Awe

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 Amplified Holy Bible (2015)

  [Ps 141:2 ] 4 And the smoke and fragrant aroma of the incense, with the prayers of the saints (God’s people), ascended before God from the angel’s hand. 5 So the angel took the censer and filled it with fire from the altar, and hurled it to the earth; and there were peals of thunder and loud rumblings and sounds and flashes of lightning and an earthquake. [Lev 16:12 ; Ezek 10:2 ] 6 Then the seven angels who had the seven trumpets prepared themselves to sound them [initiating the judgments]. 7 The first [angel] sounded [his trumpet], and there was [a storm of] hail and fire, mixed with blood, and it was hurled to the earth; and a third of the earth was burned up, and a third of the trees were burned up, and all the green grass was burned up. [Ex 9:13–35 ] 8 The second angel sounded [his trumpet], and something like a great mountain blazing with fire was hurled into the sea; and a third of the sea was turned to blood; [Jer 51:25 ] 9 and a third of the living creatures that were in the sea died, and a third of the ships were destroyed. 10 The third angel sounded [his trumpet], and a great star fell from heaven, burning like a torch [flashing across the sky], and it fell on a third of the rivers and on the springs of [fresh] waters. 11 The name of the star is d Wormwood; and a third of the waters became wormwood, and many people died from the waters, because they had become bitter (toxic). 12 Then the fourth angel sounded [his trumpet], and a third of the sun and a third of the moon and a third of the stars were struck, so that a third of them would be darkened and a third of the daylight would not shine, and the night in the same way [would not shine]. [Ex 10:21–23 ] 13 Then I looked, and I heard a solitary eagle flying in e midheaven [for all to see], saying with a loud voice, “f Woe, woe, woe [great wrath is coming] to those who dwell on the earth, because of the remaining blasts of the trumpets which the three angels are about to sound [announcing ever greater judgments]!” Revelation 9 The Fifth Trumpet—the Bottomless Pit 1 T HEN THE fifth angel sounded [his trumpet], and I saw a star (angelic being) that had fallen from heaven to the earth; and the key of the bottomless pit (abyss) was given to him (the star-angel). [Rev 20:1 ] 2 He opened the bottomless pit, and smoke like the smoke of a great furnace flowed out of the pit; and the sun and the atmosphere were darkened by the smoke from the pit.

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

  About the year 170 the apologist Melito wrote: "The race of the worshippers of God in Asia is now persecuted by new edicts as it never has been heretofore; shameless, greedy sycophants, finding occasion in the edicts, now plunder the innocent day and night." The empire was visited at that time by a number of conflagrations, a destructive flood of the Tiber, an earthquake, insurrections, and particularly a pestilence, which spread from Ethiopia to Gaul. This gave rise to bloody persecutions, in which government and people united against the enemies of the gods and the supposed authors of these misfortunes. Celsus expressed his joy that "the demon" [of the Christians] was "not only reviled, but banished from every land and sea," and saw in this judgment the fulfilment of the oracle: "the mills of the gods grind late." But at the same time these persecutions, and the simultaneous literary assaults on Christianity by Celsus and Lucian, show that the new religion was constantly gaining importance in the empire. In 177, the churches of Lyons and Vienne, in the South of France, underwent a severe trial. Heathen slaves were forced by the rack to declare, that their Christian masters practised all the unnatural vices which rumor charged them with; and this was made to justify the exquisite tortures to which the Christians were subjected. But the sufferers, "strengthened by the fountain of living water from the heart of Christ," displayed extraordinary faith and steadfastness, and felt, that "nothing can be fearful, where the love of the Father is, nothing painful, where shines the glory of Christ." The most distinguished victims of this Gallic persecution were the bishop Pothinus, who, at the age of ninety years, and just recovered from a sickness, was subjected to all sorts of abuse, and then thrown into a dismal dungeon, where he died in two days; the virgin Blandina, a slave, who showed almost superhuman strength and constancy under the most cruel tortures, and was at last thrown to a wild beast in a net; Ponticus, a boy of fifteen years, who could be deterred by no sort of cruelty from confessing his Saviour. The corpses of the martyrs, which covered the streets, were shamefully mutilated, then burned, and the ashes cast into the Rhone, lest any remnants of the enemies of the gods might desecrate the soil. At last the people grew weary of slaughter, and a considerable number of Christians survived. The martyrs of Lyons distinguished themselves by true humility, disclaiming in their prison that title of honor, as due only, they said, to the faithful and true witness, the Firstborn from the dead, the Prince of life (Rev. 1:5), and to those of his followers who had already sealed their fidelity to Christ with their blood.

