The Pro-Social Role of Grief in Ezra’s Penitential Prayer
In: Biblical InterpretationSearch for other papers by Angela Kim Harkins in
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This study uses a model of human experience that considers the embodied brain, religion, and social context in an integrated system of bio-cultural approaches. The study of grief and its strategic arousal in ritual contexts can highlight fundamental differences between modern and ancient religious understandings of the self, ultimately helping us to become more aware of our own scholarly biases and anachronisms. Such methods complement traditional historical-critical methods and shed light on how Ezra’s penitential prayer could have functioned in a Second Temple context. This study examines the similarities between the ritual performance of actions and discursive traditions that are said to have been performed by Ezra (Ezra 9–10) and discusses their resemblance to two passages that preserve foundational events of remaking the covenant (Exodus 32–34; Deuteronomy 9) and dedicating the first Temple (1 Kings 8; 2 Chronicles 6–7). The reenactment of scripted grief is identified as a strategy for bridging the breach between foundational events and the authors and readers in the Second Temple period.
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3
P. Ekman and W.V. Friesen, “Constants across Cultures in the Face and Emotion,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 17 (1971), pp. 124–39; P. Ekman and W.V. Friesen, Pictures of Facial Affect (Palo Alto: Consulting Psychologists, 1976); P. Ekman, Emotions Revealed: Recognizing Faces and Feelings to Improve Communication and Emotional Life (New York: Times Books, 2003); M.D. Pell et al., “Recognizing Emotions in a Foreign Language,” Journal of Nonverbal Behavior 33 (2009), pp. 107–120. While significant in its time, Ekman’s studies are now critiqued throughout the scholarship on emotions.
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6
B. Nongbri, Before Religion: A History of a Modern Concept (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013), pp. 132–53; R.T. McCutcheon, The Discipline of Religion: Structure, Meaning, Rhetoric (London: Routledge, 2003), p. 255; see also D. Boyarin, Border Lines: The Partition of Judaeo-Christianity (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004).
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8
T. Dixon, From Passions to Emotions: The Creation of a Secular Psychological Category (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp. 98-134; idem, “Revolting Passions,” Modern Theology 27 (2011), pp. 298–312.
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12
D. Konstan, The Emotions of the Ancient Greeks: Studies in Aristotle and Classical Literature (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006), pp. 244–58.
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15
Konstan, The Emotions of the Ancient Greeks, pp. 252–53, where he cites Plato, Resp. 395E12; 605C12; Leg. 958E7; Sophocles, El. 846; Euripides, Hel. 166.
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18
G. Ebersole, “The Function of Ritual Weeping Revisited: Affective Expression and Moral Discourse,” History of Religions 39 (2000), pp. 211–46 (reprinted in J. Corrigan [ed.], Religion and Emotion: Approaches and Interpretations [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004], pp. 185–222); see too Harkins, Reading with an “I” to the Heavens, p. 39.
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19
Ebersole, “The Function of Ritual Weeping Revisited,” p. 187.
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20
Chaniotis, “Staging and Feeling the Presence of God,” pp. 169–89 (169).
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21
Chaniotis, “Staging and Feeling the Presence of God,” pp. 175–76.
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23
D.T. Bradford, “Emotion in Mystical Experience,” Religion, Brain & Behavior 3 (2013), pp. 103–118 (107). Bradford here refers to the work of I. Hausherr, Penthos: The Doctrine of Compunction in the Christian East (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian, 1982). Bradford’s basic point about the cultural variation of the emotions reported in mystical experiences is also illustrated by C. Zaleski, Otherworld Journeys: Accounts of Near-Death Experience in Medieval and Modern Times (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987). For the cultural context of emotion, see Wierzbicka, Emotions across Languages and Cultures.
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25
P. McNamara, The Neuroscience of Religious Experience (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009). When making reference to McNamara’s work and his specific understanding of the “executive Self,” I have capitalized the S in “executive Self” just as McNamara has done in his own work.
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26
McNamara, The Neuroscience of Religious Experience, pp. 30–31.
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27
McNamara, The Neuroscience of Religious Experience, pp. 30–31. Also see R. Sosis, “The Adaptive Value of Religious Ritual: Rituals Promote Group Cohesion by Requiring Members to Engage in Behavior that is Too Costly to Fake,” American Scientist 92 (2004), pp. 166–72.
