Bewilderment

Passages

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

Page 24 of 69 · 20 per page

• From Paul and Matthew Among Jews and Gentiles: Essays in Honor of Terence L. Donaldson (2021)

  These indications present a fairly unified picture, though still beginning and partial, of one Judaean who consciously abandoned his ancestral custom. He did this not for the more common reasons of laxity, intermarriage, or attraction to the ways of another ethnos, however, but because he claimed an encounter with the resurrected figure of Jesus Christ, which in his view displaced the ethnos-polis-nomos foundations of ancient identity. This radical departure from the long-established, essential-seeming categories of life would require successive generations of Christ-followers in Paul’s trajectory—by no means the only Christian trajectory—to explain themselves, when Christ did not return to evacuate them. Their predicament remained awkward until perhaps already Tertullian and Origen in anticipation, but certainly Eusebius and his successors, managed to turn the tables and reform the social-political lexicon in light of Christianity’s ascendancy, so as to value this faith-based identity over ethnos- and polis-affiliation. 40 40 41 2 A Displaced Jew: The Specific Nature of Paul’s Earthly Identity Leif Vaage In his capacity as a missionary, Maurice Leenhardt once suggested to a New Caledonian elder that Christianity had introduced the notion of spirit ( esprit ) into Canaque thought. “Spirit? Bah!” the old man objected: “You didn’t bring us the spirit. We already knew the spirit existed. We have always acted in accord with the spirit. What you’ve brought us is the body. ” 1 Defining the specific nature of the enduring relationship between Paul’s apostolic adventures “in Christ” and their social origin within “Second Temple Judaism” has been a core conviction—or at least a chief concern—of Terence L. Donaldson for much of his scholarly career.2 The same cannot be said of me; at least not until quite recently. Perhaps late can still be better than never. In any case, in this essay I now join my long-time friend and colleague in his evermore popular scholarly effort to find Paul anew within what once was deemed to be of old. At issue is what I shall be calling Paul’s earthly identity. This essay summarizes the main argument of a larger monograph that still is under construction, whose working title also is: “Paul: A Displaced Jew.” The monograph explores the multiple ways in which the question of the early Christian apostle’s Jewish identity complicates not only many aspects of traditional Pauline scholarship but also some conventional habits of Jewish historiography. In addition, this question serves to expose how deeply imbricated both enterprises are in certain decidedly modern political projects. 3 1 See Marshall Sahlins, What Kinship Is—And Is Not (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 2013) 19; further, Maurice Leenhardt, Do Kamo (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1979), 164. 2 Cf. Terence L. Donaldson, Paul and the Gentiles: Remapping the Apostle’s Convictional World (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 1997); also Donaldson, Judaism and the Gentiles: Jewish Patterns of Universalism (to 135 CE) (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2007).

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  the blind spot in human nature: we are poorly equipped to gauge the character of the people we deal with. Their public image, the reputation that precedes them, easily mesmerizes us. We are captivated by appearances. If they surround themselves with some alluring myth, as Hughes did, we want to believe in it. Instead of determining people’s character—their ability to work with others, to keep to their promises, to remain strong in adverse circumstances— we choose to work with or hire people based on their glittering résumé, their intelligence, and their charm. But even a positive trait such as intelligence is worthless if the person also happens to be of weak or dubious character. And so, because of our blind spot, we suffer under the irresolute leader, the micromanaging boss, the conniving partner. This is the source of endless tragedies in history, our pattern as a species. At all costs, you must alter your perspective. Train yourself to ignore the front that people display, the myth that surrounds them, and instead plumb their depths for signs of their character. This can be seen in the patterns they reveal from their past, the quality of their decisions, how they have chosen to solve problems, how they delegate authority and work with others, and countless other signs. A person of strong character is like gold—rare but invaluable. They can adapt, learn, and improve themselves. Since your success depends on the people you work with and for, make their character the primary object of your attention. You will spare yourself the misery of discovering their character when it is too late. Character is destiny. —Heraclitus Keys to Human Nature For thousands of years, we humans believed in fate: some kind of force—spirits, gods, or God—compelled us to act in a certain way. At birth our entire lives were laid out in advance; we were fated to succeed or fail. We see the world much differently now. We believe that we are largely in control of what happens to us, that we create our own destiny. Upon occasion, however, we might have a fleeting sensation that approximates what our ancestors must have felt. Perhaps a personal relationship goes bad or our career path hits a snag, and these difficulties are uncannily similar to something that happened to us in the past. Or we realize that our way of working on a project needs some improvement; we could do things better. We try to alter our methods, only to find ourselves doing things in exactly the same way, with nearly the same results. We might feel for a moment that some kind of malignant force in the world, some curse, compels us to relive the same situations. We can often notice this phenomenon more clearly in the actions of others, particularly those closest to us. For instance, we see friends continually fall for exactly the wrong person or unconsciously push away the right person. We cringe at some foolish behavior of

