Book 1: An Illumination of Matthew
Part 2: The Thesis of Jesus
Chapter 4: Moonstruck & Demonriddled (The Clinical Context of Jesus)
This episode opens Part 2: The Thesis of Jesus. My friend Jake joins me and affords a dialogical approach to the content, as well as a chance to recap the meandering material in Part 1 (and I think this recap in dialogue was much better than the original meanderings from Fall 2020 - so much so that you could probably just skip it and start here).
We look at the beginning of Jesus' Messianic campaign, leading up to his first discourse, the Sermon on the Mount. That discourse is what I'm calling The Thesis of Jesus, and this episode relates his 'clinical context', as well as the political and institutional context within which he presented his thesis.
In this episode:
0:00 - Welcoming Jake and transitioning from monologue to dialogue -
1:45 - Illumination, not Illuminati!
2:35 - Recap of Part 1 and structure of Matthew’s gospel
5:35 - Difference between Matthew & Luke’s Nativity
7:15 - Matthew’s Jewish audience
08:00 - “The Biblical Dialectic of History”
09:10 - Matthew, the tax collector (!)
11:40 - Episode 2: “Of Dreams and Magi”
13:00 - Joseph’s spiritual pathway is dreaming
14:00 - Matthew and the Rabbinic institution
16:40 - Magi, the priesthood of Zoroastrianism
19:15 - The origin of religious dualism
21:30 - YHWH and Satan in the developing Hebraic consciousness
26:25 - The legend of Lucifer
29:45 - Episode 3 & “the John the Baptist moment”
30:50 - The Sanhedrin, the Sadduccess, & John’s priestly lineage
32:30 - John, the anti-establishment rebel
34:35 - John as Elijah-to-come: the Prophetic Principle
37:00 - The prophetic dimension of Jesus’ Messianic vocation
41:55 - The temptations in light of Jesus’ new-found political power
43:50 - The alignment and differentiation of John and Jesus
44:35 - Cultural Messianic expecations and unknowns
48:00 - Reading of Mt. 4:12-17: Jesus starts local
52:15 - The political dimension of Jesus’ Messianic Campaign
53:45 - Reading of Mt. 4:18-22: Jesus and the working class
56:25 - Why Jesus and the Pharisees are in conflict
58:00 - RFK Jr. and the Democrats in the 2024 “primaries”
59:20 - The need to read the political present through the Scriptures
1:00:30 - Reading of Mt. 4:23-25
1:02:05 - The 3 dimensions of the Messianic Vocation
1:03:35 - Working out the political dimension in our context
1:07:15 - Standing prophetically against U.S. imperialism & militarism
1:13:30 - The institutional dimension: Jesus is a Rabbi, teaches in the synagogue
1:19:20 - The personal dimension: Jesus the healer
1:21:30 - The loneliness of Jesus
1:22:45 - What kind of healer was Jesus?
1:25:30 - Attention to symptoms and suffering is therapeutic
1:29:20 - “Moonstruck & Demonriddled” as ancient psychopathology
1:31:20 - Jesus’ ‘clinical context’ grounds his ‘thesis’