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.

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• From Introduction to the Hebrew Bible and Deutero-Canonical Books (2018)

  But it also claims that “the spirit of the L ord speaks through me” (23:2). David, in effect, was a prophet, and he was widely regarded as such in antiquity. The composition from the Dead Sea Scrolls that lists the works of David says that David composed all his psalms and songs in the spirit of prophecy. This text also says that he was wise. Even if we suspect that much of the portrayal of David in the books of Samuel originated as political propaganda, the character of David as depicted is exceptionally appealing. No other character in the Hebrew Bible is so well rounded. Here we have a fully human figure who is no saint by later standards. He is a hot-blooded individual who is guilty of murder, adultery, and sundry forms of extortion and exploitation. But he is also an emotional figure, whose grief for his friend Jonathan or for his son Absalom is moving. Even if the biblical authors tried to excuse and justify his actions, they nonetheless portrayed him as a man who was very fallible and even sinful. Later tradition enhanced the legend of David by crediting him with prophecy and the composition of psalms. In the process, it often depicts him as more pious than he appears in the books of Samuel. (We shall see this tendency in the books of Chronicles.) The charm of the biblical character, however, is precisely his human fallibility. It is this appreciation of the imperfection of human nature that marks the story of David as one of the finest pieces of literature to come down to us from antiquity. FOR FURTHER READING Most of the literature cited in the previous chapter deals with both books of Samuel. In addition, note: Commentaries Campbell, A. J., 2 Samuel (FOTL; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005). Systematic form-critical commentary. P. K. McCarter, II Samuel (AB 9B; New York: Doubleday, 1984). Standard historical-critical commentary. Davidic Covenant and Royal Ideology A. Y. Collins and J. J. Collins, King and Messiah as Son of God (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008), 1–47. Discussion of the royal ideology of Judah and its Deuteronomistic modification. F. M. Cross, Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1973), 229–65. Influential treatment in light of Canaanite traditions. J. Day, ed., King and Messiah in Israel and the Ancient Near East (JSOTSupp 270; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998). Collection of essays on royal ideology and messianic hope. M. Hamilton, The Body Royal: The Social Implications of Kingship in Ancient Israel (Leiden: Brill, 2005). Careful study of the royal ideology of Judah in its Near Eastern context, with emphasis on bodily imagery. J. N. D. Mettinger, King and Messiah: The Civil and Sacred Legitimation of the Israelite Kings (ConBOT 8; Lund: Gleerup, 1976). Discussion of the establishment of the Davidic dynasty, with a particular focus on 2 Samuel 7. S. Mowinckel, He That Cometh (trans. G. W. Anderson; Nashville: Abingdon, 1955).

• From A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (BDB) (1907)

  Tr adj. fair, beautiful ;—m. abs. 75) 2S 14°+4t.; estr. יפה‎ Gn 39°°+6 t.; f. יפה‎ 12 +14 te 2% ne) 2246 €. > Sis ָפָתִי‎ ct 03. pl. nia Ib 42% Am 85; eS ופות‎ et 4 ny לקמ :ליט‎ beautiful, as attribute of woman 28 = יד 6 ד‎ Am8*® Prii™; ef. Jb 42" Ci 6” (י" כלבנה)‎ ; pred. Gn12™ 1 K 1* Ctr ®5 427 6; =subst. fair one 1° 2% 5° 6%; oft. estr. יפ"‎ ANT Gn 12 297 2 8 14"; IWATNDY Gn 29” 1S 25° Dt 21" Est 27: of kine MSO Nay Gn AY of. vi; WNATNIDY v's; less oft. of boy, young man 75) איש‎ 5 1 pred. Ct 15; תאַר‎ mB! Gn 39°; TD 75") v° (of Joseph); of כו א‎ יָפָה נוף‎ 1 48°: of a singer קול‎ NB Ez 33”; of trees: olive ash ו יכ‎ cedar (fig. of Egypt) 129 75° Ez 31°, cf.v?; ; 12. of everything in its time Ec 3"; of ats acts 5".—In OY Dy 7B) 1 ₪ 16", WNW Hay OY 17*, either יפה‎ =subst. abstr. 2 beauty y of eyes, or DY is textual error (Gr Krenkel *%*™* Bu apy youth), v. Dr. better 7°5'D) (Ol‏ עס ,‘7575 rd.‏ יִפְהדפִיה1 Gr Gie; reduplicated, with the force of a‏ 5184 diminutive, Sta***; cf. D128, P1PN), adj. f.‏ aby Je 46° Egypt i is a‏ יפה-פיה מִצְריִם pretty,‏ pretty heifer (G 0‏ יי v.‏ יפי T ] ישי‎ [ n.m. beauty;—abs. יפי‎ Is 3*+ t.; estr. יפי‎ Ez 28°; sf. V5. ש יָפיף ;"ח‎ 457+ 5 +. WD) Ts 3374 2 +.; ME. על‎ 6 Est 1"; beauty of a woman Is 3% 4576 Est 17 Pr 6%, 61. Pr 31°; of Jerus. under fig. of woman Ez 16°; Tyre לי‎ nd*3), ef. :"קר‎ prince of Tyre, beauty of (his) wisdom 28’; king of Tyre יפי) לע‎ 293), ideal beauty of ee of Judah Is 33”, Zion‏ ;"ץצ caebban) 50%, ef. La 2" (BS N93): of Egypt‏ under fig: of tree Ez 315; of ransomed people‏ .”9 0 יי of‏ TD, EP n.pr.loc. Joppa (Ph. יפי‎ ; As. Ja(p)pu COT Gloss Bez Tel-el-Amarna Tabl. in Brit. Mus. ao Egypt. Ye-pu WMM*)— seaport town of Ralestine (Jerusalem), יפל‎ Jos 10* Jon 15 2 Ch == יָפוּא‎ Ezr 3’; G lomna, mod. Jaffa. np [יפח]‎ vb. breathe, puff (by-form of M35, q.v.; see Ba®®; ef. Talm. np breath)—only Hithp. Jmpf. 3 fs. NBN Je 4" she gaspeth for breath. T [m=] adj. breathing or puffing out, 6862. DON ODN wp 27”? puffing out violence (cf. Che). v. sub pdb.‏ יפלט .פנה v. sub‏ "72 vb. only Hiph. shine out or forth,‏ ום ע] ך

