Sacred Stories for Human Beings with Bodies and Brains

How Stories Engage our Embodied Brains Ethically

The following survey will present a framework for an interactive hermeneutic that seeks to integrate several connected zones of analysis: human storytelling, narratology, sensory input, emotions, embodiment, simulation, language and cognition, memory and associations, conceptual blending, and ethical reflection. While each of these has been examined in depth in its own right, the following review displays how they are interconnected and influence one another in critical ways, thus providing for a richer reading of stories by holistic human beings. This survey will feature insights from both ancient and contemporary authors, sometimes featuring one or the other as well as highlighting points of contact.

Story presents itself as an organizing nexus for the breadth of human experience because it incorporates embodied simulation, language, emotion, and reasoning into coordinated, persuasive wholes (Herman, 2003: 170). Jonathan Gottschall (2012) has called human beings “storytelling animals,” recognizing the central role of narrative in human life and civilization. Humans have an innate ability to receive and create stories out of our bodily experiences, emotional associations, and cognitive processing (Gottschall, 2012: 21–32; Aristotle, ca. 350 B.C.E/1995: 1448b). Narratives operate with a basic “starter-kit” of elements: story/plot/narration, time and space, character, dialogue, focalization, and genre (Herman, 2007). Employing these basic elements, the mind habitually connects fragments, finds patterns, and makes meaning out of the variegated inputs of our embodied, subjective living—even, or especially, when they do not seem to make any sense (Gottschall, 2012: 99–103; Wu, 2011: 13–14; Storr, 2020: 48–56). Herman has described the basic nature of narrative as worldmaking, helping people organize multiple sets of experiential knowledge domains into a coherent whole (Herman, Phelan, Rabbinowitz, Richardson, & Warhol, 2012: 14; Herman, 2003: 165). Sacred stories, like those in the Bible, often expand the scope of a narrative world to include supernatural beings, religious practices, morality, mystery, ultimate meaning, and faith (Ammerman, 2013: 25–34).

Compelling stories share a cluster of elements that are embedded in our species’ sensory inputs (Keith, 2002: 49), cognitive architecture (Herman, 2013: 228–30), and affective systems (Hogan, 2011: 2), elements that can take shape in a myriad of cultural variations. A story plot frequently involves some kind of trouble, an issue or circumstance, that creates suspense and calls for resolution (Gottschall, 2012: 45–56; Aristotle, ca. 350 B.C.E./1995: 1455b). Good stories often describe surprising, unexpected changes or gaps that stimulate our curiosity (Herman, 2013: 239–43; Storr, 2020: 13–20; Aristotle, ca. 350 B.C.E./1995: 1452a). Yet, that same story will also lay out understandable cause-effect sequences that we as social and cultural beings crave (Herman, 2013: 235–39; Aristotle, ca. 350 B.C.E./1995: 1450a). Engaging stories provide us with simulated experiences that help us as social creatures to relate to the people around us and to navigate the world(s) we encounter, especially in moral/ethical ways (Herman, 2013: 292–94; Gregory, 2009: 14; Aristotle, ca. 350 B.C.E./1995: 1450b). Sacred stories include all of these elements plus cosmic dimensions, supernatural characters, and transcendent/existential topics that can intensify the nature and effect of a story (Gottschall, 2012: 117–21; Koster, 2014: 27–31; Ganzevoort, 2014: 1–2, 12–15; Storr, 2020: 51). Narratives present us with a range of recognizable elements, experiences, motivations, and sensations that invite an audience to co-construct these elements into an organized whole, allowing us to enter into and imaginatively participate in the world of the story (Herman et al., 2012: 15; Oatley, 2002: 49; Mar & Oatley, 2008: 183). In sacred stories, some of these elements, experiences, and characters are often supernatural or raise issues of morality or ultimate meaning.

Ancient philosophers and rhetoricians recognized how emotions were linked to embodied human experience and story. Aristotle states that eliciting fear and sympathy in the audience by mimesis is at the core of tragic drama (ca. 350 B.C.E./1995: 1449b). Emotion can be generated by the reversals and recognitions that characterize tragic story plots (Aristotle, ca. 350 B.C.E./1995: 1450a). The actor’s bodily gestures are another critical way to generate emotion in the mesmerized audience (Aristotle, ca. 350 B.C.E./1995: 1455a). Even more common and powerful is the vivid description of events (Aristotle, ca. 350 B.C.E./1995: 1453b), because we feel sympathy when “suffering is set before our eyes” (Aristotle, ca. 350/1926: 1386a).

Quintilian agrees, saying that the vivid conceptualization of events in the mind of the rhetor, and through his words in the mind of the audience, is the most powerful way to sway the emotions (ca. 95/2002: 6.2.29–32). Broadly, ancient rhetoricians affirm the role of graphic depiction as a way to arouse emotion (Cicero, ca. 60 B.C.E./1942: 1.46; Demetrius, ca. 250 B.C.E./1995: 217–218; [Cicero], ca. 60 B.C.E./1954: 4.39; see also Webb 2009; Webb, 2016). As Sheppard (2014: 20) says, “In antiquity visualization, vividness and realism all come to be associated with the arousal of emotions in the reader or audience.” It is not just sight, however. Vividly described input from other senses can also generate affective responses (Demetrius, ca. 250 B.C.E./1995: 218–219; Cicero, ca. 60 B.C.E./1942: 6.10; Quintilian, ca. 95/2002: 6.1.25; Webb, 2009: 22).

Contemporary studies of embodied cognition have also affirmed the role that our bodies play in our affective responses to sensory stimuli and stories (Caracciolo, 2014; Winkielman, et al., 2015; Oatley, 2002: 40–41). This point is supported by contemporary cognitive narratology: vivid details in stories that connect with our experience are a key element in enabling our emotional participation in the story (Gregory, 2009: 20; Sklar, 2013: 9; Mar & Oatley, 2008: 178). These theories fit well with the psychosomatic elements of emotion in biblical cultures (Avrahami, 2014: 26). As examples, we find patience manifested in the length of God’s nose (Exod 34:6) or Jesus having “compassion/guts” for people (splagnchnizomai in Luke 7:14). Both ancient and contemporary thinkers affirm that the way to a person’s feelings is through their senses. Thus, Luke, a skilled and perhaps trained writer (Parsons, 2003; Reece, 2022), would have understood both consciously and intuitively that engaging storytelling, embodied action, and vivid sensory description were effective rhetorical tools to generate persuasive emotion in one’s audience.

