Think about women and anointings for burial. In Mark's story Jesus had told the disciples three times and very clearly that he would be executed in Jerusalem and that he would rise after three days. If one believed those prophecies, to come with ointments is certainly an act of love but hardly of faith. It is, for Mark, a failure in belief. But before he tells of that failure by named women in 16:1-8, he tells the above story of stunning faith. This unnamed woman believes Jesus and knows that, if she does not anoint him for burial now, she will never be able to do it later. That is why she gets that astonishing statement of praise, one unparalleled in the entire gospel: "wherever the good news is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will be told in remembrance of her." That accolade is given because, in Mark's gospel, this is the first complete and unequivocal act of faith in Jesus' suffering and rising destiny. It is the only such full act before that of the equally unnamed centurion beneath the cross in 14:39b: "Truly this man was God's Son!" [John Dominic Crossan, Who Killed Jesus?, p. 185]

Dear Professor Zetzel ,

Please for give me for intruding on your time for what in the end might seem a rather trivial issue, but I've been in dispute with a correspondent about his interpretation (and the means by which he arrives at it) of something you said in your review in Classical Philology of T.P. Wiseman's book Catullus and His World, (namely, as my correspondent quotes it, "W. is almost certainly right, and his recognition of the mime as a serious literary form in the late Republic [here and in "Who Was Crassicius Pansa?" TAPA 115 (1985): 187-96] is of considerable interest") and I'm seeking your help in resolving the matter.

My correspondent has asserted in no uncertain terms that you agree with Wiseman in Wiseman's identification of the Roman poet Gaius Valerius Catullus with the Catullus whom Juvenal tells us penned the mime Laureolus and have stated as much in your review of his book. More than that, my correspondent has also concluded that what you "say" about Wiseman's thesis on the identity of the two figures could be adduced to support my correspondent's claim that the Laureolus was written circa 50 B.C.E. (See here).

I have pointed out to him (see here) that you have said no such thing and that he has made you "say" what you did not say not only by ignoring what you wrote about Wiseman's thesis elsewhere in your review, but by selectively quoting and misreading what you said about Wiseman being correct with respect to another issue altogether (i.e., to the issue of the importance in the late republic of the genre of mime).

But he insists that he has not misread and misquoted you and that his claim that you say "that Wiseman is almost certainly right that Laureolus was written by the poet [Gaius Valerius] Catullus" is true. (See here).

I wonder, then, if you'd do me the kindness of clarifying the matter. You do not support Wiseman's claim that Gaius Valerius Catullus and the author of the Laureolus are the same person, yes?. And you do not support the idea, even should you accept the identity of the two figures, that the Laureolus was written as early as 50 B.C.E. Moreover, would you agree with me that my correspondent has misread you when he asserts -- and has used selective quotation in order to get you to say -- that you support Weisman's thesis on the identity of Gaius Valerius Catullus?

I thank you in advance for any time and attention you may devote to these matters.

Yours sincerely,

Jeffrey Gibson