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 familiar (Europe, the West, ‘us’) and the strange (the Orient, the East, ‘them’),” such scholars are bound, not to submit, but to abuse the very Bible they claim to revere. It must be strange, trying to read a Semitic text from within the prison of an institutional structure in which, borrowing, again, from Said, “a relationship of power, of domination, of varying degrees of a complex hegemony,” corrupts everything Western scholarship has written and continues to say about the Middle East, let alone God’s holy text. Again, it is God’s text. It belongs to him, and he alone is our Shepherd. Dinah, from the Hebrew root Din, means judgment or law. The same root in Arabic means faith or religion. Hence the famous name, Saleh Al-Din, which means, “righteousness of the faith.”In Genesis 34, Dinah is God’s judgment, not against “Shechem the son of Hamor,” but against the sons Jacob, who used Dinah’s rape as a pretext to break the covenant of circumcision—the covenant of brotherhood—in order to commit mass murder. One can almost hear Simeon and Levi running through the camp behind their father’s back, angrily cajoling their brothers, “Do you condemn the rape of Dinah?”Yes, Dinah is the Lord’s judgment, but not in the way that Western moralists imagine. In a recent article in the Guardian, an American woman expressed her curiosity about a people in travail:“I wanted,” she said, “to talk about the faith of Palestinian people, how it’s so strong, and they still find room to make it a priority to thank God, even when they have everything taken away from them.”  It’s the question, not the silly comments of a Western newspaper, that caught my attention. The answer comes out of the text itself, which is all they have left. The God of Abraham is not mocked, and they know it with all their heart. All they have to do is wait for him. Richard and I discuss Luke 5:10-11. (Episode 510) ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

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, which means “to stand out.” In English, it has come to mean “still in existence” or “surviving,” like the teaching of Scripture under the boot of Hellenism, written in a concoction of the many Semitic languages that the proto-colonial, Alexander the “small,” tried to “unhouse” in his conquest of everyone. So why all this talk about the Amalekites in biblical literature when one need look only to human history, to Alexander, to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, or for that matter, current events, to learn about Cain’s building project and its legacy of “unhousing?”The literature—the text—not the history of Scripture, is instruction, a “cautionary tale,” an exhortation. All of us must teach this fact. We must teach it to our fundamentalist Christian friends—those who built a wall in my mom’s hometown, in Bethlehem of Palestine—in defiance of St. Paul, who said:“For he himself is our peace, who made both groups into one and broke down the barrier of the dividing wall.” (Ephesians 2:14)In the parable of Scripture, the Amalekites, the enemies of the literary characters Israel and Judah, are the descendants of the characterEsau (Genesis 36:12, 16). As Fr. Paul explains in his most recent book, Decoding Genesis 1-11:“Early in Genesis, we hear the author using the appellation of sadeh,that is, the earth as life supporting (2:5, 19, 20), and then applying it to the living area of the Amalekites, well before the story of Ephron the Hittite (Genesis 23) and the story of the two brothers Esau and Jacob (Genesis 25, 27). In other words, early on in chapter 14, the author magisterially preempts the hearers from concluding that the special story about their ancestor, Abram, and his superman feats, makes them different from other peoples, especially their sworn adversaries.” (Tarazi, p. 197)So why does God command the annihilation of the Amalekites? (1 Samuel 15:2-3)‘Amaleq, is an interesting word in Hebrew. Don’t waste time looking it up in a colonial dictionary; you will not find anything useful. melek, in both Arabic and Hebrew, is the triliteral MLK and means “king.” Did you catch my nonviolent irony? I hope so. In any case, the biblical character ‘Amaleq, which begins with the letter ‘ain, has the same root as melek. In Arabic, the word for “giant” is ‘amlaq.So, in the story, these powerful giants are introduced through Samuel as Saul’s first test of obedience. There is a parallel tale about Joshua and the Amalekites in Exodus. It’s a parable. A mashal. A dark saying. A riddle. It’s a metaphoric text contained within an epic storyline, not an historical instruction manual. Pretend you are watching Avengers Endgame. When you leave the movie theatre, ask yourself, is the moral of this story an advisory on how to become Thanos and kill half of all inhabitants in the land? This is not a trick question.Who, pray tell, is the King of Glory, Saul? Who rescued you from Egypt when you could not fight? Who overcame Agag, king of the giants, a people whose strength was beyond your might? Who saved Joshua and Moses in Exodus? Who is the King of Israel, Saul? Again, this is not a trick question.“Because you have rejected the word of the Lord,” taking the spoils of a victory that you did not win, and claiming things that do not belong to you, the Lord “has rejected you from being king.” (1 Samuel 15:23)“Then Saul said to Samuel, ‘I have sinned; I have indeed transgressed the command of the Lord and your words because I feared the people and listened to their voice.” (1 Samuel 15:24)Of course, you did, Saul, because the people demand spoils, security, barriers, and dividing walls in the land—the land—which, like the spoils you took, does not belong to you; it is the property of the Lord. In total view of the biblical epic, long before the story of Ephron the Hittite, (let alone Saul or Joshua), Abraham came from the same sadeh as the Amalekites—from the same earth as life supporting.We human beings refuse to accept our fate as ‘afar,—as people taken from and returning to the dust. This fate, Fr. Paul explains: “Will be unexpectedly redressed in Genesis 23 via 'ephron, (Ephron) the (outsider) Hittite who will prove to be the Lord God’s medium for establishing ḥebron, the place of brotherhood, the gathering place of Abraham’s descendants, which ironically will end as the inheritance, not of Joshua, but of Caleb, “the (outsider) dog” (keleb, KLB, Arabic, kalb), in the Book of Joshua (14:13-15).” (Tarazi, p. 174)Caleb, the triliteral KLB. In Arabic, kalb, the dog, the barbarian, the unclean thing—the standard bearer for brotherhood in the Book of Life. Let’s hope so. Richard and I discuss Luke 5:8-9. (Episode 509) ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

