Psychology of the Bible

Subtitled 'explaining divine voices and visions' with reference to the Old Testament, this book follows up on the work of Julian Jaynes on the bicameral mind. It is a tour de force in terms of its detailed analysis, covering what he calls neurocultural evolution and the transition from 'super-religiosity' that does not question the supernatural order to a religiosity 'that vacillates between disbelief, doubting, and wholehearted devotion', a development that occurred sometime after 1000 BCE. This corresponds psychologically to the socio-historical forces that broke apart the soul-body unity but at the same time created interiority and introspection; it also corresponds to a discussion of the role of the right hemisphere in the history of religion. The book contains a good deal of linguistic analysis, for instance key categories of biblical poetry with specific examples of the episodes and language used. There are chapters devoted to the theopolitical emergence of Israel, angels, prophets and priests in their historical context, the neurology behind hearing the voice of God, and a psychological lexicon of the Old Testament as well as an appendix of semantic clusters. The psyche is regarded as an evolving adaptive communication system that that gradually closes off from theophanies as guidance, although I'm not sure this is in fact true, and no reference is made to the work of William James and Sir Alister Hardy in this respect. Overall, it is a book mainly aimed at psychologists of religion that will also be of interest to theologians.