Pints With Aquinas - Mind-Blowing Bible Study w/ Dr. Scott Hahn

Episode Date: September 5, 2024

Dr. Scott Hahn is a renowned Catholic theologian, Christian apologist, and best-selling author. He is the founder and president of the St. Paul Center, an apostolate dedicated to teaching Catholics to read Scripture from the heart of the Church. Dr. Hahn holds the Fr. Michael Scanlan Chair of Biblical Theology and the New Evangelization at the Franciscan University of Steubenville, where he has been a professor since 1990. A former Presbyterian minister who converted to Catholicism, Dr. Hahn has written over forty popular and academic books, including “Rome Sweet Home” and "The Lamb’s Supper: The Mass as Heaven on Earth". Show Sponsors: https://hallow.com/mattfradd https://strive21.com/matt https://exodus90.com/matt Get the Ignatius Catholic Study Bible Here: https://ignatius.com/ignatius-catholic-study-bible-2h/  

Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now at the hour of our death. Amen. Amen. Saint Paul, pray for us. We have Saint Paul of the Cross up there. Oh nice, we've gone to his shrine. The icon, so the relic, yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah Yeah, we actually have an icon of st. Paul. Oh in the st. Paul center of the reliquary chapel All right, we look good All right, you say whenever Whenever doctor han it is great to have you back on pines of the coinus. Thank you for always coming back It's great to be with you again, Matt. Congratulations on the brand new St. Paul Center. That's right. Since we last spoke was in October of last year.

And so in January of 2024, we had the grand opening and we had the Bishop of Steubenville. We had the mayor as well as the president of Franciscan. And I want to issue a general invite to anybody and everybody to come see us. It's two acres right across the street from the university, 25,000 square feet, three stories now, equipped with all kinds of good stuff. You've been there a few times now.

Well, whenever you go to a place like this, you either get less or the same or more than you expect. And when I went in there, it was definitely more than I expected. It's very beautiful. And it's a beautiful building, which I think is important. It's not just a functional building. Yeah, it's that balance of functionality with aesthetics. It ended up being far more beautiful than I expected.

Well, we have a staff of full-time coworkers over 30, close to 35, and a number, probably two dozen people who are working part-time, half-time coworkers over 30, close to 35, and a number, probably two dozen people who are working part-time, half-time, whatever. But Ken Baldwin raised the money. We were on budget. We were on schedule. Rob Corzine, our other vice president, designed it. And I don't know if he knew that he had this gift,

but it was an amazing skill set because he was in every weekly meeting for over a year, every, you know, every outlet, every light switch, every. And so when you walk in, the effect is surreal. It's really, really special. How long has the St. Paul's Synod been around and teaching the scriptures? Yeah, it goes back to 2021. We got incorporated in 2022. We only had two or three people for the first three or five years, you know, and it grew slowly, but surely I never imagined we'd have our own building. I didn't think I really wanted one. But on the other hand, what I want most is whatever the will of our Lord is. So we moved from a home right behind our backyard over to Kroger's, where we had leased space, and then we moved up on campus for almost 10 years,

where the university expressed its partnership with us. We're an affiliate of the university. We're independent, but we're closely working with Franciscan University. And so we were up in Assisi Heights for almost 10 years in one of the buildings that used to be government housing. Yeah, I remember. And so we moved down in...

I remember it was getting pretty tight in there. It was getting very tight. We actually had, I think, four or five locations, people working off site, just because we'd grown so much. It's been a passion of yours ever since your conversion, no doubt to teach Catholics the scriptures. Yeah. I mean, when you say that I can still relive the shock of like, what the Catholic church is true, you know,

I'm going to have to become a Catholic. You know, I think many people know my journey and so it shouldn't come as a shock that I wasn't just non-Catholic, I was anti-Catholic and not bigoted but, you know, vehement. But studying Scripture was always more important than antagonizing my Catholic friends. So yeah, I go back 52 years, I was just looking at Addison Leitch's study on 1 Corinthians that I was listening to when I was a sophomore in high school. And I had an experience of the Holy Spirit where I used to fall asleep reading the Bible, then suddenly sacred scripture just cut fire. And, you know, I would still sometimes be distracted,

but the fire never has gone out. And so going deeper and deeper into the Bible and making more and more of the connections between the old and the new is what led me slowly but surely to recognize the Old and the New is what led me slowly but surely to recognize that the Catholic faith is that fullness of biblical religion, you know, so that it's not just New Testament proof texts trying to demonstrate doctrine. It is really reading the New and the Old contextually, like the early Church Fathers did. When I found that, it really swept me off my feet. I could relate to Clopas and his companion in Luke 24, you know, did my, we're not our hearts burning within us as this apparent stranger opened the Scriptures,

and yet Jesus clearly chose to withhold His own resurrected identity until they were at the table. He takes, He blesses, He breaks, and He gives. And so they tell the disciples, the 11, later on, he was made known to us in the breaking of the bread. And I knew enough from studying scripture, going to seminary, being a professor at a Presbyterian seminary and being a Presbyterian pastor and all of that, that the breaking of the bread was the idiomatic expression back in the first century for what we would

call the Eucharist. And for me, it was a profound symbol, but it wasn't a real presence, it wasn't much less a sacrifice. But when you start to read the New and the Old together, you're like, oh my goodness. On the one hand, this is really scary, but even more it's exciting because you recognize that the breaking of the bread, the holy sacrifice of the Mass, is where he chose to reveal his resurrected body, because what we find as Catholics in the Eucharist is not just the doctrine of the real presence,

but the real presence of the resurrected body, blood, soul, and divinity of Christ, which is the only explanation for why Jesus suddenly vanished. Once they recognized him, you'd think he'd say, what took you so long? But once he vanishes, they must have been wondering, why did he set our hearts on fire? And then why did he suddenly disappear, unless it was exactly what St. Augustine said, because he brought them to the point where through the eyes of faith, they could see that that

broken bread, that Eucharistic bread was his resurrected body. Now, it isn't like this was a full-blown mass, but it was that sign of the miracle that showed that the resurrection was not just resuscitating his corpse like Lazarus, it wasn't just vindicating his innocence over the false accusers, or even fulfilling the prophecy or, you know, a historical event with witnesses. It really is a mystery that the resurrection on Easter Sunday is ordered to the discernment of faith that in the Eucharist we have His resurrected body.

It's the same body in the Upper Room, same body on the Cross, same body in the Tomb, but now when we speak of the real presence of his body, it's the resurrected, ascended, glorified body. That's beautiful. I want to get back to that. Before I do, I want to just make a preliminary note that I think is very encouraging. Back in the 90s, when did you convert? 70s, 80s? 86. Sorry. Yeah. Was it 40s, 50s? Yeah. Well, you know, back in the 90s, people would say Catholics don't really know the scriptures, but I would say because of your work, because of the work of Jeff, and now Father Mike Schmitz, I mean, that's the number one downloaded podcast in the world for a while, was a Catholic priest reading the Scriptures. I think that stereotype has gone away because of

your work in the world. Well, I mean, it certainly is a decentralized project, and if there's one person, it would be the third person of the Holy Trinity, to be sure. But it was something I didn't have enough faith to pray for back in 86 when I came into the church. I had so many negative experiences of how much liberal, hypercritical Protestant reading of scripture had spilled into the Catholic church, and especially in higher education.

Not that historical criticism is per se evil, but it's limited only to the human, not the divine, the natural, not the supernatural. And critical methods claim to be scientific, but they haven't achieved an interpretive consensus as to the meaning of a single verse of the Bible. In fact, if anything, there is a greater spectrum of conflicting, contradictory interpretations as a result of introducing historical criticism. So I remember talking to a priest who took one Old Testament class, and he described the experience as sort of like learning how to apply embalming fluids to a cadaver. It

was so ancient, it's so old, it's so merely human. And I'm like, wow, that's what Ratzinger also described his experience was like, learning how to perform a respectful and reverent autopsy. Wow. I remember hearing a Protestant pastor back to the breaking of the bread. Actually, it wasn't Protestant pastor, it was Dr. William Lane Craig. I remember him saying that this isn't, and who I have a lot of respect for, but he said this is not proof of the Eucharist. He said, if anything, it's the opposite

because you have Jesus disappearing. So he's not here to defend himself, we don't have to respond to him personally, but what would you say to an objection like that where this can't be a sort of argument for Christ's presence in the Eucharist because when he gives us the bread he disappears. Well, I mean, what William Lane Craig advances, I would like to think, is a plausible interpretation because I held it for almost 10 years.

On the other hand, what I discovered was an even larger interpretive consensus in the first four or five centuries where Augustine gives voice to something that represents not just a majority report, but the frank recognition that what Jesus is doing on Easter Sunday is establishing the two-fold pattern of New Covenant worship. So we have the liturgy of the Word, or the Synaxis as they used to call it, where the law and the prophets will be read and then will stand for the Gospels because Christ has fulfilled the law and the prophets through be read and then will stand for the gospels because Christ has fulfilled the law on the prophets through his suffering, death, and resurrection.

But then going to the table in Emmaus where he takes, he blesses, he breaks, and he gives, you might be tempted to think, well, it's just a flashback to Holy Thursday in the upper room, except that Clopas and his companion weren't numbered among the twelve. This is not a deja vu. This is the moment that Jesus has chosen to disclose his own resurrected body. But then why would he suddenly disappear? In the ancient church it was clear because he's going to be made known in the breaking of the bread, which will be the second half and the climax of the liturgy of the New Covenant. And so from earliest times, I mean you can read Justin Martyr in the second century and

look at the checklist of things that you're going to do when you gather on the Lord's Day. And the breaking of the bread was never simply a sacred gesture. It was always a sacrifice. It was the fulfillment of Malachi 111, arguably the most frequently quoted Old Testament passage with reference to the Eucharist as sacrifice, a clean oblation, a clean offering. And so if you could find in the first five centuries where somebody said, you know, he disappeared precisely so that you wouldn't mistake this for the Eucharist, you know, I think you'd have Clopas rolling over in his grave. Well, actually, never mind.

There's a memorial feast for St. Clopas rolling over in his grave. Well, actually, nevermind. There's a memorial feast for St. Clopas on September 25th. Well, let's talk about this road to Emmaus, because if there was ever a part of the scriptures where I wish the authors elucidated more, it would be that. What is it that Christ talked about? I mean, it gives us a basic idea

that he opened the eyes from Moses and the prophets and how they all pointed to him. Yeah. You know, again, I want to just make a gesture of respect to William Lane Craig, who represents, I think, a large number of other Bible Christians who would pass a polygraph because they're utterly sincere, as I was. You fact, I was just reading a book, The Emmaus Code. It's over 400 pages. It looks at all of the oracles and promises of the Old Testament. It basically goes through Luke 24 verse 13, you know, with a fine-tooth comb. I'm trying to imagine what would be there in the law and the prophets.

It's so useful, but there is a single paragraph, not even a sentence, that is focusing on asking the question, why was he only made known in the breaking of the bread? And why did he suddenly disappear? There's not even the recognition that, okay, they weren't numbered among the twelve, they weren't in the upper room. It is not a flashback. You know, you can go back to the feeding of the five thousand where he takes, he blesses, he breaks, and he gives. So you can get the connection that Jesus was clearly preparing his followers for this to become the main event, as you find in the Greek church, the Latin church, and the Syriac believers, too.

You know, but I just want to emphasize the fact that it isn't just simply a hermeneutic that unites the Old Testament and the New in a way that was, in a certain sense, unprecedented. It does that. And we stand shoulder to shoulder with our evangelical Protestant brothers and sisters in affirming that. Because Clopas and his companion were presumably devout Jews, followers of Jesus, it wasn't like they had never really heard the law and the prophets. No. If they had been following Jesus, then presumably they knew these stories from childhood. But reading the Old Testament forward, from the law through the prophets up to the incarnation, is not the same as reading it backwards.

And so the idea that you just read the Hebrew Bible, the Tanakh, the Old Testament, you discover that there are all these promises, all these prophecies, but the people of God are still in exile, the diaspora, under Roman occupation, under Gentile domination for centuries and centuries. It reads like a story in search of an ending. Whereas we prefer the New Testament, but the New Testament is theologically, and I would even say spiritually unintelligible

apart from the old, because we're reading about all of these promises, all of these oracles, covenants that are fulfilled, but we don't really know them all that well. Well, if Jesus had any time to put together a to-do list for his Easter Sunday, his first day back from the dead, what am I gonna do on my first day back from the dead? Drop in on my blessed mother, drop in on Pontius Pilate,

maybe King Herod, or the Sanhedrin, or stop by the barracks where the soldiers were, you know, who had driven the nails into my hands and feet. None of that. You know, he could have created a kind of stadium effect in the court of the Gentiles or the Israelites, but instead he decides to spend his first day back from the dead leading a rather extensive Bible study, seven miles from Jerusalem to Emmaus. But it's not straight, it's windy, it's not flat, it's hilly, it would have taken hours,

and he's going to set two hearts on fire slowly but surely. Why would he do that unless he's got a goal, a telos in mind? And it seems to me pretty clear to the early church that the breaking of the bread ends up being the climax, the culmination of the Bible study. So the new is concealed in the old, the old is revealed and fulfilled in the new. But when he asked that rhetorical question, was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things before entering into his glory? I mean, the plain and simple answer would have been like, no, stranger. What would be necessary would be for the enemies of our Messiah to do all of the suffering, and that's how the Christ would

pass into His glory. And so, to reread the law and the prophets in light of what we would call the Paschal Mystery. I mean, you and I have talked about this before, where if we were to poll Christians in the 21st century, we'd probably get close to 100% agreement that what happens on Good Friday, there on the cross, at Calvary is a sacrifice. Whereas if we were to go back in time and stand there at the foot of the cross

with Clopas's wife Mary, Mary Magdalene, the beloved disciple, and we were to pull them, do you think this is a sacrifice? They'd be like, you know, well, a sacrifice can only take place in one, you know, it has to be in the Jerusalem temple, on top of an altar with a Levite standing by to preside at the sacrificial liturgy so that, no, this is not a sacrifice. It's a Roman execution if you haven't noticed. You know, they might also add, it's also the martyrdom of an innocent man who's been falsely accused. But a sacrifice, that doesn't really enter into the thing, you know,

until it did. But that was the point of Easter Sunday. Emmaus rode. Their hearts are burning, but their eyes weren't open till he takes, he blesses, he breaks, and he gives. He disappears so that they can testify to not only the connection between the old and the new, but between the resurrection and the fact that he is going to be manifest under the veil, under the appearance of bread, but it's going to be his resurrected body and blood.

Clopas and who was with Christ on the road? Well, that's the question. Some surmise it might have been his wife, but Jesus addresses the two as though they're males. I tend to favor what Gregory the Great and Aquinas both contend, and that was it's Luke himself. And no wonder, because St. Luke is the only one of the four evangelists to tell the story, and he tells it in such detail down to their emotional state, you know, when we are sad, when our hearts are burning, when our eyes are open, you know. Plus, Luke, and so Aquinas says,

echoing Gregory and others, too, that Luke was one of the seventy. And only Luke's Gospel records the appointment of the seventy in Luke 10. We also know about Luke's humility because when he joins up with Paul in volume two, the book of Acts, Acts 16, it's we went here, we went there, but he never refers to himself explicitly. He never refers to himself explicitly. He never refers to the joy and the privilege it must have been to be a companion to the apostle Paul. Paul pulls out the stops and praises Luke in his epistles.

