© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/15685365-12341647 Novum Testamentum (2019) 1-19 brill.com/nt Emotions, Pre-emotions, and Jesus’ Comportment in Luke 22:39-42 Michael Pope Assistant Professor, Classics, Brigham Young University, Provo, UT, USA mike_pope@byu.edu Abstract Since Neyrey’s important study on Jesus’ emotional state in Luke’s garden scene, many scholars have subsequently viewed the redactions as stemming, in part, from concern over negative Stoic passions (πάθη). The present author follows a similar trajectory but goes on to show that Luke’s removal of Jesus’ affective episode comports with a popu- larized misunderstanding of Stoic pathology but not with well-established and cur- rent Stoic teachings on pre-emotions (προπάθειαι). The author further demonstrates how Stoic sources allow for and even require early onset emotive reactions that do not threaten a sage’s moral integrity and how Luke, unlike Matthew, over-corrects his source material in an unnecessary way. Keywords Luke – Stoicism – passions – garden prayer – redaction Justified or not, Stoic theorizing on passions (πάθη) opened the door for critics and more well-intentioned audiences alike to imagine sages with impossibly austere emotional lives.1 Some Stoics’ own bold assertions that the primary 1  One famous parody of this sternness is the image of Stoic hero and martyr Cato in Lucan’s Phars. (esp. 2.234-391; 9.379-410, 444-618). For a more genial ribbing of Cato’s Stoic auster- ity, see Cicero’s send-up in Pro Murena 61-66). Austerity remains a common conception of Stoicism and can also be found employed by scholars of antiquity for various rhetorical ends. So, for example, C.M. Bowra, “Aeneas and the Stoic Ideal,” Virgil: Critical Assessments of Classical Authors (ed. Philip Hardie; New York: Routledge, 1999) 211: “But there was in Stoicism … an almost inhuman detachment from some common and reputable characteristics.” For NT_1647_Pope.indd 1 6/19/2019 3:17:04 PM