The Jesus Myth, and it's failures

[IanS]

I don't follow this. If the Diatessaron was written about 160 AD and it is what it is believed to be, a harmonization of the four Gospels that made it into the NT, the the four Gospels existed before that date.

Is your point that the Diatessaron may not have been written in 160 AD? OK, but that doesn't make the statement wrong it just invalidates the use of the Diatessaron as evidence for the Gospels before 160 AD.

Yes. I am suspicious about all dates which come from bible scholars, theologians, and Christian writers.

I was not always suspicious about those dates. But the more I see & read in HJ threads like this, and the more sceptic books I have read trying to check any of this, the less I think we can trust the accounts presented by theologians or bible scholars such as Bart Ehrman, and that includes the dates they quote for any of this early writing in support of a real HJ.

But even if there was canonisation of four selected gospels by 160AD, that is now a very long time after the period of 26-26AD when Pilate was said to be the governor of Judea.

I tried to run down how reliable the Diatessaron date was before I made the post about it, but I didn't succeed. Do you have an idea that it was written later than the generally accepted date? Even without that evidence it looks like that available evidence suggests that the latest date for the creation of at least one of the Gospels might be around 130 AD. There is, at least, the mention by Papias in the list that Kapyong provided and Marcion's writings which are dated to between 130 and 140 on the Early Christian Writing site. Also Marcion was expelled from the Catholic church for heresy in 144 and presumably his writings were complete by then.

Well, again, 130AD is the sort of date that I already suggested for the first gospels (before Kapyong posted the list), and that’s a far cry from claims that people would have known g-Mark by about 75AD and thus should have spotted any mistaken claim there saying Pilate was governor only 40 years earlier. Now, instead of 75AD, we are talking about whether people in general might have known by 130AD or 160AD what the gospels had said about Pilate executing Jesus around 30AD! That’s a pretty big difference if we are talking (as I think you were) about living people having personal adult memory of Pilate governing in 26-36AD!

And again - who was doing this harmonisation around 160AD, and where was this being done? In Jerusalem or Galilee? Or further afield in Judea? Or in another land entirely; Rome, Alexandria, Syria, Turkey, where? And how much of the specific contents would be known on the streets of Jerusalem such that Roman ruling officials would take notice of mistaken ideas about anyone called Pilate as executioner of a religious Jewish messiah from a century before?

 

[IanS]

Thanks for that, davefoc.
From the linked article


http://www.michaelturton.com/Mark/GMark_intro.html

Further, the Greek text of Mark is a reconstruction that scholars put together by viewing many different manuscripts of the Gospel, as well as the writings of scholars and commentators of antiquity, and evolving criteria to determine which reading is best. In other words, the Greek text of the Gospel of Mark is not found in any single manuscript from antiquity, and some of its readings still divide scholars. For a good survey of the issues involved in reconstructing the text of the New Testament, see Bruce Metzger's The Text of the New Testament: Its Transmission, Corruption, and Restoration. I have tried to give the flavor of some of the debates in the notes on certain passages.


Is the hilited bit a peculiarity of Mark, or is it a general characteristic of texts from the Roman Empire?

If true, that is very interesting (the highlight in particular).

I don’t recall where any of the accounts from bible scholars and/or theologians etc. make that clear in any of their writing when they say g-Mark was written only a few decades after the death of Jesus by c.70AD, and where they say, as Ehrman does for example, that the gospels can be taken as not only reliable historical evidence of Jesus, but in fact as four independent sources on the life of Jesus, and supported by no less than 3 more independent undiscovered sources named Q, M and L. So seven independent very early contemporary sources all agreeing upon the life and deeds of a real Jesus …. And yet, in the above quote we read that what is being quoted and used as g-Mark is in fact something pieced together from “ … viewing many different manuscripts of the Gospel, as well as the writings of scholars and commentators of antiquity, and evolving criteria to determine which reading is best. …” .


Has anyone pointed this out here before (ie the highlighted part above and it’s surrounding text/explanation)? And if not, why not?

 

[pakeha]

...Well, again, 130AD is the sort of date that I already suggested for the first gospels (before Kapyong posted the list), and that’s a far cry from claims that people would have known g-Mark by about 75AD and thus should have spotted any mistaken claim there saying Pilate was governor only 40 years earlier. Now, instead of 75AD, we are talking about whether people in general might have known by 130AD or 160AD what the gospels had said about Pilate executing Jesus around 30AD! That’s a pretty big difference if we are talking (as I think you were) about living people having personal adult memory of Pilate governing in 26-36AD!