And so this is why I think it's, to me, it's the most plausible explanation as to who Clopas's unnamed companion would be. But I like to also think of it terms in, every year when I do my annual retreat during Lent, I make this the subject matter of Lectio Divina for the whole weekend. And what I've noticed is as I've kind of weighed the options, who was that unnamed guy,

I felt recently like a Lord was saying, you are. And every other believer is and so the idea that I want to open up the Word of God The word that is inspirated in the law and the prophets to show you the real presence of the word who is Incarnated that the incarnation is not just a past event but a present reality The Eucharist, you know, I just feel as though our Lord is inviting all believers and especially Catholics who profess their belief, but it ends up being sort of like an item on a list of Catholic doctrines or talking points, you know, through the real presence. I mean, I don't know where you want to go, but I would love to read a little bit about

this. I would too. Yeah, would that be all right? Yeah, for sure. Now that same day, two of them were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem. I remember you once saying, Dr. Hahn, that boredom with the scriptures is not a sign of reading them too much, but something like an unfamiliarity with them. Is that what you said?

Yeah, you know, it's not that we read it too much, it's that we ponder too little. Yeah, already as I'm reading this, I'm thinking, okay, seven miles. How fun to be able to walk with who they thought was a stranger, but our blessed Lord for seven miles. As they talked and discussed these things with each other, Jesus himself came up and walked along with them, but they were kept from recognizing him. Jump in. That's significant. I mean, the eyes were kept from recognizing him. You'd almost be tempted to fault these two. Okay, we understand you're dejected. Right. It's dark. It's really the worst thing you've ever had as an adult experience. On the other hand, at some point during the seven-mile walk, wouldn't you take a close look at the guy? Wouldn't

making connections like this begin to seem familiar? Who else could do this? But I mean, Jesus. Why does he have holes in his hands? Yeah, right. But I mean, our Lord, obviously raised from the dead, is deliberately withholding His own identity. You know, so often we have biblical scholars who recognize the mysterious aspect of Jesus, both before and after the Paschal mystery. In fact, I want to just press pause for a moment, we'll come right back to this, but

I'm reading a brand new book by Dr. Brant Petrie entitled Jesus and Divine Christology. I pray you can get him as a guest. I just asked his publisher, because his publisher reached out about that book and said, let's do this, please. You know, it's academic reading, but he writes so well, and he's done the heavy lifting. I've taken this down to the Blessed Sacrament to read it, because what he does is patiently, systematically go through all of the proof to show that it's not just John who has a high Christology, Matthew, Mark, and Luke do as well. And painstakingly, he deals with all of the critical scholars who said that only John, not the synoptic gospels, or only the early church.

And so respectfully, he dismantles the arguments so that you're kind of left wondering, how did this specious consensus ever emerge? But what I like about the chapter I'm reading now is he's dealing with the riddle-like quality of Jesus' sayings. That parables are not just narrative parables, say like the Good Samaritan. Parables are also parabolic sayings that mashal, the Hebrew word for proverb or parable, could also be translated riddle. So we think of riddles as like humor for little kids. Bennett serves book of riddles.

What stands in the corner and goes around the room or goes around the world? A postage stamp, ah ha ha ha. But riddles were actually, especially in the book of Judges with Samson and other examples, you have riddles being the way that you, the way you reveal and conceal, the way you can speak so that ordinary people can understand, but at the same time that proud and the arrogant who think they have the eyes to see, but they

don't know what they don't know. They don't see what they don't see. Their own pride leads to a spiritual blindness. And suddenly when you're looking at these riddle-like sayings, you're like, Jesus was truly subtle, but he wasn't pretending not to be what he knew he was. And that is both human and divine. End of commercial. I can't wait to hear your conversation with Brandt. Well, we'll see if it happens. I'd love it to. Lord hear our prayer. Yeah, he's terrific. Wasn't he one of your students?

Well, we were really close friends. We still are, you know, but he is working, well, he happens. I'd love it too. Lord hear our prayer. He's terrific. Wasn't he one of your students? Well, we were really close friends. We still are, you know, but he is working, well, he was working with the Augustan Institute. Now he's doing some more work. I think he's focusing on research as well as writing. And I honestly would say he is a better writer than N.T. Wright, who is the C.S. Lewis of New Testament scholarship in the 20th century. But what Brandt does in Jesus and the Last Supper, as well as Jesus and divine Christology,

it's scholarship, and yet it's not written only for scholars. Anybody who's highly motivated. I'm reminded of what we've been working on, and we can talk about this a little bit later, that is the Ignatius Catholic Study Bible. It would not have happened apart from good scholarship, but it's the same kind of thing. It's written by great scholars, a team of them, but it's written for ordinary Catholics. Can we talk about that now? I want to put a link in the description below to this because I cannot wait to get my hands on this. So for those who are completely unaware, what is it, when's it coming out, why should they get it? The Ignatius Catholic Study Bible came out in one volume New Testament with thick pages so that

people wondered it'll never be one volume, it's both old and new. But sure enough, now at long last, in mid-November, Ignatius Press is going to release the Ignatius Catholic Study Bible. I was asked by the founder of Ignatius, Fr. Fesiu, in December of 97 if I would do this. And my short answer was no, but I gave a longer answer and that is, if you could hire a former student named Curtis Mitch who'd actually live with us. I mean, at that point in time, we'd had Tim Gray live with us for a couple of years, Ted Sree, Curtis Martin for a little while as well.

So we've had 66 or 67 students live with us for the last, well, since we moved here in 90. And they've always been like extended families, so my kids could see how cool it was to be Catholic and how exciting biblical theology could be. But Curtis taught our kids Greek, or he tried to. Michael is now a professor of Scripture at Mount St. Mary's, our oldest, but he reminds me of how they used to just give Curtis a hard time. But I said to Father Fesio, if you would hire him, then and only then would I be able to

really assist as a general editor in guiding him and then eventually in other people. So January of 98, so 25 years ago, he started working full-time. And I knew from my friendship with Curtis his virtue. He is just one of the most virtuous men I've ever known. And he's also a man of deep prayer, a man of humility, but a man of great learning. The languages, but also the literary, the historical, the theological, the patristic, you know, he would be just putting his hand over my mouth at this point if he were in the room, because he

is so modest. But anybody and everybody who knows Curtis Mitch I think now understands why I said if he can get to work on this full-time, we can get it done. I flew down to Nashville to meet with Thomas Nelson Bible publishers, because they had published I think at least fifteen Protestant study Bibles, and they explained to Father Fesio and to me a supply side effect that when you give to people who want to know the Bible just a Bible without footnotes, they get bored. They get confused. If you give them a Bible just with footnotes that are full of historical criticism, they

get utterly confused. So the study… You have to find that sweet spot. Yes. And so they had, and they had many best-selling study Bibles, but all Protestant. They said it'll take at least 20 years. You can never do it with just one or two people.

Were you with Ignatius at this meeting, or was it just yourself? It was just Father Fessio and me, along with Frank Couch, I remember his name, and a table full of others who had collaborated on Protestant study Bibles. Now, Father Fessio is a strong-willed fella. I can't imagine he took 20 years as the final answer.

Well, you know, I don't know exactly what he was thinking, but I suspect both of us were also realizing, okay, if you have one person who ends up working closely with me and others too, then we'll see what can happen. And they also said at Thomas Nelson Bible Publishers that you're gonna lose a lot of money up front, which Father Fessi did not care to hear. So I suggested in the meeting, well, what if you publish separate fascicles of the individual books of the Bible as they came out, like Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, eventually, and they're like, if that would work, we would have thought of it. We've done so many study Bibles. And I looked at Father Fessy, I'm like, they didn't

think of it, so they can't say it wouldn't work. And it ended up working well enough to basically finance the whole project. And then some. So, you know, we started in January of 98. We finished all the revisions and editing by December of 2023. And so it was almost exactly 25 years. But I would say this, because all of the other study Bibles have a wide range, a spectrum of scholars. You've got a spectrum of quality, whereas with Curtis Mitch and also people like John Bergma, and there are a number of other scholars who ended up contributing to.

Matthew Thomas, for example, did the Maccabees. There is a consistency of outlook, a consistency of fidelity. At the same time, you know, we only approach scholars who are great scholars but great teachers, those who could really break it down so that any highly motivated Catholic who wants to do this will find a new love for Bible study, especially the unity of God's plan from the old to the new. So the new is in plan B, the way the Gnostics would say, or a different God, but that you have a duality in unity so that the new is concealed and the old is revealed, and there's a

great focus on that as it was for the early church fathers. So the unity and content of Scripture is actually identified by Vatican II as the first the first axiom of Catholic biblical study. The second is the living tradition, the old and the new, read typologically as we would say. And then the third is the analogy of faith. So we have a lot of, we have three icons that identify these three ancient interpretive criteria, and you can get used to them right away. And you can also see the geographical, the historical, it's doctrinal as well.

It is not primarily an apologetic Bible, which is why I think it's going to end up being much more of an effective apologetic tool, because it isn't defensive. The best defense, I think, is a good offense, in this case especially. What kind of guidelines were they given, were the people who wrote this given? Because as you say, you don't want to put too much information in the footnotes. That's right. And so we had certain, what would you want to say, precedents. The two top-selling Protestant study Bibles with seven less books than we've got are the NIV study Bible and the more recently the ESV study Bible.

And both of them are over 2,500 pages, over 20,000 footnotes, so we wanted to come in under that. So you've got about 2,300... Were these with the Deutero Canonicals? No, without. So even with the seven additional books of the Deutero Canon, we end up with about 2,300 pages. We end up with about 18,500 footnotes.

Some of them are longer, some of them are shorter. All of them are in step with know, some of them are shorter. All of them are in step with the living tradition of the church. All of them are in step with the best scholarship that is out there as well. And all of them are sort of best practices when it comes to teaching, you know, serving up Scripture like it is the bread of life in preparation for He who is the bread of life. So there's a sacramentality that is always an undercurrent in these notes. There's also a spirituality to assist and facilitate prayer. You know, in fact, let me just look real quickly because you have 50 maps. I have written this down

because I knew I would forget, and I surely did. So, 140 word studies, 20-plus topical essays, 1,700 cross references to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, the 50 maps or more, the 25 charts, along with an expanded doctrinal index, an index of parables of chronology, biblical history, and introductory essays and outlines for every book. And And okay, so in this case, we're not going to force people to wait until late November or December. We're actually making available a pre-order on the St. Paul Center's website. That's right. So that will be linked below for people to go and they can buy it now, right? That's right. Yeah. That is why. Now, just hold that book up. I know it sounds like I'm not being paid to advertise this.

I am just this excited. This is a great size. It'll be roughly that size because of the thinner paper. That feels like a doable Bible. That feels like that could be someone's personal Bible almost. It's not so unwieldy that you'd only keep it on the bookshelf and pull it out occasionally. Absolutely. I love that.

And it's going to be in leather. It's also going to be in hard bound so people have the option. You know, when the NIV study Bible first came out back in 85, I was just stepping away from evangelical Protestantism as a pastor and as a professor at a seminary. But I remember thinking, this is the gold standard. In some ways it was surpassed by the ESV study Bible, but both of them always struck me as being a little excessive, you know, not because they were too scholarly, but because you got distracted by the footnotes. You ended up getting distracted and sort of taken, you know, carried along by them.

Whereas what we're trying to do, and I think what we succeed in doing, is make the footnotes make sense out of the text, and then make you want to go back and read that which is the most important. So it's kind of like, it's like, yeah, I'm reading the Scriptures, and when I'm like, oh, what's that? There's like a couple of sentences from someone who knows more than me. Ah, cool, and then I keep going. That's right. It's not going.

Exactly right. And a lot of material, a lot of citations from the early church fathers, as well as the doctors of the church, you know. Yeah, I'm looking at stpaulcenter.com.com. Again, we'll have a link below for people to click it, but even this website itself is very beautiful. Yeah, and we also have this offer that if people sign up for... The pre-order? Yeah, the pre-order, they can also gain access to the Emmaus Academy. Nice. You know, coming back again to the Emmaus road story, the Emmaus paradigm or the Emmaus pattern,

I'm convinced that every bit as much as Jesus wanted it back on Easter Sunday, you know, not only in the morning and afternoon was he not wasting his time setting their hearts on fire, but when they circled back and arrived in Jerusalem that evening and found the eleven, you know, who should suddenly appear? The resurrected Lord. And what does he decide to do? Starting with Moses and the law, the prophets, and the Psalms, he interpreted all of them, the scriptures concerning himself. Now, why would Jesus do two extensive studies of the law, the prophets, the writings, the Psalms unless he considered this a really high priority?

So it isn't the case that, well, he was traumatized. I mean, he had been falsely accused, tortured, crucified, he died, he descended into Hades. I mean, you don't have the time to put together a to-do list. No, we are the ones who have the misplaced priorities and getting sidetracked by all kinds of things more than we are drawn into the Word of God. I'm not a prophet or the son of a prophet, but I will say that I will prophesize, no, I won't do that. I will predict right now that that will be the number one Bible commentary in the world. Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised. I would love for someone to come along and improve upon it,

do something better. But I remember when I was asked by Father Fessio in December of 97, the week before, I had gotten a quote unquote Catholic study Bible that was practically indistinguishable from a liberal Protestant study Bible that I also had. And I compare that to, and I hesitate to say this, but the New American Bible, which is put together by the USCCB, they have a monopoly, it's the only one allowed to be read in masses

in America. But when you look at the study Bible, on the one hand, you get some interesting historical geographical background, but you get a lot of speculation that sort of subverts sometimes the historicity, the living tradition. And so, you know, it was- What do you say to that? Because people have pointed that out, that this seems like an indictment on the church or the... I think it was James White in a recent debate pointed that out, like, we don't know who

wrote Matthew, we don't know who wrote Luke. And this is... Except we do know it wasn't Matthew, it wasn't Mark. And again, I'd point to the scholarship of Dr. Brant Petrie, who shows this mythology that we treat all of them as anonymous gospels. If you do have a conversation with them, ask them about this scholarly construct that all of the gospels were anonymous, that how come we don't have a single copy of the tens of thousands that doesn't have authorial attribution to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John?

What's the answer to that? Because that seems like a knock down argument. Well, they had a fax machine back then and they faxed them. Oh, gotcha. There is no explanation. And Richard Burridge and a number of other people who've studied the genre of the Bias, the life of, point out that this is a commonplace, this particular approach. The Gospels are similar and yet distinct from the lives of these other great heroic figures. Is it one of these things where you just say something false long enough and it becomes gospel?

