Mental health of Jesus
The question of whether the historical Jesus was in good mental health is a subject of consideration for multiple psychologists, philosophers, historians, and writers.
[8] According to the Gospels, Jesus was presented to Pilate and sentenced to death as a royal pretender, but the standard Roman procedure was the prosecution and execution of would-be insurgents with their leaders.
Therefore, to suggest that Jesus was put to death by the Roman authorities as some kind of royal pretender does not explain sufficiently why he was executed, but his disciples were not.
[28] However, it was not until the publication of Charles Binet-Sanglé's four-volume work La folie de Jésus from 1908 to 1915 that the topic was extensively and visibly discussed.
[32][2][3] Hirsch concluded that Jesus was just a "paranoid": But Christ offers in every respect an absolutely typical picture of a wellknown mental disease.
All that we know of him corresponds so exactly to the clinical aspect of paranoia, that it is hardly conceivable how anybody at all acquainted with mental disorders, can entertain the slightest doubt as to the correctness of the diagnosis.According to Hirsch, Jesus, as a typical paranoid, applied prophecies about the coming of the messiah to himself,[33] and had a deep hatred towards anyone who disagreed with him on everything.
[10][35][36] The literature of the Soviet Union in the 1920s, following the tradition of the demythologization of Jesus in the works of Strauss, Renan, Nietzsche, and Binet-Sanglé, put forward two main themes: mental illness and deception.
[40][41] Władysław Witwicki, a rationalist philosopher and psychologist,[42] in the comments to his own translation of the Gospels of Matthew and Mark, Dobra Nowina według Mateusza i Marka[43] (The Good News according to Matthew and Mark [pl]), which is in fact a psychobiography of Jesus,[44] attributed that Jesus had subjectivism,[45] an increased sense of his own power and superiority over others, egocentrism[46] and the tendency to subjugate other people.
[50][51][52] American philosopher and science skeptic Paul Kurtz, in one of his most influential writings, The Transcendental Temptation (1986, chapter Was Jesus disturbed?
[2][3][64]The English psychiatrist Anthony Storr in his final book Feet of Clay; Saints, Sinners, and Madmen: A Study of Gurus (1996)[65] suggested that there are psychological similarities between crazy "messiahs" such as Jim Jones and David Koresh and respected religious leaders including Jesus.
According to Storr, if Jesus really considered himself a deputy for God and believed that one day he would come down from heaven to rule, he was very similar to the gurus whom he had previously described as preachers of delusions possessed by mania of greatness.
[73] American neuroendocrinology researcher Robert Sapolsky in his essay included in the book The Trouble with Testosterone: and Other Essays on the Biology of the Human Predicament (1997, 1998)[74] suggests the occurrence of schizotypal ("half-crazy", p. 248) behavior and metamagical thinking in shamans, Jesus and other charismatic religious leaders: Oh, sure, one can overdo it, and our history is darkly stained with abortive religious movements inspired by messianic crackpots.
[76] He does so in chapters containing, in sequence, an analysis of character traits of the "savior of mankind", a description of the possible course of events from the period of Jesus' public activity, and a naturalistic explanation of his miracles.
[77] In 2012, a team of psychiatrists, behavioral psychologists, neurologists and neuropsychiatrists from the Harvard Medical School published a research that suggested the development of a new diagnostic category of psychiatric disorders related to religious delusion and hyperreligiosity.
[81][c] Opinions and publications questioning the sanity of Jesus, especially Georg Lomer, Charles Binet-Sanglé and William Hirsch, caused polemical reactions.
Bundy summarized his defense of Jesus′ sanity:[87][2][3] A pathography of Jesus is possible only upon the basis of a lack of acquaintance with the course and conclusions of New Testament criticism and an amateur application of the principles of the science of psychiatry.Earlier the mental health of Jesus was defended by: the German Catholic theologian, professor of apologetics at the University of Würzburg, Philipp Kneib (Moderne Leben-Jesu-Forschung unter dem Einflusse der Psychiatrie, 1908)[88] – against the arguments of Holtzmann, Lomer, Rasmussen and Baumann;[89] the German evangelical theologian and pastor Hermann Werner [Wikidata] (Die psychische Gesundheit Jesu, 1908)[90] – against the arguments of Holtzmann, Lomer and Rasmussen;[91] and also by the German psychiatrist, chief physician of the Friedrichsberg Mental Asylum in Hamburg, Heinrich Schaefer [Wikidata] (Jesus in psychiatrischer Beleuchtung: eine Kontroverse, 1910)[92] – against the arguments of Lomer and Rasmussen.
[93] The mental health of Jesus is defended by Christian psychiatrists Olivier Quentin Hyder,[94] Pablo Martinez, and Andrew Sims.
The defense of Jesus' mental health was devoted to an editorial in the magazine of Italian Jesuits La Civiltà Cattolica, published November 5, 1994.
This mission, moreover, supposedly originated from the expectation motif then dominant in Israel, creatively reshaped by John, and from the emotional upheaval that the event of his Baptism brought about in Jesus′ life.
Further (p. 32) the author quotes Thomas Merton in reaction: "The whole concept of sanity in a society where spiritual values have lost their meaning is itself meaningless.
