By Marcus K. M. Tso, PhD
Abstract: Cognitive psychology is an emerging methodological tool in Qumran studies, but little has yet been published on how it might illuminate the sectarian moral psychology. This paper extends the author’s work on ethics in the Qumran sectarian literature (2010) by testing the effectiveness of cognitive psychology in examining moral emotions in the Qumran texts. This paper begins with a theoretical and methodological section, in which a working definition of moral emotion developed from cognitive psychology and moral psychology is presented along with some possible ways this approach can be applied to the sectarian texts. It then examines four Qumran sectarian texts from two distinct genres and analyzes them using a cognitive approach to see how they deal with what might be identified as moral emotions. Next, it illustrates how different affective phenomena in the texts can be more precisely identified and distinguished from each other, which can help explain how embodied moral emotions might have affected sectarian thought and behaviour. Moreover, it demonstrates how moral emotions might have been managed through the texts. This clarifies how the sectarians did not accept all the natural outworking of moral emotions but attempted to regulate them for communal purposes. Finally, this exploration adumbrates some methodological cautions with respect to applying cognitive science to ancient texts to inquire about moral psychology, as well as the potential heuristic value of this approach.[1]
Introduction
According to cognitive science, the link between emotions and morality is fundamental.[2] Cognitive scientists tend to give much weight to the biological bases of emotions and morality, and to emphasize the universal aspects of human behaviour and thought based on a common evolutionary history. It is from this perspective that scholars from various fields, using experimental results from cognitive science, have come to see how emotions influence morality, particularly moral judgment.[3] This perspective gives rise to the growing interest in moral emotions as an area of interdisciplinary research. While this paper focuses on moral emotions in the so-called sectarian literature associated with Qumran, the methodology it explores is relevant to biblical studies and biblical ethics, and the pastoral application of morally relevant materials from the Bible in today’s world.[4]
Can moral emotions be identified in the Qumran sectarian literature?[5] If so, what roles might they have played in the sectarian movement? What heuristic value can Qumran scholars gain by assuming some universal basis for morality rooted in human biology, or by adding the cognitive scientific approach to the methodological toolbox for studying the sectarian literature? Before one can investigate selected texts from Qumran, analyze them, and come to tentative conclusions, a few theoretical and methodological issues need to be clarified first.
Theoretical Bases for Studying Moral Emotions
This theoretical section will establish, first, a clear working definition of moral emotion and, second, some methods for analyzing moral emotions in the sectarian texts.
Working definition of moral emotion
Minimally, a moral emotion may be defined as any emotion that relates to morality, whether that relationship is causal, resultant, coincident, or indeterminate.[6] Various scholars have attempted to define moral emotion more precisely or to develop lists of specific moral emotions, without reaching consensus. The author’s goal here is to derive an inclusive definition from interdisciplinary considerations. Three basic questions in the search for an adequate definition are: what is an emotion, what is morality, and what makes an emotion morally relevant. The diversity of understandings on moral emotions is inevitable because each of these basic questions are contested.[7]
How some scholars from various disciplines have defined emotions in general and moral emotions in particular has been surveyed in more details in an earlier paper.[8] Here, a working definition is presented, adapted mainly from Klaus Scherer and Jonathan Haidt,[9] in which Scherer helps provide a scientifically precise model of emotion from a cognitive psychological perspective, and Haidt contributes to the identification of moral domains.[10] which not only clarifies what morality covers, but also when emotion becomes morally relevant.
Klaus Scherer’s influential component process theory of emotion is a notable example of the cognitive approach among psychologists of emotion. In his model, emotion is defined as “an episode of interrelated, synchronized changes in the states of all or most of the five organismic subsystems in response to the evaluation of an external or internal stimulus event as relevant to major concerns of the organism.”[11] According to this account, emotion is made up of five discrete but interrelated components. First is the cognitive component of appraisal, involving the information processing subsystem (central nervous system), with the function of evaluating objects and events. Second is the neurophysiological component of bodily symptoms, involving the support subsystem (central nervous, neuro-endocrine, and autonomic nervous systems), with the function of system regulation. Third is the motivational component of action tendencies, involving the executive subsystem (central nervous system), with the function of preparing and directing action. Fourth is the motor expression component of facial and vocal expression, involving the action subsystem (somatic nervous system), with the function of communicating reaction and behavioral intention. Fifth is the subjective feeling component of emotional experience, involving the monitor subsystem (central nervous system), with the function of monitoring internal state and organism–environment interaction.[12]
With such a model, emotion clearly involves much more than reactive feeling, which is only the last component of emotion. Moreover, Scherer applies the concept of design features to differentiate among various types of affective phenomena. Building on the five components of emotion, Scherer persuasively characterizes emotion by quantifying seven design features of affective phenomena. Thus, emotion is a phenomenon that has high event focus, appraisal drivenness, response synchronization, rapidity of change, behavioural impact, intensity, and short duration.[13] Other affective phenomena, such as preference, attitude, mood, affect disposition, and interpersonal stance, all differ from emotion and each other in how they measure in each of the seven design features.[14]
Even though Scherer’s theory of emotion is only one among many competing theories, it has the strength of providing conceptual clarity in the study of emotion and a theoretical basis of empirical scientific research. Furthermore, by including event appraisal as an essential element of emotion (arguably the most controversial part of his theory) and using a few design features to differentiate various affective phenomena from each other, Scherer’s model represents an influential form of the cognitive psychological approach.