• From Paul and Palestinian Judaism (40th Anniversary Edition) (2017)

  Just as God is righteous (5.15f.; 21.4), so also should Israel be. In 7 .20 'to observe righteousness' is to observe the commandment not to appear naked, to bless God, honour father and mother, love the neighbour and 'guard their souls from fornication and uncleanness and all iniquity'. It is obviously the same as being 'righteous'. The same meaning is implied in 35. 13f.: Esau has 'no righteousness in him, for all his ways are unrighteousness and violence', and he has forsaken God. One who observes the way of God is also said to follow 'the path of righteousness' (25.15). Those whose deeds are 'uncleanness and an abomi- nation and a pollution' have no righteousness in them. But if a man turns from their deeds and does God's will and is upright, he will raise up from him a 'plant of righteousness' (21.21-24), which is obviously a nation which obeys the will of God. Righteousness as perfect or nearly perfect obedience is not, however, the 'soteriology' of the author. The author emphasizes more than most the will of God in electing Israel and God's initiative in cleansing them of sin. The 38 In 23.3of. the righteous are apparently the dead Israelites, those of former generations (cf. Volz, Eschatologie, p. 29). There is some tendency to use the term for the good men of former generations and for the future Israel, rather than for the author's contemporaries. Appendix 1] Jubilees and the Essenes 'soteriology' is thus election and the final purification, both initiated by God, the latter dependent on repentance. As we have now come to expect, the emphasis on God's mercy is coupled with a strict demand to be obedient. But Israel should be 'clean' because God has sanctified the nation. Despite a strict legalism of one sort, the author's view is not the kind oflegalism which is summed up in the phrase 'works righteousness', for salvation depends on the grace of God. Appendix 1 Jubilees and the Essenes Similarities between Jubilees and the Dead Sea Scrolls have been noted for some time. Thus Brownlee early published an article entitled 'Light on the Manual of Discipline from the Book of Jubilees' (BASOR 132, October 1951, pp. 30-2), in which he discussed instances of the influence of Jubilees on IQS, and Milik suggested that Jubilees was an Essene book on the basis of the Calendar (Ten Years of Discovery, p. 32). Milik's view was opposed by Rabin (Qumran Studies, pp. 79f.).

• From Lost Christianities: Christian Scriptures and the Battles over Authentication (2002)

  The chance discovery of a cache of original gnostic documents in 1945, near the Egyptian village of Nag Hammadi, was one of the most important archaeological finds of the twentieth century. Some details of the find remain sketchy. It occurred in December 1945, when six bedouin camel drivers were digging for fertilizer next to a cliff in the wilderness of Upper Egypt, some 200 miles south of Cairo and 40 miles north of Luxor, near the bend of the Nile, close by the small village of Nag Hammadi. One of them accidentally uncovered a human skeleton with his mattock. Next to the skeleton was buried an earthenware jar, with a bowl over the top, sealed Saint Hippolytus. 20 Photo by The Teaching Company. with bitumen. Inside, they found nothing “valuable,” just thirteen leather- bound volumes. The leader of the group, named, remarkably enough, Mohammed Ali, took these back home with him to his village. That night, his mother used several pages to kindle the fire in her stove. Mohammed Ali came to think that the books might be worth something and wanted to put them somewhere for safekeeping, all the more necessary because of suspicions aroused among authorities for his role in a recent murder. He gave one of the books to a local priest for safekeeping, who showed it to his brother-in-law, a traveling teacher who recognized that it might be of some value. Eventually, word got out to antiquities dealers and the books were tracked down and sold to the A cache of original gnostic — \fuseum of Antiquities in Cairo. documents in 1945, near the Egyptian village of Scholars who learned of the discovery were floored by its significance. It was, in fact, a real treasure trove, a collection of original writings by gnostic Christians, archaeological finds of the including gospels about Jesus that had twentieth century. never before been seen by any Western mes = SCHOlar. These books were known to have existed in antiquity but had been lost for nearly 1,500 years. Contained within these thirteen leather-bound books were fifty-two tractates (that is, anthologies), written on papyrus. The books themselves were produced some time in the late fourth century (demonstrated by the scrap paper used to strengthen the bindings, with dated receipts, the last of which is from 348 A.D.), but the tractates within them are much older, many of them dating back to the second century or earlier. The books are all written in the Coptic language (= Egyptian), translations of Greek originals. They comprise different kinds of books: gospels allegedly written by Jesus’ own disciples (e.g., Thomas and Philip); apocalypses; mystical reflections about how the divine realm, the world, and humans came into existence; expositions of important religious doctrines, such as the resurrection; and polemical attacks on religious enemies (including proto- orthodox Christians!). Now widely known as the Nag Hammadi library, the Nag Hammadi, was one of the most important 21 Lecture 4: Early Gnostic Christianity—Our Sources

• From Amplified Holy Bible (2015)

  Revelation 14 The Lamb and the 144,000 on Mount Zion 1 T HEN I looked, and this is what I saw: the Lamb stood [firmly established] on Mount Zion, and with Him a hundred and forty-four thousand who had His name and His Father’s name inscribed on their foreheads [signifying God’s own possession]. [Joel 2:32 ] 2 And I heard a voice from heaven, like the sound of great waters and like the rumbling of mighty thunder; and the voice that I heard [seemed like music and] was like the sound of harpists playing on their harps. 3 And they sang a new song before the throne [of God] and before the four living creatures and the elders; and no one could learn the song except the hundred and forty-four thousand who had been purchased (ransomed, redeemed) from the earth. [Rev 7:4–8 ] 4 These are the ones who have not been defiled [by relations] with women, for they are celibate. These are the ones who follow the Lamb wherever He goes. These have been purchased and redeemed from among men [of Israel] as the first fruits [sanctified and set apart for special service] for God and the Lamb. [Mark 8:34 ] 5 No lie was found in their mouth, for they are blameless (spotless, untainted, beyond reproach). The Angel with the Gospel 6 Then I saw another angel flying in midheaven, with an a eternal gospel to preach to the inhabitants of the earth, to every nation and tribe and language and people; [Rom 1:1–4 ; 1 Cor 15:3–5 ; Gal 1:6 , 7 ] 7 and he said with a loud voice, “Fear God [with awe and reverence], and give Him glory [and honor and praise in worship], because the hour of His judgment has come; [with all your heart] worship Him who created the heaven and the earth, the sea and the springs of water.” Doom for Proud Babylon 8 Then another angel, a second one, followed, saying, “Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great, she who has made all nations drink the wine of the passion of her immorality [corrupting them with idolatry].” [Is 21:9 ; Dan 4:30 , 31 ; Rev 17:2 ] Doom for Worshipers of the Beast 9 Then another angel, a third one, followed them, saying with a loud voice, “Whoever worships the beast and his image and receives the mark [of the beast] on his forehead or on his hand, 10 he too will [have to] drink of the wine of the wrath of God, b mixed undiluted into the cup of His anger; and he will be tormented with fire and brimstone (flaming sulfur) in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb (Christ).

