Admiration

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

Page 283 of 288 · 20 per page

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  The pioneer of modern German Catholic historians of note is a poet and an ex-Protestant, Count Leopold Von Stolberg (d. 1819). With the enthusiasm of an honest, noble, and devout, but credulous convert, he began, in 1806, a very full Geschichte der Religion Jesu Christi, and brought it down in 15 volumes to the year 430. It was continued by F. Kerz (vols. 16–45, to A.D. 1192) and J. N. Brischar (vols. 45–53, to A.D. 1245). Theod. Katerkamp (d. at Münster, 1834) wrote a church history, in the same spirit and pleasing style, down to A.D. 1153.15 It remained unfinished, like the work of Locherer(d. 1837), which extends to 1073.16 Bishop Hefele’s History of the Councils (Conciliengeschichte, 1855–’86; revised edition and continuation, 1873 sqq.) is a most valuable contribution to the history of doctrine and discipline down to the Council of Trent.17 The best compendious histories from the pens of German Romanists are produced by Jos. Ign. Ritter, Professor in Bonn and afterward in Breslau (d. 1857);18 Joh. Adam Möhler, formerly Professor in Tübingen, and then in Munich, the author of the famous Symbolik (d. 1838);19 Joh. Alzog (d. 1878);20 H. Brück (Mayence, 2d ed., 1877); F. X. Kraus (Treves, 1873; 3d ed., 1882); Card. Hergenröther (Freiburg, 3d ed., 1886, 3 vols.); F. X. Funk (Tübingen, 1886; 2d ed., 1890). A. F. Gfrörer (d. 1861) began his learned General Church History as a Protestant, or rather as a Rationalist (1841–’46, 4 vols., till A.D. 1056), and continued it from Gregory VII. on as a Romanist (1859–’61). Dr. John Joseph Ignatius Döllinger (Professor in Munich, born 1799), the most learned historian of the Roman Church in the nineteenth century, represents the opposite course from popery to anti-popery. He began, but never finished, a Handbook of Christian Church History (Landshut, 1833, 2 vols.) till A.D. 680, and a Manual of Church History (1836, 2d ed., 1843, 2 vols.) to the fifteenth century, and in part to 1517.21 He wrote also learned works against the Reformation (Die Reformation, 1846–’48, in 3 vols.), on Hippolytus and Callistus (1853), on the preparation for Christianity (Heidenthum u Judenthum, 1857), Christianity and the Church in the time of its Founding (1860), The Church and the Churches (1862), Papal Fables of the Middle Age (1865), The Pope and the Council (under the assumed name of "Janus," 1869), etc.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  The abbot Claude Fleury (d. 1723), in his Histoire ecclésiastique (Par. 1691–1720, in 20 vols. quarto, down to A.D. 1414, continued by Claude Fabre, a very decided Gallican, to A.D. 1595), furnished a much more popular work, commended by mildness of spirit and fluency of style, and as useful for edification as for instruction. It is a minute and, upon the whole, accurate narrative of the course of events as they occurred, but without system and philosophical generalization, and hence tedious and wearisome. When Fleury was asked why he unnecessarily darkened his pages with so many discreditable facts, he properly replied that the survival and progress of Christianity, notwithstanding the vices and crimes of its professors and preachers, was the best proof of its divine origin.9 Jacques Bénigne Bossuet, the distinguished bishop of Meaux (d. 1704), an advocate of Romanism on the one hand against Protestantism, but of Gallicanism on the other against Ultramontanism, wrote with brilliant eloquence, and in the spirit of the Catholic church, a universal history, in bold outlines for popular effect.10 This was continued in the German language by the Protestant Cramer, with less elegance but more thoroughness, and with special reference to the doctrine history of the middle age. Sebastien le Nain de Tillemont (d. 1698), a French nobleman and priest, without office and devoted exclusively to study and prayer—a pupil and friend of the Jansenists and in partial sympathy with Gallicanism—composed a most learned and useful history of the first six centuries (till 513), in a series of minute biographies, with great skill and conscientiousness, almost entirely in the words of the original authorities, from which he carefully distinguishes his own additions. It is, as far as it goes, the most valuable church history produced by Roman Catholic industry and learning.11 Contemporaneously with Tillemont, the Gallican, L. Ellies Dupin (d. 1719), furnished a biographical and bibliographical church history down to the seventeenth century.12 Remi Ceillier (d. 1761) followed with a similar work, which has the advantage of greater completeness and accuracy.13 The French Benedictines of the congregation of St. Maur, in the seventeenth and eighteenth century, did immense service to historical theology by the best critical editions of the fathers and extensive archaeological works. We can only mention the names of Mabillon, Massuet, Montfaucon, D’achery, Ruinart, Martène, Durand. Among the Jesuits, Sirmond and Petau occupy a prominent place. The Abbé Rohrbacher. (Professor of Church History at Nancy, d. 1856) wrote an extensive Universal History of the Church, including that of the Old Testament, down to 1848. It is less liberal than the great Gallican writers of the seventeenth century, but shows familiarity with German literature.14 (c) German Catholic historians.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  Although be towered high above his colleagues, he disarmed envy and jealousy by his kindliness and Christian humility. Altogether he shines next to Zwingli and Bullinger as the most influential and useful Antistes of the Reformed Church of Zürich.322 § 56. Oswald Myconius, Antistes of Basel. I. Correspondence between Myconius and Zwingli in Zwingli’s Opera, vols. VII. and VIII. (28 letters of the former and 20 of the latter).—Correspondence with Bullinger in the Simler Collection.—Antiqu. Gernl., I. The Chronicle of Fridolin Ryff, ed. by W. Vischer (son), in the Basler Chroniken (vol. 1, Leipzig, 1872), extends from 1514 to 1541. II. Melchior Kirchofer (of Schaffhausen): Oswald Myconius, Antistes der Baslerischen Kirche. Zürich, 1813 (pp. 387). Still very serviceable.—R. Hagenbach: Joh. Oecolampad und Oswald Myronius, die Reformatoren Basels. Elberfeld, 1859 (pp. 309–462). Also his Geschichte der ersten Basler Confession. Basel, 1828.—B. Riggenbach, in Herzog2, X. 403–405. Oswald Myconius (1488–1552),323 a native of Luzern, an intimate friend of Zwingli, and successor of Oecolampadius, was to the Church of Basel what Bullinger was to the Church of Zürich,—a faithful preserver of the Reformed religion, but in a less difficult position and more limited sphere of usefulness. He spent his earlier life as classical teacher in Basel, Zürich, Luzern, Einsiedeln, and again in Zürich. His pupil, Thomas Plater, speaks highly of his teaching ability and success. Erasmus honored him with his friendship before he fell out with the Reformation.324 After the death of Zwingli and Oecolampadius, he moved to Basel as pastor of St. Alban (Dec. 22, 1531), and was elected Antistes or chief pastor of the Church of that city, and professor of New Testament exegesis in the university (August, 1532). He was not ordained, and had no academic degree, and refused to take one because Christ had forbidden his disciples to be called Rabbi (Matt. 23:8).325 He carried out the views of Oecolampadius on discipline, and maintained the independence of the Church in its relation to the State and the university. He had to suffer much opposition from Carlstadt, who, by his recommendation, became professor of theology in Basel (1534), and ended there his restless life (1541). He took special interest in the higher and lower schools. He showed hospitality to the numerous Protestants from France who, like Farel and Calvin, sought a temporary refuge in Basel. The English martyrologist, John Foxe, fled from the Marian persecution to Basel, finished and published there the first edition of his Book of Martyrs (1554). On the doctrine of the Eucharist, Myconius, like Calvin after him, occupied a middle ground between Zwingli and Luther. He aided Bucer in his union movement which resulted in the adoption of the Wittenberg Concordia and a temporary conciliation of Luther with the Swiss (1536). He was suspected by the Zürichers of leaning too much to the Lutheran side, but he never admitted the corporal presence and oral manducation; he simply emphasized more than Zwingli the spiritual real presence and fruition of the body and blood of Christ.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  It spread with incredible rapidity and irresistible fascination from Egypt over the whole church, east and west, and received the sanction of the greatest church teachers, of an Athanasius, a Basil, a Chrysostom, an Augustine, a Jerome, as the surest and shortest way to heaven. It soon became a powerful rival of the priesthood, and formed a third order, between the priesthood and the laity. The more extraordinary and eccentric the religion of the anchorets and monks, the more they were venerated among the people. The whole conception of the Christian life from the fourth to the sixteenth century is pervaded with the ascetic and monastic spirit, and pays the highest admiration to the voluntary celibacy, poverty, absolute obedience, and excessive self-punishments of the pillar-saints and the martyrs of the desert; while in the same degree the modest virtues of every-day household and social life are looked upon as an inferior degree of morality. In this point the old Catholic ethical ideas essentially differ from those of evangelical Protestantism and modern civilization. But, to understand and appreciate them, we must consider them in connection with the corrupt social condition of the rapidly decaying empire of Rome. The Christian spirit in that age, in just its most earnest and vigorous forms, felt compelled to assume in some measure an anti-social, seclusive character, and to prepare itself in the school of privation and solitude for the work of transforming the world and founding a new Christian order of society upon the ruins of the ancient heathenism. In the development of doctrine the Nicene and post-Nicene age is second in productiveness and importance only to those of the apostles and of the reformation. It is the classical period for the objective fundamental dogmas, which constitute the ecumenical or old Catholic confession of faith. The Greek church produced the symbolical definition of the orthodox view of the holy Trinity and the person of Christ, while the Latin church made considerable advance with the anthropological and soteriological doctrines of sin and grace. The fourth and fifth centuries produced the greatest church fathers, Athanasius and Chrysostom in the East, Jerome and Augustine in the West. All learning and science now came into the service of the church, and all classes of society, from the emperor to the artisan, took the liveliest, even a passionate interest, in the theological controversies. Now, too, for the first time, could ecumenical councils be held, in which the church of the whole Roman empire was represented, and fixed its articles of faith in an authoritative way. Now also, however, the lines of orthodoxy were more and more strictly drawn; freedom of inquiry was restricted; and all as departure from the state-church system was met not only, as formerly, with spiritual weapons, but also with civil punishments. So early as the fourth century the dominant party, the orthodox as well as the heterodox, with help of the imperial authority practised deposition, confiscation, and banishment upon its opponents.

