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 Synanon Kid: Book One: A Memoir of Growing Up in the Synanon Cult

  While most of the kids who suffered from this problem managed to wake up now and then with dry sheets, Santiago never had until that morning. Because of that he’d become the scapegoat for the other bedwetters’ pent-up humiliation. Santiago had all the strength of a limp noodle and never bothered to defend himself, though he was often physically attacked by bigger boys who grabbed his thin arms and twisted them around his back. His strategy: wait it out. Throughout breakfast and then in the classroom that morning, adults and children continuously came up to Santiago to congratulate him. The boys pumped his hand and said, “Way to go. Good job!” in loud voices. Our first grade teacher Ginny didn’t get caught up in all the hoopla of fussing over poor Santiago. Later that afternoon, when school let out and our class set off for physical education, she pulled him aside, waving the rest of us away. I slowed and looked over my shoulder, watching her kneel down and offer him a stick of gum while she rubbed his back. My respect for her grew exponentially in that moment, and so when some days later Ginny made an announcement to our class, I was conflicted. “Everyone,” she said, “I have some really good news.” Eyes shining, she clapped her hands to get our attention. “Something really wonderful has happened for me. I will be going on a date with Chuck, so I won’t be here next week. When I get back, I’ll tell you all about it.” I stared at her, mystified. Chuck was an old man. In the pictures I’d seen of him, he looked like he could pass for Ginny’s grandfather. It didn’t seem right. He belonged with the dead lady Betty everyone had been crying over, not my young, pretty teacher. A girl raised her hand. “Why are you going on a date with Chuck?” Ginny glanced around the room at our blank expressions. Her smile seemed to tuck itself into the corners of her mouth, disappearing. “Well, I was chosen. It’s a great honor.” This was a lie, like the lie that we were beautiful with bald heads. Her words fell like soap bubbles, shiny, bobbing and bursting into nothing. Ginny seemed as if she might say something else. Instead, she grabbed a piece of chalk and wrote the date on the board. She never returned to the school to tell us how the date went. Weeks later, she married the old man. I never saw Ginny again except in pictures. Through the years, her figure became husky and thick. At times when I saw the scowling, fleshy-faced woman she’d become, aged far beyond her years and grossly out of shape, sitting on a motorcycle and wearing dark sunglasses, or when I heard her on the Wire denigrating one person, threatening another, I’d forget that she was the same kind, youthful person who’d been adored at the school where she’d once taught.

• From Synanon Kid: Book One: A Memoir of Growing Up in the Synanon Cult

  herself) that when she decided to take a chance on running, she hoped to find the family that hid runaways, but like many of her schemes and plans, this one fell apart for reasons that were entirely preventable. After the lights were out and her roommates asleep, she’d set about packing a small bag with a change of clothes and food she had hidden. Then for some inexplicable reason she went into her closet, ate her packed sandwich and fell asleep. When it was discovered during the nightly head count that her bed was empty, the demonstrator on duty checked the bathroom. No Sara. Other rooms were inspected. Maybe she had climbed into bed with another girl and fallen asleep. It soon became apparent that Sara was missing. The girls in her room were the first shaken awake and interrogated as to where she had gone. When they appeared only disoriented, more kids were awakened. Panicked, the demonstrator left the building to round up other adults to search. It was during all this mayhem that one of Sara’s roommates found her sleeping soundly in the closet. As we kids exited the Shed on the night of her botched escape and public humiliation, three of her friends tore away from the pack, each grabbing a part of her body and encircling her in a soothing hug, whispering words of comfort. The rest of us fell back, letting them walk ahead, Sara clinging to the girls’ maternal warmth. For the first time I truly felt I was in some sort of prison, leading me to wonder again as I had countless times in the past how long I’d be at Synanon. I thought about the family who helped Synanon runaways, the family Sara had planned to find. I imagined their house, a small cottage somewhere in the middle of the hills. Watching Sara and the girls who embraced her gain more distance from the rest of us, I saw my stepsister in a new light. Regardless of her failure, she had had the courage to try to escape.

• From A Greek-English Lexicon (Liddell-Scott) (1957)

  πολυήρᾶτος, ov, (épaw) much-loved, very lovely, “γάμος Od. 15. 126; εὐνή Hes. Th. 404; εἶδος Ib. οοϑ ; ὕδωρ Id. Op. 739; ἥβη h. Hom. Ven. 226; of places, Θήβη Od. 11. 275; Διβύη Orac. ap. Hdt. 4.159; γᾶ Κέκροπος Ar. Nub. 301. ΘΠ ΟΝ persons, Hes. Fr. 12 10 ῬΙΠ 2: 767 E. πολύηρος, ov, (*épa) rich in land, Hesych.: v. Lob. Pathol. 257. πολυήσῦὕχος, ov, very quiet, Schol. Aesch. Pr. 139. II. with many out- II. πολυδόνητος ---- πολύκαπνος. πολυηχής, ἔς, (ἦχος) many-toned, of the nightingale’s voice, Od. 19. 521: much or loud sounding, αἰγιαλός Il. 4. 422. πολυήχητος, Dor. modvax—, ov, loud-sounding, Eur. Alc. 918. πολυηχία, ἡ, multiplicity of sound, Dem. Phal. 73. πολύηχος, ον, --πολυηχής, Philo 1. 372, etc.: metaph., βίος τραχώδης καὶ π. noisy, Epict. ap. Stob. t.1. 46. Adv. -χως, Ael. N. A. 12. 28. πολῦύθάητος [ἃ], ov, poét. for πολυθέατος, Anth. P. append. 173. πολύθάλμιος, ov, much-nourishing, Orph. H. 67. 1; cf. ζωθάλμιος, φυτάλμιος. πολῦυθαμβής, és, much frighted or astonied, Nonn. D. 14. 418, etc. πολυθαρσίκ, és, much-confident, μένος 1]. 17.156, Od. 13. 387. πολῦθαύμαστος, ov, much-admired, Theod. Stud., Suid. πολύὔθεάμων [8], ov, having seen much, c. gen., Plat. Phaedr. 251 A. πολύθέατος, ον, much-seen, conspicuous, Hesych. πολῦύθεΐα, ἡ, polytheism, Or. Sib. 2 in titulo, Eccl. πολύθεος, ov, of or belonging to many gods, ἕδρα Aesch. Supp. 424; ἐκκλησία Luc. Jup. Trag. 14 :—6déa π. polytheism, cited from Philo ; ἡ π. TOV “EAANVay πλάνη Io. Damasc.; etc. Adv. -ws, Greg. Naz. πολύθεότης, ητος, 7, polytheism, Eccl. πολῦὔθερής, és, (θέρω) feeding many, Schol. Soph, Tr. 191. πολύθερμος, ov, very warm or hot, Plut. Alex. 4, Galen. πολύθεστος, ov, much-desired, Call. Dem. 48; cf. ἀπόθεστος. ToAVOnpta, 7, great plenty of game, Poll. 5. 12. πολύθηρος, ov, with much game, full of wild beasts, Eur. Hipp. 145, Phoen. 802. Il. taking many fish, Heliod. 5. 18. πολυθλϊβής, és, much-pressed, Nonn. D. 2. 494 :—so πολύθλϊβος, ov, Achmes Onir. 77; πολύθλιπτος, ov, Theod. Stud. πολύθουρος, ov, leaping much: very lustful, Opp. C. 3. 516. πολύθραυστος, ov, much-broken, E. M. 1.53. πολυθρέμμᾶτος, ov, rich in cattle, Joseph. A. J. 6. 13, 6. πολυθρέμμων, ov, feeding many, epith. of the Nile, Aesch. Pers. 33; Νύμφαι Orph. H. 50. 12: cf. βιοθρέμμων, πελειοθρέμμων. πολύθρεπτος, ov, much-nourished, ἄνθη 7. the many flowers that grow, Orph. H. 42.6. ΤΙ. act. much-nourishing, τιθήνη Christod. Ecphr. 376 :—fem. πολυθρέπτειρα, Manass. Chron. 30, etc, πολυθρήνητος, ov, lamentable, γενεά Anth. P. 7.334, 15. πολύθρηνος, ov, much-wailing, αἰών Aesch. Ag. 714; ὕμνος Ib. 711; m. ᾿Αλκυών Luc. Alc. 1; π. ὑάκινθος Nic. Th. 902. πολύθριξ, τρῖχος, 6, 4, with much hair, Anth. P. 6. 276, Geop. ΤΠ 2 λγορονας, ον, (θρόνον) -- πολυφάρμακος, Nic. Th. 875: also πολυ- θρόνιος, ov, Androm. ap. Galen. 13. 875. πολύθροος, ov, contr. -Opous, οὐν, with much noise, clamorous, μάται Aesch. Supp. 820; κυκλίων στίχος Anth. P. append. 10g.

