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The Bible as Literature

The Bible as Literature

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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.© Copyright The Ephesus School Network, 2013-2024. All rights reserved. Cristianismo Espiritualidad Ministerio y Evangelismo
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  • Seen, and Sent

    Seen, and Sent
    Feb 16 2026
    Homily: The Prodigal Son, The Lost Sheep, and the RavenFr. Marc BoulosSunday, February 8, 2026In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.Today’s Gospel (Luke 15:11-32) forms a diptych with the parable of the Lost Sheep (Luke 15:3-7), which unfortunately is used systematically by the followers of Epstein, or, more accurately, by those captivated by the mentality of Epstein ecclesiology: the business model of church growth that treats the neighbor as a commodity.Which is everyone.Because if you are an American, or a European, or anyone who subscribes to the ideology of the elite class, the success ideology, the growth ideology, the manifestation ideology, you ultimately view your neighbor as property, as lesser, as acquisition. Or, as Satan has taught the Church in the West to say, you refer to your neighbor as a “giving unit.” It is a disgusting phrase.No less ugly than what they used to say when I was a child. They claimed to count souls, but they were counting giving units.Now, the key to hearing the parable of the Lost Sheep is to hear the accusation of the Pharisees and the scribes that prompted the parable, and to hear it in the context of Noah, which governs Luke. Jesus gives the parable of the Lost Sheep because he is accused of receiving:“This man receives sinners and eats with them.” (Luke 15:2)That is the key. He is accused of receiving sinners. What is returned to him from the wilderness is what is received.The prodigal, as you should know by now, is not praised for coming back. He simply returns. The parable of the Lost Sheep is about instruction, about remaining under command whether inside the fold or outside it. This is what is at stake when the follower says “No.”It is also what is at stake with the two birds in the account of the flood. You have a raven (Genesis 8:7) and you have a dove (Genesis 8:8-12).For those of you who study what I teach, you know the significance of the raven. For those who do not, the work is here. The rest is between you and God.In Hebrew, the word often associated with the raven is derived from three consonants, ʿayin, resh, bet. It refers to a migratory, nomadic bird, associated with the locality of the ʿArabah, the Syro-Arabian wilderness known to you as Mesopotamia, encompassing Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, and Iraq. The raven is nomadic in a very specific biblical sense. It pertains to peoples who mix among tribes and who come out at night. These are the tribes that fed Elijah. That is the raven Noah sends out.The word used is “release.” It corresponds to the same verb Jesus uses when he sends out the Twelve to proclaim the judgment of the Kingdom in Luke chapter 9, verse 2. He releases them under instruction.What is interesting is that this corresponds to the usage of the word “Bedouin” in the Qur’an. You have heard me speak about Bedouins, and many of you assume I am speaking about Arab culture. I could not care less about culture. I am speaking about Scripture.The Bedouins appear in the Bible and in the Qur’an, and they have a function. In Genesis 8:6-12, Noah sends out the raven before the Lord breaks his silence. The Lord had not spoken since the flood began, when he shut the ark with his own hand behind Noah (Genesis 7:16). He does not speak again until Genesis 8:15. There is release from Noah, but there is no command from God. The raven goes out into a world not yet ordered by divine speech. Noah releases the raven into disorder in anticipation of God’s instruction, which alone can establish order. The same is true of the dove. Both are sent out, released in hope that they might return. It is not demanded. It is a free gesture. That is how it works.In this absence, the dove’s return unfolds within divine silence, not compelled by a new command but moving in anticipation of the word by which God alone restores order. The decisive reality is the command of God, not human initiative.The prodigal, sitting on the dung heap, cannot boast, “I came back.” He came back because he was hungry. In the house of the Father, every voice is silenced before the obedience of Jesus (Philippians 2:6-11).In the Qur’an, the striking thing about the Bedouins is their obstinacy. (Rise, Andalus, p. 53; Sūrat al-Tawbah, “The Repentance, The Return” 9:97) They exist on the edge. That is why this question of sinners among the peoples on the boundaries, in the night watches, matters. Those are the ones Jesus receives. That is what angers the Pharisees and the scribes in Luke. Those whom they despise, the ravens, exist on the edge, beyond the proclamation of what is read aloud. And now they are stepping within range of that proclamation.The word Qur’an means “what is read aloud,” the proclamation of the word of God. It is rooted in Arabic, a Semitic tongue like Hebrew. Those on the margins live beyond the reach of that proclamation. The lost are released, sometimes under instruction, sometimes in hope of ...
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    58 m
  • Reconciling Insufficiency

