This week the Bible as Literature podcast steps outside its usual format. Fr. Marc Boulos sits down with two parishioners of St. Elizabeth: Bethany Saros, former parish council president, and Carter Grenz. Bethany describes leaving the church, trying other paths, and coming back once she read the Gospels straight through and found she had run out of options. Carter, who grew up non-religious and came to Christianity through evangelical churches, recounts how Fr. Paul Nadim Tarazi’s work dismantled the sectarian and nationalist assumptions he had absorbed there.

October 16 - The Holy Apostle and Evangelist Luke. The Apostle Luke the Evangelist is commonly identified as “the beloved physician” who is mentioned in St. Paul’s letter to the Colossians (4:14). In this episode, we look at evidence from the text of Luke’s gospel - his emphasis on healing - to mitigate for his being known as the physician. This emphasis is not unique to Luke, but it permeates his book more so than Matthew, Mark and John. Between Luke and Acts of the Apostles, we find at least 36 occurrences of the verb “to heal” or the noun “healing,” which is overwhelming to say the least! Notes: θεραπείας (translated “household” in Luke 12:42) οἰκετείας (also translated “household” in Matthew’s parallel text - 24:45 Acts 16 Colossians 4:14 Revelation 22:1 Megalynaria is performed by *Ncense from the album More Spacious Than The Heavens. 

Fr. Marc Boulos presents "Crossing into Judgment: The ʿIbri, the ʿArabah, and the Philological Manufacture of an Ethnos" at the 2026 OCABS Symposium, held October 2–3, 2026, at St. Elizabeth Orthodox Church in St. Paul, Minnesota. Drawn from his forthcoming book Man of Letters, the sequel to The Eucharist: A Grammar of Thanksgiving, the talk hears the Abrahamic text on its own terms: as a scripture that stands against Plato, against Homer, and against Odysseus. The 2026 OCABS Symposium gathered speakers in person and online around a single theme: Scripture, Bible and Qurʾan, heard on its own terms.

Fr. Paul Nadim Tarazi's final public presentation, "The Scriptural Canon," delivered as the keynote address at the 2026 OCABS Symposium, held Saturday, October 3, 2026, at St. Elizabeth Orthodox Church in St. Paul, MN.

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.