Psychology of the Bible

J. McVeigh Brian

Description

Fire and brimstone, bellowing prophets, and a good dose of old-fashioned sermonizing - these are the images the Bible brings to mind. But this assortment of sacred writings, in particular the Old Testament, is more than a collection of colorful allegories or miracles-and-morals mythology. Though written in the first millennium BCE, these holy writings are a nostalgic recounting of a lost 'super-religious' mentality that characterized the Bronze Age. The Psychology of the Bible explores how the Old Testament provides perspective into the tumultuous transition from an earlier mentality to a new paradigm of interiorized psychology and introspective religiosity that came to characterize the first millennium BCE. By examining the Old Testament's historical background and theopolitical context, utilizing linguistic analysis, and applying systems and communication theory, this book interprets biblical passages through a new lens. It analyzes divine voices, visions, and appearances of heavenly messengers - angel and prophets - as neurocultural phenomena and explains why they were so common. This book also answers why definitions of God changed so radically, illuminates the divinatory role of idols and other oracular aids (e.g. the Ark of the Covenant), provides a framework for appreciating why 'wisdom literature' became so significant, and clarifies the linkages among music, poetry, and inspiration.

Sujets

• Philosophie et théologie
• Christian theology
• Social

Informations

• Publié par: Andrews UK
• Date de parution: 17 septembre 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781788360432
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

The Psychology of the Bible
Explaining Divine Voices and Visions
Brian J. McVeigh
SOCIETAS
essays in political
& cultural criticism
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Published in 2020 by
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Copyright © 2020 Brian J. McVeigh
The right of Brian J. McVeigh to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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The views and opinions expressed herein belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Imprint Academic or Andrews UK Limited.



Acknowledgments
How much better to acquire wisdom than gold; To acquire understanding is preferable to silver.—Pro 16:16
Here I was, standing on the bimah (raised platform) with the late Rabbi James Cohn and Marcel Kuijsten in Temple Israel, Charleston, West Virginia, in front an audience. I was participating in a discussion of Julian Jaynes’s theories during The 2013 Julian Jaynes Society Conference on Consciousness and Bicameral Studies (McVeigh, 2013a). During the next couple of days I would, from the same platform, along with many others, give a presentation about Jaynesian psychology (McVeigh, 2013b). This was one of the most interesting experiences I have ever had—standing in a house of God expounding upon a scientific theory that questioned the very existence of God. I would like to thank Rabbi James Cohn for inviting me to that conference and allowing me an opportunity to share my views about Jaynes. Rabbi Cohn also offered me indispensable advice by strengthening this book with his careful reading and comments. For this I am deeply grateful.
Marcel Kuijsten, who recognizes the intellectual and historical significance of Jaynes and has devoted so many of his efforts to disseminating the latter’s groundbreaking ideas, also deserves my gratitude for offering useful comments on this book. I would also like to thank John Hainly, Hester Oberman, Bill Rowe, and Barbara Greene for their advice and helpful comments. As always, my wife Lana, my father, my late mother, Bill, Kristin, and Laurel—continue to furnish me with wisdom that reveals the wonders of this world.



