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 46 of 288 · 20 per page

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

  representing all Gentile sovereignty, will be brought crashing down. Nonetheless, Daniel is not suggesting rebellion. The promised kingdom will only come about long after the reign of Nebuchadnezzar. Eschatology is deferred. For the present, the Jews in Babylon are quite content in the service of the Gentile king. The political order will be set right in God’s good time. Nebuchadnezzar expresses admiration for Daniel’s god and appoints Daniel ruler over the whole province of Babylon. He does not seem to perceive the threatening character of the prophecy. But then the exaltation of the hero is part of the genre, a stock ending to a tale such as this. We shall see an even more incongruous ending in the story of Belshazzar in chapter 5. Daniel 3 Daniel’s companions, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, play no role in chapter 2, although they are said to be promoted at the end, at Daniel’s request. Conversely, Daniel plays no role in chapter 3. Most probably, these stories were originally independent of each other. The drama of chapter 3 revolves around a demand by King Nebuchadnezzar that all the officials of his kingdom worship a giant statue that he had set up (it is not clear whether the statue represents a god or Nebuchadnezzar himself). Babylonian kings are not otherwise known to have made such demands. The Jews, alone among the king’s officials, are presented with a dilemma, because of the exclusive character of their religion. We do no know of any incidents where Jews were confronted with such a problem before the second century B.C.E. and the persecution initiated by Antiochus Epiphanes of Syria that led to the Maccabean revolt. Since Daniel 7–12 clearly reflects the Maccabean era (168– 164 B.C.E.), some scholars have argued that Daniel 3 comes from the same time. But there are notable differences between the two situations. Worship of a statue was not an issue in the Maccabean crisis. (Later, in the first century C.E., the Roman emperor Caligula provoked a crisis by trying to install his statue in the Jerusalem temple.) More importantly, the martyrs of the Maccabean era were not rescued from death: their hope was for vindication after death by resurrection

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

  between the Creator and creation. The more typical phrase is “God of all” (36:1). He does, however, see a very close relation between God and nature or creation. In this he is typical of the wisdom tradition. The Praise of the Fathers The long section in chapters 44–50 is devoted to the praise of famous men from Israel’s past (Ben Sira includes no women in the list). This catalog differs from most reviews of biblical history. It is not focused on events or on the mighty acts of God. It is rather focused on individuals and their character. Primary attention is given to those who were leaders of their people. Ben Sira is especially interested in the priesthood. The praise of Aaron in chapter 45 is three times as long as that of Moses and is followed by praise of another priest, Phinehas. David and Solomon are praised at length, as are Elijah and Elisha. Mention is also made of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the Twelve (Ben Sira did not know Daniel). Surprisingly, there is no mention of Ezra, although Nehemiah is praised for raising up the fallen walls (49:13). The series concludes with a figure who was a contemporary of Ben Sira. This was Simon the high priest, known as Simon the Just, who was high priest from 219 to 196 B.C.E. During his time (in 198), Jerusalem passed from the control of the Ptolemies of Egypt to the Seleucids of Syria. Simon welcomed the Syrians and was rewarded for his loyalty. Ben Sira’s admiration for Simon was undoubtedly colored by the success Simon enjoyed under Syrian patronage. He was able to repair the temple and the fortifications. Syrian favor, however, would be short-lived, as we know from the stories in the books of Maccabees, which describe events that began a mere quarter of a century after Simon welcomed the Syrians to Jerusalem. The Role of the Scribe Ben Sira gives us a clearer picture of his role in society than do most biblical writers, and certainly more than any other wisdom writer. In 38:24—39:11 he

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

  ENDURING VALUES The importance that the Bible has enjoyed in the Western world is due in large part to its canonical status in Judaism and Christianity, and to the widespread belief in its inspiration. Be that as it may, the influence of these books on Western culture is enormous. Knowledge of biblical stories is indispensible for the appreciation of Western art and culture. Think, for example, of the Sistine Chapel paintings of Michelangelo, or of Milton’s Paradise Lost . Even apart from its importance as a cultural aid, however, the Old Testament remains vital and engaging literature even from a purely humanistic perspective. Here it may suffice to mention two factors that render the Bible an important resource for humanistic education. First, no other collection of documents from the ancient world, and scarcely any other documents at all, speak with such passionate urgency on the subject of social justice. The primary voices in this respect are those of the Hebrew prophets, but the law codes of the Pentateuch are also of fundamental importance for our understanding of human rights. To be sure, the biblical laws are not always satisfactory by modern standards. Biblical attitudes to slaves, women, and foreigners are all mired in the cultural assumptions of the ancient world, with only occasional flickers of enlightenment. Nonetheless, the concern for the unfortunate of society in these books is remarkable and often stands as a reproach to the modern Western world. Second, it has been claimed that the biblical authors were the pioneers of prose fiction. Whatever the historical merits of this claim, and it is not without substance, the achievements of the biblical writers are not just a matter of literary form. The biblical narratives offer a warts-and-all picture of human nature that has seldom been surpassed. The realism of the narratives of Genesis or the story of David is widely recognized and appreciated. The account of the brutality of conquest is no less realistic, but has less often been appreciated, because it has too often been construed as moral example. When the Bible is

