Hope

Passages

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

Page 147 of 216 · 20 per page

• From Amplified Holy Bible (2015)

  16 Mahalalel lived eight hundred and thirty years after the birth of Jared and had other sons and daughters. 17 So Mahalalel lived eight hundred and ninety-five years, and he died. 18 When Jared was a hundred and sixty-two years old, he became the father of Enoch. 19 Jared lived eight hundred years after the birth of Enoch and had other sons and daughters. 20 So Jared lived nine hundred and sixty-two years, and he died. 21 When Enoch was sixty-five years old, he became the father of Methuselah. 22 Enoch walked [in habitual fellowship] with God three hundred years after the birth of Methuselah and had other sons and daughters. 23 So all the days of Enoch were three hundred and sixty-five years. 24 And [in reverent fear and obedience] Enoch walked with God; and he was not [found among men], because God took him [away to be home with Him]. [Heb 11:5 ] 25 When Methuselah was a hundred and eighty-seven years old, he became the father of Lamech. 26 Methuselah lived seven hundred and eighty-two years after the birth of Lamech and had other sons and daughters. 27 So Methuselah lived nine hundred and sixty-nine years, and he died. 28 When Lamech was a hundred and eighty-two years old, he became the father of a son. 29 He named him Noah, saying, “This one shall bring us rest and comfort from our work and from the [dreadful] toil of our hands because of the ground which the LORD cursed.” 30 Lamech lived five hundred and ninety-five years after the birth of Noah and had other sons and daughters. 31 So all the days of Lamech were seven hundred and seventy-seven years, and he died. 32 After Noah was five hundred years old, he became the father of Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Genesis 6 The Corruption of Mankind 1 N OW IT happened, when men began to multiply on the face of the land, and daughters were born to them, 2 that the a sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful and desirable; and they took wives for themselves, whomever they chose and desired. 3 Then the LORD said, “My Spirit shall not strive and remain with man forever, because he is indeed flesh [sinful, corrupt—given over to sensual appetites]; nevertheless his days shall yet be b a hundred and twenty years.” 4 There were Nephilim (men of stature, notorious men) on the earth in those days—and also afterward—when the sons of God lived with the daughters of men, and they gave birth to their children . These were the mighty men who were of old, men of renown (great reputation, fame). [Num 13:33 ] 5 The LORD saw that the wickedness (depravity) of man was great on the earth, and that every imagination or intent of the thoughts of his heart were only evil continually.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  ‘ You're really too good for me,’ he had told her; ‘ and out there you could live considerably cheaper. For one thing the ex- change would be in your favour. I’ll write to the head of the Con- servatoire this evening.’ That had been shortly after the Armistice, and now here they were together in Paris. As for Pat, she collected her moths and her beetles, and when fate was propitious an occasional woman. But fate was so seldom propitious to Pat — Arabella had put this down to the beetles. Poor THE WELL OF LONELINESS 409 Pat, having recently grown rather gloomy, had taken to quoting American history, speaking darkly of blood-tracks left on the snow by what she had christened: ‘ The miserable army.’ Then too she seemed haunted by General Custer, that gallant and very unfortunate hero. ‘ It’s Custer’s last ride, all the time,’ she would say. ‘ No good talking, the whole darned world’s out to scalp us! ’ As for Margaret Roland, she was never attracted to anyone young and whole-hearted and free — she was, in fact, a congenital poacher. While as for Wanda, her loves were so varied that no rule could be discovered by which to judge them. She loved wildly, without either chart or compass. A rudderless bark it was, Wanda’s emotion, beaten now this way now that by the gale, veering first to the normal, then to the abnormal; a thing of torn sails and stricken masts, that never came within sight of a harbour. 3 THEsE, then, were the people to whom Stephen turned at last in her fear of isolation for Mary; to her own kind she turned and was made very welcome, for no bond is more binding than that of affliction. But her vision stretched beyond to the day when happier folk would also accept her, and through her this girl for whose happiness she and she alone would have to answer; to the day when through sheer force of tireless endeavour she would have built that harbour of refuge for Mary. So now they were launched upon the stream that flows silent and deep through all great cities, gliding on between precipitous borders, away and away into no-man’s-land — the most desolate country in all creation. Yet when they got home they felt no mis- givings, even Stephen’s doubts had been drugged for the moment, since just at first this curious stream will possess the balm of the waters of Lethe. She said to Mary: ‘It was quite a good party; don’t you think so?’ 410 THE WELL OF LONELINESS And Mary answered naively: ‘I loved it because they were so nice to you. Brockett told me they think you’re the coming writer. He said you were Valérie Seymour’s lion; I was bursting with pride — it made me so happy!’ For answer, Stephen stooped down and kissed her. CHAPTER 45 I

• From The Decameron (1353)