• From The Myth Made Fact: Reading Greek and Roman Mythology through Christian Eyes (2020)

  An incisive and balanced comparative analysis of two thinkers who made very different connections between myth and the Bible. Origen. On First Principles . Edited and translated by G. W. Butterworth. New York: Harper & Row, 1966. A reading of Christian philosophy from a controversial and, at times, heterodox third-century church father who was strongly influenced by Plato. Otto, Rudolf. The Idea of the Holy . Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1958. This is the book that taught Lewis about the numinous. Though the focus of the book is on religion, it is relevant to the effect the greatest myths have on their readers/listeners. Peterson, Jordan. Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief . Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 1999. Helps to open up the deeper meanings behind myths by consulting both cognitive science and the writings of Freud and Jung. His multipart Biblical Series , which can be watched for free on YouTube, offers much insight into mythic meanings behind the biblical stories of Genesis. Philo. The Works of Philo . Translated by C. D. Yonge. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1993. Collects the writings of the great first-century Jewish philosopher whose allegorical readings of pagan literature and myth influenced the work of Christian allegorists who shared his love of ancient Greece. Pieper, Josef. Platonic Myths Translated by Dan Farrelly. South Bend, IN: St. Augustine Press, 2011. Identifies transcendent Christian truths in the myths of Plato. Richardson, Don. Eternity in Their Hearts . Raleigh, NC: Regal Books, 1981. Documents primitive, animistic tribes from around the globe that retain a memory of monotheism. His conclusions are directly relevant to anyone seeking seeds of Christian truth in Greek and Roman mythology. Richardson’s Peace Child (Bethany, 2005) zeroes in on a single tribe with a ritual that uncannily points to the gospel. Tolkien, J. R. R. On Fairy-stories New York: HarperCollins, 2008. Offers a meditation on fairy tales that is relevant to how Christians might read Greek and Roman mythology. Weil, Simone. Intimations of Christianity Among the Ancient Greeks . Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 1998. Uncovers precursors of Christianity in Greek epic and tragedy. Let me end with a list of Christian writers whose faith, as far as I can tell, was strengthened rather than weakened by their interactions with Greek and Roman myth and philosophy: Clement, Ignatius, Polycarp, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Tertullian, Origen, Athanasius, John Chrysostom, Basil the Great, Gregory of Nazianzus, Gregory of Nyssa, Gregory Palamas, Augustine, Boethius, Bede, Dionysus the Areopagite, Thomas Aquinas, Dante Alighieri, Geoffrey Chaucer, Erasmus, Martin Luther, John Calvin, Edmund Spenser, Philip Sidney, John Donne, John Milton, John Dryden, Samuel Coleridge, John Henry Newman, G. K. Chesterton, T. S. Eliot, J. R. R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, Charles Williams, Dorothy Sayers, and Francis Schaeffer.

• From The Myth Made Fact: Reading Greek and Roman Mythology through Christian Eyes (2020)

  Charles Gordon Browne and James Edward Swallow (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1894). Revised and edited for New Advent by Kevin Knight. <http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/310243.htm>. 6. Saint John Chrysostom, An Address on Vainglory and the Right Way for Parents to Bring Up Their Children , trans. Max L. W. Laistner (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1951), 8. 7. Chrysostom, 10–11. 8. Chrysostom, 10–11. 9. C. S. Lewis, Selected Literary Essays (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 265. P reface [image file=Image00005.jpg] Dr. Christopher A. Perrin Publisher, Classical Academic Press I have been privileged to visit the cathedral in Siena, a striking duomo that was the first of the great Italian cathedrals to be built, and the Orvieto Cathedral, or Duomo di Orvieto , located approximately seventy miles from Siena. Both cathedrals are extraordinarily beautiful: the one in Siena magnificently ornate, the one in Orvieto beautiful in its comparatively elegant simplicity. The day I visited the cathedral in Siena, the floor was fully exposed (which happens for only about eight weeks per year), so I was able to see it in all its splendor. Upon entering the church, you are exhorted to enter chastely the temple of the chaste Virgin as you step over a threshold that reminds you that the cathedral is dedicated to Mary. You then proceed toward the altar (a good three hundred feet from the entrance), encountering various lovely designs in the floor as you go. Next, you encounter an inlay featuring Hermes Trismegistus, a mythical founder of human wisdom. This Hermes was regarded by various church fathers as a wise pagan prophet who foresaw the coming of Christianity. A caption describes Hermes as a contemporary of Moses and the panel’s inscription reads: DEUS OMNIUM CREATOR SECUM DEUM FECIT VISIBILEM ET HUNC FECIT PRIMUM ET SOLUM QUO OBLECTATUS EST VALDE AMAVIT PROPRIUM FILIUM QUI APPELLATUR SANCTUM VERBUM Which means “God, the Creator of all, made a visible God to be with him, and he made him first and only; he took delight in him and loved him greatly as his own Son, who is called the Holy Word.” Moving farther into the church, you then encounter a circular mosaic that depicts the myth of Romulus and Remus (considered by the Romans to be the founders of Rome), with both brothers nursing under the she-wolf. This image, along with the black-and-white striped shield, is the symbol of Siena. After passing the inlay of the imperial altar, you encounter an image that is central to the design of the floor, an inlay showing several figures making the ascent up the Mountain of Wisdom, where the personified Lady Wisdom or Virtue is pictured handing a palm branch to Socrates on her right and a closed book to the philosopher Crates on her left. Crates (a Greek Cynic philosopher) is pouring forth jewels into the sea, for wisdom is more valuable than rubies.

