Presence: Is Jesus Angry?

The exploration of the nature, cause, and result of Jesus’s anger rests on the presence of ὀργισθείς in Mark 1:41. Most modern translations say that Jesus was “moved with compassion” before he reached out, touched the man, spoke, and healed him. This is based on the presence of σπλανγχνισθείς in most ancient witnesses.Footnote ¹ However, a few ancient witnesses say that Jesus was “angry” (ὀργισθείς).Footnote ² While the majority of the ancient witnesses weighs in favor of a more broadly attested reading that Jesus felt “compassion,” the notion that Jesus was “angry” appears to be a harder reading, prone to be removed or altered on “theological or moral grounds,” given the common mistrust of anger in early Christianity (see further below).Footnote ³ It is initially difficult to discern how or why a scribe would mistakenly substitute ὀργισθείς for σπλανγχνισθείς.Footnote ⁴ Purposeful independent changes from σπλανγχνισθείς to the (more difficult) ὀργισθείς (or misertus to iratus) also seem unlikely.Footnote ⁵ However, it is possible that a few early and influential changes from (the more difficult) “anger” to “compassion” would prevent Jesus from being reprehensibly angry at this man and alter the trajectory of the entire textual tradition.Footnote ⁶ While counting scholars in favor of one reading or the other can be about as useful as counting witnesses, we find a number of interpreters who support an initial reading of ὀργισθείς with a variety of arguments.Footnote ⁷ On the other hand, the Editio Critica Maior prefers the reading σπλανγχνισθείς as do a number of other commentators.Footnote ⁸

While a full historical and genealogical examination of the variants is not possible here, it is beneficial to set forth a brief argument to support a reading of ὀργισθείς that gives a better explanation of the extant witnesses and then can serve as an impetus for devoting energy to examining the nature, cause, and result of Jesus’s anger in this passage.Footnote ⁹ This textual exploration will be buttressed by the closing interpretation, which clarifies how Jesus’s anger makes sense in this account.

Neither Luke (5:13) nor Matthew (8:3) mention any emotion in their parallels. How might these first witnesses to early texts/traditions of Mark lack any emotion here? If Luke’s known version(s) of Mark contained ὀργισθείς, then one would expect Luke to excise it, for he omits Mark’s other references to Jesus’s anger and Jesus’s emotions generally.Footnote ¹⁰ While Matthew does omit most of Mark’s notes of emotion (note the exception of Jesus’s experience in the garden in Mark 14:33 and Matt 26:37), he retains Mark’s other uses of the verb σπλαγχνίζομαι (Mark 6:34 and Matt 14:14; Mark 8:2 and Matt 15:32), so if Matthew’s version(s) of Mark had σπλανγχνισθείς, one would expect him to retain it.Footnote ¹¹ Luke has only a loose parallel to Mark 6:34 in Luke 10:2 that does not retain most of Mark’s language, including σπλαγχνίζομαι, and Luke has no direct parallel to Mark 8:2. However, Luke has no reservations around using σππλάγχνον/σπλαγχνίζομαι with Jesus (Luke 7:13 and 10:33; see also uses pertaining to God in 1:78 and 15:20). Thus, there is no clear reason why Luke would excise the use of σπλαγχνίζομαι from Mark 1:41 when he has retained most of the rest of the story in Luke 5:12–16. Therefore, a reading of ὀργισθείς in the version(s) of Mark known to Matthew and Luke is the best explanation for the coincidental change in the other two gospels, which resulted in the absence of any emotion in both Matthew’s and Luke’s account of this story.Footnote ¹²

Nathan C. Johnson has argued that ὀργισθείς is not a harder reading because early church writers cited Jesus’s anger to demonstrate the affinity of Jesus and the God of the Hebrew Scriptures in order to counter Marcionism (e.g., Ambrose, Ep. 69.10 and Origen, Comm. Matt. 14.13.134–57).Footnote ¹³ However, this does not provide an adequate reason for an intentional change of σπλανγχνισθείς to ὀργισθείς in Mark 1:41, since Mark already states Jesus’ anger clearly elsewhere (3:5; 10:41). Why would another instance be needed here, when compassion is a perfectly acceptable emotion for Jesus in all three synoptics? This explanation also minimizes the fact that anger is shunned as a negative emotion in the New Testament (e.g., Matt 5:22, Eph 4:31; Jas 1:19–20). Such admonitions against anger continue in the early church (e.g., 1 Clem. 13.1, 63.2; Ignatius, Phld. 8.1; Herm. Mand. 5.2.4; Did. 3.2, 15.3). Also, the elimination of ὀργισθείς from Matthew and Luke would have occurred, at least at first, prior to the rise of Marcionism. Furthermore, Marcionism was not the only perspective on emotions that was faced by the church at this stage. Early Christians also had to offer an apology to those of a Stoic persuasion who would look upon such an angry response as a sign of irrationality or a lack of self-control on Jesus’s part.Footnote ¹⁴ One finds Origen using Stoic ideas to suggest that while Jesus and his followers might experience the initial stirrings of emotion (propatheia), these should not evolve into full blown grief or anger (Comm. Matt. 92; Exc. Ps. 4:5).Footnote ¹⁵ Thus, the reading of ὀργισθείς does appear to be a harder reading in common polemical contexts given the frequent warnings against anger across early Christianity and in light of the Stoic critique of such an emotion. This factor increases the likelihood that at least some early scribes might have made intentional and coincidental changes from “anger” to “compassion” (as is clearly done in one later Latin witness) in order to adapt the portrayal of Jesus’s emotion within a context that viewed such “anger” as problematic for Jesus, especially given the lack of clear causation for it in this story in Mark 1.

