Chagrin
Sheepish discomfort after a minor wrong move or social misstep.
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From The Principles of Psychology (Volume 1 of 2) (1890)
all the sensations and all the actions, is a word all the conscious experiences which she has undergone in somnambulism , and knits them together to make the history of her already long life. To Léonie 1 (as M. Janet calls the waking woman] on the other hand, she exclusively ascribes the events lived through in waking hours. I was at first struck by an important exception to the rule, and was disposed to think that there might be something arbitrary in this partition of her recollections. In the normal state Léonie has a husband and children; but Léonie 2, the somnambulist, whilst acknowledging the children as her own, attributes the husband to 'the other.' This choice, was perhaps explicable, but it followed no rule. It was not till later that I learned that her magnetizers in early days, as audacious as certain hypnotizers of recent date, had somnambulized her for her first accouchements , and that she had lapsed into that state spontaneously in the later ones. Léonie 2 was thus quite right in ascribing to herself the children—it was she who had had them, and the rule that her first trance-state forms a different personality was not broken. But it is the same with her second or deepest state of trance. When after the renewed passes, syncope, etc., she reaches the condition which I have called Léonie 3, she is another person still. Serious and grave, instead of being a restless child, she speaks slowly and moves but little. Again she separates herself from the waking Léonie 1. 'A good but rather stupid woman,' she says, 'and not me.' And she also separates herself from Léonie 2: 'How can you see anything of me in that crazy creature?' she says. 'Fortunately I am nothing for her.'" Léonie 1 knows only of herself; Léonie 2 of herself and of Léonie 1; Léonie 3 knows of herself and of both the others. Léonie 1 has a visual consciousness; Léonie 2 has one both visual and auditory; in Léonie 3 it is at once visual, auditory, and tactile. Prof. Janet thought at first that he was Léonie 3's discoverer. But she told him that she had been frequently in that condition before. A former magnetizer had hit upon her just as M. Janet had, in seeking by means of passes to deepen the sleep of Léonie 2. "This resurrection of a somnambulic personage who had been extinct for twenty years is curious enough; and in speaking to Léonie 3, I naturally now adopt the name of Léonore which was given her by her first master." The most carefully studies case of multiple personality is that of the hysteric youth Louis V. about whom MM. Bourru and Burot have written a book.[312] The symptoms are too intricate to be reproduced here with detail. Suffice it that Louis V. had led an irregular life, in the army, in hospitals, and in houses of correction, and had had numerous hysteric anæsthesias, paralyses, and contractures
From Anna Karenina (1877)
Without the slightest hesitation he gave him permission to act as he might judge best. In the letter he enclosed three of Vronsky's notes to Anna, which were in the portfolio he had taken away. Since Alexey Alexandrovitch had left home with the intention of not returning to his family again, and since he had been at the lawyer's and had spoken, though only to one man, of his intention, since especially he had translated the matter from the world of real life to the world of ink and paper, he had grown more and more used to his own intention, and by now distinctly perceived the feasibility of its execution. He was sealing the envelope to the lawyer, when he heard the loud tones of Stepan Arkadyevitch's voice. Stepan Arkadyevitch was disputing with Alexey Alexandrovitch's servant, and insisting on being announced. 'No matter,' thought Alexey Alexandrovitch, 'so much the better. I will inform him at once of my position in regard to his sister, and explain why it is I can't dine with him.' 'Come in!' he said aloud, collecting his papers, and putting them in the blotting-paper. 'There, you see, you're talking nonsense, and he's at home!' responded Stepan Arkadyevitch's voice, addressing the servant, who had refused to let him in, and taking off his coat as he went, Oblonsky walked into the room. 'Well, I'm awfully glad I've found you! So I hope . . . ' Stepan Arkadyevitch began cheerfully. 'I cannot come,' Alexey Alexandrovitch said coldly, standing and not asking his visitor to sit down. Alexey Alexandrovitch had thought to pass at once into those frigid relations in which he ought to stand with the brother of a wife against whom he was beginning a suit for divorce. But he had not taken into account the ocean of kindliness brimming over in the heart of Stepan Arkadyevitch. Stepan Arkadyevitch opened wide his clear, shining eyes. 'Why can't you? What do you mean?' he asked in perplexity, speaking in French. 'Oh, but it's a promise. And we're all counting on you.' 'I want to tell you that I can't dine at your house, because the terms of relationship which have existed between us must cease.' 'How? How do you mean? What for?' said Stepan Arkadyevitch with a smile. 'Because I am beginning an action for divorce against your sister, my wife. I ought to have . . . ' But, before Alexey Alexandrovitch had time to finish his sentence, Stepan Arkadyevitch was behaving not at all as he had expected. He groaned and sank into an arm-chair. 'No, Alexey Alexandrovitch! What are you saying?' cried Oblonsky, and his suffering was apparent in his face. 'It is so.' 'Excuse me, I can't, I can't believe it!'