• From A Greek-English Lexicon (Liddell-Scott) (1957)

  ὑπερθᾶλασσίδιος, ov, above the coast-land, χῶροι ὑπ., opp. to τὰ πα- ραθαλάσσιος, Hdt. 4. 199 :—also ὑπερθάλασσος, ov, Alciphro 2. 4, 6. ὑπερθαυμάζω, Ion. - θωμάζω : fut. -άσομαι Luc. pro Imagg. 18 :—to wonder exceedingly, Hdt. 3. 3, Luc. V. H. 1. 34; ὑπ. ὅτι... Id. Amor. 52. II. c. acc. to wonder greatly at, admire greatly, Ath. 523 D, Luc. Zeux. 3. ὑπερθαύμαστος, ov, most admirable, Anth. P. 15. 16. ὑπερθειάζω, to deify or extol beyond measure, Byz. ὑπέρθειος, ov, more than divine, Eccl. ὑπέρθεμα, τό, an over-bid, so as to raise the price :—for this word and its derivs., ὑπερθεμᾶἄτίζω, to overbid; --θεματισμός, 6, an overbidding ; πθεματιστής, 6, one who overbids ;—v. Ducange. Ὑπερθεμιστοκλῆς, 6, a more than Themistocles, A. B. 67, no doubt from a Comic poet: so Ὑπερπερικλῆς, Ὑπερσωκράτης, etc. ὑπέρθεος, ov, more than God, Menand. Monost. 243 (Meineke ὑπὲρ θεούς) :—hence ὑπερθεότης, 7, more than divinity, Dion. Ar. ὕπερθεν, and metri grat. ὕπερθε (ὕπερθ᾽ 1]. 5. 503, Aesch. Theb. 228) : Aecol. ὕπερθα, Apoll. de Adv. 606: Adv.: (ὑπέρ) :—from above or (more often) merely above, τάφρος καὶ τεῖχος ὑπ. Il. 12. 4, etc.: of the body, above, in the upper parts, ὑπ. pokds ἔην κεφαλὴν 2. 218, cf. 5. 122; ἔνερθε πόδες καὶ χεῖρες ὑπ. 13. 75; τὰ ματρόθεν μὲν κάτω, τὰ δ᾽ br. πατρός Pind. P. 2. 88 ;—rare in Prose, Xen. An. I. 4, 4, Mem. I. 4, 11; τὸ ὑπ. [τῆς γῆς] Arist. Mund. 2, 2. 2. from heaven above, i.e. from the gods, Il. 7. iol, Od. 24. 344, h. Cer. 13. 3. of Degree, τότε μὲν ἄπορα, τότε δ᾽ ὑπ. sometimes yet more, Soph. O. Ὁ. 1745. II. c. gen. above, over, Pind. P. “ἢ 342, Aesch. Ag. 232, etc.; om. γίγνεσθαί τινος to get the better of .., Eur. Bacch. 904; so also, ὕπερθεν εἶναι ἢ .., to be above or beyond, i.e. worse than.., Id. Med. 650. ὑπερθερᾶἄπεύω, fo cherish or court exceedingly, Poll. 4.9, Heliod. τ. 9. ὑπερθερμαίνω, to warm or heat excessively, Hipp. 446. 36., 447. 4, Plut., etc. :—Pass., Arist. Probl. 1. 12, 2. ὑπερθερμᾶσία, ἡ, immoderate warming, heating, Hipp. 462. 24, 46. ὑπέρθερμος, 7, ov, over-warm, hot, Geop. 6. 8, 1. ὑπερθέσιμος (sc. νηστείαν), 7, a fast continued over the day, i. «. con- tinued for several days, Lat. superpositio, Eccl. ὑπέρθεσις, ews, 4, a passing over, or rather, like ὑπέρβασις ΤΙ, a pass, Strab. 751. ΤΙ, a transposition, of words or propositions, Wales Be ὑπερήμισυς ---- ὑπερισχύω.