Since sensory input is a key means by which we form and process stories and emotion, it is crucial that we have a sound understanding of our senses. Avrahami has provided a helpful typology for analyzing the sensorimotor aspects of biblical writings. Her seven-fold sensory paradigm includes sight, hearing, kinesthesia, speech, taste, smell, and touch (Avrahami, 2014: 65–112). She notes that sight is probably the predominant sense and smell the least developed in the biblical writings (Avrahami, 2014: 263–276 and 100–106 respectively). Avrahami (2014: 59–60) and others allow for the possibility of synesthesia, where the senses merge almost indistinguishably or are exchanged somehow (e.g., describing a loud sound as intensely bright; Purves, 2013; Goering, 2014). It is helpful to subdivide kinesthesia into three more precise aspects of our body awareness: (true) kinesthesia that deals with the movement of our body through space, the vestibular system that manages our balance, and proprioception that allows us to asses our body’s positioning relative to itself (Reed and Ziat, 2002).

As pointed out by developments in cognitive science, our senses and bodies are not only good for feeling with but also for thinking with. Both philosophical reflection and empirical research substantiate the claim that our language foundationally depends on and consistently uses the sensorimotor portions of our brains. Mark Johnson (1987) argued from humanistic grounds that bodily derived image schemas offer a better accounting of human rationality and imagination than traditional objectivist perspectives. Later, Lakoff and Johnson (1999: 43–46) argued that embodied experience offers a better explanation of language than other philosophical starting points. Kovecses (2006: 10–12, 18–30) defended an “experientialist” paradigm where language and concepts emerge from the experiences and interactions of our embodied brain with the world and people around us. Bergen (2012) synthesizes a wide swath of empirical research using tools like eye-tracking and functional MRIs to support the embodied nature of cognition and language.

As Bergen (2012: 13) says, “We understand language by simulating in our minds what it would be like to experience the things that language describes.” This is true of both our earliest formation of language and in more complex language development. The same neurons in our brains are activated when we physically grasp an object, when we hear a sentence about a girl grasping a leash, and when we speak metaphorically of someone “grasping an idea” (Bergen, 2012: 200–204). Mirror neurons are a key component of our brain’s capacity to learn from and understand others because they enable us to simulate in our own minds what we see or hear others do (Bergen, 2012: 76–78). This same mental capacity supports our ability to run cognitive and affective simulations of persons and events portrayed to us in narratives (Mar & Oatley, 2008: 179; Hogan, 2011: 248). As argued by Herman (2003: 170–72), stories are also good for thinking with, because they engage the same kinds of sense-making tools of our embodied cognition that help to form the basics of language. The supernatural and ultimate elements of sacred stories are often brought down to human scale and mundane matters in order to make them accessible and understandable (Fauconnier & Turner, 2002: 376–80; Ammerman, 2013: 288–304). Thus, sensorimotor input is the foundation of language, and our brains simulate sensorimotor input to process much of the language that we hear, speak, and think, including the language of stories with their sensory (and supernatural) elements (Bergen, 2012: 121–50; Gottschall, 2012: 59–62).

Our bodies with all of their sensory input are crucial to both emotion and language. What special role might the brain play in this holistic, integrative approach to how human beings process meaning and morality through stories? Two key dynamics are association and conceptualization. Association emerges from our embodied experience. The brain, especially the prefrontal cortex, integratively associates particular sensations with certain feelings, words, and concepts and records these in memory (Dixon, Thiruchselvam, Todd, & Christoff, 2017; Avrahami, 2014: 28). The bodily experience of warmth through touch is associated with feelings of attachment or intimacy, words like “comfort” or “cozy,” and ideas like safety and relationship. In biblical texts, the idea of safety can be prompted by association with a mention of warmth (e.g., Eccl 4:11; Jas 2:16). These associations help to form basic metaphors that are extensions of sensorimotor experiences (Johnson, 1987: 65–100; Bergen, 2012: 198–200; Gallese & Lakoff, 2005). Many of our metaphors, like “people are plants,” are built on associations: We see people grow and we see plants grow, so they must be similar in other ways (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980). Such associations and metaphors are a common way to bring the supernatural and mysterious aspects of sacred stories into an understandable narrative world (Sweetser & DesCamp, 2014). Furthermore, the brain interconnects similar associations and metaphors through various strands of memory built into our neuronal pathways, forming “frames” that provide our minds with a matrix to interpret sensory, cognitive, and affective input (Entman, 1993; Ribeiero & Hoyle, 2009; Barsalou, 1992). Thus, our brains associate and integrate sensorimotor stimulation, brain states (of thought and emotion), and the recall of prior relevant brain states into metaphors and frames that help us to make sense of the worlds we encounter, including the supernatural world (Barrett, 2009).

Conceptualization comes into play when our minds do creative work extending and combining associations into new ideas and insights—a process often referred to as conceptual blending (Fauconnier & Turner, 2002: 18–24). Conceptualization and blending are the mind’s special role, playing with various inputs in ways that create new insights and more abstract thought (Bergen, 2012: 240; Lakoff & Johnson, 1999: 47). While not using the language of “blending,” ancient rhetoricians recognized the value of retrieving arguments and elements from various domains (topoi or loci) and combining them into a point that was novel and convincing (Aristotle, 350 B.C.E./1960: 100a; Quintilian, ca. 95/2002: 5.1.120). As an example of such blending, take the saying “the surgeon is a butcher,” referring to a surgeon who lacks skills and harms people when performing surgery. Most of us have no sensorimotor experience of being either a surgeon or a butcher, but we do have associations and can approximately simulate their sensorimotor activities: surgeons are skilled professionals who use incision and excision to help promote health, while butchers are skilled animal meat processors who kill and dissect bodies for food. Both occupations share the framing elements of using sharp implements with their hands and working on bodies.

