Stuff means stuff, all stuff means stuff.

Some of that meaning is discovered by people as we look into it and understand the inherent

intrinsic meaning that's built into things in the natural world.

Some of that meaning is discovered or created or inflicted.

Some of that meaning is encountered as we see the world through other people's eyes.

I mean understanding the meanings they assigned to things, the meanings that other people see in things is a big part of what empathy is, right?

But everything means something. Stuff means stuff.

Locations also means something. And we can do the exercise again. We've done it before. I could throw out a

location and you could be like, oh yeah, that immediately conjures a set of meanings for me.

Alabama, the Bay Area of San Francisco, the Australian Outback, Mausel Iraq.

You see, all of those locations conjure something for you.

Well, the same is true of the people who came before us in the ancient

world and sometimes one little word, one little location place in the text can be enough for

us to chase down the rabbit trail and understand how the original

audience would have received a text better by understanding the

associations there now. In this particular case in Matthew 27

Matthew did not have to give us a detail about where a character who's about

to appear on screen was from, but he did. Why? That parchment space is prime real estate, it's

limited, this is carefully edited on his part why is he

giving us this detail what might we be able to draw from this what associations

might have been present for the original audience. Here's what we're looking at.

Jesus is being brutalized,

...