“Making My Prayer with Joy”: Epistolary Prayer as Emotional Practice in Philippians and 1 Thessalonians

Drawing on recent literature in the history of emotions, this article describes Paul’s epistolary prayers as emotional practices that aim to harmonize and amplify the emotions of Paul and his addressees, particularly shared joy and longing. In Philippians and 1 Thessalonians, philophronetic topoi an...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Schellenberg, Ryan S. (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: Brill 2022
In: Novum Testamentum
Year: 2022, Volume: 64, Issue: 1, Pages: 79-98
Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains:B Paul Apostle / Philippians / Bible. Thessalonicherbrief 1. / Prayer / Emotion / Joy / Municipality / Letter
IxTheo Classification:HC New Testament
Further subjects:B history of emotions
B Joy
B emotional practices
B philophronetic letters
B Paul
B Prayer
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Description
Summary:Drawing on recent literature in the history of emotions, this article describes Paul’s epistolary prayers as emotional practices that aim to harmonize and amplify the emotions of Paul and his addressees, particularly shared joy and longing. In Philippians and 1 Thessalonians, philophronetic topoi and the emotional norms they encode provide the basic cultural logic undergirding these prayers’ affective work. Compensating more or less successfully for the somatic signals otherwise constitutive of collective emotions, Paul’s explicit evocation of presumptively shared emotion nourishes the fantasy of presence and thus the rewards of common feeling, which include emotional sustenance for Paul himself and, if his letter is successful, a renewed feeling of solidarity among his addressees that reinforces their shared loyalty to Paul and his Lord.
ISSN:1568-5365
Contains:Enthalten in: Novum Testamentum
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1163/15685365-bja10006