• From A Theology for the Social Gospel (1918)

  While the great churches were bitterly contending over the question whether their Lord was physically or spiritually present, and if physically, whether by transubstantiation or consubstantiation, the persecuted Anabaptists, who had neither the right to meet nor to exist, had the spirit of the original institution among them. As in the primitive Church, their service was preceded by searching of heart and reconciliation, so that all might be one in Christ. As in the upper room at Jerusalem, they acted in full view of death, and their main thought was to gain strength for imprisonment and torture by once more touching the garment-hem of their Lord. They often dwelt on the fact that many grains of wheat had been crushed and had felt the heat of the oven to make this bread, and many berries of the vine had been pressed in the wine-press to make this wine; in the same way the followers of Jesus must pass through affliction and persecution in order to form the body of the Lord. Thus these poor proletarians, hunted by the tyrannical combinations of Church and State, Catholic and Protestant alike, returned to the original spirit of the Lord’s Meal and realized that Real Presence about which others wrangled. Can the social gospel contribute to make the Lord’s Supper more fully an act of fraternity and to connect it again with the social hope of the Kingdom of God? In the Lord’s Supper we re-affirm our supreme allegiance to our Lord who taught us to know God as our common father and to realize that all men are our brethren. In the midst of a world full of divisive selfishness we thereby accept brotherhood as the ruling principle of our life and undertake to put it into practice in our private and public activities. We abjure the selfish use of power and wealth for the exploitation of our fellows. We dedicate our lives to establishing the Kingdom of God and to winning mankind to its laws. In contemplation of the death of our Lord we accept the possibility of risk and loss as our share of service. We link ourselves to his death and accept the obligation of the cross. It is open to any minister to emphasize thoughts such as these, connecting the Lord’s Supper with the Kingdom of God. All who have the new social consciousness would feel their appeal. Any person encountering antagonism or loss for the sake of the Kingdom would find comfort and strength in connecting his troubles with the cross of Christ. The Lord’s Supper was instituted by Jesus in full view of his death. We can fully share his spirit only when we too confront the possibility of suffering in the same cause. The emphasis on such thoughts would be the reaction of the social gospel on the religious and theological content of the Lord’s Supper. They would be a challenge to the Church to realize its mission as the social embodiment of the