    Reconciling Insufficiency
    Jan 27 2026
    My mother was born in Bethlehem, Palestine, a land where hospitality is not sentiment, not a virtue to be cultivated, but obedience. It is not taught, debated, or defended. It is enacted. The land itself bears witness to a scriptural way of life that precedes institutions, borders, and claims of authority. The earth remembers what human beings forget. It remembers what it means to live under decree rather than under ownership.Scripture itself is formed by this memory. It speaks in a Semitic grammar in which unity precedes sequence and must never harden into possession. Genesis opens not with “the first day,” but with yom eḥad, one day. Creation does not begin with order imposed over time, but with a complete, bounded unity named before anything is divided or accumulated. Wholeness precedes sequence. Unity precedes control.Arabic preserves this same grammar. Like Biblical Hebrew, Arabic counting does not begin with an ordinal. One says yawm wāḥid, one day, not “the first day.” Ordinals only begin with “second,” al-yawm al-thānī. Linguistically, “one” does not mark position. It marks unity, closure, and intelligibility. Only once unity is given can differentiation follow. Counting does not produce wholeness. It presupposes it.This is not a linguistic curiosity. It is a refusal written into the language itself. Scripture does not allow the world to be treated as an object assembled piece by piece. The land is first named as a whole before it is ever divided. Life is first declared worthy before it is ever administered. Unity is given, not achieved.That is why in that land, people did not write treatises on coexistence. They did not construct ethical systems to justify themselves. They lived. They lived because Scripture was never an abstraction. It was not an idea to be mastered but a Command to be obeyed. Hospitality was not a moral accomplishment but a reflex, the uncalculated response of those who know that they are not masters. The outsider is received not because one has reasoned it to be good, but because this is what life looks like on land that belongs to someone else.Israel in the Scriptural text is itself constituted according to this same grammar. Twelve is not a governing structure but a symbolic totality, the whole addressed by God for a purpose. The Twelve in the Gospels function the same way. They do not rule. They signify. They address Israel as a whole, not as an institution to be preserved. Once that address has been made, unity is not hardened into continuity. It is released.Paul’s mission embodies this release. What was gathered symbolically is carried outward. Election is not converted into ownership. Unity is not turned into administration. It is sent, so that the nations may be addressed.Scripture consistently contrasts this covenantal unity with another numerical grammar. The nations appear as ten, the number of human totality, the fullness of empire and power. Ten names what human beings claim when they totalize, when they consolidate, when they rule. Scripture does not resolve history by allowing twelve to rule ten. It resolves history by confronting ten through twelve, by addressing power without becoming power.God alone remains uncounted and undissolved, because God is not one element within the sequence. God is the unity that makes all counting possible. God is not the first proprietor among others. God is the only Proprietor.That is why what happened in Gaza was wrong. Not because one group could assemble better arguments about history or entitlement. It was wrong because mothers and children were killed. This is not political speech. It is witness. The decree that rendered the land worthy is the same decree that rendered every life upon it worthy. To violate that life is not to offend an ideology but to profane what was entrusted. Those who claimed the land while denying the life upon it testified against themselves. They forgot the one thing Scripture never negotiates.There is only one Proprietor.Scripture arose to interrupt such forgetting. When kings enthrone themselves and devour, when power names itself necessity, when land is reduced to possession rather than received as inheritance, Scripture speaks. It does not bargain. It does not flatter. It calls heaven and earth to witness. The land does not belong to those who conquer it, nor to those who administer it, nor to those who explain it away. It belongs to the One who provides it. Everything that breathes upon it is under his protection, whether rulers approve or not.There is only one Ruler.Those who lived there knew this without commentary or defense. When neighbors arrived from Europe, speaking other tongues and carrying other memories, the question was never whether they had a right to be there. They came. They were received. Some remained. That was not the transgression. The transgression came when the memory of Scripture was erased by claims of ownership, when inheritance was renamed ...
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    58 m
  • A Word Against the Witnesses