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

  addressed as Adonai, “my lord”—the phrase that came to be substituted for the divine name in later Judaism. YHWH bids him sit at his right hand. (This is probably a reference to the king’s throne in the temple.) The Deity continues: “From the womb of dawn, like dew I have begotten you” (Ps. 110:3; the Hebrew is corrupt and must be reconstructed with the help of the Greek. The NRSV follows the Hebrew, reading, “Your youth will come to you” instead of “I have begotten you”). In this case, the psalmist adds an intriguing detail: “You are a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek.” Melchizedek was the priest-king of Salem (presumably Jerusalem) in Genesis 14 who blessed Abraham and to whom Abraham gave a tithe of all that he had. Melchizedek was a Jebusite, which is to say a Canaanite. He was priest of El Elyon, a Canaanite deity who was identified with YHWH in the Bible. If the Davidic kings claimed to be “according to the order of Melchizedek,” this meant that they affirmed continuity with the old Canaanite religion that had been practiced in the city for centuries before David captured it. We may infer that they took over the Canaanite understanding of the kingship, at least to some degree, and that understanding in turn had been influenced by Egyptian traditions. (Melchizedek appears again as a mysterious figure, without father or mother, in Heb 7:3, which emphasizes his priesthood. In the Dead Sea Scrolls, in a scroll known as 11QMelchizedek, he is an angelic figure who executes judgment on God’s behalf.) An even more startling view of the kingship appears in Psalm 45. This seems to be a song for a royal wedding. It begins with unabashed praise (flattery?) of the king: “you are the most handsome of men . . . gird your sword on your thigh, O mighty one!” The praise reaches its climax in v. 6: “Your throne, O God, endures forever and ever. Your royal scepter is a scepter of equity. You love righteousness and hate wickedness, therefore God, your God, has anointed you with the oil of gladness above your fellows.” Here the king is addressed as elohim, “God.” This does not mean that he is put on the same level as the Most High. He is carefully distinguished from “God, your God,” who has anointed him and on whom he depends. But the king is clearly regarded as something more than a regular human being. He is a divine being in some sense.

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

  Sovereign, how majestic is your name in all the earth!”) or simply by calling on the congregation to praise the Lord, as in Psalms 146–50. They typically give the reasons for praising God, his works in creation or history, or his character. Psalms 8 and 104 put the emphasis on the works of creation. Psalm 114 recalls the exodus. Psalm 146 praises the Lord for liberating prisoners and opening the eyes of the blind. The hymn may conclude by echoing the introductory affirmation (Psalm 8) or call to praise (Psalms 146–50) or by pronouncing a wish (104:31: “may the glory of the L ORD endure forever”; 29:11: “May the L ORD bless his people with peace!”). The form allows some variation from one hymn to another, but nonetheless it is not difficult to recognize. Hymns praising deities figure prominently in all religions of the ancient Near East, and probably in all religions. Psalm 104 has a close parallel in the Egyptian Hymn to Aten (the deity represented by the solar disk, venerated by the heretical, “monotheistic” Pharaoh Akhenaten: ANET , 369–71). There are numerous examples of Mesopotamian hymns to various deities, some dating back to ancient Sumer, including the goddess Ishtar, Marduk, the moon-god, and the sun-god ( ANET, 383–92). Hymns were sung on a wide variety of occasions but were especially associated with the temple and holy places, and with the celebration of festivals. “Happy are those who live in your house, ever singing your praise” (Ps 84:4). “Enter his gates with thanksgiving, and his courts with praise” (100:4; in this case, the singing of hymns is associated with liturgical processions). According to 1 Chron 16:4-7, David appointed Levites as ministers before the ark to invoke, thank, and praise the God of Israel. The singing of praise seems to have been a prominent part of the temple worship throughout the history of Israel and Judah. CLASSIFICATION OF PSALMS IN THE HEBREW BIBLE Hymns 8, 19, 29, 33, 65, 67, 68, 96, 98, 100, 103–5, 111, 113, 114, 117, 135, 145–50 Psalms of YHWH’s Enthronement 93, 97, 99 Psalms of Individual 3, 5–7, 13, 17, 22, 25–28, 32, 38, 39, 42, 43, 51, 54–57, 59, 61, 63, 64, 69–71, Complaint 86, 88, 102, 109, 120, 130, 140–43 Psalms of Communal Complaint 44, 74, 79, 80, 83, 89 Psalms of Thanksgiving 18, 30, 34, 40:1-11, 41, 66, 92, 116, 118, 138 Royal Psalms 2, 18, 20, 21, 45, 72, 101, 110, 132, 144:1-11 Wisdom Psalms 1, 14, 37, 73, 91, 112, 119, 128 (Many psalms are difficult to classify and are omitted from this list.)

