Thread by @nathancjohnson8, In an effort to restore @MattThiessenNT's sleep, a thread on the angry [...]

In an effort to restore @MattThiessenNT's sleep, a thread on the angry Jesus text (Mark 1:41)

1/ https://twitter.com/MattThiessenNT/status/1314173443915603973

https://twitter.com/MattThiessenNT/status/1314173443915603973

overall, I love Matt’s reading of the exchange between Jesus and the lepros. But there's the issue of whether Jesus is "angry" or has "compassion" when purifying the lepros. Matt goes with "anger," I have made an argument for "compassion." Here's why. 2/

Matt appeals to “anger” being the more difficult reading: why would scribes change Jesus' “compassion” to “anger”? Since it’s hard to imagine that change, “anger” is more difficult and therefore more likely original, right? 3/

Matt then points out that “Mt and Lk...mention neither Jesus’ compassion nor his anger. This silence suggests that the version of Mark that they had used had ‘angered,’ not ‘compassion.'"
Again, why would they omit compassion? More likely they'd omit an angry Jesus, right? 4/

this looks like an argument from “silence,” but Matt wisely supports it by looking at Mark 3:5, where Mt and Luke again *both* leave out an instance of Jesus’ anger: “and looking around at them with anger.”
So why think "compassion" is earlier and "anger" was added later? 5/

The issue is that Mt and Lk leave out anger *and* the next phrase: Jesus was “sympathizing over their hardness of their heart.” They omit both anger AND sympathy here. If they are censuring the angry Jesus, they’re also censuring the…sympathetic Jesus? The passage is equivocal.

Actually, Luke leaves out every instance of “compassion” from Mark. We wouldn't say that is because Luke is uncomfortable with “compassion” in Mark.

Why do we do this with Jesus' "anger"? 7/

The reason is that an angry Jesus seems *obviously* offensive to us – why would Jesus be angry with a suffering man who asks for his help? It’s clearly the more difficult reading, right? 8/

Well, that’s not so obvious in the ancient world. And I also think @MattThiessenNT's argument has space for this too.

For this, we need to think about the role of the angry Jesus in antiquity. 9/

First, I don't see any evidence of ancient scribes being bothered by Jesus’ anger outside of the putative case of this variant - which is circular: scribes changed it because it was a difficult reading. How do we know that? Because scribes changed it. 10/

Second, oddly, there’s evidence that an angry Jesus could be useful *in some* contexts. For starters, scribes never changed other instances of Jesus’ anger (Mark 3:5, 8:12, 10:14, John 2:13-22) 11/

Next, Origen argues against Marcion—again, oddly to us—that Jesus' righteous anger makes Jesus more like the wrathful God of the OT (!). An angry Jesus was theologically generative in the christological debates of late antiquity. 12/

In fact, strangely, scribes actually *inserted* or *increased* Jesus’ anger in a number of manuscripts! (@ Mark 10.14, Luke 6.10; d @ Mk 3.15) 13/

I wonder if this could actually fit with an aspect of Matt's argument. He notes scholars who think that “Jesus loathes ritual impurity, much like Israel’s God, who requires that no one approach his terrestrial residence…while in such a condition” 14/

Also “[Mark] believes that Israel’s God is now, in Jesus, purifying those with Lepra.” Agreed! But if so, then it'd make sense for him to be “angry” when approached with ritual impurity. If that’s the case, “anger” isn’t the more difficult reading--can’t have it both ways, right?

last point if you’ve made it this far--the manuscripts

16/20 (so close to the end)

"Anger” is only found in 5 witnesses – 4 Latin manuscripts, and only one (!) Greek manuscript. But the Greek manuscript is a famous Greek-Latin dual-language codex (D/d). So the only Greek witness is connected to the Latin witnesses 17/

How did we get "anger"?

The words “anger” (iratus) and “compassion” (miseratus) resemble each other in Latin. A scribal slip explains the entrance into Latin manuscripts, where it remained isolated in only 4 manuscripts (Diatessaron? see my article) 18/20

So the “anger” manuscript evidence is isolated in Latin, the evidence of Matthew and Luke is equivocal at best, and “anger” isn’t obviously the more difficult reading in antiquity. The angry Jesus is a fascinating reading, but one that's not in the initial text of Mark 19/20

Ultimately, @MattThiessenNT's argument doesn't depend on "anger" - his care in reading Lepra in antiquity is entirely convincing without it.

(Now here’s hoping Matt, like Mark’s Jesus, has compassion rather than anger in response

) 20/END

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