• From A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (BDB) (1907)

  God, himself Na 17 2 Ch 30" 86; מוב‎ 93” for he is good, kind 34° 100° 135° Je 33"; כי טוב כי לעולם חסדו‎ x Ch 16* 2 Ch 5% 7% Ezr 3” טוב ל ;)136 ’118 ’107 '106 ץו‎ hind to יבל‎ 145° La 3”: by (ה)טובה‎ Ezr 7° 85 Ne 2*% שמף פי טוב ;143% ש ”9 רוחף (ה)טובה‎ 52" 548; הדבר(ים) הטוב(ים) ;109% 697 כּי טוב חסרף‎ the good, kind word(s) spoken in promise Jos 21% 2348 (D), ד‎ K8 6 20" gae wees 10. good (ethical), right: | מה טוב‎ || what Yah- weh requires Mi 6% || משפט‎ Jb34*: a. of man himself || ישר‎ Mi 7*; איש טוב‎ Pr 14% good 2Ch19™ y125' Pr 2™‏ (0₪6)=(ה)טוב(ים) דברים Ecg**; man’s deeds‏ 15° 14% ”13 ?12 מעללים ;"1262 *10 8 1 מעשה ;19% 2Ch2”‏ Ez 36%; הטובה והישרה‎ WWI 1 ₪ 12% the good and right way; (ה)טוב(ה)‎ FPA) (the) good way 1 K 8*= 2 0067, Is65? Je6 36° Pr16*; good and right is‏ 215° דבריף טובים ונכחים לא טוב ;14% good thing 1 K‏ 125 טוב thy case;‏ 4 טוב

• From The Myth Made Fact: Reading Greek and Roman Mythology through Christian Eyes (2020)

  It would not be a bad thing to read Aeschylus and Sophocles in both versions. As for Euripides, I would highly recommend Ten Plays by Euripides , translated into fluid prose by Moses Hadas. Aeschylus’s Oresteia and Sophocles’s Oedipus Rex , Oedipus at Colonus , and Antigone are all must-reads. But I would strongly encourage you to also read Aeschylus’s Prometheus Bound and Sophocles’s Electra , Ajax , Women of Trachis , and Philoctetes . Euripides has many great plays, but the best place to start is with Medea , The Bacchae , The Trojan Women , Hippolytus , and Electra . After that, do read his two best happy-ending tragedies: Helen and Iphigenia in Tauris . Luckily, all of these plays (except Helen ) are included in the Moses Hadas collection mentioned earlier. If you get the collection and enjoy the plays, do take the time to read Alcestis , Ion , Andromache , and Iphigenia at Aulis , all of which offer fascinating takes on mythological stories. For Plato’s myths, see Symposium , Phaedo , Phaedrus , Republic , Timaeus , and Critias . Also read Boethius’s The Consolation of Philosophy to see how a Christian writer extracted wisdom from pagan philosophy and mythology. I have taken up the interplay of pagan literature and Christianity in several of my earlier books. From Achilles to Christ: Why Christians Should Read the Pagan Classics (IVP, 2007) takes a close look at the Iliad , Odyssey , Aeneid , and Greek tragedy. Heaven & Hell: Visions of the Afterlife in the Western Poetic Tradition (Wipf & Stock, 2013) narrows its focus to how such pagan writers as Homer, Plato, Cicero, and Virgil depicted the afterlife and then considers how Christian writers like Dante, Milton, and C. S. Lewis wove those depictions together with the fuller revelation of the Bible. In my three separate Canon Classics Worldview Guides for The Iliad , The Odyssey , and The Aeneid (all three from Canon Press, 2017), I consider, in a more schematic, textbook form, the worldviews that underlie the three great epics and how they compare with the worldview of the Bible. The Dreaming Stone (Lampion Press, 2015) is a children’s novel in which my children become part of Greek mythology and learn that Christ is the myth made fact. In the sequel, In the Shadow of Troy (Lampion Press, 2017), they become part of the Iliad and the Odyssey . The third book, The Gates of Freedom , forthcoming from Lampion, draws its hero and heroine into the rise of Greek democracy, the Battle of Thermopylae, and the Book of Esther. B ibliography: Myths Although my retellings of the fifty myths are my own, making use of my own phrasing and arrangement, I have listed below my preferred editions/translations of the primary texts on which I based my retellings. Aeschylus. Oresteia (Agamemnon , The Libation Bearers , The Eumenides ). Translated by Richmond Lattimore. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953. Apollodorus.

• From The Myth Made Fact: Reading Greek and Roman Mythology through Christian Eyes (2020)

  Toward this end, Chrysostom carefully explains to parents how to lead their child through exercises that compare characters and themes in the Bible and the Greek myths, exercises that also lead the child to the fullest engagement with the truths of scripture. For example, he encourages parents to build upon their child’s knowledge of the heroes of Greek literature by bringing to their attention heroes of the Bible. The myths introduce a child to virtue through the exploits of Hercules, Ulysses, Achilles, and the like. This teaches the child what the “soul of a hero” is like. The child learns that a hero “is something greater than a man. . . . And . . . he marvels. Much more will he do so when he hears of raising the dead,” and of Christ and all the saints.7 In The Myth Made Fact , each of Markos’s retellings of some fifty myths is followed by three instructive sections titled Reflections, Applications, and Notes. In these sections, Markos leads his readers through a hermeneutical activity worthy of the great Christian thinkers, such as Chrysostom, who paved the path to a Christian paideia . Markos cites biblical, classical, and Christian texts as well as contemporary sources that he trusts will give parents and teachers more profound insight into the myths and the education in virtue that can be gleaned and built from them. When, in An Address on Vainglory , Chrysostom turns to a consideration of how parents can instill virtue in their children, he draws on metaphors commonly employed in the classical rhetoric he had studied. Chrysostom compares the soul of a child to a city and its citizens. The gates of the city are likened to the sense organs: “the eyes, the tongue, the hearing, the sense of smell, and . . . the sense of touch.” As citizens go in and out of these gates, so “it is through these gates that thoughts are corrupted or rightly guided.” “The very bolt of these gates,” he declares, “shall be the Cross of the Lord.” Parents must regard themselves as rulers over this “city which is the soul” of their child, and take responsibility that the city is safe and protected from “thieves” and “evildoers” as they lead their child toward righteousness.8 Chrysostom was a strong believer in the capacity of stories to give “flesh” and form to virtue. We witness this in his discussion of the heroes of the classical myths and the Bible, referenced earlier. In An Address o n Vainglory , he presents yet another exercise that reflects his strong conviction about the importance of story. He suggests to parents that they tell their child the foundational biblical stories of Cain and Abel and Jacob and Esau.