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

  the heroine Judith introduced. The name Judith means simply “woman of Judah” or “Jewish woman.” It also recalls the name of Judah the Maccabee, the great champion of freedom in the Maccabean era. Judith is a widow of exemplary character and beautiful to boot. She rebukes the people who have proposed surrender and tells them that she is going to do a great deed, but they must not try to find out what she is doing. Before she goes out of Bethulia, she prays, asking God to make her “deceitful words” to the Assyrians successful. Judith now goes to the Assyrian camp. 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

• From Little Sister: A Memoir (2019)

  In September 1947, Fakhri published an article in the Center’s quarterly entitled “Sentimental Theology” that boldly proclaimed, “There is no salvation outside the Catholic Church.” In other words, the only way for a person to be saved and reach heaven after this life was to be Roman Catholic. Over the centuries, no less than half a dozen popes had championed that dogma and it was so stated in the Baltimore catechism that was part of every parochial school child’s religious education. But in the aftermath of World War II, the Catholic Church turned its focus to fostering ecumenism between Catholics and non-Catholics. The previous hard-line position was deemed too doctrinaire. Feeney railed against ecumenism, against the professors at Harvard for their liberalism, and against Catholic colleges and universities for compromising their faith by suggesting that non-Catholics might find a way to heaven. But the fire of his rhetoric was aimed mostly at the Jews, whose crime was killing Jesus. As Feeney’s vitriol increased, many of his adherents grew wary and stopped attending his lectures at the Center. But a small cadre of followers found inspiration in his oratory and became ardent adherents. Before long, the message of the Center had morphed into a one-issue mantra: “No Salvation Outside the Catholic Church.” My father, as an intellectual and a student of theology, wholeheartedly subscribed to the dogma of “no salvation.” His graduate studies at Boston College only strengthened his orthodoxy in this regard. My mother’s long road to Catholicism had imbued her with a zealous ardor for her faith. There was nothing capricious about her spirituality. She was convinced that she had received a grace from God as a small child that led her to renounce her Episcopalian heritage and convert to Catholicism. Father Feeney had guided her through those final steps and had baptized her into the Catholic Church. She would remain loyal to her priest and her faith. Catholicism was her salvation. In a defiant, and seemingly rash, show of allegiance to Feeney, more than a dozen young, brilliant students at Harvard and Radcliffe resigned from their colleges during the scholastic year of 1947 and 1948, most of them just months away from graduation. Anguished parents, whose families had, in many cases, sent their sons to Harvard for generations and provided generous support for the institution, turned to the archbishop, beseeching him to intervene. At the same time, in May 1948, the dean of the College of Arts and Sciences of Boston College met with my father to offer him the position of instructor in philosophy for the upcoming scholastic year. But that offer came with a condition that he not teach Feeney’s doctrine (as he put it) that espoused “No Salvation Outside the Catholic Church.” My father refused to agree to that stipulation. He was, nonetheless, allowed to teach philosophy, but was aware that he was under scrutiny.

• From Little Sister: A Memoir (2019)

  Half of the cavernous space was like a living room, with sofas and comfortable chairs. The rest was organized with tables and folding chairs, where the adults met for their classes. While they studied, I’d play on the floor with the Maluf children. Mariam Maluf was the first child born to the Center parents. At nearly six years old, she was a full two-and-a-half years older than I was. She had large brown eyes like her father’s and long, straight, almost black hair. Her skin color was darker than mine. Mariam said with pride that it was “olive colored,” and she explained why to me. “I’m a Semite,” she said in her all-knowing way, “and you’re a Japhethite.” Then she went into detail about how her father, Fakhri, who was from Syria, was descended from Sem, the oldest son of Noah from the Old Testament. I, on the other hand, was descended from Japheth, Noah’s youngest son, whose offspring settled in Europe. She made it sound as though that was inferior to coming from the Middle East. “That’s why you have blue eyes, and I have brown eyes,” Mariam said with authority. Fakhri had told her these things, she said, and, at three years old, I believed whatever she told me. But I was happy to have blue eyes. Sometimes Mariam seemed like an older sister because she knew so much more than I did. She had an answer for everything, and I didn’t dare question her authority. Her two younger brothers were Peter, who was nine months older than I was, and Leonard, who was nine months younger. Leonard was my best friend and we were never far apart—playing together, sharing everything, and racing each other, whether it be up and down the stairs between our apartments or along the banks of the river. When the adults’ morning classes were over, Father would sit in the middle of the Center on what seemed like his throne, a vast, low-slung armchair of crinkly, cracked red leather. Slouched in his seat, he’d stretch his legs out and rest his feet on a matching footstool. He was old (just like the chair, I thought), the oldest person at the Center, and unlike the rest of the adults, who wore colorful clothes or suits with ties, he was always dressed in black, except for the white Roman collar that signified he was a priest. As Father reclined, the women would gather around him, some sitting at his feet and others kneeling at his side. They all seemed to wait for him to say something, and while he spoke, the room was silent. If he said something funny, everyone laughed; if he was serious, so were they.