Absolutely, yeah. And especially in academic circles where you have to basically check your hat, your cane, and your faith at the door in order to be neutral, objective, scientific, you know. And there is a place for that kind of objective, scientific approach but as I would say, you know, the fact is you wouldn't approach a tone deaf man to be a more objective music critic. You wouldn't approach someone who's colorblind and say, look, you have no bias with regard to being an art critic. And so if you're reading Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, who are not only good writers literarily

and reliable witnesses historically, but men of prayer, men who contemplated Jesus, you could say sort of like the primal theologians. But if you don't share their faith, it doesn't make it easier to interpret these ancient documents on their own terms, which is what? Hermitical principles require you've got to interpret ancient documents on their terms not ours And so as Ratzinger pointed out and then later when he was Pope Benedict, you know There is no way that historical criticism is capable of demonstrating a single miracle or an authentic prophecy You're always looking for a natural explanation

for things that are presented as though they're supernatural. But it's only human, it's not divine. It's only natural, not supernatural. So it's tone deaf. It's sort of a color blindness that is not accidental but deliberate because we don't want the hierarchy, we don't want the tradition, certainly don't want the mag, we don't want the tradition, certainly don't want

the magisterial teachings to weigh in, you know. Yeah, the natural is the only game in town. They can't be open-minded enough to accept. That's right. And Chesterton's line that when you depart from the supernatural, you enter into the unnatural. Yeah. So there is no purely natural realm. Right. You know, there really is a bias. And when I worked with Dr. Benjamin Weicker on our book, Politicizing the Bible, the Roots of Historical Criticism and the Secularization of Scripture, 1300 to 1700, you see that four centuries' worth of philosophical foundations underpin so much of what emerges in the 1700s and 1800s in terms of the historical criticism of the so-called critical methods. Yeah, but this is different. I mean we learn from those methods, but we don't apply them, especially because now in the 21st century

you'd have to say that they're mostly out-noted. Yeah, I mean they're respectfully retired by the vast majority of biblical scholars, even those who are purely secular. I want to tell you about Halo, which is the number one downloaded prayer app in the world. It's outstanding. Halo.com.com. Matt. Fradd sign up over there right now and you will get the first three months for free. That's like a lot of time. You can decide whether it's useful to you or not, whether it's helpful. If you don't like it, you can always quit. Hello.com slash Matt Fradd. I use it, my family uses it. It's fantastic. There are over 10,000 audio guided prayers, meditations and music, including my Lo-Fi. Hello has been downloaded over 15 million times in 150 different countries. It helps you pray, helps you meditate, helps you sleep better. It helps you build a daily routine and a habit of prayer.

There's honestly so much excellent stuff on this app that it's difficult to get through it all. Just go check it out. Hello.com.slash.mattfrad. The link is in the description below. It even has an entire section for kids. So if you're a parent, you could play little Bible stories for them at night. It'll help them pray. Fantastic. Hello.com.slash.mattfrad. How do you celebrate the release of Psy? I mean? You guys have been working on this for over 20 years, so once it comes out, I hope there's gonna be a big party at St. Paul's. Oh, there certainly is. I think

it's gonna be a sustained celebration, you know. I was something of a building skeptic. I never really was certain whether we would end up with 25,000 square feet, three stories, and not only functional but really beautiful. So on January 25th, the feast of the conversion of St. Paul, I'm walking in and the Lord is kind of whispering, you see, I make up for what you lack. See how good I am.

And I admitted to my team that I struggled with the idea of raising that much money, building off-site down from the university. But all these people in the community kept seeing it grow, and they're like, thank you so much. And now that they've come to visit it. But I confess to my team that I was afraid of failure. I was afraid of public humiliation. And then our Lord just said, whispered the obvious in prayer, Scott, if you had no fear of failure, what would you attempt to advance the kingdom? But I mean, this Bible is what I'm talking about. I know. The same year that the building opened, which I never really believed would happen. The Bible is coming out.

And I joke with all of my teammates, co-workers, you know, five last things. You know, there's death, judgment, heaven, hell, and the Ignatius Catalyst study Bible. I just gave up. And I think at points other people also wondered, will this ever get done? And now, thanks be to God, it's done. And it's done in a way that greatly surpasses my highest hopes and expectations. Y'all should put on a big biblical conference about this. Wouldn't that be great? That's from your lips to God's ears? Yeah, we'll see. Yes, the answer is.

It's very exciting. Yeah. Yeah. So back to... Can we go back to the... Roto emeas? Yeah. Okay. So let's see. You asked the question, what do you think he talked about?

Yeah. Yeah. Well, the law and the prophets kind of indicate that the law, what do you think he talked about? Yeah. Yeah. Well, the law and the prophets kind of indicate that the law, the Pentateuch, the five books of Moses, you begin, I suspect, with Genesis. It's 50 chapters. You've got seven miles, so you're going to have to pace yourself. The first half of Genesis, almost all of the action revolves around Abraham as the main character. almost all of the action revolves around Abraham as the main character, Noah and others too,

but Abraham has two moments where you would see sacrifice. The first moment is in Genesis 14, where the first person referred to as a coan in the Hebrew, a priest, is this mysterious man named Melchizedek, who is also the king of Salem. From Psalm 76, we know that Salem is later renamed Jerusalem, so it's a rather prominent place, at least in its point there in time. So what is it that the first priest offers by way of a sacrifice? You'd expect maybe cattle, sheep, goats, and turtle doves, but no. It's bread and wine? Okay, so bread and wine is offered by this priest king in the earthly

Jerusalem to Abraham and his co-workers, as it were. And then the second moment of sacrifice comes as the final exam in Abraham's walk of faith in Genesis 22, take your son, your only son, whom you love. Or in the Septuagint, the Greek translation is, take your only beloved son. A line that we associate with the new, but they were taking it from the old. So here's a father defined by his faithfulness, offering his only beloved son as what? A Holocaust at a place that he will show. And so he goes to a place called Moriah. And again,

we know where that is because 2 Chronicles 3.1 is the only other place in the Hebrew Bible, Matt, where Moriah is mentioned. And it's where exactly one millennium later, Solomon built the Jerusalem temple there on the range of hills known as Moriah, the Temple Mount. So a father is offering his only beloved son as a Holocaust, and on the way up, he's carrying the wood. The son is. And he's also asking the salient question, here's the wood, the fire, where is the lamb

for sacrifice? The father replies, the Lord will provide himself the lamb, which I'm sure was a prayer from the heart of an aging father, but it also shows us why there was a consensus among Jews and Christians in the earliest days that this is not infant sacrifice, this is not child slaughter. He is a willing victim. Isaac is giving voluntary consent to his father offering him... How old do we think Isaac was at the time? The rabbinic majority report is mid-teens to late-teens. Strong enough to carry the wood to the top of Moriah, smart enough to ask the question, where's the lamb? But then righteous enough to anticipate or prefigure what an even greater beloved son

of the father would end up doing. Carrying the wood, the same zulon, the term is used by Paul in Galatians 3 and elsewhere. So we shouldn't read this as Abraham kind of overpowering Isaac and binding him to the wood. That's right. In Hebrew, the episode is called the Akadah, which literally means binding. Because in the interpretive tradition, the rabbis understand that Isaac,

if he's strong enough to carry the wood, he'd be strong enough to prevent an aging patriarch, Abraham would have been at least 115 at that point, from following through on some dark and dastardly deed that he didn't want to happen to himself. So the son asked to be bound, Akedah, so that he would be a willing victim. Well, we know the rest of the story. The angel of the Lord calls out from heaven. They see the ram caught in the thicket.

They offer that instead. And the very fact that there had been thorns in the thicket suggests that there might have been thorns on the head of the ram. But in any case, Moriah, we know, is not just out in the desert. It's a range of hills that include the Temple Mount, where Solomon built the Jerusalem Temple one thousand years later as a remembrance of what God had promised to Abraham and Isaac. But Moriah is also a range of mountains that would include Golgotha. and Isaac. But Moriah is also a range of mountains that would include Golgotha. Golgotha is a part of the Moriah range, where a righteous father more faithful than Abraham is offering his only beloved son as the lamb that the Lord would provide himself. And when does Abraham get his son back? We read

in verse 4, on the third day. now this could be one more coincidence among others But you know clopas and his companion knew that story Yeah, but it's sort of like hung in midair because like exactly why did God? require it and then why did God interrupt it and Then in the sudden, you know as you're reading backwards you're like because this is all not just an event, but a prophetic event that prefigures what the only truly faithful father would do in offering his only beloved son there at Moriah as a holocaust, and thus to fulfill the oath that God swore to Abraham as a reward for his faithfulness in verses 16 through 18, By myself have I sworn, says the Lord,

because you have done this, you have not withheld your only son, by your seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed. And so the seed of Abraham is actually found in the opening verse of the first book of the New Testament, Matthew. So they're obviously looking back and realizing, even if we didn't understand why he had to do it,

now we see. Mason- Real quick, is the fact that they found a ram in the thicket and not a lamb, is that significant? Buhl- Yeah, there's a, I would say the jury is split on that, you know. Because what people don't often recognize is that in the first Passover described in Exodus 12, I believe it's around verse 12, you're actually free to offer either a lamb or a goat. Okay. So when you think about the lambs on the one on the right and the goats on the left, you're like,

what does God have against goats? They could both be sacrificed, but it isn't altogether clear. What do you think? My jury's still deliberating. Yeah. All right. But we're only through the first half of the first book of the Law and the Prophets. The second half of Genesis, the main character emerges as Joseph, who is the son of Jacob, later renamed Israel, who's described as righteous, as Etika, who's

given a series of dreams, and as a result result he took the holy family of Israel to Egypt. Now if you realize that, okay, Clopas, what do we know about him besides the fact that his wife is mentioned in John 19? Hedges Sippus in the second century just reminds people of what he assumed they already knew that Clopas was the younger brother of, wait for it, St. Joseph. Really? Yeah. was the younger brother of, wait for it, St. Joseph. Really? Yeah. So here's Uncle Clopas who can't recognize

his resurrected nephew. Clopas are also- Where are we getting that from again? Hegecippus in the second century, Eusebius, the most reliable source we have in the fourth century. Clopas was the father of Simon, the second bishop of Jerusalem who was martyred also. And St. Clopas is the father of Simon, the second bishop of Jerusalem, who was martyred also, you know, and St. Clopas is, September 25th, an optional memorial feast. He was a prominent leader.

And so, this I think indicates the fact that Clopas would have been like, say what? Joseph? Huh. My brother was named Joseph. I never really got him. He's the son of Jacob. That's the name of our dad, too. He's described as righteous, and everybody could see that. He was given a series of dreams, the result of which...

So the brother of Joseph. Wow. He would be hearing about how St. Joseph, the son of Jacob, is given dreams as a righteous man. He takes the Holy Family down to Egypt. I never thought about that before, yeah. The early church fathers would sort of like scratch their heads and wonder how it is, you know this story, you know that story, connect the dots, you know? And that's what the Study Bible is all about, because that's what the early Church Fathers were all about. And not only do priests get this, and you know, we just had last month our third and

final priest conference for the St. Paul Center. One in January in Southern California, we do this every year. One in Austin, Texas at Lakeway Resort. About 200 to 240 come, and the third one was at Ogle Bay. And so between six and seven hundred priests, for almost a week of total immersion in reading the Bible, the old and the new in this way, and everyone just seems to say the same and the new in this way. And everyone just seems to say the same thing or some variation of it, that is, this is what we signed up

for in seminary, but this is what we never got. You know, one guy told me, I only had one Old Testament course that was required, and it wasn't really useful even for praying through the Old Testament, much less preaching. You're getting 700 priests a year on this retreat, you're saying? Yeah, between six and seven hundred priests. How much hope should that give people, that their priests are this hungry for the Word and are willing to spend that much time studying? I mean, tremendous hope.

We were doing about 101 different projects at the St. Paul Center, but the flagship of the armada would have to be the priest conferences. And we started doing them back in 2006 when I was teaching scripture and liturgy at St. Vincent Seminary in La Trobe. And so we began having summer conferences, we began having hundreds of priests, we began having wait lists, and that was so frustrating that eventually we went to two a year, now three a year. I'm not sure we could handle four a year, but I was down in Brazil, they want it there. I was out in Slovakia, they want a priest conference for Eastern Europeans as well. But it's not just the clergy, because Clopas and his companion

weren't numbered among the 12 hierarchs, you know. And so this is something that Jesus appears to the women first, and then spends most of the day with Clopas and this unknown guy, and then eventually ends up back with the Eleven with the Pope Peter there, you know? And so it's sort of like people who think they know how to anticipate Jesus' moves end up with scrambled eggs for brains. I mean, they just don't, they don't see this coming. I mean, the unusualness of Scripture is something of an argument for its authenticity. Even the fact that the Jews are writing about their own sinfulness seems to be like something you wouldn't be doing if this was meant just to be propaganda.

You know that is so true. You know when you begin to read the Bible you begin to sense the unity of God's fatherly plan that in the Old Covenant he's dealing with the human race, the human family in its fallenness, and he's manifesting law, justice, sometimes wrath, which he also does in the New Testament. But when the promises are fulfilled, they're fulfilled in a way that nobody saw coming. So it wasn't a committee that sat down and said, okay, why don't we arrange the stories and the prophecies and the Psalms? I mean Psalm 22, they've pierced my hands and my feet, you know. How would you foresee that?

You can't. I had Jordan Peterson here recently and he was talking about that very thing with the snake held up in the desert. His point was this is so unbelievable that no one could have put this together. Maybe you want to speak about that? I mean, Numbers 21, they have cursed God. They have said, you and the Lord have brought us out not to save us and bring us into our inheritance, but so that we would die in the desert from starvation. Well, what do you call someone who lies to kill? Well, I think Jesus calls him the devil, a liar and a murderer from the beginning.

So in Numbers 21, what are they imputing to God and Moses? Well, they're cursing. I mean, that's essentially blasphemy. And so when you have to lift a bronze serpent in order to be healed from the bites of the snakes, the serpents, I think it's a pretty clear sign that you're going to look upon the Lord your healer right after you basically described him as the devil. Wow. Like, okay, that is not what any rabbinic committee would ever devise, nor any patristic committee, but only after Easter Sunday, only after this Emmaus curriculum. And if it was Luke or if it was somebody else besides Luke, you can be sure that after Jesus led that extensive Bible study on Easter Sunday night, it didn't stop there.

They would have spent the rest of the time with the risen Savior before His ascension saying, okay, let's go back over this. You know, let's teach us some more, you know, as you prepare us to become the priests of the new covenant, we're going to be proclaiming the law and the prophets as having been fulfilled by your death. And not just dying, but the most grisly form of torture that the Persians invented that the Romans perfected. And you know, God becomes man. He's in a manger, then he's on a cross, then he looks like bread that's been broken. It's bizarre. I mean, the brain is exploding, but

at the same time, the heart is ignited. Our hearts are burning. The old, new atheists used to mock Christianity like this, that God had to be crucified. I can see why without faith it seems ridiculous. Stop. Let me repeat. I can see without faith why that would appear to be ridiculous. We take the gift of faith for granted when it is more precious than gold, much fine gold. It's sweeter than honey from the honeycomb. I mean, if David could talk about the law of Moses and take delight in that, the law of Christ, which isn't not just primarily a book, but it really is the

Blessed Sacrament, more than the inspired document, then it's sort of like, whoa. I mean, on the one hand, you can understand why unbelievers don't believe, because these mysteries are true, they're real, but they're so strange. Let's admit it. God in a manger, God on a cross, I want to go out and find a Muslim or an atheist and say, I understand. Just I get it, you know, because I didn't believe I was an atheist back when I was a teenager and all of the rest. But what we want to do as Christians, and especially Catholic Christians, is like, if we have the eyes of faith to discern the real presence of the crucified, resurrected, ascended, enthroned, Lord of lords, the King of kings, and the

high priest of heaven, which is the whole theme of the book of Hebrews, it's like, you know, why are we wasting our time just kind of surfing the internet? We ought to be just soaking in sacred scripture so that our hearts and our children and our grandchildren In fact, I brought these down because now Typology through the st. Paul Center is being made available for my grandkids And we got 23 of them now, but a lot of others We have a grandparents retreat coming up at the st. Paul Center to Mary mother of all is rooted in Hail Holy Queen the mother of God and the Word of God.