• From The Myth Made Fact: Reading Greek and Roman Mythology through Christian Eyes (2020)

  We must not be nervous about “parallels” and “pagan Christs”: they ought to be there—it would be a stumbling block if they weren’t. . . . If God chooses to be mythopoeic—and is not the sky itself a myth—shall we refuse to be mythopathic ? For this is the marriage of heaven and earth: Perfect Myth and Perfect Fact.”4 Lewis’s argument rests on the foundations of a long history of Christian philosophy and theology over which the contradictions between Christian truth and pagan myth were negotiated, as were the likenesses resolved. Fourth-century church father Saint Gregory of Nazianzus observes in his Panegyric on Saint Basil , “so from secular literature we have received principles of enquiry and speculation, while we have rejected their idolatry, terror, and pit of destruction.”5 Nazianzus seeks a middle course between the outright rejection of pagan learning represented by the likes of the third-century North African theologian Tertullian and the relatively comfortable embrace of classical learning by second-century theologian Saint Clement of Alexandria. Saint John Chrysostom (AD 347–407), perhaps the greatest preacher that Christianity has ever produced, composed An Address on Vainglory and the Right Way for Parents to Bring Up Their Children , which is in the style of a homily on the proper Christian education of young persons. In it, he urges Christian parents to be vigilant and to be prepared to wage a spiritual battle against the lures of wealth, fame, and vainglory. He cautions them not to assume that by providing their child with the best education available they have assured that he or she will grow up to become a moral and devout Christian. “In our day,” Chrysostom admonishes, parents may take great pains to educate their child “in the arts and in literature and speech,” yet fail “to exercise” their child’s “soul in virtue.”6 Under the instruction of the renowned pagan pedagogue Libanius, Chrysostom had received the best liberal education of his day. Thus, he fully appreciated the strengths of such an education. Yet he also was cognizant that it was being instrumentalized as a tool for social advancement. Something extra, nay, something more foundational, was needed to guard against this and to make certain that children grew to become God-fearing adults. That is why he thought it necessary for Christian parents to introduce their children at an early age to the Bible, especially the gospels, with their message of love and humility, and the stories of the great patriarchs and matriarchs of the Old Testament, who were the heroic forerunners of Christ. Other early Christian thinkers were just as, if not even more, conflicted about the value of the prevailing pagan classical education. Not only could such an education be used for social advancement that had little to do with godliness, but classical literature was littered with polytheism and, for this reason alone, was inferior to the writings of the Bible. They, like Chrysostom, felt the need for a distinctively Christian paideia .

• From The Myth Made Fact: Reading Greek and Roman Mythology through Christian Eyes (2020)

  I highly recommend this book.” —James Menzies, PhD author of True Myth: C. S. Lewis and Joseph Campbell on the Veracity of Christianity [image file=Image00000.jpg] “There is no better guide to the panoramic landscape of Greek mythology than Louis Markos. If there’s one book that everyone should read on the relationship between Greek myth and Christian truth, The Myth Made Fact is it.” —Joseph Pearce Director of Book Publishing at the Augustine Institute, editor of the St. Austin Review, and series editor of the Ignatius Critical Editions [image file=Image00000.jpg] “Myths are stories that have deep resonance and meaning; Christianity is the myth that also happened in history. Louis Markos does a great service in demonstrating how Christians can and should appreciate and engage with the Greco-Roman myths. In the vein of John Henry Newman and C. S. Lewis, Markos shows the reader that these pagan stories provide glimpses—fragmentary and incomplete, but valuable—of Truth and Beauty. With its excellent selection of tales, thoughtful reflections, and helpful notes and discussion questions, The Myth Made Fact is a valuable resource for teachers and parents, who will find in it clear, thoughtful explication of the ways in which these myths can be used to teach virtue and to aid in gaining a better, richer grasp of the Christian worldview.” —Holly Ordway, PhD Fellow of Faith and Culture, Word on Fire Institute, author of Tolkien’s Modern Reading: Middle-earth Beyond the Middle Ages [image file=Image00000.jpg] “The author’s grasp of the various ancient myths is quite astonishing. As a former high school teacher, I appreciate the author’s non-condescending way to introduce students to the classics. Indeed, the sections labeled ‘application’ invite excellent discussion. It would be marvelous to sit in such a class.” —Dr. William Edgar professor of apologetics, Westminster Theological Seminary and associate professor at the Faculté Jean Calvin [image file=Image00002.jpg] “The Myth Made Fact is a thundering success! In it, Louis Markos retells fifty timeless myths of Greece and Rome and shows us how they were pointers and prophecies, whispers and hints of the ‘myth that really happened’: the incarnation of Christ the Lord. Springboarding from the literary insights of C. S. Lewis, Markos also weaves together the great sagas from sacred Scripture with classic literary texts, modern fantasy stories, film, and popular culture. Not only does Markos retell the stories in a concise and accessible way, but he also presents them as part of a practical textbook for Christian students that is crammed full of illuminating notes, learning aids, teaching tips, an ample glossary, and much more. This book should become the new standard for understanding how the classical legacy complements scripture and tradition to nurture a truly abundant Christian culture.” —Fr. Dwight Longenecker author of The Quest for the Creed , The Romance of Religion , and Immortal Combat: Confronting the Heart of Darkness Cover [image "Cover page of The Myth Made Fact through Christian Eyes: Reading Greek and Roman Mythology. By Louis Markos, PhD.

