Book 1: An Illumination of Matthew      
Part 2: The Thesis of Jesus
Chapter 4: Moonstruck & Demonriddled (The Clinical Context of Jesus)
      
This episode opens Part 2: The Thesis of Jesus.  My friend Jake joins me and affords a dialogical approach to the content, as well as a chance to recap the meandering material in Part 1 (and I think this recap in dialogue was much better than the original meanderings from Fall 2020 - so much so that you could probably just skip it and start here).  

We look at the beginning of Jesus' Messianic campaign, leading up to his first discourse, the Sermon on the Mount.  That discourse is what I'm calling The Thesis of Jesus, and this episode relates his 'clinical context', as well as the political and institutional context within which he presented his thesis.

In this episode:

0:00 - Welcoming Jake and transitioning from monologue to dialogue -

1:45 - Illumination, not Illuminati!

2:35 - Recap of Part 1 and structure of Matthew’s gospel

5:35 - Difference between Matthew & Luke’s Nativity

7:15 - Matthew’s Jewish audience

08:00 - “The Biblical Dialectic of History”

09:10 - Matthew, the tax collector (!)

11:40 - Episode 2: “Of Dreams and Magi”

13:00 - Joseph’s spiritual pathway is dreaming

14:00 - Matthew and the Rabbinic institution

16:40 - Magi, the priesthood of Zoroastrianism

19:15 - The origin of religious dualism

21:30 - YHWH and Satan in the developing Hebraic consciousness

26:25 - The legend of Lucifer 

29:45 - Episode 3 & “the John the Baptist moment”

30:50 - The Sanhedrin, the Sadduccess, & John’s priestly lineage

32:30 - John, the anti-establishment rebel

34:35 - John as Elijah-to-come: the Prophetic Principle

37:00 - The prophetic dimension of Jesus’ Messianic vocation

41:55 - The temptations in light of Jesus’ new-found political power

43:50 - The alignment and differentiation of John and Jesus

44:35 - Cultural Messianic expecations and unknowns

48:00 - Reading of Mt. 4:12-17: Jesus starts local

52:15 - The political dimension of Jesus’ Messianic Campaign

53:45 - Reading of Mt. 4:18-22: Jesus and the working class

56:25 - Why Jesus and the Pharisees are in conflict

58:00 - RFK Jr. and the Democrats in the 2024 “primaries”

59:20 - The need to read the political present through the Scriptures

1:00:30 - Reading of Mt. 4:23-25

1:02:05 - The 3 dimensions of the Messianic Vocation

1:03:35 - Working out the political dimension in our context

1:07:15 - Standing prophetically against U.S. imperialism & militarism

1:13:30 - The institutional dimension: Jesus is a Rabbi, teaches in the synagogue

1:19:20 - The personal dimension: Jesus the healer

1:21:30 - The loneliness of Jesus

1:22:45 - What kind of healer was Jesus?

1:25:30 - Attention to symptoms and suffering is therapeutic

1:29:20 - “Moonstruck & Demonriddled” as ancient psychopathology

1:31:20 - Jesus’ ‘clinical context’ grounds his ‘thesis’