Hearing Visions and Seeing Voices

HEARING VISIONS AND SEEING VOICES
Hearing Visions and

Seeing Voices
Psychological Aspects of Biblical
Concepts and Personalities
Edited by
Gerrit Glas
University of Leiden, The Netherlands
Moshe Halevi Spero

School of Social Work, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan, Israel
Weinstock Oncology Day Hospital, Shaare Zedek Medical Center,
Jerusalem, Israel
Peter J. Verhagen
Meerkanten GGZ Flevo-Veluwe, Ermelo, The Netherlands
Herman M. van Praag

University of Maastricht, The Netherlands
The Albert Einstein College of Medicine, New York, U.S.A.
A C.I.P. Catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
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© 2007 Springer
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CONTENTS
Contributing Authors ix
Preface xi
Acknowledgements xvii
PART 1. HISTORICAL AND CONCEPTUAL ISSUES
1. Introduction to Historical and Conceptual Issues 3

Gerrit Glas
2. Psychiatry and Religion: An Unconsummated Marriage 9

Herman van Praag
3. Biblical Narratives as History: Biblical Persons as

Objects of Historical Faith 21
C. Stephen Evans
PART 2. PROPHECY: THEOLOGICAL

AND PSYCHOLOGICAL ASPECTS
4. Introduction to Prophecy: Theological and Psychological Aspects 37

Gerrit Glas
5. The Dynamics of Prophecy in the Writings of

Abraham Joshua Heschel 41
Neil Gillman
v
vi CONTENTS
6. The Prophets as Persons 53

Bob Becking
7. Jeremiah Interpreted: A Rabbinic Analysis of the Prophet 65

Bryna Jocheved Levy
PART 3. MARTYRDOM: THEOLOGICAL

8. Introduction to Martyrdom: Theological and Psychological Aspects 89

Gerrit Glas
9. Martyrdom: Theological and Psychological Aspects.

Martyrdom in Judaism 93
Hyam Maccoby, Z.L.†
10. The Martyrdom of Paul 105

Jakob van Bruggen
11. Spiritual, Human, and Psychological Dimensions

of St. Paul’s Martyrdom 115
Msngr. H.W.M. Tájrá
PART 4. MESSIANISM: THEOLOGICAL

12. Introduction to Messianism: Theological and Psychological Aspects 127

Gerrit Glas
13. Casting a Psychological Look on Jesus the Marginal Jew 133

Antoine Vergote
14. The Land of Israel: Desire and Dread in Jewish Literature 153
Aviezer Ravitzky
15. The Person of Jesus 169

Abraham van de Beek
16. Imagining Jesus: To Portray or Betray?: Psycho(-patho)logical Aspects

of Attempts to Discuss the Historical Individual 183
Peter J. Verhagen
CONTENTS vii
PART 5. INTERDISCIPLINARY ISSUES:

PROSPECTS FOR THE FUTURE
17. Introduction to Interdisciplinary Issues: Prospects for the Future 207

Gerrit Glas
18. The Hidden Subject of Job: Mirroring and the Anguish

of Interminable Desire 213
Moshe Halevi Spero
19. Biblical Themes in Psychiatric Practice: Implications

for Psychopathology and Psychotherapy 267
Samuel Pfeifer
20. The Bible and Psychology: New Directions

in Biblical Scholarship 279
Wayne G. Rollins
21. Searching for the Dynamic ‘Within’. Concluding Remarks

on ‘Psychological Aspects of Biblical Concepts and Personalities’ 295
Gerrit Glas
Index of Names . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 311
Index of Subjects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 317

CONTRIBUTING AUTHORS
Bob Becking
Professor of Old Testament Studies, Department of Theology, Utrecht University,
The Netherlands
Abraham van de Beek

Professor of Systematic Theology, Department of Theology, Free University, Amster-
dam, The Netherlands
Jakob van Bruggen

Professor (Emeritus) of New Testament Studies, Theological University of Kampen,
The Netherlands
C.Stephen Evans
University Professor of Philosophy and Humanities, Department of Philosophy,
Baylor University, Waco, USA
Neil Gillman
Aaron Rabinowitz and Simon H. Rifkind Professor of Jewish Philosophy, Jewish
Theological Seminary of America, New York
Gerrit Glas
Professor of Philosophy and Psychiatry Leiden University Medical Centre
Professor of Philosophy in the Reformed Tradition, Department of Philosophy,
Leiden University
Director of Residency Training, Zwolse Poort, Zwolle, The Netherlands
Hyam Maccoby, Z.L.†

Research Professor, Centre for Jewish Studies, Leeds, United Kingdom (Professor
Maccoby died in 2004)
ix
x CONTRIBUTING AUTHORS
Bryna Jocheved Levy

Senior Lecturer, Women’s Institute for Torah Studies, Jerusalem, Israel
Samuel Pfeifer
Psychiatrist and Director, Klinik Sonnenhalde, Riehen, Switzerland
Herman van Praag

Professor Emeritus of the Universities of Groningen, Utrecht, Maastricht, the Nether-
lands, and the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, New York, NY, U.S.A.
Aviezer Ravitzky
Sol Rosenblum Professor of Jewish Philosophy, Department of Jewish Thought,
Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel
Wayne G. Rollins
Professor (Emeritus) of Theology, Assumption College; Worcester, Massachusetts
Hartford Seminary; Hartford, Connecticut, USA
Moshe Halevi Spero

