The Bible as Literature

This week, Fr. Paul calls to mind an example from his latest book, where he invites Native Americans to hear Scripture in the original language so that (with respect to the land) they can tap white Anglo-Saxons on the shoulder and say, “Hey, friend, that’s your Bible, not mine.” (306) ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

Everything we treasure must be dismantled in our minds. Even the phrase “Bible Study” has been exploited, contorted, twisted, and distorted into a micro-narrative of occidental religion and philosophy. When I say the word “Bible,” it is nothing but an idea formed in your narcissistic mind with Anglo-Saxon letters—a romanticized memory of a self-centered gathering with friends for self-serving disc...

This week, Fr. Paul gives an example—one of his famous asides—an anecdote shared in class about a student’s old-school Greek uncle and his unsettling biblical attitude about what guests can do with their gifts when invited to his table. (305)  ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

This week, Fr. Paul reminds us that according to Scripture, anything we take with our hands is what someone else hands us.   (Episode 304) ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

You are probably waiting for me to move on from these painful monologues about ignorance, cultural chauvinism, settler colonialism, and the ultra-nationalistic tendencies of Western Universalism, which wraps its bombs in the values of the Enlightenment—in precisely the same manner that Constantine cloaked his war chariots in the sign of the precious and life-sustaining teaching of the Cross. Well,...

This week, Fr. Paul explains that the Hebrew text underscores the fact that the Lord deb-ber unto Moses in order that Moses would deb-ber unto the children of Israel, in order that the hearer of the Hebrew text would be prepared for the beginning of Deuteronomy, where  deb-ber is linked with debarim and is linked with midbar . (Episode 303) ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

Some time ago, on his Tuesday program, Fr. Paul observed how Western scholars, whom I now refer to with little affection as “Western Universalists,” often misread Genesis 34 (see Tarazi Tuesdays, Episode 274) emphasizing the rape of Dinah as the parable’s main point.   Why wouldn’t they?  Trapped, as Edward Said wrote, by a “vision of reality whose structure promoted the difference between the fam...

This week, Fr. Paul notes that the one who reads Scripture reads aloud so that all would hear God speak directly.  (Episode 302) ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

In recent weeks, I have stressed the fact that each time you hear biblical Hebrew or see a Semitic triliteral in the Bible, like it or not, you are hearing or seeing a cross of the many Semitic languages extant at the time of the Bible’s writing.  Like it or not, each time you hear or see biblical Hebrew, you are also hearing and seeing Arabic.  The word “extant” is derived from the Latin, extans,...

This week Fr. Paul explains that although Molech refers to a specific god, it can refer to any deity that is the owner of its people—a connection lost in the English language, which is unable to render the consonantal functionality of the Semitic triliteral. (Episode 301) ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

If you are still trying to figure out what to do with your life, you are the property of Satan. You are trapped. You are caught in a snare because it is not your life.  You have already heard the gospel. You know what you have to do. You have to choose a side. There is no middle ground. There is no twilight between light and dark. Neoplatonic expressions like “both-sideism” and “moral equivalency”...

This week, Fr. Paul explains that when your mother puts a sign on the cabinet door that says “no,” she does not need to explain why.  No means no.  (Episode 300)  ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

“Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves, for the justice of all who are oppressed. Speak up and judge righteously; defend the rights of the afflicted and needy.” (Proverbs 31:8-9) “Woe to those who make unjust laws, to those who issue oppressive decrees, to deprive the poor of my judgment and withhold my justice from the oppressed of my people, making widows their prey and robbing the...

This week, Fr. Paul explains that you may not apply two rules in the land: one for insiders and one for outsiders. (Episode 299)  ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

Thanks be to the Scriptural God who spoke long ago—once and for all time—in the Syrian wilderness, long before the occupying powers of the modern world.  Once again, when he spoke, he did not speak English. This point is well worth repeating at this very moment in history since this God spoke biblical Semitic specifically “to prick, sting, incite, and goad” those who are glorious upon the earth. T...

This week, Fr. Paul explains that in Hebrew, the shame of nakedness is linked to exile, for example, when a soldier is put to shame and flees, stripped of his armor. Notably, the same word, when vocalized differently, can mean crafty. Sounds crafty, indeed. (Episode 298)  ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

The colonials have sunk so low that it is no longer possible to argue with them, nor is it necessary. All one needs to do is record what they are saying right now on their news programs. As I explain in Dark Sayings, they play with human labels. They “apply identity as a powerful tool for social organization.” They invent new ways of labeling people. It’s propaganda. A rebranded form of self-divin...

This week, Fr. Paul explains what is impossible for Neoplatonists and  Greco-Romans to hear and endorse, let alone submit to. In Leviticus, the nephesh of the flesh—meaning all living things—is its blood and not in the blood. (Episode 297) ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

Whether the soil in the parable of the sower, the earth itself (over which colonials love to impose the illusion of control), the movement of Jesus in Luke (imposed upon by the crowds), or our insistence upon active listening in lieu of a passive hearing, the pattern is evident. We not only imagine that we are something when we are nothing, but we go to great lengths to prove we are something, eve...

This week, before explaining the centrality of atonement for the people, the high priest, and even the earth, Fr. Paul highlights the Bible’s emphasis that God is the owner of all life, and life itself is linked to blood and the seed. (Episode 296)  ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

What does it mean to worship power?  You imagine there is another question, but your art, politics, theology, television programs, pet social issues, news media, blogs, family squabbles, and even your benign internet posts—especially the ones where you post personal pictures—are all about your power. When you express sympathy about any grievance, how hard you work, how much you or they suffered, h...

This week, Fr. Paul shows that from the beginning, the text of Leviticus imposes on its addressees that one must not place their trust or their hope in the priests, the priesthood, or the temple. (Episode 295)  ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

Reception history is a big fat joke.  What? Were you expecting subtlety from a West Sider whose dad grew up in the Egypt of Gamal Abel Nasser? Ok. Let me start over.  Reception history is the last breath of a dying school of the humanities desperately trying to prove its value from within a colonial framework of self-importance that was already headed to the dustbin of history the moment Aristotle...

On his eightieth birthday, Fr. Paul takes a step back from his regular weekly address to deliver a special farewell message to his students over the years—and all those with ears to hear. The biblical story is a message of entrapment, “as though there is no hope, and yet it is presented to you as the words of hope.”  “In hope, he believed against hope, that he should become the father of many nati...

The West Side is a haven for immigrant communities arriving in St. Paul, Minnesota. Historically, it has included people of German, Roma, Polish, Swedish, Irish, Jewish (fleeing Russian pogroms), Latin American, Middle Eastern (among them after 1948, Palestinians), and African heritage. It is a place where different languages, religions, and cultures coexist in the womb of God’s earth without colo...