• From Quiet (2012)

  I once saw Wozniak speak at a bookstore in New York City. A standing-room-only crowd showed up bearing their 1970s Apple operating manuals, in honor of all that he had done for them. But the credit is not Wozniak’s alone; it also belongs to Homebrew. Wozniak identifies that first meeting as the beginning of the computer revolution and one of the most important nights of his life. So if you wanted to replicate the conditions that made Woz so productive, you might point to Homebrew, with its collection of like-minded souls. You might decide that Wozniak’s achievement was a shining example of the collaborative approach to creativity. You might conclude that people who hope to be innovative should work in highly social workplaces. And you might be wrong. Consider what Wozniak did right after the meeting in Menlo Park. Did he huddle with fellow club members to work on computer design? No. (Although he did keep attending the meetings, every other Wednesday.) Did he seek out a big, open office space full of cheerful pandemonium in which ideas would cross-pollinate? No. When you read his account of his work process on that first PC, the most striking thing is that he was always by himself . Wozniak did most of the work inside his cubicle at Hewlett-Packard. He’d arrive around 6:30 a.m. and, alone in the early morning, read engineering magazines, study chip manuals, and prepare designs in his head. After work, he’d go home, make a quick spaghetti or TV dinner, then drive back to the office and work late into the night. He describes this period of quiet midnights and solitary sunrises as “the biggest high ever.” His efforts paid off on the night of June 29, 1975, at around 10:00 p.m., when Woz finished building a prototype of his machine. He hit a few keys on the keyboard—and letters appeared on the screen in front of him. It was the sort of breakthrough moment that most of us can only dream of. And he was alone when it happened. Intentionally so. In his memoir, he offers this advice to kids who aspire to great creativity: Most inventors and engineers I’ve met are like me—they’re shy and they live in their heads. They’re almost like artists. In fact, the very best of them are artists. And artists work best alone where they can control an invention’s design without a lot of other people designing it for marketing or some other committee. I don’t believe anything really revolutionary has been invented by committee. If you’re that rare engineer who’s an inventor and also an artist, I’m going to give you some advice that might be hard to take. That advice is: Work alone. You’re going to be best able to design revolutionary products and features if you’re working on your own. Not on a committee. Not on a team .

• From The Work of Theology (2015)

  A Voyage to Georgia: Begun in the Year 1735, by Francis Moore, Georgia Historical Society, Savannah. 42 . For the motto, see Mills Lane, ed., General Oglethorpe’s Georgia: Colonial Letters, 1733–1743 (Savannah, GA: Beehive Press, 1990), xviii. On the first group of settlers, see E. M. Coulter and A. B. Saye, eds., A List of the Early Settlers of Georgia (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1949), xii, 111. Oglethorpe took on the unusual role of “gossip,” helping pregnant women to give birth; see Mr. Benjamin Ingham’s journal of his voyage to Georgia, 1736, in Egmont Papers, Philips Collection, University of Georgia, vol. 14201, 442–43; and Joseph Hetherington to Mr. Oglethorpe, March 22, 1733/34, in Lane, General Oglethorpe’s Georgia, 138. 43 . On emulation, see James Edward Oglethorpe, Some Account of the Design for the Trustees for Establishing Colonies in America, eds. Rodney M. Baine and Phinizy Spalding (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1990), 31–32. On Oglethorpe’s sacrifices for the community, and giving up the soft bed, see Samuel Eveleigh to the Trustees, April 6, 1733, in Lane, General Oglethorpe’s Georgia, 1:13; and Governor Johnson to Benjamin Martyn, July 28, 1733, and Mr. Beaufain to Mr. Simond, January 23, 1733/34, and Extract of a letter from Georgia, March 7, 1735/36, Egmont Papers, vol. 14200, 36, 62; vol. 14201, 314. 44 . Oglethorpe, Some Account of the Design , 51; Rodney E. Baine, “General James Oglethorpe and the Expedition Against St. Augustine,” Georgia Historical Quarterly 84, no. 2 (Summer 2000): 197–229, esp. 197–98. On the military design of Savannah, see Turpin C. Bannister, “Oglethorpe’s Sources for the Savannah Plan,” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 20, no. 2 (May 1961): 47–62, esp. 60–62. 45 . Oglethorpe wanted Georgia to allow men to “labour at a decent maintenance,” and he calculated the labor value of wives and eldest sons to offset the needs for servants and slaves; see James Oglethorpe, A New and Accurate Account of the Provinces of South-Carolina and Georgia (London, 1733), 39, 42–43; also see Philip Thicknesse to his mother, November 3, 1736, in Lane, General Oglethorpe’s Georgia, 1:281; Rodney Baine, “Philip Thicknesse’s Reminiscences of Early Georgia,” Georgia Historical Quarterly 74, no. 4 (Winter 1990): 672–98, esp. 694–95, 697–98. For the citizen-soldier idea, see Benjamin Martyn, An Account, Showing the Progress of the Colony (London, 1741), 18. For Oglethorpe’s views on women and cleanliness, see Oglethorpe, Some Account of the Design, 23, 26, 29–31. On the problem of female slaves, see Betty Wood, Slavery in Colonial Georgia, 1730–1775 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1984), 18. From 1732 to September 1741, 45.4 percent of the settlers sent on charity were “Foreign Protestants”; see Coulter and Saye, A List of the Early Settlers, x. 46 . James Oglethorpe to the Trustees, August 12, 1733, in Egmont Papers, vol. 14200, 38–39. 47 . See Colonel William Byrd to Lord Egmont, July 12, 1736, in “Colonel William Byrd on Slavery and Indentured Servants, 1736, 1739,” American Historical Review 1, no.

