesus was inventing new interpretations out of nowhere, but upset because his Targumic readings challenged theirs. And I wonder how that reframes what actually led up to his execution.

Dr. Bruce Chilton: Yes, that's right. I think the argument over authority, the basis on which you use scripture and how you use it, is basic to a great deal of controversy in the first century, and we can see it widely represented within Judaism. For example, in the same period, while the priests in the temple and the majority of the population observed one calendar, the people at Qumran who produced the Dead Sea Scrolls observed a completely different calendar, so they could not even agree on when sacrifices were to be offered. They disagreed on how they should be done and on how people in the community should conduct themselves.

Dr. Bruce Chilton: That argument had to do with whether you accepted the claim of the people of Qumran that their teacher, called the Teacher of Righteousness, was the person who should be followed alongside Moses. So there is a case of a teacher arguing that he can speak authoritatively in a way that relates to scripture, but it's not just scripture. It's also fresh revelation. And Jesus, from a more folk tradition, in Galilee rather than down south at Qumran, is taking up a similar stance.

Johnny Ova: I've got two more questions for you, if you have a few more minutes. This is fascinating. Fast forward to the New Testament writers: Paul, the Gospel authors, the letter writers. Were they also influenced by Targumic interpretations, or had something shifted by the time they were writing?

Dr. Bruce Chilton: Certainly by the time we're dealing with the evangelists, something has shifted drastically. They are well aware that there is Aramaic in the background, but sometimes they don't know what it is. For example, in Mark's Gospel, when Jesus raises the daughter of Jairus, Mark says, apparently very carefully, "talitha kum," which means "young girl, rise." Except there's a mistake. It should be "talitha kumi" in Aramaic. That's the feminine ending of the verb. And you know something interesting? Some manuscripts of Mark repair that. They correct it. They put the "i" ending at the end. Similarly, all of the Gospels have Aramaic in them. Sometimes it gets garbled like that. Sometimes they know what it means and translate it. Sometimes they don't know what it means, but they know it's there. That, I think, is a major difference.

Dr. Bruce Chilton: Paul is in a different position, because he is one of the only people involved in the New Testament whom we would call authentically bilingual. Anyone can see he was a master of the Greek language. He knew how to use it and how to make an argument. He grew up in Tarsus, a major center of Stoic philosophy. Stoics were known for their ability to argue, and Paul lived up to that reputation. But he's also a Jew from Tarsus, and the Jews of Tarsus had been settled there during the time of the Persian Empire. Because they had been settled there willingly, they continued to curate their own traditions, including their own Aramaic language. So when he went to Jerusalem to study as a Pharisee, there was no language barrier. He had the Aramaic.

Dr. Bruce Chilton: Unfortunately, his Greek was so good and his Aramaic was so good that there are no stumbles in his Greek writing. On the other hand, Paul uses the same dynamic understanding of the kingdom of God I referred to earlier, not only when he's quoting Jesus, but as a matter of his own assertion. Similarly, he uses traditions about the exodus from Egypt as displaying God's power that show an awareness of traditions agreeing with the Targumim. So the overlaps are much more restricted, but there are some between Paul and the Targumic tradition.

Johnny Ova: I'm praying and hoping this episode impacts people the way it's challenging me. I want a healthy relationship with the word of God and the Bible, not a static, hard line in the sand, boxed-in understanding, trying to fit it into our 2025 minds. I love the word you used before, static. I believe if you planted us right in the first century, we'd say, "What are you talking about?" A lot of stuff we would miss completely. So bring us home. I'm a pastor reading the Bible, or a Christian who wants to understand scripture better. How does knowing about the Targums change the way I should read my Old Testament and the Gospels?

Dr. Bruce Chilton: If I can begin with the Gospels, we can see Jesus and his followers directly rooted in the tradition and culture of their own time. Those are the parts of the New Testament that speak to us most directly of how Christianity emerges as a positive message. Its point is not to negate Judaism. Its point is to discover the elements of the culture that reveal how the kingdom of God is being revealed. That means standing back from the understanding of Christianity as the negation of something else.

Dr. Bruce Chilton: Then, with the Hebrew Bible texts, which are the basis of the Targumim, I think they help us in two ways. I've been involved in a project translating the Hebrew Bible, and it is a very difficult text. There's a great deal of wording and grammar that scholars still do not completely agree on. Seeing another interpretation in Aramaic can help you better understand how the Hebrew Bible is operating. And probably most important, it shows where you should be prepared to spend more work as a translator. Where you can see the Targum has to work extra hard, that probably means we do too.

Johnny Ova: Dr. Chilton, this has been such an amazing conversation. I can't thank you enough for your time. I know people are going to love this. I know you've written over 50 books. Are there any you'd point to that I should link in the description on the YouTube channel and the podcast?

Dr. Bruce Chilton: Sure. A good place to begin is a book called A Galilean Rabbi and His Bible, which is still in print. I think it's probably the most accessible. It tells you what Targums are, how they relate to Jesus, and gives specific examples of Jesus's usage compared to the Targums. Then there's my translation and commentary of the Targum of Isaiah in the series The Aramaic Bible, which is in print. And just last year Zondervan brought out a volume called Targums and Rabbinic Literature, in their series Ancient Sources for New Testament Studies. That gives specific cases, and as far as I know it's comprehensive, of where scholars in the past have made the link between the Targums and the New Testament.

Johnny Ova: Very cool. We'll have all that linked up below. Again, Dr. Chilton, thank you so much for your time today. I appreciate you, your work and all the dedication you've put toward this. This will be blessing people for generations to come.

Dr. Bruce Chilton: Thank you. I thoroughly enjoyed it, Johnny.