Building on a model of emotion similar to Scherer’s,[15] Haidt defines moral emotions as those emotions that relate to one of five different domains. In his words, there are five sets of moral concerns that evoke moral emotions.[16] These concerns are:
- harm/care (a sensitivity to or dislike of signs of pain and suffering in others, particularly in the young and vulnerable)
- fairness/reciprocity (a set of emotional responses related to paying tit-for-tat, such as negative responses to those who fail to repay favors)
- authority/respect (a set of concerns about navigating status hierarchies, e.g., anger toward those who fail to display proper signs of deference and respect)
- purity/sanctity (related to the emotion of disgust, necessary for explaining why so many moral rules relate to food, sex, menstruation, and the handling of corpses)
- boundaries between in-group and out-group
Thus, the main thrust of Haidt’s approach is not to provide an exhaustive list of moral emotions,[17] but to identify the domains of morality in which various emotions are evoked. From this perspective, no emotion is moral per se, nor is it always moral in the same way.[18] This is a helpful insight. If no emotion is moral essentially but becomes so when it is involved in a moral domain, then one must resist the temptation to identify any emotion as a moral emotion without first considering its context. Likewise, one must not assume that an emotion, when functioning morally, operates the same way in any moral concern. Finally, Haidt’s approach exposes how an understanding of moral emotion depends on what is accepted as the domains of morality. While Haidt helpfully identifies the latter two areas of moral concerns as being frequently ignored by modern liberal societies, it is debatable whether he has gone far enough.
Drawing from the above, emotion can be defined as a complex process involving a psychological elicitor, a perceptive/appraisal process, which prompts bodily responses, a subjective awareness of the emotion, and action tendencies. Developing from this model of emotion in general, a moral emotion then is an emotion which has at least one of its components falling within a moral domain, particularly the elicitor, the appraisal, and the action tendency. And moral domain is defined here more broadly than Haidt, by adding to his five moral domains analogous concerns with respect to transcendent beings and the cosmos.[19] With this working definition of moral emotion, this paper turns now to explore how such emotions can be analyzed in Qumran sectarian texts.
How to analyze moral emotions in Qumran sectarian texts
Unlike empirical cognitive scientists and psychologists, scholars of the Qumran texts cannot interrogate their subjects directly about moral emotions. Nevertheless, there are several things that researchers can do to analyze moral emotions in these texts.[20] First, one needs to notice when components of the process of emotion are mentioned together with, or in the context of, concerns within the moral domains. One can note when an emotion is elicited by a moral concern, how a moral appraisal is stated or implied as the trigger for a physiological response, and which moral behaviour is being motivated by an emotion. Second, one can attempt to detect how high or low each of the design features of an affective phenomenon is, as far as it is described or prescribed in the text. This would help differentiate moral emotions from other affects such as moral sentiments or dispositions. Third, one can observe or deduce the link between an immediate appraisal in the process of emotion and a more deliberate and rational moral evaluation, when it is possible to differentiate the two in the text. This would help clarify whether emotions were observed, believed, or endorsed as the basis of moral judgments, or whether they have some other roles, such as expressions or supports of moral judgments. Fourth, one can try to discern the relationship between the disposition to have a certain moral emotion (understood as a state) and the actual occurrence of that emotion.[21] Does the text describe this link incidentally, typically, or prescriptively? How is that disposition formed (or should be formed) according to the text? Among these and other possible avenues of investigation using cognitive scientific insights on ancient texts, this paper will focus on the second and the third.[22]
Moral Emotions in the Qumran Sectarian Literature
Qumran sectarian literature and moral concerns
While it is no longer tenable to hold that all the so-called sectarian texts were produced at the Qumran site, exclusively by and for a group that had settled there, known as the Qumran community,[23] the general consensus remains that the sectarian literature is the collective product of a movement that separated from other Jews over the interpretation and implementation of Torah.[24] Thus, questions of normativity, including morality as broadly defined above, were among the most salient concerns in its diverse literature.[25]
Sample texts from the Qumran sectarian literature
How various sectarian texts address the relationship between emotions and morality, whether intentionally or incidentally, depends on genre. Rule texts, for example, may tend to be more prescriptive about emotions, whereas first-person hymns and prayers, styled after the traditional psalm collections, may be more descriptive and introspective. Indeed, texts of the latter genre, such as the Hodayot, are rich with emotional language.[26] This paper will examine two such texts first, and then consider some rule texts.
a. Text 1: 1QHa 13:22–38
First is a portion from one of the so-called Teacher’s Hymns in 1QHa 13:22–15:8.[27]
22 {I give thanks to You} Blessed are You, O Lord, for You have not abandoned the orphan, and You have not despised the poor. For Your strength [is unboun]ded and Your glory
23 without measure. Your ministers are wondrous warriors. A humbled people are in the sweepings at [Your] feet [and You have done a miracle as well] with those heedless of
24 righteousness to bring them up from out of the desolation together with all of those {heedless} lacking mercy. But I myself have become [ ], strife
25 and contentions for my fellows, jealousy and anger to those who have entered into my covenant, a grumbling and a complaining to all who are my comrades. Ev[en those who sha]re my bread
26 have lifted up their heel against me, and all those who have committed themselves to my counsel speak perversely against me with unjust lips. The men of my [coun]cil rebel
27 and grumble round about. And concerning the mystery which You hid in me, they go about as slanderers to the children of destruction. Because [You] have exal[ted Yourself] in me,
28 and for sake of their guilt, You have hidden in me the spring of understanding and the counsel of truth. But they devise the ruination of their heart; [(4Q429 f1iii) and with the words of] Belial they have exhibited
29 a lying tongue; as the poison of serpents it bursts forth continuously. As those who crawl in the dust, they cast forth to sei[ze the cunning smiles (?)]of serpents
30 which cannot be charmed. And it has become an incurable pain and a tormenting agony in the bowels of Your servant, causing [my spirit] to stumble and putting an end to
31 my strength so that I might not stand firm. They overtake me in narrow places, where there is no place of refuge, with no distinction because of line[age] They intone
32 their dispute against me on the lyre, and compose their complaint to music; together with ruin and desolation. Searing pains have se[ized me] and pangs as the convulsions of
33 one giving birth. My heart is tormented within me. I have put on the garment of mourning, and my tongue clings to the roof of my mouth. For they have surrounded me [with the destructive thoughts] of their heart, and their desire
34 has appeared to me as bitterness. The light of my countenance becomes dark, and my splendour is transformed to gloom. vacat But You, O my God,
35 have opened a wide space in my heart, but they continue to press in, and they shut me up in deep darkness, so that I eat the bread of groaning,
36 and my drink is tears without end. For my eyes have become weak from anger and my soul by daily bitterness. Grief and misery
37 surround me, and shame is upon my face. My bread has become strife, and my drink contention. They enter my bones,
38 causing my spirit to stumble and putting an end to my strength.[28] [29]
In this text, after an introduction of thanksgiving to God, the hymnist launches on line 24 into a lament about the distress he has experienced from his opponents within the same sectarian movement.[30] The extended and vivid descriptions of emotional responses, or more precisely, components of the emotional process in a morally charged context, are striking in this lament. As a result, this text is an excellent candidate for a cognitive-psychological analysis in the next subsection. What follows is an analysis of its content.
