Fear
Fear is the body reading a threat as near — the breath shortens, the skin tightens, the attention collapses onto the single thing that might do harm. It arrives faster than thought and is rarely wrong about the fact of danger, only sometimes about its size. Vela reads fear as a primary emotion, distinct from the anxiety it shades into, and follows the writers who have written from inside it rather than about it from a safe distance.
Working definition · Threat-focused arousal—danger, loss, or harm feels proximate or plausible.
10570 passages · 1 Vela essay · in 1 cluster
Vela’s read on this emotion
Fear is one of the few emotions the body insists on before the mind has a vote, and that priority is the first thing the reading respects. Fear is not cowardice and not weakness; it is the oldest of the alarm systems, and the writers worth following have treated it as testimony rather than as something to be talked out of.
The reading is densest where fear has been lived under, not merely felt. Anne Frank's diary keeps fear as a daily condition — the specific dread of the footstep on the stair — held alongside the ordinary business of being fifteen. Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning reads fear inside the camps without flattening it into a lesson. The literature of illness and the body — the memoir written from inside a diagnosis — holds the particular fear of one's own body becoming the threat. The contemplative inheritance treats fear as a serious subject across centuries: the fear of the Lord in the Hebrew scriptures is closer to awe than to terror, and the distinction is one the reading keeps.
Fear is not the same as anxiety, dread, or terror. Fear has an object the body can point to; anxiety is fear without a fixed address, braced against what might come. Dread is fear stretched forward in time, waiting. Terror is fear past the point where action remains possible. The four are kin and the reading keeps them apart, because the difference is the difference between what the body can do and what it can only endure.
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An essay on how this word lives in language, in the tagged corpus, and in figurative art when curators pair passage with image — not a list of stages, not permission to feel.
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These attacks were probably put forward by pagans whose temples and sacrifices were economically damaged by Christian monotheism. The reversal of that social situation is, at least, the good result Pliny reports from his actions (Radice 1969:2.404–405). ’Tis certain at least that the temples, which had been almost deserted, begin now to be frequented; and the sacred festivals, after a long intermission, are again revived; while there is a general demand for sacrificial animals, which for some time past have met with but few purchasers. From hence it is easy to imagine what multitudes may be reclaimed from this error, if a door be left open to repentance. (Pliny, Letters 10.96) I cite in great detail the report he sent back to Trajan about that situation, as well as the imperial reply to his queries. It is an extraordinary interchange. In reading it, recognize that this is the moment when pagan Rome chose the official program of reaction that would eventually lead to Christian victory. Pliny’s actions developed over two stages. First, those Christians who had been denounced to him were brought before his tribunal (Radice 1969:2.401–403). I interrogated them whether they were Christians; if they confessed it I repeated the question twice again, adding the threat of capital punishment; if they still persevered, I ordered them to be executed. For whatever the nature of their creed might be, I could at least feel no doubt that contumacy and inflexible obstinacy deserved chastisement. There were others also possessed with the same infatuation, but being citizens of Rome, I directed them to be carried thither. (Pliny, Letters 10.96) Those first trials were probably of the more obvious leaders, more distinguished members, or more aggressive proponents of local Christianity. The impression is left that these all confessed and died as martyrs. And their accusers were apparently named and known individuals. But then something happened that moved the process to a second and more serious stage (Radice 1969:2.402–403). These accusations spread (as is usually the case) from the mere fact of the matter being investigated and several forms of the mischief came to light. A placard was put up, without any signature, accusing a large number of persons by name. Those who denied they were, or had ever been, Christians, who repeated after me an invocation to the Gods, and offered adoration, with wine and frankincense, to your image, which I had ordered to be brought for that purpose, together with those of the Gods, and who finally cursed Christ—none of which acts, it is said, those who are really Christians can be forced into performing—these I thought it proper to discharge. Others who were named by that informer at first confessed themselves Christians, and then denied it; true, they had been of that persuasion but they had quitted it, some three years, others many years, and a few as much as twenty-five years ago. They all worshipped your statue and the images of the Gods, and cursed Christ.
And it shows, above all, that the kingdom—be it of God, of the Father, or of the heavens—was solidly there in the tradition from the earliest evidence we have. (All those qualifications, by the way, indicate the same reality.) Kingdom eschatology did not arise in either the Q Gospel or the Gospel of Thomas . It was already there in the Common Sayings Tradition. We are, in other words, dealing with three divergent eschatologies of the kingdom of God. DISTINCTION AND COMBINATION Apocalyptic eschatology (or apocalypticism) negates this world by announcing that in the future, and usually the imminent future, God will act to restore justice in an unjust world. Whether the result will be earth in heaven or heaven on earth can remain quite vague and open. Whether the space-time universe of ordinary experience will continue or not can also remain vague and open. But two aspects are not negotiable if apocalypticism is intended. One aspect is that the primary event is an interventional act of God. Human actors may certainly be important in preparation , by their sufferings, in initiation , by their symbolic activities, or even in cooperation , by military action under angelic or divine control. All of those human details may be open for discussion, but what is not debatable is that some intervening act of overwhelming divine power is imagined and invoked. In plain language, we are waiting for God. The other aspect that is not negotiable is the total absence of evil and injustice after the apocalyptic consummation takes place. It will not be just a case of kinder, gentler injustice but of a perfectly just world. There will be no evil or evildoers in this postapocalyptic world. One could imagine an apocalyptic revelation of God such that all humans thereafter would freely and voluntarily live together in perfect justice, peace, and love. Willingly and without constraint. That is, after all, how theology has always explained human free will in an after-this-life heaven. But that is not the standard apocalyptic scenario for the unjust. There is all too often a transition from justice to revenge, a divine vengeance that results in human slaughter. When those two aspects are combined, apocalyptic eschatology almost inevitably presumes a violent God who establishes the justice of nonviolence through the injustice of violence. That may well be understandable in particular human circumstances. That may well be understandable when a genocide of them from above is invoked to prevent their genocide of us here below. But all too often, be it of pagans by Jews or of Jews by Christians, apocalypticism is perceived as a divine ethnic cleansing whose genocidal heart presumes a violent God of revenge rather than a nonviolent God of justice. Ascetical eschatology (or asceticism ) negates this world by withdrawing from normal human life in terms of food, sex, speech, dress, or occupation. It may be personal, as with hermits or anchorites, or communal, as with nuns and monks.
