All Episodes
It’s Not Who You Know
Religious and secular ideologies share much in common, including their emphasis on personality and identity. Who are you? What are you? What group are you from? What d...
What Has Athens To Do With Jerusalem?
It's easy to allow symbols and ideas from outside the Bible to shape our understanding of the text. In contrast, serious biblical students set aside extra-biblical inf...
Your Feelings Are Immaterial
What do the ending of John's gospel and the first chapters of Acts teach us about the problem of human feelings? How do our assumptions about love and its relationship...
Be It Known to You O King
What do the narratives of Exodus and Daniel have to do with the Resurrection of Jesus Christ? Why were these stories understood historically as penultimate readings du...
The Truth is Your Neighbor
Pilate's insecurity about the trial of Jesus is often and wrongly understood as evidence that the New Testament was written to gain Rome's favor. Some have gone furthe...
Ignorance is Not Bliss
Like the other disciples in Mark 10, everyone who hears the gospel is quick to assume they understand why James and John were wrong to request positions of honor next ...
What is a Spirit?
How is the word spirit used in the Bible? What does it mean to be possessed by an unclean spirit? Are spirits real? What does the unclean spirit in Mark 9 tell us abou...
Spend It Before You Lose It
Why does Mark associate prophetic concepts of abundance with the commandment to take up the cross? In what way do popular concepts of carrying the cross, associated wi...
Fat of the Land
Much of Ezekiel is spent emphasizing God's anti-locality, namely, that there is no structure or land to which the biblical God is chained. In Ezekiel, God moves freely...
Come and See
Given the Bible's persistent emphasis on the problem of idolatry, why suddenly, in John, are we confronted with the phrase, "Come and see?" This seems especially odd, ...
Broken Records
In a biblical narrative that is overwhelmingly anti-kingly, how can one make sense of Paul’s apparent endorsement of governing authorities in Romans 13? Why would Paul...
The Marketplace
How should the Bible’s addressees understand the parable of the wise and foolish virgins at the outset of Matthew 25? In what way does the metaphor of lamp oil relate ...
Blood Sacrifice
What is the purpose of ritual sacrifice in the Bible? Why is so much emphasis placed on blood sacrifice as a means of expiation? Why would Ezekiel incorporate blood sa...
Boring Texts
Why do chapters 41 and 42 of Ezekiel spend so much time talking about the monotonous details of temple architecture? Why would these details matter in a book like Ezek...
Interview with Fr. Timothy Lowe
This week, Richard and Fr. Marc interview Fr. Timothy Lowe about his paper, The Gospel of Matthew and the Law Interpreted for Jew and Gentile, one of several excellent...
Wheat, Wine, and Oil
The BBC recently reported that "the share of the world's wealth owned by the richest 1% increased from 44% in 2009 to 48%" in 2015 and that "on current trends, Oxfam.....
What’s More Important?
What is the purpose of St. Paul’s discussion of gender and marriage in 1 Corinthians? Why is he seemingly ambivalent about the status of Roman slaves? On what basis do...
Interview with Dr. Mary Youssef
Dr. Mary Youssef is Associate Professor of Arabic Literature in the Department of Classical and Near Eastern Studies at Binghamton University. Her research areas inclu...
Cloud of Witnesses
Is each generation an improvement on the previous one? Are people living today the apex of human progress? In practical terms, most of us intuit the problems of wester...
Who's Your Daddy?
When people think of meaningful passages in the Bible, the many lengthy genealogies found in Genesis and elsewhere rarely, if ever, come to mind. Yet, it is exactly on...
Playing All Sides
In this week's episode, Richard explores the Lord's counter-intuitive stance in Ezekiel, in which judgement falls on all sides and no human being finds favor in God's ...
The Apostle Paul's Book Club
Does it matter which book of the Bible you read or which testament it comes from? Where should beginners start? Are some books more important than others? What is the ...
Society of Biblical Literature
This week, Richard talks about his presentation at the Society of Biblical Literature gathering in San Diego, where he explored the various ways in which the study of ...
The Dead Shall Hear the Voice of God and Live
Preachers often adapt themes from popular books and movies to make their sermons seem relevant for children and teens. But what happens when the content of the Bible i...
Torah to the Gentiles
Richard interviews Fr. Marc about his new book, Torah to the Gentiles. The letter to the Galatians offers a brief but demanding exposition of the teaching of the Older...
I, Paul
In a culture that thrives on positive messages and expects praise from everyone for just about everything, it is easy to assume that St. Paul's use of praise in his le...
Do Not Feed Thyself
Richard and Fr. Marc continue their discussion of the biblical functions "shepherd" and "sheep," exploring these roles in context of Ezekiel 34. Ezekiel's critique exp...
Ezekiel 33: Double or Nothing
Do our good deeds count for anything? Is there a difference between a wicked person and a person who behaves correctly most of the time? What does it mean to be a chil...