• From Working Girl: On Selling Art and Selling Sex (2023)

  What she was looking at, it turns out, was the monitor of her digital camera; looking at herself, her portrait half-shrouded by dick, tied-up scrotum, and her own hair falling in front of her face, waiting to see the image she wants on the screen, and then capturing that. In this way, her camera itself is a presence in her work; or rather, she takes no pains to hide the intrusion of a recording device, blurring her sex life and her art work together. In an interview printed in Digital Diaries, Eric Kroll asked the artist, “Which comes first—sex or photography?” She answered, “I can’t separate them … I can’t just do one without thinking about the other.” Paul Mpagi Sepuya has also, and more recently, photographed himself “as a cocksucker.” In Darkroom Mirror (_2060403), he appears, camera in hand, bare-chested, head turned slightly to his right. A white cock is in his mouth, a sliver of the thighs and stomach of its owner visible at the edge of the frame. To his other side, another erect, white cock appears, its head invisible behind Sepuya’s own. The torso and hands of this person are partly visible at the frame’s other edge. The background is black. Art in America described the work in Sepuya’s 2019 show The Conditions as having “an almost religious aura.” Sepuya’s focus is as much on the making of an image as it is on the image itself; like Merritt’s embrace of self-portraiture, Sepuya is disinterested in tricks that would render his tools invisible. He is interested in showing the mirror’s stains and smudges and his own handiwork with his camera; interested in what these traces of the work’s production might indicate about the movement before and after the photo, about the subjects of his photos, most of whom are friends or lovers—even if the indication is simply of their presence. His appreciation of such traces is a mode of foregrounding Blackness and queerness in his erotic work: To make visible a lot of these latent indexical traces requires thinking about Blackness—the material within the studio construction, or the body itself, or the camera—that those fundamentals of the medium itself, the uses of the tools, the surfaces that make visibility or invisibility possible, that they cannot be separated from a Black body, Blackness as material. But also, the ways in which that language of darkness—the dark room, the queer dark room—all kind of collapsed together, can then hopefully make those subjects inseparable from photography itself. What brings Merritt’s and Sepuya’s work together is that both hinge on self-objectification, though Merritt’s gaze is apolitical, while Sepuya’s is explicitly political.

• From The Myth Made Fact: Reading Greek and Roman Mythology through Christian Eyes (2020)

  I heartily recommend Markos’s work for virtue seekers, young and old.” —David Goodwin president of the Association of Classical Christian Schools [image file=Image00000.jpg] “The Myth Made Fact , written by one of the foremost contemporary Christian scholars, is a book that is impossible to overpraise. This book is an informative and entertaining guide to the world of classical myths—a page-turner for anyone who has not been initiated into the world of classical mythology. After retelling these ancient myths, Markos then subjects them to moral and intellectual analysis, with emphasis on the virtues that they embody and affirm. Then, as an overlay on those two subjects, Markos explores the ways in which the classical stories are truthful foreshadowings of Christianity, along with ways in which they fall short of that standard. Finally, there is a pervasive thread of application to Christian living. This book is a total package on classical myth in relation to the Christian faith. It is a book that I wish I had possessed half a century ago at the beginning of my career as a teacher of literature.” —Leland Ryken, PhD Emeritus Professor of English, Wheaton College [image file=Image00002.jpg] “Believing that all knowledge, all truth, and all that is wise and good finds its source in God, Louis Markos, reflecting the insights of C. S. Lewis and working with 50 well-known Greek and Roman myths, demonstrates the power of story for shaping and forming the mind, the heart, and the imagination. Observing that our secular world has lost sight of the essential role of narrative, Markos, following in the footsteps of Christian thinkers throughout the ages, helps us to see these classical myths afresh as Christian paideia for our day. Markos, providing a hermeneutical window for each account with his reflections, applications, and notes, brilliantly enables his readers to see how these ancient stories not only teach us virtue and warn against folly, but, moreover, anticipate the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ. Readers will benefit from the additional resources for further study provided by the author. It is a joy to recommend this fine volume.” —David S. Dockery President of International Alliance for Christian Education [image file=Image00002.jpg] “When the apostle Paul strolled through the great metropolis of Athens, he noticed an altar with the inscription ‘To an unknown God.’ From that pagan shrine he was able to draw out the entire history of the gospel from creation to the resurrection. In The Myth Made Fact , Louis Markos takes fifty classic Greek and Roman myths and uncovers timeless values and lessons with origins in the character of the Triune God and revealed in both the scriptures and age-old stories of good and evil, heroes and villains. By retelling the myth and adding reflections, information about classic works of art, application questions geared toward the young, and several helpful indexes, Markos shows not only that a myth became fact, but that all myths can convey facts when read in light of the Word who became flesh.

• From Introduction to the Hebrew Bible and Deutero-Canonical Books (2018)