• From Confessions of the Flesh (The History of Sexuality, Vol. 4) (2021)

  3The Second PenanceThe fourth Precept of Hermas’s Shepherd is well known: “I have been told by some teachers that there is no repentance except that of the day [that was vouchsafed us] we descended into the water.” To which the angel of repentance replies: “ ‘What you have heard is correct; such is the case. The person who has received remission of sins must no longer sin, but remain in purity. However, since you are inquiring accurately into everything, I shall also clarify the matter for you, without giving pretext to sin either to those who will believe or now believe in the Lord, for neither have to make repentance for sins: they have absolution from their previous sins. It is therefore only for those who have been called before these very last days that the Lord has instituted a penance. For, the Lord has knowledge of hearts and knows all things in advance, the weakness of men and the multiple intrigues of the Devil, the evil he will do to the servants of God and his wickedness against them. In his great mercy, the Lord took pity on His creatures and prescribed this penance and has appointed me to direct it. But this I say to you,’ he continued, ‘if, after this solemn and holy call, someone, seduced by the devil, commits a sin, he has one chance of repentance; but if he sins again and again, even if he repents, penance is useless to such a man.’ ”1 This text has long passed as proof that, in early Christianity, no other repentance existed than that of baptism, and as evidence that in the middle of the second century a second recourse was established for already-baptized sinners: a single, solemn, unrepeatable recourse, from which would arise, through successive transformations, the penitential institution. My intent is not to evoke, even from afar, the discussions raised by this passage from Hermas: Does it manifest the first important softening of an early rigorism? Does it form a criticism of the overly strict lesson of “some teachers” who would need to be identified? Is it based on the distinction between two teachings: the instruction given before baptism and that which is reserved for the baptized, to whom one can announce the possibility of a second penance? Was the latter, in Hermas’s view, a jubilee that would take place only once, or a recourse that Christ’s imminent return made urgent, indispensable, and necessarily unique?2

• From Confessions of the Flesh (The History of Sexuality, Vol. 4) (2021)

  The same thing can be said about direction. The theme of the shepherd who must guide the flock and each sheep to the meadows of salvation is present in the oldest forms of Christianity. But it doesn’t coincide with the idea of a “direction” that would take charge of an individual’s life, guiding it step by step, prescribing it a specific regimen, giving it advice about everyday conduct, constantly informing itself about his progress and requiring a continuous and unfailing obedience. A text by Clement of Alexandria is meaningful on this point:23 it stresses the necessity for a rich and powerful person (for whom, consequently, entry into paradise is especially difficult) to have someone who comes to his assistance, and he employs the traditional metaphors of direction (a “pilot,” a “gymnastics instructor”); this guide will speak freely and bluntly; he must be listened to with all the more fear and respect. But this counseling activity is only one aspect of a more complex role, where the one who “directs” must pray, fast, engage in vigils, and subject himself to macerations for the benefit of the one he is directing. He is thus the directee’s intercessor before God, his representative, his sponsor, just as for the sinner he is an angel sent by God. So what is involved here is a substitution or at least a sacrificial participation that goes well beyond the technique of direction. The example that Clement cites confirms this: one sees the apostle John baptize a young man, then entrust him, during his absence, to the local bishop; and when upon his return he learns that the neophyte has fallen back into sin, he scolds the bishop for the bad guardianship he’s exercised24 and goes and finds the offender: “I will defend you before Christ; if need be, I will die in your place, and willingly, following the Lord’s example. I will sacrifice my life to yours.”25 In this way he brings the young man back to the Church, weeping with him and sharing his fasts. The model, as you can see, is not that of the instructor teaching his student how to live and to conduct himself: it’s that of Christ who sacrifices himself for men after they have fallen, and who intercedes for them with God. The exchange of sacrifice for redemption is the most important of these means for leading a soul and getting it to progress little by little.26

• From Confessions of the Flesh (The History of Sexuality, Vol. 4) (2021)

  And it is not just in a metaphorical sense, or to designate a certain attitude of the soul, that the angelic nature of virginity is invoked. It is substantial. It passes through matter. It operates throughout the world and transfigures things. Here on earth it is not simply waiting for the other world: it really carries the latter into effect on earth. Thus Chrysostom describes the life of Elijah, Elisha, and John the Baptist, “those genuine lovers of virginity”: “If they had wives and children, they would not have lived in the desert so easily […] Released from all these ties, they passed their lives on earth as if they were in heaven. They had no need of walls or a roof or a bed or a table or the like. They had heaven for a ceiling, the ground for a bed, the desert for a table. And the very thing that seems to others to be a cause of hunger, the barrenness of the desert, was for these holy men a place of plenty. […] Plentiful and sweet drink was supplied them from streams, rivers, and pools of water. An angel laid out for one of them a wondrous and fabulous table […] And John, […] neither food nor wine nor olive oil sustained his physical being, but grasshoppers and wild honey did. Do you behold the angels upon earth? Do you comprehend the power of virginity?”54 But there is more to virginity than this “spatial” overlap of heaven and earth. The virginity of individuals also has its place in the economy of the ages. The very numerous and very long expositions of this idea can be lumped into a few main themes.