From Anna Karenina (1877)
'I know you and the good'—again he caught a moth—'work you are doing, like every Russian,' said the lawyer, bowing. Alexey Alexandrovitch sighed, plucking up his courage. But having once made up his mind he went on in his shrill voice, without timidity or hesitation, accentuating here and there a word. 'I have the misfortune,' Alexey Alexandrovitch began, 'to have been deceived in my married life, and I desire to break off all relations with my wife by legal means—that is, to be divorced, but to do this so that my son may not remain with his mother.' The lawyer's grey eyes tried not to laugh, but they were dancing with irrepressible glee, and Alexey Alexandrovitch saw that it was not simply the delight of a man who has just got a profitable job: there was triumph and joy, there was a gleam like the malignant gleam he saw in his wife's eyes. 'You desire my assistance in securing a divorce?' 'Yes, precisely so; but I ought to warn you that I may be wasting your time and attention. I have come simply to consult you as a preliminary step. I want a divorce, but the form in which it is possible is of great consequence to me. It is very possible that if that form does not correspond with my requirements I may give up a legal divorce.' 'Oh, that's always the case,' said the lawyer, 'and that's always for you to decide.' He let his eyes rest on Alexey Alexandrovitch's feet, feeling that he might offend his client by the sight of his irrepressible amusement. He looked at a moth that flew before his nose, and moved his hand, but did not catch it from regard for Alexey Alexandrovitch's position. 'Though in their general features our laws on this subject are known to me,' pursued Alexey Alexandrovitch, 'I should be glad to have an idea of the forms in which such things are done in practice.' 'You would be glad,' the lawyer, without lifting his eyes, responded, adopting, with a certain satisfaction, the tone of his client's remarks, 'for me to lay before you all the methods by which you could secure what you desire?' And on receiving an assenting nod from Alexey Alexandrovitch, he went on, stealing a glance now and then at Alexey Alexandrovitch's face, which was growing red in patches.
The woman said to Peter, “You are not also one of this man’s disciples, are you?” He said, “I am not.” (John 18:15–17) It is significant that nothing is said about that other disciple who is presumably the same as the Beloved Disciple, denying Jesus! The transference of that peculiarly or even uniquely Markan literary-theological structure from Mark 14:53–72 into John 18:13–27 persuades me to accept, at least as a working hypothesis, the dependence of John’s passion account on Mark’s. Hence my third major presupposition about the intracanonical gospels is that Jolin is dependent on the synoptic gospels at least and especially for the passion narratives (here I agree with Maurits Sabbe [1991: 355–388, 467–513; 1994; 1995]) and for the resurrection narratives (with Frans Neirynck [1982: 181–488; 1991: 571–616]). Once again, if that is wrong, everything I build on it is invalid. And again, the same goes for the opposite position. PRESUPPOSITIONS ABOUT THE EXTRACANONICAL GOSPELS Exactly the same principles used in determining relations between the intracanonical gospels are used for those between intracanonical and extracanonical gospels. For direct literary dependence: in this situation, genetic relationship is established by finding specific stylistic traits of one gospel within another gospel and using redactional confirmation to explain why that latter version used the former as it did. In the absence of such traits giving evidence of direct literary dependence in either direction, independence may be hypothetically proposed. For indirect literary dependence: in this situation, where no specific stylistic traits of one gospel are present in another, redactional confirmation is the only method available to argue in either direction. Those principles will be exemplified in what follows, but an even more basic problem must first be faced. Fixing the Evidence? Why is it necessary to make a distinction here between intracanonical and extracanonical gospels if exactly the same principles establish dependence or independence among them all? Go back and read the epigraph to this section, a passage from Luke Johnson’s book The Real Jesus , with its accusations that my method is “fixed”; that I have given an early date and independent status to “virtually all apocryphal materials” and a correspondingly late date and dependent status to “virtually all intracanonical materials”; and that my only arguments are citations from “like-minded colleagues.” Something clearly happens to collegial courtesy, scholarly integrity, and academic accuracy when extracanonical gospels enter the debate. But, since principles and not just polemics are concerned in that indictment, let me use it to review my methodology. First, it is very, very serious to charge that another scholar has “fixed” his research methodology. Our only integrity as scholars is not to be right and correct but to be honest and public. “Fixing” data entails a deliberate intention to deceive. When one scholar accuses another of fixing the evidence, somebody has lost his integrity. Others will have to decide whether it is Johnson or myself.
The author of the Cross Gospel , or of any other gospel, did not say this: I know that the Roman authorities crucified Jesus, but I will blame the Jewish authorities; I will play the Roman card; I will write propaganda that I know is inaccurate. If they had done that, the resulting text would have been a lie. No matter how weak the gospel writers were, or how threatened their existence, such a tactic would not have been apologetics and polemics; it would have been libel and lie. That intuition helped me understand how the Cross Gospel was composed. But it helped me understand as well the continuing nature of the passion-resurrection tradition. That tradition, in my view, developed from the Cross Gospel basis and is a single genetic stream of transmission. No gospel written after the war of 66–73/74 C.E. is willing to leave the Romans totally guiltless, as did the Cross Gospel . No matter what Pilate thinks, he supplies the soldiers for the crucifixion. Mark blames the “crowd” in Jerusalem, Matthew blames “all the people,” and John blames “the Jews.” As Christian Jewish communities are steadily more alienated from their fellow Jews, so the “enemies” of Jesus expand to fit those new situations. By the time of John in the 90s, those enemies are “the Jews”—that is, all those other Jews except us few right ones. If we had understood gospel, we would have understood that. If we had understood gospel, we would have expected that. It is, unfortunately, tragically late to be learning it. CHAPTER 26EXEGESIS, LAMENT, AND BIOGRAPHYCould one suggest that women, whose involvement with the dead body is an intimate one (in most societies it is women who tend the dying, wash the corpse and dress it) need no heightened retelling of the stories of death to comprehend its reality or to quicken their emotional response? They move from experience to art, from tears to ideas. Men, whose experience of death is, in many traditional societies, less physical, in that they do not tend the dying or handle the corpse except when they kill one another (a situation which demands a particular relationship to the dead-as-enemy) must re-read death in art or play in order to experience it. The movement, in this case, might be seen as the obverse of women’s lamentation, one that progresses from ideas to tears. Gail Holst-Warhaft, Dangerous Voices , p. 22 Here is the argument so far. There is a consecutive and canonically independent passion-resurrection story, the Cross Gospel , within the Gospel of Peter . Its present form derives from the Jerusalem community in the early 40s. Its central theme of Jewish authorities versus Jewish people concerning Jesus’ passion-resurrection is the story presumed by the heirs of that Jerusalem community about a century later in the Ascents of James from Recognitions 1.41–43.