    A Word Against the Witnesses
    Jan 11 2026
    Human beings move as a flock. What feels like freedom is motion inside a herd. People act the way they do because of pressure, habit, fear, desire, reward, or past experience. When we make decisions, we are responding to systemic forces already acting on us, even when theologians insist on calling this a free choice, the so-called “free will.” Long before a choice is named, the path is worn.Governments, workplaces, laws, economies, religions, philosophies, ideologies, and social norms all rely on the same logic. If certain behaviors are rewarded and others punished, people will respond in predictable ways. Obedience inside these systems is never neutral. People comply because it benefits them, protects them, or helps them avoid loss. Even rebellion, blind to what it is building, follows recognizable patterns and is absorbed back into the systems it supposedly opposes.But beneath these systems sits something deeper and more diabolical: the human logos. Explanation. Justification. Language itself as causality. Words that govern reality, binding reasons to actions, beliefs to outcomes, and sacrifices to meaning. This is how systems hold together. They are not only structures of power, but temples built of language, narratives, and shared explanations. Propaganda. A world where everything makes sense.Belief, in this sense, is not faith. It is how humans explain themselves to themselves, a projection of the lamp of the body, quieting fear, justifying loss, making obedience reasonable. Over time, this explanatory language becomes a prison people inhabit. A Temple made of human hands, not of stone, but of coherence. An idol constructed from meaning.Inside this Temple, every sacrifice is justified. Every command explained. Every loss serves a purpose. Even love is rationalized. Domesticated. Hope reframed as likelihood. Language does not merely describe the system. It sanctifies it.These systems can even tolerate sacrifice, as long as the sacrifice is made for something abstract: the nation, the tribe, the future, the greater good, the “building” up or the “survival” of the community. Abstract loyalty is calculable. It can be taught, praised, rewarded, and demanded. A person who gives themselves for an idea or a cause is still operating inside logic the system understands and human language can defend.Torah insists that a true command cannot arise from within this Temple or employ its language. Scripture does not perceive human beings as autonomous agents standing outside the flock, freely acting. It finds people as they are: already bound, already oriented, already enslaved to something. That is why Torah does not ask whether people are free, but whom they serve. Egypt is not replaced by false autonomy, but by covenant. Pharaoh is not replaced by the self, the builder of temples, but by the Voice of the Shepherd, that commands, calling us out of the temples that entomb us. According to Scripture, if a rule makes sense because it works, helps, or produces good outcomes, then following it is still a calculation. It may be wise or effective, but it is not obedience. It is sycophancy. That is why the Voice of the Shepherd is heard in the wilderness, away from stable systems and the human Temple of explanation. In the wilderness, people cannot rely on strategy or outcomes. They can only hear and respond. To those who live inside the system, this looks like slavery, or worse, insanity. Far from it.It is trust.This is where love of neighbor enters, and it does not enter as an idea, let alone a Platonic ideal. A neighbor is not humanity in the abstract. A neighbor is not the future, the cause, or the system. A neighbor is the real person who stands before you and whose claim cannot be translated into principle without being lost.Your neighbor is not defined by worth, identity, or moral condition, but by proximity under obedience to the Command. Love of neighbor is irrational by decree. It does not weigh consequences. It does not ask whether the whole will survive. It does not justify itself in language the system can use. Systems assume that when forced to choose, people will sacrifice the one for the many. Love of neighbor refuses that exchange. It does not assume God’s purview. It does not control. It does not judge. It does not choose the right thing. It submits to the Command: love for the one encountered. This is why love of neighbor looks dangerous from inside the Temple. It threatens coherence. It interrupts explanation. It is willing to let the world burn rather than betray the one who stands before you. It does not argue. It does not explain. It does not rebel. The moment it does, it has already been absorbed back into the prison of the human logos. Hope enters here, not as optimism and not as confidence in success. Hope is what remains when explanation fails. Hope is the willingness to act without knowing whether the act will save or destroy everything. It interrupts causality by refusing ...
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    1 h y 2 m
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