The Gospels
Page 44
*225 Tradition says that Peter was crucified (upside down). The belt that gives freedom of movement by tying up garments becomes the “belting up” (an unusual way to put it, so the pun is rather labored) of a prisoner. A prisoner’s hands that are stretched out in supplication double as arms that are spread out on a cross (and may be tied in place, so the belt image may apply here too): “stretch” and “spread” are different meanings of the single verb used here.
*226 Again, see 13:23–25 above, and the note.
*227 This whole final chapter looks added on, and mainly for the purpose of dignifying John at Peter’s expense, probably reflecting conflicts among Jesus’ followers and their successors. At last, the “beloved disciple” is firmly identified as the author of the Gospel, but as before, the actual name is not given.
To the Quakers
Acknowledgments
This book would not exist without a phalanx of champions. Leading the phalanx are Gail Hochman, my agent; Parisa Ebrahimi, my editor; and Sam Nicholson, who obtained the title for the Modern Library. I owe heartfelt thanks to the Robert B. Silvers Foundation, Pendle Hill Quaker Study Center, and the University of Pennsylvania for help in the completion of the manuscript. Much gratitude is due to Robert Cousland of the University of British Columbia for his learned, insightful, and tactful advice. Vincent La Scala applied virtuoso expertise and immense care to an unusually demanding manuscript. Most of all, I thank my husband, Tom Conroy, who champions me every day of my life.
My debt to monuments of modern Bible scholarship is enormous, and I mention here only the most essential works. The Greek text of the Gospels from which I translate is the twenty-eighth edition of the Nestle-Aland Novum Testamentum Graece (German Bible Society, 2012). I have had frequent recourse to the third edition of Frederick William Danker’s Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament (University of Chicago Press, 2000).
By Sarah Ruden
Paul Among the People
The Face of Water
Other Places (poetry)
Translations by Sarah Ruden
Confessions: Augustine
The Greek Plays: Sixteen Plays by Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides (Agamemnon, Libation Bearers, Eumenides)
Hippias Minor or the Art of Cunning: Plato
The Golden Ass: Apuleius
The Aeneid: Vergil
Homeric Hymns
Aristophanes: Lysistrata
Petronius: Satyricon
about the translator
Sarah Ruden was educated at the University of Michigan, Harvard, and Johns Hopkins. She has translated several books of ancient literature, among them Vergil’s Aeneid and Augustine’s Confessions, and is the author of Paul Among the People: The Apostle Reinterpreted and Reimagined in His Own Time and The Face of Water: A Translator on Beauty and Meaning in the Bible. She is the past recipient of Guggenheim and Whiting awards, and completed this translation of the Gospels with the help of a grant from the Robert B. Silvers Foundation. Formerly a scholar-in-residence at Yale Divinity School, she is currently a visiting researcher at the University of Pennsylvania.
sarahruden.com
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