And again - who was doing this harmonisation around 160AD, and where was this being done? In Jerusalem or Galilee? Or further afield in Judea? Or in another land entirely; Rome, Alexandria, Syria, Turkey, where? And how much of the specific contents would be known on the streets of Jerusalem such that Roman ruling officials would take notice of mistaken ideas about anyone called Pilate as executioner of a religious Jewish messiah from a century before?

Where, indeed.
Jerusalem had been flattened and its population dispersed by Imperial decree, so I think that was hardly an option.
I'd plump for Alexandria or Antioch, but I'm simply an interested amateur and and inform opinion would be most welcome.

When, indeed.
Marcion, bless his excommunicated heart, puts an upper figure of 140 for Luke, correct me if I'm wrong.
Do we have any other fixed limit for any other Gospel?

If true, that is very interesting (the highlight in particular).

I don’t recall where any of the accounts from bible scholars and/or theologians etc. make that clear in any of their writing when they say g-Mark was written only a few decades after the death of Jesus by c.70AD, and where they say, as Ehrman does for example, that the gospels can be taken as not only reliable historical evidence of Jesus, but in fact as four independent sources on the life of Jesus, and supported by no less than 3 more independent undiscovered sources named Q, M and L. So seven independent very early contemporary sources all agreeing upon the life and deeds of a real Jesus …. And yet, in the above quote we read that what is being quoted and used as g-Mark is in fact something pieced together from “ … viewing many different manuscripts of the Gospel, as well as the writings of scholars and commentators of antiquity, and evolving criteria to determine which reading is best. …” .


Has anyone pointed this out here before (ie the highlighted part above and it’s surrounding text/explanation)? And if not, why not?

This is where access to a good library is so useful.
I have the Metzger on my Twelfth Night wish-list at Amazon, but even so there is a slew of information behind paywalls.
This is a bit frustrating but obviously scholarly research deserves to be well-paid.
Anyway, off to learn more about the Diatessaron.

 

[IanS]

This is where access to a good library is so useful.
I have the Metzger on my Twelfth Night wish-list at Amazon, but even so there is a slew of information behind paywalls.
This is a bit frustrating but obviously scholarly research deserves to be well-paid.
Anyway, off to learn more about the Diatessaron.

Well it‘s one thing wanting know the facts about how the gospels were pieced together. But more importantly here - what I want to know is why a piecemeal creation process like that is not openly stated up front as a caveat whenever bible scholars or anyone else attempts to use any gospel to make any claims about any of this (footnote).



footnote - that's assuming it's true that gospels have been created in that piecemeal fashion.

 

[pakeha]

It IS a puzzle, IanS.
And it's part of the reason I have the Metzger on that wish-list, because I'm not finding a great deal on the subject on-line with free access.

ETA
I've just gone around to
http://virtualreligion.net/primer/diatess.html
to learn more about the Diatesseron and it would appear this manuscript is used to find the earliest wording of the Gospels

Name borrowed from classic Greek music theory as title for an influential harmony of the four canonical gospels composed before 173 CE by Tatian, probably at Rome. Tatian's work may have simply been an expanded revision of an earlier harmony of the three synoptic gospels made by his teacher, Justin Martyr.

Despite the Diatesseron's widespread influence, there is no surviving complete ms. But much of it can be reconstructed from early commentaries & other harmonies in many ancient languages (other than Greek). The Diatesseron influenced early translations of the four gospels into Syriac, Latin, Armenian, Georgian, & Old German. And its harmonized narrative structure became a model for later gospel harmonies from Holland to Persia. But it was eventually suppressed by Greek Orthodox & Roman Catholic church authorities, because its author became the leader of a heretical sect.

The language in which the Diatesseron was originally composed is debatable. A single Greek fragment was found at Dura Europos in eastern Syria, which was destroyed in 257 CE. Stylistic analysis, however, shows the Diatesseron preferred Syriac grammatical constructions in paraphrasing the Greek gospel texts.