Our mind combines selected elements from each input frame to generate the notion of a highly trained doctor who is supposed to use sharp implements to heal a body like a surgeon (not process meat) but nonetheless uses those sharp implements badly to cause harm by forceful cutting more like a butcher (and not producing useful food in the process). A new notion of highly trained incompetence leading to harm on a person’s body emerges from our brain’s blending process with these two frames (for another brief explanation of blending, see Schneider, 2012: 3–6). Such sensorimotor-emotional-cognitive associations and blends are created within a person’s mind and thus can be highly individualized because they draw from that person’s particular experiences (Schneider, 2012: 7–8; Sklar, 2013: 11–12). However, blending operates within and is organized by larger cognitive frames (also known as image schemas or cultural scripts) that are broadly shared by members of a culture and help to shape meaning and facilitate communication (Goffman, 1974; Barsalou, 1992; Turner, 1987; Goddard, 2009). Blends can be largely shared by other persons because people share social experiences and cultural perspectives (Storr, 2020: 41–42). Stories often provide us with models of conceptualized and blended elements, inviting us to share in and thus acquire the insights of those blends (Gregory, 2009: 51–52). This includes the blending of multiple inputs that contain supernatural realities that are then brought down to human scale to be more fully comprehended in sacred stories (Fauconnier & Turner, 2002: 160–62).

Conceptual blending offers itself as a “powerful heuristic theory” given its ability to draw on multiple inputs, including dimensions of the sacred, and analyze how elements of a narrative work together (Schneider, 2012: 10, 11–20). Some scholars have applied conceptual blending to biblical materials (Goering, 2014; Ross, 2019), particularly scholars working in sociorhetorical interpretation (Robbins, 2009: 104–118; von Thaden, 2014), but most of these investigations have worked with discursive material rather than narrative (cf. Schneider, 2012: 1, 10; but see Wassel & Llewelyn, 2014).

A holistic experience of stories often prompts ethical reflection and moral formation in an engaged audience. While a wide range of dynamics around the ethical impact of stories could be considered, this study will focus on three: empathy, sympathy, and ethical repertoire. As human beings with embodied cognition experience a story, they are often led to simulate the emotions of key characters—that is, to engage in empathy (Oatley, 2002). Oatley (2002: 49) claimed that this kind of simulation is at the heart of Aristotle’s notion of mimesis (cf. Aristotle, ca. 350 B.C.E./1995: 1448b, 1452b). This call to empathy can be intensified when one is dealing with truth claims or matters of ultimate reality as is often the case in religious stories (Koster, 2014: 26–28).

Based on our own set of background experiences and points of contact with the story, we find ourselves having an analogous emotional experience to the characters in the narrative (Oatley, 2002: 41; Sklar, 2013: 25–26; Hogan, 2011: 243–48). Empathy can be prompted by a number of narrative techniques: descriptive focalization, internal character narration, secondary disclosure from other characters, comments from an omniscient narrator, and others (Sklar, 2013: 38–50). One should note that experiences of empathy (and sympathy) are definitively shaped by subjective elements and are fallible (Nussbaum, 2001: 328–33); however, empathy is often crucial to how we understand the causal sequences and outcomes of stories and thus to how we construe the ethical judgments related to those stories (Hogan, 2011: 243). Sympathy often (but not necessarily) involves some precedent experience of empathy but focuses more on the awareness of the suffering of another (including a character in a narrative) and the sense that the suffering is somehow unjust and should be alleviated (Sklar, 2013: 27–28; Nussbaum, 2001: 302). Thus, the emotion of sympathy should be understood as entailing ethical judgment since it involves an evaluation of the suffering (it is unjust/undeserved) and a prompt toward possible actions (imagining how it might be alleviated) (Sklar, 2013: 54; Nussbaum, 2001: 399).

Finally, stories can both deepen and broaden our ethical repertoire. Exposure to new and different kinds of situations and moral decisions in narratives gives us a broader scope of morally relevant memories (Mar & Oatley, 2008: 181; Herman, 2013: 281). While our experience of stories can be immersive and immediate, stories also allow us the opportunity to process ethical considerations more slowly and deeply, providing further grounding for future decision-making. Thus, stories can provide us with an expanded repertoire of embodied, affective, and cognitive experiences to inform and guide ethical decision-making in our own lives (Gregory, 2009: 52; Hogan, 2011: 244).

To sum up and prepare for the analysis of the stories in Luke: Human beings are storytelling creatures who use language to tell engaging, embodied, and emotional tales that prompt moral reflection. Sensorimotor input provides the basic building blocks of our language, thought, and emotion. Both ancient rhetoricians and contemporary cognitive scientists note that emotions are associated with vivid sensory stimuli.

The mental simulation of sensorimotor activities is at the root of how we process language, emotion, and story. Our brains use the association of embodied experience to form conceptualizations that often grow into larger metaphors and frames of meaning that come together in cultures through shared experience and explanation. Our brains take these sensorimotor inputs and associate them with a variety of words, feelings, ideas, and experiences through memory and transform them into new insights through conceptual blending. Sacred stories include religious, supernatural, and ultimate dimensions, often expressed through associations or blends, that intensify the dynamics of the narrative. Narrative has the power to employ all of these aspects of our embodied cognition (vivid embodiment, memory associations, emotion, concepts, blending) in sacred stories that capture our attention through change and surprise, that help us to make sense of ourselves and the world around us, and that provide us with the means to reflect on social and ethical decisions.

