All Episodes
You Are Not the Subject
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 mod...
Look Upon My Son
غ ن ي Academic institutions, like religious institutions, are metropolitan in nature, gathering where the Scriptural God scatters. They are the elephant whose snout ho...
Light upon Light
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...
Carried by Night
In Episode 587, Fr. Marc Boulos hears the names Lyla and Elijah as rasm, unpointed traces, skeletons of consonants standing like the dry bones in Ezekiel's valley, wai...
The Bundle of the Living
In Episode 586, Fr. Marc Boulos asks what it truly means to welcome someone in Scripture. In Luke's account of the feeding of the five thousand, the answer is far rich...
The Declining Day
In episode 585, Fr. Marc Boulos explores the profound linguistic and scriptural connections between Luke 9:10–13 and Sūrat al-ʿAṣr, showing how both texts speak a comm...
What Did You Go Out to See?
In Episode 584 of the Bible as Literature Podcast, Fr. Marc Boulos explores Luke 9:10 through the Semitic root ס־פ־ר / س־ف־ر (samek-fe-reš / sīn-fāʾ-rāʾ), uncovering a...
The Khalīfa, the Slave, and the Adversary
In this episode, Fr. Marc Boulos explores the profound connection between the Qurʾanic account of Adam as khalīfa (خليفة), Paul’s teaching on κοινωνία (koinonia), the ...
The the Cure Waits for the Kingdom
In this episode of The Bible as Literature, Fr. Marc Boulos delivers a powerful Mother’s Day homily and biblical reflection on the meaning of Baal, husbandry, empire, ...
Isaiah in the Streets
I call out to Isaiah: اخرج من الكتب القديمة (ukhruj min al-kutub al-qadīmah), come out of the old books as they came out. The world needs you now. Mahmoud Darwish said...
The Hidden Pillar
The Greek ὑπομονή (hypomone) is a compound: ὑπό (hypo, under) and μονή (mone, a remaining, from μένω, meno). Literally: remaining under. The one who endures is the one...
God is Not Mocked
When Luke records Jesus commanding the Twelve to take nothing for the journey, neither staff, nor bag, nor bread, nor money, he activates a deliberate stripping that r...
Seen, and Sent
Homily: The Prodigal Son, The Lost Sheep, and the Raven Fr. Marc Boulos Sunday, February 8, 2026 In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen...
Reconciling Insufficiency
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 defe...
A Word Against the Witnesses
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 exp...
The Sound of God
Jairus appears as an administrator. He was named, titled, and located inside a functioning system. He knew how things worked, when to ask, when to stop, when a situati...
God Sees All
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 ...
By God's Command
Human beings have always prided themselves on the advantage gained from possessing knowledge that others lack. We boast of being smarter, more informed, more enlighten...
Crowd of Thorns
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, ...
One is the Only Number
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...
Unsettled Settlement
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 huma...
Despair and Light
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. ...
Lift Up Your Gates
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. ...
Incense and Ash
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 nam...
The Desert Knows His Name
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 Gera...
The Staff Rebellion
Examining the history of nomadic pastoralism across Asia—from the Caucasus and Central Asian steppes to ancient Mesopotamia—reveals a consistent pattern: settled elit...
The Mirror is Not Your Friend
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, w...
Lex Maligna, Lego Inferna
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...