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” are Satanic—a lie of the Devil. You have to choose a side. As I speak, every 10 minutes, a child’s murder is justified by an egotistical 19th-century European theology born out of a settler-colonial King James translation of the biblical text. It is a settler-colonial text rendered in Anglo-Saxon by the court of a settler-colonial king who sought to justify the theft, dispossession, exploitation, and murder of Native Americans. Previously, European theology resulted in the barbaric and brutal persecution of our beloved Jewish brothers and sisters for centuries. These are facts.For those who are baptized into Jesus Christ, there is only one side—the judgment of God our Father—which is against you and against me. This God—the God of Scripture—does not speak Anglo-Saxon or write with vowels. In view of these facts, YOU must choose a side. YOU must TAKE A STAND—on the content of the biblical text! YOU must WRITE A BOOK—dealing with the content of the biblical text! YOU must START A PODCAST—reading aloud the content of the biblical text! YOU must WRITE AN ARTICLE—exegeting the content of the biblical text! This has nothing to do with your career choices, life goals, dreams, or what you do for a living. When you talk this way, you sound like a navel-gazing, self-serving, money-loving settler-colonial. What of the children in Sudan? Do they have dreams? Or is Sudan only a tourist stop on a checklist for impressive Ivy-League resumes? “Each one of us will give an account of himself to God.” (Romans 14:12)“Each one will bear his own load.” (Galatians 6:5)Each one of us must pick up our own shovel. I am speaking to each and every individual person who hears this podcast. This is a personal message to you. Take it personally. Be angry with me if you must. Your programs, activities, groups, mailing lists, ideals, altruisms, associations, parties, clubs, nonprofits, whatever—all of it—is vanity. Are you objectively teaching and spreading the objective content of the biblical text against anthropocentrism, ignorance, fundamentalism, fanaticism, political and religious ideology, philosophy, theology, colonialism, and greed? Or are you promoting your own version of the same (in other words, are you promoting yourself) by building your resume?  Are you teaching the content of Scripture? Are you writing? Are you going through Scripture verse by verse? Are you studying biblical languages? Are you teaching biblical languages?What are you doing? At this hour, plenty of people are expending a ton of energy and wealth to propagandize hate. Worse, they are expending even more energy and wealth to co-opt SCRIPTURE to propagandize genocide. Rightly did St. Paul speak of those who have received knowledge but refuse to work when he proclaimed, “The name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you.” (Romans 2:24)Because of those who know but do not teach:- 1,200 children have died in the past 5 months in Sudan, and at least 5.8 million people have been displaced since April due to civil war.- More than 500 children have been killed and 1,000 injured in Ukraine since the start of the war, and 11 million Ukrainians were displaced.- At the time of this recording, 5000 children that we know of have been killed in Gaza, almost 9000 were injured, and 1.4 million (70% of all Palestinians living in Gaza) have been displaced. Meanwhile, the US Congress, universities, colleges, and public institutions (and the majority of the European powers) continue to debate whether or not it is “racist” to call for a ceasefire.Those of you who listen to this podcast know better. Forget politics. You know what Scripture teaches. What are you doing to spread the content of God’s teaching? Not to give your feedback on how it could be done better, what other people should do, or what your priest should do.What are you doing with your own hands? Richard and I discuss Luke 5:7. (Episode 508) ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