The current state of scholarship on the New Testament and specifically on the Gospel of Luke makes the application of this interrelated narrative hermeneutic of embodied cognition, emotion, simulation, and conceptualization toward ethical formation both timely and needed. Several important studies have been done on the rhetorical and literary skill of Luke as a storyteller (e.g., Tannehill, 1986; Kingsbury, 1991; Kurz, 1993; Parsons, 2007: 15–52; Brown, 2020). However, these works rarely attend to Luke’s use of vivid sensory elements, the eliciting of emotion, or conceptualization and blending in his storytelling. Parsons’s later work Body and Character in Luke and Acts (2011) explores bodily description as a means of characterization but does not consider the role of bodies in language and emotion. Some work has been done on emotion in the Gospels (Voorwinde, 2011: with pp. 119–150 on Luke; Spencer, 2021), but these works focus on the explicit narration of Jesus’s emotions. Kuhn (2009) sets out to explore the emotional appeal of Luke’s stories, but he primarily focuses on the effects of plot and characterization (pp. 32–51), mostly ignoring the crucial dynamics of the body, the senses, and cognitive conceptualization in the affective power of stories. His analysis also does not extend beyond the infancy narratives of Luke. Finally, many works employ moral material found in Scripture as content to be integrated into a larger ethical system (e.g., Green, 2013; Witherington, 2016; Birch, Lapsley, Moe-Lobeda, & Rasmussen, 2018) rather than focusing on the dynamics of how those ethical building blocks were construed from biblical material in the first place. Thus, the following analysis will explore the encounter of Jesus and Levi (Luke 5:27–39) and Jesus’s raising of the widow’s son (Luke 7:11–17) using the range of elements discussed above. We will focus our attention on how Luke tells his sacred stories to human beings in embodied ways that activate emotional responses, mental simulations, and conceptual blends in order to move his audience toward ethical reflection.

Embodiment, Emotion, Simulation, and Conceptualization in the Story of Jesus’s Encounter with Levi

The encounter of Jesus and Levi (Luke 5:27–39), in terms of storytelling, has a somewhat lopsided plot. A terse introduction displays Jesus meeting Levi and then Levi following Jesus (vv. 27–28), setting up the action that follows. This opening section presents Jesus on the move (kinesthesia)—he “went out,” which signals that change is afoot and provides a prompt for the audience to cognitively simulate the walking of Jesus (v. 27). Jesus’s movement allows something new—Levi’s body sitting at a toll booth—to come into his scope of vision. This scene is simultaneously “set before the eyes” of the audience (cf. Quintilian, ca. 95/2002: 6.2.29–32). The movement and new vision (bodily and sensory inputs respectively), raise cognitively linked associations with notions of possibility and expansion as the story builds suspense for the audience (cf. Neale, 1991: 133). Luke intensifies the sensory experience by focalizing the vision of the audience using the less common theaōmai (“to look at, gaze, behold”) instead of Mark’s more common horaō (cf. Mark 2:13; Bovon, 2002: 189).

Levi is named and identified as a toll collector, perhaps eliciting memories from the audience about other toll collectors in Luke’s narrative (19:1–10) or their own interaction with similar persons (Mar & Oatley, 2008: 178). In contrast to the walking Jesus, he is “sitting.” Levi is both static and lower in height (mentioned in passing by Green, 1997: 246). These kinesthetic and proprioceptive indicators help the audience mentally simulate that Levi is both metaphorically “going nowhere” and that he is positionally inferior to Jesus since his body is at a lower elevation.

These bodily states of walking and sitting may activate a cognitive cultural frame of wisdom with its use of sitting, standing, and walking as metaphors for ways of living (e.g., Deut 6:6–7; Ps 1:1; Prov 4:14; Sir 6:10; Ribiero & Hoyle, 2009: 77–78). Jesus breaks the silence and speaks, calling the sitting, static, stuck Levi to “Follow me!”—to move his body as a signal of a corresponding change in his internal loyalties. The direct authority of Jesus to command such sudden obedience may signal that Jesus is someone with more than regular human status. Here, the story invites the audience to pause in suspense. Will Levi respond? Will he get up and move? It is a cue for the audience to simulate their own emotional and physical response to such a command (Hogan, 2011: 244; Mar & Oatley, 2008: 180). Would I respond? Would I get up and move? The next sentence in Greek begins by saying that Levi “left everything behind” (v. 28), perhaps indicating a mental activity that is then expressed in the bodily action of getting up and following Jesus that closes the sentence (noted by Fitzmyer, 1985: 590 and Green, 1997: 246). This getting up and following creates a visual-spatial simulation in the audience’s mind that puts distance between Levi and his toll-collecting accoutrements—a sign of his internal “distancing” from this way of life. Levi’s actions indicate changes in both proprioception (his upright posture) and kinesthesia (movement rather than sitting still), imitating the posture and movement of the walking Jesus. This bodily response manifests Levi’s repentance (Green, 1997: 248), and Luke will explicitly cite this cultural frame later in v. 32. At the conclusion of this brief introduction, the audience is left to wonder at and make sense of the changes taking place. What will this mean for Levi? What will it mean for Jesus?

With no transition, we are suddenly in the house of Levi, where he is throwing a grand banquet for Jesus with lots of toll collectors and other guests (vv. 29–35). When the narrative locates its characters in a household setting, it invites the audience to mentally simulate the space and events that happen in it (Schneider, 2012: 14). This may call up a synesthetic experience of social meals with their sights, smells, and tastes along with the touch and sound hinted at by the crowding of food and bodies into a dining room. These are images and experiences that again fall within a cultural frame of wisdom in the Mediterranean world (e.g., Prov 9:1–6; Sir 31:12–32:13; 1 En. 32:3; Oatley, 2002: 41, 60). The sharing of these sensory experiences is part of what made meals in the ancient Mediterranean world powerful rituals of social acceptance and friendship (Neyrey, 1991; Smith, 2003: 1–12). Luke states that everyone was reclining together to eat.

This proprioceptive feature activates the sharing of bodily posture to reinforce the sharing and association between Jesus, Levi, and the other guests at the banquet (v. 29). The story prompts a Christian audience in particular to simulate the implications this scenario with all of its social and ethical implications (Gottschall, 2012: 134–36): Should I imitate Jesus’s example by sharing table fellowship with outcasts (as Jesus recommends explicitly at Luke 14:12–14)? How would I respond to such a meal as a host or guest? And, how might others respond? This last question is then explored in Luke’s narration.