• From Little Sister: A Memoir (2019)

  “What does Sister Catherine say about your coming down here?” I asked her one day. “She’s told me to do what I must,” my mother replied. I sensed that, for once, my mother had the upper hand with Sister Catherine. I observed the ease with which she seemed to adjust to the world beyond the Center. It was as though she had hardly been separated from the real world for all those years. She was particularly at home buying clothes. She knew fabrics and offered advice on matters of quality (which I took) and fashion (which I mostly discarded). She came from an era when handbags were expected to match shoes in both color and texture. I preferred the mix-and-match approach of the late 1960s, perhaps in defiance of anything that seemed rules-based. She shared with me pictures of herself in the newspaper from her days as a teenage model, and I saw her in a new light. I started reading the society pages of the Boston Globe , engrossing myself in a life that seemed almost surreal—cotillions and balls, auctions and fund-raisers, engagements and weddings—and imagining myself as part of that life of privilege. With little understanding of what was entailed to participate in that lofty world, I blithely asked my mother one day, as we sat reading the newspaper, “Do you think it would be possible for me to make my debut?” My mother’s reaction was spontaneous. With a full-throated laugh, she exclaimed, “Where did you come from? You are the funniest child in the world.” I had much to learn. She went to work as a housekeeper for a young married couple getting their Ph.D.’s at Harvard. Not surprisingly, the three of them became fast friends, and when a year later the couple was expecting a baby, they asked her to be their nanny. My mother accepted the offer with delight. It was almost as though she was seizing the opportunity to re-engage as a mother after having shelved her maternal instincts for so many years. Until she became a nanny, I had felt sorry for my mother—she was smart and sophisticated, if not particularly intellectual. She had a commanding knowledge of world history and a prodigious vocabulary—both of which she credited to her education at Cambridge High and Latin. I wished she could be doing something that was more stimulating, but in her nun-like fashion, she never complained. Some of our most enjoyable times together were spent watching TV mystery shows—Hawaii Five-O , Mission Impossible , and Columbo . My mother could pick out the culprit within three minutes of the start of the show, and I had to beseech her to keep it to herself. “I should have been a detective,” she’d say, with an air of supreme confidence. * * * A year of teaching shorthand and typing had become tedious. I craved more intellectual stimulation, but quitting never crossed my mind; that seemed to be a dereliction of duty.

• From Little Sister: A Memoir (2019)

  James Richard Walsh was soon to be discharged after a four-year tour of duty aboard the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise . Having received an undergraduate degree from Bates College prior to his enlistment, he was now enrolled as a graduate student in philosophy, thanks to the G.I. Bill, at this Jesuit college on the outskirts of Boston. To supplement his government support, he would be teaching mathematics as an assistant professor at the college. Born in Quincy, Massachusetts, Jim Walsh had been raised in a strongly Catholic family. He and his younger sister Eleanor attended parochial grammar school, and after his father’s untimely demise, Jim attended Boston College High School and then Bates College, where he earned a degree in mathematics. He was teaching high school mathematics, but after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, he enlisted in the Navy. Catholicism had been the foundation of Jim Walsh’s life. His father had died when Jim was only eleven years old, and it was his mother and two maiden aunts who inspired his Catholicism. At Bates he had founded the Newman Society, an organization that promoted Catholic faith and morals among students and faculty. For him, faith was an intellectual endeavor rather than an emotional exercise. Observing the atrocities of war firsthand only strengthened his determination to explore the realm of God through the study of Catholic philosophy. Jim Walsh’s presence in the Boston College classroom did not escape the notice of the professor, the renowned Dr. Fakhri Maluf. Originally from Lebanon and with a Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Michigan, Maluf had done postdoctoral work at Harvard, and now, at age thirty-three, he held a prestigious position on the faculty of Boston College. The two men introduced themselves at the end of class. A few weeks later, Dr. Maluf invited Jim to join him on a visit to St. Benedict Center, a Catholic meeting place for Harvard and Radcliffe students, a stone’s throw from Harvard Square, where he offered free lectures in philosophy every Tuesday evening. Jim accepted the invitation and, before long, found himself engrossed in the energetic life of “the Center,” as it was called. To have walked into the Center on that day would have been to encounter a buzz. It came from the mingling of intellectual energy and youthful gaiety as scores of students congregated, many far from their families, who found it also to be a gracious home-away-from-home, a welcoming environment for socializing. The chaplain at the Center was Father Leonard Feeney, a fifty-year-old world-renowned Jesuit priest, poet, author, lecturer, and teacher. In addition to his role as spiritual leader, Leonard Feeney enjoyed acting as social intermediary among the vibrant young men and women who frequented the Center. He took an immediate liking to Jim, going so far as to introduce the twenty-eight-year-old bachelor to a number of young Radcliffe graduates who were attending classes at the Center. But Jim did not find his soul mate among the young women there.