  She gains admission by promising advice on the best way to attack Bethulia, but also by her beauty. She tells Holofernes that the food supply of the Jews is exhausted, and that they are ready to outrage their God by eating forbidden food. She proposes to stay with Holofernes but to go each night to the valley to pray so that she may learn from God when the Jews have sinned. Holofernes offers her delicacies, but she refuses to eat the food of Gentiles lest she offend her God. Holofernes tolerates her observances. On the fourth night, he makes a banquet and summons her to his presence. She beautifies herself and agrees to drink with him. When they are alone in his tent, however, Holofernes falls into a drunken sleep, and Judith cuts off his head and puts it in her bag. The guards let her out, as they are accustomed to her nightly excursions. When she returns to Bethulia, she is praised above all other women. The Assyrian army panics and is defeated, Achior is circumcised and converts to Judaism, and Judith leads the women in a festive dance. The book concludes with a song of praise on the lips of Judith. The story of Judith lacks the comic character of Tobit or even of Esther. The heroine resembles Esther, in that she risks her life for her people, and the two books share a militant attitude toward the Gentiles. Judith and Esther also share a rather unconventional mode of action in their willingness to go to the bed of a Gentile ruler (Ruth also flouted sexual convention). Judith, however, is preserved from transgression by the drunkenness of the king. She is, in fact, exemplary in her observance of Jewish law, quite in contrast to the more cavalier approach of Esther. The great scandal of the story, however, is her willingness to deceive the Assyrian general, violate his trust, and kill him in a gruesome manner. There is a biblical precedent for her action in Judges 4–5, where Jael the Kenite shelters Sisera in her tent and then drives a tent peg into his skull. There is no apology for the violence of the action. The survival of the people is at stake, and Judith is a heroine. That a woman performs this great deed accords with the theology of the book of Judges, where God effects his deliverance through improbable means to show that it is not an achievement of human power. The book of Judith is blatantly nationalistic. It is preserved only in Greek, Latin, and other translations, but the idiom suggests that it was composed in Hebrew.

• From Introduction to the Hebrew Bible and Deutero-Canonical Books (2018)

  Moabites do not usually get good press in the Hebrew Bible. In Numbers 25, the Israelites incite the wrath of YHWH by having sexual relations with Moabite women and joining in the worship of their gods. Deuteronomy 23:3 decrees that no Ammonite or Moabite should be admitted to the assembly of the Lord, even to the tenth generation. Ruth, however, is an exemplary character. Although the story is related to Israelite history at the beginning and at the end, it is primarily the story of family relationships. On this level of interaction between individuals, ethnic origin recedes in importance. What matters is how people behave toward one another. Like the parables of Jesus in the New Testament, the story uses concrete, specific situations to illuminate human behavior in a way that transcends the particularity of time and place. It is a story of human action, with little appeal to divine intervention. The occasional references to the Lord, however, are enough to suggest that the entire action is being guided to a happy conclusion by divine providence. The story of Ruth is divided into four chapters. The first chapter sets up the situation of crisis. As in some of the stories in Genesis, the action is set in motion by a famine in the land of Israel. A man from Bethlehem named Elimelech, in the time of the judges, goes to live in Moab. (Mention of Bethlehem helps to link the story with two incidents at the end of the book of Judges, the story of the Levite from Bethlehem, beginning in Judg 17:7, and that of the concubine from Bethlehem in Judges 19. These stories, however, are very different from that of Ruth.) The man’s sons marry Moabite women named Orpah and Ruth. Elimelech dies, and some years afterward his sons die too. Throughout the ancient Near East the situation of widows and orphans was especially precarious, as indeed it has also been in other times and places, including the modern world. The situation of a widow who had no son was especially dire, as there would be no one to inherit the family property. According to Deut 25:5-10, if a man died without a son, his brother should marry the widow and raise up an heir to the deceased (this is known as the levirate law). The brother could refuse but would then be put to shame before the elders of the town. The purpose of this law was to prevent the widow from marrying outside the family, thereby alienating the family property, but it also was a way of ensuring that the widow would be taken care of. There are only two stories in the Hebrew Bible that illustrate the working of the levirate. One is the story of Judah and Tamar in Genesis, where Judah refuses to honor the practice and Tamar takes matters into her own hands.

• From The Fixed Stars (0)

  [image file=image_rsrc2FK.jpg] My mother still remembers her confusion the first time she met a woman with HIV. You just never saw that, she says. Then, as now, gay men were the demographic most affected by HIV and AIDS. The women we met through volunteer work were mostly sisters of men who had died, best friends, or ex-girlfriends. I’m sure some were straight and some were not, but I didn’t think about it. My understanding of “gay people” was that they were mostly men. Gay men packed our living room for support group meetings. I wondered how they had sex, tried to picture it. They fascinated me. One summer vacation in California, I went with my aunt Tina, her husband, and their daughters to the San Francisco Pride Parade, where we saw the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence drag troupe, their outlandishly made-up faces above dark, flowing habits. On Castro Street, there were men in gold lamé thongs dancing in cages on flatbed trucks. Gay men were thrilling, heartbreaking, tragic, wild. I wanted to be close to them. I wanted them, even though I knew they were not for me. The idea of being a lesbian seemed boring. Lesbians were less visible than gay men, for one thing. I attributed this to a statistic I’d picked up somewhere, possibly from that conversation with my mother about Michael Freed’s one-in-ten banana painting. One in twenty women, the statistic went, is a lesbian. I thought, That’s why we don’t know any gay women. There apparently weren’t a lot of them. I remember seeing them on motorcycles at the front of the Pride Parade. They weren’t like women I knew. Lesbians were butches. That was how you could tell who was a lesbian. They wore scuffed leather boots, short hair, and lips the color of lips. They weren’t pretty. Why, I thought, wouldn’t a woman want to make herself beautiful? “Like most people around me,” writes A. K. Summers in Pregnant Butch, “I unthinkingly conflated butch with ugly.”14 In French class, we learned that adjectives follow the noun they modify. Un sac bleu. A blue bag. Des gâteaux délicieux. Delicious cakes. The only exceptions to this rule are adjectives for beauty, age, goodness, or size, all of which precede their noun. There’s a mnemonic device for this, the acronym BAGS. Beauty, Age, Goodness, Size. This is how I learned to understand women, too: in terms of beauty, age, goodness, and size. A pretty woman, a young woman, a good woman, a slender woman. Lesbians were woman-minus. Lesbians were function over form, the Ford Taurus of women. They didn’t seem to care about things that motivated the girls and women I knew: about being liked, about approval, about men. They were motivated by something I couldn’t understand.