Finally, we have the interesting, and contested, evidence from Ephrem the Syrian’s Commentary on the Diatessaron.Footnote ¹⁶ Bart D. Ehrman and Jean-Claude Haelewyck have used Ephrem as a witness to the reading of “anger” in the Diatessaron;Footnote ¹⁷ however, others have asserted that Ephrem’s comments do not support a reading of ὀργισθείς.Footnote ¹⁸ Ephrem’s comments indicate that anger is a critical part of his text. He says, “The Lord showed … reproof through his anger and mercy through his healing” (Ephrem, Commentary on the Diatessaron 12.22). Reproof and mercy are not explicitly in the text before Ephrem. Rather, these are shown through Jesus’s anger and healing, which are in the text. Furthermore, Ephrem notes in 12.23 that other commentators disagree with his position that Jesus was angry because the man questioned Jesus’s commitment to the Law and his willingness to heal anyone. Some others claimed that Jesus was angry at the man’s “leprosy” itself. This indicates that other commentators known to Ephrem also found “anger” in their text of the Diatessaron and had discussed it.Footnote ¹⁹ Thus, the Commentary on the Diatessaron provides evidence for ὀργισθείς as early as 170 CE and in the eastern part of the Mediterranean, a complement to the later diglot Codex Bezae and other Latin manuscripts in the west.Footnote ²⁰

Two genealogical stories of this text can be told.Footnote ²¹ In one, σπλανγχνισθείς is the initial text. It persists across the vast majority of the tradition. The handful of coincidental changes to ὀργισθείς (or iratus) are possibly the result of unintentional errors,Footnote ²² intentional changes by a few scribes to have an angry Jesus to counter Marcionism, or some combination of the two. However, the fact that these coincidental changes all moved to “anger” seems exceptional. In the second story, ὀργισθείς is the initial reading, but a difficult one. The early coincidental changes in Matthew and Luke were prompted by the widespread mistrust of anger in early Christianity and the seemingly inexplicable arousal of Jesus’s anger in this story. This provides some basis for why tradents would change ὀργισθείς to σπλανγχνισθείς in versions of Mark’s account, and the combination of these factors early on resulted in ὀργισθείς almost being eliminated from the tradition from the very begining. These same dynamics as well as the contextual critique of emotions by Stoics would continue to suppress this reading, also making it unlikely for it to arise independently later in the tradition. However, the inclusion of ὀργισθείς in Codex Bezae and in the Diatessaron according to Ephrem (and a few later Latin witnesses) indicates that this difficult reading did not disappear from the tradition, and in fact was present enough to be debated by interpreters, according to Ephrem. Both stories entail supporting evidence as well as points of improbability. From the above discussion, the weight of evidence and the fewest improbabilities lie with a reading of ὀργισθείς. Thus, we continue in the tradition of Ephrem, attempting to explain the cause and result of Jesus’s anger in Mark 1:41–45, but first we consider the nature of anger and emotion as a framework for doing so.

Nature: What are Emotions, and What is Anger?

No simple answer exists for this question. Philosophers, theologians, psychologists, and others have offered varying perspectives on this question for thousands of years. An initial challenge is placing anger within an underlying theory of emotion, which is itself a diverse field.Footnote ²³ One broadly integrative understanding would interrelate experiential, evaluative, and motivational theories of emotion in order to integrate the strengths of each and complement various weaknesses.Footnote ²⁴ This results in emotion being understood as a social and subjectively embodied cognitive experience that results from consequential events that interact with our evaluations of things and motivate us toward (and away from) certain actions.Footnote ²⁵ A second complication is how the word “anger” is commonly employed to refer to a range of emotions that could more precisely be defined as stretching from mere annoyance to violent rage.Footnote ²⁶ For the sake of this exploration, we will consider the middle of this range as being most appropriately labelled “anger.” Many affect theorists define anger as an emotion that results from some kind of interference with goal-directed activity.Footnote ²⁷ A person feels angry when something they are doing or want to do is somehow blocked.Footnote ²⁸ However, another prominent definition of anger is that it is a feeling that arises “when we believe (rightly or wrongly) that damage was inflicted on a person/group by another person/group, and in a manner that was illegitimate and wrongful.”Footnote ²⁹ That is, anger is a personal and moral emotion that belies a view of what is right and wrong in human relations.Footnote ³⁰ Perhaps, one may settle on a combination of these two perspectives: anger is an emotion that arises when one’s own, or some related other’s, good goals have been blocked and that obstruction can be blamed on another person/group in a way that carries moral culpability.Footnote ³¹

Anger, and other emotions, are embodied experiences—an obseration that goes as far back as Aristotle (De an. 402b) and persists up to today.Footnote ³² This relationship works in the other direction as well. It has been shown that certain somatic states can prompt us toward particular emotional reactions and/or intensify those reactions.Footnote ³³ Some persons appear to have traits that produce more/less frequent and intense experiences of anger, but anger is also a temporary state induced by stimuli of some kind.Footnote ³⁴ The experience of anger is also subjective, for it is affected by our personal history, particular values, given mood, recent experiences, and current perception.Footnote ³⁵ As a subjective experience, emotion can be radically personal and private, known only to our own selves, but emotion also has social and cultural dimensions.Footnote ³⁶ Thus, anger emerges within a complex matrix of traits, states, personalities, situations, and communities.