In lines 24 to 38, the hymnist identifies his opponents as “my fellows” (רעי 13:25), “those who have entered my covenant” ( באי בריתי 13:25), and “all who are my comrades” (כול נועדי 13:25), “those who share my bread” (אוכלי לחמי 13:25), “all those who have committed themselves to my counsel” (כול נצמדי סודי 13:26), and “the men of my council” (אנשי עצתי 13:26). The repeated pronominal suffixes highlight the intimate relationship the hymnist once shared (or still does) with these opponents from within his ingroup. That accentuates their heart-breaking betrayal and treachery. The opposition is described in terms of “strife” (13:24), “contentions” (13:25), “jealousy and anger” (13:25), “a grumbling and a complaining” (13:25), that they “have lifted up their heel against me,” (13:26), “speak perversely against me with unjust lips” (13:26), “rebel and grumble round about” (13:26–27), and “go about as slanderers to the children of destruction” (13:27). The implicit cause of their opposition is jealousy against the hymnist for the special divinely revealed insight he possesses (13:27–28). Their motive is the hymnist’s destruction (13:28).[31] Their means are “words of Belial” through a lying tongue (13:28–29). And they seize opportunities for lethal attacks like venomous vipers (13:29–30). The hymnist then turns to adumbrate his painful reactions in graphic and visceral terms, including “incurable pain and a tormenting agony in the bowels of Your servant” (13:30), “causing [my spirit] to stumble and putting an end to my strength so that I might not stand firm” (13:30–31), “searing pains have seized me and pangs as the convulsions of one giving birth” (13:32–33), “my heart is tormented within me” (13:33), “my tongue clings to the roof of my mouth” (13:33), “their desire has appeared to me as bitterness” (13:33–34), “the light of my countenance becomes dark, and my splendour is transformed to gloom” (13:34). After a brief pause recalling God’s gracious reprieve (13:34–35), the hymnist’s thought turns back to the unrelenting attack of his foes, using similar imageries for his ongoing emotional distress (13:35–38).
b. Text 2: 1QHa 19:18–25
Before making some observations from a cognitive psychological perspective in the next subsection, this paper considers a portion from another hodayah, a so-called Community Hymn in 1QHa 19:18–30.[32]
18 [ ] I thank You, O my God, I exalt You, my rock, and when You perform wonders [ ]
19 [ ] For You have made known to me the counsel of truth [ ]
20 [Yo]ur [wondr]ous works You have revealed to me, so that I might gaze upon [ ] mercy. I know
21 [that] righteousness belongs to You, and in Your mercy [ ] and annihilation without Your compassion.
22 But as for me, a fountain for bitter sorrow has been opened [ ] distress is not hidden from my eyes
23 when I come to know the inclinations of man and [consider] the response of humankind [and recognize][33] sin and the grief of
24 guilt. They enter into my heart and penetrate my bones. [ ] and muttering a lament
24a. and a groan to the lyre of lamentation for all griev[ous] mourning [ ]
25 torment and bitter wailing until injustice has ceased, and [ ] and there is no agony to make one weak. Then
26 I will sing praises on the lyre of salvation and to the harp of jo[y] and the flute of praise without
27 ceasing. Who among all Your creatures is able to recount [and] Your [wonders?] Your name shall be praised by every mouth
28 for ever and ever. They shall bless You according to [their] insight [and the meek] shall declare together
29 with the voice of rejoicing. There is no grief nor groaning, and injustice [shall be found] n[o longer.] You shall make Your truth to shine forth
30 for eternal glory and everlasting peace. vacat[34]
Like the earlier text, this passage contains vivid expressions of embodied emotions in a morally relevant context. It also begins with thanksgiving and praise, here for God’s personal revelation of divine knowledge to the hymnist (19:18–21). Also like the previous text, the hymnist turns immediately to lament. Using the language of physical perceptions, he portrays his condition thus, “a fountain for bitter sorrow מקור לאבל מרורים has been opened [and] distress עמל is not hidden from my eyes” (19:22). But unlike the last text, his sorrow and distress here are in response to his awareness of the sinfulness of humanity (יצרי גבר ותשובת אנוש 19:23). No specific occasion is mentioned. It is not even clear if he is mourning the sins of others only, or if he includes himself among them. In any case, the author painfully bewails that the subjective feelings of “sorrow of sin and the grief of guilt”[35] (אבל חטאה ויגון אשמה 19:23–24) have “entered into my heart and penetrated my bones” (ויבואו בלבבי ויגעו בעצמי 19:24). This apparently impels him to express his profound sorrow through moaning, sighing, playing a mournful lyre, and bitter weeping (ולהגות הגי יגון ואנחה בכנור קינה לכול אבל יגון [ ] ומספד מרורים 19:24–25).
