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Women's Emotion, Community, and Politics: Interpreting Tears in Luke 23.27–31
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 November 2023
Abstract
The tears of the ‘daughters of Jerusalem’ in Luke 23.27–31 are often taken as a representation of pathos. However, women's public performance of lamentation serves several purposes in the biblical prophets and Greco-Roman historiography and rhetoric. Women are responsible for mourning rituals following a death to honour the deceased and their family. They express communal lament following defeat in war. Women use tears to protest political and legal situations, swaying public opinion and decisions. The rhetorical functions of women's mourning in antiquity offer valuable insight into the potential purposes of mourning in Luke 23.27–31. The women's initial display of tears honours Jesus. The disruption of the negative perception of Jesus at this point in the narrative suggests the women's tears may be political protest. The redirection of their tears to themselves and their children provides the audience with a model response to the destruction of Jerusalem. As in Jer 9.17–22, the mourning of Luke's ‘daughters of Jerusalem’ is prophetic.
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References
1 See Reeder, Caryn A., Gendering War and Peace in the Gospel of Luke (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019) 172-3Google Scholar.
2 Johnson, Luke Timothy, The Gospel of Luke (SP 3; Collegeville: Liturgical Press/Michael Glazier, 1991) 298Google Scholar; Bovon, Franҫois, Luke 3: A Commentary on the Gospel of Luke 19:28—24:53 (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2012) 17Google Scholar; Eklund, Rebekah, Jesus Wept: The Significance of Jesus’ Laments in the New Testament (LNTS 515; London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2015) 104Google Scholar.
3 J. Massyngbaerde Ford, My Enemy Is My Guest: Jesus and Violence in Luke (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1984) 110. See also Robert C. Tannehill, The Gospel According to Luke, vol. 1 of The Narrative Unity of Luke—Acts: A Literary Interpretation (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1986) 160; Stephen Voorwinde, Jesus’ Emotion in the Gospels (London: Continuum, 2011) 140.
4 Shelly Matthews, ‘The Weeping Jesus and the Daughters of Jerusalem. Gender and Conquest in Lukan Lament’, in Doing Gender – Doing Religion: Fallstudien zur Intersektionalität im frühen Judentum, Christentum und Islam (ed. Ute E. Eisen, Christine Gerber, and Angela Standhartinger; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013) 381–403, esp. 386–93.
5 Stephen Voorwinde, ‘Jesus’ Tears – Human or Divine?’ Reformed Theological Review 56 (1997) 68–81, here 73, 75; Eklund, Jesus Wept, 104–5, 108. See also David L. Tiede, Prophecy and History in Luke—Acts (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1980) 78.
6 See Matthews, ‘Weeping Jesus’, 384–5.
7 Katherine M. Hockey, The Role of Emotion in 1 Peter (SNTS 173; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019) 23–4.
8 Tannehill, Gospel According to Luke, 165.
9 Hans Conzelmann, The Theology of St. Luke (trans. Geoffrey Buswell; New York: Harper, 1960) 134; Jerome H. Neyrey, ‘Jesus’ Address to the Women of Jerusalem (Lk. 23.27—31) – A Prophetic Judgment Oracle’, NTS 29 (1983) 74—86.
10 Matthews, ‘Weeping Jesus’, 399. See also Luis Menéndez Antuña, ‘Male-Bonding, Female Vanishing. Representing Gendered Authority in Luke 23:26—24:53’, Early Christianity 4 (2013) 490–506, esp. 493–5.
11 See F. Scott Spencer, Dancing Girls, Loose Ladies, and Women of the Cloth: The Women in Jesus’ Life (New York: Continuum, 2004) 129–30; and especially Brittany E. Wilson, ‘Masculinity in Luke-Acts: The Lukan Jesus and Muscular Christianity’, in Luke-Acts (ed. James P. Grimshaw; Texts@Contexts; London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2019) 23–33, esp. 26–7, 30.
12 Sabine Demal, ‘Jesu Umgang mit Frauen nach dem Lukasevangelium’, BN 57 (1991) 41–95; and (briefly) Robyn J. Whitaker, ‘A Failed Spectacle: The Role of the Crowd in Luke 23’, BibInt 25 (2017) 399–416, here 407, are unusual in interpreting the women as active contributors to the narrative.