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  Do not think of this as some intellectual exercise. Intellectuals are often the last to really discern the spirit of the times, because they are so grounded in theories and conventional frameworks. First and foremost, you must be able to feel the change in the collective mood, to sense how people are diverging from the past. Once you feel the spirit, you can begin to analyze what is behind it. Why are people dissatisfied, and what are they really craving? Why are they gravitating toward these new styles? Look at those idols from the past that no longer cast a spell, that seem ridiculous, that are the subject of mockery, particularly among the young. They are like Louis’s carriage. When you detect enough such disenchantment, you can be sure something strong is cresting. Once you have an adequate feel for what is really going on, you must be bold in how you respond, giving voice to what other people are feeling but not understanding. Be careful to not get too far out ahead and be misunderstood. Ever alert, always letting go of your prior interpretations, you can seize the opportunities in the moment that others cannot even begin to detect. Think of yourself as an enemy of the status quo, whose proponents must view you in turn as dangerous. See this task as absolutely necessary for the revitalization of the human spirit and the culture at large, and master it. Our era is a birth-time, and a period of transition. The spirit of man has broken with the old order of things . . . and with the old ways of thinking, and is of the mind to let them al sink into the depths of the past and to set about its own transformation. . . . The frivolity and boredom which unsettle the established order, the vague foreboding of something unknown, these are the heralds of approaching change. —G. W. F. Hegel Keys to Human Nature In human culture, we can see a phenomenon—changes in fashions and styles—that at first glance might appear trivial, but that in fact is quite profound, revealing a deep and fascinating part of human nature. Look at clothing styles, for instance. In the stores or in fashion shows we can perhaps detect some trends and changes from a few months before, but they are usually subtle. Go back to styles ten years ago and, compared with the present, the differences are quite apparent. Go back twenty years and it is even clearer. With such a distance in time, we can even notice a particular style of twenty years ago that now probably looks a bit amusing and passé. These changes in fashion styles that are so detectable in increments of decades can be characterized as creating something looser and more romantic than the previous style, or more overtly sexual and body conscious, or more classic and elegant, or gaudier and with more frills. We could name several other categories of

• From In the Dream House (2019)

  Dream House as Ambiguity In an essay in Naming the Violence —the first anthology of writing by queer women addressing domestic abuse in their community—activist Linda Geraci recalls a fellow lesbian’s paraphrasing Pat Parker to her straight acquaintance, “If you want to be my friend, you must do two things. First, forget I am a lesbian. And second, never forget I am a lesbian.” 33 This is the curse of the queer woman—eternal liminality. You are two things, maybe even more; and you are neither. Heterosexuals have never known what to do with queer people, if they think of their existence at all. This has especially been the case for women—on the one hand, they seem like sinners in theory, but with no penis how do they, you know, do it ? This confusion has taken many forms, including the flat-out denial that sex between women is even possible. In 1811, when faced with two Scottish schoolmistresses who were accused of being lovers, a judge named Lord Meadowbank insisted their genitals “were not so formed as to penetrate each other, and without penetration the venereal orgasm could not possibly follow.” And in 1921 the British Parliament voted against a bill that would have made illegal “acts of gross indecency between females.” Why would an early twentieth-century government be so progressive? “The interpretation of this outcome offered by modern history,” writes academic Janice L. Ristock, “is that lesbianism was not only unspeakable but ‘legally unimaginable.’” But this inability to conceive of lesbians has darker iterations too. In 1892, when Alice Mitchell slit her girl-lover Freda Ward’s throat in a carriage on a dusty Memphis street—she was enraged that Freda had, with the encouragement of her family, dissolved their relationship—the papers hardly knew what to do with themselves. In her book Sapphic Slashers , Lisa Duggan writes, “Reporters found it difficult to sketch out a clear plot or strike a consistent moral pose: was Alice a poor, helpless victim of mental disease, or was she truly a monstrous female driven by masculine erotic and aggressive motives? … A love murder involving two girls presented an astonishing and confusing twist that confounded the gendered roles of villain and victim.” 34 The story was simultaneously salacious and utterly baffling. They were … engaged? Alice had given Freda a ring, along with promises of love and devotion and material support. Should they execute her for murder, or put her in a hospital for her unnatural passions? Was she a scorned lover or a madwoman? But to be a scorned lover, she’d have to be—they’d have to be—? “I resolved to kill Freda because I loved her so much that I wanted her to die loving me,” Alice wrote in a statement her attorneys provided to the press, sounding every bit the possessive boyfriend from a Lifetime original movie. “And when she did die I know she loved me better than any human being on earth.