In any situation of oppression, especially in those oblique, indirect, and systemic ones where injustice wears a mask of normalcy or even of necessity, the only ones who are innocent or blessed are those squeezed out deliberately as human junk from the system’s own evil operations. A contemporary equivalent: only the homeless are innocent. That is a terrifying aphorism against society because, like the aphorisms against the family, it focuses not just on personal or individual abuse of power but on such abuse in its systemic or structural possibilities—and there, in contrast to the former level, none of our hands are innocent or our consciences particularly clear. If It Is a Girl, Cast It Out Another striking conjunction is that between infant children and divine Kingdom. Once again we can move easily from aphorism to dialogue as the tradition creates situations and settings for sayings it has retained in memory. And, once again, earliest oral memory would not have been in the form of exact syntactical arrangements recalling precisely what Jesus saw or said, but rather of a startling combination, children/Kingdom, which could then be articulated as needed in various forms and versions. Although there are four independent versions of that conjunction, I give only one, for the sake of brevity. From Mark 10:13–16: People were bringing little children to him in order that he might touch them; and the disciples spoke sternly to them. But when Jesus saw this, he was indignant and said to them, “Let the little children come to me; do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs. Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it .” And he took them up in his arms, laid his hands on them, and blessed them. What was, first of all, the immediate connotation of children or infants to the ancient Mediterranean as distinct from the modern American mind? Read this ancient papyrus letter, discovered around the turn of the century on the west bank of the Nile about 120 miles south of Cairo in the excavated rubbish dumps of ancient Oxyrhynchus, the modern El Bahnasa. The worker Hilarion writes to his wife, Alis, addressed in Egyptian fashion as sister, on 18 June in the year 1 B.C.E . From the Oxyrhynchus Papyri 4.744: Hilarion to his sister Alis many greetings, likewise to my lady Berous [his mother-in-law?] and to Apollonarion [their first and male child]. Know that we are even yet in Alexandria. Do not worry if they all come back [except me] and I remain in Alexandria. I urge and entreat you, be concerned about the child [Apollonarion] and if I should receive my wages soon, I will send them up to you. If by chance you bear a son, if it is a boy, let it be, if it is a girl, cast it out [to die].
4:11 And when they had set up the cross, they wrote upon it: This is the King of Israel. 4:12 And they laid down his garments before him and divided them among themselves and cast the lot upon them. 4:13 But one of the malefactors rebuked them, saying, “We have landed in suffering for the deeds of wickedness which we have committed, but this man, who has become the saviour of men, what wrong has he done you?” 4:14 And they were wroth with him and commanded that his legs should not be broken, so that he might die in torments. 5:15 Now it was midday and a darkness covered all Judaea. And they became anxious and uneasy lest the sun had already set, since he was still alive. [For] it stands written for them: the sun should not set on one that has been put to death. 5:16 And one of them said, “Give him to drink gall with vinegar.” And they mixed it and gave him to drink. 5:17 And they fulfilled all things and completed the measure of their sins on their head. 5:18 And many went about with lamps, since they supposed that it was night, [and] they stumbled. 5:19 And the Lord called out and cried, “My power, O power, you have forsaken me!” And having said this he was taken up. 5:20 And at the same hour the veil of the temple in Jerusalem was rent in two. 6:21 And then they drew the nails from the hands of the Lord and laid him on the earth. And the whole earth shook and there came a great fear. 6:22 Then the sun shone (again), and it was found to be the ninth hour. (Gospel of Peter 1:1–6:22) Two comments on that unit. First, it is exactly the story needed to explain how Jesus died and why his tomb needed guarding. The Romans have nothing at all to do with the condemnation or crucifixion. It is done under Herod’s command in 1:2 but by “the people” in 2:5b. After the miraculous death signs, however, there is a breach between “all the people” and the Jewish authorities in 8:28. That results in the latter’s fear that, if the disciples manage to revive Jesus’ body, people might “suppose that he is risen from the dead and do us harm” in 8:30. So the tomb is guarded, Roman and Jewish authorities see the actual resurrection, and the latter plead for a cover-up lest “they fall into the hands of the people of the Jews and be stoned” in 11:48. There may be, I repeat, another and now completely lost first part of that consecutive and independent source in Gospel of Peter 8:28–11:49, but the most economical solution is that it is Gospel of Peter 1:1–6:22. My second comment concerns that section in 2:3–5a italicized above. It is exactly the same redactional device seen earlier in 11:44 about whose function Brown and I agreed.