• From The John Dominic Crossan Essential Set (Jesus; The Birth of Christianity; The Power of Parable; The Greatest Prayer) (2004)

  When they came to Jesus, they appealed to him earnestly, saying, “He is worthy of having you do this for him, for he loves our people, and it is he who built our synagogue for us.” (7:1–5). John: There was a royal official whose son lay ill in Capernaum. When he heard that Jesus had come from Judea to Galilee, he went and begged him to come down and heal his son, for he was at the point of death. (4:46–47) Both Matthew and John have the official make the request directly to Jesus, but Luke does it indirectly . Luke has him do it through “Jewish elders” and “friends,” because that Gentile had “built [their] synagogue for [them].” Luke certainly adds that insert to describe and applaud the ideal God-worshiper, but I think it also indicates his own pre-Christian status as God-worshiper and synagogue supporter. Next, throughout what we call Acts, Luke speaks not only of “Jews” and “Gentiles,” but also of a third group, an in-between group who are “both/and” rather than “either/or.” He calls those ambiguous individuals or groups “those fearing God” or “God-fearers” four times (10:2, 22, 35; 13:16). He also calls them “those worshiping” or “worshipers” four times (13:43, 50; 17:4, 17), and, more fully, “those worshiping God” or “God-worshipers” twice (16:14; 18:7). Recall also the name of the person to whom Luke-Acts was dedicated: Theophilus, which in Greek means “God-lover.” That could be—either personally or communally—a third name for such synagogue-attending Gentiles. In any case, those Gentiles are clearly distinguished from Jews in these phrases: “Israelites, and others who fear God” (13:16), “Jews and devout converts” (13:43), “Jews incited the devout women” (13:50), “Jews…devout Greeks (17:1, 4), and “Jews and the devout persons” (17:17). In all those cases, by the way, that word devout is “(God-) worshipers” in Greek. Furthermore, those in-between “Gentile Jews” are sometimes indicated by Luke without being directly named as either “God-fearers” or “God-worshipers.” For example, the “Ethiopian eunuch, a court official of the Candace, queen of the Ethiopians, in charge of her entire treasury [who] had come to Jerusalem to worship” in Acts 8:27 was most likely a God-worshiper. Why, in both volumes of his gospel, is Luke—and Luke alone in the entire New Testament—so explicitly interested in those Gentile Jews or Jewish Gentiles? My answer to this first question can only be educated guesswork and scholarly conjecture. But my proposal is that “Luke,” the unknown author of that two-volume gospel we now call Luke-Acts, was originally a Gentile God-worshiper and synagogue supporter before he converted to Christianity. Keep, then, this question in the back of your mind throughout the discussion that follows. What might a Gentile God-worshiper who was converted to Christianity think about the Jewish community, on the one hand, and the Roman Empire, on the other? I TURN NOW TO my third point, which will have two steps, presented as case studies.

• From The John Dominic Crossan Essential Set (Jesus; The Birth of Christianity; The Power of Parable; The Greatest Prayer) (2004)

  Matthew, however, continuing his theme of Jesus as the new Moses would have called it: “The First Book of the New Torah by Jesus as the New Moses from on Top of the New Mount Sinai.” One preliminary point. For much of modern advertising, “old” is a pejorative term and “new” the accolade of excellence. It was not so in the ancient world. The “old” was the tried and true; the “new” was dangerous and suspicious. Augustus, for example, created a new dynastic monarchy while insisting he was restoring the old republic. The “new” was safest and best not as the “old” superseded and discarded, but rather as the “old” transformed and renew ed. So Matthew has Jesus say this: Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished. Therefore, whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, will be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you, unless your righteousness [better: justice] exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. (5:17–20) You will notice an internal challenge to “the least” inside the kingdom, but also an external one to the “scribes and Pharisees” outside it. The clash is neither Jesus versus Moses, let alone “Christianity” versus “Judaism,” but rather Christian Judaism versus Pharisaic Judaism, or, in other words, Matthew’s interpretation of the law versus that of the scribes and Pharisees. How exactly, then—in Matthew’s inaugural challenge—is the “justice” of Christian Jews supposed to exceed that of Pharisaic Jews? Matthew follows that manifesto in 5:17–20 with a set of six legal antitheses in which an older law is subsumed and transformed into a newer one. Here is a summary of the six comments in Matthew’s vision of the justice of the law brought to its fulfillment in Jesus: On murder (5:21–26): “You have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, ‘You shall not murder.’” “But I say to you”: Do not even be angry, insult, or berate. On adultery (5:27–30): “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’” “But I say to you”: Do not even have lustful thoughts. On divorce (5:31–32): “It was also said”: Divorce is permitted.

• From Theology: A Very Short Introduction (2013)

  He played a leading role in preparing the way for what was perhaps the most significant single event in Christian history of the 20th century, the Second Vatican Council (1962–5), and then he contributed influentially to the deliberations of the Council. He became the most widely read Roman Catholic theologian of the century. Rahner’s own intellectual formation drew on deep immersion in the Christian tradition—especially scripture, Augustine, the Greek theologians of the early centuries of the church, Thomas Aquinas, Ignatius Loyola (1491–1556), who had founded his own Jesuit order, and Catholic traditions of liturgy and spirituality—combined with adventurous engagement in modern thought, especially in philosophy. He was especially influenced by attempts to rethink the philosophy and theology of Thomas Aquinas in the light of philosophers such as Kant and Hegel, and he also studied with the philosopher Martin Heidegger. It is extraordinarily difficult to categorize his theological output. Perhaps it is best described as combining characteristics of Types 2, 3, and 4. In line with Type 2 he works out a ‘transcendental theology’ which includes a philosophical framework for theology. In line with Type 3 he engages in innumerable dialogues trying to correlate Christian faith and practice with a vast variety of other understandings and practices. He never produced one big work of theology and his favourite form was the essay or paper. This means that it is very hard to systematize him: in over twenty volumes of his Theological Investigations he continually springs surprises and shows how his transcendental philosophy and theology do not give an overview of his thought. Yet like Type 4, he is writing in faith and seeking understanding, and he could be read as offering above all a habitable, mainstream theology and spirituality for modern Christians. ConclusionThis chapter has defined academic theology as a subject which deals with questions of meaning, truth, beauty, and practice raised in relation to religions and pursued through a range of academic disciplines, and it has shown how theology is shaped institutionally and intellectually. Institutionally, the field is not best described in the ways better suited to a previous period, using the categories of ‘confessional’ theology and ‘neutral’ religious studies. Instead, I suggested describing institutions in terms of their purposes and responsibilities. Some are more oriented towards religious communities, others towards academic disciplines, but both should be open both to theology and to religious studies. In this ‘moral ecology’ of the field, the two responsibilities towards academy and community of faith need to be completed by responsibility towards the rest of society and towards the international community of societies. Institutions should ideally recognize all three dimensions of responsibility but they will differ in the ways in which they combine them. That description was based on assessing ‘best practice’ in the field in several countries. Intellectually, the field is not best described by the labels conservative, liberal, and radical. Instead, a different map of Christian theologies was sketched to show the main options.