In spite of the Diatesseron's tendency to harmonize passages from the four canonical gospels (and perhaps the gospel of Thomas), its readings are taken seriously by modern textual critics. [hxhilite= #AE9EC3 ]For the copies of the gospels that Tatian used to create his work were obviously written before the mid- 2nd c. CE. Thus, the Diatesseron is often a witness to the very earliest wording of a particular text.[/xhilite]

I come away with this thinking we can put a mid-second century upper limit to the Gospels.
Off to learn more

 

[davefoc]

...


Well, again, 130AD is the sort of date that I already suggested for the first gospels (before Kapyong posted the list), and that’s a far cry from claims that people would have known g-Mark by about 75AD and thus should have spotted any mistaken claim there saying Pilate was governor only 40 years earlier. Now, instead of 75AD, we are talking about whether people in general might have known by 130AD or 160AD what the gospels had said about Pilate executing Jesus around 30AD! That’s a pretty big difference if we are talking (as I think you were) about living people having personal adult memory of Pilate governing in 26-36AD!

And again - who was doing this harmonisation around 160AD, and where was this being done? In Jerusalem or Galilee? Or further afield in Judea? Or in another land entirely; Rome, Alexandria, Syria, Turkey, where? And how much of the specific contents would be known on the streets of Jerusalem such that Roman ruling officials would take notice of mistaken ideas about anyone called Pilate as executioner of a religious Jewish messiah from a century before?

It looks like everything about this is just unknowable. The probable situation is that the Gospels began as oral stories, maybe dating to within a few years of Paul. The stories moved around, possibly within the Godfearer groups until Christianity had reached critical mass and there was a market for written Jesus fiction. I am with eight bits in that the methodology used to date the Gospels to after the first destruction of Jerusalem is dodgy, but I also think it is hard to rule out very late dates also. So we don't know who wrote the Gospels, we don't know where they were written and we don't know when they were written with much precision.

I look forward to posts in this thread that provide insight into the details of the Gospel origins, but it seems like the more you know about it the bigger the error bars become.

 

[IanS]

It looks like everything about this is just unknowable. The probable situation is that the Gospels began as oral stories, maybe dating to within a few years of Paul. The stories moved around, possibly within the Godfearer groups until Christianity had reached critical mass and there was a market for written Jesus fiction. I am with eight bits in that the methodology used to date the Gospels to after the first destruction of Jerusalem is dodgy, but I also think it is hard to rule out very late dates also. So we don't know who wrote the Gospels, we don't know where they were written and we don't know when they were written with much precision.

I look forward to posts in this thread that provide insight into the details of the Gospel origins, but it seems like the more you know about it the bigger the error bars become.

Yep. And re. the highlight -that's mainly because a huge amount of pro-Jesus disinformation has been disseminated by Christian Theologians and Bible scholars over the past 2000 years. And most of it gets repeated ad-nauseum in HJ threads like this one.

Though the only other remark I'd make is to say that - what 1st century Christians were preaching on the streets may have been quite different to what bible scholars and others quote to us today from their only readable & useable earliest gospel copies.

Most early Christians probably had no knowledge of what was actually written in any "paper" copies. They probably just preached various stories which they believed to be true about a legendary Jesus of earlier times, inc. the stories about crucifixion under Pilate. How much of what they preached was actually true, is a very different matter. Clearly most of it was definitely not true, because it was impossible. That's apart from the fact that it appears to have been taken from ancient OT prophecies anyway.

But if what we know about the detailed contents of the gospels, ie the details that are constantly under discussion today, actually comes from the more complete and readable copies written from 4th to 6th century and later, then it is clearly misleading, almost to the point of deliberate deception, for bible scholars, theologians or anyone else to keep saying that the gospel writing dates back to 70AD, as if that was the date of their information ... The truth is they actually have no idea what was written in any gospel dating from anywhere near to 70AD.

In fact it's probably more true to say that nobody has any idea what was written or said by anyone about Jesus in the 1st century AD.

 

[Kapyong]

Aristides' comment on dating of the Gospels

Gday all,

Regarding the dating of the Gospels, there is this fascinating tid-bit from Aristides :
http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/1012.htm

"This is taught in the gospel, as it is called, which a short time ago was preached among them;"​

This is found in the Syriac version, and I asked in the Syriac newsgroup if this means "only been preached for a short time" and the answer was yes.