• From Paul and Matthew Among Jews and Gentiles: Essays in Honor of Terence L. Donaldson (2021)

  Whereas Baur’s concern for particularism arose within the context of the nationalistic project of unifying Germany, Wright and Dunn write within the context of concern over and repudiation of British and Western colonialism and racism. Nonetheless, all of these narratives about Paul situate him in relation to Judaism in a fundamental y antagonistic way: Paul opposes Judaism because of some fault within it. These accounts find something wrong or lacking in Judaism, something that Christianity, or at least Pauline Christianity, sets right. According to this reading, Judaism is particularistic and ethnocentric with regard to its treatment and view of non-Jews. As John Gager observes, though, such arguments revert to an “outmoded, unhistorical dichotomy between Jewish particularism and Christian universalism. ”13 Of course to make such sweeping comparisons between Judaism and Christianity requires scholars to turn both early Judaism and early Christianity into monolithic entities. And herein lies part of the problem. Paula Fredriksen puts it well: “Judaism … did not have views of Gentiles; Jews did. Their encounter with other nations, across cultures and centuries, resulted in a jumble of perceptions, prejudices, optative descriptions, social arrangements, and daily accommodations that we can reconstruct from the various literary and epigraphical evidence only with difficulty. ”14 The Diversity of Jewish Thought Regarding Gentiles Christian theologians and New Testament (NT) scholars alike face the temptation of using Judaism as a foil for Jesus, or Paul, or Christianity. 15 When considering the scholarly output of Terry Donaldson, then, it is remarkable to see the way in which he has continual y fought against this temptation, striving to do justice to the diversity of 12 James D. G. Dunn, The New Perspective on Paul (rev. ed.; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2008), 417 (cf. 35, 205). Elsewhere Dunn cal s the idea that gentiles should Judaize a form of “Jewish ideological and nationalistic imperialism”: The Theology of Paul’s Letter to the Galatians (NTT; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 267. 13 John G. Gager, Reinventing Paul (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000). See Dunn’s unconvincing response in New Perspective on Paul, 32 n.122. Likewise, Barclay rightly notes that “most of the weight in Dunn’s argument in fact rests on a set of Enlightenment and 20th-century social values, concerning universalism, inclusion and diversity, retrojected onto Paul”: “Paul, the Gift and the Battle over Gentile Circumcision: Revisiting the Logic of Galatians,” ABR 58 (2010): 35–56 (45). The most trenchant criticisms of this line of interpretation can be found in Denise Kimber Buel , Why This New Race: Ethnic Reasoning in Early Christianity (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2005). 14 Fredriksen, “Judaism, the Circumcision of Gentiles, and Apocalyptic Hope: Another Look at Galatians 1–2,” JTS 42 (1991): 532–64 (533–4). 15 See here George Foot Moore, “Christian Writers on Judaism,” HTR 14 (1921): 197–254. 90 90 Paul and Matthew among Jews and Gentiles

• From In the Dream House (2019)

  But more than that, I believed that I could see five lights.” His gaze rests, lost, in the middle distance.

• From The Boys of My Youth (1998)

  She has her nightgown on backward and her hair is messed up from being asleep. She shields her eyes with one hand and stares at us all. “Can we have pancakes in the morning?” she asks the room. “I’m going to pancake somebody right now,” my mother says, preparing to stand up. Linda stomps back the way she came. “I’d like to pancake Bernice,” my father says darkly. He moves me to the other shoulder, turns, and walks. My hand is tired of patting, I’m just watching the rug go by. Three more times and he walks me over to the rocking chair and points me at my mother. “She asleep?” he whispers. My mother and I are looking at each other. “You asleep?” she asks. I shake my head. She sighs, stands up, goes to the telephone table, dials, and scratches her head with a pencil while she waits. “Wake up and smell the hysteria,” she says into the receiver, and then carries the phone out to the kitchen. My father switches shoulders again and we sit down to rock. When my mother comes back in she’s carrying a bottle of beer. She’s glad we’re sitting down. Bernie and the monsters stopped at the Dairy Queen out on Route 50 to get ice cream cones on their way home. “You bet they did,” my father says, rocking. His shirt smells good. There was no reason to cart the d-o-l-l in question all the way home, so he was placed in a t-r-a-s-h b-i-n at said Dairy Queen. Under the awning, next to the counter. That would have been approximately three o’clock, and it would be now, oh, twelve-thirty. My father groans. “Shit,” he says. The chair is rocking and rocking. My mother lifts her beer bottle by the neck and takes a sip. The chances are slim to none but maybe Roy Rogers should get on Trigger and ride out there. Dale Evans will stay here with her beer. Rocking and rocking. My eyes won’t open, but I’m still wide-awake. I go back up in the air with my eyes closed and then down the hallway and to the right. My arms flop when he puts me down, but I’m not asleep. He leaves and comes back with Petie and I try to make the crying noise but nothing comes out. After he closes the door, I struggle up just long enough to force Petie through the bars and onto the floor where he belongs. “My pancakes have bonanas in them,” Linda tells me. She’s wearing shorts, a midriff top, and an Easter hat, pointing her fork at me. I’m sitting in the big-girl chair with a dish towel tied around me so I don’t climb down. My pancakes are clean. “Jo-Jo can have all the bananas she likes,” my mother says. “But they don’t interest her.” She’s drinking coffee and yawning, tapping a cigarette against her wrist. She can’t find her lighter this morning.