• From The John Dominic Crossan Essential Set (Jesus; The Birth of Christianity; The Power of Parable; The Greatest Prayer) (2004)

  If you read only the canonical gospels you would know that Peter was very important but you would know James only as one among the siblings of Jesus named in passing in Mark 6:3. If you read a non-Christian source such as Josephus, however, you would know only two individuals in earliest Christianity: one is Jesus himself and the other is his brother James. You would not know, for example, that Peter or Paul had ever existed. James the brother of the Lord, James the Just, James of Jerusalem, James by whatever name requires very special attention. The preceding epigraph concerns institutional tensions between bishop-leader and scholar-teacher when Demetrius and his successors were rulers of the Alexandrian church and Clement or Origen headed its catechetical school between the mid-second and mid-third centuries. My intention in quoting it is not to retroject the monarchical episcopate back to the early first century with James of Jerusalem. I use it, rather, to introduce this question: What mode of power and authority did James have, and what were the sociopolitical advantages and disadvantages of that mode? JAMES IN JOSEPHUS We saw in Chapter 1 what Josephus says about Jesus. But what he says about James, the brother of Jesus, is much, much longer. If we knew nothing save these two texts, James would probably seem the far more important person. His execution was enough to topple a high priest: Upon learning of the death of Festus, Caesar sent Albinus to Judaea as procurator. The king [Agrippa II] removed Joseph from the high priesthood, and bestowed the succession to this office upon the son of Ananus, who was likewise called Ananus….The younger Ananus … was rash in his temper and unusually daring. He followed the school of the Sadducees, who are indeed more heartless than any of the other Jews … when they sit in judgement. Possessed of such a character, Ananus thought that he had a favourable opportunity because Festus was dead and Albinus was still on the way. And so he convened the judges of the Sanhedrin and brought before them a man named James, the brother of Jesus who was called the Christ, and certain others. He accused them of having transgressed the law and delivered them up to be stoned. Those of the inhabitants of the city who were considered the most fair-minded and who were strict in observance of the law were offended at this. They therefore secretly sent to King Agrippa urging him, for Ananus had not even been correct in his first step [in convening the Sanhedrin], to order him to desist from any further such actions. Certain of them even went to meet Albinus, who was on his way from Alexandria, and informed him that Ananus had no authority to convene the Sanhedrin without his consent. Convinced by these words, Albinus angrily wrote to Ananus threatening to take vengeance upon him.

• From The Misunderstood Jew: The Church and the Scandal of the Jewish Jesus (2007)

  Jesus.” Those who prefer the Gospel of Judas over the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John because they see it as eliminating anti-Jewish views from Christian origins would do well, instead, to see how Jesus fits into his Jewish context, and that includes the notice that Judas does not, in the Gospels, represent “the Jews.” Jews too can learn much from appreciating Jesus within his Jewish context, for the New Testament texts preserve for Jews part of our own history. The stories of Jesus tell us a great deal about Jewish life in Galilee and Judea in the first century, and the only uncontested Pharisee from whom we have extant written sources is Paul of Tarsus. I find that the more I study Jesus, Mary Magdalene, James, Peter, and Paul in their own historical contexts, the more I come to appreciate my own Judaism: the diversity of its teachings, the richness of its encounter with the divine, the struggles it faced in accommodating to the Roman world. I appreciate, even find inspirational, the message of the kingdom of heaven, a message that spoke of the time when all debts are forgiven and when those who have willingly give, without thought of reciprocity, to those who need; a time when we no longer ask, “Who is my neighbor?” but “Who acts as neighbor?”; a time when we prioritize serving rather than being served. . . . But as much as I admire much of the message, I do not worship the messenger. Instead, I find Jesus reflects back to me my own tradition, but in a new key. I also have to admit to a bit of pride in thinking about him—he’s one of ours. If on the popular level we Jews are willing not only to acknowledge but also to take pride in the Jewishness of such generally nonobservant Jews as Sigmund Freud, Albert Einstein, the Marxes (Karl and Groucho, although Karl was baptized as a child), and Jerry Seinfeld, why not acknowledge the quite observant Jesus? Such recognition need not entail citing the Gospels in a bar mitzvah talk or in a d’var Torah, an interpretation of the biblical reading for the week, although I have heard rabbis in Reform and Conservative synagogues cite Homer (both the Greek poet and Bart’s father), Plato, the Buddha, Muhammad, Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., the Dalai Lama, and even Madonna (the Kabbalah-besotted singer, not the mother of Jesus). At least Jesus is Jewish with regard to family, practice, and belief. A critically aware, historically informed study of Jesus in his Jewish context does more than provide benefits to Christians and Jews alike; it aids in preventing the anti-Semitism that tends to arise when the history is not known. The concern to recover Jesus’s Jewishness is these days particularly urgent.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  He was, according to a tradition of the second century, the first bishop of Athens.771 In the ninth century, when the French became acquainted with his supposed writings, he was confounded with St. Denis, the first bishop of Paris and patron saint of France, who lived and died about two hundred years after the Areopagite.772 He thus became, by a glaring anachronism, the connecting link between Athens and Paris, between Greek philosophy and Christian theology, and acquired an almost apostolic authority. He furnishes one of the most remarkable examples of the posthumous influence of unknown authorship and of the power of the dead over the living. For centuries he was regarded as the prince of theologians. He represented to the Greek and Latin church the esoteric wisdom of the gospel, and the mysterious harmony between faith and reason and between the celestial and terrestrial hierarchy. Pseudo-Dionysius is a philosophical counterpart of Pseudo-Isidor: both are pious frauds in the interest of the catholic system, the one with regard to theology, the other with regard to church polity; both reflect the uncritical character of mediaeval Christianity; both derived from the belief in their antiquity a fictitious importance far beyond their intrinsic merits. Doubts were entertained of the genuineness of the Areopagitica by Laurentius Valla, Erasmus, and Cardinal Cajetan; but it was only in the seventeenth century that the illusion of the identity of Pseudo-Dionysius with the apostolic convert and the patron-saint of France was finally dispelled by the torch of historical criticism. Since that time his writings have lost their authority and attraction; but they will always occupy a prominent place among the curiosities of literature, and among the most remarkable systems of mystic philosophy. Authorship. Who is the real author of those productions? The writer is called simply Dionysius, and only once.773 He repeatedly mentions an unknown Hierotheos, as his teacher; but he praises also "the divine Paul," as the spiritual guide of both, and addresses persons who bear apostolic names, as Timothy, Titus, Caius, Polycarp, and St. John. He refers to a visit he made with Hierotheos, and with James, the brother of the Lord (ajdelfovqeo"), and Peter, "the chief and noblest head of the inspired apostles," to gaze upon the (dead) body of her (Mary) who was "the beginning of life and the recipient of God;" on which occasion Hierotheos gave utterance to their feelings in ecstatic hymns. It is evident then that he either lived in the apostolic age and its surroundings, or that he transferred himself back in imagination to that age.774 The former alternative is impossible. The inflated style, the reference to later persons (as Ignatius of Antioch and Clement of Alexandria), the acquaintance with Neo-Platonic ideas, the appeal to the "old tradition" (ajrcai'a paravdosi") of the church as well as the Scriptures, and the elaborate system of church polity and ritual which he presupposes, clearly prove his post-apostolic origin. He was not known to Eusebius or Jerome or any ecclesiastical author before 533.