c. Text 3: CD 9:2–8
The personal nature of the Hodayot is exceptional among the sectarian texts. In the above examples, negative emotions against moral wrongs are expressed powerfully and evocatively.[36] There is no sense that they are wrong feelings to have. In fact, as Angela Harkins suggests, performances of these hymns in sectarian ritual settings may lead to emulation of those emotions and ecstatic religious experiences.[37] In the rule texts, however, one can see instances of the systematic attempt to regulate some emotions of those in the sectarian community, particularly anger. As Ari Mermelstein correctly points out, the sectarian emotions of love and hate correlate to their understanding of God’s love and hate and are vehicles for communicating core sectarian beliefs and values.[38] Nevertheless, not all emotions ascribed to God are equally appropriate for emulation. In the sectarian literature, words related to love, compassion, and anger are mostly attributed to God. Whereas all these divine moral dispositions can serve as models for sectarian moral emotions, the sectarians are explicitly instructed to refrain from anger towards fellow members.[39] The first example is from CD 9:2–8:
2 As for the passage that says, ‘Take no vengeance and bear no grudge against your kin folk’ (Lev 19:18) any covenant member
3 who brings against his fellow an accusation not sworn to before witnesses
4 or who makes an accusation in the heat of anger or who tells it to his elders to bring his fellow into disrepute, the same is a vengeance-taker and a grudge-bearer.
5 vacat It says only, ‘On his enemies God takes vengeance, against his foes he bears a grudge’ (Nah 1:2).
6 If he kept silent day by day and then in anger against his fellow spoke against him in a capital case,
7 this testifies against him that he did not fulfill the commandment of God which says to him, ‘You
8 shall reprove your fellow and not bear the sin yourself’ (Lev 19:17). vacat
As an example of purported legal exegesis, this text takes the scriptural injunction against vengeance and grudges and applies it in sectarian community life. Among other prohibited acts, a covenant member is not to accuse a fellow member “in the heat of anger” (בחרון אפו 9:4). To do so would amount to taking vengeance and bearing grudges. The correct response to intra-communal offences is presumably the law of reproof in CD 7:2–3, but that is not cited here except implicitly in lines 7–8. Instead, line 5 seems to provide another scriptural rationale for refraining from acts that count as taking vengeance and bearing grudges. The citation from Nahum 1:2 suggests two points in this context. First, God indeed takes vengeance and bears grudges, but that is his prerogative alone. Second, he only does so against his enemies, and since fellow covenant members are not enemies, they are improper objects for sectarian hate. Moreover, lines 6–8 give another case of a problematic use of anger (בחרון אפו), one that allows it to simmer for a period of time and then be unleashed on a fellow member in a capital case (בדבר מות 9:6).
d. Text 4: 1QS 5:24–6:1
Similar regulations about anger also appear in 1QS, for example, in 5:24–6:1:
24 … Each man is to reprove
25 his fellow in t[ru]th, humility and lovingkindness. vacat He should not speak to him in anger, with grumbling,
26 with a [stiff] neck or with a wickedly [zealous] spirit. He must not hate him because of his own [uncircu]m[cised] heart. Most assuredly he is to rebuke him on the day [of the infraction] so that he does not
1 continue in sin.
This regulation is a more developed and specific formulation than the one in CD 7:2–3 and outlines the proper attitudes to have or to reject when reproving fellow members of the sectarian community. Anger tops the list as an emotion or attitude to avoid. Since the intended purpose this law of reproof is presumably constructive or remedial for community life, it implies that anger along with other sinful attitudes are contrary to that purpose.
Analysis of the texts using a cognitive psychological approach
The four sample sectarian texts from two distinct genres reviewed above are finally ready to be analyzed from an explicitly cognitive psychological perspective. The theoretical section proposed four possible avenues for a cognitive psychological analysis of ancient texts with respect to moral emotions. Part of the first analysis above has already been done implicitly, by selecting texts that refer to components of the process of emotion in morally relevant contexts.[40] The following discussion focuses on the second and third type of analysis.
The text from 1QHa 13 registers the presence and synchronous activation of all five components in response to a moral situation, but that does not guarantee that it is an emotion here, as Scherer defines it. The second analytical task is to clarify what kind of affective phenomenon is being examined. The seven design features above help distinguish among different affective phenomena. It is quite plausible that 1QHa 13 relates a phenomenon that mostly fits the profile of emotion. It clearly shows high event focus, appraisal drivenness, behavioural impact, and intensity. High response synchronization and rapidity of change are both probable, but not explicit. The only feature that may not fit is short duration. Even if one can assume that the initial response to the opponents was a momentary one, the text clearly indicates that it has been an ongoing experience (35–36). Scherer’s model has no description for an affect that otherwise fits the profile of emotion but is sustained in duration. A possible solution is to model short duration as a series of related emotional episodes, each lasting for a short time in its full force. As the elicitors continue to present themselves, the whole process is repeated. Whether and in what ways this repeated process will form an enduring affective and behavioural pattern are questions that cognitive scientists can help answer.
Compared to 1QHa 13, the text from 1QHa 19 reveals an affective phenomenon with a distinctly different profile. Not only is it an enduring affective experience like the previous case, but it also lacks event focus. As such, it fits the profile of an attitude better, but with a very high reported intensity. Scherer’s theory describes attitudes as “relatively enduring beliefs and predispositions toward specific objects or persons,”[41] and asserts that an attitude becomes salient when a person encounters the attitude object. This definition implies that attitudes predispose their holders to having certain kinds of appraisals about events involving the attitude objects. Applied to 1QHa 19, the hymnist’s persistent sorrowful attitude about the sinful frailty of humanity predicts an aversive appraisal when he encounters an instantiation of such sinfulness. But what would be the negative emotion evoked by such an attitude-influenced appraisal? Would it be sorrow? Or would it be anger or something else? Again, cognitive science may provide clearer answers based on empirical research.