Professor and Director, Postgraduate Program for Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy,
School of Social Work, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat, Gan, Israel.
Senior Clinical Psychologist and Research Scholar, Weinstock Oncology Day
Hospital, Shaare Zedek Medical Center and Sarah Herzog Psychiatric Hospital,
Jerusalem, Israel
Harry W. M. Tájrá
Bishop, Ordre de Sainte Marie la Vierge, Paris, France
President of the Marial Museum of Sacred Art
Antoine Vergote
Professor (Emeritus) of Psychology of Religion, Catholic University of Louvain,
Belgium
Peter J. Verhagen
Psychiatrist, Theologian, Meerkanten GGZ, Flevo-Veluwe, Ermelo, The Nether-
lands
PREFACE
The chapters in this book are based on papers that were presented at the international
conference Psychological Aspects of Biblical Concepts and Persons, 4–6 March
2002 in Amsterdam.
The conference was organized by the Dutch Foundation for Psychiatry and Reli-
gion (in Dutch: Stichting Psychiatrie en Religie) a small, but active and lively
organization, which organizes conferences and post-graduate education for mental
health professionals and which offers a platform for interdisciplinary research
and discussion in the field of mental health and religion. The organizers of the
conference – Gerrit Glas, Herman M. van Praag, and Peter J. Verhagen – are mem-
bers of the board of the Foundation. All three are psychiatrists; two of them
are also professionally occupied in another discipline: theology (Verhagen) and
philosophy (Glas).
The primary aim of the conference was to create a space for scientific dialogue
between two disciplines with a troubled and complex relationship: psychiatry and
theology. The exchange of opinions and viewpoints between specifically these two
fields has dried up in the course of the past century and has virtually been absent
from around 1960 till at least the early nineties of the previous century.
I need to clarify that we were quite specific in isolating theology and psychiatry;
instead of focusing on theology and psychology, or biblical studies and psychology,
or theology and psychoanalysis. Psychology and psychoanalysis do not seem to have
lost all contact with theology, at least not to such an extent as have psychiatry and
theology.
To be sure, there has been a resurgence of interest in religious and spiritual
issues in psychiatry in the past fifteen years, and much research on a wide variety
of topics. Religious coping, the health-promoting effects of religion, forgiveness,
and the neural underpinnings of religious experience are a few of the many sub-
jects that are high on the research agenda at the present moment. Professional
organizations like the World Psychiatric Association, the American Psychiatric
Association, and the American Psychological Association each have divisions
devoted to psychiatry (or: psychology), spirituality and religion. These divisions
xi
xii PREFACE
organize meetings, support publications, and have elevated the professional level
of this interdisciplinary field.
However, in spite of all these efforts the voice of theologians and the tenets of
theology are hardly ever heard on these matters. That is to say, theology has not been
made co-responsible for the construction of a research agenda. In short, while
psychologists and psychiatrists have been talking about theology; it is far less likely
to find the sequence reversed.
A brief comment is in order about the main title of this collection, Hearing Visions
and Seeing Voices. It is the outcome of a suggestion by one of our authors, Bryna J.
Levy and one of the co-editors, Moshe Halevi Spero. The reader will undoubtedly
have noticed, and perhaps felt somewhat disturbed or disquieted by the fact that we
seem to have erred in crossing the specific sensory metaphors and the verbs appro-
priate to them. Typically, one hears voices and sees visions and not the other way
around. Of course, there exists a peculiar neurological condition known as synesthe-
sia, which accompanies certain kinds of tumors, epilepsies, and the ingestion of psy-
chostimulant agents, that is indeed characterized by the appearance of hallucinatory
visions in response to olfactory stimuli and auditory hallucinations in response to
optical stimuli, but it was not exactly this that we had in mind. Rather, and in the
light of the dimensions of our Conference (outlined more clearly by the more mod-
est subtitle), we sought to highlight the multiple pathways that religious and psycho-
logical experience might take, pathways that, more than occasionally, are far more
complex than even the atypical possibilities alluded to in the title. The first reference
to this possibility appears in the Bible, from whence the title of our book derives. At
that epiphany, according to the Writ, ve-kol ha-am ra’u et ha-ko’lot, “And all the
people saw the sounds of the thundering,” the sound of the shofar horn, and other
auditory experiences. (Exodus, 20:15).1 Here again: seeing sounds. Many editors
have avoided confusion by translating the text as “and all the people perceived the
sounds of thundering,” which certainly preserves the central intent of the description,
but at the cost of underemphasizing the types of complexities that our authors have
chosen to address. For if we assume that the “heart” of the religious individual is fed
by multifarious tributaries, including neural, psychic, and spiritual, it is obvious that
any effort to chart the wide range between normative and non-normative, and
between pathological versus inspired moral perception will require the willingness
to hear visions, see voices and many additional atypical qualities of psychological
experience.
Some words should also be devoted to the subtitle of this book. One might
inquire: Why refer to “psychological” aspects of biblical concepts and persons if it is
the relation between psychiatry and theology which is at the centre stage? I will
make two remarks on this question.
First, and almost needless to say, psychiatry does not exist apart from psychology.
Psychoanalysis has greatly contributed to the understanding of what is going on
between doctors and patients, and between patients and the religious figures and
symbols that play central roles in their lives. Psychiatry can, indeed, profit from what
already has been accomplished in the field of psychology and biblical studies.2
PREFACE xiii
There is no doubt that psychiatry and psychology, though distinct, are close enough
in their bearing upon the spirit or psyche to learn from one another with respect to
the issue of religion. This may serve as a partial justification for the choice of the
broader term “psychological” instead of “psychiatric” in the title of the conference.
So, when utilized here by most of our contributors, the term “psychology” is taken as
denoting a more global perspective, encompassing both normal and abnormal
aspects of human functioning.
With this, I come to the main reason, which is prudence. For, the debate between
psychiatry and theology is vulnerable and its subject is often very sensitive. By
focusing on “psychiatric” aspects of biblical concepts and persons – at least, as far as
the term is usually understood in its strictly clinical connotations – the attention
could tend to become directed in a one-sided way toward abnormality, toward psy-
chopathological aspects of biblical figures. This focus, then, would lead to a preoc-
cupation with the issue of normalcy and the boundaries of the concept of disease. It
is beyond doubt that this dimension is important. One may even expect theology to
make important contributions to this debate. However, the organizers felt it was too
early to put this issue as first at the agenda of the conference. The unraveling of the
nature and dynamics of religion, and of religious phenomena and events in the lives
of biblical persons needs a context of tranquility in which different interpretative
options can be kept open as long as possible. Such a context is not served by a pre-
mature debate about normalcy and abnormality of the phenomena under investiga-
tion. It is for this reason that the more neutral term “psychological” was favored
above the adjective psychiatric.
The focus of the present text is trained upon biblical concepts like prophecy,
martyrdom and messianism and on the persons or personalities who represent the
reality at which these concepts aim. By concentrating on these typical biblical
notions theological input becomes essential. Moreover, such an approach, ideally,
shapes the conditions for a theological analysis and critique of common frame-
works of understanding in psychiatry and psychology. If a prophet is not deluded,
what kind of reality must one presuppose in order to make sense of his or her expe-
riences and announcements? If martyrdom differs inherently from pathological
masochism, what does this imply for the almost self-evidentiary character of man’s
striving for pleasure and happiness? If messianism is more than just a mass hysteri-
cal phenomenon of people in need of hope and leadership, what salutary effects
does it offer in the light of the pessimistic and repetitious elements that characterize
the human condition?
The common guiding idea behind the essays that follow is the wish to enrich and
deepen our understanding of biblical concepts and persons, in order to improve the
understanding of the psychological reality in which patients (and others) live. In
clinical discourse as well – as if thereby to highlight a practical value in this kind of
analysis – patients may identify with a particular biblical person or story, and expo-
sitions such as to be found herein may help us to comprehend the patient’s inclina-
tion and transmitted meanings. Even when religious patients do not make specific
reference to their beliefs during treatment, the biblical images they maintain, or
xiv PREFACE
which comprised their cultural background, may enrich the understanding of the
existential reality in which they live and in which psychiatrists, psychotherapists and
pastors fulfill their jobs.
This brings us to the second aim of the present text, which is to gain insight into
biblical perspectives on human psychological (or cognitive-affective) conditions
such as anguish, suffering, hope, resentment, passion, awe and reverence. These
biblical perspectives, then, could appear to differ in important respects from mod-
ernist conceptions of man and of life, which prevail also in psychiatry and psy-
chotherapy. An example of this is the concept of life as a project of individual
self-realization.
For theology such an endeavor would not only lead to a deepened understanding
of biblical concepts and persons, but also to a heightened awareness of how theology
could be brought into contact with contemporary psychological and existential
issues and tensions, both in individuals and in society.
For psychiatry such an approach could be of considerable importance as well. The
open-mindedness which is required to enable a better understanding of the biblical
world may prove to be helpful in the expansion of one’s understanding of persons
with different cultural and religious backgrounds. It may also lead to better defini-
tions and a more refined view on unusual behavior and abnormal mental states. Such
an understanding could also exert an implicit criticism on common frameworks of
psychiatric understanding of the patient and his inner world.
For, ultimately, no matter how one defines and categorizes the contents and
objects of religious faith and theology, and to whatever quadrant of reality one rele-
gates these, they remain essentially components of the semiotic codes which begin to
influence human behavior from the dawn of consciousness, on an individual, family,
and group level. To the degree that the biblical personality plays a role within these
codes – as hero, exemplar, symbol, or linguistic structure – the depth of our under-
standing enhances the versatility of our use of these symbols in every day life as well
as during the clinical interview.
The book is divided into five sections. The middle part consists of three sections
devoted to the main subjects of the conference: prophecy, martyrdom, and messian-
ism. Each of these sections contains both Christian and Judaic (or: rabbinic) inter-
pretations of the concept and offers one biblical figure as representative of the
relevant concept, Jeremiah, Paul, and Jesus, respectively. These three sections are
sandwiched between a section on historical and conceptual issues, and a section
devoted to select interdisciplinary issues. Each section begins with an introduction
by the first editor in which some of the main points of the subsequent chapters are
summarized and compared with approaches in other chapters. Points of convergence
are outlined and unresolved issues are spelled out.
The conference was unusual in more than one respect. The contributors came
from diverging fields and had different religious backgrounds (mainly Jewish and
Christian). Many of them had not met at earlier occasions, whereas others had
already established creative channels of communication at earlier Conferences such
as Psyche and Faith conferences in 1994 and 1998 in Dalfsen (The Netherlands).3
PREFACE xv
This, together with the diversity and quality of the presentations and the format of
the conference which operated within the framework of plenary sessions followed by
discussion, contributed to an atmosphere of wonder, fascination and tense expecta-
tion. We hope that this volume will reflect this atmosphere and, by doing so, con-
tribute to further dialogue and understanding.
It is with sadness that we have to ascertain that one of the authors, Hyam Maccoby,
will not see this volume in its final form. Maccoby passed away on May 2, 2004. We
remember him with gratefulness as a dedicated scholar and friendly personality.
Much has happened in the world we live in since our conference. These events
give a special meaning to what was said in the introduction of the program book. Let
me quote some passages from this introduction:
Apart from these professional reasons, the encounter between psychiatry and theology might also prove
to be illuminating for ... society in a broader sense. Today’s society is multicultural. Western society
hosts immigrants from countries all over the world. Psychiatry has always operated at the cutting edge of
individual suffering and societal pressures and needs. Therefore, psychiatry is particularly sensitive for
the underlying tensions in society. Exploring these tensions from a religious and theological point of
view promises to be fruitful for a clearer understanding of what is going on beneath the surface.
The influx of new religions and new forms of spirituality not only heightens the awareness of religiosity
and of the spiritual roots of Western society itself. It also increasingly sensitizes one towards the issue of
tolerance. Religious tolerance has never been and probably never will be self- evident – even in the so-called
developed countries. Today, more than ever, scientists are challenged to widen the limits of their understand-
ing by investigating the way other religions deal with the tensions of a globalizing world. Tolerance does not
begin with rationalism and/or intellectual criticism, but with an attitude of wonder, reverence and awe.
It is in this spirit, we hope, that this volume will be read.