In the light of the criticism above, the reply to this question can only be a conditional but resounding yes. Even if in the final analysis the slogan of ‘Jesus the Cynic’ should turn out to be a contradiction in terms, many of Jesus’ sayings would appear in a different light, as would those of Cynics, and historians and exegetes would learn an immense amount in the process” (474–475). On the other hand, from Paul Rhodes Eddy: “The evidence that can be marshaled against the Cynic thesis warrants the conclusion that, with regard to the ongoing search for a viable model for the reconstruction of the historical Jesus, one must look elsewhere” (469). I make six points to clarify my own position. First, if Cynicism had never existed, nothing would change in my reconstruction of Jesus as a Mediterranean Jewish peasant. I use the doctrine of Cynicism comparatively but do not need it constitutively. I have never considered a Cynic Jesus as some sort of replacement for a Jewish Jesus; indeed, I find that idea little short of absurd. My reply to the Cynic hypothesis was and is: if you want to imagine a Cynic Jesus, go ahead, but you better imagine a Jewish peasant Cynic (1991:421–422). Some, to my chagrin, took that as postulating an ancient social type rather than a modern scholarly construct, took it as a literal description rather than as a paradoxical challenge. Second, whether Galilean urbanization brought Cynicism to Sepphoris and/or whether Jesus actually knew about Cynicism are questions beyond proof or disproof. Not only has no direct or genetic link between Cynicism and Jesus been either proved or disproved, I am not sure how it could be verified or negated without new evidence. Third, it is on the level of our understanding— on the level, that is, of comparative religion— that I find Cynicism very illuminating for the historical Jesus. Fourth, I find the general comparison of Cynicism’s and Jesus’ anti-materialist and anti-imperialist criticism to be helpful. I would use the term ethical eschatology to describe both those programs and that comparison helps me to distinguish them from ascetical or apocalyptic eschatology . I am utterly aware that each arises from different traditions about very different gods and that, if they did not, equation rather than comparison would be demanded. Fifth, it is especially in the symbolic catecheses of their dress codes that comparison is most instructive. I find this very illuminating, even if Jesus knew nothing whatsoever about Cynicism, and I return to it immediately below. Finally, granted that a listening Jewish peasant would have considered Jesus some sort of a prophet, what would a listening pagan peasant have considered him to be? “He’s a prophet, like our Elijah!” “He’s a cynic, like our Diogenes!” Who’s Elijah?” “Who’s Diogenes?” If, in other words, pagans heard Jesus speaking about the kingdom of God, how would they have understood his program? Some sort of Cynicism, surely. Dress and Equipment .
From Augustine: A New Biography (2005)
From the moment of Augustine’s conversion to ostentatious Christianity, however, his tendency to curry favor upwards was if anything intensified, and that might be mildly surprising. The books he wrote in the winter of 386–87, while he was bracing himself for baptism and what it might lead to, were each equipped with dedicatory letters to gentlemen of higher rank than himself, potential patrons on some level or another. He embraced humility in good company. From that time onward, Augustine never let up. His targets may have shifted, but the fusillade of approaches to those who stood above him and who could help him never wavered. Some of the targets were a little shady. The immensely wealthy lady Proba, for example, one of the highest placed Christian grandes dames in Italy, accepted at least two letters from Augustine,156 and he tried to teach her how to pray. But one historian tells us the shabby story of her advance through rapine to riches, and another of a haughty selfishness that aggravated the miseries of others at Rome at the time of the city’s sack in 410.157 When Proba’s granddaughter, Demetrias, became the most celebrated young woman to “take the veil” in Augustine’s time, Augustine wrote again to Proba and Juliana (Demetrias’s mother and Proba’s daughter) to congratulate them,158 as did other ascetics, competing for the attention of the powerful. One of Augustine’s competitors was the same Pelagius who would come to haunt him later. As time passed, the great ones he sought out (as we shall see) were of a different sort. As one generalissimo succeeded another at the imperial court, Augustine addressed the most recent with a direct request for support in a lawsuit between bishops.159 In the late 410s, concern for winning the day in the doctrinal battles of Italy has him currying epistolary favor from two future popes,160 a great courtier who could intervene at Ravenna,161 and one particularly odious potentate in Gaul named Dardanus.162 Dardanus was a retired prefect and a man of great prestige. He had supported the emperor against a usurper named Constantine in Gaul, murdered another usurper with his own hands, and probably accepted Augustine’s suggestions on matters theological because they were directed in Gaul against men who had been Dardanus’s political opponents. Even Sidonius Apollinaris, a grand Christian gentleman of Gaul of the next generation, spoke ill of him, though Sidonius hardly ever spoke ill of anyone.163 But such men could be ostentatious Christians, and Dardanus had founded along with others in his family a city he called Theopolis (“Godville”) that some have seen as a clumsy attempt to take seriously the ideas of a “city of god” received somehow from Augustine. And we shall see how in his last years, Augustine was still currying favor with generals and governors, seeing in them the protection he and his flock now needed, sometimes from invaders, sometimes from other generals. AUGUSTINE THE CORRESPONDENT
