With Michael Suarez, S. J., in which he quoted from John Vanbrugh’s The Provok’d Wife Act I, scene i:
Belinda: Drown husbands! for your’s is a provoking fellow: as he went out just now, I prayed him to tell me what time of day ’twas; and he asked me if I took him for the church clock, that was obliged to tell all the parish.
Lady Brute: He has been saying some good obliging things to me, too. In short, Belinda, he has used me so barbarously of late, that I could almost resolve to play the downright wife, and cuckold him.
Belinda: That would be downright, indeed.
Lady Brute: Why, after all, there’s more to be said for’t than you’d imagine, child. He is the first aggressor, not I.
Belinda: Ah! but, you know, we must return good for evil.
Lady Brute: That may be a mistake in the translation.
Michael suggests that this is early evidence for a common sentiment that the Bible (“return good for evil”) might be subject to divergent, erroneous translation traditions. I’m intrigued, not fully convinced, but delighted with the example anyway
And I had lunch yesterday with Nicole Engard, the Metadata Librarian in Princeton Seminary’s Special Collections. I was curious to know what PTS was up to in embracing the digital trajectory of libraries, and Nicole had encouraging words about both ehr present responsibilities and the future that Steve Crocco, head librarian, envisions.