😇 Xmas 1

Readings: 📜Isaiah 63 :7-9; 🎶Psalm 148; ✉️Hebrews 2 :10-18 😇Matthew 2 :13-23

From the TRNG Room:

• How to Read Scripture Like You’re Still in the Field

Central Thesis/Theme:

I'm launching a three-year project called Fighting Words, which transitions from my previous First Formation podcast into a broader exegetical work I call "the fighting word"—a military-centered paraphrase of the Bible for rank and file believers. This isn't just rebranding; it's federating biblical interpretation away from institutional gatekeepers and placing it in the hands of ordinary people who've lived real experiences. After six or seven years of daily lectionary work, I've identified simpler, more direct ways of reading Scripture that honor both the text's depth and the reader's intelligence, rejecting both Victorian-era conservative inerrancy and watered-down modern paraphrases that dull the Bible's sharp edges.

Key Textual/Historical Insights:

I work from the Septuagint for the Hebrew Bible rather than the Masoretic text, because that's what Jesus and early Christians likely read. My translation choices are deliberate: "y'all" for third-person plural pronouns, "tem" (combining "the" + "m" from Hashem) for God to avoid inadequate gendered pronouns, "all people" for goyim, and "the people" for am or edah. In Matthew's massacre of the innocents narrative, the prophecy from Jeremiah about Rachel weeping isn't literal child-murder—it's Matthew drawing parallels between Joseph the patriarch and Joseph the adoptive father, using Egypt symbolically. Rachel's children were specifically Joseph (Ephraim and Manasseh) and Benjamin, whose tribal lands encompassed the massacre region, making this weeping symbolize all Israel's affliction.

Theological Argument:

Matthew writes after the Temple's destruction, looking back to make sense of Israelite history the way Chronicles did—identifying where God was present in both suffering and salvation. The entire Bible functions as a parable of God's work in human history through a particular people for the entire world. The massacre narrative points to how a rural, educated bastard child would expose those claiming Davidic or priestly legitimacy built on exploitation and Roman collaboration. Herod's temple reconstruction represented Solomonic propaganda—look how prosperous we are—while built on high taxes and foreign collaboration. The remnant community after 70 CE was trying to understand how worship now happens in house churches and synagogues, debating Christ's identity and divinity outside institutional structures.

Contemporary Application:

I'm undertaking this lectionary cycle work for myself because I'm curious, and after following God a long time, the Bible's well runs so deep I'll never want for satisfaction. I'm sick of people telling these stories in ways that reinforce tired stereotypes and tropes. When I ask questions based on my experience and training, I find more satisfaction than the seminary authors I read, who seem jaded and dependent on corrupt systems. Bonhoeffer talked about religionless Christianity—I think the religions we've constructed have ceased being helpful. I'm not creating a religion, but I have a structure that makes more sense. I'm making this freely available at pewpewhq.com/tfw because the public domain versions were free to me, and I want God's word accessible to anyone who wants it.

Questions Raised:

• If Hebrew and Greek don't translate directly to English, why do we privilege word-for-word inerrancy interpretations over dynamic meaning?

• What does it mean that our last major English interpretations come from Victorian-era translators—has copyright law or institutional control frozen biblical interpretation?

• Why do we continue using gendered pronouns for a God who radically precedes gender, when all our symbols are inadequate?

• If Matthew is using Joseph's Egypt journey symbolically to connect him to the patriarch Joseph, what other "historical" Gospel narratives are primarily theological rather than literal?

• How can ordinary believers reclaim biblical interpretation when we've been taught to defer to institutional authorities who seem more jaded than spiritually satisfied?

Reflection

Hello and welcome to Fighting Words by Grunt Works. My name is Brother Logan, and I am broadcasting from the chapter house in Albany, Oregon. This morning's readings come to us from Isaiah 63, Psalm 148, Hebrews 2, and Matthew 2.

If you've been a long-time listener—which you probably are if you're listening—you'll notice I'm making some changes. First Formation is becoming Fighting Words, and Fighting Words is a podcast within a broader exegetical project I'm doing that I call the fighting word. And the fighting word is the Bible, a paraphrase of the Bible that centers military experience and rank-and-file believers. And this is my first Sunday of lectionary Year A, and so I thought it'd be a good time to update everything and just go for the things I've always been thinking of.

One of those is, the more I read the Bible through First Formation over the last six or seven years, the more I noticed recurring things—things that I thought had easier, more direct, or simpler ways of doing things biblically. And I say that with deep respect for the Bible. The Bible has been with me through thick and thin more than most believers that I know, at least people that claim to be believers. And the more I allow myself to trust the Bible as a companion along the way of God and the way of Christ, it hasn't let me down.

Something somebody said a while ago—you'll notice, maybe it's copyright law or Disney or something—but the last big interpretations that we have, I'll say in the English-speaking West in America, are these Victorian-era translators from the late 1890s. Philip Schaff did the ANF Fathers, but also a lot of biblical interpretation through Wycliffe. Bible translators often will either take on a very conservative hermeneutic that's very inerrancy-focused, which is weird because these are not done in English, and Hebrew and Greek do not translate directly to English. Or it's like The Message, which is very nice but also feels like it waters down some really sharp points in the Bible.