• From Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907)

  It may be that God will find more virtue in the impetuous faults of these pioneers of social Christianity than in the faultless prudence of their critics. Balance was hardly the distinguishing quality of the Old Testament prophets, and yet they are commonly supposed to have been good for something. It is doubtless true that the interest in the social question is apt to overshadow the other aspects of religion. Absorbed in public questions, such men may forget to appeal to the individual soul for repentance and to comfort those in sorrow. That is a sore defect. The human soul with its guilt and its longing for holiness and deathless life is a permanent fact in religion, and no social perfection will quench its hunger for the living God. There was no chance for Christianizing public life on the island where Robinson Crusoe lived alone with his parrot and his cats, but when Crusoe began to read his Bible and won through to repentance for his past and faith in God, it was a triumph of religion. There are two great entities in human life,—the human soul and the human race,—and religion is to save both. The soul is to seek righteousness and eternal life; the race is to seek righteousness and the kingdom of God. The social preacher is apt to overlook the one. But the evangelical preacher has long overlooked the other. It is due to that protracted neglect that we are now deluged by the social problem in its present acute form. It is partly due to the same neglect that our churches are overwhelmingly feminine. Woman nurtures the individual in the home, and God has equipped her with an intuitive insight into the problems of the individual life. Man’s life faces the outward world, and his instincts and interests lie that way. Hence men crowd where public questions get downright discussion. Our individualistic religion has helped to feminize our churches. A very protracted one-sidedness in preaching has to be balanced up, and if some now go to the other extreme, those who have created the situation hardly have the right to cast the first stone. It seems likely that even after this present inequality of emphasis is balanced, some preachers will put more stress on the social aspects of religion. In that case we must apply Paul’s large and tolerant principle, “There are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit.”

• From Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907)

  When the “Evangelical movement” swept over the Church of England, and ministers once more preached personal repentance and conversion, Lord Melbourne is said to have risen from his pew and stalked down the aisle, angrily exclaiming, “Things have come to a pretty pass when religion is made to invade the sphere of private life.” At any rate, social questions cannot be more non-religious than many of the things about which ministers have to talk in the pulpit. If it is religious to advocate rebuilding a church, why is it non-religious to advocate tearing down and rebuilding slum districts? If it is religious to encourage the church to recarpet the aisles and cushion the seats for the feet and backs of the worshippers, why is it non-religious to speak of playgrounds for young feet and old-age pensions for aged backs? Social preaching has come under suspicion because experience has shown that when a preacher begins to speak on social questions, he is apt to veer away from the established course and fly off on a tangent. The new ideas take such hold on him that all other Christian truth seems stale and outworn in comparison. His preaching becomes one-sided. He twangs on a harp of a single string, and it becomes a weariness. If he encounters coldness, he may shake the dust of the Church from his feet in witness that it has once more cast out its prophets. Such cases are held up as proof that social questions are forbidden ground. They are indeed profoundly pathetic. These men are the explorers who travel along the unblazed trails where in coming days the highways of the Church will run, and explorers are apt to leave their graves as way-marks for those who come after. It is easy enough to march steadily on a beaten road and in the rank and file of a regiment. If these social preachers were not so alone, they would not go astray as they do. If they found many other ministers thinking the same thoughts, they could exchange and correct their ideas, and the future would not seem so dark. Thus the guilt for their aberrations rests in part on all of us who have shirked our duty and lagged behind. It may be that some of these men are naturally unstable and self-confident. But that is the stuff of which pioneers are usually made. Our Western pioneers were the venturesome pick; the solid people stayed at home. Abraham, who was the father of all men of faith, was also the father of pioneers, striking off into the unknown at the call of an inner voice, and perhaps some of his friends in Haran hinted that he was a rolling stone and “lacked common sense.”

• From Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907)

  If he attends the dinners of the Chamber of Commerce, he must take socialist street meetings as an antidote. Socialism has fully as much claim on his intellect as Robert Browning. If a man follows the mind of Jesus Christ in his judgments, he will have to appear partial in a social world which is by no means built on a line with the mind of Christ. It is a different matter entirely for a minister to follow the mind of a political party and make himself liable to the charge of partisanship. It may happen at long intervals in the history of a nation that a political party so thoroughly embodies the righteous instincts of the nation that its cause is almost identified with the triumph of justice. In such a juncture a minister may wisely decide that he must throw his influence publicly with that party and risk a loss of influence in other directions. But it is questionable if that situation has confronted ministers in our country these many years. A man may well doubt if the machinery of our great parties has ground out social progress or ground it up, and whether party loyalty has propagated patriotism or poisoned it. A minister has no business to be the megaphone of a political party and its catchwords. He should rather be the master of politics by creating the issues which parties will have to espouse. Questions are usually discussed a long time before they become political issues. Old political parties are controlled by conservative forces and will take up progressive measures only when it is necessary to retain their followers or outbid another party. The time for the pulpit to do its best work is before a question is torn to tatters on the platform. A Christian preacher should have the prophetic insight which discerns and champions the right before others see it. If he has honestly done that, he can afford to be silent when the “practical men” grumblingly enter to finish up the job which he has helped to lay out for them. Hail to the pioneers! The early work is the formative work. Embodying a moral conviction in law is the last stage of a moral propaganda. Laws do not create moral convictions; they merely recognize and enforce them. Moreover, there are important political questions which never become party issues.