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 fatherless." (Isaiah 10:1-2)“Come now, you rich people, weep and wail because of the misery that is coming upon you. Your wealth has rotted, and moths have eaten your clothes. Your gold and your silver have rusted, and their rust will be a witness against you and will consume your flesh like fire. It is in the last days that you have stored up your treasure!  Behold! The wages you failed to pay the workers who mowed your fields are crying out against you. The cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth. You have lived luxuriously on the earth and led a life of wanton pleasure; you have fattened your hearts in a day of slaughter. You have condemned and put to death the righteous man; he does not resist you.” (James 5:1-6)“For I know your transgressions are many, and your sins are great, you who distress the righteous and accept bribes and turn aside the poor in the gate.” (Amos 5:12)“By justice, a king gives a country stability, but those who are greedy for bribes tear it down.” (Proverbs 29:4)“So Samuel spoke all the words of the Lord to the people who had asked of him a king.”  (Samuel 8:10)“You will cry out in that day because of your king whom you have chosen for yourselves, but the Lord will not answer you in that day.” “Nevertheless, the people refused to listen to the voice of Samuel, and they said, “No, but there shall be a king over us, that we also may be like all the nations, that our king may judge us and go out before us and fight our battles.”  (Samuel 8:18–20)A voice is calling,  “Clear the way for the Lord in the wilderness; Make smooth in the desert a highway for our God. “Let every valley be lifted up, And every mountain and hill be made low; And let the rough ground become a plain,  And the rugged terrain a broad valley; Then the glory of the Lord will be revealed, And all flesh will see it together; For the mouth of the Lord has spoken.” A voice says, “Call out.”  Then he answered, “What shall I call out?” All flesh is grass, and all its loveliness is like the flower of the field.  The grass withers, the flower fades, When the breath of the Lord blows upon it; Surely the people are grass. The grass withers, the flower fades,  But the word of our God stands forever.  (Isaiah 40:3–8)“Do you not know? Have you not heard? Has it not been declared to you from the beginning? Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth? It is He who sits above the circle of the earth, And its inhabitants are like grasshoppers, Who stretches out the heavens like a curtain And spreads them out like a tent to dwell in. He it is who reduces rulers to nothing, Who makes the judges of the earth meaningless. Scarcely have they been planted, Scarcely have they been sown, Scarcely has their stock taken root in the earth, But He merely blows on them, and they wither, And the storm carries them away like stubble. “To whom then will you liken Me That I would be his equal?” says the Holy One. Lift up your eyes on high And see who has created these stars, The One who leads forth their host by number, He calls them all by name;  Because of the greatness of His might and the strength of His power, Not one of them is missing. Why do you say, O Jacob, and assert, O Israel, “My way is hidden from the Lord, And the justice due me escapes the notice of my God”? Do you not know? Have you not heard? The Everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth  Does not become weary or tired. His understanding is inscrutable. He gives strength to the weary, And to him who lacks might He increases power.  Though youths grow weary and tired, And vigorous young men stumble badly,  Yet those who wait for the Lord Will gain new strength; They will mount up with wings like eagles, They will run and not get tired, They will walk and not become weary. (Isaiah 40:21–31)Richard and I discuss Luke 5:4-6. (Episode 507) ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

