‘Were Not Our Hearts Burning Within Us?’ (Luke 24:32): Dysregulated Passions, Righteous Fervour and an Emotional Regime Change in the Roman Empire

Abstract Idioms describing specific emotional states with reference to hot or cold body temperatures are ubiquitous across cultural groups and appear to reflect the interpretive affordances of basic physiological processes. Thus high-arousal emotions tend to be associated with heat and low-arousal emotions with cold. Nonetheless, these associations are not universal but are shaped by cultural history. The description in the Gospel of Luke of the disciples’ ‘burning hearts’ provides an illuminating case study. Although often read by modern interpreters as a transparent metaphor for elation or excitement, ancient usage points in a decidedly different direction, reflecting a prevailing moral and medical assumption in the Greco-Roman world that the dysregulation of the body’s innate heat is a symptom of affective and physical disorder. If Luke’s phrase nonetheless depicts desirable feelings, it would appear to be a harbinger of a new chapter in the history of emotions wherein certain ‘hot feelings’ might be understood not as unregulated passions but rather righteous fervour.