• From Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (2014)

  Our large family was devastated by his senseless murder. My grandmother, who had separated from my grandfather many years earlier, was especially unnerved by the crime and his death. I had older cousins who worked in law enforcement and sought information about the boys who committed the crime—I remember them being more astonished than vengeful about the immaturity and lack of judgment the juveniles had demonstrated. We all kept saying and thinking the same thing: They didn’t have to kill him. There was no way an eighty-six-year-old man could have stopped them from getting away with their paltry loot. My mother could never make sense of it. And neither could I. I knew kids at school who seemed out of control and violent, but still I wondered how someone could be so pointlessly destructive. My grandfather’s murder left us with so many questions. Now, decades later, I was starting to understand. In preparing litigation on behalf of the children we were representing, it was clear that these shocking and senseless crimes couldn’t be evaluated honestly without understanding the lives these children had been forced to endure. And, in banning the death penalty for juveniles, the Supreme Court had paid great attention to the emerging body of medical research about adolescent development and brain science and its relevance to juvenile crime and culpability. Contemporary neurological, psychological, and sociological evidence has established that children are impaired by immature judgment, an underdeveloped capacity for self-regulation and responsibility, vulnerability to negative influences and outside pressures, and a lack of control over their own impulses and their environment. Generally considered to encompass ages twelve to eighteen, adolescence is defined by radical transformation, including the obvious and often distressing physical changes associated with puberty (increases in height and weight and sex-related changes) as well as progressive gains in the capacity for reasoned and mature judgment, impulse control, and autonomy. As we later explained to the Court, experts had come to the following conclusion: “A rapid and dramatic increase in dopaminergic activity within the socioemotional system around the time of puberty” drives the young adolescent toward increased sensation-seeking and risk-taking; “this increase in reward seeking precedes the structural maturation of the cognitive control system and its connections to areas of the socioemotional system. A maturational process that is gradual, unfolds over the course of adolescence, and permits more advanced self-regulation and impulse control…The temporal gap between the arousal of the socioemotional system, which is an early adolescent development, and the full maturation of the cognitive control system, which occurs later, creates a period of heightened vulnerability to risk taking during middle adolescence.”

• From In an Unspoken Voice (2010)

  It feels to you as though the conscious decision caused the action. Libet asked experimental subjects to do just this while he systematically measured the timing of three things: (1) The subjects “conscious” decision to move was marked on a special clock. (2) The beginning of (what is called) the readiness potential in the motor cortex was measured using EEG electrodes on the scalp. (3) The start of the actual action was measured using electrodes on the wrist. So which do you think (based on your experience in the preceding experiment) came first? Was it the decision to move, activity in the motor cortex, or the actual movement? The answer, defying credulity, dramatically contradicted common sense. The brain’s activity began about 500 milliseconds (half a second!) before the person was aware of deciding to act. The conscious decision came far too late to be the cause of the action . It was as though consciousness was a mere afterthought—a way of “explaining to ourselves,” an action not evoked by consciousness. As peculiar as this might seem, it fits in with previous experiments that Libet did on exposed brains as part of a neurosurgical procedure. Here, Libet had demonstrated that about half a second of continuous activity of stimulation in the sensory cortex is needed for a person to become aware of a sensory stimulus. 147 I had the opportunity to watch one of these procedures, and it was jaw-dropping to see it on the oscilloscope. In summary, Libet found that the “conscious” decision to perform a simple action (such as pushing a button) preceded the action. This conscious decision, however, occurred only after the “premotor” area in the brain first fired with a burst of electrical activity. In other words, people decide to act only after their brain unconsciously prepares them to do so. Daniel Wegner, at Harvard University, recently advanced and refined this proposition. 148 In one of his studies, an illusion was created by a series of mirrors. Subjects, thinking that they were looking at their own arms, were actually seeing (in the mirror) the movements of an experimenter’s arm. When the experimenter’s arms moved (according to the instructions of another researcher), the subjects reported that they had made and therefore willed the movements (when, in fact, they had not even moved their arms)! Wilhelm Wundt (considered one of the founders of experimental psychology) expands on our attachment to the notion of free will: “Nothing seems to us to belong so closely to our personality, to be so completely our property as our will.” Yet, the results of Libet and Wegner, taken together, seriously challenge (if not put to rest) our common-sense understanding of consciousness and our love affair with free will. The annihilation of free will, suggested in Wegner’s book, 149 goes against what we believe is the very core of our existence as autonomous human beings. It challenges such cherished beliefs as the capacity for planning, foresight and responsible action.