From Martin Luther (2016)
Luther’s response was robust: he counselled the younger man to stick to his guns, and upbraided him for cravenly apologising to Philip of Hesse: ‘I hear you just caved in to Philip of Hesse, gave him too humble an answer, which I was sorry about. You should now publish an Introduction where you answer the Graf [i.e. Passavant], and include that you earlier humbly sought peace, but because they rage and do not want peace you are forced not to be humble but to fight for the matter according to justice, and you are sorry about your humility.’ Still, the misjudgement dogged Agricola for years, and he had to be excluded from the 1537 Schmal- kalden negotiations to try to reach a common front amongst evan- gelical theologians, because his presence might irritate Duke Ulrich, who by then had regained his duchy. At the Diet of Augsburg in 1530, Agricola had been one of the few chosen to attend as part of the Wittenberg delegation. He had preached before the Diet opened, castigating the sacramentarians for four days in front of hostile Augsburg congregations. But he also chafed at being stuck in a ‘mining town’ like Eisleben, and hankered after a wider stage for his theological gifts.# When Luther suggested in 1536 there might be an opening at Wittenberg for him in the theology faculty, Agricola jumped at the chance, setting off for Wittenberg before a position had even been arranged, and soon moved into Luther’s house with his wife and nine children.* So close were the two men that when Luther went to Schmalkalden for the negotiations, he entrusted his doctrine, pulpit, church, wife, children and house — his ‘Heimlich- keit’, or most intimate matters — to Agricola, licensing him to preach and lecture in Wittenberg in his place.” Ambition and proximity produced tensions. Free at last of provin- cial Eisleben, Agricola wanted to find his own theological voice, and in March 1537 he preached a sermon in front of some dignitaries at Zeitz in which he gave an unusual interpretation of Romans 1:18 where Paul described God’s retribution for the wickedness and godlessness of man. He argued that we come to knowledge of the law through the gospel, and that the law of the Old Testament, which had formerly revealed the wrath of God, had been replaced by the Cross of Christ. This conviction was rooted in Agricola’s own experience, because FRIENDS AND ENEMIES 371 ‘from my youth on I had an evil, timid and shocked heart and conscience, so that when I was young and went to school I ran to the monasteries and hermitages seeking comfort’.” The experience of overwhelming guilt and his liberation through the evangelical gospel was his touchstone, and he therefore described the Christian as under- going an emotional journey of faith: ‘the preaching of the death of Christ shocks and depresses the understanding and conscience of man; that is, it teaches repentance.
From House of Holes: A Book of Raunch (2011)
Then she opened her fingers to let that rinse effluent fall away. Again she made the C-cup with her left hand and let it fill, and again sloshed it vigorously. At last she knew that she had a truly clean, well-rinsed asscrack, ready to greet the day. She dressed in her new form-fitting ass jeans and went strutting outside. She walked down the Avenue of the Men Who Need to Suck on Twat Every Day and took a left on Upskirt Street. There she heard a voice calling, “Wait, stop, hello, wait!” Ruzty hurried up in his torn jeans, out of breath. His T-shirt was old and red, and it said “Phillies.” “I request to squeeze your ass,” he said, in his foreign voice. “You will notice that I have the ass-squeezer’s license.” “Do you now?” asked Henriette. “Good for you. What else do you have?” “Basically, that’s it,” said Ruzty. “Everybody is trying to keep going, but then they turn out to be broke. The size of what they owe is how rich they are. If they can borrow a billion dollars, that makes them rich. Really they have nothing. But never mind, because I have”—he pulled out a folded sheet of paper and patted it—“an ass-squeezer’s license, signed. This means I can walk up to a girl like you with a big, beautiful ass and tell her I want to squeeze it, and she has to let me.” “Let’s see the license,” said Henriette. Ruzty waved it at her. “Very well. Where?” “My hotel.” They went up to his suite at the Portalino Extended Stay Suites. “How do you want to squeeze it?” Henriette asked. “I want you up on the bed, as soon as possible.” Henriette took off her roomy denim ass pants and arranged herself bending forward on the bed like a person skiing down a slalom course. She felt his hands on her, squeezing their way along her backthighs and finding her lower backcheeks and massaging her deeply, with an interest in all her cores and centers. Then she felt his cock pushing strangely at the seams of her underwear. “No, now, Ruzty,” she said. “You have an ass-squeezer’s license, not a pussy-fucker’s license.” “Wait a second, yes, I do, I do, I just forgot to show it,” Ruzty said, rummaging in his pockets. He had a slightly desperate sound. He waved another folded piece of paper. “I’ve been saving it for this moment.” Henriette looked the paper over. “You just typed this yourself and printed it out, didn’t you?” Ruzty looked chagrined. “Yes.” “Is the ass-squeezer’s license forged as well? ” “Yes,” he said. “Daggett said he couldn’t give me a real one because there are too many. I was wrong, I know it now. I went outside the proper channels.” Henriette said, “Ruzty, you very bad boy.”