One brief editorial note will be useful: Our authors have employed many different
editions of the Old and New Testaments in their references (e.g., Soncinco, Zondervan,
NIV, Anchor Bible), and the reader is thus cautioned to expect small differences in the
location of verses depending upon which editions of these texts he or she consults.
The book aims at clinicians, scholars and students of human behavior. It is hoped
that it will re-kindle their interest in religion and religiosity as fundamental aspects
of the human condition. The book should also be of interest for pastors and theolo-
gians, if only to demonstrate and illustrate the importance of psychological
processes for a proper understanding of how theological concepts, in real life, are
“translated” into individual religiosity.
Gerrit Glas
Moshe Halevi Spero
Peter J. Verhagen
Herman M. van Praag (Eds.)
NOTES
1
This citation follows the 1947 Soncinco Edition Translation of the Pentateuch and the Books of the
Prophets, Writings, and Scrolls. In the The King James and NIV translations the text can be found in
Exodus 20:18.
xvi PREFACE
2
See Rollins, 1999; Kille, 2001; and most recently Ellens and Rollins (2004).
3
See Verhagen and Glas (1996).
REFERENCES
Ellens, J. H., & Rollins, W. G. (Eds.). (2004). Psychology and the Bible: A new way to read the Bible.
Westport: Praeger Publishers.
Kille, A. D. (2001). Psychological biblical criticism. Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress Publishers.
Rollins, W. G. (1999). Soul and psyche: The Bible in psychological perspective. Minneapolis: Augsburg
Fortress Publishers.
Verhagen, P. J & G. Glas (Eds.). (1996). Psyche and faith. Beyond professionalism. Zoetermeer:
Boekencentrum.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
We would like to acknowledge our gratitude to the organizations which provided the
financial support that enabled us to organize the conference at which the contributions
to this book initially were presented: Center for Brain Sciences and Metabolism,
Charitable Turst (Cambridge MA, USA), Stichting Sint Annadal (Maastricht, The
Netherlands), Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschapelijke Onderzoek (The
Netherlands), Evangelische Omroep (Hilversum, The Netherlands), Stichting Makaria
(Naarden, The Netherlands) and, most notably, Protestant Fonds voor de Geestelijke
Volksgezondheid (Amsterdam, The Netherlands).
The editors would like to thank the publishers, Floor Oosting and Ingrid van
Laarhoven, for their encouragement and continued interest in the project
We also thank Jetty Strijker for her enduring secretarial support and humor in the
production of this book.
xvii
PART I
HISTORICAL AND CONCEPTUAL ISSUES
CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION TO HISTORICAL
AND CONCEPTUAL ISSUES
GERRIT GLAS
The next two chapters are devoted to historical and conceptual issues. They address
the issue of the possible interactions between psychiatry and religion from two com-
pletely different angles.
Herman van Praag, retired professor of psychiatry of the Universities of Utrecht and
Maastricht (the Netherlands) and Albert Einstein College of Medicine (New York),
investigates the complicated relationship between psychiatry and religion. His contri-
bution serves as a general introduction to the subject, by reviewing, first, the evidence
for positive and possible negative effects of religion on the course of depressive disor-
der. Van Praag, then, explores the boundaries between normalcy and pathology as may
be teased out of the details of the stories of Moses, Saul, David, Job, and Samson. This
leads, thirdly, to the field of religious psychopathology of which he gives an impres-
sion of possible topics of interest: productive maladies; religion as a ‘cause’ for psy-
chopathology; overlap with culture-bound syndromes; and finally, the role of religion
in psychotherapy. He concludes that religion is increasingly relevant to the behavioral
sciences and pleads for collaboration both on a practical and a scientific level.
Throughout, van Praag speaks as a psychiatrist and intellectual with strong con-
victions about the naturalness of religion. Religion, he suggests, is one of the great
gifts to humanity, like creativity and other forms of inspiration. Religious longing is
of all times. It is an indispensable element, if not the core, of man’s search for mean-
ing. The great divide between psychiatry and religion should be considered as a sign
of intellectual and spiritual poverty – not merely of psychiatry but of our culture and
its intellectual climate. Psychiatrists, he insists, have to accept and respect ‘that there
is more between heaven and earth than meets the eye, than the ear can catch and
logos can digests and explain.’
Steve Evans, who is university professor of philosophy and the humanities at Baylor
University (USA), speaks as a philosopher of religion who is equally convinced of the
3
G. Glas et al. (eds.), Hearing Visions and Seeing Voices, 1–8.
© 2007 Springer.
4 GLAS
naturalness of religion. However, his focus is different. Evans’s main concern is

whether the historical truth of biblical narratives does matter for understanding the
nature of religion, or, at least Christian religion. Van Praag does not seem to be trou-
bled by this question. For van Praag, the eminence of the biblical narratives and the
inspiring qualities of religious experience are obvious and sui generis, irrespective of
whether the narratives and experiences refer to ‘real’ historical events. Evans admits
that biblical narratives exert considerable literary imaginative, moral and mythic-
poetic power, even if they are not understood as historically true. So, would anything
be lost were we to read Biblical narratives as historical? Does history add any value to
these narratives, he asks?
In a lucid exposition, Evans first argues for an affirmative answer to these ques-
tions and then proceeds with a review of how this position could be defended in view
of two dominant epistemological approaches, the evidentialist (or: internalist)
approach which holds that beliefs should be justified by evidence and the non-
evidentialist (externalist) approach which argues for the priority and validity of
processes of knowing which precede philosophical and scientific reflection. Accord-
ing to the internalist view a person is justified to hold a belief if this belief is suffi-
ciently supported by relevant pieces of evidence. Evidence of sufficient relevance is
provided by sensory perception and/or by logical reasoning. According to the exter-
nalist view a person is warranted to hold a particular belief or conviction if the cog-
nitive faculties of this person are functioning properly and are rightly related to the
external world. The externalist observes that we often know much more than we ever
may be able to justify on the basis of relevant available evidence. We are neverthe-
less warranted to claim that we know, provided that our cognitive faculties function
properly and are rightly linked to the world.
The main point of divergence, here, is about the nature of religion, and not about
epistemology, I suspect. By affirming that history does matter, Evans does not take
the stance of a scientist arguing for the factualness of certain events. Historicity is
not identical to factualness (which can be verified or falsified), but to actuality; i.e.,
the immediate awareness that something ‘real’ or substantive is going on, something
that matters and that happens between me and someone (or: a power) different from
me. This ‘something’ can not be contained within the private soul; it should be con-
ceived as a dynamic between me and a power or reality outside me. By taking this
stance, Evans empathizes with the position of the believer, for whom it does very
much matter that God – once, and now – has acted in particular ways; and for whom
it is of utmost importance that deliverance from sin is not merely an internal,
psychological process but a transforming action on the part of God, one that changes
man and his relationships with everything else in the world, including God and
the self.
The notion of historical truth is often, and wrongly, understood as referring to
‘objective facts’ that are ‘gained through adherence to a scientific discipline’, in
Evans’s definition. This understanding is objectivistic. Historical faith in the sense in
which Evans uses the term ‘is not merely historical, but the vehicle for an ongoing
relation with the person who is most crucial in understanding human life and the
INTRODUCTION TO HISTORICAL AND CONCEPTUAL ISSUES 5
human task’ (Jesus of Nazareth). So, for Christians, historical truth refers to an
ongoing dynamic between God and man and not ‘merely’ to a truth which can be
observed and verified from a detached position. Religion is primarily about what
God has done toward me and us. Christianity thus claims that there is ‘really’ some-
thing to lose or to win in the world, because in some way all people take part in this
dynamic between God and man and the world.
If this is true, there is an important point of convergence between the position of
Evans and that of the great Jewish thinker Abraham Joshua Heschel. In his classical
study The Prophets, Heschel (1962) fulminates against a similar detached and meta-
physical view of God and his actions in the world. God, for Heschel as for Evans, is
not an idea; He is not the inhabitant of a totally transcendent and unknowable world.
God is driven by pathos (not: passion), which is a ‘living caring’; and a commitment
which is ‘moved and affected by what happens in the world.’ Nevertheless, like in
Evans’s chapter, this stance does not lead to a subjectivist conception in which reli-
gion is equated with a particular aspect or quality of human experience and behavior.
For Heschel, ‘The essential meaning of pathos is . . . not to be seen in its psychologi-
cal denotation, as standing for a state of the soul, but in its theological connotation,
signifying God as involved in history’.1 These words of Heschel could have been
Evans’s. Divine pathos is responded to with an understanding that is both immediate
and comprehensive. This immediacy is not far from the externalist’s emphasis on the
immediacy (or – as they phrase it – ‘proper basicality’) of certain beliefs, among
which religious beliefs.
It is tempting to proceed with this line of inquiry by comparing Heschel’s position
with the externalist approach to religious knowing and these two with Kierkegaardian
thinking on the subject.2 This, however, would far exceed the limits of this introduc-
tion. With respect to Heschel’s thinking we are in the lucky circumstance that Neil
Gillman’s contribution to this book is entirely devoted to the notion of divine pathos
in the work of Heschel.
Van Praag and Evans concur with respect to the emphasis on dynamics and on liber-
ation from self-centeredness. However, they differ with respect to where they locate the
source of sense of wonder, awe and reverence that so often characterize the religious
experience. For van Praag this sense of wonder seems to be an integral part of the acts
and experiences of believers. It is not a feeling, or opinion, of believers about their acts
and experiences, but an attitude and receptivity that is expressed by and in their acts and
experiences. For Evans the source of wonder cannot be found in religious experience
itself. He puts the emphasis elsewhere, i.e., in the totally undeserved, incomprehensible,
and perhaps even ‘insulting’ act of God by which redemption is gained by the suffering,
death, and resurrection of the Son of God. If this is true, then, wonder, awe and rever-
ence could still form the heart of religious experience, but these experiences, and the
attitudes behind them, would be part of a larger reality, i.e., the history of God’s love and
frustration with men. I might suggest that the difference I have pointed out here may be
somewhat overstated and due to the fact that van Praag’s main focus is on religion and
mental pathology and on the need to see the spiritual realm as integral part of human
existence, issues which Evans only mentions in passing.
6 GLAS
One concluding remark. At the end of his chapter van Praag briefly touches upon the
subject of spiritual therapy, that is, therapy by a professional who is ‘not bound to par-
ticular techniques’ and who aims at reaching a state of ‘soulfulness and spirituality’ in
the patient. Van Praag is quoting Byram Karasu (1999) here, who admits that even after
successful psychotherapy there may remain a sense of emptiness and loss of meaning.
Spiritual psychotherapy could supply the missing component, Karasu suggests, and it
could at least address the existential needs for which formal psychotherapies have no
solution. This suggestion leads to the question where psychotherapy ends and counsel-
ing and pastoral care begin.
Apart from the more technical aspect of how and where to draw boundaries
between the professions, there is the substantive issue of what are the implica-
tions of our ontological definition of the religious dynamic for the definition of
professionalism – which, to be sure, always has been identified with possession
of knowledge and mastery of certain skills. A traditional answer would be that
psychotherapy is concerned with psychological and interpersonal aspects of the
patient’s behavior and that religion becomes an issue in so far as religion affects
these aspects. Such an answer would draw the boundary in a manner that dictates
that religious activities, attitudes, and experiences would fall outside the scope of
psychotherapy, at least with respect to their religious meaning.
It is interesting to notice that van Praag leaves an opening for another conception
of psychotherapy, a conception which does not bother too much about the bound-
aries of conventional approaches and opens the space for an approach in which all
kinds of existential issues are on the agenda of the psychotherapist. Of course, this
idea has to be worked out, as has been done by Richards & Bergin (1997), West
(2000), Karasu (1999) and others.
We may discern a parallel here between the epistemological debate on the nature
of religious knowledge, which as we saw could not be reduced to a simple
dichotomy between objectivist and subjectivist approaches. Religion in this view
would not be referring to either a reality outside the mind (a transcendent reality) or
a reality in the mind (religious attitudes, desires or feelings). The previous para-
graphs suggested that religion should be viewed as the expression of a relational
dynamic between a person (or persons) and a power they cannot encompass or com-
prehend, a dynamic that is primordial with respect to any of its interpretations. If this
is the case, the study of religion is itself not immune for this dynamic. The entire col-
lection of essays contained in this volume, in fact, in one way or another, reflects
some of the basic attitudes and responses to this dynamic. From this perspective,
attempts to keep the scientific arena as clean as possible as far as religious insights
and values are concerned, could themselves be understood as expressions of such a
basic attitude. They are futile and neglect the religious nature of their own motiva-
tions. (Similar statements can be found in Evans’s chapter, when he speaks about
knowledge of history and about biblical criticism).
The parallel is this: If science can never fully depart from religious influences, and
instead, in its global approach, needs to be viewed as responding to existing, reli-
giously colored images of man and of the world, then psychotherapy as well cannot
INTRODUCTION TO HISTORICAL AND CONCEPTUAL ISSUES 7
protect itself hermetically against all forms of religious influence. Instead of fleeing
from this influence, it would be better to face it. The dichotomy between the subjec-
tive and the objective does not hold up any better in psychotherapy than it does
in religion. Religion is not either a reality in the mind of the patient (and therefore
open for the same kind of scrutiny like any other fantasy or image) nor an objective
reality outside the mind of the patient (and therefore no topic of concern for the
psychotherapist).
If it is true that religion can be better understood from a third, relational-dynamical
perspective than it is the task of science, and of the psychotherapist, to not withdraw
but to investigate this dynamic, to articulate its different aspects and its influence
upon the feelings and behaviors of the person, or group, under investigation. We, for
our part, will return to this core issue in the introductions to the five sections of this
volume and also in the concluding chapter.
NOTES
1
Heschel (1962), pp. 291–292.
2
See (among others): Kierkegaard (1985, 1992); Evans (1992, 1996, 1998, chapter 6 and 7); Glas (2000).
REFERENCES
Evans, C. S. (1992). Passionate reason. Making sense of Kierkegaard’s Philosophical Fragments. Bloom-
ington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.
Evans, C. S. (1996). The historical Christ and the Jesus of faith. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Evans, C. S. (1998). Faith beyond reason. A Kierkegaardian account. Grand Rapids: W. B. Eerdmans
Publ.
Glas, G. (2000). Heeft het theïsme eigen gronden? Alvin Plantinga over de ‘proper basicality’ van
religieus geloof. Philosophia Reformata, 65, 170–182.
Heschel, A. J. (1962). The prophets. Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society.
Karasu, T. B. (1999). Spiritual psychotherapy. American Journal of Psychotherapy, 53, 143–162.
Kierkegaard, S. (1985). Philosophical fragments (H. V. Hong, & E. H. Hong, Ed. & Trans.). Princeton:
Princeton University Press. (Original work published in 1844).
Kierkegaard, S. (1992). Concluding unscientific postscript (H. V. & E. H. Hong, Eds. & Trans.). Prince-
ton: Princeton University Press. (Original work published in 1846).
Richards, P. S., & Bergin, A. E. (1997). A spiritual strategy for counseling and psychotherapy. Washing-
ton, DC: American Psychological Association.
West, W. (2000). Psychotherapy and spirituality. Crossing the line between therapy and religion. London:
Sage Publications.
CHAPTER 2
PSYCHIATRY AND RELIGION

