Hi Zeez -
zeezrom wrote:What I find a little disturbing is that the Bible doesn't mention Jesus getting angry at people who were going to throw rocks to kill a person. Instead, he gets angry at people who buy and sell in the temple. I suppose this tells us where Heavenly Father's priorities were back in the day. Boy, he sure was a crusty old fella.
I really like Ehrman's thoughts on the complexity of this issue when we move beyond the notion of Bible as fable and get into the actual texts.
From the link -
Mark 1:41 and the Angry Jesus13. The textual problem of Mark 1:41 occurs in the story of Jesus' healing a man with a skin disease. The surviving manuscripts preserve v. 41 in two different forms; I've included both variant readings for you here, italicized:
39 And he came preaching in their synagogues in all of Galilee and casting out the demons. 40 And a leper came to him beseeching him and saying to him, "If you wish, you are able to cleanse me." 41 And [feeling compassion (splagxnisqei\j)/becoming angry (o)rgisqei\j)], reaching out his hand, he touched him and said, "I wish, be cleansed." 42 And immediately the leprosy went out from him, and he was cleansed. 43 And rebuking him severely, immediately he cast him out 44 and said to him, "See that you say nothing to anyone, but go, show yourself to the priest and offer for your cleansing that which Moses commanded as a witness to them." 45 But when he went out he began to preach many things and to spread the word, so that he [Jesus] was no longer able to enter publicly into a city.
14. Most English translations render the beginning of v. 41 so as to emphasize Jesus' compassion for this poor outcast leper, "moved with compassion/filled with pity." In doing so, they are following the Greek text found in most of our manuscripts, splagxnisqei\j e)ktei/naj th\n xei=ra au)tou=, "feeling compassion, reaching out his hand." It is certainly easy to see why compassion might be called for in the situation. We don't know the precise nature of the man's disease--many commentators prefer to think of it as a scaly skin disorder rather than the kind of rotting flesh that we commonly associate with leprosy. In any event, he may well have fallen under the injunctions of the Torah that forbad "lepers" of any sort to live normal lives; they were to be isolated, cut off from the public, considered unclean (Leviticus 13-14). Moved with pity for such a one, Jesus reaches out a tender hand, touches his diseased flesh, and heals him.
15. The simple pathos and unproblematic emotion of the scene may well account for translators and interpreters, as a rule, not considering the alternative text found in some of our manuscripts. For the wording of one of our oldest witnesses, Codex Bezae, which is supported by three Old Latin manuscripts, is at first puzzling and wrenching. Here, rather than saying that Jesus felt compassion for the man, the text indicates that he became angry. In Greek it is a difference between the words splagxnisqei/j and o)rgisqei/j. Because of its attestation in both Greek and Latin witnesses, this reading is generally conceded by textual specialists to go back at least to the second century. Is it possible, though, that this in fact is what Mark himself wrote?
16. In many instances of textual variation, possibly most, we are safe in saying that when the vast majority of manuscripts have one reading and only a couple have another, the majority are probably right. But this is not always the case. Sometimes a couple or a few manuscripts appear to be right even when all the others disagree. In part this is because the vast majority of our manuscripts were produced hundreds and hundreds of years after the originals, and they themselves were copied not from the originals but from other much later copies. Once a change made its way into the manuscript tradition, it could be perpetuated until it became more commonly transmitted than the original wording. Both readings we are considering here are very ancient. Which one is original?
17. If Christian readers today were given the choice between these two readings, virtually everyone, no doubt, would choose the one more commonly attested in our manuscripts: Jesus felt pity for this man, and so he healed him. The other reading is hard to construe: what would it mean to say that Jesus felt angry? Isn't this in itself sufficient ground for assuming that Mark must have written splagxnisqei\j feeling compassion?