• From The Sexual Life of Catherine M. (2001)

  But calm can also be mistaken for indifference. I knew one man who was so contemplative that he withdrew completely from his physical appearance to the extent that it no longer expressed anything. His body rested on me with all its weight; yes, it was active but impassive, as if he had abandoned it to me, and this absent face would park next to mine while I watched his ghost transported by orgasm floating above us like in a fantasy film. It was the same body that I saw when this man masturbated, indifferent to my presence and using a technique unique to him. He would lie on his tummy with his arms bent by his sides and squeeze his organ between his strong muscular thighs by contracting them. It was a stocky body, and the muscles stood out all the more in this position. Myself an experienced expert of onanism, I admired the concentration he applied to the job, stubbornly and defiantly defending the mental isolation it requires. When you have made love with a man a few times, you recognise when he is going to ‘come’, even if he is not one of those who announce it out loud. Perhaps you know before he does, informed by tiny signs: perhaps because he has slipped you into a position which acts like a trigger on him; perhaps because he falls silent, his breathing becomes audible, appeased a few moments in advance. One friend who was an imaginative, talkative and active fucker, who would keep you there for an hour with his extraordinary erotic fabulations and would make you try out the most acrobatic positions and the most improbable substitutes (cucumbers, sausages, Perrier bottles, policeman’s luminous white truncheon, etc.), would suddenly become quiet a few moments before orgasm. Whatever position I was in, he would bring me back underneath him, start to file without forcing and replace words with discreet little moans. I was convinced that this final phase followed a decision taken with full knowledge of the facts and I wouldn’t have been surprised to have heard him say: ‘Right, that’s enough fun and games, let’s get down to business.’ Afterwards, when he had discharged, he would stay on top of me, unleashing a little ‘hi, hi, hi’ in my ear which sounded like a forced laugh, but was more probably his way of gently returning us to the real world. It was the laugh of someone who laughs first, in the hopes of finding your complicity and your forgiveness for having dragged you on some unexpected escapade. And, as if to help extract me from our dream, before he opened his eyes, he would scratch my scalp affectionately.

• From The Fixed Stars (0)

  Shit, did I? My hair was now down to my shoulders, but seven years before, when I was nineteen, I’d torn out a magazine photo of a supermodel with a pixie cut and taken it to my hairdresser. There in his strip-mall salon in Oklahoma City, the guy gave it a go. I wore my hair short through college, slicked with pearly goop and mussed into soft spikes. For a while, I dyed swaths of it black or bleach-blond, which made a calico effect with my natural shade of red. I thought this was very punk. Instead, apparently, it looked gay. [image file=image_rsrc2FK.jpg] The first gay person I knew was my uncle Jerry, the second-oldest of my mother’s six siblings. Jerry lived with his partner, Tom, in Santa Rosa, California, in a sunlit single-story house on a property they called Know Creek Ranch. The house was set back from the road by a stand of trees, and at the end of its long gravel driveway sat a barn where Jerry bred Morgan horses and ran a mail-order business selling equine supplies. My mother told me that once, when one of Jerry’s horses bit him, he turned around, looked it in the eye, and bit it back. He was soft-spoken and fair, but when my cousins or I would start to whine, he could stop us with a single word. To want his validation was instinctive, obvious. Jerry had once been married to a woman, and they’d married young. He and his wife lived in Vermont, where she grew up, and had a young son, my cousin Jason. Jason once told me that his mother knew there was something secret in her husband’s life, but she was naive enough to not suspect what it was. She was a small-town girl. Jerry was worldly in comparison, having lived in both Vermont and his home state of Maryland. She was blindsided; he was less incredulous. He’d known since his early teens, but he’d hidden it. He figured that if he married a woman, and if he had enough sex with her, he’d grow out of it. I was born in 1978, four years after Jerry came out. By then he was divorced, and he’d fallen in love with Tom, and they’d moved to California, leaving Jason behind in Vermont. I only ever knew Jerry as one half of Jerry-and-Tom, as a compact man with a runner’s build; wavy, rust-colored hair; and a Magnum, P.I. mustache. In an album of photographs from Christmas 1979, Tom sits between my grandfather and my uncle Chris, his arms spread wide over the back of the sofa, smiling. In another photo, this one with wrapping paper and coffee mugs in the foreground, I sit on the same sofa, a year old, with my mother in a flannel nightgown on my right and Jerry on my left, my shoulder tucked under his arm. Tom is beside him, chest hair blooming from the open V of his bathrobe.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  The reigns of Caesar Bardas (860–866), Basilius I. the Macedonian (867–886), Leo VI. the Philosopher (886–911), who was himself an author, Constantine VII. Porphyrogenitus (911–959), likewise an author, mark the most prosperous period of Byzantine literature. The family of the Comneni, who upheld the power of the sinking empire from 1057 to 1185, continued the literary patronage, and the Empress Eudocia and the Princess Anna Comnena cultivated the art of rhetoric and the study of philosophy. Even during the confusion of the crusades and the disasters which overtook the empire, the love for learning continued; and when Constantinople at last fell into the hands of the Turks, Greek scholarship took refuge in the West, kindled the renaissance, and became an important factor in the preparation for the Reformation. The Byzantine literature presents a vast mass of learning without an animating, controlling and organizing genius. "The Greeks of Constantinople," says Gibbon,768 with some rhetorical exaggeration, "held in their lifeless hands the riches of the fathers, without inheriting the spirit which had created and improved that sacred patrimony: they read, they praised, they compiled; but their languid souls seemed alike incapable of thought and action. In the revolution of ten centuries, not a single discovery was made to exalt the dignity or promote the happiness of mankind. Not a single idea has been added to the speculative systems of antiquity; and a succession of patient disciples became in their turn the dogmatic teachers of the next servile generation. Not a single composition of history, philosophy or literature has been saved from oblivion by the intrinsic beauties of style or sentiment, of original fancy, and even of successful imitation .... The leaders of the Greek church were humbly content to admire and copy the oracles of antiquity, nor did the schools or pulpit produce any rivals of the fame of Athanasius and Chrysostom." The theological controversies developed dialectical skill, a love for metaphysical subtleties, and an over-estimate of theoretical orthodoxy at the expense of practical piety. The Monotheletic controversy resulted in an addition to the christological creed; the iconoclastic controversy determined the character of public worship and the relation of religion to art. The most gifted Eastern divines were Maximus Confessor in the seventh, John of Damascus in the eighth, and Photius in the ninth century. Maximus, the hero of Monotheletism, was an acute and profound thinker, and the first to utilize the pseudo-Dyonysian philosophy in support of a mystic orthodoxy. John of Damascus, the champion of image-worship, systematized the doctrines of the orthodox fathers, especially the three great Cappadocians, Basil, Gregory of Nazianzum, and Gregory of Nyssa, and produced a monumental work on theology which enjoys to this day the same authority in the Greek church as the "Summa" of Thomas Aquinas in the Latin. Photius, the antagonist of Pope Nicolas, was the greatest scholar of his age, who read and digested with independent judgment all ancient heathen and Christian books on philology, philosophy, theology, canon law, history, medicine, and general literature.