13 See Joel B. Green, The Gospel of Luke (NICNT; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997) 13; Loveday Alexander, Acts in Its Ancient Literary Context: A Classicist Looks at the Acts of the Apostles (Early Christianity in Context; LNTS 298; London: T&T Clark, 2005) 172.
14 Reeder, War and Peace, 171–4, 184–8.
15 Frederick W. Danker, Jesus and the New Age: A Commentary on St. Luke's Gospel (Philadelphia: Fortress, rev. ed. 1988) 3–9; Brittany E. Wilson, Unmanly Men: Refigurations of Masculinity in Luke-Acts (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015) 21–8.
16 E.g., Peter Rice, ‘The Rhetoric of Luke's Passion: Luke's Use of Common-place to Amplify the Guilt of Jerusalem's Leaders in Jesus’ Death’, BibInt 21 (2013) 355–76; and Bart B. Bruehler, ‘EGLBS 2019 Presidential Address: Sight, Insight, and Heartsight: The Rhetoric and Affective Impact of Vividness in Luke's Passion Narrative’, Conversations with the Biblical World 39 (2019) 1–26. Luke's Gospel has more generally been compared with Greco-Roman historiography and biography; see Green, Luke, 4–6; Alexander, Acts, 18—19, 156–9.
17 See, for instance, Anke Inselmann, ‘Emotions and Passions in the New Testament: Methodological Issues’, BibInt 24 (2016) 536–54; F. Scott Spencer, ‘Getting a Feel for the “Mixed” and “Vexed” Study of Emotions in Biblical Literature’, in Mixed Feelings and Vexed Passions: Exploring Emotions in Biblical Literature (ed. F. Scott Spencer; RBS 90; Atlanta: SBL, 2017) 1–41, esp. 3–12; Hockey, 1 Peter, 25–6, 32–4. Note that the current study is concerned with the practices of mourning in antiquity, not with the complex affective processes of grief.
18 Robert A. Kaster, Emotion, Restraint, and Community in Ancient Rome (Classical Culture and Society; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005) 8, suggests approaching ‘emotion’ in an ancient text as the performance of a script of perception, evaluation, response and action.
19 Cf. Françoise Mirguet, ‘What Is an “Emotion” in the Hebrew Bible? An Experience that Exceeds Most Contemporary Concepts’, BibInt 24 (2016) 442–65, esp. 444, 463–4.
20 E.g., David H. Jensen, 1 and 2 Samuel (Belief; Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2015) 174–6. See also Saul M. Olyan, Biblical Mourning: Ritual and Social Dimensions (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004) 52–3.
21 Angela Kim Harkins, ‘The Pro-Social Role of Grief in Ezra's Penitential Prayer’, BibInt 24 (2016) 466–91, esp. 486–90.
22 Tod Linafelt, Surviving Lamentations: Catastrophe, Lament, and Protest in the Afterlife of a Biblical Book (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000) 50–6.
23 See Susanne Gillmayr-Bucher, ‘Body Images in the Psalms’, JSOT 28 (2004) 301–26, esp. 325; Angela Kim Harkins, ‘The Performative Reading of the Hodayot: The Arousal of Emotions and the Exegetical Generation of Texts’, JSP 21 (2011) 55–71. Performance criticism in general draws attention to the emotive resonance of biblical texts; see especially Whitney Shiner, Proclaiming the Gospel: First-Century Performance of Mark (Harrisburg: Trinity Press International, 2003) 57–76.
24 Darja Šterbenc Erker, ‘Women's Tears in Ancient Roman Ritual’, in Tears in the Graeco-Roman World (ed. Thorsten Fögen; Berlin: Walter De Gruyter, 2009) 135–60, esp. 138–9. See also Johan Vekselius, ‘Weeping for the res publica: Tears in Roman Political Culture’ (PhD diss., Lund University, 2018) 55.
25 See further Vekselius, ‘Weeping for the res publica’, 143–4.
26 John Marincola, ‘Ancient Audiences and Expectations’, in The Cambridge Companion to the Roman Historians (ed. Andrew Feldherr; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009) 11–23, esp. 11–15. See also Ruth Webb, Ekphrasis, Imagination and Persuasion in Ancient Rhetorical Theory and Practice (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009) 18–24.
