Christians love to talk about glory and victory because we are all Roman imperialists in our secret hearts—in the thoughts that we imagine God cannot hear. We lust after victory. We want to conquer and control. We are the colonial occupiers. We plan and strategize on how to spread our dung piles around. What is especially ugly about our brand of empire is that we do it in the name of the one who was hung in shame, naked on the Cross—the preferred implement of imperial terror in late antiquity.  As such, the storyline of the New Testament is a rejection of both us and Roman imperialism.  Jesus rejects all of it, which is not good news for you and me.  In Luke 4, the Devil, who avails himself of a kairos under the purview of God the Father, offers it to Jesus, and Jesus says, “No.” 
Jesus rejects it. He says no to victory, no to glory, no to achieving heights, no to standing out, no to self-importance. No to all of it. No to everything that we strive for and treasure. Listen carefully to what I’m saying. No, to triumph and no triumphalism. All the things that we love to chant about. Yes, those ugly Roman things that Julias put on a pedestal after he crossed the Rubicon. Jesus says, “No!” Richard and Fr. Marc discuss Luke 4:13 (Episode 494)

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Jesus Says, "No!"

Each week, Dr. Richard Benton, Fr. Marc Boulos and guests discuss the content of the Bible as literature. On Tuesdays, Fr. Paul Tarazi presents an in-depth analysis of the biblical text in the original languages.

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Imagine a monster whose primary interest is to embrace philosophy and then power—Roman power, Greco-Roman power, and Greek philosophy, in other words, human power. Origen.  You know what he loved.  The ugliest, most vile, sinister, and self-serving sin, zealously and passionately preached by everyone I know. The worship of state, ethnicity, family, religion, but especially philosophy—for example, your blood-soaked liberal values—embedded in your “Greekdom.” Profoundly and inexorably disgusting.  Likewise, the human clan, the family, the irredeemable evil character that the gospel itself presents as the arch-enemy of Jesus Christ.  Peter: Equally revolting and unworthy of God. Origen, who learned Hebrew, not to teach Scripture but to increase his importance in order to undermine the Rabbis. Alexandria: Self-involved academics and money-grubbing politicians. A marriage made in Hell. Don’t believe me? Ask your kids.  “All you need,” Fr. Paul thunders, “is to read Galatians 2 fifteen times in a row.” As if. He who has ears to hear, let him hear.  (Episode 323)

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Origen Was a Monster

No statement more fully captures the anti-scriptural sadism of colonial solipsism than the American expression, “If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.”  Unless, of course, the “em” is a shepherd standing at the midbar, reciting the written command of the Scriptural, inexistent, invisible, unseen, indomitable God who has no egregious, obscene, man-made statue or temple. By all means, join him, if you can.  In 1932, according to the Yale Book of Quotations (yes, the same Yale that arrested Jewish kids this week for following the Shepherd), the Atlantic (yes, the famous liberal magazine that once, long ago, fought to protect Jewish kids) cited that ungodly saying (which is a much older saying) as uttered by a U.S. Senator. Once the Atlantic and then Yale published it, it became a colonial reference—just before many terrible things took place under its spell.  That senator would have loved Philo or Josephus Flavius. The latter lived in Palestine and fought against the Romans but later decided, “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.”  “There was a tension,” Fr. Paul thunders,  “Between the originators of scripture and some of their followers.” “There was an intellectual fight.” Fr. Paul continues, “This took place in Alexandria. Remember, Philo was in Alexandria.  And that’s the head of the Asp, as we say in Arabic.  It’s Alexandria, which was the intellectual capital of the Roman Empire.” Against Alexandria, the Shepherd cries: If you can’t beat ‘em, submit to God!  Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the Highest!  Bring more evils upon them, O Lord. Bring more evils upon those who are glorious upon the earth. Arise, O God, judge the earth, for to thee belong all the nations.  Blessed Pascha to all peoples. Peace in the Middle East.  (Episode 322)

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If You Can’t Beat ‘Em, Resist