Most of the perspectives discussed above regarding anger are influenced by modern, Western paradigms. Cultural psychology has pointed out that our views of emotion are deeply affected by culture and vary across cultures.Footnote ³⁷ The terminology, conceptualization, and evaluation of emotions vary from culture to culture (and Greek has a wide range of vocabulary for anger-like emotions).Footnote ³⁸ Therefore, an analysis of Jesus’s anger in Mark 1:41 should also consider views of emotion and anger in the historical-cultural context of a first century Jewish man in the Mediterranean basin. Yet, no culture is an emotional monolith, and we must be sensitive to variation, interaction, and divergence in emotion, particularly in terms of ὀργή, which entails both divine wrath (e.g., John 3:36; Rev 6:16) and human anger (Col 3:8; 1 Tim 2:8).

Descriptions of and reflections on emotion appear in a variety of sources from across the Mediterranean world, and one must exercise caution and emic sensitivity whenever attempting a cross-cultural understanding of emotions.Footnote ³⁹ Presentations of emotion in the Hebrew Bible take on a more integrative character than a modern, Western bent toward viewing emotions as internal subjective states. The Hebrew Bible does not contain a theorized view of emotions,Footnote ⁴⁰ and it often relies upon metaphors to express emotion.Footnote ⁴¹ Within it, experiences of emotion are typically intertwined with actions, physical sensations, and social relationships.Footnote ⁴² In particular, anger in the Hebrew Bible is associated with the sensation of heat in the mouth, nose, or face, and is only experienced by men, who are higher on the cultural social hierarchy than women (e.g., 1 Sam 11:6; Job 32:2–4).Footnote ⁴³ These human components of anger are attributed to God as well (e.g., Exod 4:14–15; Ps 78:21; Isa 30:30). Matthew R. Schlimm argues that the prototypical origin of anger in ancient Israelite culture is “perceived wrongdoing” and is always located within relationships.Footnote ⁴⁴ To exemplify these aspects of emotion in the Hebrew Bible, we turn to the first reference to anger in the Hebrew Bible in Gen 4—Cain (a man) “burns with anger” (חרה), a verb tied to the sensation of heat in the nose (Gen 30:2; Exod 4:14), and his face turns down (Gen 4:5), a facial position that indicates the emotion. This anger arises out of Cain’s relationships and sacrifice, where God approves of his brother Abel’s offering, but disapproves of Cain’s (4:6). Cain perceives God’s evaluation as a wrong done to him, especially in the context of his relationship with his brother. Cain’s anger is connected by God to sin and desire (4:7), which are depicted as external, personified agents. Ultimately, Cain’s anger leads him to the radical action of killing his brother (4:8).Footnote ⁴⁵ Thus, this less theorized, more integrative presentation of emotions in the Hebrew Bible may come closer to the developing insights of contemporary affect theory that understand emotions as subjective, social, motivating, cognitive, and embodied realities.

Shifting to the classics of Greece, we start with the Iliad and the Odyssey because of their pervasive cultural influence in the ancient world. The ὀργή/ὀργίζω word family does not appear in the epics attributed to Homer. Rather, we find σκύζομαι,Footnote ⁴⁶ the more feud-like κότος,Footnote ⁴⁷ and the more violent rage of χολός/χολόω,Footnote ⁴⁸ as well as the opening word of the entire Iliad, μῆνις.Footnote ⁴⁹ Homeric portrayals of anger tend toward the extreme pole of divine (or human) wrath, especially focused on vengeance in the face of grievous offence and particularly in the Iliad (Il.4.20–45, 11.97, 15.113 [which has χολός and μῆνις paired]; also Od. 3.141).Footnote ⁵⁰ The frenzied fury and blood-feuds of these epic characters probably operates in a somewhat different sphere than what we typically think of as anger and what Jesus seems to experience in Mark 1.Footnote ⁵¹ The classical dramatists present divine and human anger in situations that are both extreme (tragedy) and petty (comedy). We find the anger of justice around the need for retribution in Aeschylus’s Eumenides (e.g., 101, 937), and the struggle of the cycle of injustice and anger in the life of Oedipus, his family, and his rule in the plays of Sophocles (Oed. col. 765–769, 1192–99; Oed. tyr. 330–345). Tragedies, in particular, depict the need to manage and civilize anger, particularly around blood feuds and revenge.Footnote ⁵² Left to run its course, revenge and retribution can know no end and undo fragile societal bonds. On the other hand, we find Dionysius counseling Aeschylus not to fly off the handle over his rivalry with Euripides (Aristophanes, Ran. 843–857) and the angry overreaction of a local farmer toward his neighbor (Menander, Dysk. 108–109). Finally, moving on to philosophers, Plato characterizes emotion (πάθη) as a certain kind of “motion” in the soul, not controlled by reason and typically associated with pleasure and pain.Footnote ⁵³ Aristotle similarly associates emotions with pleasure and pain, though critical to Aristotle’s view is that emotion is shaped by how our reason evaluates a particular aspect of our experience.Footnote ⁵⁴ It is also noteworthy that Aristotle viewed anger as a subspecies of desire, specifically the desire for revenge based on an assessment of some wrong done against someone (Rhet. 1378a), capturing some of the echoes of the epic portrayal of anger.Footnote ⁵⁵ This very brief survey displays a range of presentation, terminology, theorization and intensity of emotion and anger across the Mediterranean milieu.

