The Bible as Literature

Situated opposite Galilee, the “earth” of the Gerasenes marks the site of God’s first tactical strike against Greco-Roman assimilation in Luke. The Greco-Roman rulers who possess and enslave the land impose violence and havoc, sowing death where God’s many flocks were meant to roam freely, without interference. Like the abusers in Jerusalem, the occupying forces in Decapolis do not want to live an...

In Scripture, “earth” signifies more than just physical land; it functions as a literary sign that opposes human oppression. The biblical narrative presents the land both as a silent witness against human civilization and as one of its victims. In this context, the recurring phrase “heavens and earth” serves as a merism , expressing the totality of creation and affirming God’s sovereign authority...

In “Dark Sayings,” I explore how internalized racism destroyed my mother’s family. This psychological process, woven out of Hellenistic pluralism and anti-Scriptural platitudes about the so-called “Melting Pot,” reveals how systemic racism operates not only externally but within the immigrant’s self-conception. Internalized racism is more insidious than the inferiority complex from which it stems....

Theologians and philosophers love to talk about the meaning of life. They explore its purpose, justification, and value, questioning whether or not suffering has meaning. They sound like the Preacher in Ecclesiastes, wasting time viewing things from the wrong perspective: man’s point of view, the king’s point of view, Job’s point of view. This mirrors how Christians assess and then attempt to cont...

In every age, empires create words to describe the people in the societies they seek to dominate and exploit. Eventually, these terms are turned inward and used against themselves. The Greco-Romans—and their eastern heirs, whom modern scholars call the Byzantines—labeled those outside their empire as barbarians.  The colonials who settled the Americas, after dismantling the peaceful coexistence of...

Some concepts in the Bible are so crucial that if they aren’t properly understood from the outset, the text itself can be twisted from a guide that protects your steps into a snare that traps you in a cycle of endless folly. One such example is the idea of ownership or proprietorship. When you hear the Bible, even in the original languages, but especially in translation—for example, the colonial K...

What is it like to be unaffected? How sad it must be to go to church, attend a class, interact with your neighbor, and be indifferent to what they say. What is it like to be unaffected? To be so confined to yourself that when you look at your natural reflection in the mirror, you see your flaws—you might even acknowledge them—but the moment you look away, you forget them. You carry on with your li...

This week, Fr. Paul reminds us that a word does not carry meaning yet the words of Scripture make God’s instruction accessible. Likewise, it is the words of God to which we submit, not an abstract Torah in Deuteronomy, but the words of God, a point echoed in the letters of St. Paul. (Episode 333) ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

When people hear Luke 8:18, they assume it is talking about stuff. But Luke, like the Book of Job, is not about stuff. It is about darkness and light. When people evaluate others—their first mistake is that they evaluate at all—they measure what others have. That is how the Duopoly assesses Job. They love him because he was rich, pity him because he was poor, judge him because he was self-righteou...

Most people, when they hear the story of Josiah and his priest rummaging through the rubble of the temple in Jerusalem and stumbling upon a scroll, fall prey to the hope that Josiah was a reformer. That he picked up the scroll, looked upon those who came before him, and thought: I can do it better. I can get it right this time. But that's the trap. That's the mistake. That's the arrogance--not jus...

Evil always dresses in a garment of light. It hides in plain sight. It smiles. It’s friendly. It’s comforting. It’s dishonest. It appears as something it’s not. Take, for example, that seemingly innocuous campfire song all your children have been taught to sing at your silly church camps: “This Little Light of Mine.” Like a mother who possesses children; like a tribe that possesses land; like thos...

It has taken some time to understand what the Parable of the Sower meant when it introduced the function “soil” in its critique of human beings’ betrayal of God’s covenant with Abraham. Still, by the time the New Testament was written, Matthew, Mark, and Luke all found it necessary to clarify that the position of the one being judged was separate from the station of the one Judge. In the end, the...

In Scripture, Abraham’s seed encompasses more than just biological lineage. It also transmits God’s covenant, outlining the potential for righteousness and human corruption in a single function. The Hebrew term zera', "seed" or "offspring," follows the continuity of God’s promise to Abraham from one generation to the next. It also marks the recurring story of human rebellion, which is as predictab...