• From The History of Christianity II: From the Reformation to the Modern Megachurch (2017)

  1Course Scope The History of Christianity II: From the Reformation to the Modern Megachurch F ive hundred years ago, Christianity was a faith centered in Europe. Monks battled emperors and popes over the right of ordinary believers to read the Bible. Rulers assumed authority over the consciences of their subjects. And renegade intellectuals were beginning to challenge the notion that the Church was always right. Today, churches are shrinking in much of Europe and North America. The faith’s center of gravity has shifted to the Global South. By 2050, about three-quarters of the world’s Christians will live in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, where both democratic reformers and authoritarian strongmen have claimed the power of Christ on their side, and believers call on the Holy Spirit to battle demons and witches who haunt everyday life. In this course, we’ll explore the complex journey of the Christian faith from the turn of the 16 th century to our present day, following the radical transformations as well as the continuities. We can’t cover every Christian community around the world, but we will trace the essential plot of one of the greatest dramas in human history: How and why did medieval Christendom break apart? How did this ancient faith encounter modernity? And how, then, did Christianity become a truly global religion? We’ll see Christians both f lourish and struggle in cultures ranging from tsarist Russia to the slave plantations of the Caribbean, from smoke-blackened factories of Victorian England to the slums of apartheid South Africa and the hidden house churches of communist China. Along the way, we’ll keep a few goals in mind. First, we’ll seek to master the basic ideas of Christian theology: the nuts and bolts of what Christians believe. The Christian faith is inherently paradoxical. God is somehow three entities in one. He is all-powerful, and yet we’re told he’s not responsible for evil in the world. Jesus is divine and human at the same time. These enigmas are not easy to understand or agree upon.

• From Quit: The Power of Knowing When to Walk Away (2022)

  T The Myopia of Goals he 2019 London Marathon was the biggest in the event’s history, with more than 42,000 runners completing the 26.2 miles. With so many entrants, it is not surprising the race was filled with unusual stories and achievements. Guinness World Records announced thirty-eight titles that day, including “fastest marathon with two runners handcuffed together (mixed),” “fastest marathon dressed as a Christmas tree (male),” and, weirdly, four minutes slower than the Christmas tree, “fastest marathon dressed as a tree (male).” And then there is the story of Siobhan O’Keeffe. O’Keeffe trained four months for the event and was hoping to finish in about five hours. Her ankle started hurting four miles into the race and kept getting worse. Even so, she continued running, ignoring the signals her body was sending her. After another four miles, her fibula bone snapped in half. Why would someone in the type of escalating pain that O’Keeffe was feeling continue running until their leg broke? If someone planning on running a marathon knew they would break their leg at mile eight, we all certainly share the intuition that they wouldn’t even start the race. And if you asked someone, given that they did start the marathon, whether they would quit running before breaking their leg, given the level of pain that must precede such an injury, their answer would also be an emphatic yes. O’Keeffe breaks our intuition. And the case gets even stranger. Medics advised her to stop running—no surprise there, her fibula bone had snapped in half—but she refused. She ran the last eighteen miles in nearly unbearable pain and finished the marathon in 6:14:20. You might think this is a bizarre, weird, one-off story, but it’s actually not as uncommon as you’d suspect. In fact, that same day, in the same marathon, at the same distance into the race, another runner broke his foot and ran the remaining eighteen miles on it. Steven Quayle, eight miles in, stepped on a loose water bottle, injuring his right foot, calf, and hip. The pain kept getting worse. By mile

• From Paul and Matthew Among Jews and Gentiles: Essays in Honor of Terence L. Donaldson (2021)

  Paul and Matthew among Jews and Gentiles156 156 late first century are not plausible, whereas hypotheses that foreground the rhetorical nature of our sources are much more persuasive. My own arguments, based on literary genre and rhetorical analysis, will not be appealing to those who see our ancient sources as reasonably accurate reflections of historical reality. These examples also illustrate the conundrum we face in attempting to discern and describe the messy process of the “parting of the ways.” As I mentioned at the outset, I have begun to question the mutuality implied by this metaphor, given the relative paucity of reliable evidence for the non-Christ-confessing Jewish role in the process. Of course I recognize that my emphasis on the silence of our sources is also affected by my own views concerning plausible hypotheses. It could be that those who accept as plausible the various statements of the NT and other ancient sources about Jewish persecution of Christ-confessors, as well as the claims that Jews rejected belief in Jesus on theological grounds, will argue that the parting was indeed a mutual affair, and, perhaps, even instigated by the Jewish opponents to Christianity. I know I will not persuade everyone, or even anyone, to take a more skeptical approach, to this topic and others. But I hope that we can all reach the point of acknowledging that plausibility, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder, and not the same as objective truth.