From Augustine: A New Biography (2005)
Vincentius had gone back to Cartennae and there become Rogatus’s successor. The argument he has with Augustine is a predictable one, but Augustine quotes Vincentius’s recollections of the young Augustine himself: “When I knew you, you were far from being a Christian. Given over to your literary studies, you were steadfast in your pursuit of good behavior and high principles. As I hear it, when you converted to the Christian faith later on, you gave yourself over to lawyer-style polemics.”84 This Augustine was certainly no libidinous hell-raiser in youth, on the one hand, but also no serene and pious bishop in middle age. By the time rumor brings Augustine’s name to Vincentius, Augustine the self-righteous troublemaker is the one he hears of. The echoes of Augustine’s words that we hear in the words of Secundinus and Vincentius take us back to Augustine’s early life by a path other than that of the Confessions. Once baptized by Ambrose, Augustine chose to privilege one of his lives, the one lived as a baptized member of the Caecilianist church in Africa, as the authentic religious experience of his life, but not all who knew him shared that view. Manicheism was with him early and late, and was the one truly impassioned religious experience of his life. He was the sort of person who has a great love affair when young, sees that it just won’t work, breaks it off, then settles down in a far more sober and sensible marriage. What he says and does for the rest of his life will be marked by firm allegiance and commitment to the late-blooming relationship, but the mark of the first never goes away, and some who knew him early will be unable to credit the marriage because they remember the passion.
From The Historical Jesus (2000)
documentation for what had really happened. For Strauss, the Gospels do not contain historical narratives but “myths,” i.e., history-like stories that evolved in early Christianity to relate the “truth” about who Jesus really was. These stories didn’t actually happen but nonetheless proclaim the Christian message. The book created a storm of protest in the theological and academic communities. As a result of his views, Strauss was relieved of his duties as a professor at Tübingen and from then on, had difficulty landing a regular teaching post. In subsequent editions of the book, Strauss retracted some of his more radical views about Jesus but later returned to them. Embittered by the controversies over his work, he continued to write in philosophy, theology, and early Christianity (as well as politics and biography) until his death in 1874. ©2000 The Teaching Company. 173 Bibliography Allison, Dale. Jesus of Nazareth: Millenarian Prophet . Minneapolis: Fortress, 1998. The most thorough recent attempt to show that Jesus was an apocalyptic prophet; the book is written at a scholarly level and deals with the issue of the criteria scholars have used to establish historically reliable tradition. Boyer, Paul. When Time Shall Be No More : Prophecy Belief in Modern American Culture . Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, 1992. A fascinating study of different religious leaders, writers, and sects in America that have maintained that the world was going to end in the near future. Brown, Raymond. The Birth of the Messiah: A Commentary on the Infancy Narratives in Matthew and Luke , 2nd ed. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1993. A massive and exhaustive (but highly popular) discussion of the accounts of Jesus’ birth in both Matthew and Luke; suitable for those who want to know everything about every detail of the passages. ⎯⎯⎯. The Death of the Messiah: From Gethsemane to the Grave , 2 vols. London: Doubleday, 1994. A detailed and thorough discussion of the accounts of Jesus’ last hours found in all four Gospels. Carter, Warren. What Are They Saying about Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount? New York: Paulist, 1994. The best introductory sketch of what scholars have said about the Sermon on the Mount from Matthew 5–7, Jesus’ best known set of teachings. Cartlidge, David R., and David L. Dungan, eds. Documents for the Study of the Gospels , 2nd ed. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1994. A valuable selection of ancient literary texts that portray “divine men” in ways that sound remarkably like the portrayals of Jesus in the New Testament. Includes portions of Philostratus’s Life of Apollonius . Charlesworth, James H., ed. The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, 2 vols. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1983, 1985. The most complete collection of non-canonical writings of early Judaism from before and around the time of the New Testament, with full and informative introductions. Included are a number of “apocalypses” from around the time of Jesus. ©2000 The Teaching Company. 174
Historical reconstruction must stand mute before such transcendental claims. They are beyond historical verification or falsification, and the proper reaction is to bracket them historically without either affirming or denying them. The other reaction is to contend that there has never been adequate empirical proof for such claims throughout past or present history and that the story, and others like it, should not be taken literally. This reaction also asserts certain physical consistencies for which exceptions would have to be publicly proved rather than privately asserted. Hold any decision between those two positions and read this second story. The conception of Octavius, Augustus-to-be, is recorded by the Roman historian Suetonius in his Lives of the Caesars , written during the first quarter of the second century. This divine conception took place over half a century before that of Jesus. As he prepares to narrate the emperor’s death, Suetonius pauses to record the omens that indicated his great destiny in birth and life as well as death. This is how his mother, Atia, conceived him (Rolfe 1.264–267): When Atia had come in the middle of the night to the solemn service of Apollo, she had her litter set down in the temple and fell asleep, while the rest of the matrons also slept. On a sudden a serpent glided up to her and shortly went away. When she awoke, she purified herself, as if after the embraces of her husband, and at once there appeared on her body a mark in colors like a serpent, and she could never get rid of it; so that presently she ceased ever to go to the public baths. In the tenth month after that Augustus was born and was therefore regarded as the son of Apollo. (The Deified Augustus 94.4) Augustus came from a miraculous conception by the divine and human conjunction of Apollo and Atia. How does the historian respond to that story? Are there any who take it literally or even bracket its transcendental claims as beyond historical judgment or empirical test? Classical historians, no matter how religious, do not usually do so. That divergence raises an ethical problem for me. Either all such divine conceptions, from Alexander to Augustus and from the Christ to the Buddha, should be accepted literally and miraculously or all of them should be accepted metaphorically and theologically. It is not morally acceptable to say directly and openly that our story is truth but yours is myth; ours is history but yours is lie. It is even less morally acceptable to say that indi rectly and covertly by manufacturing defensive or protective strategies that apply only to one’s own story. This, then, is my problem, and I repeat that it is an ethical one. Anti-Christian or direct rationalism says that certain things cannot (or, more wisely, do not) happen.
