Title: From fratricide to forgiveness : the language and ethics of anger in Genesis /
Authors: Schlimm, Matthew Richard.
Publisher: Eisenbrauns,
Year: 2011
Subjects: Bible. Criticism, interpretation, etc.; Anger in the Bible.
Abstract: "In the first book of the Bible, every patriarch and many of the matriarchs become angry in significant ways. However, scholars have largely ignored how Genesis treats this emotion, particularly how Genesis functions as Torah by providing ethical instruction about handling this emotion{u2019}s perplexities. In this important work, Schlimm fills this gap in scholarship, describing (1) the language surrounding anger in the Hebrew Bible, (2) the moral guidance that Genesis offers for engaging anger, and (3) the function of anger as a literary motif in Genesis. Genesis evidences two bookends, which expose readers to the opposite extremes of anger and its effects. In Gen 4:1{u2013}16, anger takes center stage when Cain kills his brother, Abel, although he has done nothing wrong. Fratricide is at one extreme of the spectrum of anger{u2019}s results. In the final chapter of Genesis, readers encounter the opposite extreme, forgiveness.^
Contents: Introduction -- Traversing foreign terrain : the troubles of translating emotion -- Imposing Western assumptions on the text : irrationality as senseless violence -- The Hebrew Bible's prototypical understanding of anger -- Biblical anger's associative networks -- Biblical anger and conceptual metaphor -- Advances in Old Testament ethics -- Ethics, emotion, and experience : the power of stories -- Ethics outside Eden : Cain and Abel -- A land of limitations : anger among shepherds -- Anger at the margins -- Attempting reconciliation : brothers at the end of Genesis -- Synthesis and conclusion : hope in a world of limitations -- Appendix A : the statistics of biblical language for anger -- Appendix B : Hebrew words for anger.