27 Virgil's Aeneas, who weeps and laments as he views artistic representations of the destruction of Troy, exemplifies the expected response (Aen. 1.464–5, 485–7). See Webb, Ekphrasis, 8, 87—90.
28 Webb, Ekphrasis, 149.
29 Webb, Ekphrasis, 21–4. See also Angelos Chaniotis, ‘Empathy, Emotional Display, Theatricality, and Illusion in Hellenistic Historiography’, in Unveiling Emotions II: Emotions in Greece and Rome: Texts, Images, Material Culture (ed. Angelos Chaniotis and Pierre Ducrey; Heidelberger althistorische Beiträge und epigraphische Studien 55; Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 2018) 53–84, esp. 76–8.
30 See also Webb, Ekphrasis, 107–10, 122–6.
31 Shiner, Proclaiming the Gospel, 37–46 (and throughout).
32 So Rice, ‘Luke's Passion’, 372. See also Bruehler, ‘Sight, Insight, and Heartsight’, 13–14, 20, 25.
33 Paul A. Kruger, ‘Emotions in the Hebrew Bible: A Few Observations on Prospects and Challenges’, OTE 28 (2015) 395–420, here 414–15.
34 Barbara H. Rosenwein, ‘Worrying about Emotions in History’, American Historical Review 107 (2002) 821–45, esp. 842; also Vekselius, ‘Weeping for the res publica’, 195–7.
35 See further Sarah Rey, ‘Roman Tears and their Impact: A Question of Gender?’ Clio 41 (2015) 225–45, esp. 230–7; Vekselius, ‘Weeping for the res publica’, 44.
36 Scipio's weeping over Carthage is described with δακρύω and ‘clear’ or public κλαίω in Polybius 38.22.1; and Plutarch, Marc. 19.1, attributes ‘many tears’ (πολὺ δακρῦσαι) to Marcellus at Syracuse.
37 Rey, ‘Roman Tears’, 243.
38 See also Tacitus, Ann. 3.1–6; Vekselius, ‘Weeping for the res publica’, 52–6.
39 Cf. Virgil, Aen. 9.498—502.
40 Matthews, ‘Weeping Jesus’, 396.
41 See also Vekselius, ‘Weeping for the res publica’, 52–3.
42 Anthony Corbeill, Nature Embodied: Gesture in Ancient Rome (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004), 68–9, 77; Dorota Dutsch, ‘Nenia: Gender, Genre, and Lament in Ancient Rome’, in Lament: Studies in the Ancient Mediterranean and Beyond (ed. Ann Suter; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008) 258–79; Erker, ‘Women's Tears’, 135–8.
43 So Joseph A. Fitzmyer, The Gospel According to Luke (X—XXIV): Introduction, Translation, and Notes (AB; Garden City: Doubleday, 1985) 1495; Danker, Jesus, 371.
44 See Peter J. Scaer, The Lukan Passion and the Praiseworthy Death (New Testament Monographs 10; Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix, 2005) 91–2, 112–16.
45 See further Olyan, Biblical Mourning, 29—33.
46 On professional women mourners in the Bible, see Olyan, Biblical Mourning, 49–51; L. Juliana Claassens, ‘Calling the Keeners: The Image of the Wailing Woman as Symbol of Survival in a Traumatized World’, JFSR 26 (2010) 63–77, here 67; and in Roman contexts, Corbeill, Nature Embodied, 72–7; Erker, ‘Women's Tears’, 138–43.
47 Olyan, Biblical Mourning, 50; Claassens, ‘Calling the Keeners’, 67–71.
48 See further Katariina Mustakallio, ‘Grief and Mourning in the Roman Context: The Changing Sphere of Female Lamentation’, in Unveiling Emotions, ed. Chaniotis and Ducrey, 237–50, esp. 241–2.
49 Corbeill, Nature Embodied, 75–6; Erker, ‘Women's Tears’, 143, 147–8; Vekselius, ‘Weeping for the res publica’, 199.
50 See also Claassens, ‘Calling the Keeners’, 70–1.
51 Reeder, War and Peace, 173, 207.
52 Johnson, Gospel of Luke, 15–21, explores Luke as a prophetic text (though in Luke 23.27—31, he identifies only Jesus’ words, not the women's mourning, as prophetic).
