Tell Me the Story - SoundSage

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This paper was originally presented on August 25, 2023 at the 2023 OCABS symposium held at St. Elizabeth Orthodox Church in St. Paul, Minnesota.

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The 12 Tribes of Israel:

The sons of Reuben
- Hanoch dedicated
- Pallu wonder/marvelous
- Hezron settlement/ village
- Carmi my vineyard
The sons of Simeon
- Jemuel Day of El
- Jamin Right Hand
- Ohad Joined Together
- Jachin He will establish
- Zohar Whiteness
- Shaul Asked for
The sons of Levi
- Gershon Outcast/ sojourner
- Kohath Assembly?
- Merari My bitter one
The sons of Judah
- Er Awake
- Onan Vigorous
- Shelah Prosper
- Perez Break through
  - Hezron Settlement/ village
  - Hamul Spared
- Zerach Rise/ come forth
The sons of Issachar
- Tola Worm/ Scarlet
- Puah Here/ hither
- Job Cry in a shrill voice
- Shimron Something preserved
The sons of Zebulun
- Sered Fear
- Elon Oak
- Jahleel Whom God has made sick
The sons of Gad
- Zephon Expectation
- Haggi My festival/ my pilgrimage
- Shuni My quiet one
- Arodi Wild donkey
- Areli Lion of El
The sons of Asher
- Jimnah Fortunate
- Ishuah Be level
- Ishvi My level one
- Beriah In evil?
- Heber United/ be joined
- Malchiel My King is God
The sons of Joseph
- Manesseh Forget
- Ephraim Ashes
The sons of Benjamin
- Bela Devour
- Becher Young Camel
- Ashbol Sprout
- Gera Grain
- Naaman Favor
- Ehi My brother
- Rosh Head
- Muppim Wavings
- Huppim Cover
- Ard Fugitive
The son of Dan
- Hushim Those who make haste
The sons of Naphtali
- Jahzeel Alotted by God
- Guni Painted
- Jezer Image/ form
- Shillem Retrubution/ Avenger

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This week, we continue our recitation and discussion of the book of Genesis with an emphasis on the Semitic understanding of "peace" as it relates to Joseph's reunion with his brothers.

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Jacob's short-lived WrestleMania results in a shameful title, that of Israel. However, in his arrogance, he wears it like a championship belt all unaware of the reasoning behind his circumstances. Now, in this chapter, God himself calls Jacob Israel, but for what purpose? What is different about this renaming from the previous one? Come and see...

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Back in chapter 17, the covenant of circumcision was imposed upon Abraham and everyone in his household. This was done in order to emasculate the males under the covenant in order to emphasize God’s authority and ownership over the progeny. So circumcision then is an invitation to God’s community, and a physical reminder of one’s obedience and submission to God’s providence. So the idea here is that God is completely in control of all reproduction, as he also opens and closes women’s wombs as well. God is the sole judge. But here in chapter 34, we have an abuse of this practice. Certain characters will impose circumcision upon their enemies, using that as a weapon to weaken them, and then slaughter them in that compromised state. And it just so happens these characters are the progenitors of Israel’s priestly class. In other words, the upper echelon of society. Yikes. Let’s hear the story.

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The man Jacob wrestled with was a foreshadowing of his expected battle with Esau, the brother who swore to kill Jacob 20 years prior. However, Jacob sees that he is outmatched this time, so instead of squaring up for a fight, he falls to the ground in humility, fully expecting his brother's wrath. To Jacob's surprise, the only thing he receives from his brother is mercy. How then does he remember that mercy? Come and see.

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Genesis is the key to understanding the entire scriptural story and the function of Israel is one of the most critical to understand. To be an Israelite is to be constantly reminded that your forefathers acted against the will of God and acted violently against men. That’s a tough pill to swallow, but that’s scripture.

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Today we look at Genesis 31, continuing the saga of the Old Testament patriarch Jacob.

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The namesake of all Israel is not a mighty king who was suddenly blessed by God in the land God directed him to, he is a con man who left that land promised to him to secure wealth for himself by his own craftiness in a foreign land. Jacob is a conman, and Laban is a theologian. Things are going downhill. Come and hear the story.