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. To be fair, at the time he spoke, no one spoke English, so technically, he was not making fun of English. English didn’t matter to him. Nor did French or German. Now, that is a fact, and facts are useful. At that time, the same God taught our forefathers, who were not faithful, that the matter at hand—his dabar—is not complex. We need only hear and follow his voice. Following his voice is not a sensitive matter because, in his story of the generations of the heavens and the earth, the human being is of less importance to him than the fish in the sea. More than that, in all the wonder of God’s creation, the human being is only a small insignificant part. “There is a deep sentiment in the Middle East and [among] Arabs,” Bassem Yousef explained recently, “that the West [does] not look at us as equal[s].”Yousef asked Chat GPT a simple question: “Do Israelis deserve to be free?”The machine replied, “Yes.” He then rephrased the question, “Do Palestinians deserve to be free?”The machine, created by human hands, a theology of human artistry fashioned after the image of English-speaking settler colonials, replied: “It’s complex.” Beloved in Christ, it is neither complex nor sensitive. For those who hear the voice of the Shepherd—the voice of one crying out in the wilderness—the answer to both questions is simple and straightforward:The answer is NO. No one “deserves” to be free because all of us treat each other like shit. There is only one God. He alone is our King, our provider, and the possessor of the land.  “See now that I, I am he, and there is no god besides me; It is I who put to death and I who give life. I have wounded, and it is I who heal, and there is no one who can deliver from my hand.” (Deuteronomy 32:39) “For there is none like you, [O God] nor is there any God besides you, according to all that we have heard with our ears.” (2 Samuel 7:22; 1 Chronicles 17:20)To God be the victory. In the God of Scripture, I place all my hope against hope for the sake of the poor. Because, like you, Bassem, my dad came here from Egypt. I know that look in your eyes when you are trying to reason with stupid.  I recognize the frustration that will eventually turn into dismay and, God forbid, pain. Believe me, brother, no matter how much sense you make or how hard you argue logically and intelligently for peace, it ain’t gonna work.  Pierce and his ilk are for war, and they don’t even see it. Richard and I discuss Luke 5:2-3. (Episode 506)  ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

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-divinization. Neoplatonism. Theosis in disguise. Whether you label me or you label yourself or program your children to label themselves, you are nothing more than what is found in your mother’s womb. You are from the ground. You are a land mammal from a colonial society whose language is not found in Scripture. Any word you add to me or to yourself that is not found in the text (never mind that you are also bound to use that word according to its use in the text) is under condemnation. You imagine it is harmless to make words up in your post-modern fantasy island until an entire colonial civilization lifts itself up in 2023 to perpetuate the last ghetto of World War II—with your tax dollars. Post-modernism is the new theology of atheists, a self-manifested complexity, human artistry projected as a smoke screen of self-importance and imposed by the West as violence, authoritarianism, and censorship. Or maybe the Germans should ban a public meeting to discuss peace in the Middle East. Tell me, does censorship make the pain go away? Are your sins forgiven? How many more of Elohim’s earth mammals have to die? Maybe that's why the proponents of reception history want to keep the Canon open—so that they can find new Christs to crucify. In the brightly shining light of the Torah’s wrath, the problem is your colonial map. You have no right to draw one. The land and everything in it belongs to Yahweh, our Elohim.  “Whether Greek conquerors or modern Americans, community builders depend on philosophical identity because the nature of their colonial project is to overrun and control locality. Philosophical identity is the cause of all man-made suffering.” (Dark Sayings, p. 25)Please stop telling me who you are, who we are, or who they are. As Paul says, you are nothing. You are dust. We are all God’s animals, but the human being, uniquely, is less than this. He is dust from dust scattered to the four winds, only to break bread with the gentile dogs in Hebron. That is a technical comment, not hyperbole. Read Scripture.“Under the Ottoman Empire, you could travel from Cairo to Istanbul to Baghdad without a Visa. It's just one complicated Community. If you were a Greek in Beirut you had the Greek community where you run your affairs, but you get along fine with the other communities next door. Well, is that possible? I think so. In fact, I think we should aim to go beyond bi-nationalism. We should erode the borders in the Middle East that were imposed by British and French imperialism for their own interests. They had nothing to do with the interests of the people there. They break up people who are of the same communities in ugly, vicious ways.”  (Noam Chomsky, University of California, Riverside, May 22, 2023)Maybe that’s why, in Genesis, God prefers the fish in the sea over the land mammals. Even now, with all our might, it is practically impossible for man to control or impose colonial borders at sea. That’s why Jesus, in Luke, likes to preach there. Richard and I discuss Luke 5:2-3. (Episode 505)  ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