• From In the Dream House (2019)

  Dream House as AmbiguityIn an essay in Naming the Violence—the first anthology of writing by queer women addressing domestic abuse in their community—activist Linda Geraci recalls a fellow lesbian’s paraphrasing Pat Parker to her straight acquaintance, “If you want to be my friend, you must do two things. First, forget I am a lesbian. And second, never forget I am a lesbian.”33 This is the curse of the queer woman—eternal liminality. You are two things, maybe even more; and you are neither. Heterosexuals have never known what to do with queer people, if they think of their existence at all. This has especially been the case for women—on the one hand, they seem like sinners in theory, but with no penis how do they, you know, do it? This confusion has taken many forms, including the flat-out denial that sex between women is even possible. In 1811, when faced with two Scottish schoolmistresses who were accused of being lovers, a judge named Lord Meadowbank insisted their genitals “were not so formed as to penetrate each other, and without penetration the venereal orgasm could not possibly follow.” And in 1921 the British Parliament voted against a bill that would have made illegal “acts of gross indecency between females.” Why would an early twentieth-century government be so progressive? “The interpretation of this outcome offered by modern history,” writes academic Janice L. Ristock, “is that lesbianism was not only unspeakable but ‘legally unimaginable.’” But this inability to conceive of lesbians has darker iterations too. In 1892, when Alice Mitchell slit her girl-lover Freda Ward’s throat in a carriage on a dusty Memphis street—she was enraged that Freda had, with the encouragement of her family, dissolved their relationship—the papers hardly knew what to do with themselves. In her book Sapphic Slashers, Lisa Duggan writes, “Reporters found it difficult to sketch out a clear plot or strike a consistent moral pose: was Alice a poor, helpless victim of mental disease, or was she truly a monstrous female driven by masculine erotic and aggressive motives? … A love murder involving two girls presented an astonishing and confusing twist that confounded the gendered roles of villain and victim.”34 The story was simultaneously salacious and utterly baffling. They were … engaged? Alice had given Freda a ring, along with promises of love and devotion and material support. Should they execute her for murder, or put her in a hospital for her unnatural passions? Was she a scorned lover or a madwoman? But to be a scorned lover, she’d have to be—they’d have to be—?

• From Paul and Matthew Among Jews and Gentiles: Essays in Honor of Terence L. Donaldson (2021)

  and pol uted them (2.472–473). He dramatical y singles out the best Judaean fighter, Simon, to craft a mini-tragedy: Simon resolved to kill his family and himself, before the Scythopolitans could kill them. To cast Simon’s activity as “leaving Judaism” would obscure the tragic tone of Josephus’ account, which underscores the real-life struggle of conflicting loyalties. Tiberius Alexander, Antiochus, and Simon were not following different “Judaic systems.” They were all Judaeans, who made the unique choices that seemed best in their particular situations. And, of course, we see them only through the literary construction of Josephus, not from an omniscient or even balanced perspective. We cannot ask them how they interpreted Judaean ancestral tradition in relation to their various identities. Of the many ways in which one could (seem to) let observance of the ancestral laws slide, two others merit attention. The first appears in Philo’s famous insistence that knowing the spiritual truth of scripture does not permit one “to dissolve the customs that more exalted and greater men than any of our time devised” ( Migr. 90). We do not know the real-life situation behind this passage, but it raises the possibility that a purely philosophical approach was leading some Alexandrian Judaeans toward laxity in practical y observing the laws. Second, the second chapter of Wisdom of Solomon, perhaps also from Alexandria, seems to describe a conflict among Judaeans, between those determined to enjoy life in the present and the “righteous,” who accept the constraints of ancestral law, partly in anticipation of the life to come (2.12). 45 In any real human society, there must have been an enormous range of thought and practice, and perceived thought and practice, in relation to observance of ancestral custom, as there surely was of Rome’s mos maiorum. Even civic officials who had to represent the national customs at public events may not have sincerely believed in them, 46 and a Greek’s or Roman’s enthusiasm for Egyptian or Judaean ways could effectively displace native allegiances. There is no reason to imagine that we would be able to categorize the kaleidoscope of individual possibilities, even if we wished to do so.

• From In the Dream House (2019)

  Dream House as Noi r She is not your first female crush, or your first female kiss, or even your first female lover. But she is the first woman who wants you in that way—desire tinged with obsession. She is the first woman who yokes herself to you with the label girlfriend . Who seems proud of that fact. And so when she walks into your office and tells you that this is what it’s like to date a woman , you believe her. And why wouldn’t you? You trust her, and you have no context for anything else. You have spent your whole life listening to your father talk about women’s emotions , their sensitivity . He never said it in a bad way, exactly—though the implication is always there. Suddenly you find yourself wondering if you’re in the middle of evidence that he’s right. All these years of telling him he’s full of bullshit, that he needs to decolonize his mind and lose the gender essentialism, and here you are learning that lesbian relationships are, somehow, different—more intense and beautiful but also more painful and volatile, because women are all of these things too. Maybe you really do believe that women are different. Maybe you owe your father an apology. Dames, right?