• From A Greek-English Lexicon (Liddell-Scott) (1957)

  φέρτατος, ἡ, ov, bravest, best, πολὺ φ. 1]. 1. 581, etc.; μέγα φ. τό. 21, etc.; ο. dat. modi, χερσίν τε βίῃφί τε φέρτατοι ἦσαν Od. 12. 246; περὶ δ᾽ ἔγχει ᾿Αχαιῶν φέρτατός ἐσσι Il. 7. 289; φ. ὄλβῳ Pind. N. το. 24 :—of things, κακῶν φέρτατον the best, i. e. least bad, of two evils, Il. 17. 1053; . λόγοι best, Pind. P. 5. 63; ὅ τι φέρτατον ἀνδρὶ τυχεῖν Id. O. 7. 49 :—so also, 2. in form φέριστος, ἄνδρα φέριστον Il. g. 110; but mostly in voc. φέριστε, 6. 123., 15. 247, etc.; φέριστοι 23. 409 ;—so in Att., φέριστε Καδμείων ἄναξ Aesch. ὙΠΕΡ. 39; ὦ φ. δεσποτῶν Soph. Ο. T. 1149; εἶεν, ὦ φ. Plat. Phaedr. 238 Ὁ ; also φέρ- τιστος, Pind. Fr. 02. II. Comp., φέρτερος, a, ov, braver, better, Hom.; πολὺ φ. 1]. 4. 56, etc. ; c. dat. modi, φ. Bin καὶ χερσί 3. 431, cf. Od. 6. 6; οὐκ ὀλίγον φ. ἔγχει Il. 19. 2173 ©. inf, θεοὶ... φέρτεροί εἰσι νοῆσαι Od. 5.170; φ. πατρὸς γόνος Pind. I. 8 (7). 705 παῖδα p. πατρός Aesch. Pr. 768 :—of things, ἀγών, τελευτά Pind. O. 1. 12, P. 1. 68 :---πολὺ φέρτερόν ἐστιν ’tis much better, Il. 1. 169, etc. ; ο. inf., Od. 12. 109., 21. 154 :—eis τὸ φ. τίθει TO μέλλον Eur. Hel. 346 :— τέττιγος φέρτερον ἄδεις, as Ady., Theocr. 1. 148. (The posit. may be found in προ-φερής : and perh. the Root is φέρ-εσθαι, so that the orig. sense would be quick in action, active, vigorous.) φερτός, 7, dv, verb. Adj. endurable, οὐ τλατᾶς od φερτᾶς Eur. Hec. 159: cf. ἄφερτος. φέρτρον, contr. for φέρετρον, 1]. 18. 236. φέρω, a Root only used in pres. and impf. ; Hom. has several irreg. forms, 2 pl. imper. φέρτε Il. 9. 1713 3 sing. subj. φέρῃσι, 18. 308, Od. 5. 164., 10. 507., 19. 111, (cf. 2 sing. φέρῃσθα Call. Dian. 144): inf. φερέμεν 1]. 9. 411, al.:—impf. φέρον, lon. φέρεσκε, φέρεσκον, Od. 9. 429., 10. 108 :—hence also come the rare verb. Adj. φερτός (cf. ἄφερ- τος, σύμφερτοΞς), and the collat. form φορέω. II. from ΨΟΙ come fut. οἴσω, Dor. οἰσῶ Theocr., 1 pl. οἰσεῦμες Id. 15. 133 :—Ep. imper. οἷσε, of a form between aor. I and 2, Od. 22. 106, 481 (also in 4. 46 :—as Subst. the house-carrier, i. e. snail, Lat. domiporta (Posta 5 Ar. Ach. 1099, 1101, 1122, Ran. 482), οἰσέτω 1]. 19. 173, Od. 8. 255 ; 1662

• From The Tides of Lust (1973)

  “I stayed with them a month. They worked hard at their day labors. At dawn the night’s pleasure object was reconcealed in the earth. But during funerals, leaning on their spades, out of earshot of the mourners, they would joke and nudge one another like two rowdies stealing glimpses through the door of a ladies’ gymnasium. They were abominably paid. Three times, that hard month, with much joking, Guido, after he and Pietro had satisfied themselves, took the cleaver from the mantle and retained part of a thigh for roasting. I ate with them. “I passed my days in town. The reason why I did not stay with them more than a month? I made the acquaintance of Catherine. Across the street (she sat, o continental banality, in a cafe), from her dress and carriage, I assumed her ten years or more my senior, or I don’t believe I would have approached her (I merely went to ask some point of information or direction). But she turned, I stayed to talk; and she was twenty-five. She knew much more of the strange world I had chosen for myself than I. (And now, when near another quarter century has passed, and my hair is white, one might easily think she has not so aged from then.) We met with an exchange of information, which is the only way such meetings could be effected in Europe of that day. It developed into a confident relationship over several afternoons’ pastry and demitasse. On our third meeting she invited me to her home. And I learned she was Catherine, Duchessa di Monsalvaggio. The fact that I was a bright, young American, not a year out of school, and therefore still within the European status of student, helped excuse our friendship in the eyes of il Duce, a wealthy businessman, and his senile and provincial parents. He had brought the title to the marriage; she, from Salt Lake City, the money. Oh yes, the duke had as well brought her a stepson, within days of Pietro’s age. Certainly more prepossessing than Pietro, and closer to me in education, he still struck me as insufferably dull. And against his brilliant and witty step-mother, he made a poor showing. But he was occupied with his tutor most of the week.

• From The Tides of Lust (1973)

  He laughed, and said, “I am Faustus, the magician.” He let me work for him. And, he was a magician. In his house he had books and magazines with pictures of all over the world. He had a microscope he would let me look in as a reward when I finished my work. He had lenses, rolls of graph paper, compass and inking pens, and a drawing board that tilted when you fixed the nut. I made him tell me what it all was. After I cleaned for him and ran his errands for a year, he taught me how to use some of them. He made me learn English. The other engineers who came to talk with him all spoke English. He had a chart of the elements and a map of the sky he said was almost useless to us because it was a map of the northern sky and we were just under the Tropic of Capricorn. He made me learn the names of all the countries of Europe. Many in Asia. He had been in lots of them. He read me stories in Spanish and English. Once I tried to make him teach me German. Herr Bildungs liked teaching, and every time I wanted to learn, he would leave what he was doing and go on with me for hours—I lost interest before he did. But this time he only spent two evenings to help me with the sounds you have to make like a rasp on the back of your tongue. I had to coax and pull every word from him. I gave up. There were too many other things he liked to talk about, the three chambered hearts of birds, the evolution between the bird and the lizard. Later, when I took my boat to the east and came to ports where German is still the trade tongue, I had to try all over again. It is still my least good language. He said once, walking from his house in the village to the sea, “Do you want to know the most valuable piece of information there is? Always remember the objects you are working with. When you make a bridge, remember you are putting steel on stone and dirt. When you build a raft, remember you are floating wood in water. Someday you will write poems to a little girl: marks with ink on paper. When you want to turn them into songs and sing them, remember you are squeezing wet bags of air over the cartilages in your throat. When you are making love, you are moving flesh against flesh. That is the basis of all magic. It is very simple and very complicated.” Later he asked me, “Do you know any more magicians besides me?” “Two,” I said. He was surprised. I told him about the man and woman in the doorway.