From Lit: A Memoir (2009)
The women’s room had the shocking dead-meat smell of a butcher shop and a mirror whose crack left it in the shape of Louisiana. And since January first was Daddy’s birthday, he’d joked that the party was for him. One after another, I’d danced with the men he’d worked on oil towers with and caught bass with, guys who’d built the garage studio for my mother one blistering summer. Two elementally nicknamed Red and Blue, men monosyllabic in every way. One named Buck, one Bubba, one Sweet. Not one didn’t have a union card in his wallet, and their faces were weathered as dried fruit. Your daddy’s so proud of you, how smart you are and your writing and all. The Texas two-step we did, the cotton-eyed Joe, swing dancing I could barely keep up with. At the end of the night, the ladies’ room sink was plugged up with puke, and two disputes had been taken outside—one over a pool game, one over Lord knows what. By the time Daddy grabbed my hand for the last dance, the floor had begun a slow tilt-a-whirl around us. His squinting bloodshot eyes stared over my shoulder as he glided me around to The Tennessee Waltz. We listed through the song. I don’t remember midnight. At the truck, I yelled myself hoarse trying to get his keys away from him. A passing cowboy said, Dang, Pete, give the girl your keys. And Daddy said, Mind your own business before I stomp a mud-hole in your ass. And I remember the fog we drove in, how it billowed up over the road from the bayou on either side till the road narrowed to smoke. The biker bars I’d been in, skinny-dipping drunk in a lake miles wide, hitchhiking: Never had I felt closer to death than with that old man feeling his drunk path on and off the road shoulder through that smoky miasma. The day I moved Daddy to the hospital, he grabs my arm as we cross the lawn. I’m carrying his piss jug again. The checks I sent home never paid down the guilt I tote today for having disappeared from the place he’s dying in, which is—in turn—a place dying in me. My life with Warren somehow excludes my daddy. The me Daddy knew doesn’t exist in Warren’s house, which is maybe why my husband didn’t come down on this mission—down being the operative word. Where I came from is a comedown. Daddy’s last upright public appearance was on the bar stool in the VFW, where one final shot of whiskey felled him the way German snipers had failed to. In an increasingly skeletal form, he kept breathing, though each week he’s sanded closer to the bone. But he’d been floating farther from me, starting when I’d left him—he’d left me? I never could decide—more than a decade before. The ambulance door seals me inside with him. Daddy’s good hand wipes his wet face then swats my hand away.
The earlier ones, in Josephus and Pseudo-Philo, date from the first century and are very important in proving that those expansions were already available before Matthew composed his infancy account. The later ones, such as the one in the Book of Remembrances (or Sefer ha-Zikronot ), an unedited medieval Hebrew manuscript in the Bodleian Library at Oxford, are more complete and allow fuller and more detailed comparisons with Matthew. Imagine, once again, a parallel drama but now in three rather than five acts. Here, however, those three acts have separate and subordinate scenes. The first act is the ruler’s plot . Moses does not just happen to be born after the massacre was decreed; rather, the massacre was decreed in order to kill him. Josephus, a priestly Jewish historian, who published the twenty-volume Jewish Antiquities , a history of his people, around 93 or 94 C.E ., adds in the following details when paraphrasing the Exodus account from the Bible: A further incident had the effect of stimulating the Egyptians yet more to exterminate our race. One of the sacred scribes—persons with considerable skill in accurately predicting the future—announced to the king that there would be born to the Israelites at that time one who would abase the sovereignty of the Egyptians and exalt the Israelites, were he reared to maturity, and would surpass all men in virtue and win everlasting renown. Alarmed thereat, the king, on this sage’s advice, ordered that every male child born to the Israelites should be destroyed by being cast into the river. It is, in other words, precisely to kill the predestined child that Pharaoh ordered the massacre of the male children. That account is developed over four specific scenes in the much later Book of Remembrances . [1 Sign .] Pharaoh dreamed that he was sitting on the throne of his kingdom. He looked up and saw an old man standing before him with a balance like those of a merchant in his hand. The old man grasped the scales and held them up before Pharaoh. Then he took all the elders of Egypt, her princes and her nobles and put them on one scale of the balance. After that he took a tender lamb and put it on the second scale and the lamb outweighed them all. Pharaoh wondered at this terrible vision, how the lamb outweighed them all and then Pharaoh awoke to find it was only a dream. [2 Fear .] Next morning Pharaoh arose and when he had summoned all his courtiers and narrated his dream they were extremely frightened. [3 Consultation .] Then one of the royal princes answered. “This can only mean that a great evil shall come on Egypt at the end of days.” “And what is that?” the king asked the eunuch. So the eunuch replied to the king. “A child will be born in Israel who will destroy all the land of Egypt.
That is possibly and plausibly our Caiaphas. Earlier, discussing overt peasant Jewish resistance to Roman imperialism before the First Roman-Jewish War broke out in 66 C.E ., we looked at apocalyptic prophets and messianic claimants . There were also several instances of massed protesters in that same period, large groups of ordinary people who gathered at Jerusalem or Caesarea to complain about some action or demand relief of some grievance. Josephus recounts two such incidents during Pilate’s governorship and Philo narrates one, in his Embassy to Gaius 199–305, but it is most likely a simple variant of Josephus’s first story. The first episode is that of the Military Standards , as told in the twin versions of War 2.169 and Antiquities 18.56. I quote the latter account: Now Pilate, the procurator of Judaea, when he brought his army from Caesarea and removed it to winter quarters in Jerusalem, took a bold step in subversion of the Jewish practices, by introducing into the city the busts [embossed medallions] of the emperor that were attached to the military standards, for our law forbids the making of images. It was for this reason that the previous procurators, when they entered the city, used standards that had no such ornaments. Pilate was the first to bring the images into Jerusalem and set them up, doing it without the knowledge of the people, for he entered at night. The ordinary people of Jerusalem went to Caesarea, gathering country reinforcements as they went, and implored Pilate to remove the offending emblems. He refused, and “they fell prostrate around his house and for five whole days and nights remained motionless in that position” (War 2.171). To break this sit-down strike, Pilate hid his soldiers in the stadium, had the demonstrators come there for an audience, and then threatened them with immediate death unless they submitted. When all immediately and simultaneously offered to accept martyrdom, Pilate was himself forced to submit rather than massacre so many. The second incident is that of the Temple Funds , again with twin versions in War 2.175–176 and Antiquities 18.60–62. Here is the former narrative. He provoked a fresh uproar by expending upon the construction of an aqueduct the sacred treasure known as Corbonas; the water was brought from a distance of 400 furlongs…. He, foreseeing the tumult, had interspersed among the crowd a troop of his soldiers, armed but disguised in civilian dress with orders not to use their swords, but to beat any rioters with cudgels. The logic of that tactic derives from Pilate’s previous experience. In the Military Standards incident he had suddenly opposed a Jewish crowd with armed soldiers and, confronted with their readiness for mass unresisting martyrdom, had been forced to back down. In the Temple Funds case he infiltrated the crowd with disguised soldiers, planning to stampede the crowd into violent action or headlong flight. Both events probably happened in relatively close proximity to one another, soon after Pilate first became governor.