• From The John Dominic Crossan Essential Set (Jesus; The Birth of Christianity; The Power of Parable; The Greatest Prayer) (2004)

  They may be ascetical celibates, but they are also deeply involved with power and government, whether as prophets, dream-interpreters, or military commanders. As described by Josephus, the Essenes are city phenomena. The four references to individuals span about 170 years. In 105 or 104 B.C.E. there is “Judas of the Essene group [genos] , who had never been known to speak falsely in his prophecies” (Jewish Antiquities 13.311). In the middle of the first century B.C.E. there is “a certain Essene named Menahem, whose virtue was attested in his whole conduct of life and especially in his having from God a foreknowledge of the future” (Jewish Antiquities 15.373). In 106 C.E. , there is “a certain Simon, of the sect [genos ] of the Essenes,” who interpreted the dream of Archelaus (Jewish War 2.113 = Jewish Antiquities 17.346). Finally, in late 66 C.E. , “John the Essene,” commanding northwestern Judaea in the revolt against Rome, died in an assault on the coastal city of Ascalon (Jewish War 2.567; 3.11, 19). The second difference is even more interesting. Philo, Pliny, and Josephus (in Jewish War 2.120–121 and Jewish Antiquities 18.21) agree on frugality, communality, and ascetical celibacy for the Essenes. But then comes this surprising comment from Josephus: There is yet another order of Essenes, which while at one with the rest in its mode of life, customs, and regulations, differs from them in its view on marriage. They think that those who decline to marry cut off the chief function of life, the propagation of the race, and, what is more, that, were all to adopt the same view, the whole race would very quickly die out. (Jewish War 2.160) But, Josephus continues, since they marry not for pleasure but for children, they marry only women who are already certainly menstruating, and they do not have intercourse during pregnancy, “thus showing that their motive in marrying is not self-indulgence but the procreation of children” (2.161). That raises this major question. Does the term Essenes refer to male ascetics living in communal isolation only, or also to those who marry, raise families, and are associated with towns, cities, and spheres of government? ESSENES INSIDE QUMRAN For almost two hundred years before its destruction by the Roman legions in 68 C.E. , a Jewish community lived in caves, huts, or tents around a central complex of communal buildings later called Khirbet Qumran on the Dead Sea’s northwestern shore. That community is almost certainly the Essene group mentioned by Dio and Pliny. (Engedi, for example—one of the landmarks used by Pliny—is twenty miles south of Qumran, and Masada is thirty-one miles south.) Between 1946 and 1956, not only was their communal center excavated, their hidden library was recovered from eleven nearby caves. That literary treasure ranges from relatively full manuscripts to tattered fragments. There are, for example, the first seven manuscripts from Cave 1 and the Temple Scroll from Cave 11.

• From The John Dominic Crossan Essential Set (Jesus; The Birth of Christianity; The Power of Parable; The Greatest Prayer) (2004)

  Virgil, who died two years earlier, had told the epic story behind that mythical acclaim in his Aeneid . Reversing Homer’s sequence of heroic wars and homeward wanderings, he brought Aeneas, son of Anchises, and Aphrodite-Venus, from Troy to Italy as ancestor of the Julian clan. “The eschatological story of the Augustan age was told by Virgil in his Aeneid , which anchored the new age in the distant past; it became the Roman national epic. The followers of Jesus in the churches of Paul told the story of Jesus’ suffering and death; this story also reached back to the past of Israel as it cast the narrative in the words of the singers of Psalms and of the prophets” (1994b–535). The cult, myth, and story of Augustan eschatology can be seen today in Rome at the Ara Pacis Augustae , the Altar of Augustan Peace, reconstructed from original and copied fragments and now relocated between the Tiber and the Julio-Claudian Mausoleum. It is all there in marble, from fertile Earth Goddess, to Aeneas sacrificing, to Augustus and his family. Finally, as Koester concludes, Augustus used power and authority while Paul used letter and persuasion to build two quite different types of community. Koester is completely correct that myth, ritual, and story are constitutive of community, but there is no need to give them to only one of those twin traditions, to the passion-resurrection tradition but not to the sayings tradition. In any case, as we shall see, they have both common elements and divergent developments that indicate that both traditions could generate and support community life. In what follows, therefore, I seek, negatively, not to privilege one of those twin traditions over the other and, positively, to emphasize connections and similarities where those are present. I am not, in other words, imagining two ideologically opposed traditions. Rural and Urban Christianity If Paul and his followers seem to have avoided the empire’s villages and countryside, Jesus himself seems to have avoided the towns…. But instead of the Palestinian countryside, [the Acts of the Apostles ] actually follow the mission in the cities of the Graeco-Roman world and end up with Paul a prisoner at Rome. The Palestinian countryside where Jesus had travelled and taught in fact disappears completely from all New Testament sources…. It must be stressed, however, that although urban and rural Christianity represent two different types of the new religion—the former more conservative and tending to compromise with secular power, the latter more subversive and with social reformist tendencies—their conflict but rarely came out into the open. Dimitris J. Kyrtatas, The Social Structure of the Early Christian Communities , pp. 92, 95 It is necessary, then, to distinguish two traditions in earliest Christianity, one emphasizing the sayings of Jesus and the other emphasizing the death and resurrection of Jesus.