It gets so old—your universal declarations, your philosophies, your ideologies, your heightened sensibilities, your values, your propaganda, your Kool-Aid.  Your gods.  Hearing Fr. Paul teach, it hit me like a ton of your rubble. When people hear the words of the biblical Prophet, they can’t help but respond by preaching their civilization. It’s an obvious, if not childlike, attempt to assimilate and digest the biblical Prophet—to neutralize the bitter pill.   “How can we make this ours?”  One only needs to visit the British Museum to understand the mechanism.  But Prophets cannot be digested. Like a statue of Dorothy Day or Malcolm X, they cannot be made to fit in. You want them to fit because you fit in. But that’s why you can’t hear Scripture.  So you draw a picture of your city, the god of Reagan, and write the name “Jesus” or “Mary” on it, and then tell stories about your holy wars.  I wish I were talking about fringe extremists, but as we speak, the most evolved, educated, liberal, and enlightened scholars of your civilization conspire to kill Saracens in defense of their gods.  “There is tension,” Fr. Paul explains: “There are insiders that are opposing the message. And I’m convinced that things were worded in this way because the original authors…knew that they were talking against the grain…that’s why they included—in their stories—a preemptive strike against those who would not agree with them, and it is this that is my basis when I critique the Liberal Arts and Reception History.” It’s tempting to call those praying to kill the Saracens “idiots,” but this is a grave error. An extremely intelligent person with an Oxford degree in the humanities is not only capable of conspiring to kill Saracens (in the service of his gods) but has been doing it openly for the past six months.  The word you are looking for is not “idiot” but “monster.” If adding modifiers like “authentic,” “evolved,” or “enlightened” helps, please do so.  It’s your civilization.  (Episode 321)

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Stop Preaching Your Gods

Every immigrant, every minority, and every colonized person living under a human boot faces the same dilemma: how to live without imitating or accepting the ways of the human gods that impose their glory. “We have,” a wise poet once said, “on this earth what makes life worth living.” Scripture, Fr. Paul has explained many times, forged a path for living in the ancient world by refusing to accept the glory of Alexander, the Seleucids, and all who came after them by pushing back. Not by working within their system.  Not by playing their game or thinking like them.  Least of all by adopting their language.  With no hope, from under their boot, Scripture came up with biblical Hebrew to force the Greeks to submit to the Scriptural God. They did not study Greek or capitulate to Greek culture in order to convince or get ahead in Greek society and maybe attract a few wealthy people to their secret cult. You’re thinking of the harlots in 1 Corinthians.  Don’t be like the harlots in 1 Corinthians.  You become what you accept. So, reject everything and become nothing, like the biblical prophets.  Trust me.  When you are nothing you have more free time to study Semitic triliterals. The more you know Semitic, the better your chance of hearing God speak. So when in Rome, smile at the Romans, the Greeks (or the freedom-loving ice cream people), politely ignore them and do what Paul says.  (Episode 320)

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You Become What You Accept

There is nothing like a cup of Turkish Coffee. That’s not an opinion. It’s an observation of fact. The local Starbucks does not serve Turkish Coffee. That’s why I never buy Starbucks for Fr. Paul before his lectures. Why would I? Why would anyone who cares about anything important, meaning Scripture, do something so foolish? I am pretty sure there is a “Stars and Bucks” somewhere in the Middle East (and like any industrious knock-off, I bet they serve Turkish Coffee), but not the local Starbucks.  This week, Fr. Paul even mentions the importance of his Turkish Coffee in the morning (with lots of water) before tackling the authorship of the Hebrew and Septuagint texts.  Of course, his view goes against scholarly consensus.  He also discusses his novel stance on the Book of Sirach, which goes against scholarly consensus.   And his view on the choice of Greek over Latin, which goes against scholarly consensus.
 
And the importance of the Latin Vulgate, which goes against Orthodox consensus, which is not scholarly.  And the function of grammatical gender, which goes against, well, everybody but especially theologians.  Why, my daughter asked me, is the Bible so negative?  The Bible is humorous, I answered. The Bible is ruthless, even cruel. But negative?   I, myself, am a man of optimism.  The many puny human gods, I explained, are like tiny cancerous tumors.  The Bible, on the other hand, is hopeful, like a doctor who prescribes chemotherapy to a person covered with many tumors.  When these puny, toxic little gods are attacked, ridiculed, dismantled, and poisoned by the text of the Bible, the pain is unbearable—but the doctor goes to work against the cancer anyway because he has hope—hope against all hope when there is clearly no hope—that the treatment will bring hope. I call that insane optimism like a Gazan who just lost everything but somehow finds the strength to lift his hands in prayer—like the Olive Tree—which gives thanks only to God.  You do not need a Seminary degree to unpack that puzzle.  (Episode 319)

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Jesus Says, "No!"

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