Despite the potentially boisterous atmosphere of the house, the narrative filters out all the other noise, focalizing our attention in on the grumbled complaint of the Pharisees (v. 30; on this sensory filtering feature of narrative, see Herman, 2013: 169–75). The conflict narrated between Jesus and the Pharisees primes the audience to recall situations of conflict that they have experienced (Sklar, 2013: 20–21), especially around the conceptual frame of new vs. old that will appear in the following statements of Jesus. The questioning of Jesus by these skeptical characters may have prompted a Christian audience to empathize with Jesus (considering how it feels to be accused publicly through questions) and to sympathize for Jesus (Jesus has done nothing wrong to deserve this line of questioning).

The Pharisees and their scribes inquire why Jesus “eats and drinks” with unsavory and impure characters like toll collectors and sinners, implying that he should not be doing so. The collocation of “eating and drinking” (the two almost always appear in that order) has traditional Jewish cultural associations that connect the tasting of food and wine with fellowship (Exod 24:11; Judg 19:4; b. Ber. 45a) and celebration (1 Chron 29:22; Tob 7:10; t. Ta‘an. 3.14). The Pharisees raise two points in their criticism: First, why is Jesus fellowshipping with these (objectionable) people? Second, why are these (sinful) people celebrating rather than repenting, feasting rather than fasting?

They have perceptively picked up on the implications of the sharing of bodily experiences but cite a fundamental disjunction between the bodily enjoyment of eating and the fact that Jesus’s table companions ought to be feeling remorse. Jesus perceives their dual challenge and answers the first component by employing the synesthetic experience of sickness vs. health—the general malaise that our bodies feel in sickness versus the overall vigor of good health (v. 31). This statement introduces both the simulation of bodily illness on the part of the audience (Mar & Oatley, 2008: 172–74) and the body/illness as a cultural frame for explaining Jesus’s table fellowship (Entman, 1993: 51–52). The image and experience of sickness is an apt metaphor for being a “sinner,” since the dysfunction of the body can be associated with the dysfunction of a person’s moral/ethical/religious faculties (Storr, 2012: 42–45 and Malina, 1986: 36; cf. John 9:2; 1 Cor 11:28–29; Jas 5:15). Jesus’s response sounds like similar Mediterranean proverbs about doctors, fitting for the ongoing frame of wisdom (Plutarch, ca. 100/1954: 59 and Dio Chrysostom, ca. 110/1946: 100; on proverbs in a wisdom frame see Robbins, 2009: 123–24). Doctors should be with the physically sick, so it is natural for Jesus to have fellowship with those who are ethically/religiously unwell; he has come to call sinners to repentance just as doctors treat those who are ill (v. 32; Kilgallen, 2012). Jesus’s bodily presence (“I have come”) enables him to issue a hearable call to which sinners might respond and find holistic restoration.

The second issue is the association of eating and drinking with joy and fullness. It is raised in the slightly modified challenge repeated in v. 33 and addressed in the exchange found in vv. 33–35. With the flow of the narrative forward, the Pharisees seem implicitly to allow Jesus’s first point. They can permit this fellowship but raise an additional challenge. Their unstated reasoning could be paraphrased in this way: “Fine, you can be with sinners if you are truly calling them to repent, but repentance should involve prayer and fasting, not this celebratory feasting.” The Pharisees explicitly contrast the “prayer and fasting” of John’s disciples with the “eating and drinking” of Jesus’s disciples, bringing in the bodily experience of hunger (in contrast to satiety) and its association with the emotions of grief and mourning that should accompany the cognitive act of repentance (e.g., Neh 1:4; Acts 13:3; m. Ta‘an. 2.1; also Malina, 1986: 200–203). Thus, the lack of righteousness on the part of these toll collectors should be accompanied by both the lack of food and the lack of joy/happiness. That is the fitting homology that emerges from the brain’s association of food with fullness and joy (cf. Acts 14:17; Lakoff & Johnson, 1999: 57).

Jesus responds to this by changing the frame (vv. 34–35). The Pharisees identify the appropriate response by means of the bodies and status of the sick/sinners—repentance, fasting, and mourning. Jesus, however, says that the appropriate response is determined by his bodily presence. He changes the embodied point of reference, reframing the actions and thus conceptualizing them differently. When the bridegroom (that is, Jesus) is present, the wedding celebration should be in full swing. The frame of a wedding with a bridegroom and the absence of the bridegroom raises associations common in the early Christian apocalyptic frame (Matt 25:1–10; Rev 19:7–9; Robbins, 2009: 94).

This apocalyptic moment of the presence of Jesus makes it a time for feasting and joy, not for fasting and grief. With this move, the story introduces a sacred dimension, assuming that Jesus has a degree of supernatural significance in the cosmos (and its apocalyptic end) that entails the redefining of what human behavior is appropriate at which times. Jesus admits that a time will come when he (the bridegroom) is not bodily present. In those days, the appropriate association of repentance, fasting, and mourning will once again be enacted (as the church does in Acts 13:2–3).

In the final portion of this episode (vv. 36–39), Luke has Jesus tell two parables that contrast new and old, picking up on the apocalyptic contrast between the current “new” time of feasting with the “old” time of fasting (cf. Robbins, 2009: 336–45). These parables are also wisdom forms of speech, continuing from the wisdom frame set up in vv. 27–28. The form (parable: wisdom) and the content (new vs. old: apocalyptic) are conceptually blended here to generate an emergent insight (Fauconnier & Turner, 2002: 42–48): The current collision of apocalyptic ages created by the supernatural presence of Jesus results in this predictable clash of perspectives on feasting and fasting. In the first parable, Luke features the tactile-kinesthetic act of tearing the cloth using the verb form schizō twice (in comparison to Mark’s single use of the noun form in 2:21).

This is the same verb used to refer not only to the tearing of cloth (Isa 36:2; John 19:4) but also to embodied acts of repentance and remorse (Isa 37:1; 4 Bar. 2:5) and to the apocalyptic splitting of rocks and mountains (Zech 14:4; T. Levi 4:1). Thus, this repeated verb links together the physical simulation of tearing cloth, the conceptual framework of apocalyptic upheaval, and the human response of grief and repentance.

