Acts 17:22-31. The Apostle Paul, in Athens, takes the opportunity to preach in the Areopagus. One man, Dionysius, is among those who hear and join him. Athens is named after the goddess Athena. Its name is grammatically plural (detectable in the final “s” - “Athens”), reflecting the many statues and temples erected to the goddess in the city. This was common in the ancient world. Anyone visiting Athens would immediately know to whom the city pertained. Such convention sheds light on an otherwise puzzling fact: in the Bible, “God” in Hebrew (“Elohim”) is grammatically plural. Why is that so? And how is the God that Paul preached unlike the other deities, known and unknown, that were worshipped in the ancient world? This is Episode 88 of A Light to the Nations, a production of the Ephesus School Network. Notes: Genesis 1:1 אֱלֹהִ֑ים (Elohim) “Sing A New Song” composed and performed by Raphael Shaheen. 

The Son Of Man. When Jesus refers to himself in the Gospels, it is almost exclusively as “Son of Man;” that is to say, not “Son of God” as in “a king.” Moreover, Jesus is systematically referred to as “a teacher” in the Gospels more than any other appellation. In both of these aspects - Son of Man and teacher - the Gospels are following the lead of both Ezekiel and Isaiah, respectively. In Ezekiel, the title is a belittling of the kings of Judah and Israel who were supposed to be the representatives of God. Because of their disobedience, God makes a mere Son of Man (ben-Adam) his plenipotentiary. In Isaiah, we hear that the servant of the Lord is assigned to restore not only the redeemed of Israel, but is also given as a light to the nations, “so that the salvation of the Lord might reach to the end of the earth” (Isaiah 49:6). This servant is struck by the will of the Lord, after which his progeny is raised via the word, the seed of instruction. Thus, he is a teacher.  Enter in the Gospels Jesus, the Son of Man, the Teacher… Notes Genesis 3:5 Isaiah 49:6;53:6,10-11 Ezekiel 3:1-2 Psalm 45:6-7;82:4,6-7 Matthew 21:23;25:31-33 Philippians 2:5-11 Crystal Ball rehearsal and Bobbi Jo performed by Prince.

In Episode 590, Father Marc Boulos examines Luke 9:39 through Ezekiel, 3 Maccabees, and the linguistic connections between Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic. He challenges modern ideas of choice, agency, and the “pursuit of happiness,” showing how Scripture presents God—not the human being—as the true subject and actor.

غ ن ي Academic institutions, like religious institutions, are metropolitan in nature, gathering where the Scriptural God scatters. They are the elephant whose snout hoards knowledge for the tyrants of the earth like the Egyptian scribes (Genesis 41:8), inscribing their will with an iron stylus on the foreskins of human hearts, concealing them from God (The Eucharist, 270). The psychē (ψυχή) fights against God by clinging to the sarx (σάρξ), desperately struggling to shut out the pneuma (πνεῦμα) with all its might, concealing the uncircumcised heart from the Almighty God under cover of the circumcision of human institutions. Oh yes, Hellenists love the psyche. It’s what they “turn” (to) and in, epistrephein (ἐπιστρέφειν, Corinthians 3:16), away from him, spinning as they spin their rejection of the sufficiency of God. It’s the source of all they talk about on their podcasts. They gather it up in their communities to meditate on it and its endless crisis of “loneliness.” (2 Timothy 3:2–4)  “If only they knew.” (Qurʾan, Sūrat al-ʿAnkabūt سورة العنكبوت “The Spider” 29:64) But God, in his sufficiency, is all seeing and all knowing, and their schemes will fail. Each moment in life, each kairos, each encounter with the unseen God in the crossing of neighbors in the ʿarabah terrifies the human institution, because the crossing presents each living, breathing soul with a divine uncovering, and the possibility of a revelation: we do not need the institutions. We never did. It’s ironic. The academy will insist it exists to question, to challenge and to tear down, but of its nature a building is incapable of the apostle’s turning in his withering, let alone the prophet’s birth-pains. Yes, they critique, but not to tear down, one stone from another. No. They critique in order to build their artificial mother. Their blasphemous alma mater. “Because they disbelieved and uttered terrible slander against Mary.” (Qurʾan, Sūrat al-Nisāʾ سورة النساء “The Women” 4:156) Yet, “God is not mocked” (Galatians 6:7), for everyone knows that milk sweetened with chemicals is toxic. Well, not everyone. Against them, and all who are like them, the Abrahamic scriptures neither build nor synthesize. They present no dogma. People who “read” them do, of course. That’s how we end up with buildings and tribes, which all three scrolls summarily condemn. Instead, what these texts offer is a method for hearing and seeing in daily living, so that each of us can hear how to walk our path in this life. Indeed, God, who is the source of all knowledge, has assigned a path for each of us, and this life is your test. Only you can hear and see what he has presented for you to understand, for your sake.  It is your test.  On that day, you have no advocate but yourself and no recourse but him. The sooner you stop covering your ears and hiding behind your eyes; the sooner you open your heart to his instruction, the better your chance of receiving his gift with empty hands. God has assigned a lesson for you in your brief time on earth, which, as the song says, is as “but a dream.” True knowledge does not come from men. It comes directly from him, and Scripture is a guide on the path through his wilderness. Unlike human institutions which traffic in recycled human words, Scripture offers only the witness—the martyrdom—of the unseen, of the done-unto by God, who stand by you on the path, bearing witness to your witness to his divine words. And the words are signs along that path to help you find your way, as you uncover the test he has prepared for you, which is yours and yours alone. The Bible was not written to establish anything. It was written to keep the path open, for your sake, so that nothing would ever stand in between you and God on the path, before the time, until the time he shall judge the living and the dead; and of his kingdom, there shall be no end. This week, I discuss Luke 9:38

In episode 588, Fr. Marc hears the mashal of the Transfiguration as a warning against attempting to control what God gives freely. The Arabic root ش-ي-ع (shīn–yāʾ–ʿayn) spreads light naturally shedding itself without the inevitable fracture it finds in human hands. Peter's ploy to "make" tents for the prophets is a poor attempt to turn the gift of light into property. But the light, like rain, is lost the moment the human hands close around it.