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29
J. Henrich, “The Evolution of Costly Displays, Cooperation and Religion: Credibility Enhancing Displays and Their Implications for Cultural Evolution,” Evolution and Human Behavior 30 (2009), pp. 244–60.
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35
A. Mittermeier, “Dreams from Elsewhere: Muslim Subjectivities beyond the Trope of Self-Cultivation,” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 18 (2012), pp. 247–65 (262 n. 10). Here Mittermeier cites J. Biehl, B. Good, and A. Kleinman, Subjectivity: Ethnographic Investigations (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007), p. 6.
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36
S. Mahmood, Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005), p. 147.
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47
R.A. Werline, Penitential Prayer in Second Temple Judaism: The Development of a Religious Institution (Atlanta: Scholars, 1998); Newman, Praying by the Book; R.J. Bautch, Developments in Genre between Post-Exilic Penitential Prayers and the Psalms of Communal Lament (Atlanta: SBL, 2003); Boda, Falk, and Werline (eds.), Seeking the Favor of God (3 vols.; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 2006-2008); M.D. Matlock, Discovering the Traditions of Prose Prayers in Early Jewish Literature (London: T & T Clark, 2012).
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48
P. Boyer, The Naturalness of Religious Ideas: A Cognitive Theory of Religion (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994). For a useful historical overview of this field, see J.L. Barrett, “Cognitive Science of Religion: Looking Back, Looking Forward,” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 50 (2011), pp. 229–39; S.E. Guthrie, “A Cognitive Theory of Religion,” Current Anthropology 21 (1980), pp. 181–94; idem, Faces in the Clouds: A New Theory of Religion (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993).
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51
T. Asad, Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993), p. 144; also important is the discussion of the adaptive relevance of emotional memories in new and changing circumstances in P. Boyer, “What are Memories For? Functions of Recall in Cognition and Culture,” in P. Boyer and J.V. Wertsch (eds.), Memory in Mind and Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), pp. 3–28.
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52
Henrich, “The Evolution of Costly Displays, Cooperation and Religion,” pp. 244–60.
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56
Dor, “The Composition of the Episode of the Foreign Women in Ezra IX–X,” p. 29.
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61
J.L. Kugel, In the Valley of the Shadow: On the Foundations of Religious Belief (New York: Free, 2011), p. 17. The generation of this subjectivity is related to the various decentering practices that are engaged and helpfully described in McNamara, The Neuroscience of Religious Experience.
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64
R.S. Norris, “Examining the Structure and Role of Emotion: Contributions of Neurobiology to the Study of Embodied Religious Experience,” Zygon 40 (2005), pp. 181–99.
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68
Noted by W. Oswald, “Foreign Marriages and Citizenship in Persian Period Judah,” Journal of Hebrew Scriptures 12 (2012), pp. 1–17 (7).
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69
Chaniotis, “Staging and Feeling the Presence of God,” pp. 169–89.
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73
Henrich, “The Evolution of Costly Displays, Cooperation and Religion,” pp. 244–60.
| All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract Views | 332 | 57 | 15 |
| Full Text Views | 233 | 9 | 2 |
| PDF Views & Downloads | 160 | 26 | 4 |
The Pro-Social Role of Grief in Ezra’s Penitential Prayer
In: Biblical InterpretationSearch for other papers by Angela Kim Harkins in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
This study uses a model of human experience that considers the embodied brain, religion, and social context in an integrated system of bio-cultural approaches. The study of grief and its strategic arousal in ritual contexts can highlight fundamental differences between modern and ancient religious understandings of the self, ultimately helping us to become more aware of our own scholarly biases and anachronisms. Such methods complement traditional historical-critical methods and shed light on how Ezra’s penitential prayer could have functioned in a Second Temple context. This study examines the similarities between the ritual performance of actions and discursive traditions that are said to have been performed by Ezra (Ezra 9–10) and discusses their resemblance to two passages that preserve foundational events of remaking the covenant (Exodus 32–34; Deuteronomy 9) and dedicating the first Temple (1 Kings 8; 2 Chronicles 6–7). The reenactment of scripted grief is identified as a strategy for bridging the breach between foundational events and the authors and readers in the Second Temple period.
| All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract Views | 332 | 57 | 15 |
| Full Text Views | 233 | 9 | 2 |
| PDF Views & Downloads | 160 | 26 | 4 |