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Remember how straightforward the story of Abraham’s servant and Rebekah was? The servant simply went to Mesopotamia, trusted God to find a wife for Isaac, was presented with Rebekah, and then the two made their way back to Canaan. Well, it’s time to throw that out of the window. At this point in the story we have Isaac and Rebekah’s son, Jacob, who is going to Mesopotamia himself but through a convoluted series of events ends up being locked in a 14 year servitude under his father in law… only because he wants to marry the younger and better looking daughter of Laban’s household, even though it would be more customary for him to marry Leah, the elder daughter. How does all of this pan out? Let’s hear the story.

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All Christians today are likely familiar with the concept of being “transformed” by scripture or Christ or however you want to phrase it. This, and the idea of being a “born again Christian” which has been in vogue in evangelical circles for the last 50 years or so, speaks to a certain reality of a scriptural life and transformation. The true scriptural reality of it all is much more complex and demanding than the sort of “Christian-ese” catchphrases that get thrown around willy-nilly, but something we can all agree on is that a person's past sins always come back to haunt them, even after they are quote-unquote “transformed.” That is exactly what we see in today’s story. If we stop ourselves from projecting our personal interests into the story and we actually hear what is going on, then this fact will be as clear as day.

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This week we present one of our two papers as they were presented at the 2022 OCABS symposium. This week is Blaise's "The Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus as a Retelling of Genesis 15".

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https://drive.google.com/file/d/1tyedblYUUIl1kl76c3_tAQp1g_uhWlDc/view?usp=sharing

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Like all names in the Bible, Jacob's has a clear function which is explored in Genesis chapter 27. Let us be attentive!

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We’ve spent the last few months laboring in detail the often complicated and frustrating story of the patriarch Abraham in the Bible. Surprisingly, Isaac’s story is fleeting like a vanishing vapor. He shows up, and almost instantly the text seems more concerned with his son Jacob than with Isaac. But in chapter 26, we get Isaac’s only real narrative for himself and it turns out to be one of the most critical in the book of Genesis. So let’s turn our scriptural ears on and get underway with Genesis chapter 26!

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We come to scripture this week expecting to hear more about our new focal character Isaac, but we are shocked to find out that the story in Genesis 25 has already moved on to new characters: Isaac's two sons. Why the quick progression? What's the deal with Esau and his obsession with pottage? Come and see...

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Today we hear the mashal of Genesis 24! Let us be attentive.

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Today we hear the mashal of Genesis 23 where Abraham is curiously rejecting the mercy of his enemy and seeks to buy gift of the land as a possession for himself. Let us be attentive!

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In today’s episode we hear the story of Abraham being commanded by the Scriptural God to sacrifice Isaac. This is a very famous story from the Bible and is used by various different people to make various different assertions about God and the Bible, but today you will hear from us not an assertion, not simply another manipulation of the Biblical story, but an explanation of the Biblical story. We cannot use the Bible for anything- we can only listen to it and choose whether or not we will align our behavior with God’s will, as the Biblical character Abraham is commanded to in this chapter. Come and hear the story.

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This week we cover chapter 21 of Genesis. This is the story of Isaacs's birth and the surrounding events. Join us as we discuss the story and the overlooked but incredibly important detail which is Isaac's conception and birth seeming to happen without any involvement from Abraham.

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As already discussed many times in this podcast, Abraham's story in the book of Genesis is anything but linear. For every move in obedience to God, there is a countermove in disobedience. We will see this play out for the final time in the Abraham cycle before his full character actualization in chapter 22. What is the point of all this? Precisely to constantly bore into the ears of the Israelites that they are not special in relation to the Gentiles and that Abraham was once himself a gentile and acted outside the bounds of the Mosaic Law. What made him righteous? His trust in God's promise and his change of behavior. This isn't about blood. Let us be attentive.

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Join us as we read through Genesis 19 and critique the popular reception of the story of Sodom and Gomorrah.

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Our ideologies are our downfall. We cannot use scripture to suit our desires and our ideological premises. We cannot even come to scripture with questions. We must only seek to hear what scripture is saying. Join us today as we attempt to do just that in light of historic sociological shifts in the United States.

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Join us this week as we hear the pericope of Abraham's hospitality toward YHWH, his master. YHWH is identified in the appearance of three men- who are these three men? Three angels? Two angels and The LORD? Three shepherds? Is it even important? Come and see...