  Accordingly, having learned the house and name of the lady whose daughter the count loved, she one day repaired privily thither in her pilgrim's habit and finding the mother and daughter in very poor case, saluted them and told the former that, an it pleased her, she would fain speak with her alone. The gentlewoman, rising, replied that she was ready to hearken to her and accordingly carried her into a chamber of hers, where they seated themselves and the countess began thus, 'Madam, meseemeth you are of the enemies of Fortune, even as I am; but, an you will, belike you may be able to relieve both yourself and me.' The lady answered that she desired nothing better than to relieve herself by any honest means; and the countess went on, 'Needs must you pledge me your faith, whereto an I commit myself and you deceive me, you will mar your own affairs and mine.' 'Tell me anything you will in all assurance,' replied the gentlewoman; 'for never shall you find yourself deceived of me.' Thereupon the countess, beginning with her first enamourment, recounted to her who she was and all that had betided her to that day after such a fashion that the gentlewoman, putting faith in her words and having, indeed, already in part heard her story from others, began to have compassion of her. The countess, having related her adventures, went on to say, 'You have now, amongst my other troubles, heard what are the two things which it behoveth me have, an I would have my husband, and to which I know none who can help me, save only yourself, if that be true which I hear, to wit, that the count my husband is passionately enamoured of your daughter.' 'Madam,' answered the gentlewoman, 'if the count love my daughter I know not; indeed he maketh a great show thereof. But, an it be so, what can I do in this that you desire?' 'Madam,' rejoined the countess, 'I will tell you; but first I will e'en show you what I purpose shall ensue thereof to you, an you serve me. I see your daughter fair and of age for a husband and according to what I have heard, meseemeth I understand the lack of good to marry her withal it is that causeth you keep her at home. Now I purpose, in requital of the service you shall do me, to give her forthright of mine own monies such a dowry as you yourself shall deem necessary to marry her honorably.'

• From Understanding the Old Testament (2019)

  Understanding the o ld testament 88 In the last verses of this book, hope is offered in the form of a somewhat forgotten character: King Jehoiachin, exiled back in 597 BCE. The book of 2 Kings 25:27–30 says that in his 36th year of exile: [The] King …of Babylon, in the year he became king, pardoned King Jehoiachin of Judah and released him from prison. He treated him with kindness and gave him a throne above those of other kings who were with him in Babylon. So Jehoiachin removed his prison garments, and for the rest of his life always ate at the king’s table. In other words, the royal family was still alive. There’s hope that the line of David will continue and perhaps Israel could return from exile. God’s promise to David that his dynasty will always rule over Jerusalem— seemingly thrown to the wind by the fall of the kingdom—may prove true, after all. Questions to Consider Y In the end, do the books of Kings look favorably upon Elijah? Y Was the conquest of Judah inevitable, or were its kings just foolish to rebel? Suggested Reading Heller, Characters of Elijah and Elisha and the Deuteronomic Evaluation of Prophecy. Heschel, The Prophets. BIBLICAL SHORT STORIES: RUTH AND ESTHER LECTURE 14 This lecture looks at a specific genre of books in the Old Testament: short stories. Before that, the lecture provides some historical background. An Exile A large portion of the population of Judah was deported to Babylon after the conquest of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon. The Jews remained in Babylon for roughly the next 50 years, until 539 BCE. (Many stayed much longer.) They thrived as a minority group in a larger population. Additionally, the Babylonian captivity saw the forging of the Jewish religion. 14 Understanding the o ld testament 90 The central feature of Israelite religion prior to the exile was sacrifice of animals in the temple in Jerusalem. No temple would be built in Babylon. Still, a place where Jews gather to hear the scriptures, pray, and sing is called a synagogue. It is in the Babylonian exile that the word synagogue first appears, mentioned in the book of Ezekiel. Unfortunately, no synagogues have ever been found in ancient Iraq from this period, so it is impossible to be certain about this topic. The Exile

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

  2. The Continuous (or Historical) system: The Apocalypse is a prophetic compend of church history and covers all Christian centuries to the final consummation. It speaks of things past, present, and future; some of its prophecies are fulfilled, some are now being fulfilled, and others await fulfillment in the yet unknown future. Here belong the great majority of orthodox Protestant commentators and polemics who apply the beast and the mystic Babylon and the mother of harlots drunken with the blood of saints to the church of Rome, either exclusively or chiefly. But they differ widely among themselves in chronology and the application of details. Luther, Bullinger, Collado, Pareus, Brightman, Mede, Robert Fleming, Whiston, Vitringa, Bengel, Isaac Newton, Bishop Newton, Faber, Woodhouse, Elliott, Birks, Gaussen, Auberlen, Hengstenberg, Alford, Wordsworth, Lee. 3. The Futurist system: The events of the Apocalypse from Rev. 4 to the close lie beyond the second advent of Christ. This scheme usually adopts a literal interpretation of Israel, the Temple, and the numbers (the 31 times, 42 months, 1260 days, 3 1/2 years). So Ribera (a Jesuit, 1592), Lacunza (another Jesuit, who wrote under the name of Ben-Ezra "On the coming of Messiah in glory and majesty," and taught the premillennial advent, the literal restoration of the ancient Zion, and the future apostasy of the clergy of the Roman church to the camp of Antichrist), S. R. Maitland, De Burgh, Todd, Isaac Williams, W. Kelly. Another important division of historical interpreters is into Post-Millennarians and Pre-Millennarians, according as the millennium predicted in Rev. 20 is regarded as part or future. Augustin committed the radical error of dating the millennium from the time of the Apocalypse or the beginning of the Christian era (although the seer mentioned it near the end of his book), and his view had great influence; hence the wide expectation of the end of the world at the close of the first millennium of the Christian church. Other post-millennarian interpreters date the millennium from the triumph of Christianity over paganism in Rome at the accession of Constantine the Great (311); still others (as Hengstenberg) from the conversion of the Germanic nations or the age of Charlemagne. All these calculations are refuted by events. The millennium of the Apocalypse must he in the future, and is still an article of hope.