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, even if it means driving poor people off a cliff into a genocidal war that will result in nothing except more war. Do you think there is a difference between your views about whatever it is you think about whatever you say because when you speak, you are for peace, but then whatever you say, you are for war? I have news for you. It is not good news. It is not bad news. It is just news, plain and simple. Your premise, whoever you are, whatever it is, more than ignorant, is invalid. Yes, you are wrong. How can you say that, Fr. Marc? Because I read the Bible, and I know exactly what I am. Do you know exactly what you are? Don’t interrupt. Oh wait, I’m a text. You have no control over me or my premise, which is not your premise. All you can do is ignore me or ridicule me, but you can’t shut me up because I am written. From my perspective, you are nothing more than a pair of ears—and if you have ears, you have no choice but to hear. Which means you are under judgment:“The priests and the prophets and all the people heard Jeremiah speaking these words in the house of the Lord. When Jeremiah finished speaking all that the Lord had commanded him to speak to all the people, the priests and the prophets and all the people seized him, saying, “You must die!”(Jeremiah 26:7–8)Yep. The thing is, it’s not rocket science. Whether we are talking about Eastern Europe or the Middle East—stop defending your land because it does not belong to you. We have one Father in the heavens, and his Kingdom rules over all.  We human beings (all of us) are his children together with the animals, the fish in the sea, the birds in the air, and the vegetation. Many in the media have referred to some of us as “human animals.” We are all God's creatures, his animals, the families of the earth—those of us who know what we are sit in a circle each day, holding hands, sharing everything. To paraphrase John Lennon, I hope one day everyone will join us. Each time you defend yourself, you attack Jeremiah and throw him in the stocks. Brothers and sisters, the God of Scripture does not abandon his prophets. There will be a reckoning. I know for a fact you can hear me. Whether or not you listen is your problem.  This week’s episode is in loving memory of Fr. Daniel Simon, who was assistant and then head pastor in the refugee church of my youth. Like the towns and villages its founders left behind, this church is erased from the historical record but not forgotten. Likewise, Fr. Daniel’s commitment to the gospel is committed to God’s eternal memory for the sake of the generation yet to come. So we keep our hand to the plow with Fr. Daniel, as commanded by the Lord, who said:“No one, after putting his hand to the plow and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God.” (Luke 9:62)Richard and I discuss Luke 5:1. (Episode 504)  ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

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, how terrible that tragedy is, how barbaric they are—you are wielding your power. So the wheels of this power, which look like the current state of affairs in the world, keep on turnin’. Against you and me, the only teaching that systematically undermines the stench of your power rises in power out of the biblical text.The only valid response to war and violence is the teaching of the Cross. The West loves to preach about this when other people suffer under their boot. By other, I mean those “whom you do not see.” (1 John 4:20) But when those whom you do see suffer an unbearable trauma, you see them only because you see yourself in them. You see people who look like you. Brothers and sisters, this is not empathy. It is idolatry—of the worst kind. The prophet David said: “They have eyes, but they cannot see!” (Psalm 115:5-6)To have empathy is not to assert power or to take revenge. It is to feel broken with those who have been broken—and if you are a follower of Jesus, which, de facto, we are not, is to be broken with them. You cannot be sad about human suffering and call for more suffering with lust in your eyes. Friends, wake up. Something is wrong. We are on the wrong path. I won’t catalog the lengthy litany of injustices we have committed against the little children of those “whom you do not see.” Nor will I capitulate to the premise of the Western media, which—universally—celebrates any violence that legitimizes its colonial premise, which is an affront to God. My reference is the Scriptural God. Him alone do I serve. He is against me, against you, and against them too. I’ll take him as my master any day over anyone. Before you open your mouth to argue with me, look up and take a look around. How are Western individualism, solipsism, and market worship turning out for everyone? Be honest. How are things turning out? Richard and I discuss Luke 4:42-44. (Episode 503)  ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