Similarly, violent destruction characterizes the second parable. If someone is foolish enough to put new wine into old wineskins, then the wineskins will burst, the wine will spill everywhere, and the skins will be destroyed (apollumi; v. 37). Again, the sacred dimensions of an apocalyptic frame are activated by the vocabulary, for apollumi appears in other contexts describing cosmic upheaval (e.g., Luke 17:27–29; 2 Thess 2:10; 1 En. 10:2). Luke’s description is more vivid than either Mark or Matthew, heightening the apocalyptic contrast of new and old (Bock, 1994: 519). In line with the ancient rhetoricians’ advice, he employs graphic descriptions here to emotionally engage his audience (Webb, 2009; Webb, 2016). As a precedent, we find Job describing his mental anguish as a new wineskin ready to burst (32:19). These embodied experiences of tearing clothing and jerking away from exploding wineskins narratively mirror the shock of the Pharisees at the disturbing actions of Jesus and prompt a similar reaction in us through our physical and emotional simulation of the experience (Bergen, 2012: 76–78; Mar & Oatley, 2008: 179–83).

To close the episode, Jesus calls up yet another sensory experience, the taste of a favored and familiar wine, as a way to explain why Jesus’s opponents cling to an old perspective (v. 39). The Pharisees’ visceral rejection of Jesus in the story is understandable since a wisdom-apocalyptic blend shows that the disjunction of new and old is proverbially true. This clash of perspectives is to be expected and will not yield to typical persuasion, because it is again proverbially true that people generally prefer what is old and familiar (following Bock, 1994: 518–22 and Wolter, 2016: 248–50; contra Good, 1983 and Green, 1997: 249–50). This final example suggests that the audience should simulate their preference for that good, old wine, providing them with an opportunity to empathize to some degree with Jesus’s opponents—Of course, we all prefer that good, old wine.

And yet, the apocalyptic moment can lead to a reevaluation of these long held and embodied preferences. The image of the bridegroom, the violence of these embodied experiences, and the destruction of the various items raises apocalyptic associations for these parables that is then cast back as a sacred explanatory paradigm for the entire scenario taking place on the human plane regarding eating and drinking. The old ways associated with the Pharisees and scribes are being undone by the unexpected, sudden, and shocking intrusion of an apocalyptic moment in the person of Jesus, which calls for a new paradigm of thinking and acting with regard to the subjects and acts of repentance.

This emergent wisdom-apocalyptic blend in the parables provides Luke’s audience with a new element in their repertoire of ethical reasoning: Jesus (and his followers) may act in shocking ways that simultaneously exhibit classic wisdom because a new frame of reference and action has been introduced with the arrival of Jesus. This frame of reference has a sacred dimension—the apocalyptic reality of the new crashing into the old. These new insights could prompt members of the audience, drawing on their own experience, to reflect on analogous situations in their own lives (Sklar, 2013: 5; Gregory, 2009: 51). Are they open to offering this kind of welcome and presence with “sinners” and to re-understanding repentance as accompanied by celebration? The final note of the story in v. 39 draws the audience into reflection once again—are they trying (very reasonably!) to hold on to old ways, or are they giving way to the new apocalyptic moment realized in the presence of Jesus? To try to do both is futile and destructive, and the change enacted by the presence of Jesus makes the new and unfamiliar way the right one.

Embodiment, Emotion, Simulation, and Conceptualization in the Story of Jesus Raising a Widow’s Son

The second story to be considered is the raising of the widow’s son in 7:11–17. The story begins prosaically but can still activate our kinesthetic simulation: Jesus and his disciples and a large crowd were all walking toward a village named Nain (v. 11). As they approach, they are met by a procession headed out of the city. The active movement of Jesus and the surrounding crowd is contrasted with the body of a son who has died and is now “being carried out” (the passive verb exekomizeto) for burial. The story welcomes the audience in to observe a sacred funeral ritual, and raises ultimate issues of life and death. The audience is also sensitized to the key role that bodies will play as the frame for this miraculous encounter (Robbins, 2007: 169–173). As the tension of the story rises, the audience already knows that Jesus can heal those dealing with bodily illness and disability (5:12–26), even from a distance (7:1–10). Might it be possible for Jesus to raise one who has died so tragically? We must wait and see.

The crowd accompanying Jesus and the crowd of the funeral procession stand in contrast to the “only” son of this woman who has died and now left his mother alone, for she is now a childless widow (Nolland, 1989: 322). The scene of a woman all alone in her grief yet circled by throngs of people displays a doleful story (Schürmann, 2000: 400). Jesus’s own vision and emotion are narrated at the beginning of v. 13, focalizing the audience’s attention and inviting them to share in Jesus’s visual and emotional experience. He sees the woman and “has compassion [esplagchnisthē]” upon her. Jesus’s sense of sight arouses emotion in him (Busse, 1979: 171; Elvey, 2006: 15.6–15.7), again displaying the immediate connection between sight and affect (Sheppard, 2014: 20). In line with Aristotle’s advice (ca. 350 B.C.E./1995: 1449b), Luke sets the suffering of this widow “before our eyes” by placing it before Jesus’s eyes to arouse sympathy in his audience (see also Oatley, 2002: 50–51; Sklar, 2013: 25). This omniscient narration could prompt a dual response of empathetic sympathy: the audience may feel how Jesus feels for the widow.

The verb splagchnizomai is an excellent example of the association of emotion with a specific part of the body. The noun splagchnon refers concretely to the “bowels” (Prov 26:22; 2 Macc 9:5–6; Acts 1:18), which is the seat of sympathy or compassion (Mark 8:2; Php 2:1; T. Abr. 3:9). Thus, the verb implies the activation of a response in this part of the body for another, especially as caused by visual perception (Mark 6:34; Luke 10:33 and 15:20; T. Zeb. 7:1–2). The “depth” of the emotion may be analogous to the “deep” location of the bowels in the body. The change in Jesus’s vision and the change in his body signal a turning point in the story, pointing forward toward Jesus’s upcoming action (cf. Menken, 1988: 110–11) as well as leading the audience to share in the ethically informed desire that something should be done to help woman in her desperate circumstances. Those who have lost loved ones may more quickly empathize with the woman’s plight, but a lone widow who has lost both her husband and her only son could evoke sympathy from anyone in the audience. If only there were something that could be done.