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

  He went back for inspiration to the only possible source, to Homer—the “bible,” if ever there was one, of Greco-Roman paganism. He fused together Homer’s two Greek epics—the Iliad , about waging war abroad, and the Odyssey , about coming home again—into his own Latin Aeneid . Julius Caesar and Gaius Octavius were celebrated as heirs to an ancient and even divine ancestry. For Aeneas—son of a human father, Anchises, and a divine mother, Aphrodite—had saved both his father and his own son from the embers of Troy’s destruction and brought that son, Julus, to Italy as sire of the Julian family. In the words of the Aeneid ’s first book: The Trojan Caesar comes, to circumscribe Empire with Ocean, fame with heaven’s stars . Julius his name, from Julus handed down : All tranquil shall you take him heavenward In time, laden with plunder of the East , And he with you shall be invoked in prayer … And grim with iron frames, the gates of War Will then be shut . Even where all the dates and places were exactly known, mythology alone was adequate for a radically new vision of Roman society. But whether we term it mythology, ideology, theology, or propaganda, at its root was the historical fact that Octavius had ended twenty years of civil strife by emerging as the one and only victor. He was now Augustus, a title poised with marvelous ambiguity between humanity and divinity. He was also Princeps, a title poised with equal ambiguity between kingship and citizenship. Call him first among equals, with all the equals dead. And, lest we sneer too readily at this mixture of history and mythology, remember that we are always better at separating such mixtures in other lives, in different societies, and in alien cultures. Our own mixture we too seldom see at all. In any case, the Roman Senate deified Augustus on 17 September 14 C.E ., a scant month after his death on 19 August. He was now divine not only by ancestry or adoption but in his own right as well because of all he had done to unify Roman power internally and to consolidate Roman power externally. Which returns the discussion to Jesus. The Future of the Past Of the four gospels inside the New Testament only Matthew and Luke give any account of Jesus’ birth or early years. And thereafter they, like Mark and John, proceed immediately to his adult life, the point where Mark and John begin their own narratives. It is, however, the presence rather than the absence of an infancy story that requires explanation. Before his death, for example, Augustus had left for safekeeping with the Vestal Virgins a list of his accomplishments, which were to be inscribed on bronze tablets before his mausoleum in Rome.

• From A Greek-English Lexicon (Liddell-Scott) (1957)

  ὑὕμνέω, Ep. ὑμνείω, Hes. Op. 2; Dor. 3 pl. ὑμνεῦσι h. Hom. Ap. 190; fem. part. ὑμνεῦσα Hes. Th. 11; Dor. imperat. ὕμνη Ar. Lys. 1321 ; Lacon. 1 pl. subj. ὑμνίωμες Ib. 1305: (ὕμνοΞ): I. with acc. of person or thing sung of, to sing, laud, sing of, tell of, Lat. canere, c. acc., first in Hes. Th. 11, 33, then often in the Homeric Hymns, Pind., and Trag.:—also in Prose, to mention in a hymn, celebrate, commemo- rate, Ὦπιν Hdt. 4. 35; τὰς τούτων ἀρετάς Lys. 190. 29; Παλαμήδη Xen. Mem. 4. 2, 23, etc.; of the hymn itself, οὔτε... μέ τις ὕμνος ὕμ- ynoev Soph. Ant. 816 ;—c. dupl. acc., ἃ τὴν πόλιν ὕμνησα the points wherein I praised our city, Thuc. 2. 42:—Pass. to be sung of, ’Ap- γεῖοι.. τὰ πολλὰ πάντα ὑμνέαται (lon. for -νται) are everywhere praised, Hdt. 5.67; ὑμνηθήσεται πόλις Eur. Ion 1590; ὑμνοῦμενος famous, Xen. Hell. 7. 1, 38; αἱ ὑμνοῦμεναι φιλίαι Arist. Eth. N. το. 10, 6 :---ὑμνεῖτο δ᾽ αἰσχρῶς foul songs were sung, Com. Anon. 305 (v. Meineke). 2. in Poets sometimes joined with words that imply a bad sense, ἐν κατηρεφεῖ στέγῃ .. ὑμνήσεις καικά wilt sing of thy ills in melancholy strain, Soph. El. 382; buy. τινα θρήνοις Eur. Rhes. 976 ; τὰν ἐμὰν ὑμνεῦσαι (Ion. for --οὔὐσαι) ἀπιστοσύναν ever singing of my want of faith, Id. Med. 423; so, ὑμνοῦσι τὸ γῆρας, ὅσων κακῶν αἴτιον [ἐστι Plat. Rep. 329 B:—Pass., ᾿Ἐτεοκλέης ἂν... ὑμνοῖτο .. φροιμίοις πολυρ- ρόθοις Aesch. Theb. 7, cf. Ruhnk. Tim. 3. c. acc. cogn. Zo sing, ὕμνον, παιᾶνα Aesch. Ag. 1191, 1474, Eur. H. F. 688. II. to tell over and over again, to repeat, recite, rehearse, Lat. decantare, Plat. Prot. 317 A, Rep. 549 E, 364 A, Theaet. 174 E, etc.; τὸν νόμον ὑμνεῖν to recite the form of the law (as in Lat., carmen for a form of words, Liv. τ. 26, etc.), Id. Legg. 870 E ;—Pass., 6 δ᾽ εἶπε πρός με Bal’, ἀεὶ δ᾽ ὑμνούμενα (Schol. τὰ πολυθρύλητα), Soph. Aj. 292. III. intr. to sing, chant, ws ποιηταὶ ὑμνήκασι περὶ αὐτῶν Thuc. 1. 21; ὑμνῶν οὔποτ᾽ ἔληγεν Xen. Ages. ΤΙ, 2. 2. in a pass. sense, φῆμαι .. ὑμ- νήσουσι περὶ τὰ ὦτα will ring in their ears, Plat. Rep. 463 Ὁ. [In Att. sometimes ὕ, Eur. Bacch. 71, v. Pors. Med. 441, and cf. ὑμνῳδέω, evupvos. | ὑμν-ἤγορος, ov, praising in hymns, Epiphan.: hence ὑμνηγορέω, Theod, Prodr.; ὑμνηγορία, ἡ, Epiphan. ὑμνηπολέω, ὑμνηπόλος, v. sub ὕμνοπ--, Suid. ὑμνήσιος, ον, -- ὑμνητός, ΑΕ]. N. A. 12. 5. ὕμνησις, ews, 7, a singing, lauding, praising, Diod. 4. 7, Eccl. ὑμνητέον, verb. Adj. one must praise, Plat. Epin. 983 E, Luc. ὑμνητήρ, ῆρος, ὃ, -- ὑμνητής, Opp. H. 3.7, Anth. P. 7.17; fem., ὑμνή- τειρα γλῶσσα Anth. P. 8. 35. ὑμνητήριος, ον, -- ὑμνητικός, Byz. ὑμνητής, οὔ, 6, one who sings of or praises, τυραννίδος Plat. Rep. 568 B. ὑμνητικός, 7, όν, laudatory, ἣ ποιητική Strab. 468.