The bad news is that trance’s content, the what of trance, is absolutely psychosocially conditioned and psychoculturally determined. But that could be, of course, either for or against that specific society or culture. And whether that against is good or bad is for destiny to decide and history to record. Trance is susceptible to a natural or a supernatural explanation, but it is also possible to overlay these explanations on top of one another—not just to discard one in favor of the other, but to let them interact with one another on the presumption that they are different interpretations of the same psychosomatic phenomenon . In either explanation, for example, there is a clear distinction between good and bad states, and what is hidden behind that polarity is, in every case, control or noncontrol—whether the phenomenon is under psychosocial control or is not. Consider the phenomenon of entranced speaking in tongues; it does not interrupt the sermons in Pentecostal churches and does not happen to people en route to or from the services. It happens only at certain marked times within the service. It is, in other words, under ritual control. Trance is, therefore, a perfectly natural human experience, but its control is a perfectly natural human necessity. Societies that have such processes do not need to apologize for themselves. Societies that have no such procedures may have to consider whether there is such a thing as unhealthy trance deprivation or pathological trance substitution within their borders. It may well be the absence rather than the presence of trance that is pathological. Legion and Swine Granted that uncontrollable trance may be considered negatively as an undesirable condition, and may be interpreted as demonic possession in certain cultures, why was there so much of it in the first-century Jewish homeland? It seems as if Jesus encountered demoniacs around every corner. Could there be a connection between colonial oppression and forms of mental illness easily interpreted as demonic possession? Ioan M. Lewis has argued forcibly for the close connection between possession and oppression, whether that subjugation be the sexual and familial one of women by men or the racial and imperial one of some people by other people. In that first case, “women’s possession cults are…thinly disguised protest movements directed against the dominant sex…. In its primary social function, peripheral possession thus emerges as an oblique aggressive strategy.” In the second, “those societies in which central possession cults persist are usually those composed of small, fluid, social units exposed to particularly exacting physical conditions, or conquered communities lying under the yoke of alien oppression.” Lewis calls such possession groups “protest cults” or “ritual rebellions,” and he describes them as using “oblique redressive strategies.”* But notice that he is talking of situations where the possessed are organized into cults that have both a personally therapeutic and a socially subversive role. An occupied country has, as it were, a multiple-personality disorder.
The sun was darkened and the stars were disturbed; the sea was shaken and the mountains moved, and the graves opened. The veil of the temple was split, as if lamenting the destruction hanging over the place. For when he suffered, this whole world suffered with him. Even the sun grew dark and the stars were moved, the sea was troubled, and the mountains loosened and the tombs were opened. The veil of the temple was torn as if in mourning for the coming desolation of the place. Nevertheless, although the whole world was moved, they themselves are still not yet moved to the consideration of such great things. Because of these things, all the people were afraid and were constrained to question them. But some, although all the people were moved in their minds, did not move themselves to this matter. The first half of that section about the cosmic signs is very similar in both translations. The second is quite different. The Latin has nothing at all about a split among the people. It is simply a matter of the “world” against “them.” The Syriac, however, has a clear opposition between “all the people” and “some” unidentified ones. The section about the Gentiles in B is an insertion. That is evident from the repetitive opening lines of the framing sections in A1 and A2 about Jesus’ sufferings and the Earth’s darkness. In A2 the text starts like A1 , but it continues with new content, as follows (Van Voorst 1989:58): Recognitions 1.42:3–4 (Latin) Recognitions 1. 42:3–4 (Syriac) In the meantime, after he had suffered, and darkness had overcome the world from the sixth hour to the night, when the sun returned things came back to normal. Wicked people once more went back to themselves and to their old customs, because their fear had ended. While he suffered, there was darkness from the sixth hour to the night. But when the sun appeared, and matters returned firmly as they were before, evil ones of the people returned to their ways. For some of them, after guarding the place with all diligence, called him a magician, whom they could not prevent from rising; others pretended that he was stolen. For some of them said about him who had suffered, and who was not found although they had guarded him, that he was a magician; thus they were not afraid to dare to lie. Notice that those texts are intelligible only if you know some sort of story presumed behind them. The cosmic sign, darkness, was already included among those in the first account, but now it is given a timespan. In both translations, the split is far less clear than in the Syriac of Recognitions 1.41:4 above. The Latin has “wicked people” (all the people?) but then specifies “some.” The Syriac is slightly better.