• From From Shame to Sin: The Christian Transformation of Sexual Morality in Late Antiquity (2013)

  Though her life is said to have fulfilled the dictum “The prostitutes and publicans will precede you into the kingdom of heaven,” the gospel expression retains none of its original compassion for society’s outcasts. The Life of Thais is valuable because it allows us to watch the translation of a primitive monastic tale into the symbolic world of classical fiction. It already reveals the way that new configurations of religion, society, and the body fueled the literary imagination. Because the Life of Thais is aesthetically clumsy, its author’s handiwork is nakedly obvious. The other three examples of the subgenre are more artful, and they reveal a deeper mastery of the medium and its potential. Among the earliest competitors to the Life of Thais is the story of Pelagia, a prostitute and actress of Antioch. Thanks only to the brief aside in the sermon of Chrysostom do we know that there is a kernel of historicity in the story of a glamorous celebrity who converted to the ascetic life. We cannot say how far legendary material had accreted around her by the time the author of the life, sometime in the fifth century, elaborated the written version that survives. We can only say that the author, who purports to be a deacon named Jacob, was a highly literate spirit, one of those soldiers of Christian culture who remade the ancient tradition in a Christian mold. 59 The Life of Pelagia is highly conscious of its status as an antiromance. It counterposes its hero, an ascetic bishop named Nonnos, and its heroine, the redoubtable Pelagia, in the symmetrical fashion of the Greek novel. The story begins as Nonnos and other bishops have gathered at Antioch at the behest of the bishop of the great city. One day the visitors were sitting together outside the shrine of the martyr Julian when Pelagia, “first lady of the Antiochene stage,” rode by with her cortege. No detail of the fantasia is omitted. Pelagia rides on a donkey, head uncovered, attended by a great throng of slaves, all of whom are bedecked with gold, gems, and pearls. The aromatics of her passing entourage could stun the unwary soul. The bishops avert their gaze, except for Nonnos, who holds her in his mind with his eyes. He is struck by her beauty, but his interest is not prurient. He is fired with envy by the care she takes to make herself pleasing to men; he wishes he could take such care to prepare his soul for God. Her glorious physical charms, in good Platonic fashion, remind Nonnos of the “inconceivable beauty” (to amēchanon kallos) at which even the cherubim dare not gaze, which the Christian will find in heaven!

• From Introduction to the Hebrew Bible and Deutero-Canonical Books (2018)

  The real heroes, from the viewpoint of Daniel, are the “wise” (Hebrew maskilim ) who instruct the common people, even though some of them do so at the cost of their lives. It is reasonable to suppose that the authors of Daniel belonged to the circle of “the wise.” The instruction they gave to the masses presumably corresponded to the revelations of Daniel: that the human conflicts were only a reflection of conflicts on the supernatural level, and that the outcome was assured. Some scholars have argued that “the wise” should be identified with a party known as the Hasidim, who are mentioned three times in the books of Maccabees (1 Macc 2:42; 7:12-13; 2 Macc 14:6). We know very little about these people, except that they were militant supporters of the Maccabees. Daniel, in contrast, says nothing about the Maccabees. Daniel 11:34 says that the wise shall receive little help. This has often been interpreted as a slighting reference to the Maccabees. It is not clear, however, that Daniel would have regarded the Maccabees as a help at all. In his view, the battle would be won by the archangel Michael. The role of the Jews was to keep themselves pure and not do anything to obstruct their heavenly deliverer. Daniel 11:40-45 describes the downfall of the king. Verse 45 claims that he would meet his death between the sea and the holy mountain, that is, in the land of Israel. This prophecy was not fulfilled. Antiochus Epiphanes died in Persia late in 164 B.C.E. from wounds received in an attempt to rob a temple. The unfulfilled prophecy reveals the date of the composition of Daniel. All the “predictions” are correct down to the persecution. This part of the prophecy was presumably written after the fact and served to inspire confidence in the real prediction of the end of the story, which was yet to come. The prophecy must have been written before the news of Antiochus’s death reached Jerusalem. The death of the king is not the climax of the prophecy. According to Dan 12:1-3: “At that time Michael, the great prince, the protector of your people, shall arise.” Then all those written in the book of life would be delivered. Some would rise to everlasting life and some to everlasting contempt. The wise would shine like the stars forever. We know from a passage in 1 Enoch 104 that “to shine like the stars” means “to become companions of the angels.” The idea of astral immortality, that some souls ascend to the stars after death, was well known in the Greek world. Daniel does not say that everyone will be raised, only the righteous and the wicked. Neither does he say that the resurrection will involve a body of flesh and blood.

• From Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907)

  It is interesting that where our conditions are similar to those of the ancient world, a similar relation of clientage has grown up in the protection given to the poor by the political boss and the service exacted by him in return. It is probable that the wealthier members of the Christian communities served as the patroni of their poorer brethren. Phœbe, of the Corinthian harbor-town Cenchreæ, was probably not a poor deaconess, but a woman of social standing who had served Paul and many others as patrona . Christianity spread at first chiefly in the cities and among the lower middle class, the working class, and the slaves. The poorer classes of the Empire were a proletariat much like that of our great cities. They were largely composed of slaves and of freemen who were economically submerged through the competition of organized slave labor, through the drift of the peasantry toward the cities, and through the increasing economic breakdown of the Empire. The Christian Church was of immense social value to these people. It took the place in their life which life insurance, sick benefits, accident insurance, friendly societies, and some features of trades-unions take to-day. The individual found in the community a hold when any wave of misfortune threatened to sweep him off his feet and drag him out to sea in the undertow of misery. It is now generally recognized that this element of mutual help was quite as strong a factor in the growth of the Christian movement as the attractiveness of the truth it presented. Harnack justly makes “The Gospel of Love and Charity” one of the chief chapters in his account of the missionary expansion during the first three centuries. The historian Schiller in his history of the imperial age of Rome says: “As the gospel of the poor and oppressed, of the despairing and guilty, Christianity naturally sought its adherents first in the lower strata of population, and if we remember what moral degradation prevailed in the Greek seaports, we realize the more the power of the new faith, which was able to awaken a higher and somewhat more ideal conception of life even amid such surroundings. The fundamental idea of Christianity … could unfold but slowly, and only a few of the nobler spirits could rise to such lofty conceptions. With the majority of believers the determining motives were the socialist elements on the one hand and the Messianic hope and the expectation of a better life beyond on the other hand.” Karl Kautsky, in his history of socialism, thinks the practical aid was a stronger element than the hope of the golden age. “Like the Social Democracy to-day, primitive Christianity grew to a power irresistible by the ruling classes of that day because it became indispensable to the masses of the population.” Speaking of the decay of communistic enthusiasm in the Church after Constantine, he says: “But even in this weakened form Christianity for centuries accomplished great things in counteracting pauperism.