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 penned his first memo to Alexander, whom the small decided to call great, because, well, every fool imagines they are better than their parents. Look how that turned out.  I am not a big deal. You are not a big deal. Moreover, our modern civilization is not a big deal. It is not a factor, cannot be factored in, and is not within the purview of Scripture. I hate to scandalize all the self-loving postmodernists out there pontificating about the intersection between their ego and the text, but the Bible was written before you, existed and still exists without you and your personal narrative, and when humanity is long gone, could easily be read by space aliens, and, who knows, some other form of intelligence—and probably will be. You and I are not needed—and any meaning we supposedly “create” or try to add to it is not from Scripture and, therefore, has nothing to with the God of Scripture. So all this talk about your history, which is about you and your reception of it, is worse than vain talk. It is blasphemy. You are taking something irrelevant—something that is not a subject matter, and using it to supplant the God of Scripture as the premise of Scripture. To all who hear these words, be it known to you, we are not interested in worshiping you, your gods, your narratives, or your empty human histories. According to Paul, Psalm 78, and the Biblical story itself, your ancestors are evil. So why are you talking about them or how they received the Bible? We know why. Because, ultimately, you want to talk about yourself.  But your ancestors clearly had no clue, which is why, as Paul thundered, “God was not pleased with most of them; their bodies were scattered in the wilderness.” “These things happened to them as examples and were written down as warnings for us, on whom the ends of the ages have come. So, if you think you are standing firm, be careful that you do not fall! No temptation has overtaken you except what is common to the human race. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can endure it. Therefore, my dear friends, flee from idolatry.” (1 Corinthian 10:11-14)Richard and I discuss Luke 4:40-41. (Episode 502)  ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

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 nations, as he had been told, ‘So shall your offspring be.’” (Romans 4:18) (Episode 294) ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

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 colonial integration, though not free from its ire. The latter is felt in the absence of the native Mdewakanton Dakota people, who sojourned locally along the river in a seasonal encampment under a succession of chiefs known as “Little Crow.” After Minnesota became a territory in 1849, colonial merchants were eager to “expand” and “build” bigger “barns.” (Luke 12:16-21) So, by 1851, the nomadic tribes of God were driven out of nearly all of Elohim’s earth in Minnesota and eastern Dakota in the Traverse des Sioux and Mendota treaties. The same colonial resentments resurfaced first in the suppression of the German language by the “Minnesota Commission of Public Safety,” and later in the 1930s during the Great Depression, when, in several attempts to address the “Mexican problem,” Ramsey County officials repatriated no less than 15% of the Mexican population, many of whom were U.S. citizens. “This was the West Side Flats, and for about a hundred years, from the 1850s to the 1960s, life bloomed there. A unique neighborhood in Minnesota and the wider U.S., the Flats were dense, low-income, polyglot, striving, unpaved, and unpainted.” In this sense, despite its material (and at times extreme) poverty and because of its mix of languages under constant outside pressure, it is reminiscent of al-Andalus, the fleeting memory of a golden age of tolerance, cultural exchange, and common sense. Despite regular flooding in the old neighborhood, city officials did nothing to address the issue or assist West Side residents. Only after the demolition of the Flats and the deportation (integration into the Melting Pot) of its residents in 1963 did the “community builders” of Ramsey County install flood control mechanisms on the Riverfront. “What they did to the Mexicans down on the old West Side—to make them move like that, and not compensate them, and give them the bare minimum. What they did to destroy a community like that is wrong.” —George AvalozRichard and I discuss Luke 4:38-39. (Episode 501) Today's introduction is an excerpt from Fr. Marc’s new book, Dark Sayings: Diary of an American Priest (OCABS Press, 2023). Available on amazon.com, Barnes and Noble, and many of your favorite online booksellers. Check the show notes or visit ocabspress.org to learn more.References: www.mnopedia.org/place/west-side-flats-st-paulwww.nps.gov/miss/planyourvisit/kapoindi.htmwww.wsco.org/westsidehistorywww.nchsmn.org/1851-treaty-of-traverse-des-siouxminnpost.com/mnopedia/2016/01/during-world-war-i-minnesota-nativists-waged-all-out-war-german-culture-state/Roethke, Leigh. Latino Minnesota. Minnesota Historical Society, 2009, pp. 40-41. ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

This week, Fr. Paul explains that the book of Leviticus begins with what is being offered in order to belittle the priests, in contrast with our attitude and that of all religions, which begin with the functionary, the human being, as their reference. (Episode 293) ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★