The third line of enquiry concerns the link between an immediate appraisal and more deliberate and rational moral evaluation. The legal examples from CD and 1QS suggest that from the sectarian perspective, moral emotions like anger can and should be overcome through rational consideration of what is right.[42] An immediate appraisal of wrong doings, especially committed against oneself, can naturally provoke anger and hostile behaviour. The sectarians presumably were capable of making such an observation and were wary of such natural reactions and their pernicious impact on community life. As a result, they developed laws to regulate such natural moral emotions. Nevertheless, the sectarian laws did not simply oppose natural moral emotions for communal purposes, but also harnessed other moral emotions that would support ideals in communal living. Thus, the passage from CD attempts to replace the sense of righteous indignation against a wrong doer with the familial affection between kinsmen (בני̇ עמך 9:2) and fellow members of the covenant community (רעה 9:3, 8). They were not to be viewed as enemies. Promotion of an attitude or interpersonal stance, in Scherer’s terminology, fostered a greater likelihood of a cohesive community.[43]
Finally, to conclude this abbreviated cognitive-psychological analysis of the sample sectarian texts, one can say that according to the texts, moral judgments are grounded in divinely revealed knowledge, and emotions are either unproblematic expression of those judgments (Hodayot), or to be carefully regulated (CD, 1QS). Looking beneath the sectarian rhetoric, however, one sees examples of the sectarian texts leveraging various emotions to nurture the desired sectarian selves, to support moral stance, and to facilitate moral compliance. To what extent these uses of emotions reflect the universality of the unconscious operations of people’s moral minds or are based on an intuitive but conscious awareness of how moral psychology works, is a question that requires more research in this and related literatures in a comparative context.
Assessment of the Methodology
Having seen how a cognitive scientific approach might be illuminating for Qumran studies, as illustrated above by attending to moral emotions in the texts, Qumran scholars first need to reflect on where one needs to be cautious with this approach, and then turn their attention to the prospects it promises for the discipline.
First, there is a metaethical distinction between descriptive and normative ethics.[44] The observations operating in moral psychology do not necessarily produce normative claims, however accurate those observations turn out to be. Second, as Matthew Schlimm cautions, language and conceptual frameworks for emotions are embedded in cultures, and may not be fully translatable.[45] Thus, one needs to beware of culturally-based assumptions about what certain emotions mean and what their moral significance and evaluations might be in ancient and foreign texts.[46] Third, as István Czachesz cautions regarding the use of a cognitive scientific perspective in biblical studies,[47] one needs to account for the complexities of textual creation and transmission as well as changing readers’ perspectives. Therefore, one cannot be too confident in one’s ability to read ancient minds.
Despite all of the above, cognitive scientific approaches are promising for Qumran studies for the following reasons. First, they prompt researchers to ask unexamined questions and get new insights.[48] Second, they take common humanity and embodiment seriously. Third, they also take emotions seriously as a key part in ethics (metaethical, descriptive, and normative). Fourth, they clarify affective phenomena and permit scientific insights into the mechanics of moral psychology reflected in ancient texts.is paper is only a part of the author’s initial foray into applying cognitive scientific theories and insights in studying sectarian texts from Qumran. The goal are to demonstrate the heuristic value of cognitive science in helping Qumran scholars be more precise when investigating moral emotions in the texts, and be more attuned to how emotions in general, and moral emotions in particular, were understood and handled by the sectarian communities reflected in the Scrolls.
Conclusion
This paper is only a part of the author’s initial foray into applying cognitive scientific theories and insights in studying sectarian texts from Qumran. The goal are to demonstrate the heuristic value of cognitive science in helping Qumran scholars be more precise when investigating moral emotions in the texts, and be more attuned to how emotions in general, and moral emotions in particular, were understood and handled by the sectarian communities reflected in the Scrolls.
More work can and needs to be done. For example, as the Qumran texts examined above already confirm in part, moral emotions are both grounded in human embodiment and formed by social/cultural forces. How then can the question of nature versus nurture with respect to moral emotions be explored? Is it possible to combine the cognitive approach with a social constructivist approach in studying moral emotions in the Qumran sectarian scrolls? May more scholars join this interdisciplinary conversation and advance this research.
Rev. Dr. Marcus Tso, BASc, MDiv, PhD, is the Senior Pastor of Newbern Alliance Church, Research Associate of the Dead Sea Scrolls Institute at Trinity Western University, and formerly Associate Professor of Biblical Studies at Ambrose University and Seminary. After working as a mechanical engineer, Marcus enrolled at Regent College. Later he served as the English-speaking pastor in South Vancouver Pacific Grace MB Church and became an accredited minister in the Mennonite Brethren denomination. Marcus did his doctoral research in Biblical Studies (Dead Sea Scrolls) at the University of Manchester, and has taught courses on the Bible, ethics, and theology for Columbia Bible College, Carey Theological College, Regent College, China Graduate School of Theology, Ambrose, ACTS Seminaries, Canadian Chinese School of Theology Vancouver, and Vancouver School of Theology.
Author copyright.
Tso, Marcus K.M. “Moral Emotions in the Qumran Sectarian Literature: A Cognitive Psychological Approach.” Northwest Institute for Ministry Education Research. www.nimer.ca (retrieved Date Accessed). Peer reviewed.
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————. “Conceptions of Masculinity in the Scrolls and the Gendered Emotion of Anger.” Dead Sea Discoveries 26 (2019): 314–38.
————. “Love and Hate at Qumran: The Social Construction of Sectarian Emotion.” Dead Sea Discoveries 20 (2013): 237–63.