I don't have Greek or Hebrew. I just have years and years of using my Greek and Hebrew keyword Strong's reference keyword Bible that I got in 2005. So what is that? Twenty years ago. And so anything that I change, I call a paraphrase. When I taught the Bible at Methodist University in Fayetteville, North Carolina, I taught my students that there are three basic ways to look at Bible translation.

There's static literal translation, word-for-word, which will be completely illogical in English, not only because the grammar and syntax are different, but also Hebrew is this trilateral consonantal language, and we inherited a lot more from the Greek and Latin in America and in English than we did from the Semitic and Asiatic languages.

And then on the other hand, there's dynamic translations. The further you get from word-to-word literal translation, it's called dynamic, and they'll be called paraphrases. They want the thought, the feeling—I don't want to say the essence and privilege dynamic readings—but the word-to-word equivalence is not important for paraphrases. Paraphrases are like the Common English Bible.

The translation that I start from that you will see on pewpewhq.com/tfw where I host this exegetical thing—I use for the Old Testament, the Hebrew Bible, I use the LXX, also known as the Septuagint, public domain translation. Someone did it a long time ago in 2012. And then for the New Testament, I use the World English Bible, but I change it up quite a bit, and I'll get into that in a moment. The World English Bible is also public domain, but the authors of that piece have asked, "Don't use WEB if you change it." And I want to be able to publish the Bible as I've reworked it without getting into copyright problems.

So the WEB is what I start with, and then I change it, and it becomes my own translation that I call the fighting word. And most of the readings today, you'll probably hear them.

A couple things I want to go over. When we see there's a lack of plural noun for you, third-person plural—in the South we'd say "y'all," that is thought to be distasteful or lowbrow, which is just dumb. So I use "y'all" where in the Hebrew or Greek if they use a third-person plural, it will often get translated into just "you," because that's what it is for a lot of English speakers. You out there. And you might then go say "you all out there." And it's like, why don't you just say "y'all"? So when you hear me say "y'all," I'm translating a Greek third-person plural into the vernacular for me. I lived in the South for, I don't know, maybe ten years.

The other one is gendered pronouns for God. They're gendered in the Hebrew and the Greek, but I don't think God—our symbols for God are always inadequate. So choose your inadequate reference, whether you think of God as male or you think of God as female. They're both inadequate. God precedes gender radically, like all the way to the root. There's no gender for God. But on the other hand, I can see how if you use a third-person pronoun for God—"it" or "they"—it can feel weird.

And so I started thinking, what if I just call them "m," like in Hebrew and in Judaism, you'll refer to—when you see the Tetragrammaton, you'll say Hashem, "the name." And at the end in English, a little apostrophe "M." And sometimes when we speak quickly in English, you'll shorten "them" to "em"—"go get 'em," right? I never said "them," I said "em." And so by combining "the" and "M" and combining them into two, if you go to read my translation at pewpewhq.com/tfw, you'll see "tem." And that is my function. That is how I point to God without getting caught up in gendered references.

And I also use "Yahweh" a lot, because if God gave us a name, that's a mark of familiarity. The entire Old Testament never has God giving up this name. Yes, God makes it off-limits for frivolous use, but that means there's a serious use for it. And yet we, profane corruptible creatures, created beings, have been invited to address God directly. And that's a scary thing. It's a lot of responsibility. But that's why I do it.

So there's also, when we hear "goyim" in the Hebrew, that is like saying "the nations" as apart from us, the nation of Israel, or the ethnos, the people of Israel. And so whenever I see "goyim," I put it as "all people." If I hear "am," which is typically referencing "my people" or "the congregation of Israel," my being God's people, I make that capital T, "the people," which is also a nod to the Constitution of the United States of America, which I think is a really important document, both divinely and humanly.

But anyway, so "goyim" is all people, all of those people out there. But also we are also a nation. And then "the people," the congregation—it will often say "am" or "edah," but "edah" leads to congregation. And "am" I'll typically translate as "the people," as in "us," "we the people."

So in Matthew, I wanted to point out, really the only thing that I reserved for today was this prophecy from Jeremiah. And I had to look it up because I always thought it was a real thing that somebody destroyed their own children on the rock, dashing them on the rocks. That's not what's going on.

In Matthew, Joseph is told in a dream to go to Egypt, and this is Matthew's way of saying, "This is who we're talking about." Joseph the patriarch, the son of Rachel, Jacob's favorite wife, who only had two sons, Joseph and Benjamin. Matthew has them go to Egypt to make real clear—look, this is who we're talking about when we're talking about Joseph. It's the adopted father of Christ. But also, Matthew uses it. Mark doesn't. Mark never mentions a father. Paul never mentions a father. It's not until Matthew and Luke that we see this, and they both do it. They just accept that Joseph is Jesus' dad, adopted dad. They'll admit that. And Luke even says in his genealogy in Luke 3, "It is said that Joseph was his father." So here's his patrilineal genealogy.