The bustle of the crowds evaporates as the narrative focuses attention on the personal interaction between Jesus and the woman. Without explanation, Jesus abruptly tells the woman to “stop weeping [mē klaiō]”—to cease the bodily manifestation of the grief that she feels at the loss of her only, beloved son and provider. This is another sudden command, akin to Jesus’s command for Levi to follow, that may intimate Jesus’s divine power and intent. Knowing that the woman is weeping could activate a mirror physical and emotional response in the audience, inducing them to empathy and possibly crying themselves (Krivan et al., 2020), so Jesus’s seemingly unwarranted command may come as a shock.

Thus far, the story employs two verbs, splagchnizomai and klaiō, that strongly link emotions and physicality—one invisibly deep in the body of Jesus and another immediately visible (and probably audible) on the face of the widow. An informed audience would likely anticipate what is coming—Jesus’s miraculous intervention—but these opening words could arouse further compassion for the widow who is suddenly told to stop grieving by a stranger.

From this point on, the story activates several sacred connections. God is characterized as showing compassion upon those who weep (2 Sam 12:22; Isa 30:19; 4 Bar. 6:21; Apoc. Mos. 9:3; Apoc. Sedr. 13:3). Furthermore, this is the first time that Luke, as narrator, calls Jesus “Lord,” and Jesus’s response of compassion here may echo God’s own compassion for people (Luke 1:78; T. Zeb. 8:1, 4; Wolter, 2016: 299–301). The story goes on to narrate Jesus raising a person from the dead, an act most often attributed to God (John 5:21; 2 Cor 1:9; 4Q521 2.II; the second of the Eighteen Benedictions). At the end of the episode (v. 16), Jesus is identified as a “great prophet” sent by God, even the very manifestation of the presence of God who “looks favorably [episkeptomai]” upon God’s people (cf. Luke 1:68).

This verb carries nuances of both physically visiting someone (Acts 15:36; James 1:27; T. Sim. 1:2) and the mental/emotional attention that (usually) leads to caring/saving acts (Ps 105:4 [LXX]; Acts 15:14; 1 En. 25:3). Others have noted how this story communicates a high Christology using redactional (Bovon, 2002: 274) and intertextual (Wolter, 2016: 300–302) resources. This analysis adds further confirmation of how Luke associates God and Jesus through his narrative. The sensory and conceptual elements portrayed in the story are blended to formulate a high Christology within a bodily frame in which Jesus feels embodied compassion like God, heeds physical weeping like God, responds with God-like miraculous power on a body, and manifests the salvation of God in the midst of the bodies of other people.

At this point, Jesus alone steps forward and touches the bier carrying the dead son of the woman. This is one of the few instances in Luke’s Gospel where the touch of Jesus in the midst of a miracle story does not cause immediate recovery (contrast 5:13, 6:19, 8:44–47, 22:51). Instead, the touch here is a signal to the pallbearers to stop in their tracks, building the suspense of the audience (Busse, 1979: 164; Gregory, 2009: 112–13). This touch, without words, communicates well: Jesus wants the procession to stop, and the bearers of the body stand still (v. 14). Now, the crowd has stopped moving, Jesus has stopped moving, the funeral procession has stopped moving, the widow has stopped crying. All action and movement in the bodies and the story has halted.

The stillness and silence allow Jesus’s words to ring crisp and clear: “Young man, I say to you, get up!” But, what good is it to issue a command to a dead person? The dead cannot hear or obey (cf. Ps 6:5 and 115:7). Death entails the cessation of sensorimotor functioning, and yet, Jesus in Luke’s story employs an auditory command to enact the miracle. Jesus’s efficacious speaking to a corpse could imply a few means of operation.

Perhaps, there was some kind of pre-verbal restoration of the man’s senses that makes the command audible to the otherwise dead body. For example, Green (1997: 292) speaks of Jesus issuing this command to the corpse (that is then obeyed). Perhaps, the words serve as an audible sign of the invisible and inaudible power of Jesus that restores life to the young man. The words are for the listening crowd and are not a means of raising the man at all (cf. John 11:42). Finally, perhaps, Jesus can speak in ways that disembodied spirits (still close to their body) can hear and obey. This final option is supported by the other account of Jesus raising a dead person in Luke: the daughter of the synagogue leader in ch. 8. The command Jesus issues there is very similar (“Child, get up!”; 8:55), and the text says that “her spirit returned” (8:56). This explanation is unique to Luke and implies that Jesus’s command was heard by the spirit that then returned to reanimate the body.

If this is the case, then sensorimotor perception is assumed by Luke and his audience to extend even into the spirit world. This conceptualization extends the ethical repertoire of the audience into the spiritual world to at least some degree. It provides a blend of embodied sensory perception with a post-mortem (non-bodily) life that extends the range of ethical action to include life beyond death as part of the sacred/supernatural dimensions of the story. To signal the return of life, “the dead man [ho nekros]” is now capable of kinesthetic movement with his body. Both he and the girl in Luke 8 get/sit up (anekathisen in 7:15 and anestē in 8:55; cf. Acts 20:10). The proprioceptive change to the position of “up” connotes a positive development (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980: 14–21). Both young people also do things with their mouths (speaking in 7:15 and eating in 8:55; cf. Acts 20:10) The young man of ch. 7 utters intelligible speech, clearly indicating the return not only of bodily but also cognitive function. The story leaves us with no doubts about the supernatural event that has occurred (cf. Philostratus, ca. 230/2005: 4.45). The return of holistic life, physical and cognitive, paves the way for the social reintegration of the dead child. Jesus gives the resuscitated son back to his mother (7:15; cf. 8:56), reversing the sorrowful scene cast at the beginning of this short story.