The Supper of the Lamb that I've done with Emily Stimson Chapman, I mean, this is basically taking typology of the Lamb's Supper and making it so that kids can not only get it – It's beautiful, too. But you and I were just at that conference recently for Hallow, and a group of parents who were at the reception at the St. Paul Center were saying, our kids! Typology lights up their minds, but their hearts, they want to get more of this just like we do. The clergy, the laity, adults, adolescents, children, it causes spiritual heartburn. And yet at the same time it prepares you for this Eucharistic Eureka moment,

you know, where it's like, that ain't bread anymore. It looks, it tastes like bread, but Jesus kept His word. I think it was Pascal who said, some looked at Christ and saw only a man, and some see the Eucharist and see only bread. It seems just as insane to say that that Eucharist is the second person of the blessed Trinity than to say that that man who just got back from the bathroom and who has sweat is the second person of the blessed trinity than to say that that man who just got back from the bathroom and you know who has sweat Is the second person you know when you think about the Eucharistic revival that's been going on for three years now It's already scheduled for 2033 in Southern, California

the next National Eucharistic Congress to commemorate the 2000th anniversary of Jesus death and resurrection You know I can't help but wonder if we have 70% real symbol, sacred symbol, 30% real presence or what? It isn't like we simply wanna flip that and 70% believe in it. No, we want 100% to believe in the real presence. But we also want 100% to share this experience of Clopas where they said, you know, not only are our eyes of faith open to breaking the bread, but to set us up for

that, our hearts were burning within us. Why is that not more than 30%? Why is that not – God desires that to be 100% for all of his sons and daughters, whether they're old, young, or in between. It isn't like I want this more than Jesus does. Mason- I'm ashamed to say that when I heard about the Eucharistic Congress, I thought, oh dear, I hope this isn't just a shoddily thing thrown together for the sake of optics or for the sake of fulfilling some pastoral plan for the whole church. Everyone I know who's been there, I didn't go, said it was outstanding.

I did. It was stunning to the point of surreal to be in the stadium, to be in the main sessions, to be in the breakout sessions, to be able to address five or six hundred priests for me, and to share Emmaus to tell them about the priest conferences, to invite them, and then to speak to, I think, about 2,500 people with 1,500 people who were turned away because there wasn't enough chairs, and to share another version of this approach to the old and the new, and to show how the document illuminates the sacrament. One of the points that I made in that second presentation is that Jesus only calls one thing the New Testament, in the New Testament.

We call the document the New Testament, but the document shows that Jesus only used that kinē diētheke phrase in Greek, novum testamentum, when he was instituting the Eucharist. So that Greek word can be translated as testament. Yeah, kinē, new, diathēke, covenant or testament. Okay. Potato, patato, basically, you know. And so he doesn't say write this in remembrance, he says do this, but what is this? Well, it's the Eucharist, but they weren't calling it the Eucharist until the final third of the first century.

What were they calling it? The New Testament. Why? Because that's what he called it. So what do we conclude? That the New Testament was a sacrament before it started to become a document according to the document. In the earliest reference to the books of the New Testament, around 191 AD, I lay this all out in my book, Consuming the Word, the New Testament and the Eucharist in the early church, where I showed that the New Testament was the Eucharist in the early church. In 1.91, we hear about the books of the New Testament. But when you look at that statement in context, the New Testament was still the Eucharist. But these are the books that were written to be read and proclaimed as showing how Christ fulfilled the Old. So these are the books of the Eucharist. These are the books of the Eucharist.

These are the books of the New Testament. And in the second century, Irenaeus is trying to show what is the source, the authority, and the standard for all of our doctrinal beliefs. He said, we base all of our beliefs upon the Eucharist, which is another way of saying we base all our beliefs upon the New Testament. So when the document is collected and officially canonized in the second half of the fourth century, it wasn't like the church was in suspended animation. What are we supposed to believe? No. Jesus said, do this. They preach the gospel, they baptize new believers, they celebrate the breaking of the Eucharistic bread in Acts 2, Acts 20, 1 Corinthians. It's the idiomatic expression for what we would call the Eucharistic liturgy.

I think this is a quote from you, and I love it, and I'd love you to expand upon it. You said, I believe, the Bible is not a manual for a church still in shrink wrap, but the Bible presupposes a church already in existence. That's right. Yeah, absolutely Excellent. Another thing that I... Because that is how we often look at it or at least... I did. Yeah I mean for most of my Protestant life spiritual. Protestants who might be trying to start a church. They'll go to the church What should the church look like? Right as you say the church was an exit. Church wrote the Bible You know if you take a living organism out of its natural habitat to study it

You know say a botanist takes a plant out of the woods and brings it back to the lab and puts it under the hot bright lights and Microscopes and he wouldn't begin wondering why is this withering and dying? You want a fish out of the ocean? Yeah, so when you take the New Testament document out of its sacramental context, in which it was written, for which it is written, by which it is proclaimed and fulfilled in the Eucharist. And then you begin wondering, why are we forming 20, 30, 40, over 40,000 denominations, all

by people who sincerely believe that they're getting it right. They'd pass a polygraph. You could be totally sincere and still be sincerely wrong. But when you put the document back in its Eucharistic habitat, then suddenly you realize this is why we call it not just sacred tradition, but living tradition, because when you read the new in light of the old and then you hear how the old is fulfilled by the new,

this is the DNA of the early church. I know a lot of people debate the merits or the demerits of things that have happened since Vatican II. And I'm not going to really dive into that swamp, but I would say this. One benefit that occurred in 1970 was the revised lectionary, which intentionally fulfills what was stated there in the first of the sixteen documents of Vatican II, the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, Sacrosanctum Concilium, which called for more exposure to the Scriptures. Well, as of 1970, there was a 400% increase in the amount of the Old Testament that would

be read and proclaimed on any given Sunday or feast day from every period of salvation history, from every part of the Old Testament. And my former pastor, God rest his soul, was a seminary teacher when that came out, and he told me years later, we were so excited, but we were never instructed. We didn't realize that there was a deliberate coordination, a strategic alignment of the old and the new, so that this pattern of promise and fulfillment would come back. So if you're applying historical criticism to that lectionary, you're basically dissecting dead animals.

Two questions. Who is it who did that? Because it is remarkable. Like, who is it that kind of mirrored the old with the new in the lectionary? And then maybe give us an example of something that we Catholics might miss on any given Sunday or weekday Oh, yeah, I published a book back in 05 entitled letter and spirit from written text to living word in the liturgy and in the opening chapters, I summarized the history of that because when Vatican II concluded in 1965 and when the revised lectionary was promulgated around 1970 you have a committee, Chatus

11, I believe it was. And it was, I think it was headed up by a Benedictine by the name of Father Cipriano Vagagini. I had read all the way through his 996-page masterpiece called The Theological Dimensions of the Liturgy, and Vagagini sort of oversaw this committee. But I think, you know, I've heard from friends of mine who are Benedictines that what Gerard Goulagrange was to the Dominicans at the Angelicum,

Cipriano Vagagini was for the Benedictines at San Insalmos in Rome. They revered this man. What is he? He's a patrologist. He's a liturgiologist. He's a biblical scholar. You know, well, what?

He's all of the above. And he was a man of deep prayer and holiness. And so he worked hard with others, but I think he probably did a fair bit of the heavy lifting. So that when this was proposed to Paul VI, they were probably deliberately, it was an intentional compilation of readings

that not only were rooted in the first five or six centuries, but also could restore the tradition of reading the old and the new, not just in tandem, but as mutually illuminating, interpenetrating, so that there's an inseparable bond not only between the old and the new, but an even stronger bond between the document of Scripture and the sacrament of the Holy Eucharist. That was a vagagini. And so when you read the theological dimension of the liturgy, I started reading it when

I was a Protestant. And I'm like, I found myself wondering, this could all be true. And thinking to myself, I hope it is. Because if it is, I'm not going from a lot of good news to less, but it was so much more of the Gospel, and it made so much deeper sense out of what I already believed. When we were talking earlier about how nobody standing at Calvary on Good Friday would have said, what a sacrifice, what an execution, what a martyrdom. But only when the Fathers cited St. Paul st Paul in first Corinthians 5 7 Christ our Passover lamb has been sacrificed then and only then can you see okay?

We don't understand Good Friday unless we look at it in the light of Holy Thursday What he's instituting in the Eucharist is the Passover of the new covenant So the sacrifice of the Lamb of God is initiated through the institution of the Eucharist. But that sacrifice, if it is a Passover, and a Passover was never a meal, if the Eucharist is just a meal, then Calvary remains an execution. But if the Eucharist is the Passover of the New Covenant, and the Passover in the Old was always primarily a sacrifice, then a communion meal on the sacrificial lamb, how much more true is it that the

sacrifice is initiated when the Eucharist is instituted, but that exact same sacrifice is what is consummated on the cross there at Calvary on Good Friday. You can't understand either event without the other. Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed, so the Eucharist transformed the execution to a sacrifice holier than all of the animals that were offered in the Old Covenant Temple and retired them. But then Easter Sunday, as Clopas would testify to the 11 apostles, now that sacrifice is also the blessed sacrament. It is the Holy Eucharist. Our eyes were opened to his resurrected body in the breaking of the Eucharistic bread. We call it the Triduum, the Paschal Mystery, the memorial Thursday of his death, Friday,

and his glorious resurrection and his ascension into heaven, where he doesn't just make a clean escape, he now basically presides as the heavenly high priest in the heavenly sanctuaries we read in Hebrews 6-9. And so through the power of our earthly priests, the Holy Spirit enables them to do what? To speak human words like Jesus did, to transform earthly matter, bread and wine, into the resurrected body, blood, soul, and divinity of Christ. That's what our son, Father Jeremiah, does in the Steubenville Diocese. It's just like, again, it's too good to be true unless it's the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth we profess as Catholics. Now, I know we think of Moses as the lawgiver. Do we also refer to him as

a prophet? Oh, indeed, he is, yeah. In fact, Moses himself refers to himself that way. Of course, yeah. In Deuteronomy 18 verses 15 through 18, he predicts that there will be a prophet like unto Moses. That's right, that's right. So when Jesus multiplies the loaves in John 6, they said, this is indeed the prophet who's to come into the world. That is the new Moses.

Now, you know, I just basically derailed my own train of thought like 25 minutes ago, because we barely got through Genesis. But I mean, Exodus. Well, that's what I wanted to ask you about, is how, if you don't mind talking about it, if you want to go somewhere else, that's okay. But as, I mean, Christ here in this conversation is how foolish you are, how slow to believe all the prophets have spoken. So I guess what was it that Moses spoke, but more than maybe how he spoke, how does his life prefigure Christ, who leads us out of... This is a good question. This is not an easy one to answer, because I think that the answer lies in a

deeper recess of Scripture than we first expected. So what we assume is that the Old Testament is the law and the prophets. So you have Moses giving the law, and yet he's also a prophet? Okay, yeah. Because anytime somebody gives you a divine revelation of sacred truth that could never be known on the basis of philosophical logic, scientific method, historical or philosophical reason. What do you call that? You call that revelation.

And what do you call the agent of revelation? You call it a na'vi, a prophet. And so the law and the prophets, this is why, for example, when Peter gets up and gives the first sermon at Pentecost in Acts 2, repeatedly he refers to David in the Psalms as a prophet. Now, we think of him as a king, but the Psalms are drenched with prophecy, okay? It's like Princess Bride. You keep using that word, but I don't think it means what you think it means. Prophecy is not simply one of the major prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah,

Ezekiel, Daniel, or one of the twelve of the minor prophets. No, anybody who God uses to reveal what had been previously concealed that is not knowable by human natural means. So Caiaphas in the Gospel of John, being high priest that year, prophesied about how it would be better for one man to die than for the nation. Here's a cynical, corrupt priest plotting the death of the Messiah, but because of his office, John is not being ironic. Well, he is being ironic, but he's not in any way being deceptive. So Balaam's ass, you know, Balaam himself, a false prophet, but not because he told a lie, but because he was telling the truth prophetically for money, for gain. So I would point people, in fact, I've been working for the last three

to five years off and on, on this manuscript on the Emmaus Road, because I have, I mean, Aquinas pints of, you know, pints with, and Aquinas' master, St. Augustine, both use prophecy in a way that nobody else speaks of prophecy that way. And they base it on a number of passages, but especially 2 Peter chapter 1 verses 20 to 21, where no prophecy of scripture is a matter of one's own private interpretation because no prophecy ever came apart from the Spirit and the men who are bearing this word. Prospero, it's a technical thing, but to make it simple, just to summarize, what Peter is saying in talking about the transfiguration in the earlier verses is basically this,

that when Jesus was there on the mountain with Moses and Elijah, and we were witnesses of this, we realized that we were trying to come up with our own interpretation of the meaning of the law and the prophets, and then Moses and Elijah, the transfiguration, point to a transfiguration that has to occur within the intellect, the imagination, the will, a transformation. And so the takeaway for Gufton was the Bible is not just a book or a collection of 73 books that include the section called the prophets, major and minor. All of Scripture is prophecy. In fact, Aquinas says that the creation account in Genesis 1, 2, and 3

is not literal scientific historiography. He just says it's prophecy. And it's a matter-of-fact reminder to his readers of something that in the Middle Ages he assumed they already knew. How would Adam know that God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life? How would Adam know that God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life? How would Adam know that after the deep sleep that he fell into, God took a rib? How would Adam know, bone on my bone, flesh on my flesh, he shall be called woman, for that reason a man shall leave his father and mother? He's the only man who didn't have a father or mother to leave. For Aquinas, these are all mysteries.

Augustine says all of scripture is a forest of prophecy, so that the intentional meaning, the literal sense, is not reducible to what were the human authors thinking when they wrote this. They're prophets. They're endowed with infused knowledge that isn't merely human but divine, so that when Genesis being written,

it's being written not just by a good writer who has literary artistry and a reliable historian, it's written by a contemplative. We'll pretend he's Moses, because I actually think he might have had a... Moses wrote of me, said Jesus, and I don't think Jesus was wrong about that. Anyway, I think when we approach the Bible as prophecy, we aren't doing a novelty. It is stepping back into something that is ever ancient and ever new. It's what Augustine in contra Faustum, and especially in Spirit in the Letter, it's what

I'm trying to kind of relearn. My son, when he wrote a dissertation on Aquinas's understanding of the relationship between the old and the new, and how he drew more from Augustine than any of his other medieval contemporaries, he defended this dissertation at Notre Dame. I read it and my brain exploded. My heart was ignited. This makes so much better sense! And this became like the heart of the St. Paul Center, the heart and soul of what we do with priests. This year all of the conferences revolved around

prophecy and typology. That was the title of all three of the priest conferences because as Cardinal Dona Lou says, prophecy is not merely predicting the future the way we assume. It involves Messianic prediction. But prophecy, Danielou says, is nothing other than the typological interpretation of history. So it's not just predictions in Isaiah 53 about the suffering servant. Israel itself is a prophetic people. Moses himself is a prophetic person. So that when you see that Moses is born to be the Savior, but as soon as the Savior needed to be saved, as soon as the Savior was born, he needed to be delivered because of this tyrant named Pharaoh who targeted all of the Hebrew male children. So the Savior needed to be saved.

And you think of Jesus sent to be the Savior, he needed to be saved because of some tyrant named Herod who targeted not only him, but the Hebrew male children in Bethlehem. So Joseph back then, Joseph in Matthew, they go down to Egypt, they come out of Egypt, they pass through the water, Jesus passes through the water. They're led out of the desert. Jesus is led out to the desert. They're tempted for 40 days while Moses is fasting. Jesus, too, he passed the test that Israel failed. Why? Because he quotes the Scriptures. No, he's quoting Deuteronomy 6 through 8 with all three temptations, because that's where Moses corrected the disobedient Israelites. You don't live by bread alone, not even the miraculous manna.