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

  The first and most important of the Eighteen Articles of the treaty recognizes, for the first time in Europe, the principle of parity or legal equality of the Roman Catholic and Protestant Churches,—a principle which twenty-six years afterwards was recognized also in Germany (by the Augsburger Religionsfriede of 1555), but which was not finally settled there till after the bloody baptism of the Thirty Years’ War, in the Treaty of Westphalia (1648), against which the Pope of Rome still protests in vain. That article guarantees to the Reformed and Roman Catholic Cantons religious freedom in the form of mutual toleration, and to the common bailiwicks the right to decide by majority the question whether they would remain Catholics or become Protestants.264 The treaty also provided for the payment of the expenses of the war by the five cantons, and for an indemnity to the family of the martyred Kaiser. The abolition of the foreign pensions was not demanded, but recommended to the Roman Catholic Cantons. The alliance with Austria was broken. The document which contained the treasonable treaty was cut to pieces by Aebli in the presence of Zwingli and the army of Zürich.265 The Catholics returned to their homes discontented. The Zürichers had reason to be thankful; still more the Berners, who had triumphed with their policy of moderation. Zwingli wavered between hopes and fears for the future, but his trust was in God. He wrote (June 30) to Conrad Som, minister at Ulm: "We have brought peace with us, which for us, I hope, is quite honorable; for we did not go forth to shed blood.266 We have sent back our foes with a wet blanket. Their compact with Austria was cut to pieces before mine eyes in the camp by the Landammann of Glarus, June 26, at 11 A. M. ... God has shown again to the mighty ones that they cannot prevail against him, and that we may gain victory without a stroke if we hold to him."267 He gave vent to his conflicting feelings in a poem which he composed in the camp (during the peace negotiations), together with the music, and which became almost as popular in Switzerland as Luther’s contemporaneous, but more powerful and more famous "Ein feste Burg," is to this day in Germany. It breathes the same spirit of trust in God.268 "Do thou direct thy chariot,Lord, And guide it at thy will; Without thy aid our strength is vain, And useless all our skill. Look down upon thy saints brought low, And grant them victory o’er the foe. "Beloved Pastor, who hast saved Our souls from death and sin, Uplift thy voice, awake thy sheep That slumbering lie within Thy fold, and curb with thy right hand The rage of Satan’s furious band. "Send down thy peace, and banish strife, Let bitterness depart; Revive the spirit of the past In every Switzer’s heart: Then shalt thy church forever sing The praises of her heavenly King."269

• From Understanding the Old Testament (2019)

  Understanding the old testament 98 Themes of the Book of Amos There are two main themes to the book of Amos. He is often called the prophet of righteousness. The word meaning “righteousness” in Hebrew is tzedakah. In modern Hebrew, tzedakah means “charity.” However, in the Old Testament, tzedakah means “right covenant relationships.” It’s not about being righteous in the sense of not sinning. It means every Israelite is in the right covenant relationship with every other Israelite and with God. Amos fundamentally sees tzedakah as about economics. There are more words meaning “poor” in the book of Amos than anywhere else in the Bible. Amos’s basic thesis is this: Israel’s lack of tzedakah, its lack of right covenant relationship, is best seen in the treatment of the poor. For instance, if the judges are taking bribes, a rich person can get justice from an unjust judge. A poor person cannot. The book of Amos has a second theme, which can be framed in this way: There is no cultic security blanket. The existence of a cultic security blanket would mean that God will pay no attention to a person’s unjust deeds as long as the person continues the rituals of worship. Amos is perhaps the first prophet to emphasize that there is no cultic security blanket. Amos’s Style The prophets are oral proclaimers and are very skilled at rhetoric; they have a way of speaking poetically. Their speeches, when read in Hebrew, are filled with puns and rhythm, and they also know how to draw a crowd. In Amos 1:3, there is a repeated pattern that turns into a crowd chant: “Thus says the Lord for three transgressions of Damascus, and for four, I will not revoke it: because they thrashed Gilead with threshing boards of iron. I will send down fire upon Bit-Hazael.” Each denunciation of a different enemy begins for three transgressions and for four. Using this pattern, Amos first denounces Damascus. Israel, the northern kingdom, was perpetually at war with Damascus. The second enemy Amos denounces is the Philistines. Then, he goes after the Phoenicians, and then Edom. It seems that a crowd is continually growing around Amos, and he next denounces the Ammonites, Moab, and Judah.