Moving from classical Greece and into the Hellenistic-Roman era, we find extensive reflections on emotions among Stoic and other moralists. As noted above, the Stoics employ the notion of propatheia or pre-emotion—a kind of sudden reaction that occurs before a rational response can take place. Epictetus describes a circumstance where a person may be suddenly shocked by a loud noise from the sky, but then that person’s wisdom can come into play and withhold rational assent to the initial movement of the emotion of fear.Footnote ⁵⁶ Moving on from these “pre-emotions,” many Stoics understood the emotions (generally, desire, fear, pleasure, and pain) as impulses driven by opinion. Thus, the Stoics held an evaluative view of emotions as well, but judged that the opinions that give rise to emotion are often faulty, mistaken notions in need of rational re-evaluation and correction.Footnote ⁵⁷ Seneca composed a complete treatise on anger (De Ira) that displays the Stoic understanding of emotions as needing to be mastered by the rational faculties (e.g., De Ira, 3.37–38).Footnote ⁵⁸ These opinions can harden into habits of mind that are hard to break, but ultimately through moral and philosophical effort one can retrain one’s mind to judge correctly and be free of most of the impulses caused by emotion.Footnote ⁵⁹ One should seek to rise above these through moral training to a state free from πάθη.Footnote ⁶⁰ The goal is for the rational part of the person to exercise proper government over the whole of the person, including the mind, body, spirit, appetites, and any external realities that may affect a person.Footnote ⁶¹

A few further observations about the intersection of affect theory and ancient conceptualizations of anger are appropriate here. First, anger need not be ego-centered. We do see times, illustrated in the Bible, where anger is aroused by unjust insult or injury to one’s own person that leads someone to seek personal retribution (e.g., Esth 1:12; Matt 22:7; Luke 15:28). Yet, we also see instances where one is angry on account of a wrong done to another (Job 32:2; Matt 8:34). Aristotle already expands this scope of the causes of anger by pointing out that anger can arise from offense to “oneself or one’s friends” (Rhet. 1379b).Footnote ⁶² Fisher points out that modern work on the passions is primarily egocentric, but that it should be expanded to involve one’s relational connections to others, even in a very broad sense of a moral principle across shared humanity.Footnote ⁶³ I can be angry because of something done to someone else. I am involved insofar as a moral principle or a larger corporate action to which I am committed has been blocked or violated, for these things are within the scope of shared values and commitments.Footnote ⁶⁴ Also, the dominant model of emotions in most modern, Western societies is that they are internal, personal, subjective states. However, cross cultural analysis has shown that emotions are often construed as social feelings that exist between persons rather than within persons.Footnote ⁶⁵ Thus, the fact that Jesus has recently left the crowds of Capernaum (Mark 1:21–38) and plans to go on to preach in towns and synagogues (Mark 1:38–39) is an important social setting for the anger that occurs between Jesus and the man with the skin disease (not just within Jesus).Footnote ⁶⁶ Finally, a typical modern, Western cultural approach to emotions values the authentic expression of internal emotion in external words and actions. In contrast, other cultures in the world today and many ancient cultures of the Mediterranean, like that of the Stoics, valued emotional restraint—one should control one’s emotions and instead act in ways that are socially acceptable and beneficial.Footnote ⁶⁷ Thus, as we attend to Jesus’s angry response in Mark 1:41–45, it is crucial to do so within this culturally tuned conceptual framework.

The view of anger as an emotion that arises from a social situation in which some morally good aim benefitting others is in the process of being inhibited fits well with the other two instances in Mark where Jesus is explicitly said to be angry. In Mark 3:5, Jesus looks around “with anger” (μετ’ ὀργή). He is “grieved” (συλλυπούμενος) because of his opponents’ hardness of heart that would prevent the man in front of them from being healed. Jesus anger occurs between him and these opponents. Jesus’s anger is based on the fact that it is God’s will to do good and save life on the Sabbath (3:4).Footnote ⁶⁸ Yes, Jesus’s goal is to heal the man, but his anger seems to arise more out of the potentially unjust and obstructive action taken against the man by these people and is only secondarily about Jesus’s own aims.Footnote ⁶⁹ Similarly, Jesus is “indignant” (ἠγανάκτησεν) at the group of disciples who were prohibiting children from coming to him (Mark 10:14; cf. several uses of this verb in Josephus including A. J. 11.210 and J. W. 1.564). Jesus makes it clear that the kingdom of God belongs to such little ones (10:14–15). Yes, Jesus’s aim is to bless the children, but his anger seems to be primarily caused by the withholding of good from these children, not merely the frustration of his own action. These could be buttressed by two occasions where Jesus’s anger is strongly implied by the narrative.Footnote ⁷⁰ When Jesus upbraids the Pharisees and scribes for their hypocrisy in Mark 7:6–13, his anger is not stated explicitly but can be deduced from the narrative because Jesus calls them hypocrites (7:6) and sarcastically refers to their “fine” (καλῶς) way of rejecting the commandments (7:9; cf. 2 Cor 11:4 and Sophocles, El. 816). As an example, Jesus cites how people avoid doing good to their parents by declaring that any such gifts are actually offerings to God (Mark 7:10–12). Jesus is angered by the way the support due to parents within a family network as commanded by God can be undone by human casuistry.Footnote ⁷¹ Similarly, Jesus is angered by the buying and selling in the temple because it thwarts the temple’s purpose of being a house of prayer for people—the economic activity stops other people from praying (Mark 11:15–17). Thus, Jesus appears to have a tendency in Mark that one might identify as a trait-affected anger response. Jesus is prone to become angry when people would unjustly prevent him (or other agents) from doing good to others in accordance with God’s will. However, the focus in all of these instances is not primarily on the obstruction of Jesus’s aim but on the way that this obstruction blocks good being done in a network of relationships. It is social and other-focused. With these features of anger before us, we can now turn to discerning why Jesus is angry in Mark 1:41–45.