“He who is not with me is against me; and he who does not gather with me, scatters.” (Luke 11:23) Mothers, not women—mothers specifically—are exploited by the schemes of city builders. This distinction is important because women are often party to the weaponization of mothers. I began this week's monologue with a verse from Luke 11 because it is impossible to hear what Luke wrote about “scattering...

In this episode, Fr. Paul stresses the importance of going to the biblical text, not “going back, ” highlighting how Paul’s letters and even Luke’s Gospel were written to specific individuals, challenging the tendency to read these texts as universally applicable. We want to make Scripture timeless to elevate our power, but its power lies in its direct address to its original audience. ★ Support t...

We imagine that love is the product of a kind or generous heart. We confuse love with sentiment. Maybe we want others to like us. Perhaps we can’t stomach their suffering, so we medicate them with lies, or we embrace their fantasies because they accommodate our needs. We coddle sentiment as a virtue because it feels safe, womblike, and even noble.  Sentiment reinforces our private delusions. There...

When the text says “recline” in Greek, it doesn’t mean “recline.” When the Greek text differentiates “recline” through repetition, it still doesn’t mean “recline,” even in translation. Even when Greek functions correctly, Greek alone is insufficient—it doesn’t work without lexicography. Without proper word study, there is no such thing as Scripture. If you merely hear the original Greek text in Gr...

In their extreme hubris, humans believe that Luke’s admonition, “A tree is known by its fruit,” is nothing more than a proverb about being a “better parent.” But as I explained a few episodes ago, it is a warning that humans can’t parent. It is a judgment, a mashal , a rule, a verse, a biblical sign that there is no such thing as a good human parent because the only tree that bears “good fruit” is...

A single, passing word is easily overlooked in translation. You could pontificate about it in abstraction, but can you observe its importance, its technicality? Of course, you can’t—not in English. No way. Not in a thousand years. What does the word “luxury” have to do with the book of Genesis? Can you tell me how or where it connects to Genesis? What does “luxury” have to do with a dog’s vomit? C...

The Odyssey narrates Odysseus’s ten-year journey as the king of Ithaca, during which he attempts to return home after the fall of Troy. Virgil’s Aeneid chronicles the journey of Aeneas, a Trojan hero and son of the goddess Venus. Aeneas escapes the fallen city of Troy and embarks on a quest to start a settler-colonial project in Italy.  Virgil wrote a work of total fiction, and then as if by witch...

This week, Fr. Paul reiterates the importance of hearing Scripture within its historical and sociopolitical context. Beginning with Alexander the Great’s quest for divinity, he illustrates this with references to subsequent events, like the Maccabean Revolt and the resulting Roman domination of Judah. In contrast, he critiques the folly of philosophy in biblical studies, arguing that theology, und...

What does it take to liberate people from exceptionalism? To liberate a teaching?  Such a pernicious snare, that saying of yours, “family first.” It was your fear of losing the tribe that led you to elect a king and build a city against the will of God.  So he sent his Shepherd to rescue his sheep from Cain’s cities, to liberate his people and the Torah from the stone idols fashioned by Cain’s son...

Elitist intellectuals are drawn to the concept of a psychological trap because others’ suffering entertains them and because their perception of another's supposed trap reinforces their sense of self-importance and permanence. Poor Sartre, poor DNC, poor duopoly. “The fool says in his heart, There is no Judge.” I agree, Jean-Paul: for your spiritual children, there can be “No Exit.” The local Jude...

The folly of human construction is similar to that of large language models. Noam Chomsky talks about this in his famous critique of the current state of artificial intelligence and the absence of scientific analysis. We imagine that these expansive predictive systems are creative. Sure, they are impressive, even helpful—for good and ill—and yes, they will likely replace or change your job, but th...

This week, Fr. Paul underscores how the Septuagint’s different ordering and classification of texts impact our ability to hear the words of God correctly, shifting Chronicles from the Ketubim to historical books, reframing them as historical events rather than wisdom writings. The same can be seen with Daniel’s placement between Ezekiel and the Twelve, which undermines its resonance as wisdom lite...