The word for plow in Hebrew is foresh.

So I'm saying to myself, you know, plowman, plowman, I've heard this before.

Where have I heard this? Where did I hear it? I heard it in New York because I was born in New York and I was born next to the United Nations.

And they have a statue there.

And the statue is a man beating a sword into a plowshare.

Now, where is this from? It's from the book of Isaiah.

And in Isaiah, it says that in the future, in the messianic times, in the future, They're going to beat swords into plowshares.

What would you say to that person?

What was the moment or process that made you start questioning the familiar interpretation of sto- of these stories?

Okay.

So, uh, basically, um, I studied comparative literature, and I s- I studied Japanese, Chinese, Greek and Roman, uh, literature, uh, European literature, American literature, and English literature.

And when you're doing that, you're studying, um, s- cultures, and you're studying style of language.

And during those years, I was given a book by, uh, Maurice Nicolle, but actually, it's Dr. Maurice Nicolle.

He was a psychiatrist, uh, during World War I, and by World War II, he had s- drifted into, um, mysticism.

And after the war was over, he started studying, um, the Gospels.

How much of- What people believe this story means is actually shaped by translation rather than the original text.

What was the moment or discovery that convinced you this was a story you had to tell?

Well, basically, if you read the Bible, either way, the Old Testament or the New Testament, if you don't understand the metaphors, then you simply don't understand what's happening.

So, for example, we have the story of the Garden of Eden.

And we're told there's a tree of knowledge of good and evil.

But Eve does not eat the tree, she eats the fruit.

So therefore, the fruit is what contains the knowledge.

And what we need to understand is that in the Gospels and in the Old Testament, All food represents knowledge, and each specific type of food represents a specific type of knowledge.

How, for listeners who have never heard this before, walk us through that linguistic and metaphorical evidence, and why does this distinction matter so profoundly?

of

good and evil.

However, if you remember, Eve does not eat the tree, she eats the fruit.

So therefore, fruit becomes a metaphor for knowledge.

And actually, in the Old and New Testament, all food... no matter what food it is, is a metaphor for something else, some type of knowledge.

So, for example, even the word gospels in Hebrew means meat.

So when we see the gospel of Mark in Hebrew, it says the meat of Mark.

Not even

Can you explain what you mean?

Okay, so the problem with the New Testament is that we're dealing with three languages.

We have that the New Testament was written in Greek, and the oldest copies of the New Testament that we have written down are in Greek.

But people believe that it was based on Hebrew.

But the problem was that the Jews and the Romans fought a war and the Romans were destroying all the Hebrew documents and Torahs and Bibles.

So the only written records we have, the oldest, are in Greek.

The second problem is is that Jesus grew up in the Galilee, and in the Galilee they spoke Aramaic.

So, Drew, are there any words or concepts that cannot easily be translated?

Now talking about the interpretations that many Christians and Jewish, uh, people have asserted for many years, can you share with us what made you, uh, comfortable questioning ideas that are often treated as settled truths?

Okay.

There's a, a controversy-- Well, there's a few controversies, but, um, one of the arguments today in 2026 is what language was the Bible written in or what language did Jesus speak? And most people, uh, agree that the Old Testament is Hebrew, and Moses spoke Hebrew, and Abraham spoke Hebrew, so that's not the big problem.

The problem is the Gospels and the New Testament.

So you have Mel Gibson, for example.

When he made his movie, uh, The Passion of Christ, he had everybody speaking Aramaic because he believes that Jesus grew up in the Galilee, and in the Galilee, people spoke Aramaic, and the disciples of Jesus for-- were Galileans.

So in his movie, he has people speaking Aramaic.

Now, why do you believe that understanding the metaphor can sometimes be more important than taking a Bible passage at face value?

Okay,

so...

Basically, the problem with the gospel is that it's in three languages in the beginning.

It was people were saying that Jesus grew up in the Galilee, and in the Galilee, they spoke Aramaic.

So they're saying Jesus grew up in the Galilee.

All his friends spoke Aramaic.

So he spoke Aramaic.

What is one biblical idea you believe humans desperately need to reconsider today?