An unconsummated marriage
HERMAN M. VAN PRAAG
University of Maastricht, The Netherlands
1. THE GREAT DIVIDE
The Symposium of which this book renders an account is organized by the (Dutch)
Foundation for Psychiatry and Religion, an organization set out to forge tighter links
between those two domains. Those connections used to be more or less self-evident.
For many centuries both Christianity and Judaism preached that mental pathology
had its ultimate origin in sin, in a path of life discrepant with God’s commandments.
Certain psychiatric schools, e.g. that of Heinroth in Germany, considered “moral
treatment” to be the royal road to recovery. Moral treatment implied such activities
as praying, confession of guilt and exorcism.
In the USA “moral treatment,” practiced a good part of the 19th century in many a
psychiatric asylum, referred to a very different approach. According to Taubes
(1998) it was an offshoot of the Protestant revival movement known as the Second
Great Awakening. It emphasized good works and volunteer activities in the commu-
nity as a means toward salvation, and held strong beliefs in man’s perfectibility. In
fact, it reacted against the Calvinistic doctrines of predestination and the idea of the
depraved nature of mankind.
Based on this philosophy, Taubes (1998) reports, American asylums provided occupa-
tional therapy, amusement designed to distract patients from their pathological preoccu-
pations, and a structured agricultural life built around Christian virtues of self-discipline
and work. The capacity of religious worship to inspire self-control and rational behavior
was emphasized. Moral treatment in the American sense, though strongly influenced by
religious premises, was a precursor of the approaches to be taken, half a century later, by
the fully secular movements known as social and community psychiatry.
Therapeutically, both clergy and the medical profession were engaged in the man-
agement of mental disorders. In the last century, however, the partners for so long
9
© 2007 Springer.
10 VAN PRAAG
became increasingly estranged. Particularly after the second world war the Western
world secularized in high gear. Religion evoked boredom, or even worse, disdain;
the latter particularly among psychiatrists. Many of them identified religion with
intolerance, repression and persecution. Religious belief, so they argued, is irra-
tional, almost delusional, a manifestation of immaturity, inability to relinquish infan-
tile desires to identify with a powerful, patronizing father-figure. Religion, it was
argued, is antithetical to mental health. It should be fought not cherished. Freud
(1927) and his disciples (e.g. Ellis, 1980, 1983) propagated these notions and for
many decades the psychiatric profession accepted them as pronouncements ex cathe-
dra. Even after the decline of Freudian influence from the seventies and beyond, this
theory lingered on. No wonder, then, that psychiatrists appeared to be less religious
than the general population (Neeleman & Persaud, 1995), and that no more then
2.5% of quantitative studies in psychiatry contain a religious variable, in most cases
no more than a notation of religious denomination (Larson et al., 1992; Larson,
Pattison, Blazer, Omran, & Kaplan, 1986).
Indeed, there were counter-currents. Jung (1969), Maslow (1962) and in The
Netherlands Rümke (1965) considered religiosity to be an essential component of
mental health and a necessary prerequisite for self-actualization. These views, how-
ever, were not embodied in mainstream psychiatry.
This a-religious up to anti-religious viewpoint has not benefited psychiatry. Prac-
titioners of this profession have to deal with the subject and come to terms with it.
Atheism is not as pervasive as has been suggested. It is prominent among (would-be)
liberal intellectuals, but the common man has not abjured religion. The National
Opinion Poll U.K. Survey (1985), for instance, reported that 71% of the people inter-
viewed expressed belief in God.
Psychiatrists, thus, are not done with religion by declaring it out of date, just a
remnant of an archaic stage of human development. They have to accept and above
all to respect the conviction that there is more between heaven and earth than meets
the eye, than the ear can catch and logos can digest and explain. It seems logical,
moreover, that prior to rejection one defines carefully that which one proposes to
reject. What is meant by the terms “atheistic” or “agnostic” if one defines oneself as
such? Is it the belief in God, be it in a personified shape or conceived as an abstract
unimaginable Principle? Is it the irresistible want of human beings to search for life’s
meaning and for a spiritual, irrational dimension of the human condition? Is it the rit-
uals, the outward manifestations of devotion? Is it the overwhelming amount of liter-
ature, philosophy, art, music that has been accomplished in honor of God and to
enlighten what a religious belief system in essence implies? The old psychiatric
adage that one should know oneself, before one can understand others, still holds.
Otherwise it will be problematic to bring out and discuss without rancor and preju-
dice themes oneself is not receptive to.
I add as an aside that having no patience with the concept of God, no interest in
irrational constructs like spirituality, no affinity with religious rituals should not
automatically imply rejection and neglect of the awesome intellectual and artistic
harvest of millennia of religious thinking. Yet, this is often the case. Rejection of the
PSYCHIATRY AND RELIGION 11
divine principle generally means disregard for its beautiful apparel. To cut oneself of
from that heritage, however, means grave intellectual and artistic impoverishment.
To phrase it paradoxically, one does not need to believe in God, to be religious.
Be this as it may, psychiatrists are not philosophers. The latter may contemplate
whatever they like. Psychiatrists cannot. Their philosophies will penetrate their
daily work, which is treating other individuals. Many of these have retained reli-
giosity and cherish it as a precious gem. It should be held in true esteem by their
therapists as well.
2. SPIRITUALITY AND RELIGION
I emphasize that in this chapter I speak about religion, not about spirituality.
As organized religion lost ground, the need for spirituality grew. The latter concept is
badly delineated and hard to define. It refers to a need for and fascination with the
metaphysical, the transcendent, the mystical, the mysterious, the occult, to a longing
for the lofty, the august, the spiritual, that what exceeds the material aspect of the
human life.
Religion is different. It is based on the assumption of and belief in the concept of
God, in whatever way it is conceived: be it as a concrete anthropomorphic Agency,
or as an abstract, non-visualizable, non-imaginable Power. Whatever the image may
be, the underlying notion holds that the divine Principle constitutes a steering, direc-
tional force that provides not only direction but also meaning to life. God is for the
believer the Symbol of spirituality in its most perfect form. He has no need for spiri-
tual substitutes. By definition they would be of a lower order (Van Praag, 2007).
3. MEETING POINTS BETWEEN PSYCHIATRY AND RELIGION
Psychiatry and religion are connected on several levels and in various ways. Here-
after some of those meeting points will be discussed.
3.1 Religion and Mental Health
Stress is a popular concept in psychiatry; one might say, for modern society in gen-
eral. Many in our societies are supposedly over-stressed and stress is considered to
be a causative factor in several major mental disorders. Clearly stress-buffering and
stress-intensifying mechanisms should receive due attention, and they do with one
notable exception, i.e. religion. Can religious beliefs ease mental distress or prevent
it altogether, or are belief systems of this nature more a burden, making life dreary
and insecure and thus increasing the risk of mental breakdown or worsening its out-
come. Studies into these questions are surprisingly scarce, certainly compared with
those focusing on other variables such as social circumstances and traumatic life
events and their impact on preservation or disruption of mental health.
A priori it seems plausible that religion might decrease vulnerability for psychic
maladies. Religious life generally revolves around a community of like-minded
12 VAN PRAAG
people who mutually care and will provide support in times of spiritual hardship.
Religion, moreover, if internalized and practiced in freedom and not out of fear, fos-
ters hope, repose, and patience. It acts as a counterpoise to loneliness, despair, feel-
ings of superfluity, states of mind that are known to undermine the ability to
withstand adversity.
Several studies do indeed indicate that religiosity may provide a degree of protec-
tion against depression and may further remission, in particular in elderly people with
few social contacts and little self-confidence (Koenig, 1997; Koenig, McCullough, &
Larson, 2001; Braam et al., 1998; Braam et al., 1999; Braam, Sonnenberg, Beekman,
Deeg, & Van Tilburg, 2000). Religiosity was measured on two levels. Extrinsically,
registering frequency of church visits and regularity of praying, and intrinsically,
trying to gauge the genuineness of religious feelings and the import they have in
someone’s life, relative to other concerns, such as earning a good income, building
satisfactory family life, enjoying good health, and having risen to a high post. It
appeared to be the plenitude of inner religious life rather than the more formal aspects
of religiosity that correlated with the risk of depression and its prognosis.
The results so far mainly concern depression and seem encouraging, but much
work remains to be done: the concept of stress has to be defined in greater detail;
those elements of intrinsic religiosity with protective potential have to be estab-
lished; better instrument to assess religiosity have to be developed; subtypes of
depression which are particularly susceptible for the influences of religion have to be
determined, and mental disorders other than depression have to be studied as to
responsiveness to religious contemplation.
It seems also conceivable that religiosity might influence mental health in the
reverse direction: undermining rather than improving mental health. Religion may
act as a straight jacket, thwarting spiritual growth, inducing fear and emotionally
“empty” preoccupation with religious precepts (Van Scheyen, 1975; Schilder,
1987). Instead of lightening and illuminating life religion then becomes a burden,
a source of worry. Religious beliefs may shrink to remorseful waiting until death
arrives.
Just as for individuals, religion may become a negative force in society. Religious
fanatics might force their belief system upon others, if need be with fire and sword.
Respect for the individual, for individuality, for personal freedom, for alternative
points of views is wanting. Quite often they strive not only for spiritual hegemony
but for worldly power as well. Fundamentalists they are called, but I reject this qual-
ification. For me a religious fundamentalist is someone searching for the fundamen-
tals of the religious belief system he adheres to, not someone who rides roughshod
over the ethical foundations not only of a civilization but of civilization in general.
Civilization and spreading death and destruction are incompatible. Indeed, the bor-
der between true religiosity and delusion, though not always easy to mark, should be
drawn, for the sake of mankind and for the sake of credibility of religion. Over
the centuries clergy often failed as to that. Some of them were even tempted to incite
destructive religious fervor, failed to quench it, or looked, not even remorseful, to
the other side. It is hard to understand why religious institutions have been so
permissive towards intolerance and disrespect up to enmity towards others in the