• From Another Country (1962)

  That day. That day. Had he known where that day would lead him would he have writhed as he did, in such an anguished joy, beneath the great weight of his first lover? But if he had known, or been capable of caring, where such a day might lead him, it could never have been his necessity to bring about such a day. He was frightened and in pain and the boy who held him so relentlessly was suddenly a stranger; and yet this stranger worked in Eric an eternal, a healing transformation. Many years were to pass before he could begin to accept what he, that day, in those arms, with the stream whispering in his ear, discovered; and yet that day was the beginning of his life as a man. What had always been hidden was to him, that day, revealed and it did not matter that, fifteen years later, he sat in an armchair, overlooking a foreign sea, still struggling to find the grace which would allow him to bear that revelation. For the meaning of revelation is that what is revealed is true, and must be borne. But how to bear it? He rose from his seat and paced restlessly into the garden. The kitten lay curled on the stone doorstep, in the last of the sun, asleep. Then he heard Yves’ bicycle bell and, shortly, Yves’ head appeared above the low stone wall. He passed, looking straight ahead, and then Eric heard him in the kitchen, bumping into things and opening and closing the icebox door. Then Yves stood beside him. “Madame Belet will be here in a few moments. She is cooking for us a chicken. And I have bought some whiskey and some cigarettes.” Then he looked at Eric and frowned. “You are mad to be standing here in your bathrobe. The sun is down and it is getting cold. Come in and get dressed, I will make us both a drink.” “What would I do without you?” “I wonder.” Eric followed him into the house. “I also bought some champagne,” Yves said, suddenly, and he turned to face Eric with a small, shy smile, “to celebrate our last night here.” Then he walked into the kitchen. “Get dressed,” he called, “Madame Belet will be here soon.” Eric stepped into the bedroom and began putting on his clothes. “Are we going out after dinner?” “Perhaps. That depends. If we are not too drunk on champagne.” “I’d just as soon stay in, I think.” “Oh, perhaps we must have just one last look at our little seaside town.” “We have to get packed, you know, and clean up this house a little, and try to get some sleep.” “Madame Belet will clean it for us. Anyway, we would never be able to get it done. We can sleep on the train. And we do not have so very much to pack.”

• From Amplified Holy Bible (2015)

  [Lev 26:21 ] 2 Then I saw something like a sea or large expanse of glass mixed with fire, and those who were victorious over the beast and over his image and over the number corresponding to his name were standing on the sea or large expanse of glass, holding harps of God [worshiping Him]. [Rev 4:6 ; 7:9–17 ] 3 And they a sang the song of Moses, the bond-servant of God, and the song of the Lamb, saying, “G reat and wonderful and awe-inspiring are Your works [in judgment], O Lord God, the Almighty [the Omnipotent, the Ruler of all]; Righteous and true are Your ways, O King of the b nations! [Ex 15:1–8 ; Ps 145:17 ] 4 “Who will not fear [reverently] and glorify Your name, O Lord [giving You honor and praise in worship]? For You alone are holy; For ALL THE NATIONS SHALL COME AND WORSHIP BEFORE YOU , FOR YOUR RIGHTEOUS ACTS [Your just decrees and judgments] HAVE BEEN REVEALED and DISPLAYED .” [Ps 86:9 ; Jer 10:7 ; Phil 2:9–11 ] 5 After these things I looked, and the temple (sanctuary) of the tabernacle of the testimony in heaven was opened, 6 and the seven angels who had the seven plagues (afflictions, calamities) came out of the temple, arrayed in linen, pure and gleaming, and wrapped around their chests were golden sashes. 7 Then one of the four living creatures gave to the seven angels seven golden bowls full of the wrath and indignation of God, who lives forever and ever. [Rev 4:6 ] 8 And the temple was filled with c smoke from the glory and radiance and splendor of God and from His power; and no one was able to enter the temple until the seven plagues of the seven angels were finished. [Ex 33:9 , 10 ; 1 Kin 8:10 , 11 ; Is 6:4 ; Ezek 44:4 ] Revelation 16 Six Bowls of Wrath 1 T HEN I heard a loud voice from the temple, saying to the seven angels, “Go and pour out on the earth the seven bowls of the wrath and indignation of God.” [Ps 69:24 ; Is 66:6 ] 2 So the first angel went and poured out his bowl on the earth; and loathsome and malignant sores came on the people who had the mark of the beast and who worshiped his image. [Ex 9:10 , 11 ; Deut 28:35 ] 3 The second angel poured out his bowl into the sea, and it turned into blood like that of a corpse [foul and disgusting]; and every living a thing in the sea died. 4 Then the third angel poured out his bowl into the rivers and the springs of water; and they turned into blood.