• From Paul and Matthew Among Jews and Gentiles: Essays in Honor of Terence L. Donaldson (2021)

  Paul and Matthew among Jews and Gentiles158 158 and its “after-life” in use, including its non-use in the Gospel of Matthew. As such, we conclude by reflecting on the way the text created new possibilities of interpretation, some of which were not followed by the other Synoptic Gospels and were only picked up on later. The Main Lines of Interpretation of the Passage An in-depth account of the history of the interpretation of Mark 14:51–52, what a significant number of modern commentators regard as a “strange passage,” 2 even “ridicule et indécente,” 3 has yet to be written. 4 In what follows we look briefly at Patristic interpretations of our passage and at the historical critical study of the passage, and in between provide a more lengthy overview of Protestant and Evangelical exegesis since this material is not as well known. Furthermore, an overview of this material is important for the conclusions that we draw at the end of this contribution. Patristic Interpretation Most commentators in the ancient and early medieval church saw in this text the memory of an actual historical event and accordingly focused on the young man’s identity. 5 Ambrose, followed by Gregory the Great and Bede, related our text to John 18:15–16 and concluded that the “young man” was the Apostle John. 6 Epiphanius of Salamis, however, believed that the “young man” was Jesus’ half-brother James, since linen was purportedly James’s clothing of choice after his conversion. 7 Concurring with Epiphanius, the eleventh-century commentator Theophylact noted further that 2 The quote is from Francis J. Moloney, The Gospel of Mark: A Commentary (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 2002), 299 n. 118. See also Mark L. Strauss, Mark (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2014), 645 for a similar judgment. Other scholars see it as: a “confusing” story, Robert H Stein, Mark (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2008), 674; “this bizarre episode,” M. Eugene Boring, Mark: A Commentary (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2006), 403; a “mysterious story,” R. T. France, The Gospel of Mark (Grand Rapids, MI: Paternoster Press, 2002), 595; and “unusual,” albeit “trivial,” James A. Brooks, Mark (Nashville, TN: Broadman, 1991), 238–9. For other similar judgments, see Abraham Kuruvilla, “The Naked Runaway and the Enrobed Reporter of Mark 14 and 16: What Is the Author Doing with What He Is Saying?” JETS 54.3 (September 2011): 527. 3 Vanhoye, “La fuite du jeune homme nu (Mc 14,51–52),” 401. 4 See, though, Frans Neirynck, “La Fuite du jeune homme en Mc 14, 51–52,” in Evangelica: Gospel Studies—Études d’Évangile (Leuven: Uitgeverij Peeters/Leuven University, 1982), 215–38; Brooks, Mark, 238; Robert H Gundry, Mark: A Commentary on His Apology for the Cross (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1993), 881–2; Adela Yarbro Collins, Mark: A Commentary (ed. Harold W. Attridge; Hermeneia—A Critical and Historical Commentary on the Bible; Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2007), 688–93; and Kuruvilla, “Naked Runaway,” 527–33. 5 Neirynck, “Fuite,” 227. The presentation of Patristic interpretation in Collins, Mark, 688–9 is overly brief.

• From Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence (2006)

  We are indeed a nation that prides itself on efficiency. But here’s the catch: eroticism is inefficient. It loves to squander time and resources. As Adam Phillips wryly notes, “In our erotic life work does not work…trying is always trying too hard. Eroticism is an imaginative act, and you can’t measure it. We glorify efficiency and fail to recognize that the erotic space is a radiant interlude in which we luxuriate, indifferent to demands of productivity; pleasure is the only goal. Octavio Paz writes, “The moment of merging is a crack in time, a balm against the wounds inflicted by the minutes and hours of time. A moment totally eternal as it is ephemeral.” It is a leap into a world beyond. This leap entails a loss of control that we’re taught from a very young age to guard against. We are socialized to tame our primal side: our unruly impulses, our sexual urges, and our rapacious appetites. Social order is built on this restraint, and lack thereof threatens to create chaos. Because loss of control is almost exclusively seen in a negative light, we don’t even entertain the idea that surrender can be emotionally or spiritually enlightening. But experiencing a temporary suspension of our discernible self is often liberating and expansive. I have seen many people stumble when they can’t simply take the problem of eros and fix it. They are left feeling bewildered and frightened by their slackened command. I help them learn how to relinquish control intentionally, as a means of personal growth and self-discovery. Ryan and Christine have been in therapy for a year. I meet with them together and individually as they struggle through the transition from being a sexually entwined couple to being the parents of three small children. Following the birth of their twin daughters, the lovers’ erotic inspiration began gasping for air. While some couples accept fading intensity with gracious resignation, settling into affectionate companionship, Ryan and Christine don’t want to give up. The memory of what they once had is still dear to them. They make a clear distinction between having sex and making love, and they haven’t made love in a while. They’ve rented videos, they’ve taken baths together, and they are committed to their weekly date. They’ve tried a lot of things, some yielding satisfying results, others a total waste. Merely having sex is not really their issue. Of course they’d like to have it more often, but their concern is more about intensity than frequency. It’s not the diminishing amount of sex that bothers them, but its increasing dullness. They like to be proactive, and they’re shopping for new tools.

