Sarah Ruden > Quotes

“A slave was, in Greek or Roman eyes, absolutely limited as to the consideration anyone (even a god) could show for him. Even if freed, he would always be treated as a social, civic, and spiritual inferior. A runaway had no right to any consideration at all. Deploying Christian ideas against Greco-Roman culture, Paul joyfully mocks the notion that any person placing himself in the hands of God can be limited or degraded in any way that matters. The letter must represent the most fun anyone ever had writing while incarcerated. The letter to Philemon may be the most explicit demonstration of how, more than anyone else, Paul created the Western individual human being, unconditionally precious to God and therefore entitled to the consideration of other human beings.”
― Sarah Ruden, Paul Among the People: The Apostle Reinterpreted and Reimagined in His Own Time

“[Circe]: What is the matter? Does my kiss offend you? Do I have bad breath from hunger? Have I neglected to cleanse my sweaty armpits?”
― Sarah Ruden, The Satyricon

“These languages were not like modern globalized ones, serving mainly to convey information in explicit and interchangeable forms-- but with a dimension called 'style' for artistic uses on the side. Instead the original Bible was, like all of ancient rhetoric and poetry, primarily a set of live performances and what they meant was tightly bound up in the way they meant it...this degree of difference can prevail when the Bible is translated without attention to its original forms particularly those that inform its striking and moving expressiveness-- that is, its beauty. Almost literally, if we can't dance to it, we don't understand it.”
― Sarah Ruden, The Face of Water: A Translator on Beauty and Meaning in the Bible

“Oenother took out a leather phallus, which she proceeded to coat with oil, ground pepper, and crushed nettle seeds. Gradually, she inserted it into my anus.
The cruel crone kept sprinkling the fluid over my thighs.
*
She mixed nasturtium seed with artemesia and spread it over my genitals, then, with a switch in her limber hand, beat everything below my navel.”
― Sarah Ruden, The Satyricon

“...when I turned back to him, he'd taken off all his clothes and put 'em in a pile beside the road. That sure knocked the wind outta me. I stood there like I was dead. He pissed around his clothes and all of a sudden he turned into a wolf. I'm not joking.”
― Sarah Ruden, The Satyricon

“Well, let me weave together various sorts of tales, using the Milesian mode as a loom, if you will. Witty and dulcet tones are going to stroke your too-kind ears—as long as you don’t turn a spurning nose up at an Egyptian papyrus scrawled over with a sharp pen from the Nile. I’ll make you wonder at human forms and fortunes transfigured, torn apart but then mended back into their original state. Now to my preface. ‘Who’s writing there?’ you ask. In a few words: my ancient stock is from Attic Hymettus and the Ephyrean Isthmus and Spartan Taenarus. All that fertile sod has been immortalized by books more fertile still. There, as my boyhood began, I served my first tour of literary duty in the Athenian tongue. Then as a foreigner in the Latian city I invaded the speech native to the Quirites’ curriculum, settled on it, and worked it for all it was worth – and it was harrowing, as I had no teacher walking ahead and pointing out what to do. So here I am, pleading in advance to be let off if I commit some offense, as I’m still a greenhorn: to me, the speech of the Roman forum is outlandish. But this very change of language suits the genre-jumping training I have undertaken. The story we are starting has a Greek original, you see. Give heed, reader: there is delight to be had.”
― Sarah Ruden, The Golden Ass

“When Ascyltes, loaded down with all these woes, was falling asleep, the maid he had rejected and insulted rubbed the whole of his face with a generous quantity of ash. He felt nothing, and she went on to paint graffiti-style penises on his shoulders and sides.”
― Sarah Ruden, The Satyricon

“I rejoiced also because the ancient writings of the law and the prophets were no longer presented to me for reading with the kind of gaze that had made them look ridiculous before, when I’d accused your holy followers of holding opinions that in fact they didn’t hold. I was happy in hearing Ambrose say often in his public sermons, as if he were recommending this very carefully as a basic principle, ‘The letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.’
He was removing the ritual covering, as it were, from the deeper meaning, to disclose the spiritual sense of things that, when taken literally, seemed to teach what was untenable. He didn’t say anything I found troublesome, but he did say things I hadn’t yet learned how to distinguish as true or false. I was, you see, holding my heart back from any admission of the truth, as I feared the sheer drop into it; but hanging (myself) in the air above it was more like killing myself.”
― Sarah Ruden, Confessions

“That's because he had such an enormous load of genitalia - you'd think that the rest of the body was nothing but a handle on that piece of equipment.”
― Sarah Ruden, The Satyricon

“The ship you promised would come from Africa with money and an entourage has not arrived. The legacy hunters, just about cleaned out, have diminished their giving. Either I am mistaken, or the bill for our rare good fortune is about to arrive with interest.”
*
All beneficiaries of my will, except for my freedmen, may inherit under this condition: that they cut my body into pieces and eat it with all the townspeople watching.
*
We know that certain nations maintain the custom of relatives devour­ing their dead. In fact, the sick are often scolded for the deterioration of their flesh. For these reasons, I admonish my dear friends not to deny my request, but to eat my body with the same eagerness with which they prayed for it to die”
― Sarah Ruden, The Satyricon

“This is in fact how much god loved the world: he gave the only son born to him, so that everyone who trusted in him wouldn’t be annihilated, but would have life for all time.”
― Sarah Ruden, The Gospels: A New Translation

“Sir, I’m not a fit person to have you come under my roof; but only say the word, and my boy will be healed.”
― Sarah Ruden, The Gospels: A New Translation

“Don’t let your hearts be troubled. Trust in god, and trust in me.”
― Sarah Ruden, The Gospels: A New Translation

“Come here to me, everyone who is exhausted and loaded down, and I’ll give you rest.”
― Sarah Ruden, The Gospels: A New Translation

“What should we do to work at god’s work?” 29 Iēsous answered by telling them, “This is god’s work, that you trust in the one he sent.”
― Sarah Ruden, The Gospels: A New Translation

“Don’t stop someone like that, as whoever isn’t against you is for you.”
― Sarah Ruden, The Gospels: A New Translation

“I’m the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never starve, and whoever trusts in me will never be parched.”
― Sarah Ruden, The Gospels: A New Translation

“So don’t worry about tomorrow, because tomorrow will worry about itself. Today’s aggravation is plenty for today.”
― Sarah Ruden, The Gospels: A New Translation

“The breath is what creates life; the body alone is good for nothing.”
― Sarah Ruden, The Gospels: A New Translation

“But just say the word, and let my boy be healed.”
― Sarah Ruden, The Gospels: A New Translation

“Sir, don’t take the trouble: I’m really not a fit person to have you come under my roof.”
― Sarah Ruden, The Gospels: A New Translation

“god’s kingdom is inside you all.”
― Sarah Ruden, The Gospels: A New Translation

“everything that you ask for in prayer, you’ll get if you have trust.”
― Sarah Ruden, The Gospels: A New Translation

“This is my command, that you love each other as I’ve loved you.”
― Sarah Ruden, The Gospels: A New Translation

“Peace I leave to you, my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives, I give to you. Don’t let your hearts be troubled,”
― Sarah Ruden, The Gospels: A New Translation

“the Gospels are not about Jesus; they are Jesus.”
― Sarah Ruden, The Gospels: A New Translation