From Lit: A Memoir (2009)
I add, What kind of God wants me to get on my knees and supplicate myself like a coolie? Janice busts out with a cackling laugh, You don’t do it for God! You do it for yourself. All this is for you…the prayer, the meditation, even the service work. I do it for myself, too. I’m not that benevolent. How does getting on your knees do anything for you? I say. Janice says, It makes you the right size. You do it to teach yourself something. When my disease has ahold of me, it tells me my suffering is special or unique, but it’s the same as everybody’s. I kneel to put my body in that place, because otherwise, my mind can’t grasp it. Out of the kitchen holding a crockery mug comes a lady with cropped dark hair and eyes the color of fresh-dug earth. Liz has the frank, inquisitive gaze of a trained scientist, but softer in its aspect. The clubhouse/college-dorm feel of this place suggests a camaraderie lacking with my writer pals. Can we help her not drink? Deb asks, Liz. And it appears a sincere question. Absolutely, Liz says, pulling up a chair. We’re all about the not-drinking thing. From the TV in the living room, the mongoose is announcing his name in a chittering falsetto: Rikki-Tikki-Tavi! Deb explains that Liz had run a lab at MIT, adding, She had a hard time with the higher-power thing, too. I stayed sober a year, but I was white-knuckling it, Liz says. It was hell, and I drank again. Second time around, I started the prayer stuff. You get miserable enough, you’ll take suggestions. Liz envisions her higher power as a sober part of herself—some saner, more adult aspect of her own psyche. She says, It’s not so different than Freud’s superego—or healthy ego. I tell her maybe I could pray easier if it was a positive-thinking exercise. From the next room, Sam says, The smart money’s on the cobra. Wanna make a gentleman’s wager? Two’ll get you four for the mongoose, Joe says. Dumb money, Sam says, but I’ll take it. I’m thinking, This doesn’t seem like a cult or a trick, there’s something—I don’t know—realistic about these women. They don’t seem misty-eyed or drippy. So I tell them how shaky I am inside, afraid my marriage is a mistake, and how I can’t even read anymore. Liz says, Try lying in bed, picturing yourself held by two giant hands. Giant hands? Liz says, I know what you’re thinking. That’s idiotic. For some reason, my eyes well up, and I find myself saying to women I just met, I’m afraid I’m not a good mom. Dev runs up to me, announcing the victory of Rikki-Tikki-Tavi. While Sam is fishing bet money from his jeans, Joe says, Never mess with a mongoose. Sam drops quarters into Joe’s open palm next to a wadded-up dollar, adding—genially, it seems—Eff you, brother.
Herod decided therefore that it would be much better to strike first and be rid of him before his work led to an uprising, than to await for an upheaval, get involved in a difficult situation and see his mistake…. John, because of Herod’s suspicions, was brought in chains to Machaerus…and there put to death. Suddenly everything changes, but without any explanation. Who are those others , why are they so aroused , what is the content of those sermons , whither would John lead those who obeyed him in everything that they did , and how might it all lead to some form of sedition or even to an uprising? After reading that second section, one is not surprised that Antipas moved swiftly to eliminate John. The problem is how that second section can be reconciled with the first one; how did ritual piety get misinterpreted as potential revolt? The answer demands a detour through what the New Testament gospels say about John and then a return once more to Josephus. The Wilderness of Jordan Antipas’s execution of John cannot be explained by a simple appeal to Mark 6:17–29, even if one took that marvelous fiction as historical fact: Herod himself had sent men who arrested John, bound him, and put him in prison on account of Herodias, his brother Philip’s wife, because Herod had married her. For John had been telling Herod, “It is not lawful for you to have your brother’s wife.” And Herodias had a grudge against him, and wanted to kill him. But she could not, for Herod feared John, knowing that he was a righteous and holy man, and he protected him. When he heard him, he was greatly perplexed; and yet he liked to listen to him. But an opportunity came when Herod on his birthday gave a banquet for his courtiers and officers and for the leaders of Galilee. When his daughter Herodias came in and danced, she pleased Herod and his guests; and the king said to the girl, “Ask me for whatever you wish, and I will give it.” And he solemnly swore to her, “Whatever you ask me, I will give you, even half of my kingdom.” She went out and said to her mother, “What should I ask for?” She replied, “The head of John the baptizer.” Immediately she rushed back to the king and requested, “I want you to give me at once the head of John the Baptist on a platter.” The king was deeply grieved; yet out of regard for his oaths and for the guests, he did not want to refuse her. Immediately the king sent a soldier of the guard with orders to bring John’s head. He went and beheaded him in the prison, brought his head on a platter, and gave it to the girl. Then the girl gave it to her mother. When his disciples heard about it, they came and took his body, and laid it in a tomb.
But the nail in the right heel had struck a knot in the upright and its point had become bent, so that when the man was taken down, the nail, olive wood, and heel bone all remained fixed together in burial and discovery. Finally, there was no evidence that the man’s legs had been broken after crucifixion to speed his death by more instant asphyxiation. But why, with all those thousands of people crucified around Jerusalem in the first century alone, have we found only a single skeleton, and that, of course, preserved in an ossuary? I mentioned earlier, for instance, that the Syrian governor, Publius Quinctilius Varus, needed three legions as well as auxiliary troops to quell revolts, including three major messianic uprisings, in the Jewish homeland immediately after the death of Herod the Great in 4 B.C.E . When he arrived at Jerusalem, he crucified, according to Josephus’s twin accounts in War 2.75 and Antiquities 17.295, “two thousand” of the rebels. Mass crucifixions also framed the beginning and ending of the First Roman-Jewish War. In the early summer of 66 C.E . Florus, then Roman governor of the Jewish homeland, ordered his troops to attack inside the city itself, according to War 2.306–308: Many of the peaceable citizens were arrested and brought before Florus, who had them first scourged and then crucified. The total number of that day’s victims, including women and children, for even infancy received no quarter, amounted to about three thousand six hundred. The calamity was aggravated by the unprecedented character of the Romans’ cruelty. For Florus ventured that day to do what none had ever done before, namely, to scourge before his tribunal and nail to the cross men of equestrian rank, men who, if Jews by birth, were at least invested with that Roman dignity. Four years later, in the early summer of 70 C.E ., Titus’s army had completely encircled Jerusalem and the siege was being pressed toward its awful consummation, according to War 5.447–451: The majority [of those who issued from the encircled city in search of food] were citizens of the poorer class, who were deterred from deserting by fear for their families…. When caught, they were…scourged and subjected to torture of every description, before being killed, and then crucified opposite the walls…five hundred or sometimes more being captured daily…. The soldiers out of rage and hatred amused themselves by nailing their prisoners in different postures; and so great was their number, that space could not be found for the crosses nor crosses for the bodies. Even though Roman crucifixion was, as this chapter’s epigraph from Martin Hengel emphasizes, a death reserved primarily for the lower classes, it could be used, as it was by Florus, precisely to degrade and dishonor rebel members of the upper classes. What exactly made crucifixion so terrible? The three supreme Roman penalties were the cross, fire, and the beasts.