• From The Case for God (2009)

  Each one of us has an ousia that we find very difficult to pin down but that we know to be the irreducible essence of our personality. It is what makes us the person we are, but it is very difficult to define. We try to express this ousia to the outside world in various hypostases —our work, offspring, possessions, clothes, facial expressions, and mannerisms, which can give outsiders only a partial knowledge of our inner, essential nature. Language is a very common hypostasis: my words are distinctively my own, but they are not the whole of me; they nearly always leave something unsaid. So in God there was, as it were, a single, divine self-consciousness that remained unknowable, unnameable, and unspeakable. But Christians had experienced this ineffability in hypostases that had translated it into something more accessible to limited, sense-bound, time-bound human beings. The Cappadocians sometimes substituted the term prosopon (“face,” “mask”) for hypostasis; the word also meant a facial expression or a role that an actor had chosen to play. When prosopon was translated into Latin, it became persona , the “mask” used by an actor that enabled the audience to recognize his character and contained a sound-enhancing device that made him audible. But nobody was required to “believe” this as a divine fact. The Trinity was a “mystery” not because it was an incomprehensible conundrum that had to be taken “on faith.” It was a musterion because it was an “initiation” that inducted Christians into a wholly different way of thinking about the divine. Basil always distinguished between the kerygma of the Church (its public message) and its dogma , the inner meaning of the kerygma , which could be grasped only after long immersion in liturgical prayer. 41 The Trinity was a prime example of dogma , a truth that brought us up against the limits of language but could be suggested by the symbolic gestures of the liturgy and the silent practice of hesychia . The initiation consisted of a spiritual exercise that was explained to new mystai after their baptism in a liturgical context. They were instructed to keep their minds in continuous motion, swinging back and forth between the One and the Three. This mental discipline would enable them gradually to experience within themselves the inner balance of the threefold mind. 42 Gregory of Nazianzus explained the kind of ekstasis this produced: No sooner do I conceive of the One than I am illumined by the splendour of the Three; no sooner do I distinguish Three than I am carried back into the One. When I think of any of the Three I think of him as the whole, and my eyes are filled, and the greater part of what I am thinking escapes me. I cannot grasp the greatness of that One so as to attribute a greater greatness to the rest. When I see the Three together, I see but one Torch, and cannot divine or measure the undivided light.

• From The Case for God (2009)

  By the time the mystai arrived in Eleusis, confused, elated, exhausted, and scared, it was evening, and they were herded to and fro through the streets by flickering torchlight until, thoroughly disoriented, they finally plunged into the pitch darkness of the initiation hall. From this point, we have only brief, disconnected glimpses of the rites. Animals were sacrificed; there was a shocking event— a child may have been pushed, like little Demophon, into the fire, only to be reprieved at the eleventh hour—and a “revelation.” Something—a sheaf of corn, perhaps—was lifted out of a covered basket. But the Mystery ended joyfully, with tableaux depicting Persephone’s return from the world of the dead and her reunion with her mother. No secret doctrine was imparted in which the mystai had to “believe.” The “revelation” was significant only as the culmination of the intense ritual experience. In a superb summary of the religious process, Aristotle would later make it clear that the mystai did not go to Eleusis to learn (mathein ) anything but to have an experience ( pathein ) and a radical change of mind (diatethenai ). 13 The rites seem to have left a powerful impression. No mystes could fail to be stunned by a ceremony so “overwhelming in its beauty and size,” wrote the Greek rhetorician Dio of Prusa (50–117 CE); he would behold “many mystic views and hear many sounds of the kind, with darkness and light appearing in sudden changes and other innumerable things happening;” it was impossible that he would “experience just nothing in his soul, and that he should not come to surmise that there is some wiser insight or plan in all that is going on.” 14 The historian Plutarch (c. 46–120 CE) thought that the initiation was a foretaste of death. It began with the dissolution of one’s mental processes, disorientation, frightening paths that seemed to lead nowhere, and, just before the end, “panic, shivering, sweat and amazement.” But finally a “wonderful light … pure regions and meadows are there to greet you, with sounds and dances and solemn sacred words and holy views.” 15 The carefully crafted drama introduced mystai to a wholly new dimension of life and put them in touch with a deeper, unconscious level of the psyche so that afterward many felt entirely different. “I came out of the mystery hall,” one recalled, “feeling a stranger to myself.” 16 They found that they were no longer afraid of death: they had achieved an ekstasis , a “stepping out” of their workaday selves, and, for a short time, had felt something akin to the beatitude of the gods.