• From Little Sister: A Memoir (2019)

  But I was respectful of the two men who ran the office, and while I was a neophyte in the world of finance, it was evident to me that they were not only hardworking but also successful. It was not lost on me that, despite their stature within the office, they were always courteous and made me feel like a member of their team. When I found myself with time on my hands, I’d bounce into their office and ask them if there wasn’t something I could do—anything. Before long, I was running errands for them all over town, a welcome diversion from sitting at the front desk and answering the telephone. I had been employed for eight months, when, at yearend, the partners invited me into their wood-paneled office and presented me with a $1500 bonus check. I was speechless—that was almost half of what I had made since I came to the firm. But equally as rewarding was the realization that these two men, who seemed bigger than life to me, were appreciative of my work. One day, not long after the bonus surprise, the two partners once again called me into their office. “We’d like you to do us a favor,” they said. They had been working on a deal, they explained, that was closing at the end of the week, and they needed me to go to New York to collect $5 million in checks from five separate investors. “Here’s a ticket to LaGuardia Airport on the shuttle for tomorrow morning, and a list of the places you need to go. A car and driver will take you to each of the destinations.” Me? Collect $5 million? In New York? On my own? I can do it, and they know I can . As I took the subway home that evening, I reveled in the realization that I, the receptionist, was selected over the half-dozen secretaries whose responsibilities and income were well above mine. The chauffeured limousine was awaiting me at LaGuardia, and for the next few hours, I went from office to office. The last appointment of the day was at the country estate of an elderly man, Mr. Rosenberg. He greeted me at the door, his butler supporting his frail frame as he reached his hand out to me. “Come in,” he said, “please join me for tea.” “Thank you,” I replied instinctively, “I’d love to.” I was brought back to the days in Still River when I was nine years old and the Thursday afternoon tea parties over which Sister Catherine presided. I noted the difference—on this occasion, I was being served rather than serving. Mr. Rosenberg inquired about my interests, and I felt that stab of panic grip my stomach. Dear God, please don’t let him ask me about where I grew up . What would a Jewish man say if he knew I was a Feeneyite?

• From Little Sister: A Memoir (2019)

  “What does Sister Catherine say about your coming down here?” I asked her one day. “She’s told me to do what I must,” my mother replied. I sensed that, for once, my mother had the upper hand with Sister Catherine. I observed the ease with which she seemed to adjust to the world beyond the Center. It was as though she had hardly been separated from the real world for all those years. She was particularly at home buying clothes. She knew fabrics and offered advice on matters of quality (which I took) and fashion (which I mostly discarded). She came from an era when handbags were expected to match shoes in both color and texture. I preferred the mix-and-match approach of the late 1960s, perhaps in defiance of anything that seemed rules-based. She shared with me pictures of herself in the newspaper from her days as a teenage model, and I saw her in a new light. I started reading the society pages of the Boston Globe , engrossing myself in a life that seemed almost surreal—cotillions and balls, auctions and fund-raisers, engagements and weddings—and imagining myself as part of that life of privilege. With little understanding of what was entailed to participate in that lofty world, I blithely asked my mother one day, as we sat reading the newspaper, “Do you think it would be possible for me to make my debut?” My mother’s reaction was spontaneous. With a full-throated laugh, she exclaimed, “Where did you come from? You are the funniest child in the world.” I had much to learn. She went to work as a housekeeper for a young married couple getting their Ph.D.’s at Harvard. Not surprisingly, the three of them became fast friends, and when a year later the couple was expecting a baby, they asked her to be their nanny. My mother accepted the offer with delight. It was almost as though she was seizing the opportunity to re-engage as a mother after having shelved her maternal instincts for so many years. Until she became a nanny, I had felt sorry for my mother—she was smart and sophisticated, if not particularly intellectual. She had a commanding knowledge of world history and a prodigious vocabulary—both of which she credited to her education at Cambridge High and Latin. I wished she could be doing something that was more stimulating, but in her nun-like fashion, she never complained. Some of our most enjoyable times together were spent watching TV mystery shows—Hawaii Five-O , Mission Impossible , and Columbo . My mother could pick out the culprit within three minutes of the start of the show, and I had to beseech her to keep it to herself. “I should have been a detective,” she’d say, with an air of supreme confidence. * * * A year of teaching shorthand and typing had become tedious. I craved more intellectual stimulation, but quitting never crossed my mind; that seemed to be a dereliction of duty.

• From Little Sister: A Memoir (2019)

  It was two years after moving to New York when I found the courage to step through that door. I had been dating a man for about a year, a respected oil analyst on Wall Street, whom I’d met at a business lunch. This man whom I adored was twenty years my senior, and in the short time we’d been together, he had unearthed a world that was far beyond the reveries of my once childish imagination. Together we traveled to exotic places—Egypt and Tobago. On the moonlit balcony of our room at the Oloffson Hotel in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, he read to me—poems by Stephen Spender and passages from E. M. Forster. For Christmas, he gave me a copy of Skeat’s An Etymological Dictionary of the English Language before presenting me with a pair of gold earrings from Cartier. I sensed he relished the role he played in my life—the older man opening up the world of culture and literature to a receptive and energetic young woman. Perhaps a bit like Professor Higgins, although I hoped he didn’t consider me quite Eliza Doolittle. “Gamine” was what he sometimes called me. At first I wasn’t sure if that was a compliment or a put-down, but I came to understand it as a term of endearment—I was the raring-to-go, not-quite-settled girl and he was the already accomplished man of Wall Street. On a warm summer evening, I was sitting with him in his apartment on New York’s Upper West Side, coddling a glass of white wine, the light of day still pouring into the living room through the skylight above. I had my feet tucked underneath me as I excitedly explained my upcoming business trip to Paris. He mentioned that his mother lived in the town of Orgeval, a few kilometers outside of Paris. She had recently broken her hip, he said, and was struggling with her recovery. “I’d love to visit her,” I told him. That’s when he got silent, and I sensed something was wrong. “Tell me,” I said. A tear came to his eye, and he reached out his hand, with its slight tremble, to take my own in his. The words formed slowly. “My mother’s a lesbian,” he said, and the tear rolled down his cheek. His pain touched me—he’d spoken of his mother before, but only in reference to his parents’ divorce when he was barely old enough to walk and how he would go for months at a time pining for her. I knew deeply what that separation felt like, yet I had not braved sharing with him the story of my