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

  Paul’s personal experience embraced intense fanaticism for Judaism, and a more intense enthusiasm for Christianity. It was first an unavailing struggle of legalism towards human righteousness by works of the law, and then the apprehension of divine righteousness by faith in Christ. This dualism is reflected in his theology. The idea of righteousness or conformity to God’s holy will is the connecting link between the Jewish Saul and the Christian Paul. Law and works, was the motto of the self-righteous pupil of Moses; gospel and faith, the motto of the humble disciple of Jesus. He is the emancipator of the Christian consciousness from the oppressive bondage of legalism and bigotry, and the champion of freedom and catholicity. Paul’s gospel is emphatically the gospel of saving faith, the gospel of evangelical freedom, the gospel of universalism, centring in the person and work of Christ and conditioned by union with Christ. He determined to know nothing but Christ and him crucified; but this included all—it is the soul of his theology. The Christ who died is the Christ who was raised again and ever lives as Lord and Saviour, and was made unto us wisdom from God, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption.774 A dead Christ would be the grave of all our hopes, and the gospel of a dead Saviour a wretched delusion. "If Christ has not been raised then is our preaching vain, your faith also is vain."775 His death becomes available only through his resurrection. Paul puts the two facts together in the comprehensive statement: "Christ delivered up for our trespasses, and raised for our justification."776 He is a conditional universalist; he teaches the universal need of salvation, and the divine intention and provision for a universal salvation, but the actual salvation of each man depends upon his faith or personal acceptance and appropriation of Christ. His doctrinal system, then, turns on the great antithesis of sin and grace. Before Christ and out of Christ is the reign of sin and death; after Christ and in Christ is the reign of righteousness and life. We now proceed to an outline of the leading features of his theology as set forth in the order of the Epistle to the Romans, the most methodical and complete of his writings. Its central thought is: The Gospel of Christ, a power of God for the salvation of all men, Jew and Gentile.777

• From Unbought and Unbossed: Transgressive Black Women, Sexuality, and Representation (2014)

  In "The Civil Rights Movement: What Good Was It?" Alice Walker asserts that prior to the movement, she had "never seen [her] self and existed as a statistic exists, or as a phantom. In the white world [she] walked, less real to them than a shadow [...], wait[ing] to be called to life. And, by a miracle, [she] was called."36 Much like Walker, the struggle for civil rights "called" many black women into being, not only providing them with heightened ideological and sociopolitical consciousness, as well as political skills, but also empowering them with knowledge. Awareness of one's condition, and the metaphysical systems perpetuating that condition, is, in itself, life-giving and transformative. In part because of this new awareness, and in part because the term "sex" was included as another dimension in the Civil Rights Act of 1964, African American women began interrogating their position within the movement and society.37 Having worked exceedingly hard in the black rights struggles, including both the older civil rights and subsequent Black Power movements, black women remained largely overshadowed. With extensive focus on the recovery of black manhood, a major component of black cultural nationalism, it became increasingly difficult for black women to address issues affecting them within the movement, and they strongly desired to contest the simultaneity of oppressions-racism, patriarchy, sexism, heterosexism, and classism - confronting them as blacks and women. While the Black Nationalist movement, in which black women participated, refuted notions of black political and cultural inferiority, celebrating "blackness" publicly in radical form, its often unitary constructions of black identity privileged black manhood (and heterosexuality) in ways that relegated black women to the periphery. According to black nationalist tenets, and in tandem with nationalisms generally, black women's functions did not extend beyond biological and cultural nurturing. As problematically constructed within these discourses, "all Black women should be heterosexual" with "the primary utility ofblackwomen's sexuality" being that of "inspiring her Black man in the privacy of their home. Her own pleasure is rarely mentioned."38 Many black women contested these unitary, patriarchal, and heterosexist constructions of black female identity in their refusal to have their sexuality regulated through black men, marry, or "make babies for the revolution" and the black nation. Risking possible alienation from the community, these women asserted their agency in revolutionary ways, providing a space and transgressive models for black women who diverge from the nationalist script.

• From Unbought and Unbossed: Transgressive Black Women, Sexuality, and Representation (2014)

  While Kinsey's report was indubitably controversial because it exposed publicly an otherwise undisclosed dimension of America's sexual character, particularly as it revolves around constructions of white sexuality, it also provoked charges that it was inherently and methodologically biased. This was due, in part, to the fact that a significant portion of his subjects had formerly been incarcerated, were or had been prostitutes, and/or were self-selected and unashamed of challenging society's sexual codes. As such, his studies were critiqued as not being reflective of the general American population because of the limited demographics racially and otherwise, subject positions, and circumstances of his subject pool. While the Kinsey Institute did, at some point, conduct research on African Americans, finding disparities in the sexual conduct of the working class and the black middle class, the topics of black sexuality, the status of blacks, and the sexual revolution were receiving their own attention in the black community. Black writers, sociocultural and political activists, and black scholars and intellectuals initiated dialogues and studies on sexual diversity, same-sex desire, lesbianism, and black male homosexuality, as well as produced narratives to address these topics and rape, incest, molestation, interracial sex, and other sociosexual dynamics. In his 1970 "A Letter from Huey to the Revolutionary Brothers and Sisters about the Women's Liberation and Gay Liberation Movements," Huey Newton, while supreme commander of the Black Panther Party, not only offers support of the women's and gay liberation movements, which he recognizes as potential political allies; but, perhaps far more consequential, he articulates a politics of shared oppression from the established "norm"-humanizing the women's and gay liberation movements-while instructing his constituents to remain vigilant in not associating revolution with homophobic, heterosexist, or sexist postures. In speaking of gay liberation specifically, he posits, "We haven't said much about the homosexual at all and we must relate to the homosexual movement because it is a real movement"; and, "whatever the case is, we know that homosexuality is a fact that exists and we must understand it in its purest form; that is, a person should have the freedom to use his body whatever way he wants to."48 Moreover, he avers that, as the Black Panthers were in the process of developing a "revolutionary value system," they should eliminate from their vocabularies any offensive, pejorative language regarding gays and nongays alike. While its support of gay liberation is progressive within the context of its time, this philosophy did not engage a conspicuously racialized element regarding black sexual diversity within the Black Panther Party, nationalist movement, and society at large.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  Wherefore, after pondering many things in himself, he bethought himself thus: 'The place is far hence and none knoweth me there, an I can but make a show of being dumb, I shall for certain be received there.' Having fixed upon this device, he set out with an axe he had about his neck, without telling any whither he was bound, and betook himself, in the guise of a beggarman, to the convent, where being come, he entered in and as luck would have it, found the bailiff in the courtyard. Him he accosted with signs such as dumb folk use and made a show of asking food of him for the love of God and that in return he would, an it were needed, cleave wood for him. The bailiff willingly gave him to eat and after set before him divers logs that Nuto had not availed to cleave, but of all which Masetto, who was very strong, made a speedy despatch. By and by, the bailiff, having occasion to go to the coppice, carried him thither and put him to cutting faggots; after which, setting the ass before him, he gave him to understand by signs that he was to bring them home. This he did very well; wherefore the bailiff kept him there some days, so he might have him do certain things for which he had occasion. One day it chanced that the abbess saw him and asked the bailiff who he was. 'Madam,' answered he, 'this is a poor deaf and dumb man, who came hither the other day to ask an alms; so I took him in out of charity and have made him do sundry things of which we had need. If he knew how to till the hortyard and chose to abide with us, I believe we should get good service of him; for that we lack such an one and he is strong and we could make what we would of him; more by token that you would have no occasion to fear his playing the fool with yonder lasses of yours.' 'I' faith,' rejoined the abbess, 'thou sayst sooth. Learn if he knoweth how to till and study to keep him here; give him a pair of shoes and some old hood or other and make much of him, caress him, give him plenty to eat.' Which the bailiff promised to do.