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In this interlude episode, I argue that the fundamental problem with "theology" is that it reduces scriptural faith into something that is to be "believed" rather than "lived out" in obedience to a command.

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Perhaps you’ve heard before that God has a sense of humor. Well, that is true but not in the way you might think. Often, if we say God has a sense of humor it is so that we can relate with God. We want him to be the father we didn’t have, the friend we need, the brother who will watch out for us, and if he has a good sense of humor, that makes him all the more friendly. This is not scriptural. God has a sense of humor but he laughs at us, not with us. If we can laugh at ourselves, then good! Perhaps then, we can stray from the path of self-righteousness, but that does not mean that God and we are on the same page. We all think we have things figured out, we study scripture and think we understand, we live life and think we understand how to navigate it, but we will always be tested when we least expect it and like a child bracing itself confidently against a monster in a children's novel, we look foolish to God, and he laughs at us. What’s worst of all is that before we even knew what we were doing, we laughed at God. This is why he laughs at us; because we are but children who think they know what they are saying, but as scripture continues to show us through the meshalim, the stories, every word that comes out of our mouth is wrong and every word condemns us.

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Circumcision is probably the most controversial covenant in the entire scriptural story. From the onset of the common era, the implications of this covenant for the gentile world was the primary basis for the rift that would eventually split Pharisaical Judaism into two major groups, those of the Pauline persuasion which would evolve into Christianity and those of the Jerusalemite persuasion which would evolve into Rabbinical Judaism. There’s obviously nuance to this, which we will get into, but the point is that this very covenant became more of a symbol of division rather than unity… the unity of which, as we will see, was the original purpose. So why did this unfortunate bastardization of circumcision occur? And more importantly, why is circumcision seemingly so critical in the Old Testament but seemingly bypassed in the New? Is this even a fair question? Is there a dichotomy between circumcision in Genesis and circumcision in Paul’s writings? Let’s explore this question, not by attempting to justify how our religious traditions have treated this issue, but by how it functions in the story being told. Only then can we hope to answer this controversial but highly important conundrum.

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Something that Rowdy and I have pressed many times throughout these podcasts is the fact that names not only have special meanings in the Hebrew text, they define the function of the characters bearing those names. In other words, the names offer critical context to the overall narrative and without a clear understanding of the names in the original language, the narrative itself can become blurred. So it is surprising that one of the most important names in the scriptural narrative is extremely elusive to Biblical scholars and no one seems to know exactly what is going on with the language. This name is Abraham, the new God given name for Abram. In today’s episode, Rowdy and I will discuss the various scholarly interpretations into this name and we will also touch on the impact these different interpretations have on the broader scriptural narrative. Let's hear the first section of chapter 17!

Intro and outro music Copyright © Holy Transfiguration Monastery, Brookline, MA, used by permission. All rights reserved. Thumbnail icon © The Children of Abraham, Dr. Robert Lentz, Courtesy of Trinity Stores, www.trinitystores.com, 800.699.4482

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Today we will hear chapter 16 of Genesis. We are coming off of last weeks reading, chapter 15, when we heard of God’s first covenant with Abram where he promised to him to give his offspring the land of Canaan. Abram was promised peace and a great future for his children and in this chapter we will hear of Abram and Sarai’s quick backstep as they fail to trust God. Let us hear the story!

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If you’re familiar with St. Paul’s letter to the Galatians, the next few chapters of Genesis will be extremely familiar to you. This is because St. Paul almost exclusively sources his arguments on the content of these chapters. In essence the Pauline New Testament is simply reinforcing the correct reading of the Old Testament against the abuses of the religious establishment of Jerusalem in Paul’s time. You see, in first century Judea, the center of religious life was the Herodian Temple. Around the Temple, you had two major classes of Jewish society. The Sadducees were the extremely wealthy and Hellenistic priestly class and the Pharisees were anti Hellenist opponents of that priestly class and devoted their lives to piety and the study of scripture. This was Paul’s background. He was a Pharisee and like all Pharisees, he knew scripture very well. Zealous for the traditions of their forefathers and of Judean identity, the Pharisees weighed their righteousness around the technical following of the Mosaic Law and not only that, they were set to impose that law onto Gentile converts into the faith. Paul, fleeing from this trap, condemned both Judaism and Hellenism and argues in Galatians that Abram was considered righteous by God independent of the Mosaic Law! So how was Abram deemed righteous? Let’s hear the story that Paul heard and find out for ourselves. The painful truth of scripture is that it only upholds our traditions when we force it to do so. But when we read it for what it is, it tears those traditions down. And when I say that Paul tears down Judaism, I am not making a slight against modern Judaism. This is Judaism of the 1st century, and it can function as any religion, including and especially Christianity. This is difficult because we love the traditions of our forefathers, but scripture doesn’t give a damn! Let us be attentive!