• From Healing Our Broken Humanity: Practices for Revitalizing the Church and Renewing the World (2018)

  Grace Ji-Sun Kim and Graham Hill show us practical, life-giving ways that the church can help God’s will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” Jacqui Lewis, senior minister at Middle Collegiate Church “Healing Our Broken Humanity isn’t so much a banquet as it is a big tasting plate, introducing us to a rich set of practices, rooted in the missional, contemplative, and progressive traditions of the church. Kim and Hill have packed their short book with such a vast array of ideas, resources, and stories, the reader’s appetite to learn more and put it all into practice is thoroughly piqued—a wonderful introduction to the field.” Michael Frost, author of To Alter Your World and Surprise the World! “There are many books dealing with diversity and reconciliation. Of all those books, including my own, I believe Healing Our Broken Humanity is the most relevant, hands-on, how-to manual on the subject you will encounter! Grace and Graham draw you into practical application from the earliest pages and they never let go. Regardless of whether you have been seeking ways to do the gospel in the midst of present brokenness or have become somewhat jaded to the theorizing of it, Healing Our Broken Humanity will not disappoint. Written by two powerfully seasoned and wise mentors, they have found the missing link on this subject that everyone and every church should read. Healing Our Broken Humanity lives up to its subtitle, Practices for Revitalizing the Church and Renewing the World , and what could be better than that?” Randy S. Woodley, author of Shalom and the Community of Creation: An Indigenous Vision “In these pages two voices that I respect harmonize beautifully to sing of what the church can be. Part road map for forming a community in the healing purposes of God, part primer on intersectional theology, part Bible study on how justice is at the center of following Jesus, this book is wholly about the practices that make us a people who live together more like Jesus (and less like jerks).” Jarrod McKenna, cofounder of the #LoveMakesAWay movement and #FirstHomeProject for refugees “Kim and Hill have marvelously provided what the church needs today: a road map for ways Christians can contribute to the common good and accordingly aid in the transformation of the world. Healing Our Broken Humanity is biblically grounded, sensitive to context, and eminently practical, as each chapter ends with concrete suggestions for ‘practices, challenges, and activities for small groups’ to move all those who encounter their book to immediate action. I heartily commend this book to all justice-seeking Christians.” Grace Yia-Hei Kao, associate professor of ethics at Claremont School of Theology, codirector at Center for Sexuality, Gender, and Religion “The reality of a broken humanity is fundamental to a Christian understanding of the world. The temptation would be to simply offer a diagnostic that is a litany of lament over a fallen world.

• From Healing Our Broken Humanity: Practices for Revitalizing the Church and Renewing the World (2018)

  In this text, Kim and Hill not only offer an appropriate analysis, but also a Christian justice ethic that engages a theological depth and breadth. They also offer practical, real-life ways to put these principles into practice. For those who seek to revitalize and renew an active Christian faith, this book offers not a simple how-to guide, but a genuine, deep, significant, practical resource for the church.” Soong-Chan Rah, professor of church growth and evangelism at North Park Theological Seminary, author of Many Colors and The Next Evangelicalism “This book is a clarion call for all those who dream of a church that is whole, holy, and humble, a church that acknowledges its own failings and seeks justice, and a church that seeks to join those who hope for a better humanity. It will inspire those who eschew the pursuit of power so they may better amplify the voices of the powerless and those who believe in community. This is a superb, clear-eyed call for all of those who dream of a better church and world, to begin to work toward it, and draw strength from the transformative power of love. There can be no greater and more urgent work than this.” Julia Baird, presenter on the Drum, columnist for the Sydney Morning Herald and the International New York Times “In Healing Our Broken Humanity , two authentic voices from two continents offer the Christian church practical reflections to renew our mission, lives, and world. This work touches on critical contemporary issues facing our communities, and offers individual and communal responses that make a difference.” Joel Edwards, advocacy director for Christian Solidarity Worldwide, London “In this outstanding work—thought provoking, theologically sound, wonderfully practical, and comprehensive in scope—Grace Ji-Sun Kim and Graham Hill effectively synthesize and ultimately advance key tenets of varying mindsets and movements within the church today, all in pursuit of a common goal: disruptive innovation in the local church whereby it is repurposed and positioned to advance a credible witness of God’s love for all people in an increasingly diverse, globally connected, painfully polarized, and cynical society. Healing Our Broken Humanity is a thorough guide and inclusive playbook for pastors and parishioners alike seeking to engage the complexities of race, class, culture, gender, politics, and more, in a biblically accurate and informed way, and in so doing recognize that such things as lament, corporate repentance, reconciliation, and justice are not peripheral but intrinsic to the gospel.” Mark DeYmaz, directional leader of Mosaic Church of Central Arkansas, president of Mosaix Global Network “This marvelous book is a practical and relevant resource that will help the church work with God to build renewed communities based on the new humanity in Christ. It will empower Christians to deal with the problem of racism and all forms of injustice. This book emphasizes the importance of corporate expressions of pain, grief, repentance, and lament.

• From Healing Our Broken Humanity: Practices for Revitalizing the Church and Renewing the World (2018)

  In front of the cave is a large stone that says, “We refuse to be enemies.” It was a moving experience for me. Nassar told me a story about reconciliation. A few years ago, she unexpectedly chanced on a woman jogging past her farm. The woman was an Israeli settler we’ll call Maya. Maya said to Amal, “What are you doing out here, in the middle of nowhere?” Amal replied, “This is my family farm. We’ve lived here for more than one hundred years.” Incredulous, Maya replied, “That’s not true. No one lives here. This is empty land. Where are the houses and roads?” “Our homes are built among the caves,” replied Amal, “and all these vineyards you see are ours.” Over the next twelve months, Amal and Maya regularly met each other during Maya’s morning runs. Eventually Maya agreed to come to Amal’s home for lunch. Her husband strenuously objected but finally relented. Soon Amal and Maya became friends. One day, Maya said to Amal, “It’s my son’s birthday soon, and I’d like to hold the birthday party on your farm, with your family.” Her Israeli settler husband wasn’t happy about holding this party with a Palestinian Christian family on a Palestinian farm, but he eventually agreed. Over time, the families became close. Through friendship, patience, and understanding, they had moved from enemies to friends. This is just one example of the reconciling ministry that Nassar and her family are involved in. It’s a slow and relational process. Nassar and her family cultivate positive, proactive, and peacemaking approaches to life and conflict. They are peacemakers in a region filled with conflict and injustice. For decades they’ve opened their home and farm to Palestinians, Israelis, and people from all over the world—inviting them to embrace the message of love and reconciliation. Students, settlers, rabbis, imams, pastors, peace activists, and a host of international guests have spent time at this farm discussing pathways to nonviolence, forgiveness, and peace. Nassar and her family choose to respond to violence in positive ways. They meet violence with love, peace, forgiveness, and embrace. Committed to breaking the cycle of violence, they build bridges, not walls. They bring people together. They know that reconciliation only happens as we address issues of justice and peace. Their lives show the power of relationships for healing conflicts and for moving toward justice, forgiveness, peace, and reconciliation. In my interview with Nassar she shared at length how her faith in Jesus sustains her in her struggle for peace and reconciliation. Reconciliation and love of enemies is a daily decision for Palestinian Christians. They do it in the power of the Spirit and by following the life and message of Jesus Christ. These Palestinian Christians are models of love and reconciliation to the whole world. What Is Reconciliation?Reconciliation isn’t an easy or simple process. It involves lament, repentance, and forgiveness. It requires justice, authentic partnerships, and equality. Notice that reconciliation doesn’t come first.