• From Amplified Holy Bible (2015)

  19 For the power of the horses [to do harm] is in their mouths and in their tails; for their tails are like serpents and have heads, and it is with them that they do harm. 20 The rest of mankind, who were not killed by these plagues, a did not repent even then of the works of their hands, so as to cease worshiping and paying homage to the demons and the idols of gold and of silver and of bronze and of stone and of wood, which can neither see nor hear nor walk; [Ps 115:4–7 ; 135:15–17 ; Is 17:8 ] 21 and they did not repent of their murders nor of their sorceries (drugs, intoxications) nor of their [sexual] immorality nor of their thefts. Revelation 10 The Angel and the Little Book 1 T HEN I saw another mighty angel coming down from heaven, clothed in a cloud, with a rainbow (halo) over his head; and his face was like the sun, and his feet (legs) were like columns of fire; [Ex 13:21 , 22 ; Ezek 1:26–28 ; Dan 7:13 ; Matt 17:2 ] 2 and he had a little book (scroll) open in his hand. He set his right foot on the sea and his left foot on the land; [Ezek 2:9 ; Hos 11:10 ] 3 and he shouted with a loud voice, like the roaring of a lion [compelling attention and inspiring awe]; and when he had shouted out, the seven peals of thunder spoke with their own voices [uttering their message in distinct words]. [Ps 29 ] 4 And when the seven peals of thunder had spoken, I was about to write; but I heard a voice from heaven saying, “Seal up the things which the seven peals of thunder have spoken and do not write them down.” [2 Cor 12:4 ] 5 Then the angel whom I had seen standing on the sea and the land raised his right hand [to swear an oath] to heaven, [Deut 32:40 ; Dan 12:6 , 7 ] 6 and swore [an oath] by [the name of] Him who lives forever and ever, WHO CREATED HEAVEN AND THE THINGS IN IT , AND THE EARTH AND THE THINGS IN IT , AND THE SEA AND THE THINGS IN IT , that there will be delay no longer, [Neh 9:6 ] 7 but a when it is time for the b trumpet call of the seventh angel, when he is about to sound, then the mystery of God [that is, His hidden purpose and plan] is finished, as He announced the gospel to His servants the prophets.

• From Henry Miller on Writing (1964)

  It was not a silent language either, as is often used in communication with “higher beings.” It was a language of clamor and tumult—the heart’s clamor, the heart’s tumult. But noiseless. If it were Dostoievski whom I summoned, it was “the complete Dostoievski,” that is to say, the man who wrote the novels, diaries and letters we know, plus the man we also know by what he left unsaid, unwritten. It was type and archetype speaking, so to say. Always full, resonant, veridic; always the unimpeachable sort of music which one credits him with, whether audible or inaudible, whether recorded or unrecorded. A language which could emanate only from Dostoievski. After such indescribably tumultuous communions I often sat down to the machine thinking that the moment had at last arrived. “Now I can say it!” I would tell myself. And I would sit there, mute, motionless, drifting with the stellar flux. I might sit that way for hours, completely rapt, completely oblivious to everything about me. And then, startled out of the trance by some unexpected sound or intrusion, I would wake with a start, look at the blank paper, and slowly, painfully tap out a sentence, or perhaps only a phrase. Whereupon I would sit and stare at these words as if they had been written by some unknown hand. Usually somebody arrived to break the spell. If it were Mona, she would of course burst in enthusiastically (seeing me sitting there at the machine) and beg me to let her glance at what I had written. Sometimes, still half-drugged, I would sit there like an automaton while she stared at the sentence, or the little phrase. To her bewildered queries I would answer in a hollow, empty voice, as if I were far away, speaking through a microphone. Other times I would spring out of it like a Jack-in-the-box, hand her a whopping lie (that I had concealed “the other pages,” for instance), and begin raving like a lunatic. Then I could really talk a blue streak! It was as if I were reading from a book. All to convince her—and even more myself!—that I had been deep in work, deep in thought, deep in creation. Dismayed, she would apologize profusely for having interrupted me at the wrong moment. And I would accept her apology lightly, airily, as though to say—“What matter? There’s more where that came from…. I have only to turn it on or off…. I’m a prestidigitator, I am.” And from the lie I would make truth. I’d spool it off (my unfinished opus) like a man possessed—themes, sub-themes, variations, detours, parentheses—as if the only thing I thought about the live-long day was creation.

• From Henry Miller on Writing (1964)

  And so we have and we have not, we are and we are not. In the realm of sex there is a similar kind of sleepwalking and self-delusion at work; here the bifurcation of pure desire into fear and wish has resulted in the creation of a phantasmagorical world in which love plays the role of a chameleon-like scapegoat. Passion is conspicuous by its absence or by monstrous deformations which render it practically unrecognizable. To trace the history of man’s attitude towards sex is like threading a labyrinth whose heart is situated in an unknown planet. There has been so much distortion and suppression, even among primitive peoples, that today it is virtually impossible to say what constitutes a free and healthy attitude. Certainly the glorification of sex, in pagan times, represented no solution of the problem. And, though Christianity ushered in a conception of love superior to any known before, it did not succeed in freeing man sexually. Perhaps we might say that the tyranny of sex was broken through sublimation in love, but the nature of this greater love has been understood and experienced only by a rare few. Only where strict bodily discipline is observed, for the purpose of union or communion with God, has the subject of sex ever been faced squarely. Those who have achieved emancipation by this route have, of course, not only liberated themselves from the tyranny of sex but from all other tyrannies of the flesh. With such individuals, the whole body of desire has become so transfigured that the results obtained have had practically no meaning for the man of the world. Spiritual triumphs, even though they affect the man in the street immediately, concern him little, if at all. He is seeking for a solution of life’s problems on the plane of mirage and delusion; his notions of reality have nothing to do with ultimate effects; he is blind to the permanent changes which take place above and beneath his level of understanding. If we take such a type of being as the Yogi, whose sole concern is with reality, as opposed to the world of illusion, we are bound to concede that he has faced every human problem with the utmost courage and lucidity. Whether he incorporates the sexual or transmutes it to the point of transcendence and obliteration, he is at least one who has attained the vast open spaces of love. If he does not reproduce his kind, he at least gives new meaning to the word birth.