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Notes
[1] This paper is an updated version of Marcus K. M. Tso, “Moral Emotions in Qumran Sectarian Literature from a Cognitive Psychological Perspective” (paper presented at Annual Meetings of the SBL, Nov. 20, San Antonio, Texas, 2016). Both have been adapted from a much longer paper, Marcus K. M. Tso, “Feelings, Nothing More than Feelings? The Place of Emotions in Moral Judgment from a Cognitive Psychological Perspective, the Case of Mencius and Qumran” (paper presented at International Meetings of the SBL, July 5, Seoul, Korea, 2016). In that original paper, methods and insights gleaned from cognitive psychology were applied to ancient Confucian texts from China and the Qumran texts presented here. While that cross-cultural comparison, intended to help resolve a theoretical debate on the causal relationship between emotions and moral judgement, was methodologically illustrative, much of it is outside the scope of the San Antonio paper as well as this one. The author thanks Dr. Jutta Jokiranta for her kind invitation to present at the San Antonio session, and her helpful suggestions for revising the original paper. The author also thanks the other participants of that session for their constructive comments, and for Dr. Elsie Froment for the invitation to rework and publish this work in the current form.
[2] See, e.g., pp. 294–95 of Chandra Sekhar Sripada and Stephen P. Stich, “A Framework for the Psychology of Norms,” in The Innate Mind: Volume 2: Culture and Cognition (eds. Peter Carruthers, Stephen Laurence, and Stephen P. Stich; New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 280–301.
[3] For a review of some of the proposals, see Marcus K. M. Tso, “Feelings, Nothing More than Feelings? The Place of Emotions in Moral Judgment from a Cognitive Psychological Perspective, the Case of Mencius and Qumran” (paper presented at International Meetings of the SBL, July 5, Seoul, Korea, 2016). For a dissenting voice against “sentimentalism” and in support for “rationalism,” see William H. B. McAuliffe, “Do Emotions Play an Essential Role in Moral Judgments?,” Thinking & Reasoning 25 (2019): 207–30.
[4] For example, sensitivity to how moral emotions accompany moral teachings in the Bible may give faith communities a greater appreciation of how emotions may support or hinder their moral instructions.
[5] While very few scholars are exploring this question to date, there has been increasing interest in emotions in Second Temple Jewish texts from a cognitive science of religion (CSR) perspective. See, e.g., Renate Egger-Wenzel and Stefan C. Reif, eds., Ancient Jewish Prayers and Emotions: Emotions Associated with Jewish Prayer in and around the Second Temple Period (DCLS; Berlin: De Gruyter, 2015). See more recently, Anders Klostergaard Petersen, “50 Years of Modelling Second Temple Judaism: Whence and Wither?,” Journal for the Study of Judaism in the Persian, Hellenistic and Roman Period 50 (2019): 604–29. Nevertheless, little on moral emotions in Second Temple Jewish texts in general, or in the Qumran sectarian literature in particular, has been written from the perspective of CSR.
[6] Definitions that see moral emotions as those that “prompt moral judgment” beg the question of causality, such as the one given by David Morrow, “Moral Psychology and the ‘Mencian Creature’,” Philosophical Psychology 22 (2009): 281–304. Instead, the current approach begins with a more inclusive definition that can accommodate more theories of moral psychology. Space does not permit a lengthy consideration of the related concepts of intuition and sentiment, except to assert that these concepts need to be distinguished from each other, and that there is a diversity of views on how these concepts relate to each other. See below for Klaus Scherer’s method as a representative model for distinguishing among various affective phenomena.
[7] E.g., see the admission that both “emotion” and “moral” are contentious terms, and that current researchers typically do not define these terms, but still propose models about how they relate to each other, in p. 1 of Bryce Huebner, Susan Dwyer, and Marc D. Hauser, “The Role of Emotion in Moral Psychology,” Trends in Cognitive Sciences 13 (2009): 1–6.
[8] Tso, “Feelings, Nothing More than Feelings.” The theorists included the following: From biblical studies, Thomas Kazen, Emotions in Biblical Law: A Cognitive Science Approach (36; Sheffield, U.K.: Sheffield Phoenix, 2011). From moral psychology, Jonathan Haidt and Fredrik Bjorklund, “Social Intuitionists Answer Six Questions about Moral Psychology,” in Moral Psychology: Volume 2: The Cognitive Science of Morality: Intuition and Diversity (ed. Walter Sinnott-Armstrong; Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2008), 181–217. Jorge Moll et al., “The Cognitive Neuroscience of Moral Emotions,” in Moral Psychology: Volume 3: The Neuroscience of Morality: Emotion, Disease, and Development (ed. Walter Sinnott-Armstrong; Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2008), 1–17. From philosophy of emotion, Ronald de Sousa, “Emotion,” in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2014 ed.; ed. Edward N. Zalta, 2014). Gregory Johnson, “Theories of Emotion,” in Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: A Peer-Reviewed Academic Resource (eds. James Fieser and Bradley Dowden; IEP). From psychology of emotion, Klaus R. Scherer, “What Are Emotions? And How Can They Be Measured?,” Social Science Information 44 (2005): 695–729. That paper problematizes each of these proposals and notes how each perspective may nevertheless contribute to a more adequate definition of moral emotions.
[9] For an illuminating survey of the major research traditions in the psychology of emotion, using the schema of four traditions each with its distinctive focus: Darwinian (facial expressions), Jamesmian (physiological responses), cognitive (appraisals), and social constructivist (cultural influences), see Randolph R. Cornelius, The Science of Emotion: Research and Tradition in the Psychology of Emotions (Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1996). Though dated, this schema is largely echoed more recently in Roberto Caterina, “Emotion, Language and Literary Texts,” in Love, Hatred, and Other Passions: Questions and Themes on Emotions in Chinese Civilization (eds. Paolo Santangelo and Donatella Guida; Leiden: Brill, 2006), 37–58. In this schema, Scherer is located solidly in the cognitive tradition, since event appraisal is a key feature of his model of emotion. In this tradition he is among others such as Magda Arnold, Richard Lazarus, and Craig Smith. See Cornelius, Science of Emotion, 112–48.