Here, Luke relates a comic rather than tragic reversal (cf. Aristotle, ca. 350 B.C.E./1995: 1450a; the portion of the work on comedy is lost), but the dramatic reversal has a powerful effect on the audience in the narrative and, by simulation, has the possibility of similarly affecting the audience of the narrative. To the shock of the surrounding crowd (“fear seized them all” in v. 16) the young man has come back to life. The raising of the dead man is an “awesome [thaumastos]” event performed by a great prophet from God (v. 16) that completely reverses the tragic plot (Aristotle, ca. 350 B.C.E./1995: 1455b–1456a) and incites the audience’s “benevolence [philanthrōpia]” on behalf of the widow (Aristotle, ca. 350 B.C.E./1995: 1456a). In this case, probably activating an empathetic response of joy that mirrors the delight of the widow who has regained her son. When the audience in the narrative sees the miracle, they respond by glorifying God and declaring Jesus to be a great prophet (v. 16), and when this is all “set before the eyes” of the audience of Luke’s Gospel, they are meant to respond with praise in like fashion. The audience of the story is encouraged to imagine these supernatural events and share in the sacred declarations about Jesus and God’s visitation in him.

The original presentation of a crying woman all alone has been resolved with the return of her son to life, all because Jesus was viscerally moved with compassion when he saw her. Luke’s account of this event is saturated with physical, sensory, and conceptual elements that have an emotional effect on the audience. The emotional and embodied vividness of the story invites the audience into a state where their ethical attitudes and commitments can be formed (Oatley, 2002: 51; Storr, 2020: 207–208). The story begins prompting empathy for the widow, especially if that empathy is linked to the audience’s own experience of loss. It then moves the listeners to empathize with Jesus’s sympathy for the woman, reinforcing the concept that the woman has suffered undeserved wrongs that should be ameliorated in some way. The audience would recognize that it is beyond any typical human’s power to raise the dead, but the story invites them to imagine how they could respond to a widow or others experiencing loss in their own lives (cf. Gregory, 2009: 51). If one cannot raise the dead, what can one do to soothe the grief and trouble of those who have lost loved ones, especially those who face desperate situations? It may involve social presence (like the surrounding crowd), emotional support, practical assistance or any number of contextually appropriate responses. Luke has engaged the beings, bodies, and brains of his audience through this vivid and emotional story with powerful sacred dimensions in order to further the formation of ethical feeling, thinking, and acting of his audience.

Conclusion

The application of this embodied-affective-cognitive hermeneutic to these two passages in Luke’s Gospel has shown that stories may select any number of elements from this broad, integrative framework to employ in various ways and to a variety of ethical ends. The embodied elements may serve various purposes: to fuel the storytelling, to generate emotion, or to prompt relevant concepts and frames. Not all the senses are used consistently. Kinesthesia features in both prominently as do sight and hearing, but touch is only mentioned once and smell not explicitly at all. Jesus’s rebuttal to the Phari-sees prompts us to mentally simulate the destruction of cloth and wineskins, and the setting of the widow “before our eyes” prompts us to feel sympathy.

Finally, the associative and cultural nature of several points of embodiment and conceptualization create a hermeneutical situation where one must consider a range of unstated implications in light of both closer and broader context. Does all tearing indicate apocalyptic? No, but it seems to in light of other hints in 5:27–39. How exactly does Jesus’s command cause the young man to rise? Clues in another passage from Luke indicate that such commands from Jesus can be heard by spirits that can then reanimate bodies. Jesus is presented more as a (typical, human) sage speaking proverbs and parables at Levi’s meal with hints that his presence has apocalyptic ramifications, but his sacred and supernatural status is clearly presented and loudly declared in the raising of the widow’s son. This reminds us that the embodied, emotional, and conceptual aspects of religious narratives should be explored with creative attention to the narrative itself, the real worlds of the text, and the contexts of the various audiences.

Exploring how Luke’s stories engage our embodied beings through emotion, embodied simulation, and conceptualization has both revealed new insights in these stories and enriched interpretations formulated from other aspects of the text. In both stories, we see the building of suspense (What will happen between Jesus and Levi? What can Jesus do for this grieving widow?) and key points of change (Levi stands up and follows Jesus; Jesus raises a dead son). Both stories employ a panoply of embodied simulations to support the story (Levi’s movement as a signal of internal change; the stopping of the procession to prepare for Jesus’s words), to activate emotions (Jesus’s presence calls for celebration, not remorseful fasting; the audience’s simulation of Jesus’s empathy), and to activate conceptual frames (the tearing and bursting to indicate an apocalyptic moment; the embodiment of divine compassion in raising the dead).

The narration of these embodied aspects engages emotions, simulations, and conceptualizations to spur the audience’s moral imagination, especially for a Christian audience: Would I welcome outcasts at my own table? How can I meet the needs of a grieving widow? Luke has employed the power of these embodied elements to raise believers and others to more profound ethical reflection.

Luke is far from the only good storyteller in the Bible. Scripture is full of other sacred stories. To name a few, there are three more Gospels, the parabolic tales of Jesus, and the patriarchal and monarchy narratives of the Hebrew Scriptures. The application of the embodied-affective-cognitive hermeneutic above has shown that great storytelling incorporates these embodied elements and that they have the power to capture people’s embodied emotions and thinking along with their sympathy and imagination (Herman, Phelan, Rabbinowitz, Richardson, & Warhol, 2012: 14–16; Oatley, 2002) in order to form and enact ethical commitments in line with the sacred and mundane dimensions of these biblical stories (Gottschall, 2012: 130–38; Sklar, 2013: 55–59; Gregory, 2009: 51–52). The sacred stories of Scripture make claims about the ultimate matters of reality with divine grounding that affect matters of everyday life such as who eats at one’s table and the inevitable loss of beloved family and community members. Therefore, the interrelated dynamics of embodiment, sensation, emotion, simulation, association, and blending should be investigated in these other sacred stories to better perceive the persuasive and ethical power that each one contains.