Thus it seems the singular un-named Gospel was fairly new in the time of Aristides.

There is some confusion over when he wrote - either in the time of:
* Hadrian 117-138
* Antoninus Pius 138-161

It seems it was addressed to Antoninus Pius, whose full name was :
CAESAR TITVS AELIVS HADRIANVS ANTONINVS AVGVSTVS PIVS
but was confused for Hadrian - most references give Hadrian, but I have read somewhere (lost the reference) that the citation in Syriac was to Antoninus Pius.

This is the only clue I have ever found in the ancient writings as to when the Gospels arose - apart from the late dating of references to them.

This makes a singular un-named Gospel newly preached (how short is 'a short time'?) in the period 138-161.


K.

 

[smartcooky]

Most early Christians probably had no knowledge of what was actually written in any "paper" copies. They probably just preached various stories which they believed to be true about a legendary Jesus of earlier times, inc. the stories about crucifixion under Pilate. How much of what they preached was actually true, is a very different matter. Clearly most of it was definitely not true, because it was impossible.

And therein lies what is, IMO the massive problem with trying to find what the "truth" is (if there is even a truth there to find).

Their preaching of the various biblical stories is seriously vulnerable to the "Chinese whispers" phenomenon. Preacher "A" in about 30AD addresses multiple assemblages of people, and out of those assemblages come multiple Preacher "B's", who may embellish or add their own bits, or leave bits out, or even just tell the same stories in a slightly different way or with different emphasis. In turn, their audiences contain followers who become Preacher "C's"; more changes, personal interpretations, own emphasis. A hundred years and five generations go by before anything gets written down, and by the time it does, not only has the original story changed significantly, there are several different versions of the stories in circulation at the same time in different areas.

This sort of thing is a nightmare for historians. How any bible scholar can seriously claim that the Gospels are literally accurate, is beyond belief.

 

[IanS]

And therein lies what is, IMO the massive problem with trying to find what the "truth" is (if there is even a truth there to find).

Their preaching of the various biblical stories is seriously vulnerable to the "Chinese whispers" phenomenon. Preacher "A" in about 30AD addresses multiple assemblages of people, and out of those assemblages come multiple Preacher "B's", who may embellish or add their own bits, or leave bits out, or even just tell the same stories in a slightly different way or with different emphasis. In turn, their audiences contain followers who become Preacher "C's"; more changes, personal interpretations, own emphasis. A hundred years and five generations go by before anything gets written down, and by the time it does, not only has the original story changed significantly, there are several different versions of the stories in circulation at the same time in different areas.

This sort of thing is a nightmare for historians. How any bible scholar can seriously claim that the Gospels are literally accurate, is beyond belief.

Indeed. I think all the evidence points to that as the most likely, and really quite obvious, scenario.


Though to cap it all, even that earliest preaching about Jesus c.30AD (or people can pick any date they like), for example the preaching of Paul, appears quite clearly to have been taken from stories written centuries before in the ancient OT anyway. And those stories are unarguably ancient OT myth. They were not accounts of actual events involving anyone named Jesus in the 1st century.

 

[IanS]

I am with eight bits in that the methodology used to date the Gospels to after the first destruction of Jerusalem is dodgy, but I also think it is hard to rule out very late dates also.

I don't know what that methodology is supposed to be, but it does not need any methodology to point out that bible scholars and theologians are (a)likely to be too optimistic in assigning dates as early as they possibly can, (b)those dates are just guesswork anyway, (c)those theologians and bible scholars are typically not using fragments which might date to those earliest times, they are using the more complete copies written from the 4th-6th century and later, (d)the earliest copies of any gospel were probably not available to more than a tiny handful of people who could read, (e)they might have been first written as far away as Syria or Italy anyway, and not known to anyone in Judea.

So even if the first gospels were written around 70AD, we do not actually know beyond a few brief fragmented sentences what those gospels said about Jesus. And we certainly do not know at what date Christians in general first became aware of the detailed sentences from any of the canonical gospels.

However, one thing we do know (and here is a "theme" of mine), courtesy of authors like Randel Helms, is that the gospel stories of Jesus were certainly taken from writing produced centuries before in the OT. So as Paul himself even tells us (repeatedly), the source of his Jesus beliefs is OT scripture.