• From The Tides of Lust (1973)

  A castrated Negro on a train’s cow-catcher moved forward through dispersing figures: one, the great flower of a woman’s face; another, a man with a broken sword. A musculature manikin was painted as a black, with real, woolly hair pasted on the skull; in his chest an open wound had been gouged, and a union flag draped through his arm. On a shelf sat a glove-manikin hand, black, and painted with a trompe l’oeil night: stars, moon, and the pale clouds before it. The captain took the wallet from his pocket. “Your picture is in this wallet. What can you tell me about the woman?” He tossed it toward the drawing board. Proctor caught it. As he opened it, his brows pulled together. He looked up. “Thank you.” “My dog found it on the docks and brought it on the boat. The woman dropped it.” “Catherine?” “Is that her name?” Proctor nodded. Then he said: “Won’t you sit down. Why don’t you have some coffee with me.” The captain nodded. “There’s money in this wallet,” Proctor said, looking up. The captain shrugged. Proctor fingered through the bills. “You should have some reward for returning it to—” The captain’s gesture erased the suggestion. “You tell me about the woman.” The captain sat on a crate, letting his feet go wide— “What do you want to know?” —balanced his wrists on his knees, and leaned forward: “How many times you had your tongue in her pussy? How many times you had your dick in her ass?” Proctor put his arm on the drawing board and laughed. “Fifty for each?” Then, “None?” Then, “What do you want?” The captain said, more softly: “Who are you, Jonathan Proctor? What do you have that I want?” The artist leaned forward. “There’s a rumor, Captain, that the day the devil comes seven times between noon and midnight, we will begin an age of moral chaos such as is only hinted at in the tale of the expulsion from the garden. There!” “Who made that up?” “I did.” Proctor shrugged. “I can tell stories as well as paint pictures. You want something from me? I’m simply telling you what I can offer. You come up here like a man who wants to eat pussy and stick ass. I haven’t been a pimp for a while.” The captain grinned. “Not to say . . .” Proctor drew his fist up his thigh “. . . I have no talent there.” Suddenly he looked over his shoulder and called: “Benny!” A lizard scurried along the bars of a bird cage, stared at them with a red eye. From a doorway, hung with paisley drape, came a sleepy boy, fifteen or sixteen. Proctor said: “Bring us some coffee.” Black hair, olive dark (the high cheeks of a Puerto Rican), eyes curious through fatigue: a long body carved by physical labor. He went over to the stove and began to make coffee. His hands were clumsily affectionate with the pots.

• From Lit: A Memoir (2009)

  Binge drinking disagreed with me in no way. The hangovers that haunted the other restaurant folk tended to spare me. Or the ones that did knock me out gave me an excuse to bail from ordinary commerce and loll around feeling resplendently poetic. I drank less steadily than some kids my age (twenty-one), but now I had an appetite for drink, a taste for it, a talent. Maybe it fostered in me a creeping ambition-deficit disorder, but it could ease an ache. So anything worth doing could be undertaken later. Paint the apartment, write a book, quit booze, sure: tomorrow. Which ensures that life gets lived in miniature. In lieu of the large feelings—sorrow, fury, joy—I had their junior counterparts—anxiety, irritation, excitement. But humming through me like a third rail was poetry, the myth that if I could shuffle the right words into the right order, I could get my story straight, write myself into an existence that included the company of sacred misfit poets whose pages had kept me company as a kid. Showing up at a normal job was too hard. Who knows, maybe I’d still be straining martinis from a silver shaker—it was a nice joint—had I not bought a ticket to a midwestern poetry festival so debauched that it couldn’t survive even the extremely low bar of acceptable behavior back in the 1970s. Down the dorm hallways, marijuana smoke hazed lazily. At readings, bottles of syrupy wine were passed around. A poetic Woodstock, I told Mother it was on my call home, regaling her with the circuslike atmosphere she’d have been inspired by. I actually saw living, breathing poets. Back in high school, I’d fallen in love with the visionary antiwar work of Bill Knott, who’d become a cult figure partly through a suicide hoax. After collecting rejection slips, he’d wound up sending a mimeographed note to America’s poetry editors, saying something like, Bill Knott died an orphan and a virgin. The allegedly posthumous poems came out under the pen name St. Geraud, a character in an eighteenth-century porno novel who ran an orphanage and sodomized his charges. The grotesque humor of the endeavor won me over, particularly when Knott came out from behind his mask with his second book, Auto-Necrophilia, which—it took me a while to puzzle out—referred to masturbation after death. Knott lumped up to the stage, a hulking bubble of a guy in sweatshirt and pants he might have rifled from a dumpster. His heavy black glasses—worn in a wire-rim age—were lopsidedly held together in the center by bandaids. His fair hair hung in unwashed strings. He drew a poem from a wrinkly paper bag stuffed with pages, and after reading a few lines, he said in a disgusted voice, That’s such shit, stupid moron Knott, asshole. People laughed nervously, looking around. He wadded up the page and tossed it. The room roared.