• From Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body (2017)

  Ina Garten makes cooking seem easy, accessible. She loves good ingredients—good vanilla, good olive oil, good everything. She is always offering helpful tips—very cold butter makes pastry dough better, and a cook’s best tools are clean hands. She uses an ice cream scoop for the dough when she’s making muffins and reminds the audience of this trick with a conspiratorial grin. When she shops in town, she always asks the butcher or fishmonger or baker to put her purchases on her account. She doesn’t sully herself with cash. One day, she invites some construction workers who are rehabbing a windmill over for lunch and she decorates the table with construction accessories like a tarp and some paintbrushes and a bucket. As she prepares their meal, she makes sure to provide man-sized portions, to be followed by a brownie pie, a decadent affair I would eventually try to bake. What I love most about Ina is that she teaches me about fostering a strong sense of self and self-confidence. She teaches me about being at ease in my body. From all appearances, she is entirely at ease with herself. She is ambitious and knows she is excellent at what she does and never apologizes for it. She teaches me that a woman can be plump and pleasant and absolutely in love with food. She gives me permission to love food. She gives me permission to acknowledge my hungers and to try and satisfy them in healthy ways. She gives me permission to buy the “good” ingredients she is so fond of recommending so that I might make good food for myself and the people for whom I enjoy cooking. She gives me permission to embrace my ambition and believe in myself. In the case of Barefoot Contessa, a cooking show is far more than just a cooking show. 64I am not the kind of person who can survey the pantry, identify four or five random ingredients, and assemble a delicious meal. I need the protection and comfort of recipes. I require gentle instruction and guidance. On a good day, I can experiment with a recipe, try to mix things up, but I need a foundation of some kind. There is, I must admit, something very satisfying about making things from scratch, to know every dish in a meal was made by your own hands. As a lazy person, I’m a fan of premade things, but it was a lot of fun and deeply relaxing to make, for example, my own dough and my own cherry filling for a beautiful cherry pie. I felt productive and capable. What has fascinated me about cooking, and coming to it in the middle of my life, is how it’s actually a really good endeavor for a control freak. There are rules, and to succeed, at least in the early going, those rules need to be followed. I am good at following rules when I choose to.

• From Reading Biblical Literature: Genesis to Revelation (2016)

  Lecture 34—Paul on Gender Roles and Slavery 227 ‹ Paul uses language that is vivid and graceful, possibly quoting a song or poem. The poem traces an arc in which Christ moves from a high point to a low point and back up again. ● At the outset—the high point—Christ was in the form of God. In the downward movement, Christ emptied himself and let go of his status. He took on the form of a slave and was born as a human being. The low point occurred when he became obedient to the point of death, giving up his life through crucifixion. ● Only then does the upward movement take place again, as God elevates Jesus to glory through resurrection. ‹ Paul says that his own life had a similar pattern. In chapter 3, he notes that he once had high status as a Pharisee. Then, the downward movement began when Paul became a follower of Jesus. He let go of a sense of identity that was based on heritage and achievement—what he believed gave him status—to live out a relationship that he was convinced had true value. And Paul said that he, too, could move from death into life through resurrection, just as Jesus had done. This perspective enables him to move through the experience of loss in the conviction that it does not define his future. ‹ In chapter 3, Paul also gives us a glimpse into gender roles in the church at Philippi. He speaks of two women, Eudoia and Syntyche, who had striven beside him in the work of the gospel. This idea of a close partnership between women and men in Christian communities was typical for Paul. Philemon ‹ Philemon is a letter addressed to a slave owner of that name. Because Paul had apparently introduced Philemon to the Christian faith, there was a significant bond between the two. In prison, Paul met a slave named Onesimus, who belonged to Philemon and had also become a Christian. It’s possible that Onesimus had come to Paul for help concerning some problem with his master. ‹ The letter reframes the relationship between master and slave in the context of Christian community. Instead of saying that Philemon should set Onesimus free, Paul uses the paradigm of family relationships. Given that both master and

• From Reading Biblical Literature: Genesis to Revelation (2016)

