Although the Bible knows nothing of modern psychological theory, it is a richly psychological text. Psychology is the study of human behavior, and the Bible not only describes human behaviors, attitudes, motivations, interactions, and relationships, it is also the product of human behaviors – memory, personality, thinking processes, perception, and interpersonal interactions. Psychological factors continue to be at work in the ongoing reading, exegesis, and interpretation of the Bible.¹

Bibliography

Method

Capps, Donald.  "Psychological Biblical Criticism: Envisioning Its Prospects."  In Psychological Hermeneutics for Biblical Themes and Texts: A Festschrift in Honor of Wayne G. Rollins (ed. J. Harold Ellens; New York: T&T Clark International, 2012) 43-60.

 

Kille, D. Andrew.  Psychological Biblical Criticism, Guides to Biblical Scholarship, Old Testament Series.  Minneapolis: Fortress, 2000.

 

--------.  "Psychology and Biblical Studies."  In The New Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible (ed. Karen Doob Sakenfeld; Nashville: Abingdon, 2009) 4.684-5. (or 284-285?)

 

 

Applications

Jung, Karl.  Answer to Job, trans. R. F. C. Hull.  Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2011.

 

Rashkow, Ilona.  Taboo or Not Taboo: Sexuality and Family in the Hebrew Bible.  Minneapolis: Fortress, 2000.

 

Rollins, Wayne G. and D. Andrew Kille, eds.  Psychological Insight into the Bible: Texts and Readings.  Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 2007.

 

 

Related Studies

Arnold, Patrick M.  Wildmen, Warriors, and Kings: Masculine Spirituality and the Bible.  New York: Crossroad, 1991.

 

Edinger, Edward F.  The Christian Archetype: A Jungian Commentary on the Life of Christ.  Toronto: Inner City, 1987.

 

Freud, Sigmund.  Moses and Monotheism, trans. Katherine Jones.  New York: Vintage, 1959, 1955.

 

Gay, Peter, ed.  The Freud Reader.  New York: W. W. Norton, 1989.

 

Jung, Karl.  Memories, Dreams, Reflections, ed. Aniela Jaffé, trans. Richard and Clara Winston.  New York: Vintage, 1989.

 

Rollins, Wayne Gilbert.  Jung and the Bible.  Atlanta: John Knox, 1983.

 

--------.  "Psyche, Soul, and Self in Historical and Contemporary Perspective."  In Psychology and the Bible: A New Way to Read the Scriptures, vol. 3, From Gospel to Gnostics (ed. J. Harold Ellens and Wayne G. Rollins; Psychology, Religion and Spirituality; Westport, Connecticut: Praeger, 2004) 279-94

 

--------.  Soul and Psyche: The Bible in Psychological Perspective.   Minneapolis: Fortress, 1999.