name of God. Here lies one of the roots of unbelief in Western societies, and a field
in urgent need of study. Religion and violence, how did they become enmeshed, how
can they be disengaged?
3.2 The Bible and Mental Health
The Bible, particularly the Hebrew Bible presents a galaxy of real-life figures. No
idealized or demonized figures, no saints or monsters, but recognizable people in
their strength and weakness, in triumph and in defeat (Van Praag, 1986; 1988; 1991).
By way of illustration I will give two examples. They concern two imposing
figures: Moses and David, venerated over the ages in particular by the Jews. Moses
is considered as the foremost prophet: “And there hath not risen a prophet since in
Israel like unto Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face” (Deuteronomy 34:10).
Shortly before his death God informs him that he shall not enter the Promised Land.
He is desperate, does not acquiesce, but enters into an argument, a true disputation
with God. A midrash tells that God spoke to Moses: “You seek life, but as for you
yourself, did I ever command you to kill the Egyptian (taskmaster)?” Moses replies:
“But you, God, killed all the first-born of Egypt!” God answers: “You dare compare
yourself to Me? I am the Giver of life, I am the Creator” (Riskin, 1999). The pain
Moses had to bear he considers not to be his own fault. His people are to blame. “The
Lord was wroth with me for your sakes, and hearkened not unto me” (Deuteronomy
23:26). At a supreme moment in his life even the greatest of all prophets was unable
to recognize where he himself had failed.
David, the second king over the people of Israel, a man who became one of its
greatest leaders and from who’s house, according to tradition, the Messiah will arise,
as a young man betrays his people. He fears, quite rightly, the envy of King Saul, his
initial patron. He flees, surrounds himself with a bunch of desperados and enters the
service of the Philistine king, Israel’s arch enemy. To flee was the right thing to do,
to desert to the enemy an outrage.
While reading the Bible, one enters in places the realm of pathology. King Saul,
for instance, figures as a man unable to cope with the tension brought on by the
divine charge to assume the Kingship on the one side, and on the other side inner
doubts about his abilities reinforced by the scepticism of God’s ambassador Samuel.
He breaks down and eventually commits suicide. Job is another example. Job looses
everything he possesses and develops a depression (Van Praag, 1988), or, alterna-
tively, Job suffers from a psychotic depression to begin with and exhibits in this
context both delusions (of poverty, and physical deterioration) and hallucinations:
the voices of the “advisors” who accuse him of a sinful life.
I mention, as a last example Samson, a hero with Shakespearean airs, shoot of a
long-time barren women, begotten via intervention of a heavenly figure or, more
likely, offspring from a adulteress relationship; a loner who dedicates his life to a
solo war against the Philistines. A man whose life represents a classic example of a
Freudian concept: the compulsion to re-enact the same situation again and again
14 VAN PRAAG
though previous experiences have shown it to be distinctly counterproductive (Kutz,

1989). Three times in a row he let himself be seduced by daughters of Israel’s mortal
enemy: the Philistines, i.e. the woman from Timnah, the prostitute from Gaza and
finally Delila. All three had clearly hinted that they intended to betray him. With his
eyes wide open he steers for his own destruction.
Generally, people are neither immaculate nor entirely stained, neither perfect nor
thoroughly bad. The Bible stages them as such. For this reason alone the Bible is for
psychologists and psychiatrists a fascinating book, one that lends itself admirably for
psycho-exegesis; also in this respect, a true gold-mine.
3.3 Religious Psychopathology
Psychopathological phenomena with a religious charge are by no means rare,