 

[maximara]

IOW - I’m just saying that before we decide whether Pilate did things such as executing Jesus, I’d just like to clarify that there really is good evidence for his existence. Because, after all, this a field in which many of the principal characters do in fact appear to be ficticious (see for example my earlier link to Richard Dawkins talking to bible scholar John Huddlestun). But on the face of things, the Pilate Stone looks to me very suspicious (reasons explained before). And the earlier evidence of gospel writing, coins and late copies of non-biblical writing seem to me completely unconvincing and/or highly unreliable.

Personally I think it distracts from the issue at hand: no reference to Pilate as being involved in the execution of Jesus exists well until the 2nd century.

Besides we do have evidence of Pilate outside of the Bible and the Stone: Philo of Alexandria and Josephus.

Philo is the more interesting of the two because it is actually a letter to him...from Herod Agrippa. It is buried in the Embassy to Gaius (c40 CE) and starts at XXXVIII.

Herod Agrippa knows that Philo is visiting Caligula regarding Caligula's planned statue in the Temple and so is trying to provide evidence on how Pilate created unrest by "dedicated some gilt shields in the palace of Herod".

The letter is carefully designed to portray Tiberius in the best possible light and Pilate in the worst. It is in essence saying 'by following the example of Tiberius in his prime you will become loved as he was in his prime.' There is the slight 'and I know just the man for the job of running this province that will add to your popularity...nudge nudge wink wink.'

I say it is interesting because of what is NOT in it: there is NOTHING about Jesus or anything even remotely related to him in the letter. Certainly if Pilate had tried to placate a Jewish mob by offering to free the killer of Roman citizens then Herod Agrippa would have related that little tidbit to Philo to send on to Caligula.

Josephus' Antiquities of the Jews Book XVIII Chapter 3 starts out by talking about the excesses of Pilate. Only the Testimonium Flavianum talks about Jesus and it doesn't fit given the paragraph right afterword.

Everything points to Pilate being a real person who was disliked by Jews and who Herod Agrippa had a vested interested to vilify in Roman eyes.

Given Paul's conversion no later then 37 CE you had the barely mentioned Marcellus (36-37 CE) or Pontius Pilate who was not liked by the Jews to choose from as the executor of Jesus if you assume Jesus was recently crucified. Doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure who the Jews choose.

When Christianity started catering to the Romans they obviously had to make Pontius Pilate seem blameless and the Jews responsible.

 

[Sherman Bay]

Yes. I am suspicious about all dates which come from bible scholars, theologians, and Christian writers.

You should be suspicious about ALL dates, but where would you rather get them? Seems like bible scholars would be a pretty damn good source. Isn't that what a bible scholar does, investigate dates?

 

[Stone]

How any bible scholar can seriously claim that the Gospels are literally accurate, is beyond belief.

NO SERIOUS PROFESSIONAL PALESTINE SCHOLAR EVER CLAIMS THAT. THAT IS A TOTAL STRAW MAN

AND

YOU

KNOW

THAT.

Stone

 

[pakeha]

Welcome back, Stone.
You seem to have a problem with your caps lock.
I hope you'll fix it before posting again here.

 

[IanS]

Personally I think it distracts from the issue at hand: no reference to Pilate as being involved in the execution of Jesus exists well until the 2nd century.

Besides we do have evidence of Pilate outside of the Bible and the Stone: Philo of Alexandria and Josephus.

Philo is the more interesting of the two because it is actually a letter to him...from Herod Agrippa. It is buried in the Embassy to Gaius (c40 CE) and starts at XXXVIII.

Herod Agrippa knows that Philo is visiting Caligula regarding Caligula's planned statue in the Temple and so is trying to provide evidence on how Pilate created unrest by "dedicated some gilt shields in the palace of Herod".

The letter is carefully designed to portray Tiberius in the best possible light and Pilate in the worst. It is in essence saying 'by following the example of Tiberius in his prime you will become loved as he was in his prime.' There is the slight 'and I know just the man for the job of running this province that will add to your popularity...nudge nudge wink wink.'

I say it is interesting because of what is NOT in it: there is NOTHING about Jesus or anything even remotely related to him in the letter. Certainly if Pilate had tried to placate a Jewish mob by offering to free the killer of Roman citizens then Herod Agrippa would have related that little tidbit to Philo to send on to Caligula.