“Ananias,” Peter asked, “why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit and to keep back part of the proceeds of the land? While it remained unsold, did it not remain your own? And after it was sold, were not the proceeds at your disposal? How is it that you have contrived this deed in your heart? You did not lie to us but to God!” Now when Ananias heard these words, he fell down and died. And great fear seized all who heard of it. The young men came and wrapped up his body, then carried him out and buried him. After an interval of about three hours his wife came in, not knowing what had happened. Peter said to her, “Tell me whether you and your husband sold the land for such and such a price.” And she said, “Yes, that was the price.” Then Peter said to her, “How is it that you have agreed together to put the Spirit of the Lord to the test? Look, the feet of those who have buried your husband are at the door, and they will carry you out.” Immediately she fell down at his feet and died. When the young men came in they found her dead, so they carried her out and buried her beside her husband. And great fear seized the whole church and all who heard of these things. (Acts 4:32–5:11) How is that claim to be assessed? Is that an imaginary community that never existed as such? Is it unhistorical and dreamy idealism? Is it just Luke’s insistence on the peaceful and serene life of the earliest Jerusalem community? They had, he says, not only a common purpose and intention; they had common possessions as well. Does that description, however idealized, point to some serious attempt at radical commonality in the earliest Jerusalem Christian community? You could, on the one hand, point to that sanction in Qumran’s Rule of the Community seen above: “If one is found among them who has lied knowingly concerning goods, he shall be excluded from the pure food of the Many for a year and shall be sentenced to a quarter of his bread” (1QS 6:24–25). So maybe Ananias and Sapphira are fact? You could, on the other hand, point to Aristophanes’ comedy, also seen above. Praxagora intends to apply her new program by creating a common fund of “silver and land” into which all must contribute everything they own and out of which all will receive whatever they need. But what, her husband Blepyros asks, if somebody holds back not land, which would be difficult to hide, but “talents of silver and Darics of gold,” which would be much easier to conceal? Why do that, she responds, when all have whatever they want in any case? (lines 596–607). In any account of common-property initiation, that seems an obvious question: What if somebody cheats? So maybe Ananias and Sapphira are fiction? In a recent essay, S.
They had been saying to one another, “Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance to the tomb?” When they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had already been rolled back. As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man, dressed in a white robe, sitting on the right side; and they were alarmed. But he said to them, “Do not be alarmed; you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised; he is not here. Look, there is the place they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you.” So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid. (Mark 16:1–8) While the reaction in that third passage could be explained as numinous awe, the text offers a rather negative portrayal of the women. It is also self-contradictory. If they told nobody, how did Mark, unless “he” was one of them, know about it? But it all fits quite exactly as a conclusion to Mark’s gospel. Mark is severely and relentlessly critical of the Twelve in general, of Peter, James, and John in particular, and of Peter above all the others. That has been interpreted as Markan criticism of other Christian communities that are less emphatic about the suffering destiny of Jesus, less enthusiastic about the mission to the pagans, and more dependent on traditions about Peter, the Three, and the Twelve, for their theological viewpoints. It has also been interpreted as Markan consolation for those in his own community who have failed Jesus in recent persecutions attendant on the First Roman-Jewish War of 66–73/74 C.E. and who need to be told that, as with Peter, the Three, and the Twelve, failure, flight, and even denial are not hopeless. But, against that background, how could Mark end his gospel with apparitions to Peter, or the Inner Three, or the Twelve? He had to end his gospel very differently. Mark’s ending in 16:1–8 must be understood against that general background and within this specific foreground: (A1 ) Failure over crucifixion (named male disciples): Mark 10:32–42 (Gethsemane) (B2 ) Success over resurrection (unnamed female disciple): Mark 14:3–9 (anointing) (A2 ) Success over crucifixion (unnamed male disciple): Mark 15:39 (centurion) (B1 ) Failure over resurrection (named female disciples): Mark 16:1–8 (empty tomb) All of that structure is important to understand Mark’s purpose. Female and male companions of Jesus are important for Mark, and the inner three from each group are especially important for him. But they are important as models of failure—not of hopeless failure, but still of failure. That explains why Mark created the empty-tomb story just as he created the sleeping disciples in Gethsemane.
From Lit: A Memoir (2009)
I have an image of sipping green chartreuse from thimbled glasses, feeling it go down like race-car fuel. Are those people I knew? Then I’m driving on a flat tire that flaps and flaps in time with the wipers in the thunderstorm. The steering mechanism is pulling hard one way, and I struggle with it while the paltry defroster does little against the windshield’s inner ice. With my cold bare hand—where’d I leave my gloves?—I claw at the frost, and in a flash, the road before me splits unexpectedly. I press the brake, and the car yields to a spin. Just as I master the turn, the car stops twirling like a top and slides sideways. I see a concrete road divider sailing toward my door. In slow motion, it comes, and I feel like a corpse flipped from a catapult, flying at a castle battlement. Rain has slicked the street into black metal, and I know in one soul-destroying eye blink that my son will wake without a mother, for I’m at last about to smash into something more solid than I am. But I don’t. In some flash of molecular inversion, my car and I become ghost forms. The car passes skidding sideways right through the concrete. I sit unhurt, facing the wrong way on the river drive. I climb out in driving sleet just as a truck whooshes by, blowing its horn. I climb over the fence that edges the river, and I bend over to puke my guts up. Then I wait for the police to come arrest me. But they do not come and do not come. I move the car over onto the grass and start stumbling home. The pebbles in the wet asphalt look like scales on a snake’s back, and the road has a nasty tendency to squirm away just before I set my foot down, so a few times I stumble over a curb and sit my ass in wet grass. A mile or so on, I turn back and find my car still sitting saggily, unmolested. Next I know, I’m creaking into my suburban house as my husband pulls the door open from inside. He’s been up all night. You can get up with him and get him ready, he says. I’m sober enough by this time and gushing apologies. You should be sorry, he says. He heads up the stairs, turning back to add a sentence of a type and tone he never uses with me, and again I remember it so clearly because it was so out of character for him: You smell like a bum. Which is my moment of clarity. Not blinding flash nor drunk-tank revelation, not drinking out of a turkey’s innards, not setting myself afire, but the dull thunk of reality as my husband’s muscled calves carry him upstairs. A moment of deep self loathing makes not drinking seem your only conceivable option.