[10] Haidt, as a moral psychologist in the social-intuitivist camp, can be considered a departure from the cognitive tradition to the social constructivist tradition, as schematized by Cornelius. His use of the component model of emotion of Scherer et al. glaringly omits appraisal, collapsing it into the component of elicitor. See Jonathan Haidt, “The Moral Emotions,” in Handbook of Affective Sciences (eds. Richard J. Davidson, Klaus R. Scherer, and H. Hill Goldsmith; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 852–70. He argues that though evolution has prepared humans with innate intuitions about morality, these intuitions are “externalized” through social forces. See Haidt and Bjorklund, “Social Intuitionists,” 206–10.
[11] Scherer, “What Are Emotions?,” 697.
[12] Scherer, “What Are Emotions?,” 698. For an empirical study supporting his component process theory of emotions (or Component Process Model), “that the quality of feelings signified by major emotion words in many different languages can be predicted by appraisal and response features in the meaning of those words,” see Klaus R. Scherer and Johnny R. J. Fontaine, “The Semantic Structure of Emotion Words across Languages Is Consistent with Componential Appraisal Models of Emotion,” Cognition & Emotion 33 (2019): 673–82.
[13] Scherer further distinguishes between two types of emotions based on two types of appraisals. Utilitarian emotions are the so-called basic emotions (adaptive) based largely on transactional or utilitarian appraisal, and less on intrinsic appraisal, whereas aesthetic emotions are based almost entirely on intrinsic appraisal and are of lower intensity and behavioural impact than the former. The introduction of a distinctive type of emotions different from the basic adaptive emotions (Scherer prefers “modal emotions”) is very illuminating. This category may shed light on what emotions are distinctly human. However, characterizing them as aesthetic emotions may limit the utility of the category, since it seems to leave out religious emotions. Perhaps “transcendent emotions” is a category that can encompass the aesthetic, the religious, or the spiritual concerns of humanity. Contra the current dominant research interest in the basic or utilitarian emotions, studying the transcendent emotions may be even more relevant for religious and philosophical studies.
[14] Scherer, “What Are Emotions?,” 699–706.
[15] See note 9 above.
[16] These are summarized in Haidt and Bjorklund, “Social Intuitionists,” 203. See also Jonathan Haidt and Craig Joseph, “The Moral Mind: How Five Sets of Innate Intuitions Guide the Development of Many Culture‐Specific Virtues, and Perhaps Even Modules,” in The Innate Mind: Volume 3: Foundations and the Future (eds. Peter Carruthers, Stephen Laurence, and Stephen P. Stich; New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 367–91. Haidt and others later developed an empirical instrument based on these five domains, what they then called moral foundations, and subsequently refined their theory to include six foundations: care, equality, proportionality, loyalty, authority, and purity, separating fairness/reciprocity into two distinct foundations. See Mohammad Atari et al., “Morality beyond the WEIRD: How the Nomological Network of Morality Varies across Cultures,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (2023). Note esp. Table 2 for the conceptual definitions of these six moral foundations.
[17] The way Haidt gives examples of moral emotions and classifies them is illustrative and open-ended, see Haidt, “The Moral Emotions.”
[18] Anger for example, may be evoked in a context outside of Haidt’s five major domains of morality, or perhaps even any moral context. Moreover, anger can be a response to any one of the domains, as can other emotions.
[19] Thus, for example, when an emotion is prompted by seeing someone causing pain to an animal (elicitor), it is a moral emotion, regardless of what states the other components are. Similarly, when an emotion includes an action tendency to conform to a perceived norm of a transcendent being, that too is a moral emotion, however it is labeled. For a recent example of identifying gratitude as a religiously significant moral emotion, see Celia E. Deane-Drummond, “Tracing Distinctive Human Moral Emotions?: The Contribution of a Theology of Gratitude,” Zygon 58 (2023): 522–38.
[20] For a review of research on emotions in early Jewish literature more broadly, see Françoise Mirguet, “The Study of Emotions in Early Jewish Texts: Review and Perspectives,” Journal for the Study of Judaism in the Persian, Hellenistic, and Roman Period 50 (2019): 557–603.
[21] For the empirically supported proposal that emotion disposition is the result of appraisal bias, see Klaus R. Scherer, “Evidence for the Existence of Emotion Dispositions and the Effects of Appraisal Bias,” Emotion 21 (2021): 1224–38.
[22] For a very helpful methodological guide to exploring emotions in ancient literary texts that is informed by cognitive science, see Caterina, “Emotion, Language and Literary Texts.”
[23] John J. Collins, Beyond the Qumran Community: The Sectarian Movement of the Dead Sea Scrolls (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010). Of course, most Qumran scholars have held more nuanced views than this for some time. See for example, the use of the term Qumran community or Qumranites, in Marcus K. M. Tso, Ethics in the Qumran Community: An Interdisciplinary Investigation (WUNT 2/292; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2010). Nevertheless, though some of the ties between what is labeled Qumranic texts here and the sectarians who settled at Qumran need loosening up, it is still important to recognize that there was a major sectarian community at Qumran, as it is their last and only known permanent address.
[24] See Lawrence H. Schiffman, Qumran and Jerusalem: Studies in the Dead Sea Scrolls and the History of Judaism (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010), 81–97, 112–22.
[25] For a largely social-constructivist account of the formation of morality in the history of the sectarian group at Qumran, see Tso, Ethics in the Qumran Community.
[26] See Angela Kim Harkins, “The Performative Reading of the Hodayot: The Arousal of Emotions and the Exegetical Generation of Texts,” Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha 21 (2011): 55–71, and Angela Kim Harkins, Reading with an “I” to the Heavens: Looking at the Qumran Hodayot Through the Lens of Visionary Traditions (3; Berlin: De Gruyter, 2012).