Cause: Why is Jesus Angry?

Given the uncertainty of the textual reference to Jesus’s anger in Mark 1:41, the brevity of this story, and the implicitness of the narrative regarding the origins of Jesus’s anger in this case, it is no wonder that a number of possible explanations have been set forth by interpreters to reveal the possible roots of Jesus’s anger. Perhaps Jesus is broadly grieved at the ravages of disease in a fallen creation plagued by evil as exemplified in this man.Footnote ⁷² Perhaps Jesus is angry at the demonic forces that could be blamed for this defiling skin condition.Footnote ⁷³ Perhaps Jesus is angry at the way the purity system excluded and shamed people with such defilement.Footnote ⁷⁴ On the contrary, perhaps Jesus is upset that the man has defied the purity system by approaching him in a populated area.Footnote ⁷⁵ Jesus could know that the man’s skin condition is a result of some prior sin, which arouses his anger.Footnote ⁷⁶ Perhaps Jesus is working up his emotional state like other Mediterranean healers in preparation for the act of power he is about to perform.Footnote ⁷⁷ A potential weakness of all these proposals is that they must look beyond the text to draw in some piece of broader background information to make sense of Jesus’s anger: Jesus’s and/or Mark’s views of disease or leprosy, perspectives on the demonic or sinful causes of defiling conditions, understandings of the ritual purity system, or assumptions about healers’ behavior in the Mediterranean world. Thus, all these options are plausible, but they also all rely on conjectures about their relevance based on limited connections from the multiple dimensions of the Mediterranean world to the details of the story. On the contrary, Mark’s surrounding narration provides sufficient indicators to explain the cause of Jesus’s anger, and this will be explicated below.Footnote ⁷⁸

In the midst of these background-oriented proposals, an argument has emerged based on the man’s question to Jesus in Mark 1:41: “If you are willing, you are able to cleanse me.” Two recent monographs have argued that Jesus is angry because the man’s question casts doubts on Jesus’s willingness to heal him. F. Scott Spencer argues that Jesus is angry because the man’s question connotes doubts about Jesus’s commitment to wholeness and life as part of his proclamation of the gospel. Thus, Jesus is personally offended that someone would question his values on this point.Footnote ⁷⁹ Matthew Thiessen argues that Jesus takes offense at the man questioning his willingness to heal, but he claims that the question entails the man suggesting that Jesus does not take ritual impurity seriously.Footnote ⁸⁰ Jesus is upset that the man would insinuate such a thing about him. However, this perspective falters on a few key points. First, these arguments are weakened by the fact that they draw on a particular understanding of anger as inherently involving a personal affront. The previous survey points out that this is overemphasized in some contemporary, Western conceptualizations of anger, while emotions (including anger) in a Jewish-Mediterranean context generally bore a broader, social character. Next, if Matthew and Luke edit out Jesus’s angry reaction (both Spencer and Thiessen support a reading of ὀργισθείς), why would they retain the man’s insulting question? Matthew and Luke do not appear to hear any note of offense in the question. Also, one searches in vain for an instance where ἐάν θέλῃς (1:41) is employed to question the willingness of the subject.Footnote ⁸¹ On the contrary, uses of this phrase lean toward inferring that the subject is or should be willing to act in such a way (cf. Sir 6:32, 15:5; Mark 6:22; Philo, Flight 1.28; Plutarch, Demetr. 27.4; Athenaeus, Deipn. 14.84). This nuance fits the typical connotations of the conditional form (ἐάν with the subjunctive followed by a present verb in the apodosis), which connotes a positive stance regarding the realization of the condition.Footnote ⁸² Finally, given that this is so early in the gospel narrative, it would be dubious to expect any secondary character who has just appeared on the scene to have much knowledge of Jesus’s commitments to healing or purity.