• From Understanding the Old Testament (2019)

  leCtUre 14 | BiBli Cal short stories: rUth and esther 91 Although many of the festivals of the Jewish calendar would become impossible without the temple, it was certainly possible to keep the Sabbath. Kosher diet laws could be maintained and circumcision preserved. All of these things, in fact, became more important in exile, so the community could distinguish itself from its neighbors. The letters used for the Hebrew language for the past two millennia are Aramaic letters, adopted during the Babylonian exile. The lingua franca of the Babylonian empire, Aramaic, became the spoken language of the Jews as well. After the Exile In 539 BCE, the Persian king Cyrus conquered the Babylonian Empire. Part of Cyrus’s policy to ensure loyalty was to allow multiple peoples whom the Babylonians had exiled to return home, the Jews among them. However, the restored Jewish community in Judah was by no means independent, nor would it be for centuries. It was a province of the Persian Empire until the late 4th century BCE, when it became a province of Alexander the Great’s empire. Independence for the Jews was never an option. They were a small, powerless people. That’s important for understanding the literature we’re about to read. Postexilic Stories A new genre emerged in the postexilic period: short stories, or totally independent books that are single brief plots. Several of them are accepted as canonical scripture by Catholics and Eastern Orthodox Christians but not by Protestants or Jews. There is a predominance of women in this genre. Three of the books have women as the main character: Ruth, Esther, and Judith. They are women doubly at risk. Ruth is both a woman and a foreigner. Esther is a woman and an orphan. Judith is a woman and a widow. In the narratives of these three books, traditionally male values fail. Understanding the old testament 92 The Book of Ruth In Judaism’s ordering of the books of the Bible, the book of Ruth is placed at the very end with the other short stories. In the Christian Bible, the book of Ruth is earlier, between Judges and 1 Samuel because that’s the time setting for the narrative. Ruth 1:1 says, “In the days when the judges ruled.” That’s the narrative setting for this short story. In the story, the character Ruth is repeatedly referred to as “Ruth the Moabite.” There is no escaping her despised foreign identity. It’s not clear how other characters know she’s Moabite, but there is no way to avoid it regardless. The twists and turns of the story deliver a twofold message: On the one hand, when you are weak and traditional power is not available to you, then loyalty and your own wits can save you. The second message is about foreigners and perhaps about intermarriage. This is a book against segregation; it sees no value in purity of blood. Ruth in Boaz's Field, Julius schnorr von Carolsfeld, 1828

• From Understanding the Old Testament (2019)

  l e Ct Ure 13 | t he Boo Ks of Kings 87 The Assyrians imported foreigners into Israel, and they came to worship Yahweh while preserving some of their foreign religions. These are the people that come to be known as Samaritans. Assyria had also invaded the southern kingdom of Judah. The Assyrian leader Sennacherib campaigned against Judah’s King Hezekiah, and five different accounts in Assyrian records describe the invasion. Forty-six Judean cities were besieged, and many captives were taken. Assyrian sources say Sennacherib went home without conquering Jerusalem but that Hezekiah sent a huge tribute. Chapters 18 and 19 of 2 Kings say that God struck the besieging army dead, just as Isaiah had prophesied he would to defend Jerusalem. In fact, part of the explanation for the Assyrian retreat was the approach of an Egyptian army under the leadership of the ruling Ethiopian dynasty, a combined Egyptian-Ethiopian army that the Assyrians did not want to confront. However, Judah was left badly devastated. The Assyrian empire fell in 612, but Judah’s days were numbered. The Babylonian Empire rose in 605 under the king Nebuchadnezzar, and Judah falls under its sway in 2 Kings 24. Rebellion and Hope Judah was determined to be independent. Her last kings—the last kings of the house of David—rebelled against Babylon. In 2 Kings 24:10, 597 BCE, Jerusalem falls, and many people are taken captive to Babylon. According to 2 Kings, the king, Jehoiachin, was deported and provided for in Babylon, as Babylonian records confirm. The Babylonians put a new king in place. That king, Zedekiah, again foolishly revolts. As 2 Kings 25 recounts, the city of Jerusalem falls to Nebuchadnezzar in July of 586. The temple is demolished, and its goods are taken to Babylon. Zedekiah’s eyes are put out, and he’s taken in chains to Babylon, ending the reign of the house of David. The nobles, merchants, and officers of Judah go into exile in Babylon.