You live by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. Secondly, you don't worship the Lord and him alone, not that golden calf. And you don't put the Lord, the Lord your God, to the test, especially while he's testing you. So not only does Jesus know where to go and what to quote, but Matthew was tracking him perfectly well because Matthew knows that there is an Exodus, then there's a new Exodus. There is a Moses, then there's a new Moses. There is an Israel delivered from slavery,

then there's a new covenant that brings a new law. And so when Moses scales the mountain to get the law of the Old Covenant after the 40 days of fasting, the next thing Jesus does after the forty days is to scale the heights and give them the Sermon on the Mount, which begins by saying, I've come to abolish the law and the prophets. I mean, we're off to the races. And it's like Mark Twain's famous line that history does not repeat itself, but it certainly does rhyme. But it's a divine poetry that the Catholic Church needs to rediscover that Clopas and his companion for hours and hours were like, Wow! Who does this? I'm sure if it was like, I'm sure I would have been like, okay, slow down, slow down, slow down, okay.

I know, I know, it's like, and they must have taken twice as long to get to Emmaus just to kind of try to digest it. I would have made him slow down. Sorry, I hurt my foot. We're gonna have to go a lot slower than we're character going. Let's just let it go along and hear some more from Micah. I was just reading Genesis again and I had Dr. Aaron Banzack, is that his name? He was on the show recently to try to help us understand William Shakespeare. And he said, no one understands, you know, the human person like Shakespeare. And I'm sure he's right in his own right. But reading Genesis, the most interesting of characters, I saw myself in every single one of them. I was so gripped by the people in Genesis.

As we should be. At the literary level. It's great literature. At the historical level, because we see how God is fathering a wayward family, dysfunctional with every generation. And at the same time, it's not just literary and historical. Above all, it's theological, but not a list of doctrines. It's so much more than chronological history. It really is a typological prefiguring of what? Weight. Well, what? Weight. We're in exile. Just keep waiting. Okay? And so you have Isaiah, you have Jeremiah, you have the prophecies of a new and greater Exodus, a new and greater Moses, a new creation, a new heavens, a new earth. So keep going back and rereading these things. But even then, it isn't the case that only the biblical scholars could recognize Jesus

on Easter Sunday. They especially were probably oblivious to how the mystery surpassed the highest hopes of the holiest and most intelligent Hebrews. Greg Fiskins Side step for one moment and talk about the great hope we should have, because I see how God works with broken instruments. I mean, you've got Abraham hiding behind his wife, you have Adam, who started all this mess, who's, correct me if I'm wrong,

tradition understands to be a saint. Right. I mean, that's pretty wild. So if God can save Adam and Eve, who are saints, he can save you. Right. Isn't that exciting? It's so hope-filled.

My goodness. I like to say that there is no saint without a past, except for Mary and John the Baptist. There's no sinner without a future. There's always hope, but even more, I'm thinking of a book by, I want to say it's Lawrence Turner. It's called Announcements of Plot in Genesis, and he demonstrates through all 50 chapters, if I recall, that every time somebody presumes to kind of take on the fulfillment of what

God had previously promised me, he not only thwarts the fulfillment through his pride, but postpones it as well. Whereas the people who are out to thwart the fulfillment of God's promises end up advancing it, fast forwarding it. God is writing straight with crooked lines from the very beginning,

but it's like our strength is not made perfect. His strength is made perfect in our weakness. So don't deceive yourself. Well,. His strength is made perfect in our weakness. So don't deceive yourself. Well, if his strength is made perfect in our weakness, how much more in our strength, you know, you'd be my co-pilot. You know, it's like, these are delusions of proud intellectuals.

Yeah, what a beautiful meditation. Thank you Lord for the work you're doing through me, especially when I'm unaware of it. And I thank you that you've given me enough time to do it in. I think sometimes I feel like I'm running around with a chicken with its head cut off, trying to make sure I'm doing what the Lord wants. Just relax, because it's His work.

Whatever good is being done. And the fact is, what we have covered thus far, though it only touches upon the first two. We've done Abraham and Moses, is that all we've done? But I mean, the fact is, you don't have to try to take a sip from a fire hydrant like me. That's what I hear from my students. And so what I want to do is sort of whet your appetite, but at the same time, just recognize the obvious, that you can't feast sumptuously without a kind of spiritual gluttony. And so Mother Church just serves up enough.

So there are two resources that I would recommend that both come from our center, the St. Paul Center. On the one hand, for the clergy, Dr. Bergsma, as you know, has put together four volumes called The Word of the Lord. And we have done nearly 200 shows that are available in the St. Paul Center, and for free now for any priest who wants access to it Where we work for about a half hour through all of the readings for next Sunday in order to help these priests make these connections To reflect and then also to proclaim but I also have a book myself. I mean

Bergman is a biblical scholar. Oh, yeah, you do. Yeah, it's called breaking, a biblical devotional for Catholics. I worked with Ken O'Gorick. He can help me include material from the catechism of the Catholic Church that matches the readings and the reflections that I, but I'm trying to connect the old and the new every Sunday for year B, the year of St. Mark. Year C is coming out in a matter of days. It might even be out by the time this conversation is broadcast. But in any case, breaking the bread is going to be the means by which you just have a ramp that gradually leads people to say none of those readings are accidental. All of them are strategic, but the effect is cumulative. Not just in the sense of like blowing up our minds, you know,

but really feeding us the bread of life in a way that, as Augustine would say, you know, the one who's at an advanced contemplative is never satisfied, and yet the little spiritual child will be so delighted and pleased to find out that I got something out of this too. And so it's the humility of those who know themselves to be sinners because of the power of the Holy Spirit were called to be saints. I think it was Chesterton who said that the church is shallow enough for a mouse and deep enough for an elephant. That's right. He's paraphrasing Gregory the Great who said, That's right. He's paraphrasing Gregory the Great who said,

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Genesis or Exodus that prefigured Christ in a way that most Catholics haven't thought about. Yeah, okay. So you mentioned Adam, you know, and how as our first father, he was the mediator of the Old Covenant, and he was tested in a garden, but he went to the wrong tree, and then he partook of food, and the only other time in the entire Bible where you have the phrase their eyes were opened Genesis 3 verse 7 They eat the wrong fruit and their eyes were open to nakedness to guilt That's the only other phrase I've never made that connection So in Luke 24 the new Adam who has established the new covenant in his own body and blood

Yeah, is going to withhold his identity until their hearts are burning and then he takes he blesses he breaks and he gives and Their eyes were opened in the breaking of the bread So the old covenant collapsed the new fruit. That's right So all of us as humans have Adam as our founding father Even Israel in the old covenant could trace its genealogy back to Adam. So we're in a glorious house, but the Old Covenant is like being in a home that is on fire.

You don't want to stay there just because it's a beautiful house. You want to get out because Jesus has borne the curses for having broken that covenant, but also he has released the blessings of the new covenant. And so the new covenant is for Jew and Greek. It's for Israel and the Gentiles. You know, at Sinai, when the tabernacle was built by Moses and the people, Bezalel and Aholiab, it was only barely big enough for the twelve tribes to assemble. That's the old covenant. Augustine and Aquinas point what Paul is saying

that when you look at the temple at Zion, it's different than the Tabernacle at Sinai, because Gentiles like Hiram of Tyre actually built the temple for Israel. The largest precinct in the Solomonic Temple was the court of the Gentiles, because they were invited up to learn to sing the Psalms, the songs of David, and also to offer prayer to the God of Israel because Israel is our older brother, their God is our Father, too. So the new covenant that unites Jew, Greek, Israel, and the Gentiles, this is why Paul never says, we are the tabernacle, we're the temple of the Holy Spirit. Paul never says, we are the tabernacle, we're the temple of the Holy Spirit. So it's not just pointing to Jesus, it's also pointing to the church.

It's pointing to circumcision on the eighth day. Hmm, Jesus was raised on the eighth day, when the mortal flesh that you get from Adam is basically cut off, and you get the immortal body of Christ on the eighth day, and you are baptized into that. And so in the Old Covenant you have the fief of Pentecost that celebrates, well, there's an ark from Passover to Pentecost 50 days after Passover when the law of the Old Covenant is given, but they worship the calf in Exodus 32, and 3,000 are slaughtered by the sword of the Levites. The New Pentecost, you have what? Well, the Holy Spirit is the new law,

it's poured out upon all flesh, and then three thousand are slain by the sword of the Spirit and resurrected in the waters of baptism, because that's the new Pentecost. And again, this is found throughout the Church Fathers. So it's not just predictions here and there like you're connecting dots. It's the whole cumulative effect of reading the law, the prophets, the writings, and the Psalms as like all of this, you know, the worst analogy I can think of is the only analogy. And so it's the best.

You know, I don't know if anybody here would remember magic eye art from the 90s. The first time you had art that could only have been generated by computers. Not even the best artists could. You look at these books called Magic Eye, we have all four volumes. And they're not particularly beautiful.

They're colorful. But only when you look at them with a kind of dead eye or a contemplative, just not gazing, but do they suddenly pop off the page and become three-dimensional? I remember seeing the episode of Seinfeld, and also there were like two or three other popular shows, Friends also, because some concede and others can't. You can read the law and the prophets and get the literal sense, but as Paul tells the Corinthians in 2 Corinthians 3, the letter alone kills.

It's the spirit that gives life. The Spirit doesn't go against the letter, but it goes beyond it. Draws out. Yeah. So the three-dimensionality of this divine artistry, the Trinity alone could account for. But that basically endows to varying degrees all of the Old Testament becomes a prophecy of the New. Then Jesus' rebuke is not adding insult to injury. Haven't they been through enough?

It's not rubbing salt into an open wound, foolish men and slow of heart. It's giving them a diagnosis just like He had given to the disciples, the twelve, for example, in Mark 8. You have eyes, but you can't see. You have ears, but you can't hear. How many loaves were there? Five. And then how many baskets of the twelve, and how many loaves were there? There were seven baskets. Do you still not understand? And they're like,

no. And most, you know, most lecturers and congregations are like, no. And so what does Mark do? He shows Jesus proceeding to heal a blind man. Do you see? Yeah, but I see men as trees walking. Okay, so let's do it again. Round two. And so that blind man is like exhibit A. He exemplifies me and the disciples who think they can see, wait a minute, you know,

the disciples are like, we know there were five loaves, two fish and 12 baskets. We know there were seven loaves and a few fish and 12 baskets. We know there were seven loaves, and you know, a few fish, and then seven baskets. What is the numerical symbolism? You need the Holy Spirit. You need the Holy Trinity. You need the Paschal Mystery. And even then, it's not like easy peasy. How do we see the numerical significance? Well, I mean, okay. Because I'm still seeing trees walking around.

Right. Okay. When Jesus is in the promised land up in Galilee, that's Israel, five loaves, two fish, many say the five books of Moses, you feed the 5,000 and you fill how many baskets? Twelve. The twelve tribes of Israel. But then Jesus goes outside the promised land and you have seven loaves and you think, okay, outside the promised land, you know, God created the whole world in seven days. There are seven different tribes of the Canaanites, and so the seven, and then the seven baskets of leftover shoe, so you have the seven loaves.

And so it's Jesus basically providing food for Israel and the Gentiles, which is why then he defaults to, you know, don't have the leaven of the Pharisees and the Herodians. They're like, Jesus, we don't have any bread, whether it's leavened or not. Do you still not understand? Because what the Pharisees and the Sadducees and the Herodians wanted was like to make Israel great again, apart from the Gentiles, at the expense of the Gentiles, whereas what God the Father wants is that the whole human family would come together under a new Adam who's tested in a garden,

goes to the right tree, and then he dies with a new Eve giving consent. And so eyes are open in the breaking of the Eucharistic bread, which is the antidote to mortality. It's the new Adam. And so all of these things are just going to be like, not candy for the soul, but I mean solid meat. And this is why Paul laments the fact that you ought to be enjoying the succulent steak, but I've got to take you back to the spiritual milk. Oh my goodness, that's definitely me. What are we to do with the Jewish people who rejected

Christ? Have you ever sat down with a faithful Jew and went, how can you not see it? And what's the response? It's been a few years, but of course I have. You know, invariably they wouldn't be willing to talk to me unless they had at least one door unlocked and open for me to pass through it. And so over the years, I've known a number of Jews who became Catholics. But I mean, in some ways, the most remarkable conversion of all is what occurred at Easter time in 1945. Because Rabbi Emil Zoli was the chief rabbi of the Synagogue of Rome, which arguably was sort of like the Vatican of world Judaism.

And for the last few years, he and Pope Pius XII had been conspiring to get Jews to safety by hiding them in the Vatican. People didn't often know that. I mean, there was that... No. Allowing hundreds and possibly thousands of Jews to dress up like monks or clerics to get them to safety. But in the process collaborating to save them, they ended up befriending each other.

And so they had late hours and they apparently discussed matters and Isaiah 53 for Rabbi Zoli turned out to be like the game changer. And so he was baptized at the Easter liturgy in 1945. I mean, that would almost be comparable to the Cardinal Archbishop or the Bishop of Rome, you know, getting circumcised and entering the synagogue or something, because, I mean, the world press, the secular media practically denounced him immediately as deranged or out of his mind or whatever, but he became the first lay professor where at the Pontifical Biblical Institute. So an old friend of mine, God rest her soul, Sophia Cavalletti, who was the foundress of the Catechesis of the Good Shepherd. She was tutored by Rabbi Zoli, who told her that he took as his baptismal name Eugenio instead of Emil. Why? Because Pius XII's name was Eugenio Pacelli, and it

was through their friendship and his own study of Scripture and in particular you said, you know, what other scripture? Certainly Isaiah 53 which was like the most cryptic oracle of all of the prophets But this is Isaiah the greatest of the prophets. He was despised and rejected by men a man of sorrows acquainted with grief Surely he is born our griefs and carried our sorrows yet We esteemed him stricken smitten by God and afflicted but he was borne our griefs and carried our sorrows, yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, bruised for our iniquities, so that upon him was the chastisement that made us whole, for by his stripes we are healed. For all we like sheep have gone astray, and the Lord has laid upon him the iniquity of us all.

He was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, us all, he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, like a sheep that before its shearers is dumb, so he opened not his mouth." The suffering servant is a new Moses, but is a new lamb, bringing about a new Passover, a new covenant. And when you look to see how he offered a sin offering, the many were made righteous. This is like the law and the prophets being fulfilled on steroids. And so I had a chance to meet with Sofia Cavalletti before she was called home in her apartment right off of Piazza Navona. And she described, among other things, we were promised 20 minutes,

we ended up with almost three hours. And she described what it was like to learn to reread the Old Testament at the feet of this former rabbi of the Synagogue of Rome, Zoli, who wrote a book called The Nazarene. It was written before he had converted, but you can already get a sense that there is a trajectory to this. Especially given the Second World War, I'm sure he was looked at as a traitor by his Jewish brothers and sisters. Exactly. And this is why even the Catholic press was like, you know, mute this. Eww, we're kind of a sheer...

