Things are never what they seem and your eyes can deceive you. Maybe that’s why Sesame Street was so important for so many of us growing up in the seventies. In 1968, Joan Ganz Cooney introduced the show with the teaching segment, “One of These Things.” Her work, set to music by Joe Raposo, conveyed a methodology for study and a life-saving template for correct behavior. “One of these things,” brothers and sisters, always and forever, is not like the others. Thank God for that; and thank God for Sesame Street, and the teachers of that era who gave a damn, made an effort and used their capacity ..read more

What is self-righteousness?  You hear the command of God, and refuse to introspect. You do not, as Paul teaches, “look to yourself.”  You look to others.  You gossip. You nitpick. You complain. You find fault. You do everything under the sun but consider the one thing that is needful in God’s eyes: The most likely possibility.  That you, oh man (or woman)—I mean, let’s be generous—oh bipedal humanoid earth mammal—you, and nobody else but you, are the problem.  But you do not consider this. You do not introspect. So when the voice of the Lord touches your heart, you “ex ..read more

Father Marc Boulos provides an update on upcoming episodes of “The Bible as Literature Podcast” and makes an important announcement about Father Paul’s podcast series, “Tarazi Tuesdays.” He also shares that he is relaunching “The Bible as Literature Podcast,” emphasizing functionality and language, steering away from theology and narrative. He discusses the importance of understanding sacred texts through the study of grammar and the original languages, especially Hebrew and Arabic, and how this approach submits to the text of Scripture, facilitating table fellowship. Article mentioned in t ..read more

Years ago, when I worked in the city, I took perverse pleasure in the prophetic absurdity of a small, dilapidated, prewar brownstone jutting out against the pristine, monied plaza of the Towers, built as money does, to cover the ugliness of human sin with the vanity of majesty and looks.  It was an ugly, filthy box, with fire escapes and all. I used to look to see if I could find an old Greek woman running a clothesline to hang dirty underwear out to dry for all the wealthy brokers to see—people who made their living funding all the genocides the Western media has long since perfected hid ..read more

The canon—not the text—of the Septuagint dates back only to the fourth century, to the area of, you guessed it, Alexandria.  The canon—not the text—of the Septuagint comes from sources like Codex Alexandrinus, Sinaiticus, and Vaticanus. The canon—not the text—because the Septuagint text, Fr. Paul explains, was rendered by the original authors (or their followers), who, unlike Philo and Origen, were committed to teaching Scripture, not using it for their own gain.  We pretend that political violence is shocking or surprising. However, early Christian leaders, Fr. Paul continues, influ ..read more

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 gospe ..read more

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 ..read more

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 Pro ..read more

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 adop ..read more

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 ..read more