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Chart:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1GDDYCyPjGwVpB-K21AKgoq-oOo7c2Ilh/view?usp=sharing

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Be always with Christ, and trust God in everything
Pray as you can, not as you think you must.
Have a keepable rule of prayer, done by discipline.
Say the Lord’s Prayer several times each day.
Repeat a short prayer when your mind is not occupied.
Make some prostrations when you pray.
Eat good foods in moderation, and fast on fasting days.
Practice silence: inner, and outer.
Sit in silence 20 to 30 minutes each day.
Do acts of mercy in secret.
Go to liturgical services regularly.
Go to confession, and holy communion regularly.
Do not engage intrusive thoughts, and feelings.
Reveal your thoughts, and feelings to someone regularly.
Read the scriptures regularly.
Read good books, a little at a time.
Cultivate communion with the saints.
Be an ordinary person, one of the human race.
Be polite with everyone, first of all with family members.
Maintain cleanliness, and order in your home.
Have a healthy, wholesome hobby.
Exercise regularly.
Live a day, even a part of a day, at a time.
Be totally honest, first of all with yourself.
Be faithful in little things.
Do your work, then forget it.
Do the most difficult, and painful things first.
Face reality.
Be grateful.
Be cheerful.
Be simple, hidden, quiet, and small.
Never bring attention to yourself.
Listen when people talk to you.
Be awake, and attentive, fully present where you are.
Think, and talk about things no more than necessary.
Speak simply, clearly, firmly, directly.
Flee imagination, fantasy, analysis, figuring things out.
Flee carnal, sexual things at their first appearance.
Don’t complain, grumble, murmur, or whine.
Don’t seek, or expect pity, or praise.
Don’t compare yourself with anyone.
Don’t judge anyone for anything.
Don’t try to convince anyone of anything.
Don’t defend, or justify yourself.
Be defined, and bound by God, not by people.
Accept criticism gracefully, and test it carefully.
Give advice only when asked, or when it is your duty.
Do nothing for people that they can, and should, do for themselves.
Have a daily schedule of activities, avoiding whim, and caprice.
Be merciful with yourself, and with others.
Have no expectations, except to be fiercely tempted until your last breath.
Focus exclusively on God, and light, and never on darkness, temptation, and sin.
Patiently endure your faults, and sins peacefully, under God’s mercy.
When you fall, get up immediately, and start over.
Get help when you need it, without fear, or shame.

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In today’s episode we will read the rest of chapter 12 as well as chapter 13. This is the story of how Abram ignored God after walking according to his command and passed into the land that was promised to Abram’s offspring. Instead of staying and relying on God, he kept walking down to a land we can easily assume was more appealing than that which God gave him. That land is the land of Egypt. Let’s hear the story.

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Today we will jump right into the story of Israel starting with the father of faith- Abram. But, as we will see, he is not the wonderful example of faith we often like to think of him as… at least not at first. We often read our own ideas of who we like to think of Abraham as back into the earliest parts of the story and that causes us to miss important details, so let’s not do this. Let’s hear what the text is saying.

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Today we hear the story of the Tower of Babel and the fools who built it. We must remember always that the fools in scripture, that is, all characters in scripture, are examples for us and examples of us. So without any further ado, let us hear the story.

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Today we conclude our reading of chapter 10 of Genesis. We will hear the remainder of the names featured in this section, as well as an interesting grammatical device used by the authors which can only be heard in the Hebrew language: men producing progeny, or more literally, birthing children. What does it mean for a man to birth offspring in the story of scripture? Let us hear...

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Chapter 10 features what many call “The Table of Nations,” which lays out Biblical geography and cultural dispersion across the Scriptural authors’ known world. There is a lot packed away in this chapter thanks to the brilliance of the Scriptural Hebrew language and the intelligence of the authors. We will put in the work to introduce these names in detail because when we push our effort this way, we will have a much better idea when the names of these nations come up again later in scripture. These seemingly alien words play an important role in the total story being told and if we sit back and gloss over them because it’s too hard to understand them then they will be extremely hard to keep track of as we navigate the Old Testament.