These recent interpretations of Jesus’s anger largely overlook the plot flow and social dynamics in Mark’s narrative that provide a reasonable framework for Jesus’s anger. We are told in 1:14 that Jesus came “preaching the good news of God” (κηρύσσων τὸ εὐαγγέλιον τοῦ θεοῦ), and soon afterwards Jesus is portrayed “teaching” (ἐδίδασκεν) in a synagogue (1:21). No mention has been made of healing or exorcising activity until the demon possessed man cries out in 1:23, interrupting Jesus’s teaching. Jesus silences and exorcizes the demon. This is followed by amazement at Jesus’s “new teaching with authority” (διδαχή καινὴ κατ’ ἐξουσίαν) because of the exorcism, and then the spread of Jesus’s fame in 1:28. Right after this, Jesus is subtly asked to heal Simon’s mother-in-law (1:30). All of this results in a throng of people crowding around Simon’s and Andrew’s house, not seeking to hear Jesus’s message, but clamoring for his healing or exorcizing touch (1:32–34). Jesus escapes from the crowds out to the desert to pray (1:35). When he is informed that the crowd is searching for him, Jesus leaves them behind and departs to other towns “so that I may preach (κηρύξω) there too, for I have come for this reason” (1:38). The flow of the plot shows that Jesus’s healings and exorcisms kindle a level of social attention that he perceives as inhibiting his preaching activity. As Edwin K. Broadhead states, “Jesus avoids the miracle-seeking crowd in order to accomplish his mission of proclamation.”Footnote ⁸³ We see a similar dynamic narrated in Mark 3:7–12. Great crowds of people have come to see Jesus because they “heard what he was doing” (3:8; not that they heard about his preaching). These crowds threaten to “trample” (3:9) Jesus, and they “fall upon” him (3:10) in an attempt to touch him. Jesus performs many miracles and healings, but he is not able to preach the message of the kingdom and has to silence the demons who shout out his identity. While Jesus includes healings and exorcisms as part of his mission of doing good and saving life (cf. 1:39, 3:4, 5:19), a necessary component of his mission is verbal: preaching, teaching, proclamation.Footnote ⁸⁴ The most common address given to Jesus in Mark’s gospel is “Teacher” (διδάσκαλε; 4:38, 5:35, 9:17, 9:38, 10:17, 10:20, 10:35, 12:14, 12:19, 12:32, 13:1)—Jesus even identifies himself without a name as “The Teacher” in 14:14. While Jesus’s ministry includes both proclamation and healings/exorcisms (so 1:39), the popular reactions to Jesus’s demonstrations of power appear to limit or inhibit his ability to preach the kingdom of God (never vice versa) in Mark. Thus in 1:38, Jesus aims to depart from the throngs generated by his miracle working activity in order to preach to a broader geographical area.Footnote ⁸⁵

Shortly after stating this intent to avoid the notoriety of his wonder working in order to preach more (1:38), Jesus is met by a man requesting a miracle—not only that, but the dramatic miracle of cleansing someone from an infamous defiling skin disease. In Jewish culture, this skin disease was strongly associated with death (perhaps due to the appearance of white, flaking flesh), and so cleansing someone of it was tantamount to raising the dead.Footnote ⁸⁶ Most biblical precedents of the cleansing of “leprosy” involve divine intervention (Exod 4:6–8; Num 12:10–16; 2 Kgs 5:1–27). The removal of this disease in Jesus’s Jewish context was seen as something only God or someone endued with God’s power could do.Footnote ⁸⁷ If Jesus’s previous acts of power attracted attention (1:28, 32), then this super-miraculous act could generate an even greater degree of problematic notoriety for Jesus that would further inhibit his proclamation of the kingdom of God.Footnote ⁸⁸ Jesus knows how this dynamic caused problems for him recently, and the narrative tells of the realization of his prognostication when Jesus is no longer able to enter a city openly after the man does go out and spread the word of his cleansing (1:45).Footnote ⁸⁹ Jesus’s appraisal of the complexity and difficulty of the situation and its possible results arouse his anger.Footnote ⁹⁰ Jesus’s anger has both state and trait elements that fuel it here. In terms of narrative time, Jesus has only just left Capernaum to avoid the crowds who are seeking him and his miraculous power in order to preach more widely. Right on the heels of this purposeful act, Jesus is faced with the very same dynamic, placing him in a dilemma. The man’s demonstrative public accosting of Jesus presents a positive challenge to Jesus’s reputation and honor in this cultural context.Footnote ⁹¹ If Jesus chooses not to cleanse the man, it could put either his power or his commitment to mercy and life into question. If he does cleanse the man, it may very well obstruct his intent to preach his message more broadly.Footnote ⁹² Jesus is in a state of aiming to avoid disruptive notoriety, when he is presented with the same problem again, perhaps with an even stronger intensity of public pressure and possible recognition. This concatenation of events reasonably sparks frustration and anger.Footnote ⁹³ This also intersects with Jesus’s trait anger observed above: Jesus tends to get angry when he perceives that someone is standing in the way of good that might be done to others. While cleansing this man is good and consistent with Jesus’s mission, doing so may limit his ability to proclaim the kingdom widely to others, given the man’s propensity to public display. This is precisely what happens in 1:45, and so his anger is aroused for those who might not hear his good news because of the problematic publicity that will likely occur.

Result: What Does the Angry Jesus Do?

