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...field without grass is an eyesore," wrote the Roman poet Ovid, "so is a tree without leaves, so is a head without hair." For centuries, bald and balding men have winced at such unkind references to their predicament. Conditioned to regard hairlessness as a male curse second only to impotence, they have historically taken drastic measures to undo their baldness. Some have pretended to own hair, bewigging their shining pates with nylon or natural locks; others have recycled what little thatching they have left, combing a few camouflaging strands across their brows or having "plugs" transplanted from one part...
Maybe, maybe not. Last week the government named Domenico Sica, 55, a fierce Roman prosecutor hailed as "superman" by Italian newspapers, to be high commissioner in the fight against the Mafia. In the past two decades, Sica has directed investigations into some of Italy's toughest cases, including the ; attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II and the kidnaping-murder of former Prime Minister Aldo Moro. Sica immediately flew off to Palermo, for a firsthand look at La Piovra, or the octopus, as the mob is known throughout Italy...
Mack maintains that Galilee in Jesus' day was the "epitome of a cross- cultural mix," with Roman and Hellenistic influences colliding with Jewish thought. The cultural upheaval, he argues, gave rise to questioning cynics, rather like the hippies of the '60s. He theorizes that Jesus' message was concerned with a general malaise that afflicted the land. When he spoke of the coming kingdom of God, he was not warning of the apocalypse but, in true Hellenistic fashion, urging more natural and just relationships among people of all social classes...
...Flusser interprets it within a motif of martyrdom that stemmed from the Maccabees, rather than from the belief that the Crucifixion would take away the sins of the world. "I am sure," says Flusser, "that there were many Jews, when Jesus was crucified, who believed this innocent victim of Roman cruelty would stop the anger of God against the people of Israel. 'They died so that we may live' is a common Jewish idea...
...Roman Catholicism has just begun to grapple with the awareness that liberal scholarship may pose a threat to dogma. "Sometimes I ask my Catholic counterparts why they must make all the same mistakes in 20 years when we Protestant theologians needed over 200 years," jests Tubingen's Hengel. Conservative Catholics hope Ratzinger will strike at this threat, but the Cardinal is said to oppose a return to Rome's earlier proclamations on the Bible's complete historical reliability. He seems to prefer intellectual counteroffensives to decrees and crackdowns...