The Bible as Literature
Each week, Fr. Marc Boulos discusses 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.
Episodes
Most assume that the difference between Greek literature and the Semitic Scrolls, written in Biblical Hebrew, Aramaic, and Qurʾanic Arabic, lies in narrative. It does not. Narrative is the veil, a carrier wave for what remains unseen. Everything hinges on lexicography. The decisive divide is grammatical.
Greek “meaning” is a conceptually “built” construct, grounded in philosophical abstraction and analytic inference. Semiti...
Human beings have always prided themselves on the advantage gained from possessing knowledge that others lack. We boast of being smarter, more informed, more enlightened—as if we were the elite guardians of some secret insight reserved for our sect, our institution, or our circle. Whether the advantage lies in religious doctrine, education, status, political ideology, or modern technology, it always devolves into the same ...
The thorns in Luke press and threaten. They are the self-referential swarm posing as a flock: the so-called “community” that gathers to its own voice, circling death, mistaking its stench for sweetness, even as it strangles the one bearing the seed.
These are the thorns.
But the roots are of another kind. They spring up from the seed itself. A daughter of Israel, fruit of the Master’s vine, afflicted for twelve years, who ca...
The functional path of oneness is not an abstract unity but a lived encounter of utter dependence. Western thought, enslaved by the grammar of the Anglo-Saxons, treats the human as an individual: a self-contained atom, an object unto itself. It imagines freedom as isolation, and isolation as freedom. But this supposed independence becomes sterility: the atomized person, cut off from the Shepherd’s breath, is lost in a sea ...
The obsession of Western spirituality with forgiveness—therapeutic forgiveness—is an obsession with the self. With control. With the usurpation of God’s throne by human power. It domesticates God, it drags wisdom into abstraction, it ties it down, it entangles it in comfort for the self, and multiplies suffering for others.
But Scripture cuts the knot. Forgiveness from the cross is not therapy. It is release. Its root, ἀφίη...
Every dynasty insists on its permanence. Every people clings to the hollow echo of its own voice. Every generation invents its own despair and dares to call it light. Yet Scripture unmasks the fragility of these human building projects.
The voices of despair rise in the camp, soothing themselves with stories of morality, while kings and judges build false legacies and nations carve idols in the light of their own eyes. Agai...
All of Scripture comes to this: hope and trust.
Not in the work of our hands, but in the righteousness of God.
He alone vindicates the poor, he alone tends the needy.
He is the Good Shepherd, the breath in the night,
the voice that calms the storm,
the hand that keeps the wolf at bay.
Will we close the gates?
Will we bind ourselves in chains?
Will we send him away?
To wait is to hope.
Yet waiting is a...
The function ש־ו־ב (shin–waw–bet) is not the sigh of remorse in a cloistered heart, but the pivot of a sword’s edge; the turn God commands into the place where his name has been denied. Abraham returns from the valley of kings; Moses returns to the mountain, still breathing the smoke of the calf’s golden stench; Gideon returns to the camp with the dream of victory burning in his ears. None turns to hide—all turn to face hi...
In Scripture, to “find” is never mere discovery.
It is encounter—
a turning of the text where mercy meets rebellion,
where favor walks hand-in-hand with wrath.
In Gerasa, the people find the healed man—clothed, sane, silent—
and they tremble.
He is a mirror, a testimony they cannot bear.
Restoration becomes a scandal. Mercy, a threat.
As well it should be.
They send away the one who scattered their demons
bec...
Examining the history of nomadic pastoralism across Asia—from the Caucasus and Central Asian steppes to ancient Mesopotamia—reveals a consistent pattern: settled elites have repeatedly waged war against pastoral peoples. Both the Bible and the Qur’an emerged from nomadic pastoral societies, yet these same texts were later weaponized by sedentary civilizations against the very peoples once nurtured by them. We are witne...
Human beings are evil. We are hardwired to curate our self-image, excuse our failures, and cling to the stories that make us feel good about ourselves. The truth is, we are hypocrites—fluctuating between condemning unspeakable horrors, often hidden from public view, and idolizing the very politicians and institutional cowards who cause or permit them.
The same psychological games we play to deceive ourselves work flawlessly...
In Dark Sayings, I explain how Emperor Justinian stands as a striking example of imperial harlotry. Like all rulers, he filtered Scripture through his own agenda—much like what we see in 2025, with elites twisting the biblical text to justify the very actions it condemns. Today’s world leaders are effectively reenacting the sins of the Bible’s villains.
If it weren’t a tragedy, it would be a comedy. I’d sit with Jonah b...
In Isaiah, Cyrus the Great emerges as a unique figure chosen by the God of Israel to fulfill a specific historical task: the rebuilding of the Jerusalem temple and the liberation of the Judahites from exile in Babylon in direct fulfillment of the prophecy spoken by Jeremiah.
Cyrus’s rise to power is depicted not as a product of his strength but as the result of God stirring his spirit and granting him authority over all...
People choose personal relationships and personal fulfillment over duty. Most often, they place the latter ahead of the former, which is why you see all these ridiculous posts on social media about “toxic relationships.”
It’s a big joke.
I live among people who do not inhabit the same reality as I do.
It used to frustrate me, but now I smile and move on, knowing that most people are not willing to make hard choices. They—and ...
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 and let live. They seek to ass...
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 and judgment:
“Assemble to m...
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. Eventually, the im...
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 control the Holy Spirit through...
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 Semitic peoples in Souther...
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 King James text—when you hear...
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