If it pleases the king let a royal statute be written here and promulgated throughout all the land of Egypt to kill every newborn male of the Hebrews so that this evil be averted from the land of Egypt.” [4 Massacre .] And the king did so and he sent to call the midwives of the Hebrews. [The story here reverts to Exodus 1:15.] That story, with its four successive scenes, is the model for Matthew’s account of Jesus’ birth in 2:1–18, although, of course, he has to include the pagan wise men, which have no parallel in the popular accounts of Moses’ birth. For Matthew, Jesus is both rejected by the Herodian authority and accepted by pagan wisdom. The wise pagans at the start of Jesus’ life look to the concluding admonition to “teach all nations” at the end, in Matthew 28:19. Here is his version, in summary format: [1 Sign .] In the time of King Herod, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem, asking, “Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews? For we observed his star at its rising, and have come to pay him homage.” [2 Fear .] When King Herod heard this, he was frightened, and all Jerusalem with him. [3 Consultation .] Calling together all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Messiah was to be born. They told him, “In Bethlehem of Judea; for so it has been written by the prophet.” [4 Massacre .] When Herod saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, he was infuriated, and he sent and killed all the children in and around Bethlehem who were two years old or under. The second act is the father’s decision . While Exodus 2:1–2 simply states that after the decree of massacre, “a man from the house of Levi went and took to wife a daughter of Levi [who] conceived and bore a son,” the popular versions greatly expand the story. The anonymous Book of Biblical Antiquities , erroneously attributed to the Jewish philosopher Philo, but dating in any case from soon after the fall of Jerusalem in 70 C.E ., expands that sparse information quite considerably. Then the elders of the people assembled the people with mourning and mourned and lamented saying…let us appoint us an ordinance, that no man come near his wife…for it is better to die childless, until we know what God will do. And Amram [father-to-be of Moses] answered and said…I will not abide by that which you ordain, but will go in and take my wife and beget sons, that we may be made many on the earth…. Now therefore I will go and take my wife, neither will I consent to the commandment of the king…. And the word which Amram had in his heart was pleasing to God….
One part of it must hate and despise the oppressor, but the other must envy and admire its superior power. And, once again, if body is to society as microcosm to macrocosm, certain individuals may experience exactly the same split within themselves. Take, then, the case of the Gerasene demoniac in Mark 5:1–17. It is independently attested only in Mark, and the story was almost certainly created long after Jesus’ life, maybe even in the context of the First Roman-Jewish War of 66 to 73 C.E . I use it here for two reasons. One is that, despite all the mention of exorcisms in the gospels, there are no examples of independently attested stories about demonic expulsions. The reason is not that they did not happen during the life of the historical Jesus but that they may have been too commonplace for oral memory to record in any save the most general descriptions. Another reason I use the Markan account is to show that, in the first-century mind, there was a connection between demonic possession and colonial oppression. They came to the other side of the sea, to the country of the Gerasenes. And when he had come out of the boat, there met him out of the tombs a man with an unclean spirit, who lived among the tombs; and no one could bind him any more, even with a chain; for he had often been bound with fetters and chains, but the chains he wrenched apart, and the fetters he broke in pieces; and no one had the strength to subdue him. Night and day among the tombs and on the mountains he was always crying out, and bruising himself with stones. And when he saw Jesus from afar, he ran and worshiped him; and crying out with a loud voice, he said, “What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I adjure you by God, do not torment me.” For he had said to him, “Come out of the man, you unclean spirit!” And Jesus asked him, “What is your name?” He replied, “My name is Legion; for we are many.” And he begged him eagerly not to send them out of the country. Now a great herd of swine was feeding there on the hillside; and they begged him, “Send us to the swine, let us enter them.” So he gave them leave. And the unclean spirits came out, and entered the swine; and the herd, numbering about two thousand, rushed down the steep bank into the sea, and were drowned in the sea. The herdsmen fled, and told it in the city and in the country. And people came to see what it was that had happened. And they came to Jesus, and saw the demoniac sitting there, clothed and in his right mind, the man who had had the legion; and they were afraid.