[27] Column and line numbers for 1QHa in this paper follow Puech and Stegemann, which correspond to 5:20–7:5 in Sukenik’s old system in this case. For the number adjustments, see Émile Puech, “Quelques aspects de la restauration du Rouleau des Hymnes (1QH),” JJS 39 (1988): 38–55, and Hartmut Stegemann, “The Material Reconstruction of 1QHodayot,” in The Dead Sea Scrolls Fifty Years after Their Discovery, (eds. Lawrence H. Schiffman, Emanuel Tov, and James C. VanderKam; Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 2000), 272–84. For the proposal that this composition is an exegetically generated text, see Harkins, Reading with an “I” to the Heavens, 153–205, 220–24.
[28] This column finds its parallels in 4Q428 7, 4Q429 1–3, and 4Q432 11. Unless otherwise noted, Qumran texts are excerpted from Dead Sea Scrolls Electronic Library, 2005, based on Donald W. Parry and Emanuel Tov, eds., The Dead Sea Scrolls Reader: Part 5: Poetic and Liturgical Texts (Leiden: Brill, 2005). Line numbers are adjusted to match Stegemann’s reconstruction in the case of 1QHa.
[29] Translation excerpted from Dead Sea Scrolls Electronic Library, 2005, based on Michael O. Wise, Martin G. Abegg, Jr., and Edward M. Cook, eds., The Dead Sea Scrolls: A New Translation (San Francisco: Harper Collins, 1996), with line numbers adjusted to match Stegemann’s reconstruction.
[30] While Harkins minimizes the validity and relevance of the Teacher Hymn Hypothesis, and hence underplays the apparent historical references in compositions like this, she correctly allows for the possibility that this hymn refers to someone’s actual experience. Harkins, Reading with an “I” to the Heavens, 203.
[31] As more clearly suggested by Harkins’ translation, “But they devise destruction (הוות) (in) their heart.” Harkins, Reading with an “I” to the Heavens, 192.
[32] This passage is 11:15–27 in Sukenik’s old system, and finds its parallels in 4Q427 frg. 1 and 4Q428 frg. 12 1:1–5. For the view that this a part of a “liturgical hodayah,” see Esther G. Chazon, “Liturgical Function in the Cave 1 Hodayot Collection,” in Qumran Cave 1 Revisited: Texts from Cave 1 Sixty Years after Their Discovery: Proceedings of the Sixth Meeting of the IOPS in Ljubljana (eds. Daniel K. Falk, Sarianna Metso, Donald W. Parry, and Eibert J. C. Tigchelaar; Leiden: Brill, 2010), 135–49, cited in Harkins, Reading with an “I” to the Heavens, 248–49.
[33] Cf. the fuller restoration from Accordance, based on WAC, revised 2005 edition, “[and recognized the sorr]ow of sin and the grief of guilt.”
[34] Translation excerpted from Dead Sea Scrolls Electronic Library, 2005, with line numbers adjusted, based on Wise, Abegg, and Cook, Dead Sea Scrolls.
[35] Based on the results of a quick concordance search, the concept of guilt אשמה and its related words in the sectarian literature, as in the Hebrew Bible, seems to be generally about an objective state or status rather than subjective feelings. This is a rare case where the word “guilt” is linked to an emotion.
[36] There are many positive emotions in the Hodayot, too, but they are usually associated with worship and eschatological expectations. Doubtless, the ways certain emotions are expressed literarily have some traditional bases, but that does not invalidate the assumption that they refer to physically instantiated emotions.
[37] See, e.g., Harkins, Reading with an “I” to the Heavens, 112–13.
[38] Ari Mermelstein, “Love and Hate at Qumran: The Social Construction of Sectarian Emotion,” Dead Sea Discoveries 20 (2013): 237–63. For his development of this insight, linking sectarian love and hate to their group identity as emotions of belonging, see Ari Mermelstein, “Between Belonging and Identity in Ancient Judaism: The Role of Emotion in the Production of Identity,” Journal of Law and Religion 37 (2022): 365–74.
[39] For more on this regulation of anger as intra-sectarian, which by no means applied to outsiders, see Ari Mermelstein, “Conceptions of Masculinity in the Scrolls and the Gendered Emotion of Anger,” Dead Sea Discoveries 26 (2019): 314–38.
[40] For a fuller identification of the components of emotion in 1QHa 13, see Tso, “Feelings, Nothing More than Feelings.”
[41] Scherer, “What Are Emotions?,” 703.
[42] This is, of course, etic language. For a survey of empirical research on anger as a moral emotion, see Tim Lomas, “Anger as a Moral Emotion: A ‘Bird’s Eye’ Systematic Review,” Counselling Psychology Quarterly 32 (2019): 341–95.
[43] Space precludes following the fourth area of investigation, about the connection between a moral sentiment and the actual occurrence of the associated emotion. In fact, the author’s earlier research reveals that while Confucian texts from Mengzi have much to say about this question, the Qumran texts examined say very little about it. See Tso, “Feelings, Nothing More than Feelings.”
[44] Morrow, “Moral Psychology and the ‘Mencian Creature’,” 300.
[45] Matthew Richard Schlimm, From Fratricide to Forgiveness: The Ethics of Anger in Genesis (7; Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 2011). However, for a recent empirical study that demonstrates a high degree of cross-cultural similarity in emotion concepts, especially for their affective, cognitive, and motivational components, see Kristina Loderer et al., “Are Concepts of Achievement-Related Emotions Universal across Cultures? A Semantic Profiling Approach,” Cognition & Emotion 34 (2020): 1480–88. Nevertheless, their results also “point to cultural variation, particularly for physiological and expressive components.” See also Scherer and Fontaine, “The Semantic Structure of Emotion Words,” cited above.
[46] While this is particularly true for more complex emotions, Schlimm’s work shows persuasively that even as basic an emotion as anger is full of culturally nuanced significance. One must therefore be especially vigilant about limited commensurability regarding words, concepts, and worldviews.
[47] István Czachesz, “Morality after Empathy? Current Trends in the Cognitive and Neuroscientific Study of Empathy and Their Implications for Biblical Interpretation” (paper presented at SBL, Atlanta, 2015).
[48] As discussed in the methodological section.