though less frequent than they were before the “cultural revolutions” of the 60’s
and 70’s during which the process of secularization was catalyzed so strongly,
at least in the Western world. Delusions may have a religious content (e.g. the
delusion of being Jesus, a biblical prophet, or having a divinely commissioned
mission in life) and so do hallucinations (e.g. hearing voices of divine creatures
such as angels, or seeing scenes from hell) and obsessive-compulsive symptoms
(e.g. the urge to swear, followed by the inner coercion to execute penitential
rituals). Cognitions, perceptions and corresponding emotions of this kind raise
several fundamental questions.
First of all the border issue: where does normality end and pathology begin? What
can still be considered as sound religious experiences and considerations and what are
clearly morbid elaborations? How, for instance, has the mental state of the prophets to
be defined? They hearkened to the voice of God, they felt to be His spokesperson.
Modern psychiatrists would consider this to be psychotic symptoms. On the other
hand, they spoke in a magnificent language; formulated social precepts and ethical
directives of great import, and were more or less accepted by their contemporaries. To
qualify these figures properly, the term psychoses seems but a bleak and inappropriate
simplification. They towered high above the ordinary, were engrossed with a sense of
mission, felt divinely inspired and used to express their state of mind in metaphors of
such poetic beauty that it was not difficult to believe that they really were. That pro-
vided their argument with powerful, undying expressiveness, until this very day. If
one wants to adhere to the term psychotic, then one has to acknowledge that psychosis
evidently can produce insights of great philosophical, ethical and artistic value.
At this point, I want to insert a contemporary example taken from actual practice.
A 60 year old, deeply depressed lady, living in an orthodox Protestant setting is con-
vinced of her sinfulness and feels deeply guilty. Piety toward God should imply
compassion toward other people, she stated. She has utterly failed in this respect.
God has punished her by making her immortal. She will outlive everyone and live a
life of utter solitude. She is admitted to a psychiatric ward. Her minister does not
think she is sick, her psychiatrist maintains she is. According to the minister her state
of mind can be attributed to genuine flaws in her concept of God, in her religious
beliefs, and that these errors give rise to feelings of guiltiness. The psychiatrist thinks
that she lives in a delusional state, that her sins are largely imaginary, the products of
a diseased mind. Who is in the right? Both, I would say. Undoubtedly, the woman is
depressed, suffers, and thus is in need of treatment. On the other hand, she delivers a
message worth to be listened to: The sin of leaving one’s fellowman to his fate. It
would be foolish to dismiss it as a figment of a wandering mind.
In this context another question looms. Can thoughts, experiences that by them-
selves are pathological, be to such a degree coherent and directional that groups of
people come to believe them? The answer is probably in the affirmative. Psy-
chopathological symptoms are not necessarily regressive in that they injure, dimin-
ish the richness of a personality. They may be enriching, adding dimensions to a
personality that were not detectable before. In psychiatry one may come across pro-
ductive maladies (Van Praag, 2003). In Jewish history Sabbatai Zwi is a gripping
example. From a young age on he suffered from depressive and manic episodes.
While manic he considered himself to be the Messiah, commissioned by God to
bring the Jews back to Zion, to rebuild the Temple, to establish a society based on
God’s precepts and to provide the Jews a national home, freedom, autonomy and a
safe existence. He, in collaboration with his “prophet” Nathan of Gaza, was able to
convince almost the entire Jewish community of his days that he, Sabbatai Zwi, was
indeed the one he pretended to be. The turmoil they stirred up was tremendous; the
disappointment, the despair Sabbatai Zwi brought on by his conversion to Islam, so
forced by the sultan of the Ottoman empire, was no less dramatic. In a manic state
Sabbatai Zwi was able to enthrall an entire nation. Again the question looms up
where to draw a line between fancy and frenzy, between creative novelty and
grotesque chimera’s.
Another fundamental question is, whether the religious themes have played a role
in the causation of the disorder. Are they consequences of the disorder, just “color-
ing” its presentation, or have they contributed to its occurrence?
A related question is whether religious reflections are culture- or nature-bound. Is
religious psychopathology restricted to patients raised and steeped in a religious
milieu or do they also occur in those averse to religion or ignorant of the religion that
produced the ideas which were more or less caricatured by the patient? Phrased on a
more fundamental level: can illnesses of the mind give rise to novelty, or are morbid
contents always derived from memory traces stored in the archives of our brain? Is it
possible that under certain conditions themes can be generated that do not rest on
previous experiences, of which there is no original in the experiential and cognitive
files of that individual?
The questions raised permit no answer and, unfortunately, among psychiatrists the
ambition to study them is presently negligible. This is for two reasons. First, psychi-
atry today wants to be strictly evidence-based, and the only data considered to be
“evidence” are those derived from controlled studies of as large groups of patients as
possible. The questions raised above do not lend themselves for this type of research.
They require detailed case-studies, leading to individualized probability statements,
and not to more or less definitive conclusions which can be generalized.
16 VAN PRAAG
Second, these issues are theoretically interesting because they further insights into
the relations between the phenomenology of mental disorder and the social / religious
milieu in which the patient was raised, and his life history. Modern psychiatry, how-
ever, does not hold such exercises in high esteem. They have, so it is claimed, no direct
practical relevance. This a questionable view. Detailed knowledge of individual devel-
opment and social/religious context are preconditions for psychological interventions
to exert lasting beneficial effects. Psychoanalysis may have lost favor with a majority
of psychiatrists, several of its basic principles stand still upright and will, I predict,
never crumble. Moreover, to write of so called philosophical notions as practically
irrelevant is a sign of serious scientific short-sightedness. Without philosophical fertil-
izers this profession would whither.
3.4 Psychotherapy and Religion
Does religion have a role to play in psychotherapy? On face value I am inclined to

answer this question in the affirmative. The reasoning is as follows. Mental disorders
are the product two complex processes. First of all a set of dysfunctions in brain sys-
tems involved in behavioral regulation. They lay at the root of disturbances in partic-
ular psychological domains such as that of cognition, perception, emotional
regulation and many others. The brain dysfunctions underlying abnormal behavior
and experiences in their turn are caused by a variety of agents, biological and psy-
chological in nature. The former category includes both acquired factors, such as
brain injuries induced by trauma or infection, and genetic influences, leading, for
instance, to a particular enzyme being in short supply.
Psychological factors, too, can exert a major influence on brain development and
brain functioning. Severe psychological traumatization, striking acutely or of a more
chronic nature, has measurable and often lasting effects on the brain (Van Praag,
de Kloet, & Van Os, 2004). Strong evidence suggests that, for instance, adversity
during early development may increase the sensitivity for stress and lead to an
increased risk for depression and maladaptive behavior (Bremner & Vermetten,
2001). Conversely, stress-reduction and strengthening of coping-skills may reduce
the risk of mental breakdown in trying days, or limit their impact.
Religiosity forms part of man’s psychological fabric. It seems plausible to
assume that, if experienced positively, it could promote mental repose and stability,
while exerting opposite effects if religious notions are experienced as repressive
and frightening. As mentioned, research, though still scarce, seems to confirm this
a priori view.
Yet mutual consultation and collaboration between pastor and psychiatrist regard-
ing treatment of individual patients is a rare occurrence. Until the 70ties communica-
tion used to take place regularly, at least in The Netherlands, and that was useful in
several respects. The psychiatrist obtained a better idea about the world view of his
(religious) patients, and the social climate in which they were raised. Problems with a
religious connotation – thoughts about sin, guilt, punishment, grace, questions about
afterlife, atonement, redemption, meaning of life, and the like – were approached in
dialogue with the pastor. In these domains he, not the psychiatrist, radiates authority,
and thus can operate more effectively.
This practice ceased, and this did not benefit mental health. The issues at stake
have not shriveled and regularly break through the armor of secularization. The psy-
chiatrist would seriously err to avoid them, play them down, or to conceive them as
manifestations of a neurosis.
Should the psychiatrist (even a secular one) take a religious history of his patients
as Glas (2000) calls it? Definitely, I believe. The spiritual / religious realm of life is
foundational. It cannot be moved away with impunity.
Should a psychiatrist deal with religious subjects? Yes, I think, provided the
patient has given evidence to be bothered by them, the psychiatrist disposes of suffi-
cient denominational knowledge, feels at least some affinity to the spiritual needs of
his patient and appreciates his lack of spiritual authority. Karasu’s (1999) remarks
are important in this context. He points out that even after a successful psychother-
apy, “when psychological conflicts are relatively resolved, deficits filled, and defects
corrected, ultimately patients still experience post-therapeutic dysphoria, a loss of
meaning or sense of emptiness, a non-luminous hollow.” He conceptualizes the,
what he calls spiritual psychotherapist, as someone not bound to particular tech-
niques, emphasizing not so much individuation of the patient but reaching a “state of
belonging and believing” and guiding him to a state “of soulfulness and spirituality.”
Soulfulness, he states, requires love; love of others, love of work and love of belong-
ing. The required ingredient for spirituality is belief. This belief is not so much a
belief in God as He is portrayed in theological conceptions, but believing in the sanc-
tity of everything around us. Yet “formal religion will always remain a common
ground toward spirituality.” The spiritual therapist, then, Karasu summarizes is “one
who is concerned with man’s anguish of isolation and alienation, sense of meaning-
lessness and existential guilt over forfeiting one’s potentials.”
Karasu, thus, defines superbly what is lacking in today’s treatment of psychiatric
patients: brains are being treated and so are psyches. The spiritual existence
remains out of range. An essential ingredient of the human condition is simply left
offside. This amounts to an essential failure. This is not to say that I think spiritual-
ity should be the domain of a separate caste of therapists; it should be a concern of
all psychiatrists.
It thus seems appropriate to include religion – as a potential source of concern and
of spiritual strength – in psychiatric and psychotherapeutic training programs.
4. CONCLUSION
It may have become clear that religion is not irrelevant to the behavioral sciences,
foremost psychology and psychiatry. On various levels these two domains interface
and overlap. Yet over the past 40 years or so the two partners became estranged. This
has impoverished psychiatry both in its diagnostic and therapeutic efforts.
The (Dutch) Foundation for Psychiatry and Religion was established with the
very objective to bridge that gap and further renewed rapprochement. At the
18 VAN PRAAG
symposium on which this volume is based, only one religious/behavioral interface

