Activity: Talk or presentation types › Oral presentation
Desire (ἐπιθυμία) and pleasure (ἡδονή) can be viewed as positive emotions, although their assessment is complex both in biblical and elsewhere in ancient literature. From the point of view of contemporary psychology, desire is viewed merely as a drive rather than an emotion—although some emotion studies list interrelated emotions of desire such as lust, enjoyment or love among basic emotions. Moreover, the experience of pleasure and other emotions and affects that are closely related to pleasure have been recently studied from the point of view of subjective well-being in contemporary psychological research. This paper will discuss the concepts of desire and pleasure in biblical sources in comparison to the view of contemporary emotion study in the field of psychology. Moreover, notions of these emotions depicted in ancient medical and philosophical literature will be discussed. In biblical and ancient literature, the concepts of desire and pleasure are ambivalent. For instance, in relation to God’s creation or the law (e.g., Gen 2:9; 3:6; Ps 19:10), desirability and desire are portrayed in a positive light. On the other hand, in the texts stemming from the Hellenistic and Roman periods, the complexities of desire, pleasure, enjoyment and the relationship of these affects to reason and law prevail. The assessment of these themes is copiously discussed in 4 Maccabees which will be dealt with in this paper. Likewise, in Paul’s letters, the excess of or uncontrollable desire is depicted as leading to general moral corruptness. In Paul, the concept of desire (ἐπιθυμία) is often associated with the metaphorical use of πορνεία (fornication) denoting idolatry. In these instances, warning about πορνεία indicates that one thing leads to another because the worshippers have weak will and are unable to resist desire.