Josephus' Antiquities of the Jews Book XVIII Chapter 3 starts out by talking about the excesses of Pilate. Only the Testimonium Flavianum talks about Jesus and it doesn't fit given the paragraph right afterword.

Everything points to Pilate being a real person who was disliked by Jews and who Herod Agrippa had a vested interested to vilify in Roman eyes.

Given Paul's conversion no later then 37 CE you had the barely mentioned Marcellus (36-37 CE) or Pontius Pilate who was not liked by the Jews to choose from as the executor of Jesus if you assume Jesus was recently crucified. Doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure who the Jews choose.

When Christianity started catering to the Romans they obviously had to make Pontius Pilate seem blameless and the Jews responsible.

OK, well that may be a reasonable indication that Pilate was a real person. Though, I don't suppose Philo's writing is actually known to us from anything other than copies made centuries after Philo had died, is it? And I don't suppose Philo has much to say about Pilate, does he? Also, where did Philo get any of his information, and where was he when he wrote any of this (eg was he in another land altogether)? I’m not sure what confidence or trust we should place in any of this early writing where it says person X did various things.

But the only reason I was asking about any evidence of Pilate in connection with the crucifixion of Jesus, is the discovery of the Pilate Stone, which seems to me to be obviously rather suspicious ... in the same way that James Ossuary is rather suspicious.

 

[IanS]

You should be suspicious about ALL dates, but where would you rather get them? Seems like bible scholars would be a pretty damn good source. Isn't that what a bible scholar does, investigate dates?

I would rather that important dates were determined by people who did not have a direct personal interest in Jesus and Christianity. And in fact I believe that has been attempted with the use of C14 dating for some biblical fragments. Though afaik that is not ideal because C14 only becomes reasonably accurate with materials much older than the gospel fragments.

But the main problem is that, imho, bible scholars & theologians are likely to suggest the earliest possible dates for any biblical fragments, simply because that is seen as making the fragments more reliable as a result of being as close as possible in time to the believed lifetime of Jesus. The further the dates are from the life Jesus, the less reliable the writing becomes.

However, afaik, what is discussed as the detail of sentences taken from the gospels, is not typically taken from the earliest fragmented remains. It comes instead from the more complete and legible copies which apparently date from the 4th century onwards (mostly in fact from the 6th century onwards). So in that respect it is highly misleading if bible scholars give the impression that the details under discussion, are being obtained from gospels dated as early as say 68-75AD ... afaik, most of any such detail comes from those much later copies (4th-6th century onwards).

 

[pakeha]

A good point, IanS, about the NT sources.
Wat do you make of the Embassy to Gaius mentioned by maximara?
http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/yonge/book40.html

 

[IanS]

A good point, IanS, about the NT sources.
Wat do you make of the Embassy to Gaius mentioned by maximara?
http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/yonge/book40.html

What I make of it (as given by that link) is that it's extremely long with huge great dense slab-like paragraphs of verbiage about all sorts of opinions on people and events. More like a small book.

But do you or Max know where in all that lot the author talks about Pilate?

 

[pakeha]

What I make of it (as given by that link) is that it's extremely long with huge great dense slab-like paragraphs of verbiage about all sorts of opinions on people and events. More like a small book.

But do you or Max know where in all that lot the author talks about Pilate?

I see your point about the translation.
And that awful wordiness.

The references to Pilate start at XXXVIII. (299) where Philo quotes Herod Agrippa's story about the gilt shields of the Roman legions being set up in the Temple.
Here's an example of Herod Agrippa's opinion of Pilate

(302) "But this last sentence exasperated him in the greatest possible degree, as he feared least they might in reality go on an embassy to the emperor, and might impeach him with respect to other particulars of his government, in respect of his corruption, and his acts of insolence, and his rapine, and his habit of insulting people, and his cruelty, and his continual murders of people untried and uncondemned, and his never ending, and gratuitous, and most grievous inhumanity.

Political maneuvering at its finest, indeed.
This text has been commented on at the monster thread over at RatSkep
http://www.rationalskepticism.org/christianity/historical-jesus-t219-3920.html#p569530

I don't know how seriously Philo's account of Herod's letter is to be taken, though.
Here's a pdf I downloaded from Brill about that text, if you're interested