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I hope Ben Shapiro is watching. Yeah. Because this is, yeah, I'm sure it was just like, I've heard you say that as a Protestant becoming a Catholic, you felt like you became more of a Christian. Yeah, more evangelical. So I'm sure those Jews that convert

say the same, a similar thing. Right, you know, I took a line from one of them, you know, because he was an evangelical after being a Jew, then he became a Catholic. And we talked about how often we sang Amazing Grace, and yet how amazing it is how Catholics are unamazed by more amazing grace. We have more to sing about. And it's amazing how unamazed we are because how unformed, how uninstructed we are. And then once you make up for what is lacking in catechesis, once you make up for what is lacking in the Old and the New, once you connect the document to the sacrament, you know, open

up the doors, the barn, you know, it's like we're off to the races. These horses are going to win whatever. How, I mean, we've looked at how Moses, well Christ is like the new Moses. Dr. Darrell Bock The new Solomon, or greater than Solomon as Jesus himself says in Matthew 12. Mason Fiery What about Israel? How is Christ like the new Israel?

Dr. Darrell Bock Well Christ, you'll recall, is described as being... Mason Fiery The new Jacob for those who are watching. Dr. Darrell Bock Yeah, think of Exodus 422. At the burning bush, after the long conversation, it's sort of like a telegram. Go tell Pharaoh, Israel is my firstborn son.

Let him go to serve me, or else I'll slay your firstborn sons. Yes. That's the Exodus in a nutshell. Okay, so Israel is called upon to be a nation in the family of nations, a lot like what Adam was to be in the family of persons. And so the rabbis even had an expression that what the forbidden fruit was to our first father Adam, the golden calf became when the firstborn son, nation, fell into idolatry. So fast forward to the Passover.

So if you slaughter a lamb, your firstborn will be spared, redeemed, but not just redeemed, but consecrated. Okay? So the Passover lamb is slaughtered, so as to redeem the firstborn, and who is that? The Israelite people, but also the Israelite firstborns within all the 12 tribes. So when you follow from Exodus 422 through Exodus 12, the Passover, you arrive in Exodus 24 where the quote-unquote young men are offering sacrifice. They're priests. Who are they?

We would assume the Levites, except the Levites don't become priests until the golden calf in Exodus 32. The rabbinic consensus, the unanimous testimony of the rabbinic and the patristic commentaries, the young men are the firstborn sons who were redeemed by the blood of the Lamb but consecrated to be priests and kings, rulers.

And so what a father is in the family, the firstborn son ideally ought to become when the father dies, you won't splinter because the firstborn son will be the father figure as the firstborn among many brethren Well, where have we heard that Romans 8? But every firstborn son fails as you read about Cain killing Abel as you read about Ishmael Taunting Isaac as you read about Esau harassing Jacob and you read about Manasseh being bypassed for the younger Ephraim, and you read about the firstborn Reuben, Levi, Simeon all bypassed for Judah, by the time you get to Exodus, Israel, my firstborn son, might sound like good news, but given the track record of all

of the failed firstborns – and by the way, I should mention, all of this is in my book, A Father Keeps His Promises. And it was like after Rome's Fleet Home, that was my second book because I was teaching Bible studies to high school kids in addition to college undergraduates. And I was way past due the deadline for the manuscript, but I'm like, not until high school kids can get this. So I dedicated it to the nine high school kids who were like, finally, we get it. I'm like, okay, I'm sending it off. But all of this stuff about Israel being a prophetic people, for better and for worse. And so you can see how they represent the firstborn Son of God, and how when they arrive at Sinai, what does God say? If you hear my voice and you keep my covenant,

you'll be a kingdom of priests, a holy nation. Well, they don't hear his voice. Moses does. What do they hear? Thunder. That's not a good sign. So Moses knows he's got to do penance, and that's why he fasted for forty days atop of Sinai to hopefully gain the grace that Israel needs to hear the voice of God, which they still don't, especially when they worship the calf. So the Levites end up becoming the priestly caste among the tribes of Israel. So what the firstborns and all the tribes of Israel would have had, now it's given to the Levites alone.

And so that's why after Exodus shows the rise and fall of God's firstborn son, what's the next book? Leviticus. Why? Because the Levites replaced the firstborn sons. When you get the numbers, it's called numbers because you're numbering all of the firstborn sons, when you get the numbers, it's called numbers, because you're numbering all of the firstborn sons and then all of the Levites, and you have 273 more Levites than,

no, 273 more firstborn than Levites, and people are like, I can't keep track of this. Well, what if it were the stock market or the major league team that you follow? You'd keep track of it. And when you do, you know, I check on the pirates to see if they're winning or losing or the Steelers as well. But I mean, this is what brains and hearts were made for. A lot of these insights, I remember you saying maybe in your book, Room Sweet Home,

that you were stunned to have found that they weren't your discoveries. They were the discoveries of the early church. That's right. I'm reinventing wheel after wheel after ancient wheel. How much of these things have not, either have not yet been discovered or are only now being discovered now the more we kind of, I don't know, is this all in the early church? When you look at the early church you realize, okay, it was an illegal religion until the fourth century. There were persecutions, and so you didn't have big libraries and seminars and that kind of thing.

But when you find the material in the fourth, fifth, and sixth centuries, especially Augustine, who is the Latin father par excellence, but you also have the Cappadocians, you know, and so you have Basil and Gregor of Nyssa and Gregor nonziensis and you have oh Leo the great Gregor the great if you just read through Gregor the greats commentary on job Moralia, yeah, you know you can only read about four or five pages. You're like It's so thick. It's so beautiful. Yeah, it's like, you know baklava or some other sweet dessert That's too thick to have a big piece of it. Will Barron Well, even Aquinas doesn't seem to have the sort of access to all the fathers that you and Petra seem to today. I mean, even when you look at his commentary on John with Behold

Your Mother, Behold Your Son, he doesn't make the connection there, at least in the commentary that Mary is... Get this, you know, when he taught on the book of Job, we have his literal exposition on the book of Job. In the introduction, he explains that I would do the spiritual senses, except who can surpass Gregor the Great's Moralia. So I'm going to focus on the literal exposition, and even that's dynamite. When you look at his contract at the University of Paris, you would read his job description, and he's a magister, a teacher of the sacrapagina. And yet we think of not as a biblical scholar, but as a theologian, because the only way you taught doctrine was by expounding scripture.

But you wouldn't teach doctrine through the spiritual senses, as he says in the Catechism Quote Aquinas, you root all doctrine in the literal sense, the historical truth, the theological mysteries as it were. And so he assumed that in the monasteries, you know, the Benedictines, when you think of the Cluniac reform, anywhere from four to seven thousand Benedictine monasteries throughout all of Europe under the abbot of Cluny, who's not in any way pressured by the local diocesan bishop or the cardinal. He's directly under the pope, which caused the Cluniac revival to bring about the spiritual senses like crazy in the ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries when Bernard of Clairvaux sets up the Cistercian renewal, it's because the Benedictines under Cluny got so rich, you know, that they ended up owning almost too much stuff.

And so the Cistercian renewal ends, you know, it's like when you read Bernard of Clairvaux on the Song of Songs, you're like, can it get turned up any higher than that? vo on the song of songs, you're like, can it get turned up any higher than that? You know, it's interesting because Protestants are about 20 years ahead of Catholics for the most part in rediscovering how the New Testament writers use the Old. I think of an old colleague of mine, Gregory Beale, who's written on the temple and a bunch of other things, all dealing with how the New Testament writers use the Old Testament. And though we've parted ways since I became a Catholic, I still study and learn a lot from him because he was the one who kind of opened our eyes

to what the fathers of the church and the doctors just assumed. That is, when the New Testament writers are quoting the Old Testament, the only way to understand, they're not twisting scripture or taking out a context. You gotta go back and read that text in its context, soak in it, then you'll see the evocative power.

So if I said, oh, say, can you see by the dawn's early light, a friend of yours from Australia might not know how to finish that first line from the National Anthem, but you've been here long enough. And so when you read the new, citing the old, the evocative power, the strategic allusions, it's not just quote unquote, it's not just a direct citation.

The intertextual echo, or what literary experts call meta-lapses, the intertextual echoes of the old and the new, it's like an echo chamber when you read the Gospels, Acts, the Epistles, and the Apocalypse. You can't understand the new apart from the old, and you won't appreciate the old until you realize how it was fulfilled in the most unexpected ways. We've got to raise up a new generation. We're not going to have Eucharistic revival that lasts until we have the first half of the Emmaus adventure, that Emmaus experience. All right, yeah. So that's what we need. Okay, fair enough. So that's how the two are

tied together. We need people to be in love with Scripture, familiar with Scripture, and when they do that, they'll love the Eucharist. Yeah, on the one hand, I think they're going to be humble to say, I wish I knew more, and I'm hungry enough to ask for more. On the other hand, they're going to say, what are we so proud of in the 21st century? You know, I was mentioning Protestants. There's another one that I would not recommend generally because I don't agree with most of his conclusions. They're not what do you even call Protestant orthodoxy, but the guy is a genius, Dale Allison, who worked on a three-volume commentary on Matthew that is replete with patristic typology. I remember having him here in Steubenville to give a lecture.

We had dinner together before he left Pittsburgh Seminary to go to Princeton. And we were talking about intertextuality. What is that? The idea that the New Testament writers are constantly citing the Old Testament. And you've got to go back and really understand the text in context to understand why the New Testament writers are doing in the New Testament what Jesus did on the road to Emmaus, evocative power, you know, just as a tangent. If you ever read Martin Luther King's speech, I Have a Dream, you know, or the other speech

that he gave shortly before he died, the day before he was shot in Memphis, he describes himself as Moses looking over, but he doesn't sure, he's not sure that he's ever going to enter the promised land. Well, the next day he dies. I'm getting chills now. In high school, we studied the I Have a Dream speech. He's citing Shakespeare. He's citing Jefferson.

He's citing Amos. He's citing Isaiah. But he never says, quote unquote, he never identifies the sources. But the fact that he can cite the Constitution shows he's a patriot. The Declaration of Independence, the fact that he's quoting the hymns and

the scriptures, he's showing that this is my patrimony, too. That doesn't diminish. That increases the power of that speech because you realize these are echoes. You know, it's like when Jesus says, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? It's the first line of Psalm 22, which every Jew would know the rest of the Psalm is vindication and thanksgiving at the end. And so I had dinner with Dale Allison and I said, so when you were working on Matthew, when you're working on your other scholarship and you're looking for all of the sources of the Old Testament, you know, what the New

Testament writer, what the early Church Fathers were doing. He interrupted me, he said, I'm going to surprise you. He said, St. Thomas Aquinas was great, but his master, Albert the Great, he was the master. He said, I have access to a lot of Albert the Great in the Latin. And he said, when I think I have found in the New Testament an intertextual echo of the old, I check Albert the Great. If it's not there, I'm not sure I should trust my own judgment. But invariably, it's in Albert.

Well, no wonder you graduate a student like Aquinas, because the foundation that Albert the Great laid in Cologne, Germany, for his future pupil and then the future teacher of the Dominicans. You cannot understand something as great as Aquinas without understanding the foundation that he's based upon. And the order of preachers, they don't have to preach the Summa as much as I love that. They're to preach the Scriptures the way Aquinas did, but also his mentor, Albert the Great. I don't know of many Catholics that read Albert the Great, so why is that? Men, have you checked out Exodus 90 lately? If you've heard of Exodus 90 before, you're

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of the exorcist vials, who is the spiritual guide for St. Michael's Lent this year on the Exodus 90 app. We will awaken to invisible realities and enter into that spiritual battle that rages around us. Go to Exodus90.com slash Matt to join us for St. Michael's Lent. That's Exodus90.com slash Matt to join us for St. Michael's Lent happening now on the Exodus 90 app. It's not too late to join. You cannot understand something as great as Aquinas without understanding the foundation that he's based upon, you know? And the order of preachers, they don't have to preach the Summa as much as I love that. They're to preach the Scriptures the way Aquinas did, but also, you know, his mentor Albert the Great. I don't know of many Catholics that read Albert the Great.

So why is that? Is it because I don't know the right Catholics, or is it because Albert hasn't been translated? We've only, you know, I would say this, I mean, the renewed appreciation for St. Thomas Aquinas is still getting started. It happened through Matt Levering and Michael Dauphiné in the late 90s, Tim Gray and other people. Now we have a separate part of our catalog for Emmaus Road and Emmaus Academic. Emmaus is the publishing arm of the St. Paul Center. You can probably figure out why we call it Emmaus. But we have biblical Thomism, you know, because ultimately biblical theology is such that, as Vatican II says,

the study of the sacred page is, as it were, the soul of sacred theology. So doctrine is like a body, Scripture is like the soul. Unfortunately, most of the last two or three centuries, you were learning doctrine, memorizing lists and such, but not studying Scripture, because that was weaponized by the Protestants for the last four or five centuries. You never feel good about a book that was used to beat you over the head, as Frank Sheed once put it. And so, it seems to me that if all you have is the body of doctrine, you've basically

got a skeleton. Now, we need skeletons to stand upright, but on the other hand, if all you have is the body of doctrine, you've basically got a skeleton. Now, we need skeletons to stand upright, but on the other hand, if all you've got is Scripture and Bible studies apart from the solid body of Catholic doctrine, you've got a ghost, a soul that is not embodied. Only when you reunite the study of the sacred page is, as it were, the soul of sacred theology do you have the body and soul? We are still in the earliest phase of the discovery of the patristic

and medieval scholastic synthesis. And so Albert the Great will be discovered after we realize how did Aquinas become this common doctor, this angelic doctor, his mentor. I would also say that Emmaus working with the Aquinas Institute, is for the first time ever putting all of the writings of Aquinas out in the Oprah Omnia. I know that.

Yeah, he's over there. There it is. What about the Psalms? His commentary on the Psalms, where are we there? Yeah, that's coming. Well, we began with the biblical commentaries because everybody else... By the way, I got to be with a mate of yours from the ITI who's done some of the... John Mortenson? Yes. Oh, John.

We went to dinner in Austria. John and his wife. He is... I started speaking to him and I could not believe how brilliant he was. Not just brilliant, but could... Gentle. Like yourself though, can articulate what's really high and lofty to knuckleheads like me. He's the real deal more than I could ever be. What a guy. To quote Billy Joel, we didn't start the fire.

He did. I mean, Mortenson is the one who began the systematic translation project, and he's working closely with my son, Michael, their friends. And what this ultimately will lead to is all of the works Aquinas published online and in print with the parallel columns of the Latin and the English beginning where everybody else would end with the biblical commentary, most of which were not translated until the last 30 or 40 years. Oh my goodness.

But I do believe that you've got Thomists who don't really understand the Bible, you've got Biblists who don't recognize the need for solid, Thomistic theology and philosophy. But when you bring the two together, it's the St. Paul Center for Biblical theology, Biblical Thomism. And it's like, I think the best is still yet to come. Mason- I've been looking up the Cantina Aurea. Is that how you pronounce it? Breyer- Oh, yes. The Cantina Aurea, the golden chain. Mason- Yeah, so this is Aquinas for those at home. His commentary on the New Testament, or rather the four gospels, using only the words of the Church Fathers.

And that's available online. Brilliant. For free. The katena aurea. You know, when Aquinas was called by the Pope, actually he was called to Orvieto in the early 1260s, where he was for three or four years. That's where he did the Summa Contra Gentilis That's when the Eucharistic miracle that happened a few miles away Was brought to the Pope's attention and Pope Urban was living in Orvieto at the time right down the street from Aquinas

So he approached Aquinas about creating the texts and the prayers for Corpus Christi Yeah creating the texts and the prayers for Corpus Christi. And so all of the prayers you discover that this man was not only a scholastic but a mystic, a Eucharistic mystic. But I mean it isn't like well he was this and then on his you know on the weekend he was that. Talk about the story of him and Bonaventure composing poems for the Holy Father. Yeah you tell me. Well just the I don't know if it's apocryphal or not, but obviously the two of them were contemporaries.