Many cultures have a notion of emotions as internal, affective states. This sense is primary in modern, Western cultures. However, a majority of the world’s cultures across time and space, including the ancient Mediterranean, consider emotions as external realities performed by actions in specific social situations.Footnote ⁹⁴ Thus, it is critical to examine how Jesus “performs” his anger—what actions flow from the initial statement of Jesus’s anger by Mark. Taking the reading of ὀργισθείς as well-instantiated in this episode’s textual tradition means that the very first thing Jesus is narrated as doing in this story is “being angry.” By opening in this way, the narrator casts what happens in the rest of the story as somehow related to or resulting from Jesus’s anger. As will be shown, the actions of Jesus and the man are both illuminated within the causal context of Jesus’s anger.

The first consideration is how to read the participle ὀργισθείς in relation to Jesus’s actions in the rest of 1:41: Jesus reaching out his hand (ἐκτείνας; another participle), touching the man (ἥψατο), and speaking his cleansing (λέγει … καθαρίσθητι). As stated above, the man’s disease and public approach put Jesus in a conundrum: cleanse the man, which is consistent with his mission, and risk the obstacles that might arise from the notoriety, or refuse to cleanse him, which could put him in a bad light, and proceed onward with his proclamation of the kingdom.Footnote ⁹⁵ A modern, Western perspective that emphasizes emotions as internal, essential states might prefer a concessive connotation in the translation: “Even though he was angry, Jesus reached out his hand and touched him.”Footnote ⁹⁶ That is, Jesus cleanses the man despite his angry reaction to the obstruction of his mission that might emerge from such an act. His internal anger and his external actions are in tension with one another. However, cultures (like the ancient Mediterranean) where emotions are habitually managed as part of social and situated actions would be comfortable with a present temporal sense: “While he was angry, Jesus reached out his hand and touched him.” This translation simply asserts that Jesus’s emotional state co-existed with his cleansing action with no notion of tension. While we are not explicitly told so, Jesus’s action of cleansing the man belies that, despite an initial appraisal and emotional response, he has judged it socially, morally, and missionally better to cleanse him, and thus he does so.Footnote ⁹⁷ In the midst of the emotional and public moment, Jesus selects this merciful act as the best course of action even though it may (and does) have negative future implications.

The next thing that Jesus does in his angry state is to “strictly order” (ἐμβριμησάμενος) the man to say “nothing to anyone” (μηδενί μηδὲν). Some interpreters emphasize an irate connotation for the verb ἐμβριμάομαι, referring back to its use in classical Greek for the heated snorting of horses (Aeschylus, Sept. 461 and Lucian, Men. 20).Footnote ⁹⁸ However, reading such a strong emotional sense into this word is not necessary and misses a key linguistic distinction in its use.Footnote ⁹⁹ When this verb is used without following speech or any indirect object, it does refer to an experience of anger or indignation by the subject.Footnote ¹⁰⁰ For instance, in the Aquila recension of LXX Ps 7:12 this verb refers (anthropomorphically) to the fact that God is righteous and patient, and so does not experience anger (ἐμβριμάομαι) every day.Footnote ¹⁰¹ Similarly, ἐμβριμάομαι is used in John 11:33 and 38 alongside τάρασσω to refer to Jesus’s emotions without direct reference to speech (see also Eusebius, Hist. ecc. 5.1.60). We find the noun form ἐμβρίμημα/ἐμβρίμησις in LXX Lam 2:6 and 1 En 101:7 (P. Chester Beatty XII) referring to internal wrath and not spoken words. However, when ἐμβριμαόμαι is used with an indirect object in the dative and followed by speech, it refers to a manner of speaking that entails a forceful, direct order or rebuke (and not to an internal emotional state).Footnote ¹⁰² LXX Daniel 11:30 (ἐμβριμήσονται αὐτῷ; LXX) probably recalls the ultimatum given by the Romans to Antiochus IV to leave Egypt. In Isa 17:13 (LXX Symmachus), the phrase ἐμβριμήσεται αὐτῷ translates the Hebrew גער (to rebuke) in place of the primary LXX reading of ἀποσκορακίζω (to curse). In a parallel account, we find ἐνεβριμήθη αὐτοῖς in Matt 9:30 referring to a direct order that Jesus gives to two healed men with no reference to anger in the context—an order that is similarly disobeyed in 9:31.Footnote ¹⁰³ Perhaps most importantly, Mark uses the verb again in 14:5 (ἐνεβριμῶντο αὐτῇ) to refer to the rebuke given to the woman who anointed Jesus’s feet. While some emotion on the part of the speaker(s) may be adduced with this kind of direct speech, the emphasis is not on the internal emotion but on the external action of speaking that carries unusual force and often accusatory implications in a social context.Footnote ¹⁰⁴

In Mark 1:43, Jesus “strictly orders” (ἐμβριμησάμενος αὐτῷ) the man (note the use of the dative) and then sends him away (ἐξέβαλεν αὐτὸν).Footnote ¹⁰⁵ Again, while emotion on the part of the speaker could be inferred,Footnote ¹⁰⁶ the primary emphasis of ἐμβριμαόμαι in this construction, as shown above, is that the tone and/or contents of the speech impute some possible culpability on the recipient of the command and stress the importance of obeying the command. The force of the order is also communicated by the use of four direct imperatives in 1:44 (ὅρα, ὕπαγε, δεῖξον, προσένεγκε). The verb ἐμβριμάομαι is the perfect word to use in this context where Jesus anticipates that the man might disobey him and so wants to forcefully stress the fact that he must heed the order. Jesus could reasonably deduce that a “leper” who boldly accosted him in public and asked to be cleansed might be prone to share the news of this deed.Footnote ¹⁰⁷ Jesus wants to try to prevent the public announcing of this spectacularly miraculous act by the man so that it does not end up impeding his mission to proclaim the kingdom of God.Footnote ¹⁰⁸ Thus, he “strictly orders” him.