• From Who Wrote the Bible? Searching for Its Origins and Authors (2025)

  55 9. The Three Isaiahs Indeed, the narrative has leapt forward in time, from the 8th to the 6th century. Over those 200 years, the world has changed. At the end of the 8th century, in 701, Assyria attacked Judah and Hezekiah. Less than 100 years later, Assyria was gone, but Babylon was in its place. In 597, Babylon captured Jerusalem, and in 586, they leveled it and sent Judah into exile. Suddenly, in 539, it was all over. The nation strong enough to capture Jerusalem, bring about the end of the Davidic dynasty, and remove Israel from its God-given territory was wiped away. The Persians took the Babylonians’ place, and they were so much stronger than anyone before them that they conquered all the way into Greece. Between the 8th and the 6th centuries, everything that Israel had ever known or thought possible was overthrown. The Advent of Biblical Monotheism The Isaiah of the 8th century was all about that 8th-century world. Assyria was the first great empire of the ancient Near East. Where did they come from, and why were they so scary? The prophet had an explanation: Israel was full of social injustice and needed to be punished. Israel’s God would allow Assyria to come and conquer Israel—though not all of it, for there had to be a reason for people to try and change their ways before it was too late. In the 6th century, social justice was off the table because there weren’t any powerful Israelites to oppress their vulnerable neighbors. Israel wasn’t even in Israel anymore: The Israelites were in exile in Babylon. Cyrus had just declared that they could return home after 50 years of exile. Surely, this was God’s doing. But now, God wasn’t just letting his people be conquered—he was also controlling the far-off empire of Persia and having it defeat Babylon. In the 6th century, a new theology was created to account for all of this confusion: monotheism. The first truly monotheistic text in the Bible is Isaiah—and just the part from the 6th century, starting in chapter 40. This is how Isaiah explains how Israel’s god—a local, national deity—is suddenly controlling distant empires. This theological sea change is marked not only with a new sense of global politics but also with unprecedented bold statements. For instance, chapter 43 says, “Before me no god was formed, nor shall there be any after

• From Confessions of the Flesh (The History of Sexuality, Vol. 4) (2021)

  It is necessary as well, because “the time is short.”59 The moment of Christ’s return is not far away. One might draw negative consequences from this proximity, whose promise was one of the important aspects of fourth-century spirituality. Why concern oneself with the world, seeing that it is ending? Why care about future generations when the future is coming to a close? Why not immediately turn our thoughts to those realities that are beyond our reach, yet so close to us? Up to now, we have been preoccupied with “childish things”; the time has come “to abandon earthly things, which in reality are childish playthings, and place before our minds heaven and the splendor of life there and all of its glory.”60 Some object to the practice of virginity by saying that the human race could then totally disappear, a concern that makes no sense today: in a time when the apocatastasis will occur, let us recall that at the Creation of the world, when man led a joyful existence, “there were no cities, crafts, or houses.”61 And one is thus brought back to the idea of a positive role that virginity can and must play in the ending of the world. A passage from Gregory of Nyssa is very explicit on this point.62 Virginity is barren. But this barrenness has to do with only carnal birth, which is connected with death in two ways: first because death is its consequence, and next because it stands for the end of posterity, the passing away of human beings, one after the other. But as a rejection of generation, virginity is a rejection of death, a way of breaking this indefinite succession, which commenced in the world when death appeared there and now continues from generation to generation—that is, from death to death. “Through virginity a boundary line is drawn for death, checking its advance”; those who have chosen virginity “have made themselves, in fact, a frontier between life and death, and a barrier, too, which thwarts it.” The series that opened with the fall finds itself interrupted. The power of death can no longer bring its activity to bear, and so this physical barrenness should not be seen as a slow progression toward death, but a triumph over it and the advent of a world in which it will no longer have a place. Virginity is therefore both an element of a deathless world and an embryo of that world: a piece of that world here on earth and access to the heavenly reality that it constitutes. But it is also conceived, in relation to these realities, as a way of forming and developing spiritual relationships: it is a form of union, a mode of kinship, a principle of fertility and begetting. This is one of the most characteristic traits of the Christian mystique of virginity, a trait that carries it very far from the old conception of continence.

• From Henry Miller on Writing (1964)