From Sometimes an Art: Nine Essays on History (2015)
The difficulty of recovering the context in this case, and of keeping it free from anachronistic distortions, is typical of the problems one faces at this level of historical interpretation. Such difficulties can to some extent, however, be overcome—by the amassment of detailed knowledge of the past; by the skill that can be developed in piecing documentary fragments together into strange but meaningful mosaics; by close attention to the losers (Butterfield’s misfires and blind alleys); and by the constant effort to imagine the distinctiveness of distant worlds. And there have been notable successes in recovering at least some of the subtlest, most interior experiences of people in the past, experiences that are strikingly different from our own. But to the extent that one succeeds in this kind of historical archaeology, one confronts consequences that raise difficult problems that have ignited bitter contention in contemporary politics. The first problematic consequence of succeeding in contextualizing history is essentially moral. To explain contextually is, implicitly at least, to excuse. One could explain, with reference to the context of the time, the logical reasons why the American Constitution did not eliminate slavery. But it seems to be moral obtuseness to say that the framers of the Constitution had good reasons for what they did. However understandable these reasons may have been, to try to explain them seems to be an attempt to excuse them, while what historians should be doing, according to some, is condemning them and focusing on the immorality of slavery and the Founders’ moral blinders. Jefferson was a liberal, imaginative, and sensitive man, and he sincerely loathed slavery; he called it “an abominable crime” and a blot on civilization. Then why did he not free his slaves? Consistent with the Revolution’s egalitarianism, there was a short-lived abolitionist movement in the 1780s; surely it should have been advanced and exploited by people like Jefferson. But it was not. And the seeming dilemma is not resolved by noting that though Jefferson’s generation did not rid the country of slavery they did a great deal to restrict it. They scheduled the slave trade for extinction and prohibited slavery itself in what would become the five states of the Old Northwest, while the northeastern states set in motion legal processes that would abolish it. Above all, the Revolution made of slavery a problem it had never been before. Before the Revolution, slavery was rarely seen as a problem; after the Revolution, there never was a time when slavery was not a problem.
Look first, however, at Luke 24:12, a verse omitted from some manuscripts but most likely originally present in that chapter: But Peter got up and ran to the tomb; stooping and looking in, he saw the linen cloths by themselves; then he went home, amazed at what had happened. Suppose, now, that you knew that piece of tradition and could not ignore it, but that you also wanted to exalt the Beloved Disciple over Peter. How could you both admit that tradition and then negate it at the same time? This is how, in John 20:3–10; note the four steps: Then Peter and the other disciple [the one whom Jesus loved] set out and went toward the tomb. (1) The two were running together, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. (2) He bent down to look in and saw the linen wrappings lying there, but he did not go in. (3) Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb. He saw the linen wrappings lying there, and the cloth that had been on Jesus’ head, not lying with the linen wrappings but rolled up in a place by itself. (4) Then the other disciple, who reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed ; for as yet they did not understand the scripture, that he must rise from the dead. Then the disciples returned to their homes. The Beloved Disciple reaches the tomb first and looks into the tomb first. Peter is allowed, however, in deference to tradition, to enter the tomb first. But only the beloved Disciple is said to believe. That takes care of Peter. Mary Magdalene is next; indeed, her denigration frames that of Peter. But read first this narrative in Matthew 28:8–10, just after the women leave the empty tomb on Easter Sunday: So they [Mary Magdalene and the other Mary] left the tomb quickly with fear and great joy, and ran to tell his disciples. Suddenly Jesus met them and said, “Greetings!” And they came to him, took hold of his feet, and worshiped him. Then Jesus said to them, “Do not be afraid; go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me.” Suppose, once again, that you knew this piece of tradition. And suppose that you wanted both to admit it and to suppress it at the same time. Understand, of course, that I am not imagining these as historical but as fictional units, as competing visualizations about priority and primacy. Here is what John 20:1–2 and 11–18 does with Mary: (1) Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the tomb.