• From Unbought and Unbossed: Transgressive Black Women, Sexuality, and Representation (2014)

  During the 1970s, black general-interest periodicals like Ebony magazine featured articles on the topic of blacks and the sexual revolution. Essence magazine, for black women especially, produced a monthly column entitled "Your Sexual Health" to address questions on such topics as female orgasms, oral sex, sexual wellness, sexually transmitted diseases, libido, abortions, same-sex desire, and the questioning of sexual identity. On the academic front, the Black Scholar, one of the leading academic journals, published a special issue in 1978 entitled "Blacks and the Sexual Revolution." And, a 1971 issue of Ebony featured the comedian Dick Gregory and his large family on the cover with his story, "My Answer to Genocide," in the "Race" section. Apparently his answer was, in part, race augmentation vis-a-vis the reproductive capacities of (black) sexuality. [image file=img/img0002.jpg] FIGURE L1 Ebony, October 1971, with Dick Gregory and headliner "Blacks and the Sexual Revolution." (Courtesy of Johnson Publishing Company, LLC. All rights reserved.) Of equal or greater import, Gregory's story was paired interestingly with a feature article in a provocative special "Sex and Psychology" section, wherein Alvin Poussaint disseminated his findings on blacks and the sexual revolution. Foregrounding blacks, the sexual revolution, and liberation, Poussaint dispelled mythologies regarding black sexuality, while calling on black people to remain vigilant and "on guard against the mass media's outpouring of crude and degrading sexual stereotypes." Collapsing dichotomous constructions of black sexuality among class lines, he refuted the notion that the black middle class and bourgeoisie embraced more puritanical sexual views than their counterparts of a lower socioeconomic class. Reportedly, lesseducated black women had fewer instances of sexual relations before and during marriage than black middle-class women. "Let us keep in mind," he asserts, "our unique social heritage and be thankful that many blacks have retained a relaxed attitude toward sex," he asserts, while concomitantly expressing hope that the sexual revolution would liberate racialized sexual tension so that black people would cease to be the "scapegoats" upon which white sexual repression would be displaced 49 Poussaint's assertion might, at first, seem curious-as a directive eliciting gratitude and praise instantiated on the basis of "a unique" cultural practice and heritage. His emphasis on this racial/cultural sensibility, coupled with his notion of "relaxed" sociosexual dispositions among blacks, takes on greater magnitude-and indeed significance-when contextualized within the framework of the American cultural proclivity to pathologize black sexuality.

• From Vox (1992)

  Perhaps it’s presumptuous of me to say that we, you and I, click, but there is that possibility.” “Yes.” “In a way it’s like the radio. Do you know that I’ve never actually gone to a store and bought a record? That’s probably why I never learned to appreciate the fade-out, as you describe it, since on the radio, one song melts into the next. But it seems to me that you really need the feeling of radio luck in listening to pop music, since after all it’s about somebody meeting, out of all the zillions of people in the world, this one other nice person, or at least several adequate people. And so, if you buy the record, or the tape, then you control when you can hear it, when what you want is for it to be like luck, and like fate, and to zoom up and down the dial, looking for the song you want, hoping some station will play it—and the joy when it finally rotates around is so intense. You’re not hearing it, you’re overhearing it.” “On the other hand,” she said, “if you own the tape, you show you’ve got some self-knowledge: you know what you like, you know how to make yourself happy, you’re not just wandering in this welter of chance occurrences, passively hoping the disk jockey will come through. Maybe when you’re a little kid you find yourself out on a balcony in the sun and you think, My oh my, this feels unexpectedly nice. But later on you think, I know that I will feel a particular kind of pleasure if I walk out onto this balcony and sit in that chair, and I wish to experience that pleasure now.” “Well, right, and so the reason I called this line was that the pleasures I’d sought out weren’t doing it for me and there was this hope of luck, that I, that there would be a conversation …” “You never said what it was about the Disney Tinker Bell exactly, at the video store.” “Well, in the scene I saw, and this is the first time I’ve seen any of this particular Disney by the way, and you have to remember that I’m in an altered state there in the movie store, with my three orange movies and my men’s magazine in my briefcase, but in the scene, Tinker Bell zips around in a sprightly way, with lots of zings of the xylophone and little sparkly stars trailing her flight, and you think, right, typical fairy image, ho hum. And she’s tiny , she’s a tiny suburbanite, she’s about five inches tall. This insubstantial, magical, cutely Walt Disneyish woman. But then this thing happens. She pauses in mid-air, and she looks down at herself, and she’s got quite small breasts—” “I thought you didn’t like that word.” “You’re right, but sometimes it seems right.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  Before aught else she studied to see Bertrand and next, presenting herself before the king, she prayed him of his favour to show her his ailment. The king, seeing her a fair and engaging damsel, knew not how to deny her and showed her that which ailed him. Whenas she saw it, she was certified incontinent that she could heal it and accordingly said, 'My lord, an it please you, I hope in God to make you whole of this your infirmity in eight days' time, without annoy or fatigue on your part.' The king scoffed in himself at her words, saying, 'That which the best physicians in the world have availed not neither known to do, how shall a young woman know?' Accordingly, he thanked her for her good will and answered that he was resolved no more to follow the counsel of physicians. Whereupon quoth the damsel, 'My lord, you make light of my skill, for that I am young and a woman; but I would have you bear in mind that I medicine not of mine own science, but with the aid of God and the science of Master Gerard de Narbonne, who was my father and a famous physician whilst he lived.' The king, hearing this, said in himself, 'It may be this woman is sent me of God; why should I not make proof of her knowledge, since she saith she will, without annoy of mine, cure me in little time?' Accordingly, being resolved to essay her, he said, 'Damsel, and if you cure us not, after causing us break our resolution, what will you have ensue to you therefor?' 'My lord,' answered she, 'set a guard upon me and if I cure you not within eight days, let burn me alive; but, if I cure you, what reward shall I have?' Quoth the king, 'You seem as yet unhusbanded; if you do this, we will marry you well and worshipfully.' 'My lord,' replied the young lady, 'I am well pleased that you should marry me, but I will have a husband such as I shall ask of you, excepting always any one of your sons or of the royal house.' He readily promised her that which she sought, whereupon she began her cure and in brief, before the term limited, she brought him back to health.