When the assembled crowds resisted his troops, Archelaus unleashed his full force against them and, according to War 2.13, the soldiers falling unexpectedly upon the various parties busy with their sacrifices slew about three thousand of them and dispersed the remainder among the neighboring hills. That incident reminds us of how explosive a situation Passover could be as crowds gathered in the Temple to celebrate, amid later imperial oppression, deliverance from an earlier one. With Jewish police within the Temple courts and Roman auxiliary troops overlooking them from the Antonia fortress to the north, force was poised to stop any trouble before it could even begin. But what did Jesus do to get himself crucified? It is clear that his words and deeds involved social even if not military revolution, but it was not Antipas in Galilee but Pilate in Jerusalem that crucified him. So what happened there, at that time and that place? Here are three separate incidents from the days immediately before his death. Let us see which best explains what happened. First, the Triumphal Entrance . In Mark 11:1–10 there appears the story of the triumphal—or, better, antitriumphal—entry of Jesus into Jerusalem on what is now called Palm Sunday. And they brought the colt to Jesus, and threw their garments on it; and he sat upon it. And many spread their garments on the road, and others spread leafy branches which they had cut from the fields. And those who went before and those who followed cried out, “Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Blessed is the kingdom of our father David that is coming! Hosanna in the highest.” Implicit behind that scene is a prophecy from the fourth or third century B.C.E . now included in Zechariah 9:9 that sharply contrasts Alexander the Great’s entrance into a conquered city with that of the messianic deliverer coming in the future to save God’s people: Lo, your king comes to you; triumphant and victorious is he, humble and riding on an ass, on a colt the foal of an ass . And what is left implicit in Mark is rendered explicit by the parallel texts in Matthew 21:4–5 and John 12:15, both of which cite Zechariah 9:9 as being fulfilled in Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem. An action such as that could certainly have provoked reaction from the authorities in a Passover situation. But its status of prophetic fulfillment, while not disproving that it could have occurred, renders it much too suspect for me to build on it as a historical event. Notice also that this incident is not based on general Davidic or Mosaic models known to every Jew but on a very precise verse in one single prophecy. It seems more what scribes look backward to find rather than what people look forward to see. I do not think, in other words, that it ever actually happened, except as later symbolic retrojection. Next, what about the Last Supper ?
The marvelous signs at the death of Jesus result in this reaction: Then the Jews and the elders and the priests, perceiving what great evil they had done to themselves, began to lament and to say, “Woe on our sins, the judgment and the end of Jerusalem is drawn nigh.” (Gospel of Peter 7:25) At this point all participants recognize that they have done something evil. But, as Act 2 continues, that acknowledgment begets a split between Jewish authorities and Jewish people . The authorities know they have done wrong, know that they will be punished; but, far from being repentant, they seek guards from Pilate for Jesus’ tomb lest the people harm them (in, as noted, a very awkward sentence): But the scribes and Pharisees and elders, being assembled together and hearing that all the people were murmuring and beating their breasts, saying, “If at his death these exceeding great signs have come to pass, behold how righteous he was!”—The elders were afraid and came to Pilate, entreating him and saying, “Give us soldiers that we may watch his sepulchre for three days, lest his disciples come and steal him away and the people suppose that he is risen from the dead, and do us harm.” (Gospel of Peter 8:28–30) Notice, by the way, the logic of their position. Why “for three days”? I agree with Brown’s interpretation: “In the GPet storyline the wish to safeguard the burial place ‘for three days’ (8:30) need imply only that after such a period the imposter would surely be dead” (1994:1309 note 55). Recall this different version: The chief priests and the Pharisees gathered before Pilate and said, “Sir, we remember what that impostor said while he was still alive, ‘After three days I will rise again.’ Therefore command the tomb to be made secure until the third day; otherwise his disciples may go and steal him away, and tell the people, ‘He has been raised from the dead,’ and the last deception would be worse than the first.” (Matthew 27:62b–64) Only in Matthean redaction at Matthew 12:38–40 have the authorities heard Jesus’ three-day resurrection prophecy—a development that allows a quite different logic. There a three-day watch is necessary lest the disciples steal the corpse and “tell the people” a lie about resurrection. In Gospel of Peter 8:30 the problem is quite different. Only after three days—that is, on the fourth day, as with Lazarus in John 11:17—is someone surely and certainly dead. Guards are needed until that point of possible resuscitation is securely past. If the disciples were to resuscitate Jesus (or so it goes in the minds of the authorities), the people, in their present state of mind, might assume resurrection. They would not even need to be told by the disciples! Because of the repenting people, then, the Jewish authorities enlist Roman help in guarding the tomb. A crucial distinction is now established between Jewish authorities and Jewish people , and this distinction reaches a climax in Act 3.
From Lit: A Memoir (2009)
Then I’m driving on a flat tire that flaps and flaps in time with the wipers in the thunderstorm. The steering mechanism is pulling hard one way, and I struggle with it while the paltry defroster does little against the windshield’s inner ice. With my cold bare hand—where’d I leave my gloves?—I claw at the frost, and in a flash, the road before me splits unexpectedly. I press the brake, and the car yields to a spin. Just as I master the turn, the car stops twirling like a top and slides sideways. I see a concrete road divider sailing toward my door. In slow motion, it comes, and I feel like a corpse flipped from a catapult, flying at a castle battlement. Rain has slicked the street into black metal, and I know in one soul-destroying eye blink that my son will wake without a mother, for I’m at last about to smash into something more solid than I am. But I don’t. In some flash of molecular inversion, my car and I become ghost forms. The car passes skidding sideways right through the concrete. I sit unhurt, facing the wrong way on the river drive. I climb out in driving sleet just as a truck whooshes by, blowing its horn. I climb over the fence that edges the river, and I bend over to puke my guts up. Then I wait for the police to come arrest me. But they do not come and do not come. I move the car over onto the grass and start stumbling home. The pebbles in the wet asphalt look like scales on a snake’s back, and the road has a nasty tendency to squirm away just before I set my foot down, so a few times I stumble over a curb and sit my ass in wet grass. A mile or so on, I turn back and find my car still sitting saggily, unmolested. Next I know, I’m creaking into my suburban house as my husband pulls the door open from inside. He’s been up all night. You can get up with him and get him ready, he says. I’m sober enough by this time and gushing apologies. You should be sorry, he says. He heads up the stairs, turning back to add a sentence of a type and tone he never uses with me, and again I remember it so clearly because it was so out of character for him: You smell like a bum. Which is my moment of clarity. Not blinding flash nor drunk-tank revelation, not drinking out of a turkey’s innards, not setting myself afire, but the dull thunk of reality as my husband’s muscled calves carry him upstairs.