From The City of God
97 Lecture 5 Transcript—The Problem of Suffering (Book 1) Edward Gibbon is the greatest proponent of this view, but it’s still very often a commonly accepted one. But there’s another view. On this view, the classical world is not just like modern Europe except without churches. It’s not bourgeois civilization. It’s a world of unbridled passion, divine enthusiasms, madness, great cruelty, and great achievement. There’s no simple way for modern people to reach around their Christian heritage and shake hands with Cicero or Marcus Aurelius. This is the view of Nietzsche, who was a classicist before he was a philosopher, and one who indicted the educators of his age for failing to grasp the psychological profundity of the classical world, and the way that they were trying to grab its flowers, its blossoms, without reaching down to seize its deep psychological roots. For Nietzsche, Christianity is not just an optional thing for us, a light cloak we can throw off and return to our classical origins. The centuries between us and Augustus and Cicero have made us into very different creatures altogether. There’s no going back; there’s no rebirth. There is only going forward in full cognizance of all that has made us. I personally hew more to the Nietzschean view of the ancient world than the Gibbonian one, particularly in this: The Romans were not like contemporary secularist thinkers, at least not entirely like that. They were deeply religious, deeply passionate, and they had a morality that was real, but much of which we would find terrifyingly inhuman. That word choice is telling, for in our bourgeois self-satisfaction we find it hard to imagine a way of life as radically different from our own as what these sources seem to think is true, and to still recognize that as a human way of life. The Roman playwright Terence is famously reputed to have said, “Humanus sum, nihil humanum a me alienum puto”; I am a human, and so nothing human is alien to me. Augustine, by the way, knew that line. But is it true? Do you want it to be true? For murderers are human. Sadists are human. Hitler was a human. Are there limits
From Lit: A Memoir (2009)
Dev peered in. Jonathan said, Mine is brie and kiwi fruit. Dev reached for it, and Jonathan cupped one hand around it. It has less sugar than yours. His next sentence was so remarkable, I noted it down in my journal: I first had this sandwich in Vienna.... Perhaps Evan’s flinch stemmed from the day Dev had elected to yank Jonathan’s mittens from his coat pocket, bolt up the stairs while Evan and Warren chased after him, and fling them into the toilet. Warren fished them out with a pencil and offered to launder them. When I got the ziploc bag from my husband, I tossed the mittens into the trash among the potato peelings. I just didn’t want to deal with them—or the whole starchy Cambridge milieu. So the mittens stop me dropping Dev off, or the puking. My head spends much of its day pumping out reasons for not doing what I should the way a magician draws long strings of scarves from a sleeve. Warren drops him now, an act that brings him endless praise. How great, the teachers say every day when I fetch Dev, that Warren drops him off! And isn’t it great that I pick him up? Then spend all day and night with him? I once asked. From their stunned expressions, I could guess that it wasn’t. Not so much.
From Augustine: A New Biography (2005)
Read in this way, the individual notes in the Reconsiderations are of quite variable interest. In some cases, more often those of his earlier books, he has corrections or amendments to make. He spends the most time and shows the thinnest skin concerning his Free Choice of the Will (De libero arbitrio voluntatis), inasmuch as Pelagius and others had quoted this work over the years in support of doctrines that Augustine would not now acknowledge.615 Though he says often, both in the Reconsiderations and elsewhere, that he believes that he has learned and progressed as he has grown older (“Whoever reads my books in the order they were written in will likely find out how much progress I have made with my writing”616), he is loath to admit that he was ever distinctly wrong on a point of substance. We can fairly describe his development by saying that the ideas of Free Choice of the Will were brought forth by an Augustine who had not yet settled on his distinctive reading of Paul, and thus on his ideas of grace and predestination. In the Reconsiderations, Augustine wants to make it seem as if the ideas that Pelagius is missing were simply irrelevant to the narrow topic of the early book. Few readers not already committed to finding Augustine in the right on every possible point have been persuaded by this. For the most part, however, the corrections and amendments made in the Retractations are of slight import, not of much more interest than the addenda et corrigenda slips that publishers sometimes drop into a badly printed volume. And so the book escapes modern attention. But it has exercised an invisibly powerful influence over our view of Augustine. First of all, by cataloguing and indexing the work of Augustine, even usually giving the incipit (or opening words) of each text, this book made it remarkably easy in the middle ages to know what Augustine had written, to identify books that could be found, and to know what books to look for that were not at hand. At or shortly after the time Augustine was working on the Reconsiderations, his friend and biographer Possidius compiled a sketchier index of Augustine’s works, one including sermons and letters. Together with the Reconsiderations, Possidius’s work made it easy for those who had heard of Augustine to find their way in a mass of material. The self-presentation that Augustine as writer had been careful to manage was thus perpetuated into later centuries with extraordinary success.
From Anxiety at Work: 8 Strategies to Help Teams Build Resilience, Handle Uncertainty, and Get Stuff Done
And two of the milestones were complete fails.” Verhun shared with his boss how dismayed he was with the team’s performance and his own failure as a leader. The conversation went as follows: Chairman: Did you think we were going to achieve all those goals? Verhun: Of course, we put them on paper and the team all agreed to them. Chairman: Darcy, if we had achieved all our goals, that would have been an indication that we weren’t dreaming big enough. Verhun: But two of the milestones were epic fails. They’ll never be achieved. Chairman: Did you learn something from them? Verhun: Yeah, a ton. Chairman: Okay, great. And I’m guessing we will apply the lessons we learned from any mistakes we made along the way? Verhun: Yes. Chairman: Awesome. Carry on. See you next quarter. Verhun says he’s told this story on many occasions at every level in his company. “It is such a great example of our ethos: We are going to try things, fine-tune as we learn, fix mistakes, and produce results together. We will never be perfect, but we will always strive for excellence,” he said. We think the wisdom this chairman imparted is a great story to share with all perfectionists. Ryan Westwood, cofounder and CEO of Simplus, told us, “It helps tremendously with perfectionism when leaders are open about their own anxieties. It puts people at ease and gives everyone permission to be human. We did a leadership training last week, and I told a story about how I screwed up in the way we structured management incentives in our latest acquisition. We failed to maximize the benefits of the team. I talked about how hard it was to navigate through it and how much it stressed me. It was almost like there was this collective sigh of relief by employees on the call. They were posting on the thread about how it was so nice to hear their CEO had messed up.” Another manager we interviewed about this issue shared a great message he reinforces in his firm. Roland Ligtenberg is the founder of Housecall Pro, an eight-year-old San Diego software company with about 150 employees. He has seen firsthand the effects of perfectionism on rising anxiety levels in his firm, so he began coaching his employees: “In our world, perfection is the enemy of done .”