• From Understanding the Old Testament (2019)

  leCtUre 16 | the ProPhet isaiah in three movements 103 The Second Movement Beginning in the 12th century CE, rabbis noted that something happens after Isaiah 39: The prophet Isaiah is no longer mentioned, and the entire context seems to have changed. Since 1775, biblical scholars have proposed that Isaiah chapters 40 to 55 are the work of an author later than Isaiah of Jerusalem, the product of the Babylonian exile in the 6th century BCE. The audience’s situation has changed because the enemy of the Jewish people is not Assyria. It is Babylon. The environment of the people has changed because they’re living in Babylon, not Jerusalem. Additionally, the vocabulary is different. The theology is different as well: The overall message of Isaiah 40 to 55 is comfort and a promise of restoration. One of the main themes of this section is that Israel’s redemption will come at the hands of Persia. The prophet is under no illusion that the Persian king Cyrus acknowledges God or believes Yahweh has granted him victory. But the Israelites are assured that behind the scenes, Cyrus’s conquest of Babylon is God’s doing. Another theme in this section of Isaiah is a literary character known as the suffering servant, who is presented in a series of so-called servant songs. The term was coined in the 1920s by the German scholar Bernhard Duhm, who identified the servant songs. In the New Testament, Christianity identified the suffering servant as Jesus. That’s because in Isaiah, God accepts the servant’s suffering and death as reparation, while, on the other hand, the frail, obedient servant of the Lord ends up elevated to an almost divine status. However, another reading is that the servant is Israel. Israel suffers. God accepts its suffering as reparation and extends God’s salvation to the Gentile nations. The Third Movement The third and final movement of the book of Isaiah is the section after chapter 55. Scholars have come to date this to a later period when the people of Israel—having returned from the exile in Babylon—resumed life as a free people in the land of their ancestors and rebuilt Jerusalem. The name Isaiah is not found in these chapters.

• From Unbought and Unbossed: Transgressive Black Women, Sexuality, and Representation (2014)

  This is, indeed, a provocative and consequential gesture, with new critical perspectives, approaches, and epistemologies, that interrogates black womanhood within intersectional, integrative, cross-cultural and other frameworks. We need more scholarship that examines, without ambiguity, ambivalence, or "fear of reprisals," the dynamics governing black womanhood and the politics of representation. We need work that transcends ideological and disciplinary boundaries and further engages race, gender, and sexuality. We need discourses that transcend silence, omission, and limitation. We need politics and practices that reflect the totality of our humanity, as well as our individual and collective experiences. We need models and paradigms that broaden our understandings of the functions and conventions governing our identities and representations of them. We need future projects, like this one and our First Lady's official White House photograph, that, simply put, transgress. [image file=img/page0217_0000.svg] Introduction 1. Chisholm, Unbought and Unbossed 19. 2. Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham coins the terminology "politics of silence" in reference to the strategic secrecy surrounding black women's sexuality-or what Darlene Clark Hine refers to as a "culture of dissemblance." For discussions, see Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent; and Hine, "Rape and the Inner Lives of Black Women in the Middle West." 3. For extensive discussions of the "cult of true womanhood," see Welter, "The Cult of True Womanhood, 1820-1860"; and Carby, Reconstructing Womanhood. Carby examines the cultural and political impact of the cult of true womanhood on representations of black women in abolitionist literature, as well as the ways in which these ideologies informed black women's display of propriety and respectability after the cult of true womanhood was no longer "the dominant ideological code." For scholarship on the gender politics of black nationalism, see Collins, "When Fighting Words Are Not Enough"; Lubiano's "Black Nationalism and Black Common Sense"; and J.H.Scott, "From Foreground to Margin." 4. Dubey, Signs and Cities 31. 5. D.Scott, Extravagant Abjection 18. 6. See Carby, Reconstructing Womanhood; Tate, Domestic Allegories of Political Desire; duCille, The Coupling Convention; Dubey, Black Women Novelists and the Nationalist Aesthetic; Jenkins, Private Lives, Proper Relations; and Thompson, Beyond the Black Lady. 7. My assertion here benefited from the intellectual insight of literary scholar and critic Cathy Schlund-Vials, who advanced my thinking regarding this interregnum period and multiculturalism. 8. While "mainstream" scholars theorizing about transgression typically ignore issues of race and the racialized dynamics, I do want to acknowledge that a great deal of work is treated by queer of color scholars, as well as theorists in race and sexuality and black queer studies, who do engage racialized blackness and transgression broadly construed. 9. Cohen, "Deviance as Resistance" 24.