• From The Misunderstood Jew: The Church and the Scandal of the Jewish Jesus (2007)

  The former bishop of Sweden and dean of Harvard Divinity School Krister Stendahl speaks appropriately of “holy envy,” that is, the appreciation of the beliefs and practices of another.2 By seeing Jesus as a Jew with regard to both belief and practice, Christians can develop a deeper appreciation for the teachings of the church. To be sure, anyone engaged in biblical study, whether in the privacy of a living room or retreat center, reading with a church group, listening to tapes, or taking a class, can develop an impression of Jesus. Those who study the text for spiritual reasons will find a Jesus who speaks to them personally. As my students sometimes say, “I read the text, and the Holy Spirit guides me.” Yet even more can be done, or, as I am wont to reply, “Give the Holy Spirit something to work with.” In particular, I think the Spirit would appreciate a bit of historical investigation. Today Jesus’s words are too familiar, too domesticated, too stripped of their initial edginess and urgency. Only when heard through first-century Jewish ears can their original edginess and urgency be recovered. Consequently, to understand the man from Nazareth, it is necessary to understand Judaism. More, it is necessary to see Jesus as firmly within Judaism rather than as standing apart from it, and it is essential that the picture of Judaism not be distorted through the filter of centuries of Christian stereotypes; a distorted picture of first-century Judaism inevitably leads to a distorted picture of Jesus. Just as bad: if we get Judaism wrong, we’ll wind up perpetuating anti-Jewish or anti-Semitic teachings, and thus the mission of the church—to spread a gospel of love rather than a gospel of hate—will be undermined. For Christians, this concern for historical setting should have theological import as well. If one takes the incarnation—that is, the claim that the “Word became flesh and lived among us” (John 1:14)—seriously, then one should take seriously the time when, place where, and people among whom this event occurred. Christians obtain yet another benefit in seeing Jesus in his Jewish context, for the recognition of Jesus’s Jewishness and of his speaking in a Jewish idiom can also restore faith in the New Testament. Doing just a bit of historical investigation provides a much-needed correction to America’s Christ-saturated, albeit biblically ignorant, culture. For example, those who prefer the fiction of The Da Vinci Code over the facts of history because the novel seems to enhance the role of women in early Christianity will find that studies of the Jewish Jesus reveal the leadership roles and economic freedoms women had at the time. Moreover, such studies yield more options to women than the relegation of Mary Magdalene to the role of “Mrs.

• From The John Dominic Crossan Essential Set (Jesus; The Birth of Christianity; The Power of Parable; The Greatest Prayer) (2004)

  In seeking a more specific focus, however, I started reading the journal Cahiers Sioniens, a French periodical, issued between 1947 and 1955, which was very important in preparing the declaration on relations between Christianity and Judaism later promulgated by the Second Vatican Council. In one of its final issues in 1954 was an article by Renée Bloch on the rabbinic traditions about Moses, which was continued into another article in Recherches de Science Religieuse in 1955. (Bloch died—much too soon—that same year.) Her articles studied the rabbinic midrashim, that is, those narrative expansions on biblical texts that emphasized moral elements and answered possible questions or objections about their content. For example, did Moses just happen to be born after Pharaoh’s command to kill all the newborn males of the Israelites? No, said the midrashim, Pharaoh had a dream, which his advisers interpreted as foretelling the advent of a predestined deliverer. Pharaoh’s murderous net was cast, therefore, precisely to catch that coming savior. But why did all those Israelite parents—including, of course, those of the future Moses—not divorce one another to prevent the slaughter of newborn males? Because, said the midrashim, those special parents trusted in God or were commanded by God to conceive the predestined child. Bloch also drew attention to the parallels between, on the one hand, Pharaoh and his advisers discussing Moses-to-be and, on the other, Herod and his advisers discussing Jesus-to-be. That gave me the topic for my licentiate paper. I proposed that the overall structure, specific sequences, and individual details of Matthew 1–2 were created on the precise model of those Mosaic midrashim . Matthew’s infancy story about Jesus was derived from and modeled on those midrashic storytelling expansions of Exodus 1–2 about the infancy of Moses. That paper would be constitutive, by the way, for my understanding of biblical truth as parabolic history ever since. Jesus, therefore, was immediately proclaimed by Matthew as the new Moses. Actually, even a cursory reading of Matthew 1–2 indicates that emphasis. Notice, for example, that the Magi—although led by their guiding star—stop off in Jerusalem to ask directions. Why was that necessary? Because in this parabolic rather than historical overture, Matthew is creating a parallel between the evil Pharaoh, who slaughters the infant males in Exodus 1–2, and the evil Herod, who does the same in Matthew 1–2. Herod is the new Pharaoh just as Jesus is the new Moses. Despite their guiding star, the Magi must ask for directions in Jerusalem, so that Herod can enter the story and become the new Pharaoh. At the start of Matthew’s gospel, the Magi ask Herod, “Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews?” (2:2). That title next appears at the end of his gospel, repeated three times, like a death knell, in 27:11–37. It appears, for instance, above the cross: “Over his head they put the charge against him, which read, ‘This is Jesus, the King of the Jews’” (27:37).