was discussed: the psychological significance of three basic concepts in religious
thinking: prophecy, martyrdom and messianism. How have they been conceived by
theologians, of Jewish and Christian persuasion; in what way have they influenced
the life of individuals and communities, and by which biblical figures are they
most typically exemplified.
Students of the transcendent aspects of the human condition, and those studying
its immanent aspects, i.e. those elements knowable through our senses, our logos and
our emotional receptiveness, should take cognizance of each others viewpoints and
findings and collaborate. They have a lot to talk about. So, may that come to pass.
5. SUMMARY
The bonds between religion and psychiatry have been strong over many years but
loosened in the last century to the point of virtual estrangement. Of course the tan-
gents remained, but they are not exploited anymore. This is wasteful, both from a
practical and a more fundamental point of view. Practically, because we know much
too little about the stress-buffering or stress-generating, the disease-producing or
health-promoting potential of religion. Religious variables, moreover, are only rarely
included in psychotherapeutic interventions. Is this a missed chance? We don’t
know. The role of religion in mental health is poorly studied, and this void should be
filled.
Also, from a more theoretical vantage point, psychiatry and religion interface in
many respects. What, for instance, has been and still is the impact of theological con-
cepts on individual and societal development. For psycho-exegesis, moreover, the
Bible is a goldmine (and not only for that). In particular the Hebrew Bible is popu-
lated with real-life figures in whom weakness and strength are inextricably inter-
twined. Psychological and psychiatric studies will throw light on the Book and on its
writers. A final interface being discussed in this paper is the occurrence of religious
psychopathology. Those phenomena raise fundamental questions such as what the
border is between normal religious life and pathological interpretations.
Psychiatry and religion show consanguinity. Neglect of this kinship is detrimental
to both parties.
REFERENCES
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Tilburg, W. (1998). Religious denomination and depression among older Dutch citizens: Patterns and
models. Journal of Aging and Health,10, 483–503.
Braam, A. W., Beekman, A. T. F., Van den Eeden, P., Deeg, D. J. H., Knipscheer, C. P. M., & Van
Tilburg, W. (1999). Religious climate and geographical distribution of depressive symptoms in older
Dutch citizens. Journal of Affective Disorders, 54, 149–159.
Braam, A. W., Sonnenberg, C. M., Beekman, A. T. F., Deeg, D. J. H., & Van Tilburg, W. (2000). Religious
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of Sigmund Freud Vol. 21 (pp. 3–57). London: The Hogarth Press.
Glas, G. (2000). De religieuze anamnese. Psyche en Geloof, 11, 71–85.
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religion: West and east (pp. 5–111). London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
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CHAPTER 3
BIBLICAL NARRATIVES AS HISTORY

Biblical persons as objects of historical faith
C. STEPHEN EVANS
Baylor University, USA
1. INTRODUCTION
There is much debate and much skepticism about the historical truth of Biblical
narratives, both in the Old Testament and New Testament.1 There is, however, a
good deal more consensus that these writings contain many narratives that at least
as literature purport to represent actual doings. The late theologian Hans Frei
argued, particularly for the New Testament, that the gospel narratives belong to the
genre of “realistic narrative.”2 Even the miracle stories of the gospels are narrated,
for the most part, in a sober, realistic manner. Frei thus argued that the gospel nar-
ratives are history-like, regardless of the degree to which they are historically
accurate. Such Jewish scholars as Robert Alter and Meir Sternberg have made sim-
ilar arguments for Old Testament narratives.3 They have argued that looking at the
religious meaning of the narratives does not require that scholars ignore the
history-like character which the narratives possess on their sleeve, so to speak, and
in fact a literary understanding of these texts does not rule out the possibility that
one of the tasks the texts accomplish is to communicate historical information.
They have, in other words, forcefully called our attention to the fact that in English
terms like “story” and “narrative” are ambiguous. Not all stories and narratives are
about what really happened in history, but some of them are. Fictional stories can
be told as if they were historical and thus be “history-like.” But genuinely histori-
cal stories are also “history-like.”
Once we turn our attention to these history-like narratives, we find many memorable
characters, for although the narratives are the narratives of a community, the overall
story is carried by the stories of individuals. The stories of Abraham, Jacob, Joseph,
Moses, Saul, Solomon, David, and Elijah have abiding power as stories, whatever
else they possess, and the characters portrayed in the stories exercise continuing power.
21
© 2007 Springer.
22 STEPHEN EVANS
The same is true in the New Testament for Peter and any of the disciples, for Paul, and
pre-eminently for Jesus of Nazareth. (I will later say why I believe the narrative about
Jesus has this pre-eminence for Christians, such that other Biblical stories are dwarfed
in comparison.)
2. WHAT VALUE DO BIBLICAL NARRATIVES

HAVE IF THEY ARE NOT HISTORICAL?
What value do these Biblical narratives have for us today? In what ways is that
value linked to historical truth? These are the fundamental questions I wish
to address in this paper. A good way to begin is to look at the value such narra-
tives can have even if they are devoid of historical accuracy. I shall dismiss
without much comment the value such stories may have in providing us with
materials for case histories and diagnoses. I certainly don’t deny that the Biblical
stories can be treated in this way; that is shown by the work of such psychologists
as Eric Altschuler, who has diagnosed Samson with “Antisocial Personality Dis-
order” and the prophet Elijah as suffering from temporal lobe epilepsy.4 I suppose
that if we do not take the Biblical characters to be historical figures, such diag-
noses lose some of their point, and would be akin to looking at cases of mental ill-
ness in contemporary novels. Still, there is a lot to be learned from literature, so
the Biblical stories might still possess some value for this kind of thing even if
they are not taken to be historical. Since I lack clinical expertise I will neither
comment on the accuracy of such diagnoses of Biblical characters nor the value
of the enterprise.
Having set aside this clinical use of the narratives, there are three fundamental
kinds of value that Biblical narratives might possess even if they are not historically
true: literary, moral, and mythical. I shall examine each of these in turn.
2.1 Literary Value that does not Depend on Historicity
A promising area to begin in order to see what value the Biblical stories may pos-
sess even if they do not contain historical truth is the field of literature. It would
appear that the Biblical stories have whatever literary value good stories possess,
whether they are historical or not. One can read the story of David and Goliath in
the same way one reads the story of Hector and Achilles. I will leave it largely to
the literary scholar to tell us what kinds of value such stories possess as literature.
I assert only that such value is very great, and that such stories as stories lose little
or nothing of this literary value if we do not take them to be historically true. Lit-
erature provides us with the incalculable value of imaginative possibilities. With-
out imaginative possibilities, each of us would be limited to the actualities we live
and know about. Our ability to understand and judge the value of various ways of
approaching human existence would be vastly limited. Through literature I can
come to understand and empathetically grasp both the attractions and dangers of
various kinds of lives. A great novel can give us insight into life possibilities that
BIBLICAL NARRATIVES AS HISTORY 23
we could never actually enter, or that we could enter only at the cost of our own
psychological or physical destruction. Such understanding of possibilities can fos-
ter wisdom in the deepest sense.
2.2 Biblical Narratives as Providing Moral Exemplars
A second kind of value the Biblical narratives might retain for us even if we lack belief
in their historical verisimilitude is the value of providing moral examples. Of course
historically true narratives can provide moral examples as well, and it is even arguable
that an example gains some kind of power by virtue of historicity. The historicity of the
example, one might say, testifies that the moral possibility illustrated in the story is one
that humans are really capable of exemplifying. Nevertheless, the moral possibility
exemplified by a story can be powerful and inspiring even if the events narrated never
occurred. One of Søren Kierkegaard’s pseudonyms, Johannes Climacus, the reputed
author of Concluding Unscientific Postscript, actually argues that the historical actual-
ity of a moral example has no positive value and can even be an ethical distraction:
What is great with regard to the universal must therefore not be presented as an object for admiration, but
as a requirement. In the form of possibility, the presentation becomes a requirement. Instead of presenting
the good in the form of actuality, as is ordinarily done, that this person and that person have actually lived
and have actually done this, and thus transforming the reader into an observer, an admirer, an appraiser, it
should be presented in the form of possibility.5
Kierkegaard’s thought here is that if the example is provided as historically actual,

the reader may become distracted by questions about the example instead of focus-
ing on the existential possibility the character poses that is relevant for the reader. In
effect, the actuality tempts the reader to adopt the guise of spectator. In the worst
case, the reader of a narrative may be lulled to sleep by the example, confusing admi-
ration for the historical person for the development of genuine character within
himself or herself. “Ethically understood, there is nothing on which one sleeps so
soundly as on admiration over an actuality.”6
I think the worry of Kierkegaard’s pseudonym here is somewhat exaggerated. It is
true that people may deceptively judge themselves better than they are because of
admiration for an outstanding individual, historical or contemporary. But admiration
is not always morally deadening; it can also be an uplifting and inspiring passion. So
I do not agree with Climacus that historical truth makes no contribution to a moral
example. But he is certainly right to affirm that a story can exemplify in a powerful
way a moral possibility without the story being historically true.
Philosophers such as Immanuel Kant have argued that our judgments about the
worthiness of an historical figure as a moral exemplar are rooted in prior judgments
about the moral value of the possibility exemplified. Thus, Kant says that “even the
Holy One of the Gospel must first be compared with our ideal of moral perfection
before we can recognize him to be such.”7 Kant claims therefore that it is not essen-
tial to have a moral exemplar that is historical: “We need, therefore, no empirical
example to make the idea of a person morally well-pleasing to God our archetype;
this idea as an archetype is already present in our reason.”8 Someone who lacks such
24 STEPHEN EVANS
a robust faith in reason may value an historical exemplar more highly than did Kant
himself. Perhaps we learn about goodness by observing good people and not merely
through an innate a priori ideal. Nevertheless, it seems right to claim that a story
devoid of historical truth can still possess considerable power as exemplifying a
moral possibility.
As moral exemplars, then, the persons of the Bible may gain something if we take
their narratives as historical, but the stories would still retain considerable power
even if this were not so. A good illustration of this is provided by C. S. Lewis, who,
reflecting on his thoughts about the narrative of Jesus prior to his conversion to
Christianity, says that “what I couldn’t see was how the life and death of Someone
Else (whoever he was) 2000 years ago could help us here and now—except in so far
as his example helped us.” Lewis here seems to offer some support to the view, con-
trary to Kant, that the historical truth of a moral exemplar, might be of some value to
us. Nevertheless, the value does not seem vast, and it seems clear that a story can
retain its core value as an illustration of a moral possibility even if it lacks historicity.
2.3 Biblical Narratives Viewed as Myths: Symbolic