  138 LECTURE 21 Esther, Daniel, and Life under Empire T he books of Esther and Daniel tell stories of life under the Persian Empire and the Hellenistic or Greek empires that followed. They show the schemes of the high and mighty being subverted and the vulnerable winning out in the end. At this time, the Jewish people were a small minority of these vast empires’ populations. Some of them had returned to Jerusalem, while others had stayed in Babylon and other regions ruled by the Persians. Wherever they were, they needed to make lives for themselves, with hope and encouragement, at a time when they were subject to the whims of those in power. The books of Esther and Daniel suggest how they did so. Esther as Queen ‹The Persian rulers saw themselves as dignified and authoritative, but the Persian king in the story of Esther is not too bright. He repeatedly has other people tell him what to do, and his decisions are often ludicrous. The king’s primary adviser is the wicked Haman. ●By way of contrast, a truly noble figure in the story is a Jewish man named Mordecai, who lives among the exiles under Persian rule. Mordecai has adopted his cousin Esther, who is an orphan, and raised her as his own daughter. He will foil the evil schemes of Haman and seek the welfare of his own people. ●Esther herself is beautiful, and she rises from the status of commoner to become queen of the empire. She shows wisdom and courage and uses her powerful position to save those who are threatened. Esther’s story shows that even under domination by a foreign power, ordinary people may do great things. ‹In the first scene, the king of Persia holds a great banquet and commands his wife, Vashti, to make an appearance to allow everyone to see her great beauty. But his wife refuses to come. The king’s advisers warn that Vashti’s refusal to

• From The Bible: A Biography (2007)

  This makes a truly spiritual reading of the Bible difficult. The achievements of the historical-critical method have been magnificent; it has given us unprecedented knowledge about the Bible but has not yet provided us with a spirituality. Fishbane is right: the horoz and pesher exegesis of the past are no longer an option. Nor are the elaborate allegories of Origen, who was able to find a gospel miqra in every word of the Hebrew scriptures. This type of figurative exegesis offends modern academic sensibilities, because it violates the integrity of the original text. But there was a generosity in allegoria that is often lacking in modern discourse. Philo and Origen did not dismiss the biblical texts with disdain but gave them the benefit of the doubt. Modern philosophers of language have argued that ‘the principle of charity’ is essential for any form of communication. If we truly want to understand the other, we have to assume that he or she is speaking the truth. Allegoria was an attempt to find truth in texts that seemed barbarous and opaque and then ‘translate’ them into a more congenial idiom.1 The logician N. L. Wilson has argued that a critic who confronts an alien body of texts must apply the ‘principle of charity’. He or she must seek interpretation, which ‘in light of what it knows of the facts, will maximize truth among the sentences of the corpus’.2 The linguist Donald Davidson maintains that ‘Making sense of the utterance and behaviour of others, even their most aberrant behaviour, requires you to find a great deal of truth and reason in them.’3 Even though their beliefs may be very different from your own, ‘you have to assume that the alien is very much the same as you are,’ otherwise you are in danger of denying their humanity. ‘Charity is forced upon us,’ Davidson concludes. ‘Whether we like it or not, if we want to understand others, we must regard them as right in most matters.’4 In the public arena, however, people are often presumed to be wrong before they are proved right, and this has inevitably affected our understanding of the Bible. The ‘principle of charity’ accords with the religious ideal of compassion, the duty to ‘feel with’ the other. Some of the greatest exegetes of the past – Hillel, Jesus, Paul, Johanan ben Zakkai, Akiba and Augustine – insisted that charity and loving kindness were essential to biblical interpretation. In our dangerously polarized world, a common hermeneutics among the religions should surely emphasize this tradition. Jews, Christians and Muslims must first examine the flaws of their own scriptures and only then listen, with humility, generosity and charity to the exegesis of others.

• From The Bible: A Biography (2007)

  The Antiochenes could not discard all typological exegesis, because it had been used so copiously by the evangelists, but they urged scholars to stick to the allegories in the New Testament and not to go in search of new ones. Theodore, bishop of Mopsuestia from 392 to 428, could see no value in the Song of Songs, for example; it was just a love poem and could only be read as a sacred text if entirely alien meanings were superimposed upon it. But in Alexandria, the Song was popular precisely because it offered such rich opportunities for allegoria. Versed in the same hermeneutic tradition as Philo, the Christians of Alexandria had developed an art of reading that they called spiritual interpretation – an attempt to reproduce the experience of the disciples on the road to Emmaus. Like the rabbis, they saw the Bible as an inexhaustible text, capable of yielding endlessly new meanings. They did not think that they were reading into scripture things that were not there but would have agreed with the rabbis that ‘everything is in it’. The most brilliant Alexandrian exegete was Origen (185–254), the most influential and prolific author of the day. 14 Besides his biblical commentaries, he produced the Hexapla (an edition of the Bible that placed the Hebrew text beside five different Greek translations), and two monumental works: Against Celsus, an apologia to refute a pagan philosopher’s critique of Christianity, and On First Principles, a comprehensive account of Christian doctrine. For Origen, Jesus was the beginning and end of all exegesis: Jesus reveals the law to us when he reveals to us the secrets of the Law. For we who are of the catholic Church, we do not spurn the law of Moses but accept it, so long as it is Jesus who reads it to us. Indeed, we can only possess a correct understanding of the Law when he reads it to us, and we are able to receive his sense and understanding. 15 For Origen, the Jewish scriptures were a midrash on the New Testament, which had itself been a commentary on the Tanakh. Without allegory, the Bible made no sense at all. How could you explain literally Christ’s command: ‘If your right eye should cause you to sin, tear it out and throw it away’? 16 How could a Christian accept the savage command that uncircumcised boys be killed? 17 What possible relevance to Christians were the lengthy instructions for the building of the tabernacle? 18 Did the biblical writer really mean that God ‘walked’ in the Garden of Eden? 19 Or insist that Christ’s disciples should never wear shoes? 20 If you interpreted it literally it was ‘a very difficult, not to say impossible task’ to revere the Bible as a holy book. 21 Reading scripture was far from easy – a fact that Origen emphasized again and again.