• From Healing Our Broken Humanity: Practices for Revitalizing the Church and Renewing the World (2018)

  By empowering and profiling the voices of those often neglected, this church witnesses to God’s extravagant love and justice by breaking down the dividing walls of animosity, hatred, fear, discrimination, and exclusion. Reinforcing agency is another way of talking about being a transformed, healthy, missional church—one that welcomes the stranger, offers good news to the broken and poor, shines in the darkness, and practices lavish welcome, hospitality, and embrace. As it welcomes, loves, and esteems the lost, the last, and the least, the church is the light of the world and a city on a hill that cannot be hidden (Mt 5:14 ). Embracing Corporate Practices That Reinforce Agency (Inside and Outside the Church)Churches also need to embrace practices that reinforce people’s agency (and especially women and minority groups), both inside and outside the church. What are some of these corporate practices? Provide occasions for minoritized and female voices and perspectives to be heard and honored. These opportunities may be in community and neighborhood settings, in small groups, or during worship services. Invite local people (and especially minorities and women) to fashion ministries, churches, missions, leadership practices, and services that genuinely meet the needs of their neighborhoods and cultures. Worship in ways that are indigenous to all the cultures and groups in your church. If you have multiple cultures and groups in your church, provide space for them to express worship, theology, and ministry in a way that makes sense to their culture. These expressions of faith should be so close to the heart of those cultures that they make sense to believers and nonbelievers alike. Make sure your congregation is a place where local minorities, indigenous groups, and women take part in and lead the ministries and mission of the church. Collaborate with them so that they own these ministries and missions and expressions of the church. Refuse to blindly import theologies, church models, governance structures, and worship expressions, especially those that only reflect majority cultures. Instead, empower your congregation (and especially the minorities and less vocal members of your church) to make their own decisions and determine their own programs and structures. Invite minorities and women to form their own theologies and shape their own ministries, while you do the same. This is another way majority and minority groups and cultures can enrich each other. This is about mutuality, equality, and sharing. It models diversity in unity. Ask minorities, indigenous groups, and women to help enrich your theology and biblical understandings. Throw fuel on the fire of local theological imagination. Listen to history and tradition. Respect the authority of Scripture. Pay close attention to the interpretations of people of color. Be theologically imaginative. Strive for theological innovations, interpretations, and explorations. Allow these to challenge and confront the majority culture and its normal way of doing theology and reading the Bible. Give fresh weight to the stories, images, ideas, and interpretations of those who are not a part of the majority culture.

• From The Tides of Lust (1973)

  The dog circled, then sat by the captain, forepaw on the black foot. The tongue lolled and shook over the black gums. The captain raised his hands and settled his thumbs under his belt. The shapes in his forearms changed size. “You’re Jonathan Proctor.” Proctor nodded. Grey hair, short. Grey brows marked his face with a frown. “Who are you?” Slender. Hands very wide. The left hung by hooked fingers from the board’s edge. The nails were thick. White hair pawed the back of his collar, clawed from his chest over the edges of his shirt. “I’m captain for The Scorpion.” And looked at the: Painted panels of Masonite, some twelve feet high: A gutted horse sat in flaming money. Two naked figures hid in its carcass, toying at each other’s genitals. A castrated Negro on a train’s cow-catcher moved forward through dispersing figures: one, the great flower of a woman’s face; another, a man with a broken sword. A musculature manikin was painted as a black, with real, woolly hair pasted on the skull; in his chest an open wound had been gouged, and a union flag draped through his arm. On a shelf sat a glove-manikin hand, black, and painted with a trompe l’oeil night: stars, moon, and the pale clouds before it. The captain took the wallet from his pocket. “Your picture is in this wallet. What can you tell me about the woman?” He tossed it toward the drawing board. Proctor caught it. As he opened it, his brows pulled together. He looked up. “Thank you.” “My dog found it on the docks and brought it on the boat. The woman dropped it.” “Catherine?” “Is that her name?” Proctor nodded. Then he said: “Won’t you sit down. Why don’t you have some coffee with me.” The captain nodded. “There’s money in this wallet,” Proctor said, looking up. The captain shrugged. Proctor fingered through the bills. “You should have some reward for returning it to—” The captain’s gesture erased the suggestion. “You tell me about the woman.” The captain sat on a crate, letting his feet go wide— “What do you want to know?” —balanced his wrists on his knees, and leaned forward: “How many times you had your tongue in her pussy? How many times you had your dick in her ass?” Proctor put his arm on the drawing board and laughed. “Fifty for each?” Then, “None?” Then, “What do you want?” The captain said, more softly: “Who are you, Jonathan Proctor? What do you have that I want?” The artist leaned forward. “There’s a rumor, Captain, that the day the devil comes seven times between noon and midnight, we will begin an age of moral chaos such as is only hinted at in the tale of the expulsion from the garden. There!” “Who made that up?” “I did.” Proctor shrugged. “I can tell stories as well as paint pictures.

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

  The trajectory of the burial tradition sought, after that rather negative beginning, to move from burial by enemies to burial by friends, from inadequate and hurried burial to full, complete, and even regal embalming. The first problem was how to create a story in which Jesus was buried by his friends. If they had power, they were not his friends; if they were his friends, they had no power. Mark 15:42–46 solves that dilemma by creating one Joseph of Arimathea: When evening had come, and since it was the day of Preparation, that is, the day before the sabbath, Joseph of Arimathea, a respected member of the council, who was also himself waiting expectantly for the kingdom of God, went boldly to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus. Then Pilate wondered if he were already dead; and summoning the centurion, he asked him whether he had been dead for some time. When he learned from the centurion that he was dead, he granted the body to Joseph. Then Joseph bought a linen cloth, and taking down the body, wrapped it in the linen cloth, and laid it in a tomb that had been hewn out of the rock. He then rolled a stone against the door of the tomb. The naming of Joseph, as with Barabbas earlier, does not necessarily guarantee historicity. If you are creating a person, it is easy to give him a name as well. But notice what Mark has done. Joseph is both “a respected member of the council”—that is, on the side of those who crucified Jesus—and also “waiting expectantly for the kingdom of God”—that is, on the side of Jesus’ followers. Joseph is exactly what is needed to turn the vague hope that they would have buried him into a specific and definite event. Moreover, far from a hurried, indifferent, and shallow grave barely covered with stones from which the scavenging dogs would easily and swiftly unbury the body, there is now a rock tomb and a heavy rolling stone for closure and defense. Matthew and Luke, each using Mark as a source, try to improve on that creation. Its weakest element is how Joseph could be on both sides at the same time. Matthew 27:57–60 solves the ambiguity one way by stressing Joseph’s Christian rather than his Jewish credentials: When it was evening, there came a rich man from Arimathea, named Joseph, who was also a disciple of Jesus. He went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus; then Pilate ordered it to be given to him. So Joseph took the body and wrapped it in a clean linen cloth and laid it in his own new tomb, which he had hewn in the rock. He then rolled a great stone to the door of the tomb and went away. That is much simpler. Joseph is now a “disciple of Jesus,” but he is also “rich” and that explains why he has access to Pilate.

