Weighing Hearts

Character, Judgment, and the Ethics of Reading the Bible

Stuart Lasine

• Publisher: T&T Clark
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9780567473783
• eBook ISBN: 9780567426741
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Commentary

Issues involving 'character' have been the object of increasing interest and debate in recent years. Social psychologists attempt to determine the role of character as a cause of human behavior, moral philosophers explore the significance of character for understanding ethics and virtue, and literary scholars investigate the depiction of character in narrative. Weighing Hearts represents the first serious attempt to integrate all these approaches in order to gain a deeper and more precise understanding of how readers evaluate characters in biblical narrative. While the primary focus is on the Hebrew Bible, the author also includes several comparative analyses involving other ancient and modern literary works. Weighing Hearts also shows how biblical historians and redaction critics can make their analyses more precise and nuanced, by taking into account what psychology has learned about the consistency of character and the 'attribution errors' people make when evaluating others.

Table of contents

• CONTENTS
• Preface
• Abbreviations
• Part I. METHODS, THEORIES, AND TEXTS
• Chapter 1. INTRODUCTION: SEEING WITH THE EYES OF EVALUATION
• 1. Judging Character: Methodology at the Intersection of Psychology, Literary Theory, and Moral Philosophy
• 2. Preview of Chapters 2–9
• Chapter 2. SEARCHING THE INNERMOST PARTS: CONSCIOUSNESS, SELF, AND MENTAL SPACE IN ANCIENT LITERATURE
• 1. “How different were the ancients?”
• 2. Methodological Problems Assessing Ancient Selves from Texts
• 3. Mental Space Ancient and Modern
• 4. Biblical Selves and Inner Space
• 5. Conclusion
• Chapter 3. WHEN SHOULD WE PSYCHOLOGIZE? EVALUATING CHARACTER IN REDACTED BIBLICAL TEXTS
• 1. Character and Situation in Job 1–2
• 2. Moses in Exodus 32 and Numbers 11
• 3. Elijah in 1 Kings 19 and Other Passages
• 4. David in 2 Samuel 12:15–23
• 5. Zedekiah in the Book of Jeremiah
• 6. Conclusion
• Part II. PROPHETS AND PERSONALITY
• Chapter 4. PROPHECY WITHOUT PERSONALITY: LIONIZED PROPHETS AND THE POWER OF LYING IN 1 KINGS 13 AND 20
• 1. Characters and Intentions
• 2. Der Gottesmann ohne Eigenschaften: Obedience and Vulnerability to Deceit
• 3. Lying, Success, and the Social Functions of Deceit
• 4. Moral and Theological Implications: Is Character Destiny?
• Chapter 5. PROPHECY, PERSONALITY, AND DEATH: PSYCHOLOGIZING ELIJAH
• 1. Describing Elijah’s Personality
• 2. 1 Kings 19:1–14
• 3. Narcissism and Death in 1 Kings 19
• 4. Narcissism, Death, and Immortality in the Elijah Narratives as a Whole
• Part III. CHARACTERIZING KINGS
• Chapter 6. REASSESSING THE CHARACTER OF CONDEMNED KINGS: NEW PERSPECTIVES ON JEROBOAM AND JEHORAM
• 1. Judging Jeroboam’s Character
• 2. Being Sane in Insane Places: Evaluating Jehoram’s Characterin Besieged Samaria
• Chapter 7. KINGS WICKED AND WEAK: THE CHARACTERIZATION OF AHAB IN COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE
• 1. Introduction: Flat Statements About Round Characters
• 2. Ahab and Periander as Wicked: Character, Situation, and Context
• 3. Ahab and Agamemnon as Weak Kings
• 4. Conclusion: Judging Ahab’s Character
• Part IV. CHARACTER AND THE ETHICS OF READING THE BIBLE
• Chapter 8. THE WITNESSING HEART: SELF-EVALUATION IN THE STORIES OF JOB AND KING DAVID
• 1. Self-evaluation and Self-betrayal in the Book of the Dead and the Book of Job
• 2. Varieties of Self-Evaluation in the Hebrew Bible
• 3. David’s Self-presentation as Soft and Weak in 2 Samuel 3
• Chapter 9. ART THOU THE MAN? JUDGING KING DAVID AND JUDGING OURSELVES
• 1. Counting Character and Weighing “Heaps” of Facticity
• 2. Identifying the Wicked and the “Negativity Bias”
• 3. Identifying the Sinner: Ambiguity, Attribution, and Cognitive Dissonance
• 4. It Is I to Whom It Is Speaking
• 5. Empathy, the Spell of Identication, and the Process of Character Evaluation
• 6. Judging King David and Ourselves
• 7. Judging Dickens’s David and Uriah
• 8. Judging Kafka’s Josef K. and King David
• 9. Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index of Ancient Sources
• Index of Authors