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God does not endorse human behavior. God is not a cheerleader. If we are hearing scripture we will understand that humans are wicked and God stoops down to their level and provides commandments and circumstances that will bring about people who will bear fruits worthy of repentance. Today we will read Genesis chapter 9 and hear of God’s covenant following Noah and his family exiting the ark. This is a new beginning, but things are much different now than they were in the garden.

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Today we pick apart the intricacies of Genesis chapter 8. From wordplay to metaphor, the authors are making distinct choices to cause us to hear a specific story- not just another diluvian epic. Let us hear.

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Lenten Graffiti Episode 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7jMAMKom_yk&t=40s

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Today we will read Chapter 7 of Genesis and begin our hearing of the story of the flood dominating the earth and her inhabitants. In chapter 6 we heard the story of God warning Noah and commanding him to action, and now we will hear about the beginnings of this great desolation. As always, the authors use a variety of techniques to control the way we listen. We have already tackled the fact that approaching this story as a historical account of some great meteorological anomaly in human history is perhaps the weakest and most obtuse approach one can take, so let us leave that idea behind us. What we are being told is much more impressive and convicting. Let us trust God; Let us hear.

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Sources on the Kuphar/Quffa boat:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuphar
http://indigenousboats.blogspot.com/2016/04/the-mesopotamian-quffa-or-kuphar.html

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God’s rest is not something to sit back and enjoy. How can it be? Our bodies deteriorate with every passing breath. We approach the end of our lives with the fleeting of every moment. God’s rest is for us, but it is through repentance that we find it. God is not commanding us to chill. He is not asking us to kick back and watch him work. He is asking us to do the work. When we hear his teaching, we should hear our own sins revealed and be moved to action because our lives are fleeting. There is no time to bask in the beauty and peace and love of daddy god. There is a tremendous amount of work to do. God loves us. He commands repentance, and through that repentance we are moved to action. This action brings rest, but when we chill out and enjoy it, we end up falling back into sin and we have to go through the whole process again. The rest should energize us. We can’t become fat and lazy having a nice time, enjoying how much we love God. We have to be on the move. It’s a poetic contradiction. Repentance brings rest, but the scriptural rest drives you toward action, movement, expending energy toward helping others: the sick, the lowly, the widow, so that you can multiply that rest which is the product of God’s mercy. This is the story.

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In the Eastern Christian world, it is common to wish people a hearty “many years” whenever they are celebrating any meaningful life event whether that be a birthday or an anniversary or when they become chrismated into the Church. This is not said to suggest that there is anything special about having a long earthly life, as if that is the criterion for God’s blessings. If that were the case, we’d have a major issue because the vast majority of the saints we commemorate and imitate did not live long lives. So why do we say this? Because we are mortal and our lives will come to an end whether we’re ready for it or not. And when death comes, judgment follows. So when we wish that God will grant our fellow Christians many years, we are wishing that God will grant them more time to repent. Because it is not the length of years that signifies holiness, as we will soon discover, but how faithfully we lived as an abdullah - a slave of God.

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Here are our notes regarding Cain's dynasty for you to read yourself:
Cain and his wife have Enoch, which means “to dedicate” and it makes sense because Cain then builds a city and also names it Enoch, after his son. So, we can see that Cain is dedicating his actions not to God, but to his lineage and the civilization he is building in his own image. Enoch fathers Irad which comes from the word ‘arad’ which is a Canaanite city and also a verb that means ‘fugitive.’ Irad fathers Mehujael which means ‘stricken (one) of God.’ Mehujael fathers Methushael which means ‘man of God’ and the word for ‘man’ is the Hebrew ‘mat’ which often carries the connotation ‘of a few men’ so one could argue that Methushael denotes a man of God when ‘men of God’ are scarce. Building off of that idea, and what I think this text is ultimately alluding to, is that this is a man of a negative god as in ‘little g’ god, so a man of a ‘little g’ god. What is this type of man? Well… it’s a temple priest. The priest of the local deity. Now, this might sound like pure conjecture but stick with me for a minute and I think you’ll get the connection. Methushael fathers Lamech which means, get this, nothing. Lamech doesn’t mean anything… it’s a made-up word not connected to any root that we know of. Well, we can see that so far the authors have been very literal with some things, but pretty vague with other things, alluding to certain ideas without shoving them in the hearers' faces. We have also seen that the authors have used a variety of classic literary devices such as foreshadowing, poetry, rhyming schemes, clever manipulation of grammar, etc. What we have here with Lamech is an anagram! An Anagram is the rearranging of letters in a word to form a new word. Lamech is an anagram from the Hebrew word Melek, for King. This is corroborated by the fact that the vowel structure is identical from word to word. You can hear it! lEmEk and mElEk. Following this train of logic, let’s say that Lamech means king.