They both died the same year. But apparently the pope was said to have asked them both to compose hymns for Corpus Christi. Aquinas went first. And while he's reciting it, you've got Bonaventure tearing his manuscript or tearing his his hymn, The Seraphic Doctor, wow. Which, you know, I kind of wish he didn't do, because I've read his prayers before and after receiving Eucharist, and they are astoundingly beautiful. He's a master of the Sacred Page, too.

Perhaps even more. You know, but in Orvieto, the Pope asked him, would you do a labor of love? Would you compile all of these patristic comments on the Gospels? Oh, he asked him. I didn't realize that. love, would you compile all of these patristic comments on the Gospels? Oh, he asked him. I didn't realize that. So in Orvieto, for Pope Urban, he compiled the Golden Chain, the Catena Aria. I have it in four hard bound. There are also paperback. It's available online. I buy it every time someone invites me to an ordination. That's the gift I give them.

I think I gave it to your son. Oh, Rachel, you did. You gave it to Father Jeremiah. Because, I mean, it's... Yeah, I really want to encourage people to get it. I think we've got to... That is such a beginner. I mean, that is not for first grade or kindergarten, but I mean, for people who are really willing and able just to spend like 20 to 30 minutes a day or every other day reading through the Gospels and then reading Aquinas' compilation.

What does the gloss mean? I think I understand. Oh, yeah. I don't see it here. Well, I'm looking here. It does the gloss mean? I think I understand. Oh yeah. Yeah, so. I don't see it here. Well, I'm looking here, it says the glossary, right? So does that mean notes that were taken on the column? Or what is it?

Yes. It does. It's marginalia, the stuff that was written on the margins of the Bible. But here comes another big treat, because what we are doing for the first time ever is taking the medieval glossossa Ordinaria, the ordinary glosses. And so what Aquinas was doing was probably what everybody did,

and that is looking at the glossed Bible, so that on all the margins you had extensive quotations from the fathers of the second, third, fourth, and fifth centuries. Which true's Bible was this? In any monastery, the glossed Bible, the Glat's Ordinary, it's probably the single most copied book in the medieval scriptoriums. Okay. Because they want to have the Bible read so they can chant, they can pray, they can contemplate. Yeah.

And so, we have begun a project through Amazacademic, under the leadership of my firstborn, Michael, Dr. Hahn, the younger and the much smarter. And so we have a fellow from Texas. Oh, come on, Scott. We have published the Glossa Ordinaria in English translation for the whole book of Genesis. Moreover, the layout is sheer artistry because just as it was, you know, if we've been talking about that... I'm still confused because I understand that it's not like, since these were handwritten, you didn't have multiple Bibles per monetary. So is it one particular Bible in one particular monetary you're referring to?

Generally speaking, yes. That's the Glossa? Yes, the Glossa Ordinaria, the ordinary Glosses of the commentary. And was this handed down or? It was handed down, but prized, I mean, revered. What the Ignatius Catholic Study Bible strives to be in the 21st century is the modern equivalent to the Glossa Ordinaria, only they're at the bottom of the page instead of wrapped around the page.

But we already published the Glossa Ordinaria, the Gloss Bible on Genesis. It is beautiful because you have the text of Genesis in the middle of the page and all around it. This is for sale right now? It is. How do you spell it? Glossa. Glossa.

There it is. G-L-O-S-S-A-O-R-D-I, just as it sounds, okay. Yep. All right. The book of Genesis. I'm looking it up now. Oh, forgive me. I want to say Ted, but I'm sure I'm wrong. I'll look it up. You see the translator? I'm want to say Ted, but I'm sure I'm wrong. Oh, look at that.

You see the translator? I'm going to, I'm going to. Because I owe him acknowledgement. Aria Genesis. He did such a great job. And now he's finishing up Matthew. Oh, I'll look it up. Oh, I'll get it.

Oh, wow. It is absolutely beautiful. It's stunning. And it's large. It's like eight and a half by 11. Each page. Samuel K. Klumpenhauer. Samuel K. Klumpenhauer. Yes, Samuel Klumpenhauer. Samuel is as well as a few other contributors too.

But we're hoping to get Matthew out, which is far more than the Catena aria. He was drawing from the Glast Bible on Matthew. I mean, these comments in the columns, are they attributed to the fathers? Yes, they are. But this is what is somewhat frustrating or irksome and difficult, because you will have abbreviated quotations, and you're expected to know how to go back to Ambrose and read on the mysteries and pick up the rest, or to go back on Augustine's and Narazione's commentary on the Psalms, where you have some of this rich spiritual exegesis.

But you know, for the most part, the material in the Glossa Ordinaria is probably at least 60 to 70 percent of the text that is commenting on the literal and the spiritual senses of Genesis, Exodus, the whole Bible had glosses, some books obviously more than others, but drawing from the patristic sources, you end up discovering that the medieval enrichment was a summary and a synthesis, but truly an enrichment, a deepening.

And so, Albert the Great can come along and not only be a great philosopher and scientist, but arguably what he would have said is that his job first and foremost would have been to proclaim the sacred page. As a Dominican training other Dominicans, he wants to teach preachers how to basically soak in scripture so that your proclamation is just the overflow. Wow. Yeah, that is something that's hard to wrap my head

around. When I read Aquinas and I see him just drawing in his memory, you know, it's not like he's looking this up on a laptop and then cut and pasting. I need to say this for honesty, so I don't have to go to confession when we're done. You know, I feel like the seventh grader who intimidates the second grader. Only I'm really in fifth grade. But I mean I I am barely a novice I don't say that so that people say well then forget it. I'm not gonna bother wasting my time

It's like what better use of your time do you have for the rest of your lifetime than taking God at his word? submitting to the Lordship of Jesus Christ and finding out that the good news is immeasurably better than you thought and infinitely more than the bad news these days is horrendous. You know, so we think that what we've got to do is keep track of all of the bad news, get online, denounce these people, and then therefore we'll feel good about ourselves. You know, what drives out darkness is not just simply identifying branding in his darkness Find the light switches find the frickin candles and the matches Turn on the light of Christ because that alone will dispel the darkness and God doesn't you know it is like well

I'd be willing to do that if they were looking for the switches God the Father wants to light up the world with the Sun by the power of the Spirit more than all of us put together Have enough faith to ask him for Increase our faith so that we can ask you to increase the grace He wants to renew his people far more than any USCCB committee wants to Hey men Scott harm that was incredible. I don't feel strongly I just have a contract to fulfill as a professor and all that. I mean, oh, I tell you, I don't feel this as strongly as God does.

Or as Our Lady. Our Lady wants to light up our hearts and our minds more than a thousand Scots do. Let's speak about some practical advice for getting into the Word. I'm sure you've said it a million times, but I mean, we're in a day and age where we're distracting ourselves to death and the bad news is so tantalizing. It really appeals to our passions, the sin of curiosity. It's distracting or Neil Postman's amusing ourselves to death. Looking for whatever will kind of dull the senses

or dull the brain. And I feel so strongly about it and I think I'm able to articulate it so well, because I'm exhibit A. It's so easy to spend every day listening to an hour or two of political commentary from our favorite political pundits because it is so tantalizing. It is so... And it's not unprofitable up to a point. I remember hearing one nun tell me that for every hour of news media we take in, we should spend two hours in front of the Blessed Sacrament. At least. And I think she meant that.

I think she actually was doing just that. Like, that's fine, you can listen to an hour of that, two hours on your knees. Well I certainly don't do that. And I don't think most people do. I remember when I was signing copies of Catholics in Exile down in the warehouse of Emmaus Road, my co-workers, who basically pack the boxes and send them off were listening to my friend Michael Knowles, and he was so good. But I mean, for 25 minutes, he gave a Trinitarian account of the trial of the angels and why

and how the evil angels fell. I'm like, that is so better than unmasking whatever president is. Foul I'm like that is so better than unmasking. My president is essentially a Catholic podcast at this point. I oh I know people give Ben grief But Ben has given platform to two very prominent faithful Catholics who wouldn't have the platform They do now have Matt Walsh. I mean in Michael Knowles, right? My heroes, but I must admit I never listened to them except when I'm signing books in the warehouse You know and I'm like I am so happy. I told these guys I listen to them except when I'm signing books in the warehouse. And I'm like, I am so happy. I told these guys, I said, you know, when it was over,

do you realize that you just heard in like 25 minutes better than anything I've ever heard in a lecture in a doctoral seminar. Good Michael. Yeah. I let him know when I was with him in Nashville. But how do we begin? Well, you know, it's like a baby or a little child who wakes up on the 4th of July in the middle of a parade. You know, you just basically start wherever you are, and you're content to be in METI or REZ, just in the middle of things, you know? And so, you're not going to be able to run forward to catch all the floats that you missed.

You just basically are like, okay, I want to focus on whatever the Lord has passing by at this time, which means the scripture readings for today's Mass, the scripture readings for Sunday's Mass, and then at the same time, a little bit of reading from the New Testament every day. I still do this after decades of being a Catholic. I have a little pocket New Testament divided up into two parts. How is that? Is that somehow associated with

Jose Maria Escobar? Opus Dei people sure have it in their back pockets more than others, you know, but ever since Bergsmuth started lighting the fire, you know. Why does it have two dates on every page? Because you basically read from Matthew through Acts the first half of the year and then you reread it in the second half of the year and the second date is always going to be. So you read from the epistles on to Revelation, and so you're basically reading the entire New Testament twice a year. I see. And the Conta Fraternity version that they use is actually drawn from the Vulgate, it's a reliable translation, it's out of copyright, And so I find it really useful. And the

footnotes are often surprisingly good, not one of which you're not going to find in the Cainaceous Catholic style. All of the good ones we basically paraphrased and included. For those at home in the back, what is this New Testament called again for those who want to look this up? Because I would highly recommend it. I think I left it in my car. What did you say? The confraternity of... Yeah, let me just see if I can look it up too. I left it in my car. I'll look it up. It's the confraternity version. It's just the New Testament, and you can go to John Bergsmith's website. You should do that anyway.

Yeah, there it is. See, he's been promoting this for a while. Oh yeah. I mean, Pope Francis called for the Word of God Sunday on the third Sunday of ordinary time five years ago, and yet I haven't found a single parish that's gotten got in step with that. Yeah. I haven't seen any angry YouTube videos about that, Scott. So I haven't been able to hear. Right. That's the.

We should get angry about the right things, maybe. I don't know. And what does he do? I'm looking at the epistolic letter that he put out five years ago. He says, look at the Emmaus road. Wow. Study what happened to them. You were like, yes.

The old and the new. So Confraternity Pocket New Testament. And I'm seeing one by Scepter. road, study what happened to them. You were like, yes! The Old and the New. So, Confraternity Pocket New Testament. And I'm seeing one by Scepter. Yep, Scepter Press. So people can check that out, yeah. I should also mention, since you did, that the Catena Aria, you know, for beginners that might be a little bit of a steep climb, but for the moderate, the intermediate, who has

read through the New Testament, and I would say thank God for Father Mike Schmitz. I mean, through the Bible in a year, through the catechism in a year. I'll be honest, and I'm ashamed to admit this, but if I were asked, okay, I'm going to be shipwrecked on a desert island, I'm only allowed one book, should it be the Bible or the catechism? It's like Jack Benny, the old miser comedian, you know,

sticking with your money or your life. I'm thinking, you know, I love the Bible first and foremost. It alone is the Word of God. But there has never been a catechism in 2,000 years so soaked in Scripture, so saturated with Scriptural categories that if I had to choose, I think I'd have a hung jury. I don't know if it was you or somebody else who said that the catechism is for us, maybe not the summa, but it... No, given our level, that is not wrong. Given our level, right. We should really... Yeah, I think it's good that we remind people the great treasure that the catechism of the Catholic Church is.

Because it's called a catechism, teachers and scholars don't take it seriously. But if any scholar, if I had written that, overnight I would have become a worldwide sensation as one of the top voices in Catholic theology. That's how good it is. Right. And it's so clear, it's so deep. I mean, Father Mike Schmitz, to follow the Bible in a year with the Catechism in a year. God bless him. Father Mike. And Ascension Press as well, The Great Adventure, Jeff Cavins, all of the things that Matt Pinto, I mean, Ascension is doing. And I'm not going to forget to say Emmaus Road, Emmaus Academic, Aquinas, and all of

these other things, the Ignatius Catholic Study Bible especially. I went to a different country every week, every weekend to preach for the last four months while I was in, well maybe two months at the end of my big European stay, I was in Austria. And everywhere I would go, these beautiful local people from Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Italy, everywhere I was, they are so grateful to yourself, They are so grateful to yourself. Bishop Robert Barron, Father Mike Schmitz. Yes, I just want to be. I'm so proud to live in this country because I thought to myself, Americans need to stop apologizing for the influence.

Not that they are apologizing, but Americans often feel kind of sheepish because they are so big and so powerful and so loud. Overly influential. And in many respects, we have a bad influence on the world from our trashy movies and some of them are good, but you know, trashy music that populates the airwaves everywhere. But I tell you what, I mean, so I'll tell you what, so many people have been so blessed by American Catholics. The influence that American Catholics are having on the world stage is beautiful. It's so beautiful. And I spoke to a dear friend of mine, she's

since deceased, Evie Muldoon. God bless this woman. I've got to tell you a story about her. She was something of one of these feminists and very critical of me after I converted to the faith. She said, we shouldn't be going around saying that our faith is more important than other faiths. They're all equal, that kind of thing. Well, one day she happened to be at Holy Mass, and she was going through a rough spot. And someone said, you know, we're going to have a few people praying over people today after Holy Mass, so if you want that, you can come down and get some prayers.

Well, Evie was on her way out to the car, and she accidentally found herself in front of these two people didn't mean to but Didn't want to be rude. So said yeah, sure. Okay. Yeah pray for me. I'm going through a few things the Holy Spirit Blasted her, you know a lot of people who have these dramatic conversions are in their youth their teenagers their college students She was in her 50s or 60s Her life changed she said she used she had all these new age symbols in her 50s or 60s. Her life changed. She had all these new age symbols in her house. And so she said she would walk. She was at Bible study.

She started going to a Bible study immediately. And she confessed in this Bible study that she had broken, smashing statues of Buddha, throwing holy water up the walls. Someone said, don't you think that's a little narrow minded? She said, I hope so. It's a narrow path, which sounds very Scott Hahn, you know, this play on words. She was so beautiful. She would wake up every morning and spend an hour in the word. She would say every day she was just so in love with scripture. Just

this year she went to her reward, but I was with her in the hospital and she said, you know, I so grateful for, for Bishop Robert Bar you know. Oh, it's amazing how far and wide these voices go. In the Augustan Institute. Yes, that's right. We've forgotten about that. So it's so wild, you think, OK, we've got the number, Catholics have the number one religious network, EWTN, with the number one downloaded app, Hello, the number one Bible study, and we're all over here complaining and we're all like in-fighting while the Holy Spirit's like fine you in-fight I'll convert the world through

the good work that's being done in the church today. And Franciscan University of Steubenville is launching a PhD program in theology for the first time this fall of 2024 and then there's Christendom College, there's Thomas Aquinas both East and West, you know Benedictine College, you know I'm gonna apologize to the presidents of the schools that I forget to mention, but I mean, thanks be to God. Wyoming Catholic. Wyoming Catholic, yeah.