Chapter 1
When God Spoke to Us
Reconstructing Forgotten Mentalities
The voice of the Lord is power; the voice of the Lord is majesty.
—Psa 29:4
Fire and brimstone, bellowing prophets, and a good dose of very old-fashioned sermonizing—these are the images the Bible brings to mind for many of us. But this assortment of sacred writings, in particular the OT, is more than a collection of colorful allegories or miracles-and-morals mythology. This book tells a story inspired by examples from the Bible. It begins about several centuries before 1000 BCE, with the premise that at that time people lacked conscious interiority, i.e. that indefinable experience of being subjectively self-aware and able to mentally “see” oneself and plan for the future. Most behavior was habit-determined, prescribed, and routinized. Nonconscious schemas, ritualized patterns of activity, and scripts were adequate for most decisions—as is the case, incidentally, for modern humans. But when confronted with a particularly novel, stressful, or challenging situation that required cautious deliberation, individuals in the Bronze Age heard the guiding “voices” of gods, ancestors, or divine rulers. These “voice-volitions” originated in the right hemisphere (the commanding “god”) and communicated with the left hemisphere (the obeying “person”). In what was ancient Israel, the loss of direct, face-to-face theophanies from Yahweh required new forms of authoritative decision-making.
As civilizations became more sophisticated and complex, people gradually had to learn a new type of “interiorized” cognition. This cultural psychological adaptation allowed people to “spatialize” and “see” (via mental imagery) problems and their solutions “in” their heads. Significantly for my purposes, this “interiorization of behavior” positioned agency within the individual. This led to a more efficient decision-making process, i.e. it permitted people to simulate possible outcomes of choices without actually having to act them out in the real world. Overall, it gave the human psyche the ability to interconnect its neurological components in a more efficacious way, forming novel neurocultural pathways that sped up information flow.
To follow my arguments, a number of interrelated concepts and theoretical perspectives need to be introduced. That is the goal of this chapter. I only mention them here as they are explained with more nuance and detail in other books about Jaynesian psychology (at the end of this chapter I also provide an outline of the book). The crucial concepts I utilize include the premise that the challenges of social communication have, over time, configured the psyche; these configurations, due to the inherent plasticity of our neurocultural apparatus, have taken on remarkably different forms (e.g. bicamerality and conscious interiority). The psyche is a machine for social messaging, and our inherent sociopolitical nature requires that we obtain permission and approval from others (authorization) for decisions and volitions, and, as strange as it may sound, from ourselves (self-authorization). Its communicative nature means it is a node in a densely networked system, part and parcel of a complex, dynamic web. “Instead of adapting to the external environment, human society became the environment for the most part, and our own evolution was more and more in our own hands” (Ornstein, 1997: 34). No known “brain centers” for anything like consciousness have been discovered; there are only circuits, no centers (Trimble, 2007: 178). As such, the mind operates on an expanded grid, and for our purposes this means that other social beings, as well as a constellation of objects of material culture—idols, images, altars, temples, shrines—need to be incorporated into any analysis of how cognition does what it does. Psychological processes, then, cannot be contained within the individual’s brain since they implicate, interlink, and involve other people and other things (Appendix 1: Extended Mind Thesis). Culture, like tools, has altered the very nature of evolution.
Methodological Concerns and Approaches
Problems of Dating
A number of problems confront any analysis of the Bible. The first is dating. An obvious difference exists between the period to which a book refers versus the period when it was written. In general, OT books are not contemporaneous with the events they describe; this precludes presenting arguments in a clear and sequential order. My working premise is that some books of the OT refer to either late bicameral times (or more precisely the declining days of bicamerality, i.e. several centuries before and after 1000 BCE) or post-bicameral times when expressions of vestigial bicamerality—unsanctioned divination and angry, frothing prophets—haunted the social landscape like ghosts. Here we should note that these are composed not just from earlier documentary sources now lost but also from even earlier oral traditions. Despite problems with chronological ordering, for our purposes a general picture can still be outlined (Appendices 2 and 3).
Though no definitive dating system of the OT is agreed upon by scholars, many put at least some stock in the “documentary hypothesis” developed by Julius Wellhausen (1844–1918) who contended that the Torah was composed from four sources, each with its own distinct emphasis and message: “J,” “E,” “P,” and “D” (see below). A “redactor” compiled and combined these sources sometime in the mid-fifth century BCE.
The “J” or Yahwist source (from the “J” in “Jahwist,” though the three other sources also use “Yahweh”) is the oldest, written around 950 BCE, just as the Kingdom of Israel split between the southern and northern monarchies. “J” depicts Yahweh in anthropomorphic terms and as a being that visits mortals. “J” is very concerned with the history of Israel, and Yahweh’s own people who he brought to Canaan and will protect.
The “E” source is named for “elohist” (from the generic term for deity rather than “Yahweh”). This source, relatively short, was written about a century after “J” in the northern Kingdom of Israel. God comes off as somewhat more distant since he delivers his message not just via direct theophanic manifestations, but also through angels, prophets, and dreams. “E” duplicates some of “J,” though it gives more attention to four basic issues: (1) prophetic leadership (Abraham, Jacob, Joseph, and Moses); (2) the fear of God; (3) the covenant; and (4) the sacred nature of history whose unfolding will reveal Israel’s destiny.
The “P” source (for “priestly”) may have been written by kohanim (priests) in exile in Babylon, but its dating has led to many debates. It may have been composed before as well as after the Babylonian exile of 586 BCE. “J” and “E” are partially duplicated by “P,” which uses elohim as a name for God and has a penchant for lists, genealogies, dates, numbers, and laws. The supreme