The Christ most decidedly touched upon feelings, as in, "you have heard it said, thou shall not," etc., "but I say to you," thus and such.
In the latter formulations, e.g., with regard to adultery, Jesus was crystal clear about sins of the inner self, the core being, or "cardia," for the human heart.
I am suspicious of all scholars who make grand, sweeping statements about the scriptures, and those who approach the subject without allowing for the possibility of their being inspired by the Living God, Friend of Abraham and Father of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, creator of Heaven and Earth. (Who spoke and not-a-thing became everything.
The ancient Hebrew vocabulary was succinct, consisting of 500 words in the record surviving to the present age, and yes, it's possible there were less shades of meaning, less ambiguity than we are used to in the English-speaking world of the 21st century. But thought proceeded action then as now, and it is out of the heart, Jesus is reliably reported to have said, that proceeds the plethora of human failings, or evils, for the less politically correct.
“In the latter formulations, e.g., with regard to adultery, Jesus was crystal clear about sins of the inner self, the core being, or “cardia,” for the human heart.”
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I always took this to mean a man who becomes obsessed with a woman he knows is married to another and fantasizes about her. I have heard it presented as meaning any man who sees an attractive woman and experiences desire, I don’t buy that one, such a reaction is an involuntary thing.