As noted above, Mark 1:44 provides the content of Jesus’s order. It is presented to the audience as a kind of quick narrative flashback after Jesus has sent the man away. First, Jesus issues a command with a strong double negative for him to keep silent—say “nothing to no one” (μηδενί μηδὲν). This particular double negative appears nowhere else in Mark and only rarely elsewhere in the New Testament (Rom 13:8; 2 Cor 6:3).Footnote ¹⁰⁹ The four imperatives entail three actions: go, show yourself to the priest, and offer the appropriate sacrifices. This part of the command would involve the man in a three-day journey to Jerusalem and an eight-day ritual to certify his cleansing.Footnote ¹¹⁰ This would take the man entirely out of the region of Galilee for several days, removing him from the center of public attention and redirecting any news he might share into a faraway city.Footnote ¹¹¹ In this framework, Jesus’s command that the man follow the prescribed Levitical rituals appears to be more strategic than ideological. That is, this is not Jesus intentionally affirming the Jewish purity system. Rather, Jesus is tactically making use of the requirements of this system to get the man and the notoriety he might generate out of the way.Footnote ¹¹²

The final phrase of Jesus’s order specifies that what the man does in Jerusalem is done “as a testimony to them” (ἐις μαρτύριον αὐτοῖς; that is, to the priests).Footnote ¹¹³ This phrase can be used positively to designate a witness for an act to be remembered (LXX Gen 21:30; LXX 1 Sam 9:24; LXX Prov 29:14; Matt 24:14; Luke 21:13; Heb 3:5), or it can be used negatively as entailing some kind of accusation (LXX Deut 31:19, 26; LXX Josh 24:27; LXX Job 16:8; LXX Hos 2:14; Luke 9:5; James 5:3).Footnote ¹¹⁴ Three primary interpretive options have been proposed:Footnote ¹¹⁵ this is a testimony to Jesus’s faithfulness to the Law,Footnote ¹¹⁶ it is a testimony to Jesus’s messianic power effectively cleansing the man,Footnote ¹¹⁷ or it could be testimony against the failed Jewish purity system.Footnote ¹¹⁸ The phrase occurs two more times in Mark: one that is negative (testimony against; 6:11) and one that is neutral-positive (testimony to; 13:9).Footnote ¹¹⁹ In both of those contexts, it makes good sense to translate ἐις as purpose: “in order to testify,” and so it is sound to understand the phrase in 1:44 in a telic sense. Jesus sends the man to Jerusalem in order to testify there. In the framework of this argument, the impact of his testimony is not the critical concern. Rather, Jesus takes the man’s narratively implied propensity to testify about what has happened and redirects it to the priests in Jerusalem. Jesus is effectively saying, “You feel a burning desire to testify about this? Fine, just not here. Go to Jerusalem and tell it to the priests there.”Footnote ¹²⁰ Jesus provides the man with a culturally appropriate outlet to share his good news and have his place in society restored, but in a location far away from Jesus’s current mission field.Footnote ¹²¹

Nevertheless, Jesus’s stern command is ineffectual. The man goes out and proclaims it freely (κηρύσσειν πολλὰ) and spreads the news widely (διαφημίζειν τὸν λόγον).Footnote ¹²² Despite Jesus’s anger (1:41), merciful act (1:42), strict order (1:43), and specific directives (1:44), the man does not obey, and in fact does quite the opposite. Why is this? The first reason returns us to the notion of emotions as shared, social realities discussed above. In this case, Jesus’s anger is unknown to and unshared by the man. Mark has to narrate Jesus’s anger—to tell the audience—because the events that transpire in the account itself do not demonstrate that anger definitively. Jesus’s anger arises out of his prior experience intersecting with this man’s public request, but the man has no way of knowing Jesus’s recently declared intent of proclaiming the kingdom more broadly (1:38) or of the way that miraculous acts have brought him troublesome notoriety recently (1:35–38). The man cannot act in ways that respond appropriately to Jesus’s anger because there is not enough shared context and relationship between them for the emotion to be socially realized. The man appears to have no idea that Jesus is angry and that this anger stands behind the strict order that Jesus delivers. Jesus’s awareness of the man’s ignorance may also play into his decision to heal him, despite the predictable negative results. Jesus manages his own emotions in light of his assessment of the man’s understandable lack of appreciation for the dynamics at play. Second, while we know almost nothing of the man’s background, it would be feasible that his sustained unclean status had strained his kinship ties and reduced him to near poverty. A journey to Jerusalem for the prescribed ritual as Jesus commanded would have been a very difficult task for a “leper” who was ostracized and probably impoverished. It may have been much easier and more expedient for the man to stay in his home region and take advantage of Jesus’s reputation as a healer to certify his cleansing. Therefore, while Jesus’s anger results in a forceful and specific set of orders to go away to Jerusalem and share his news there (so as to not interfere with Jesus’s mission of proclamation), the lack of shared social and circumstantial context between Jesus and the man means that Jesus’s emotion and its resulting actions are ineffectual.