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

  It is just as possible, even more credible, but unfortunately quite as unprovable, to suggest that the unnamed woman in Mark 14:3–9 is “Mark” herself obliquely and indirectly signing her narrative. That, however, is not the point. We cannot ever be sure whether Mark was a woman or a man. We can, however, be absolutely sure that the author of this gospel chose an unnamed woman for the supreme model of Christian faith—for the faith that was there before, despite, or even because of Jesus’ death. Easter, for her, came early that year. EpilogueFrom Jesus to ChristTHE VOICES THAT SPEAK to us from antiquity are overwhelmingly those of the cultured few, the elites. The modern voices that carry on their tale are overwhelmingly those of white, middle-class, European and North American males. These men can, and do, laud imperialistic, authoritarian slave societies. The scholarship of antiquity is often removed from the real world, hygienically free of value judgements. Of the value judgements, that is, of the voiceless masses, the 95% who knew how “the other half lived in antiquity…. The peasants form no part of the literate world on which most reconstructions of ancient history focus. Indeed, the peasants—the pagani—did not even form part of the lowly Christian (town dweller’s) world. They are almost lost to historical view, because of their illiteracy and localism. Thomas F. Carney, The Shape of the Past : Models and Antiquity (Lawrence, KS: Coronado Press, 1975) CLASS, THEN, ESSENTIALLY a relationship, is above all the collective social expression of the fact of exploitation (and of course of resistance to it): the division of society into economic classes is in its very nature the way in which exploitation is effected, with the propertied classes living off the non-propertied. I admit that in my use of it the word “exploitation” often tends to take on a pejorative colouring; but essentially it is a “value-free” expression, signifying merely that a propertied class is freed from the labour of production through its ability to maintain itself out of a surplus extracted from the primary producers, whether by compulsion or by persuasion or (as in most cases) by a mixture of the two. G. E. M. de Ste. Croix, “Karl Marx and the History of Classical Antiquity ,” Arethusa 8 (1975) This epilogue is both summary and challenge. The summary looks backward and condenses the preceding chapters into a historical synthesis. The challenge looks forward and asks about the relationship between any and every historically reconstructed Jesus and any and every theologically accepted Christ. The twin sections that follow are, respectively, historical summary and theological challenge. The One As Yet Unknown He comes as yet unknown into a hamlet of Lower Galilee. He is watched by the cold, hard eyes of peasants living long enough at subsistence level to know exactly where the line is drawn between poverty and destitution.

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

  (15:40–41) In that group there are both unnamed women and that named threesome, which is then repeated twice: “Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Joses saw where the body was laid” (15:47) and “Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices, so that they might go and anoint him” (16:1). In other words, just as Mark has a primary, named, male threesome—Peter, James, and John—so also does he have a primary, named, female three-some—Mary, Mary, and Salome. In what follows—and as always with Mark—we must pay special attention to the sequence and structure of his story in order to understand his purpose and intention: Opening negative example: twelve named males do not believe Jesus (10:32a–45) First positive example: one unnamed female believes Jesus (14:3–9) Second positive example: one unnamed male believes Jesus (15:39) Closing negative example: three named females do not believe Jesus (16:1–8) In the structure of 10:32–16:8 Mark interweaves and contrasts three different aspects of discipleship, name, gender, and belief, but, for him, name dominates the other two aspects. He does so by framing two positive examples with two negative examples. In all of this, we must continually remember that we are reading historical parable or parabolic history; that is, we are reading the history of Jesus around the year 30 CE made into parable by Mark around the year 70. We have already seen Mark’s opening negative example, how those twelve named male disciples paid no attention to Jesus’s triple prophecy of his death and resurrection in 8:31–9:1; 9:31–37; and 10:33–45. We also saw how their obtuse indifference reached a climax in 10:33–45, which both concludes that section and opens the final one in Mark’s narrative. Next comes Mark’s first positive example . In 14:3–9 an unnamed woman anoints Jesus with “costly ointment” at a banquet in Bethany. That is certainly a beautiful gesture, but why does it get this amazing accolade from Jesus: “Truly I tell you, wherever the good news is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will be told in remembrance of her” (14:9). What exactly has that unnamed woman done to achieve such a special status and receive such a unique promise? She has, quite simply, believed Jesus. If you are going to die and rise, she thinks, I better anoint you now, because there may not be another chance. “You will not always have me,” says Jesus. “She has done what she could; she has anointed my body beforehand for its burial” (14:7–8). She is, as it were, the first Christian, and she believed before any empty tomb was found or risen vision was granted. For her, Easter was the word of Jesus, and she believed it. Mark might be imagining her among those unnamed women mentioned, as seen above, in 15:40–41. Recall that Mark began his story by recording how “Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the Gospel of God” (1:14).

• From Sometimes an Art: Nine Essays on History (2015)

  The underlying unity of this renaissance, the profound impulses that elevated the life of a nation, require deeper study and thought than they have yet received. We do not propose to solve such problems in these few pages. We seek, merely, possible perspectives within which to perceive them. For the American colonies too enjoyed a flowering in the eighteenth century—not a renaissance, but yet a blossoming worthy of the designation “golden age.” British North America produced no Hume or Adam Smith, but in Edwards and Franklin, Jefferson, Madison, and Adams, Rittenhouse, Rush, Copley, West, Wythe, and Hutchinson it boasted men of impressive accomplishment. Its finest fruit, the literature of the American Revolution, has justly been called “the most magnificent irruption of the American genius into print.”5 The society in which the achievements of these men were rooted, though obviously different from that of Scotland in many ways, was yet significantly related to it. Elements of this relationship struck contemporaries much as they have later scholars. “Boston,” writes one critic, “has often been called the most English of American cities, but in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries it was a good deal more like Edinburgh than like London.… The people, like those of Edinburgh, were independent, not easily controlled, assertive of their rights.”6 In Boston, New York, and Philadelphia, as in Edinburgh and Glasgow, private clubs, where pompous, often ridiculously elaborate ritual threw into bold relief the fervor of cultural uplift, were vital social institutions. Similar to the quality of social mobility that led Dr. Alexander Hamilton to berate New York’s “aggrandized upstarts” for lacking “the capacity to observe the different ranks of men in polite nations or to know what it is that really constitutes that difference of degrees” was the spirit of “shocking familiarity” in Scotland of which Boswell, on his Continental tour, took care to warn Rousseau.7 Such remarks tell much and suggest more. They lead one to pursue the question of the social similarities bearing on intellectual life into richer, if more remote regions. They suggest the value of a comparison of the cultural developments in Scotland and America from the standpoint of the English observer in London. Certain common social characteristics of these flowerings, thus isolated, might throw new light on the basic impulses of the Scottish Renaissance and prove of interest to historians of both regions. We find, first, a striking similarity in the social location of the groups that led the cultural developments in the two areas.