Accepting the more difficult reading in Mark 1:41 that Jesus was “moved with anger” (ὀργισθείς) in response to a leper’s request for healing, this article investigates the motives behind this vehement response, which persists after Jesus cures the man (1:43). A close analysis of Mark 1:40-45, in conjunction with key Markan co-texts (6:14-29; 10:35-52; 14:32-36; 15:6-15) and ancient and modern theories of emotion, demonstrates that the leper chiefly provokes Jesus’ ire by belittling his deep desire or will to heal (ἐὰν θέλῃς). Discussions of anger (ὀργή/ira) by Aristotle and Seneca serve as primary resources from Greco-Roman antiquity. In contemporary thought, the study of emotion has recently surged in various disciplines, not least in philosophy, psychology, and literary criticism. Biblical scholarship has just begun to engage with this material in examining characters’ emotions. This article sets forth an example and framework for further exploration of the passionate Markan Jesus.
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Sharon H. Ringe, “A Gentile Woman’s Story,” in Feminist Interpretation of the Bible (ed. Letty A. Russell; Philadelphia: Westminster, 1985), 69.
William V. Harris, Restraining Rage: The Ideology of Anger Control in Classical Antiquity (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001), 401-02; cf. pp. 50-70.
Richard S. Lazarus, Emotion and Adaptation (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 115; cf. Part 2, pp. 87-213; Richard S. Lazarus and Bernice N. Lazarus, Passion and Reason: Making Sense of our Emotions (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 139-51.
Martha C. Nussbaum, The Therapy of Desire: Theory and Practice in Hellenistic Ethics (2nd ed.; Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994); Upheavals of Thought: The Intelligence of Emotions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001); Hiding from Humanity: Disgust, Shame, and the Law (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004); and “Emotions as Judgments of Value and Importance,” in Thinking about Feeling (ed. Solomon), 183-99. Robert C. Roberts, Spiritual Emotions: A Psychology of Christian Virtues (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007); Emotions: An Essay in Aid of Moral Psychology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003); and “Emotions and the Canons of Evaluation,” in The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Emotion (ed. Peter Goldie; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 561-83. Philip Fisher, The Vehement Passions (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002). Daniel M. Gross, The Secret History of Emotion From Aristotle’s Rhetoric to Modern Brain Science (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006).
See William James, “What Is an Emotion?” Mind 9 (1884): 188-205; excerpted in What Is an Emotion? Classic and Contemporary Readings (2nd ed.; ed. Robert C. Solomon; New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 65-76.
Cf. Cicero, Nat. d. 2.22. See Michael LeBuffe, From Bondage to Freedom: Spinoza onHuman Excellence (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 101-03; idem, “Spinoza’s Psychological Theory,” in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (ed. Edward N. Zalta; url = http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2010/entries/spinoza-psychological/); and Antonio Damasio, Looking for Spinoza; Joy, Sorrow, and the Feeling Brain (Orlando: Harcourt, 2003), 36-37, 79-80, 131-32, 138-39, 170-75.
Lazarus, Emotion and Adaptation, 222; Nussbaum, Hiding from Humanity, 13.
See Abraham Smith, “[T]he repetition of the will/wish/want language in Greek produces a thematic echo that links Herod Antipas and Pilate together. Both men submit their wills to human beings whose desires lead respectively to the deaths of John and Jesus” (“Cultural Studies: Making Mark,” in Mark and Method [ed. Anderson and Moore], 202); cf. idem, “Tyranny Exposed: Mark’s Typological Characterization of Herod Antipas (Mark 6:14-29),” BibInt 14 (2006): 279, 282-86.
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Accepting the more difficult reading in Mark 1:41 that Jesus was “moved with anger” (ὀργισθείς) in response to a leper’s request for healing, this article investigates the motives behind this vehement response, which persists after Jesus cures the man (1:43). A close analysis of Mark 1:40-45, in conjunction with key Markan co-texts (6:14-29; 10:35-52; 14:32-36; 15:6-15) and ancient and modern theories of emotion, demonstrates that the leper chiefly provokes Jesus’ ire by belittling his deep desire or will to heal (ἐὰν θέλῃς). Discussions of anger (ὀργή/ira) by Aristotle and Seneca serve as primary resources from Greco-Roman antiquity. In contemporary thought, the study of emotion has recently surged in various disciplines, not least in philosophy, psychology, and literary criticism. Biblical scholarship has just begun to engage with this material in examining characters’ emotions. This article sets forth an example and framework for further exploration of the passionate Markan Jesus.
All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
---|---|---|---|
Abstract Views | 672 | 75 | 13 |
Full Text Views | 271 | 8 | 1 |
PDF Views & Downloads | 141 | 24 | 4 |