In the last four or five months, in my particular examen, I've examined my conscience in one area in particular, and that is my negativity, my critical spirit, and I've come up with this little slogan that I use in my prayer journal, and that is Scott be rational Be thankful. Yeah, and if you fail to see the ratio of The blessings to the challenges and the hardships. It's like 10 to 1 more like 50 to 1 you're not being rational

And so just start by thanking God Prime the pump just do it whether you feel like it or not, and you end up saying, not only am I uplifted, I'm sane, I'm rational, because that's reality. Yes, yeah, you're not talking, it's not airy-fairy, it's not clouds in the sky, it's not being thankful so our mental health will be better. It's no, you actually should be thankful.

Look all that's going on. My 45 years of marriage to the most amazing bride. Praise the Lord. My youngest son David, who's just getting married to an amazing gal from England named Martha, 23 grandkids. I mean, you could go down the list and people say, oh, his life is just so, it's like, yeah, it's not enchanted, but it is, it's blessed. Well, also people don't know, I mean, I don't want to speak for you and I don't know you that well, but I mean, you've had, it is tempting for people out there to look at you, to hear all

these accomplishments and think we must have had it pretty easy. But you've been through hell yourself. You've had crosses to carry that would crush a lot of people. You know, I have too. My wife and I have been married 18 years next week. Glory to Jesus Christ. And I feel like about my wife, the way you do about yours. I'm just so grateful. I know. And she feels that way about you, like Kimberly. I mean, we were on a platform

together for that conference, and I told you, Cameron was sharing about the hardships. She said, when we enjoy life, yeah, but when we go through hardships, then we grow closer, we fall more in love. And I just came up with a catalog list of the things that have happened to Kimberly and me that have brought us closer. You wouldn wish on your worst enemy, but you would never swap it out for something better easier Now this is what it means to be Catholic to carry a cross that Jesus redemption was not a substitution He bears a cross for us, but he bestows a cross on us and Kimberly's and the name of my cross She's got a much bigger and harder cross named Scott, you know. But I mean, this is the road of love. We're watching, oh boy, I hate to say this. You know, I've been studying the kingdom of God through scripture and typology. So we decided to take up a friend's

suggestion. We're watching this Netflix special called The Crown. I'm not recommending it, all right? But we're in the fourth or fifth season. It's all about Queen Elizabeth and the monarchy of England and the Commonwealth of all these nations, you know. And on the one hand, you see the antiquity, the stability, you know, the authority of monarchy. I'm like, huh, whoa. Then you see the fragility and the pollution of modernity

and the family squab, the dysfunction and how deeply embedded in the royal family it is. They're so entitlement, privilege, presumption, they can't relate to ordinary people. And I'm thinking, we're a family as Catholics, we're the family of God, we're a royal family, a kingdom of priests, but man, we take a lot of grace for granted.

The Bible, I can get it online, I can read it anytime I want. The Catechism, all these other things like EWTN. You know, one other anecdote. When I first started around 90, when we moved here, I went to England for about a week or so, and I talked to Catholics over there. And I went back again about two, two and a

half years later. And there was one guy who heard me talking like a zealous convert, all about the Bible, and he was in his early seventies. His name was Leo, if memory serves. And he raised his hand and he said, okay, all that you say is fine, but I can just think of the medieval peasant who is illiterate and thus disqualified from any and everything that you're talking about, you know? And I said, okay, Leo, it's a good point because we ought to be grateful for our literacy and for all of these resources, you know? And they had the gospel in stained glass, they might have had it in other forms, but

I think the best response to your question would actually come from the medieval peasant himself because if you could imagine him standing here next to me, he would look at you and say, you're using me as an excuse. You have books, you have literacy, you have access to these resources, and you're using me as an excuse to not take advantage of them. Leo looked with his big ring and he goes, you won that round, you know. When I came back three years later, whenever it was, I missed him the first round. Then I ran into him and I said, is what I heard about you a couple of days ago true, that you're leading two Bible studies

every week? He said, ha, three! Wow. Well, this reminds me of Frank Sheed in his introduction to theology and sanity. He said, well, that's true that the peasant was just as holy. Maybe more. But he's not a saint because he was ignorant. That's not why we're praising him. Yeah. You know, and I think too that, you know, in our own experience, you can get straight A's taking courses, even if you're a theology major, and not be confident enough to feel like you know it. You don't really know it that way until you teach it. And you never wait until you feel qualified to teach because you'll slip into presumption because nobody's qualified. I'm certainly not.

But if you just teach it and you see the expressions on other people's faces, you'll be like, that's better than any salary. To see that it's impacting other people like it impacts me. You know, and you go back, this is what Leo was describing to me back in the 90s, that once he started, then he became more confident. He just fell in love. Yeah. Okay, I'm not an expert. No. I don't need to be. No. You don't have to be a gynecologist to want to get married and find a great woman, you know. Right. I mean, talk about the etymology of the word amateur. Yeah, it comes from amour, mean, talk about the etymology of the word amateur.

Yeah, it comes from amor, a love. And so if we're to love the Lord our God with all of our heart, our soul, and our mind, you know, I find that when people start to take God at His word, and then they might be in fourth grade or third grade, but share this with people who are in first grade or kindergarten, because you'll own it. Once you teach it, then you make it your own. That's right. I mean, when you're given the grace to drop your pride, you realize that telling people

about Christ is just telling them about the greatest person you've ever met. And the idea that I have to fully understand him to share him seems silly. I don't need to fully understand who you are to introduce you to people who I... Well, you've got to meet Scott. It's like, well, you're an expert. I don't need to be. I know enough. And how much true is that of Christ in the Scriptures?

Because when you're in love, if someone corrects you, you go, thank you, brother. Thank you for correcting me. Right. You know, I was in Slovakia last year, and we didn't know that like 19 of our books- I was just there a couple months ago, they were talking about your visit there, said it was awesome. It was stunning. And then we're going to Poland next week, for a week or so. Praise God. And I didn't know how many of our books were translated into Polish, but it isn't our books,

I feel as though they're little foot bridges to get people to the Scriptures especially, but also to the Summa Theologiae, I mean, and to Augustine's confessions and to spirit and letter. I mean, you can read that in half an afternoon and understand the old and the new in a way. I mean, the spirit and the letter, you know, for that matter, on Christian doctrine, De Doctrina Christiana, I mean, the spirit and the letter, you know, for that matter, on Christian doctrine, De Doctrina Christiana. I mean, Augustine has become sort of my favorite after he'd become my oldest son's favorite. He's become my tutor all over again. Can you tell us about Emmaus Academy?

You didn't ask me to ask you this, but I want people to check this out. This is, if you're listening right now and you want to just delve deeper, but you don't know how to start, this is so well done, what you guys have done over there. Yeah, I mean, we call Emmaus Academy because what we wanna do is impart an Emmaus experience to Catholics, not just when it comes to biblical studies, but when it comes to the Blessed Virgin Mary.

So I've done something on reading scripture from the heart of the church, which takes the Emmaus Road story, but we also have the four gospels. So Dr. Bergma, we have Dr. Shane Owens, we have Dr. Jeff Marl on work, and what we wanna do is to show that understanding scripture,

reading it in the tradition, especially with the help of the Ignatius Catholic Study Bible, is what will enrich your marriage, your work, your friendship, your neighborhood. And so it touches upon doctrine, it touches upon morals, it touches upon marriage and prayer and so many. We have Father Boniface Hicks, you're probably looking at all these, some of these names. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You had Father Lampert.

Oh yeah, Exorcism. Yeah. No, it's, and it's, it's's so they're online courses that you can take. What I love- Not for credit, not for tests, not for assigned papers. It might be seven or eight, 20 to 25 to 15 minute episodes. And they're beautifully shot. They really are.

I remember I felt kind of, what's the word, exposed a little. Because I thought, oh, yeah, was like clicking around. I went, oh, I guess I could take this course. And then it asks you how many hours a week can you devote to this? When will you do it? Well, we also got the privilege of publishing your book, How to Be Happy. Yeah, happy. Yeah. Yeah. We have not recruited you yet to do a mini course for Emmaus Academy on that. I don't mean to put you on the spot, but that's exactly what I'm doing. These courses are, again, they're not for credit, and we don't want to compete with the university because Francis is so old. And we were privileged to publish The Fulfillment of All Desire, as well as a workbook on that. That's our best-selling title.

Yeah, I understand why. St. John of the Cross, Teresa Avela, made simple enough for ordinary Catholics. It's still my favorite, my daughter's favorite book on the spiritual life. You were next-door neighbors to Bethany and Anna in Austria. What I want to see, if I'm allowed to put in my two cents now that I've got your ear, I love these beautiful books here, the Thomas Aquinas biblical commentaries, but I really like it when they feel accessible. See, you're an academic and so you need the Greek and the Latin and the English. The one you've done on Romans, that single little, I would love to see more of that. We've done one on Isaiah for the

first time. Isaiah was never translated and so it's one of the earliest things that Aquinas wrote when he began his career and you realize this guy knew the old as well as the new. He's so thick though, isn't he? Just the other day, not thick, I don't mean thick intellectually, obviously, I mean just he's like a stick steak. I was reading what he had to say about the come to me all you who are weary and burdened, I will give you rest. His commentary on that, I mean you could spend an entire couple of days just, he takes a couple of lines and then he gives you so much. There are two authors I want to recommend to the clouds and beyond. One is John Bergsmuh, for beginners. Bible basics for Catholics, New Testament basics for Catholics,

psalm basics for Catholics, love basics for Catholics, line drawing, stick figures and all of that, you know. Yes, there is a God, you know, the Bible and why he converted. But his book called The Catholic Introduction to the Bible Old Testament that he wrote with Brant Petrie is the kind of text I would have done anything for when I was studying the Old Testament. Now, I think it's being used in the majority of Catholic seminaries graduate schools and that kind of thing It's not it's thick. It's amazing. It's readable. So many charts maps and diagrams the Ignatius Catholic Study Bible Goes perfectly well with that. That's a little hefty that would be for more advanced I also would recommend a thing I did called the Catholic Bible Dictionary. Yes

I got a story about that I don't know if I've told you this but my wife and I had moved to Canada We were quite literally beneath the poverty line. We couldn't afford meat I mean, I'm not saying we were nearly homeless or something. We had a house, but we couldn't afford meat We couldn't afford to use the car because we couldn't afford gas and so we decided okay We get one gift each and mine was, I wanted the Catholic Bible dictionary. And that was what my wife gave me. I was so- I should have sent it to you. I was free.

Well, he didn't know me then, but I was so moved by that gift. And when I was working at Catholic Answers, you came by and I had you sign it. And I still have that book today. Nice. When I was a doctoral student, we got to the point where I had to ride a bike. We couldn't afford the gas. We couldn't afford groceries.

And then a dear friend just, you know, said, I've just got so much stuff, you know, we come home and the ice, the fridge in the icebox is just packed with all the steak. He's like, I just didn't know what to do. I didn't want it to rot. You know, it is important. You're doing me a big favour. It's important to talk like this because it is easy, you know, especially younger married couples who have so little, how much of a blessing you can be to them. I remember, as I said, we didn't have meat. I remember one day this woman came over and she said, hey, there was a turkey on special at the grocery store. I thought you might want it. She left.

I started tearing up. And I think if you came around today and gave me a turkey, I'd be like, what the bloody hell am I going to do? Why would Scott give us a turkey like what the bloody hell am I gonna do? Why would Scott give us a turkey? We don't even have room in the fridge, you know, but how grateful I was Bob and Kay circumvich dropped over like 40 pounds of meat. We had been eating peanut butter and jelly for dinner For like two or three nights in a row. We hadn't told anybody we were grateful for that How did they let themselves in to fill your freezer up? Well, they babysat. And so, you know, and yeah, God bless them. I mean, that kind of thing just speaks volumes. By the way, the second name, not surprisingly, would be Brant Petrie.

So, Jesus and the Jewish Roots of the Eucharist. Sorry, we're jumping around a bit. Yeah, Brant Petrie. I said Bergsmar. Yeah, well, I've got his book over there, Jesus and the Jewish Roots of the Eucharist, right in front of there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so you also have Jesus and the Jewish Roots of Mary. Mary, uh-huh. And then the case for Jesus as well. Yes, yes. I use that as a text all the time.

Someone needs to send that to Bart Ehrman. For the... oh, what? I mentioned earlier, I think, maybe I didn't. I was talking to Bergsmüller earlier this morning about it. His brand new book, Brant Petrie's Jesus and divine Christology we need that yeah and Bart Ehrman especially I mean he treats Bart Ehrman with far more respect than Ehrman deserves And then I mean the book is the most glorious eulogy slash epitaph for Bart Ehrman's Publications, but I mean he is so generous, so charitable. Like Aquinas always

identifies the objections of his critics, you know, and sometimes even better than his opponents would state. And then he also refutes them. Yeah, dismantles them. In Jesus and Divine Christology. Really. I mean, it's like I was reading it the other day before the Blessed Sacrament, like, you are so God and man. And also his book, Jesus and the Last Supper, is a masterpiece.

Any Protestant who wants to understand the biblical roots for the Eucharist, Jesus and the Last Supper, it's over 400 pages. It is easy breezy, as I said earlier. He writes like N.T. Wright, who's compared to C.S. Lewis, only I think in some ways it's more, it's clearer, you know, for American English especially. So, Brandt and John, and there are a number of other people as well. We can't go through the whole list. But, I mean, we really are in a kind of Catholic springtime.

You know, I... Spring brings rains, rains bring floods. We have lots of issues and challenges too. But let's not forget, you know, be rational, be thankful. Well, I think we should probably wrap it up there since that was such a, but I do have to ask you this though. Did you see Jimmy Akin debate Bart Ehrman?

I didn't. Please watch it. Because he, absolutely. I wouldn't say this if I didn't really think it. I'm often very critical of Catholic debaters and I'm fine saying when I think someone did better than the Catholic, he absolutely took part to task. Absolutely. God bless Jimmy.

And he was so kind of Jimmy's kind of like. That's right. There's a lightness to him. He just, I would recommend if people are questioning the historicity of the Bible or anything like that, watch that debate because that was outstanding. Dr. Hahn, you're wonderful. Thank you for being here and all the work that you and St. Paul Center is doing. Thank you for the gift of your friendship, what you're doing with Pines. Yeah, I mean, you're welcome, obviously, of course, you know, but keep up the great and the amazing work.

Right, all right. So everyone watching, click that link below. You can get your copy. I wouldn't be surprised if they sell out. So that's why people should click that before it actually comes out. I'm going to do it actually very soon after this show. Pre-order that. Also think about sponsoring your priests for the 2025 priest conferences. We've had many, many lay people sponsor their priests and when they come back, they're on fire. What are they called, these priest conferences? Yeah, just go to the St. Paul Center and look at priest conferences. January is in Huntington Beach, California, and then April is in Lakeway Resort in Austin, Texas. We average around 200 to 220, and then July will be in the Oglebay Resort in Wheeling, West Virginia, only about 40 minutes from here.

When they, is everything included? Yes. Yeah. So if you talk to your priest, can we sponsor you to attend one of these priest conferences? Then you can basically do that. And if you have any questions, we're going to be able to answer them as well. And sign up for Emmaus Academy as well. I mean, that I think will end up becoming arguably the best blessing long term for Catholic families. But I love it. Don't

complain about your priest's homily. Or if you do, also sign him up to one of these priest conferences because he's going to come back ripping and roaring. All right, God bless you. This has been great. That was, wow, that was amazing. Speaking of like,