Okay so before we continue let’s pause and break all of this down what we have so far using the meaning of the names opposed to the names themselves: Cain fathers Dedicate, Dedicate fathers Fugitive, Fugitive fathers The Stricken One of God, The Stricken One of God fathers The man of god, The priest. The man of god, The priest, fathers the King. I understand that all of this might be hard to follow so we’ll be sure to include it all in the show notes.

So we then hear that Lamech took for himself two wives… how kingly of him, right? The first is Adah which means ‘to adorn or decorate oneself’ and the second is tselah which means ‘to shade or grow dark’ and is indeed related to the word ‘tselem’ which means a shadowy image. Obviously, these are not positive indications.

His two wives bore a total of three sons. All three of their names come from the Hebrew word “yaval” which means “to lead the way or guide” and we will see why. Each of their names is a different form of the word yaval which allows the authors to ensure each character is identifiable within the story. So Adah, or ‘the adornment’ births Javal who ‘led the way’ for those who live in tents and have livestock and she also births Juval who ‘led the way’ for the musicians and let’s say by extension, the arts, and Tselah, or ‘the growing darkness’ births Tuval-cain. Tuval-Cain is he who led the way of every craftsman of bronze and iron. In other words, he led the way in making instruments of war. What is more is that his name has something that his brothers do not and that is the addition of the name ‘Cain’ which is an obvious harkening back to their progenitor, or father, Cain. But remember: Cain isn’t just a name. As we established at the outset of this chapter, Cain means spear! So Tuval-Cain is He who led the way of the spear. He is the first war master. How much clearer can it be? Tuval-Cain: he who leads the way of the spear is the son of the king and the growing darkness. This entire genealogy is the story of the first human empire.

One last note in this genealogy is that Tselah has a daughter called Naamah which means ‘delightful or passible in beauty.’ This entire family is centered around the celebration of the human. A king to be worshipped, sons who head the various aspects of metropolitan culture such as raising cattle, music and entertainment, and war. And lastly, a princess who is made out to be an icon of physical beauty.

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Join us as we embark on the story of Genesis chapter four. We will meet new characters and hear various details that work to establish the lore of the story of Genesis, not to mention the most disastrous act committed by humankind thus far. Which, according to us, is worse than murder.

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When we approach the scriptures, all too often we rely on what people have told us about them instead of taking it upon ourselves to hear it correctly. We become beguiled with strange ideas and sensational heresies. If we don’t listen to the scriptures closely, we will not know the scriptures and naturally, we will not know when they are warped and causing us to go astray. When we do this, we cannot be surprised when things go awry and death and destruction come at our doorstep… because God has warned us of this beforehand… He has told us so… whether we listened to his words or not.

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Did God really make Woman for her to be subordinate to man? In today's episode, we read through Genesis chapter 2 and discuss a variety of things such as the images of shepherdism alluded to in the assignment of man to the garden, the early red flags of man's descent into sin, and the true colors of the introduction of Woman in chapter 2.

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In this episode, we conclude our reading of the "first creation account" and discuss what has been the character introduction of God, as well as the introduction of the theme "toledot" or "generations."

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In this episode, we discuss the introduction of Mankind to the stage of the biblical story. This section has been historically inflated with all varieties of philosophical presuppositions. Eisegesis, if you will. This is not the way to read scripture. Join us as we attempt Exegesis. This approach is to lead from out of the text the originally intended message. If we allow the Hebrew to speak on its own terms and we look at the overall structure of the literature in this section, the introduction of mankind is astonishingly simple but much more vexing.