18. On the contrary, and this may indeed seem backwards at first, the fact that one of the readings makes such good sense and is easy to understand is precisely what makes some scholars suspect that it is wrong. For scribes also would have preferred the text to be simple to understand and nonproblematic. Which is more likely, that a scribe copying this text would change it to say that Jesus became wrathful instead of compassionate, or to say that Jesus became compassionate instead wrathful? When seen from this perspective, the latter is obviously more likely. o)rgisqei/j, became angry, is the more difficult reading and therefore more likely to be "original."
19. But there is even better evidence than this speculative question of which reading the scribes were likely to invent. As it turns out, we don't have any Greek manuscripts of Mark that contain this passage until the end of the fourth century, nearly 300 years after the book was produced. But we do have two authors that copied this story from within twenty years of its first production. Matthew and Luke have both taken this story over from Mark, their common source. It is striking that Matthew and Luke are virtually word for word the same as Mark in the leper's request and in Jesus' response in vv. 40-41. Which word, then, do they use to describe Jesus' reaction? Does he become compassionate or angry? Oddly enough, as has often been noted, Matthew and Luke both omit the word altogether.
20. If the text of Mark available to Matthew and Luke had used the term splagxnisqei\j, feeling compassion, why would each of them have omitted it? On only two other occasions in Mark's Gospel is Jesus explicitly described as compassionate: Mark 6:34, at the feeding of the 5000, and Mark 8:2, the feeding of the 4000. Luke completely recasts the first story and does not include the second. Matthew, however, has both stories and retains Mark's description of Jesus being compassionate on both occasions (14:14 [and 9:30]; 15:32). On three additional occasions in Matthew, and yet one other occasion in Luke, Jesus is explicitly described as compassionate, using this term (splagxni/zw). It's hard to imagine, then, why they both, independently of one another, would have omitted the term from the present account if they had found it in Mark.
21. What about the other option? What if both Matthew and Luke read in Mark's Gospel that Jesus became angry? Would they have been inclined to eliminate that emotion? There are in fact other occasions in which Jesus becomes angry in Mark. In each instance, Matthew and Luke have modified the accounts. In Mark 3:5 Jesus looks around "with anger" (met) o)rgh=j) at those in the synagogue who were watching to see if he'd heal the man with the withered hand. Luke has the verse almost the same as Mark, but he removes the reference to Jesus' anger. Matthew completely rewrites this section of the story and says nothing of Jesus' wrath. Similarly, in Mark 10:14 Jesus is aggravated at his disciples (different word: h)gana/kthsen) for not allowing people to bring their children to be blessed. Both Matthew and Luke have the story, often verbally the same, but both delete the reference to Jesus' anger (Matt 19:14; Luke 18:16).
22. In sum, Matthew and Luke have no qualms about describing Jesus as compassionate. But they never describe him as angry. In fact, whenever one of their sources, Mark, did so, they both independently rewrite the term out of their stories. Thus it's hard to understand why they would have removed splagxnisqei\j from the account of Jesus' healing of the leper but altogether easy to see why they might have wanted to remove o)rgisqei/j. Combined with the circumstance that the term is attested in a very ancient stream of our manuscript tradition and that scribes would have been unlikely to have created it out of the much more readily comprehensible splagxnisqei\j, it is becoming increasingly evident that Mark in fact described Jesus as angry when approached by the leper to be healed.
23. But one other issue must be emphasized before moving on. I've indicated that whereas Matthew and Luke have difficulty ascribing anger to Jesus, Mark has no problems at all doing so. I should point out that even in the present story, apart from the textual problem of v. 41, Jesus does not treat this poor leper with kid gloves. After he heals him, he "severely rebukes him" and "throws him out." These are literal renderings of the Greek words that are usually softened in translation. But they are harsh terms, used elsewhere in Mark always in contexts of violent conflict and aggression (e.g., when Jesus casts out demons). It's difficult to see why Jesus would harshly upbraid this person and cast him out if he feels compassion for him; but if he is angry, perhaps it makes better sense.