• From The Bible: A Biography (2007)

  Calvin never tired of pointing out that in the Bible God condescended to our limitations. The Word was conditioned by the historical circumstances in which it was uttered, so the less edifying stories of the Bible must be seen in context, as a phase in an ongoing process. There was no need to explain them away allegorically. The creation story in Genesis was an example of this divine balbative (‘baby talk’), which adapted immensely complex processses to the mentality of uneducated people.27 It was not surprising that the Genesis story differed from the new theories of learned philosophers. Calvin had great respect for modern science. It should not be condemned simply ‘because some frantic persons are wont boldly to reject whatever is unknown to them. For astronomy is not only pleasant but also very useful to be known: it cannot be denied that this art unfolds the admirable wisdom of God.’28 It was absurd to expect scripture to teach scientific fact; anybody who wanted to learn about astronomy should look elsewhere. The natural world was God’s first revelation, and Christians should regard the new geographical, biological and physical sciences as religious activities.29 The great scientists shared this view. Nicolaus Copernicus (1473–1543) regarded science as ‘more divine than human’.30 His heliocentric hypothesis was so radical that few people could take it in: instead of being located in the centre of the universe, the earth and the other planets were rotating around the sun; the world appeared to be stable, but was in fact in rapid motion. Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) tested the Copernican theory empirically by observing the planets through his telescope. He was silenced by the Inquisition and forced to recant, but his somewhat aggressive and provocative temperament had also played a part in his condemnation. At first, Catholics and Protestants did not automatically reject the new science. The Pope approved of Copernicus’s theory when he first presented it in the Vatican and the early Calvinists and Jesuits were both keen scientists. But some were disturbed by the new theories. How could you reconcile Copernicus’s theory with a literal reading of Genesis? If, as Galileo suggested, there was life on the moon, how had these people descended from Adam? How could the revolutions of the earth be squared with Christ’s ascension to heaven? Scripture said that the heavens and the earth had been created for man’s benefit, but how could this be so if the earth was just another planet revolving round an undistinguished star?31 The old allegorical exegesis would have made it much easier for Christians to cope with their changing world.32 But the increasing emphasis on the literal meaning of scripture was the product of early modernity: the scientific bias of early modern thought required people to see truth as conforming to the laws of the external world. It would not be long before some Christians would conclude that unless a book was historically or scientifically demonstrable it could not be true at all. *

• From The Bible: A Biography (2007)

  We do not know very much about the Yavneh period, however.1 The coalition of scholars was led by the Pharisees, initially by R. Johanan and his two gifted pupils, R. Eliezer and R. Joshua, and later by R. Akiba. Long before the tragedy of 70, the Pharisees had encouraged the laity to live as though they were serving in the temple, so that each hearth became an altar, each householder a priest. Yet the Pharisees had continued to worship in the real temple as well and never imagined that Jews would one day have to manage without it. Even during their years at Yavneh, they seem to have believed that Jews would be able to build a new temple, but their ideology was well suited to the post–70 world because they had, as it were, constructed their daily lives around a virtual temple which became the focus of their spirituality. Now R. Johanan and his successors would begin to build this imaginary shrine in more detail. The first task of the rabbis at Yavneh was to collect and preserve all the available memories, practices and rituals of traditional religion, so that when the temple was rebuilt the cult could be resumed. Other Jews might plan new rebellions against the Roman empire; Christians could insist that Jesus had replaced the temple; but together with the scribes and priests who had joined them at Yavneh, the Pharisees would make a heroic effort to keep every single detail of the lost shrine in their minds, at the same time as they revised the Torah to meet the needs of their drastically altered world. It would take the Pharisees many years to become the undisputed leaders of the new Judaism. But by the late 80s and 90s, as we have seen, some of the Christians had begun to feel seriously threatened by Yavneh, whose vision seemed more compelling and authentic to many Jews than the gospel. Yet in fact the Pharisaic enterprise had much in common with early Christian churches. The Pharisees would also search the scriptures, invent another form of exegesis, and compose new sacred texts – even though they would never claim that these formed a ‘New Testament’.