But in Luke 1—forget about Luke 1—Matthew, I'm sorry, is pointing out the narrative force of this story. Joseph was, scare quotes, "Egypt," was scare quotes. And then when Matthew references this prophecy in the book of Jeremiah: "A voice was heard in Ramah," which is a city out in the villages of Rachel the matriarch, Jacob's favorite wife, who was barren much longer than her handmaiden, her other step-wife/sister-wife, and her handmaiden—she was the last to bear children. But she was Jacob's favorite, and her two children—it says Rachel weeping for her children, and it means all of Israel. It does mean all of Israel.

But Rachel's children were Joseph, who bore Ephraim and Manasseh in Egypt by an Egyptian wife, and Benjamin are the two specific ones that Rachel bore herself. Her children and the tribes and the names of the patriarchs are often synonymous with the lands. Benjamin is where we see Jerusalem. And Joseph—Ephraim and Manasseh—had two huge allotments because it was a huge tribe. And that's basically almost all of the Judean province and then also this area called Perea, which we can forget about. But Manasseh had that huge allotment. Ephraim had Shiloh—let me double-check, is that correct? I sometimes get my tribal allotments mixed up. Ephraim has Shiloh, which is where the tent of meeting was. And Benjamin has Jerusalem, where the Davidic city was.

And so it's those two in particular, but it's also Manasseh and Ephraim. She is crying for all the land. And it goes on to say that Herod and the massacre of the innocents took place in Bethlehem, which is the very northernmost city of Judah, and the surrounding countryside, which is Benjamin, Ephraim, and Manasseh. And so when that's pointed to, Rachel is of course weeping for everybody. There's all symbolism.

But let's not forget the particularity. Rachel's children were the last of the tribes of Israel, and in biblical imagery, that is the best, that is the center. That is where we want to be looking. We want to be looking at Joseph, who was sold into slavery, and his younger brother, who, when he was born—when Benjamin was born, Rachel died. And so this is affliction and sadness and depression all just smashed together.

She's weeping because her children are no more. Not only have the northern tribes been carried off hundreds of years before, but I think what Matthew was saying here is that even the remaining ones—Benjamin and Ephraim, right there in the fertile area just to the west of the Jordan River—that is going to be no more. Almost all of Israel—where are they? They're gone. They are no more.

And so Matthew, this writer for a Hebrew audience, is indicating the prophetic utterance: we have sinned and God is afflicting us, and affliction and salvation are bound up in one. Matthew is writing after the destruction of the temple, after Jesus has already come and gone, after Paul has written. This is somebody trying, looking back on Israelite history and trying to make sense of it in the way that Israelites have always made sense of it. The prophets, the writings, especially Chronicles—Chronicles goes through their own history. I'm like, "This sucked, this is how we know God was here. This was great, this is how we know God was here."

And so all the gospels, the entire Bible I'd say, is a parable for what God has done in human history through a particular people for the entire world. And so this is coming to a point, right at that time when Herod destroys Joshua's temple, builds up his own, and basically reorganizes a Solomonic propagandistic imagination: "Look how prosperous we are." Oh, but it's built off the backs of high taxes, alienating the poor, foreign collaboration with Rome or with other enemies of Israel.

Like a rural, somewhat educated bastard child is going to come in and assume the throne of David, and all the people who want to believe that they have Davidic or priestly dynastic legitimation are going to be exposed. And this is the people that are left, the remnant after the destruction of the temple, trying to make sense of what all happened, such that here we are now worshiping in house churches and synagogues and arguing about whether or not this guy was the Christ, and whether and to what extent Christ was also God, et cetera.

This project I'm undertaking for the next three years, entire lectionary cycle—you can follow along, you can comment, you can reach out directly. I'm pretty good about getting back to people. But as with First Formation, I'm doing this for me because I'm curious, and I've been following God a long time. And the well of the Bible goes so deep that I don't think I'll ever want for satisfaction. There's so much symbolism and meaning and storytelling—good storytelling—and I'm sick and tired of people telling the stories in a way that just reinforces the same tired stereotypes and tropes.

When I dig into it and allow myself to ask questions based on my experience and training, I find so much more satisfaction. Maybe it's false satisfaction. Maybe I'm just patting my own back. Maybe I'm just gazing at my own navel. But I know I've been through a lot of shit, and as much as I have privilege-wise, but also mental and moral health-wise, I don't know what the hell I would do with the rest of my life because I've got everything I want. So I might as well entertain myself reading these stories and finding more meaning and connecting dots. And that's what the fighting word is about.

I don't think that a lot of the people that I read in seminary found what they were looking for, and in some weird sense, I haven't either. But I seem less jaded and less dependent upon corrupt systems to feel the way I feel about God and about spirituality and about the cosmos. Bonhoeffer talked about religionless Christianity. I think that's impossible. It's more like the religions that we've constructed have ceased to be helpful. And I'm not creating a religion, at least not intentionally. But I do have a system. I have a structure in mind that makes more sense.

And that's why I'm doing this for the next three years, and I'm going to try and organize it as well as I can and put it all in one place so that if you want to follow along, you can. And if you don't, that's fine. I'm going to try and make it as freely available as possible. The public domain versions were free to me, and I'll try and make as much as I can free to anybody who wants to read God beside me.