From Sense and Sensibility (1811)
The whole country about them abounded in beautiful walks. The high downs which invited them from almost every window of the cottage to seek the exquisite enjoyment of air on their summits, were a happy alternative when the dirt of the valleys beneath shut up their superior beauties; and towards one of these hills did Marianne and Margaret one memorable morning direct their steps, attracted by the partial sunshine of a showery sky, and unable longer to bear the confinement which the settled rain of the two preceding days had occasioned. The weather was not tempting enough to draw the two others from their pencil and their book, in spite of Marianne’s declaration that the day would be lastingly fair, and that every threatening cloud would be drawn off from their hills; and the two girls set off together. They gaily ascended the downs, rejoicing in their own penetration at every glimpse of blue sky; and when they caught in their faces the animating gales of a high south-westerly wind, they pitied the fears which had prevented their mother and Elinor from sharing such delightful sensations. “Is there a felicity in the world,” said Marianne, “superior to this?—Margaret, we will walk here at least two hours.” Margaret agreed, and they pursued their way against the wind, resisting it with laughing delight for about twenty minutes longer, when suddenly the clouds united over their heads, and a driving rain set full in their face. Chagrined and surprised, they were obliged, though unwillingly, to turn back, for no shelter was nearer than their own house. One consolation however remained for them, to which the exigence of the moment gave more than usual propriety,—it was that of running with all possible speed down the steep side of the hill which led immediately to their garden gate. They set off. Marianne had at first the advantage, but a false step brought her suddenly to the ground; and Margaret, unable to stop herself to assist her, was involuntarily hurried along, and reached the bottom in safety. A gentleman carrying a gun, with two pointers playing round him, was passing up the hill and within a few yards of Marianne, when her accident happened. He put down his gun and ran to her assistance. She had raised herself from the ground, but her foot had been twisted in her fall, and she was scarcely able to stand. The gentleman offered his services; and perceiving that her modesty declined what her situation rendered necessary, took her up in his arms without farther delay, and carried her down the hill. Then passing through the garden, the gate of which had been left open by Margaret, he bore her directly into the house, whither Margaret was just arrived, and quitted not his hold till he had seated her in a chair in the parlour.
From Lit: A Memoir (2009)
12 Bent Bender “Well, if God doesn’t exist, who’s laughing at us?” —Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov One day Lecia rings me up. Tawdry, she says. An adjective meaning crude or trashy or otherwise unseemly, I say. Talk to me. Mother’s sleeping with Harold, she says, meaning Daddy’s pill-popping nurse, crashing of late in the spare room. Never happen, I say. That man has got to be gay. Happened, she says. They showed up drunk last night, talking about the hustle contest at Get Down Brown’s. Lecia lives two hours from our hometown, but her former secretary saw Mother and Harold necking. I wonder were they doing this with Daddy in the house! Who knows? Lecia says. Daddy’s so out of it, he may not have twigged to it anyway. If anything, he likes Harold better than Mother. Harold’s nicer, I say. Way nicer. And he used to work at the jail, Lecia says. I wonder if they practice safe sex. We both went quiet till I add, She needs to get an AIDS test. Tawdry, Lecia says. Tawdry, I say, and hang up. So vivid is Mother’s story of her final drunk with Harold—so painterly in its grotesque detail—that I take the liberty of recounting as if I were there, for a good story told often enough puts you in rooms never occupied. The way other families keep wedding videos or log dates in a Bible, mine stores in the genetic warehouse alcohol-fueled catastrophe. I’m the voyeur as Harold tries to zip Mother into her red sequined top, a close fit on her sixty-two-year-old frame. You need to spray some PAM on me, Mother says. Before the mirror, she sucks in her cheeks and rouges a terra-cotta stripe in the cheekbone’s shadow. He tugs down on the blouse hem and she feels her zipper pop midback. Whoa, she says. I can feel a breeze in here. She takes a sip of Harold’s banana daiquiri as he checks her out from behind. I’ll safety-pin it, he says. After draining the glass, she holds up the empty, saying, And do me. He opens the refrigerator, on which Mother has painted a bulbous hippolike old woman, nude in a floppy hat. Hippos are their theme animal, Mother and Harold’s. In the months since I’ve moved Daddy into the home, the old house has sprouted hippos all over. Money I’ve sent to help out has partly been used for the bloated, nappy furniture they laze on—also for redoing the bath, where Mother painted another cartoonlike mural of twin hippos, which I fear echoes the two of them nude together. Mother dials the phone while telling Harold to put some britches on. The silky polyester shirt he slides into has zigzag lightning bolts. Once the buttons are fastened, the front puckers. In our apartment in Cambridge, the phone squeals, and I holler to my husband, who’s typing in the next room, That’s her. Don’t answer it, he says. I know he’s right.