• From Unbought and Unbossed: Transgressive Black Women, Sexuality, and Representation (2014)

  What black women's literature from the 1930s through 1950s illustrates is the changing ideological, political, and literary/ sociocultural milieu-the very shifting landscape of the politics and paradigms-governing "the politics of silence." While this era is distinct with its own stylistics, literary conventions, and thematic preoccupations, its engagement with and refusal to be silenced in the face of racial injustice, coupled with its acknowledgment of the gender/sexual terrain, allow it to serve as a consequential bridge-a space with larger epistemological and ontological impact-to post-196os black women's literature. The black women writers of this era gesture toward racial, gender, and sexual liberation and contest the interlocking systematic oppression of black women and the community. They anticipate, then, the post-196os and second-wave feminist doctrine that "the personal is political." Additionally, these writers make clear that the political (who is enfranchised, has access to fundamental rights and full civic, economic, and social subjectivity) is also deeply personal and inextricably bound to one's race, gender, class, ethnicity and/or nation(ality). What, then, created space for African American women writers to explore the complexities of their intersectionality and diverse experiences as black women with range, depth, and substance? What enabled them to contest limited representations and the matrix of domination, both contributing to and perpetuating black women's oppression, marginalization, and exclusion? And what allowed them to challenge and redefine the politics governing their multiple identities in strikingly new, daring, and consequential ways? Indubitably, it was the political movements ensuing and developing out of the civil rights struggles of the 195os and 196os. The civil rights movement, with its focus on renegotiating the marginalized and segregated social space to which African Americans had been consigned, centered itself around ending social segregation, as well as the political and economic disfranchisement of blacks. Challenging the American social disorder that produced and rested on oppositional constructions, the civil rights movement demanded equal rights for all people, specifically African Americans, who had long been relegated to second-class citizenship. Galvanizing individuals around sociopolitical activism and nonviolent action, it raised the racial, class, and political consciousness of Americans. This new awareness made a space for African American women to move forward in their quest for equality and liberation from American social injustice.

• From Understanding the Old Testament (2019)

  Understanding the old testament 114 Verse 2 is explicit that the Lord handed all of Judah over to Nebuchadnezzar. Later on, the royal servant Ashpenaz refers to Nebuchadnezzar as his “lord.” This story will be about which lord Daniel and his friends will serve. The Jews were not only militarily overwhelmed. They were surely culturally overwhelmed. They had gone from a cultural backwater of the hills of Judah to a society that had known literature for millennia as well as scientific, medicinal, and geographic knowledge. The narrative presents the Babylonian king setting about to remove the young men’s native culture so as to make wise men out of them. In verse 5, it is relayed that “The King allotted them a daily portion of food and wine from the royal table. After three years training, they were to enter the king service.” Then, “The Chief Chamberlain changed their names: Daniel to Belteshezzar, Hannaiah to Shadrach, Mishael to Meshach, and Azariah to Abednego.” Verse 7 states that the chief chamberlain “determined” their names. That’s not the normal phrase for naming people, but it’s exactly the word used in the next verse: “Daniel determined not to defile himself with the king’s food.” This contrasts two worldviews: that of the Babylonians and that of the Israelites. It’s not clear what the problem with the food is. It doesn’t seem to be about kosher food. It is likely that the issue is one of identity: Food is tied up with ethnicity, and part of the way to indoctrinate someone in a new culture is to force them to change their diet. Daniel proposes a test. In verse 12, he says, “Test your servants for ten days. Let us be given vegetables to eat and water to drink. Then see how we look in comparison with the young men who eat from the royal table.” We discover the result of this in verse 15: “After ten days, they looked healthier and better fed than any of the young men who ate from the royal table.” The young men go on to be the king’s chief advisers. This is a message for diaspora Jews, living under foreign domination. And the message is the same as found in the apocalyptic sections: No matter what, do not give up your faith. God will deliver you. leCtUre 18 | daniel and aPoCalyPtiC l iteratUre 115 Questions to Consider YIf apocalyptic literature gave hope to persecuted people, what was its message to people in times of prosperity? YWhat do the stories of Daniel say to persecuted people? What do they say to Jews in times of prosperity? Suggested Reading Boyarin, The Jewish Gospels. Collins, “From Prophecy to Apocalypticism.”