Bible and Bedlam: Madness, Sanism, and New Testament Interpretation by Louise Joy Lawrence

Abstract

Reviewed by: Bible and Bedlam: Madness, Sanism, and New Testament Interpretation by Louise Joy Lawrence Henry Ansgar Kelly louise joy lawrence, Bible and Bedlam: Madness, Sanism, and New Testament Interpretation (LNTS 594; London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2018). Pp. vii + 188. £85. A clear purpose of this book is to introduce biblical scholars to "Mad Studies," and to alert them to the dangers, in themselves and others, of "sanism," defined as prejudice against persons who are judged to be mentally ill. Sanist attitudes routinely fail to appreciate positive qualities in non-normal persons. Lawrence maintains that mental as opposed to physical problems have been neglected even in the field of disability studies. In chap. 1, "Ivory Towers and the Banishment of Bedlam: Reason, Right Minds, and Sane Privilege in Biblical Studies," L. seeks to expose sanist attitudes "within the identity and discourse of Western biblical scholarship" (p. 15), showing the use of damaging psychiatric stereotypes against scholars or biblical characters viewed negatively. The chief example is a recent (2007) critique by a nonbiblical scholar of Morton Smith's Secret Gospel: The Discovery and Interpretation of the Secret Gospel according to Mark (New York: Harper & Row, 1973), in which the author psychologizes Smith. In chap. 2, "The Curious Incident of a Jew in the Night-time: Autistry and an Encounter with Nicodemus," L. concentrates on analyses of Nicodemus's approach to Jesus by night and his literalist question about reentering the womb, which "could at least in part have fed (albeit largely unintentionally) into wider cultural 'diagnoses' of this character as autistic in various popular cultural forums and church resources" (p. 51). In chap. 3, "'Ex-centric' Women: Intersecting Marginalities and the Madness Narratives of Bessie Head, a Canaanite Woman, and Pythian Slave Girl," L. correlates the main character in a semi-autobiographical African novel with the "sanist psychopathological labeling" of the Syro-Phoenician woman of Matt 15:21-28 as a "hysterical woman of Canaan" (recorded only once in a 2015 article, but said to be frequently cited [p. 83]). Also considered is the girl with the Pythonic spirit (therefore identified as "Pythian" here) of Acts 16:16-19. L. says that she is frequently called "the demented slave girl," but gives only one citation (p. 87). In chap. 4, "Gatekeeping the Madness of Jesus and Paul: Negotiating Mythologies of Madness in an Age of Neoliberalism," L. deals with the ideological selectivity of details (that is, acting like a typical "gatekeeper" in, say, managing press releases) in either denying or asserting madness in Jesus and Paul. L. agrees that Albert Schweitzer (The Psychiatric Study of Jesus [German original, 1913]) "effectively halted the use of psy-discourses in relation to Jesus's identity" for the better part of a century (p. 104), but she adduces recent presentations of Jesus as "fatherless" that diagnose him not as mad but rather as "a 'normate' [End Page 546] neoliberal subject with regard to his mental disposition" (p. 108). L. also covers psychological studies of Paul, some of which might seem to be non-sanist, aligned with "the mad genius type/creativity mystique increasingly being featured within leadership studies" (p. 128). But L. cites warnings against psychologizing mere rhetoric, or treating the collective authorship of the Pauline epistles as the product of one mind (p. 128). In chap. 5, "Madness, the Affect Alien, and the Gospel of Mark: Critically Probing a Happiness Turn in Biblical Studies," first discusses recent general emphases on happiness as the goal of human life, appropriately associated with Martin Seligman and "positive psychology," a new science of human strengths detailed in an article published in the year 2000 (p. 134). Those "who do not follow the culturally affective script of happiness" are considered deviant; for instance, "the feminist killjoy," the "unhappy queer," the "melancholy migrant," are termed collectively "mad affect aliens." These concepts are first considered in connection with unschooled spontaneous responses to the Gospels, including those of an anti-psychiatric group organized by L. herself ("Hearing Voices Network"). She then treats the Gospel of Mark itself briefly as, equivalently, an affect alien (pp. 145-59). This book does not live up to its implicit charge that biblical scholarship is widely...