24. At what, though, would Jesus be angry? This is where the relationship of text and interpretation becomes critical. Some scholars who have preferred o)rgisqei/j (becoming angry) in this passage have come up with highly improbable interpretations, usually, in fact, with the goal of exonerating the emotion and making Jesus look compassionate when in fact they realize that the text says he became angry. And so one commentator argues that Jesus is angry with the state of the world that is full of disease; in other words, he loves the sick but hates the sickness. There's no textual basis for the interpretation, but it does have the virtue of making Jesus look good. Another interpreter argues that Jesus is angry because this leprous person had been alienated from society, overlooking the facts that the text doesn't say anything about the man being an outsider and that even if it assumes he was, it would not have been the fault of Jesus' society but of the Law of God (specifically the book of Leviticus). Another argues that in fact that is what Jesus is angry about, that the Law of Moses forces this kind of alienation. This interpretation ignores the fact that at the conclusion of the passage (v. 44) Jesus affirms the law of Moses and urges the former leper to observe it.
25. All of these interpretations have in common the desire to exonerate Jesus' anger and the decision to bypass the text in order to do so. Should we opt to do otherwise, what might we conclude? It seems to me there are two options, one that focuses more heavily on the immediate literary context of the passage and the other on its broader context.
26. First, in terms of the more immediate context. How is one struck by the portrayal of Jesus in the opening part of Mark's Gospel? Bracketing for a moment our own pre-conceptions of who Jesus was and simply reading this particular text, one has to admit that Jesus does not come off as the meek and mild, soft-featured, good shepherd of the stain-glassed window. Mark begins his Gospel by portraying Jesus as a physically and charismatically powerful authority figure who is not to be messed with. He is introduced by a wildman prophet in the wilderness; he is cast out from society to do battle in the wilderness with Satan and the wild beasts; he returns to call for urgent repentance in the face of the imminent coming of the judgment of God; he rips his followers away from their families; he overwhelms his audiences with his authority; he rebukes and overpowers demonic forces that can completely subdue mere mortals; he refuses to accede to popular demand, ignoring people who plead to have an audience with him. The only story in this opening chapter of Mark that hints at personal compassion is the healing of the mother-in-law of Simon Peter, sick in bed. But even that compassionate interpretation may be open to question. Some observers have wryly noted that after Jesus dispells her fever, she rises to serve them, presumably bringing them their evening meal.
27. Is it possible that Jesus is being portrayed in the opening scenes of this Gospel as a powerful figure with a strong will and an agenda of his own, a charismatic authority who doesn't like to be disturbed? It would certainly make sense of his response to the healed leper, whom he harshly rebukes and then casts out.
28. There is another explanation, though. For as I've indicated, Jesus does get angry elsewhere in this Gospel. The next time it happens is in chapter 3, which involves, strikingly, another healing story. Here Jesus is explicitly said to be angry at Pharisees, who think that he has no authority to heal the man with the crippled hand on the Sabbath.
29. In some ways an even closer parallel comes in a story in which Jesus' anger is not explicitly mentioned but is nonetheless evident. In Mark 9, when Jesus comes down from the Mount of Transfiguration with Peter, James, and John, he finds a crowd around his disciples and a desparate man in their midst, whose son is posssessed by a demon, and who explains the situation to Jesus and then appeals to him: "If you are able, have pity on us and help us." Jesus fires back an angry response, "If you are able? Everything is possible to the one who believes." The man grows even more desparate and pleads, "I believe, help my unbelief." Jesus then casts out the demon.
30. What is striking in these stories is that Jesus' evident anger erupts when someone doubts his willingness, ability, or divine authority to heal. Maybe this in fact is what is involved in the story of the leper. As in the story of Mark 9, someone approaches Jesus gingerly to ask: "If you are willing you are able to heal me." Jesus becomes angry. Of course he's willing, just as he is able and authorized. He heals the man and, still somewhat miffed, rebukes him sharply and throws him out.
31. There's a completely different feel to the story, given this way of construing it, a construal based on establishing the text as Mark appears to have written it. Mark, in places, portrays an angry Jesus.