• From Cleanness (2020)

  Part of Vitosha was a pedestrian zone, and the restaurants and cafés that lined it had seating that spilled out onto the street, some with tables laid out in elegant white, others with low couches for sprawling with cigarettes or water pipes. I was surprised that these were full, the protests hadn’t put a dent in the crowds out to enjoy the evening. There were the usual tourists for whom the parade was a spectacle, they pointed their cameras at us, but also Bulgarians, some of whom sat with their backs resolutely turned, determined to ignore the chants of ostavka and the more aggressive chants of cherveni boklutsi, red trash, which had increased with the darkness, as had the presence of men wearing Guy Fawkes masks. There weren’t many of them but they added a different note to things, a note of incivility, a discordant note, I thought, which was amplified by the fact that there weren’t as many children now; it was a long march, they must have gotten tired. There were more police at the Palace of Justice, wearing their riot gear now but still relaxed; they were chatting among themselves with their visors lifted, shields propped on the ground. A couple of them were sitting on the stairs leading up to the palace, a young man leaned back against one of the stone lions there. D. had once pointed out to me that on one of these lions the legs are in the wrong position, the fore and hind legs of the same side stretch away from each other; it’s supposed to suggest the cat in motion but no animal walks like that, D. said, if it walked like that it would fall over. It’s the perfect symbol, he said, laughing, the Bulgarian lion. You know it’s the word we use for our money, lev, as if our money has ever been a lion! A kitten, maybe, he said, the runt of the litter, and this made him laugh again.

• From Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence (2006)

  If uncertainty is a built-in feature of all relationships, so too is mystery. Many of the couples who come to therapy imagine that they know everything there is to know about their mate. “My husband doesn’t like to talk.” “My girlfriend would never flirt with another man. She’s not the type.” “My lover doesn’t do therapy.” “Why don’t you just say it? I know what you’re thinking?” “I don’t need to give her lavish presents; she knows I love her.” I try to highlight for them how little they’ve seen, urging them to recover their curiosity and catch a glimpse behind the walls that barricade the other. In truth, we never know our partner as well as we think we do. Mitchell reminds us that even in the dullest marriages, predictability is a mirage. Our need for constancy limits how much we are willing to know the person who’s next to us. We are invested in having him or her conform to an image that is often a creation of our own imagination, based on our own set of needs. “One thing about him is that he’s never anxious. He’s like a rock. I’m so neurotic.” “He’s too much of a wimp to leave me.” “She doesn’t put up with any of my shit.” “We’re both very traditional. Even though she has a PhD, she really likes staying home with the kids.” We see what we want to see, what we can tolerate seeing, and our partner does the same. Neutralizing each other’s complexity affords us a kind of manageable otherness. We narrow down our partner, ignoring or rejecting essential parts when they threaten the established order of our coupledom. We also reduce ourselves, jettisoning large chunks of our personalities in the name of love. Yet when we peg ourselves and our partners to fixed entities, we needn’t be surprised that passion goes out the window. And I’m sorry to say that the loss is on both sides. Not only have you squeezed out the passion, but you haven’t really gained safety, either. The fragility of this manufactured equilibrium becomes obvious when one partner breaks the rules of the contrivance and insists on bringing more authentic parts of himself into the relationship.

• From Quit: The Power of Knowing When to Walk Away (2022)

  pheromone trail are myopic, it doesn’t matter to the colony because other ants are still looking around. But we’re just us. You’re just one person. Once you’ve established a pheromone trail to follow, you become myopic, making it hard to see those other opportunities that your ant friends otherwise would be looking for. One of the most famous studies showing that being fixated on a task or goal can cause you to literally not see what’s right in front of you is the invisible gorilla experiment, conducted by Harvard psychologists Daniel Simons and Christopher Chabris in 1999. Participants watched a video of a group of people passing a basketball back and forth and were tasked with counting the number of passes. Halfway through the video, a woman in a full gorilla suit walked through the scene. After completing the task of counting the number of times the basketball was passed, the participants were asked if they noticed anything unusual. If they said no, they were asked if they saw anything or anyone other than the six players. If they said no to that, they were asked, “Did you see a gorilla walk across the screen?” More than half of the participants (56%) answered “no” to all those questions. The gorilla was obvious to anyone just watching the video, with no directive to count anything. Indeed, when the experimenters showed them the video a second time, the participants were consistently shocked that they missed it. If they couldn’t see the gorilla right in front of their noses, what do you think you are missing when you are pursuing a goal? You need to be really wary of this myopia because it’s counterproductive to seeing the opportunities around you. That’s another reason why developing an exploratory mindset is so important. You have to be making sure that you’ve got a good view of the landscape, that you are taking calls from recruiters, that you’re exploring other functions, and that you’re generally trying out new things, so that you can start to add to and expand your portfolio. Quitting coaches can also reduce myopia, because they can generally see the opportunities that are available to you better than you can.