  Besides, if I wished to ridicule a current idea which was anathema to me all I had to do was to impersonate a mutt, lift my hind leg and piss on it. Despite all the foolery, all the shenanigans, I nevertheless managed to create a sort of antique glaze. My purpose was to impart such a finish, such a patina, that every page would gleam like star dust. This was the business of authorship, as I then conceived it. Make mud puddles, if necessary, but see to it that they reflect the galactic varnish. When giving an idiot voice mix the jabber-wocky with high-flown allusions to such subjects as paleontology, quadratics, hyperboreanism. A line from one of the mad Caesars was always pertinent. Or a curse from the lips of a scrofulous dwarf. Or just a sly Hamsunesque quip, like “Going for a walk, Froken? The cowslips are dying of thirst.” Sly, I say, because the allusion, though far-fetched, was to Froken’s habit of spreading her legs, when she thought she was well out of sight, and making water. These rambles taken to relax or to obtain fresh inspiration—often only to aerate the testicles—had a disturbing effect upon the work in progress. Rounding a corner at a sixty-degree angle, it could happen that a conversation (with a locomotive engineer or a jobless hod-carrier) ended only a few minutes previously would suddenly blossom into a dialogue of such length, such extravagance, that I would find it impossible, on returning to my desk, to resume the thread of my narrative. For every thought that entered my head the hod-carrier or whoever would have some comment to make. No matter what answer I made, the conversation continued. It was as if these corky nobodies had made up their minds to derail me. Occasionally this same sort of bitchery would start up with statues, particularly chipped and dismantled ones. I might be loitering in some backyard gazing absent-mindedly at a marble head with one ear missing and presto! it would be talking to me … talking in the language of a proconsul. Some crazy urge would seize me to caress the battered features, whereupon, as if the touch of my hand had restored it to life, it would smile at me. A smile of gratitude, needless to say. Then an even stranger thing might happen. An hour later, say, passing the plate glass window of an empty shop, who would greet me from the murky depths but the same proconsul! Terror-stricken, I would press my nose against the show-window and stare. There he was—an ear missing, the nose bitten off.

• From Henry Miller on Writing (1964)

  They have split the egg in two. All art, I firmly believe, will one day disappear. But the artist will remain, and life itself will become not “an art,” but art , i.e., will definitely and for all time usurp the field. In any true sense we are certainly not yet alive. We are no longer animals, but we are certainly not yet men . Since the dawn of art every great artist has been dinning that into us, but few are they who have understood it. Once art is really accepted it will cease to be. It is only a substitute, a symbol-language, for something which can be seized directly. But for that to become possible man must become thoroughly religious, not a believer, but a prime mover, a god in fact and deed. He will become that inevitably. And of all the detours along this path art is the most glorious, the most fecund, the most instructive. The artist who becomes thoroughly aware consequently ceases to be one. And the trend is towards awareness, towards that blinding consciousness in which no present form of life can possibly flourish, not even art. To some this will sound like mystification, but it is an honest statement of my present convictions. It should be borne in mind, of course, that there is an inevitable discrepancy between the truth of the matter and what one thinks, even about himself: but it should also be borne in mind that there exists an equal discrepancy between the judgment of another and this same truth. Between subjective and objective there is no vital difference. Everything is illusive and more or less transparent. All phenomena, including man and his thoughts about himself, are nothing more than a movable, changeable alphabet. There are no solid facts to get hold of. Thus, in writing, even if my distortions and deformations be deliberate, they are not necessarily less near to the truth of things. One can be absolutely truthful and sincere even though admittedly the most outrageous liar. Fiction and invention are of the very fabric of life. The truth is in no way disturbed by the violent perturbations of the spirit. Thus, whatever effects I may obtain by technical device are never the mere results of technique, but the very accurate registering by my seismographic needle of the tumultuous, manifold, mysterious and incomprehensible experiences which I have lived through and which, in the process of writing, are lived through again, differently, perhaps even more tumultuously, more mysteriously, more incomprehensibly.

• From Confessions of the Flesh (The History of Sexuality, Vol. 4) (2021)

  So nothing new in Thecla’s discourse thus far, compared to the previous orators, even if the repeated recourse to Platonic themes assumes a particular significance in this contribution that is more decisive than the others.62 One expression stands out, however, as early as the first lines. I’m referring to the comparison—a common one, which in its philosophical usage was more Stoic than Platonic—of life with a theater. But while, as a trite metaphor, this served mostly to designate the fleeting illusions of existence or the theatrical character of a life in which we are an actor whose role is decided ahead of time,63 and while Plotinus evokes something like a pure dramatic spectacle—with changes of scenery and costumes, cries and laments, murders and wars—as he speaks of the myriad of scenes in which “the outer man whimpers, complains, and performs his role,”64 Methodius, for his part, speaks of the drama of truth.65 That drama is acted out in the ascension toward incorruptible reality. Those who remain attached to pleasure are dismissed. Taking part all the way to its end are those that seek “the treasures up above.” Virginity is a condition—or rather, as a general form of existence, it is the precondition in order for this drama of truth to reach Truth itself. Rather than a stage play, it’s a liturgy in which the souls that “have truly and faithfully lived as virgins for Christ” process toward heaven and meet the choir of angels “who have positioned themselves in front” of the cortege; they sing “the welcoming words,” “conduct” them to the pastures of immortality, and give them “the prize of their victory.”66 Then, everything they had only glimpsed, as in a dream, in shadowy forms, they now see clearly: “wonderful and glorious and blessed things of beauty.”67 Justice itself, Continence itself, Love itself, and Truth and Wisdom. In sum, the eighth discourse—the crowning discourse (discours coryphée)—reiterates the movement evoked by the preceding discourses. But while the earlier discourses promised incorruptibility, immortality, eternal bliss, it is truth that is announced here: the virgins make it to the heavenly fields and in return God illuminates them. So it’s in this sense that Thecla’s discourse completes all the others. But it also grounds them in the sense that the treasure of truth it will now reveal concerns virginity itself. Doubtless this is how we should understand the two arguments that make up the body of Thecla’s discourse, and whose presence at this point may seem strange: an exegesis of the Book of Revelation and considerations on astral determinism. In one case, it’s a matter of taking up virginity again from the perspective of the end of time and as a form of time’s fulfillment; in the other, it’s a matter of looking down on virginity from the top of the world, from the highest celestial spheres.