53 See Ekaterina Koslova, ‘Women and Ancient Mortuary Culture(s)’, Covenant Quarterly 72 (2014) 159–73, esp. 160; Reeder, War and Peace, 171–3.
54 See further Olyan, Biblical Mourning, 102–3; J. J. M. Roberts, First Isaiah (Hermeneia; Minneapolis: Fortress, 2015) 61–2.
55 Kathleen O'Connor, Jeremiah: Pain and Promise (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2011) 61–5, addresses the slippage between referents in Jer 8.18—9.11.
56 See Olyan, Biblical Mourning, 49–51; Claassens, ‘Calling the Keeners’, 67.
57 O'Connor, Jeremiah, 68. See also Koslova, ‘Mortuary Culture’, 168.
58 Claassens, ‘Calling the Keeners,’ 68—71.
59 Claassens, ‘Calling the Keeners’, 72–3.
60 Cf. Ford, My Enemy, 3–4; Green, Luke, 58–9, 122–3; Reeder, War and Peace, 14–15.
61 Johnson, Gospel of Luke, 372; Brant Pitre, ‘Blessing the Barren and Warning the Fecund: Jesus’ Message for Women Concerning Pregnancy and Childbirth,’ JSNT 81 (2001) 59–80, here 69–74; Reeder, War and Peace, 48–9.
62 See Erker, ‘Women's Tears’, 152–4.
63 John Keegan, The Face of Battle (New York: Penguin, 1976) 31–4.
64 Lawrence A. Tritle, From Melos to My Lai: War and Survival (London: Routledge, 2000) 11, 34.
65 Tritle, Melos to My Lai, 143–61, 189–91.
66 Compare Jo-Ann Shelton, ‘The Fall of Troy in Seneca's Troades’, in The Fall of Cities in the Mediterranean: Commemoration in Literature, Folk—Song, and Liturgy (ed. Mary R. Bachvarova, Dorota Dutsch, and Ann Suter; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016) 183–211, esp. 191, 207.
67 Ann Suter, ‘Tragic Tears and Gender’, in Tears in the Graeco-Roman World, ed. Fögen, 59–83, esp. 65, 81; Shelton, ‘Fall of Troy’, 191.
68 Donald Lateiner, ‘Tears and Crying in Hellenic Historiography: Dacryology from Herodotus to Polybius’, in Tears in the Graeco-Roman World, ed. Fögen, 105–34, esp. 107.
69 See e.g., Tiede, Prophecy and History, 113; Neyrey, ‘Jesus’ Address’, 76–7.
70 I. Howard Marshall, The Gospel of Luke (NIGTC; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1978) 863—4; Ford, My Enemy, 129.
71 See also Tacitus, Ann. 2.75, 2.77; Erker, ‘Women's Tears’, 144–7.
72 Vekselius, ‘Weeping for the res publica’, 75–82.
73 Erker, ‘Women's Tears’, 149–52; Mustakallio, ‘Grief and Mourning’, 246.
74 See Ebersole, Gary L., ‘The Function of Ritual Weeping Revisited: Affective Expression and Moral Discourse’, HR 39 (2000) 211–46Google Scholar, here 243–44; Mustakallio, ‘Grief and Mourning’, 247.
75 Demal, ‘Jesu Umgang’, 80–1, makes a similar proposal concerning the women of Luke 23.27–31. On Luke's theme of injustice, note Luke 23.4, 13–15, 22, 40–1, 47, and Green, Luke, 807, 827; Whitaker, ‘Spectacle’, 415.
76 See Tannehill, Gospel According to Luke, 165.
77 The vocabulary is different— κόπτω (along with θρηνέω) describes the women, while the crowd is described with τύπτω τὰ στήθη. Consequently, Whitaker, ‘Spectacle’, 407, 409, argues that the crowds in verse 48 only represent grief – not remorse.
78 See Cosgrove, Charles H., ‘A Woman's Unbound Hair in the Greco-Roman World, with Special Reference to the Story of the “Sinful Woman” in Luke 7.36–50’, JBL 124 (2005), 675–92Google Scholar, esp. 688–91; Whitaker, ‘Spectacle’, 407.
79 See further Reeder, War and Peace, 161—4, 184—8, 207—8.
80 See Reeder, War and Peace, 195—200.