Expressions of Psychological Truth
A third kind of value that narratives about Biblical characters might possess even if
they lack historical truth lies in what we might call mythic expressive power. Many
writers see ancient stories of gods and heroes, such as those preserved in the great
Greek tragedies, as stories that express in a particular and imaginative way universal
truths of a psychological and/or metaphysical nature. C. S. Lewis captures this view
of myth nicely when he says that “in the enjoyment of a great myth we come nearest
to experiencing as a concrete what can otherwise be understood only as an abstrac-
tion.”9 Though, like Lewis, I would personally want to leave open the possibility that
a story with mythic power could also be historically true, there is no question that the
vast majority of myths are non-historical and that they do not lose this mythic
expressive power because of this lack of historical actuality.
For thinkers such as Joseph Campbell (1968), the mythic power of the Biblical
stories overpowers any historical truth the stories might possess, just as is the case
with other religious myths. The characters of the stories are mythical heroes, but for
Campbell all the heroes are at bottom the same figure, “the hero with a thousand
faces.” At bottom the hero of the myth is Everyman; each one of us is the hero, and
the myth is the recounting of the quest each individual makes for salvation. For
Campbell the quest is a search for the underlying unity between the self and God:
“The two—the hero and his ultimate god, the seeker and the found—are thus under-
stood as the outside and inside of a single self-mirrored mystery, which is identical
with the mystery of the manifest world. The great deed of the supreme hero is to
come to the knowledge of this unity in multiplicity and then to make it known.”10
Not all thinkers will share Campbell’s monistic reading of the religious meaning of
the great myths. It is possible to read the Biblical stories not as illustrating the truth
that the “font of life is the core of the individual,”11 but as narratives that recount the
paths individuals can follow to a personal God who is distinct from the self. On such
a theistic reading the Biblical stories, while still possessing mythic power, retain a
more pluralistic character; the various persons represented in the narratives may
exemplify various psychological types whose paths to God are different because the
obstacles they must surmount are different.
However, whether we read the stories as myths in a monistic or theistic way, their
mythical power lies in their ability to express in a dramatic and concrete fashion
truths that are in themselves timeless. The myths convey to us the eternal nature of
God and timeless and universal truths about how humans must relate to God. If the
highest religious truths are of this nature, then I think little would be lost if we see
the Biblical stories as non-historical.
3. THE VALUE OF THE BIBLICAL NARRATIVES

THAT IS TIED TO HISTORY
We have seen that the Biblical narratives may have significant value even if they are
not viewed as historically true. It is worth asking, however, whether anything is lost
when we do not read the narratives as historical. Does history add any value to these
Biblical narratives? If so, how does it do so? If there is to be significant value in
such narratives, taken as history, that value must be tied to the value of history itself.
I take it to be a distinctive of traditional Christian faith, and—so it seems to me, of
traditional Judaism too, though it is not for me to say what is or is not important for
Judaism—that history is viewed as having fundamental importance. Christianity
has traditionally taught that salvation is not merely something that is gained by the
realization of some timeless, universal truth or truths, as might be the case if the
narratives are viewed purely mythically or as moral exemplars. Rather, salvation is
something to be achieved in history, something to be won or lost in time. On such a
view, history is not merely a theatre for the illustration of moral truths or a place in
which one recognizes some human status that is fundamentally an eternal posses-
sion. History is not merely the arena for acquiring timeless truths about God and the
self. Rather, history is the place where God and human beings interact, the story of
God’s actions to make salvation possible and the responses of human beings to
those actions.
On this view the Bible contains what may truly be called a “metanarrative,” a
grand story that provides a meaningful frame for human history and human exis-
tence. The narrative is not in this case merely a symbolic expression of inner, psy-
chological truths, for the truths are not merely about ourselves, and they are not
merely symbolic, but bear on the actual course of human events. To turn our atten-
tion to the narrative is not to turn our attention solely within ourselves, but to learn to
see ourselves in light of this larger story. As Hans Frei argued, the task is not to
assimilate the Biblical narrative to our world, but to learn to understand our world in
light of the Biblical narrative.
The main outlines of the grand narrative are familiar to us as what is often called
the major “acts” of the Biblical drama. The story begins with God’s creation and
26 STEPHEN EVANS
moves to the Fall which mars that creation. The third act, with which the Biblical
narrative is mainly occupied, is God’s plan of action to redeem a fallen humanity and
natural order. That redemptive plan begins with the calling and creation of a particu-
lar people, through whom God is to offer his salvation to the whole human race. That
people is sent prophets and teachers, and its history is intertwined with the history of
its covenantal relations with God. In the “fullness of time” God himself enters
human history and acts decisively in Jesus of Nazareth, to defeat sin and death and
establish a new people of God, an inclusive people drawn from every race and
nation. God continues to deal with his people, sanctifying and purifying them as they
struggle to actualise the redemption he has made possible. Through all the struggle
God’s promise of final victory looms as the final act of the drama, the historical
event that will inaugurate the unending banquet-feast of the kingdom of God.
On this reading of the Bible, salvation is something to be gained (and perhaps, for
some, lost) in history. History is thus invested with a crucial meaning and importance
that is not to be found merely in the cycles of nature. God is seen as a being who acts
in particular ways, particular times, particular places, lovingly seeking to restore a
fallen humanity and natural order. Human choices are seen as leading to eternal joy
or eternal ruin.
On this view, the historical truth of the Biblical narrative assumes an importance
that it could not possess if it functioned merely as literature exemplifying imagina-
tive possibilities, exemplifications of moral ideals, or mythical symbolic expression
of psychological or metaphysical truths. Of course the story can fulfil all these func-
tions as well, but none of them rivals the crucial function the narrative plays. The
story is the story of how God acted to deliver humans from a prison of sin and death;
if the story is not historically true then they have not been delivered from the prison.
It is important not to confuse the question of the value of historical truth with the
different question as to how we have epistemological access to that historical truth.
For many to speak of historical truth is to speak of objective facts, gained through
adherence to a scientific discipline. If we are thinking of “history” in this sense, it is
difficult to see how it might bear on our lives. The epistemological questions as to
how we gain access to historical truth are indeed important, and I shall address them
in this paper. However, a more fundamental question than the question of how we
gain access to historical truth is the question of why historical truth matters to us at
all, and this is the question I am now addressing. Christianity makes historical
claims, but it does not regard those claims as “bare facts” without significance.
Rather, it claims that the meaning of our own lives—indeed, the meaning of the
universe—is bound up with God’s actions in history, particularly God’s actions in
Christ. However we gain access to the story about what God has done in history—
and I shall proceed to argue that we do not gain such knowledge through a detached
scientific attitude—the truths the story contains are ones that claim to have the power
to transform us and our world, and they thus challenge us to respond and reconsider
the meaning of our lives. The events are not such that can merely survey them as a
detached spectator, but events that challenge one’s sense of who one is and why one
is living.
The epistemological difficulties presented by historical truth claims seem daunt-

ing indeed. It is easy to see why we are tempted to focus instead on literary truth,
moral truth, and mythical truth, which allow us to ignore those epistemological prob-
lems. However, if the true religious meaning of the story—its power to change
human beings, human society, and even the whole natural order—is essentially tied
to the occurrence of particular events in history, then we may have no choice but to
confront those epistemological problems head-on. Otherwise, we may lose what is
most valuable in the narratives, for it may turn out that in this case meaning and his-
torical truth are not easily detached from each other. I shall say something about how
these epistemological difficulties should be approached in my concluding section.
4. THE GRAND NARRATIVE, THE STORY OF JESUS,

AND THE NATURE OF FAITH
The question of historical faith in the Biblical narrative must then center first and
foremost on the grand narrative. The narratives of individual persons and particular
communities, of Joseph and Moses, Elijah and Elisha, James and John, Peter and
Paul, take on their fundamental significance in light of the grand narrative in which
they are embedded. That does not mean that such narratives cannot function in rela-
tive isolation by providing moral inspiration and psychological insight, but it means
that when they do function in these ways questions of historical truth are of lesser
importance.
This means, I think, that the question of historical truth lies not in the accuracy of
the details, but in the reliability of the overall thrust of the narrative. The historical
details of individual stories are, by and large, not as important so long as the reader
of the narrative gets a true impression of what God has done and is doing for human
salvation, and what humans must do in response to God’s initiative.
We can now understand why historical faith in Jesus of Nazareth is of pre-eminent
importance for Christians. It is not that the narrative of Jesus can stand alone. Like
all the other narratives in the Bible, its meaning must be understood in relation to
what I am calling the grand narrative that is supposed to provide the answers to who
we are and what life is all about. However, the story of Jesus is for Christians the
absolute centerpiece of that grand narrative. Just as an epic film that contains many
individual stories may yet hinge on one crucial, central story, so the Biblical narra-
tive as a whole flows backward and forward from the story of Christ. Christ’s story is
the central story of the grand narrative, the one that enables us to understand the
beginning and the long period of preparation, as well as the existential struggles of
people in every age and the final promise of victory at the time of time. For the
beginning is the beginning of the story that hinges around Jesus; the preparation is
the preparation for his coming. The existential challenge is the challenge of how to
view Jesus, and the end is understood as the ending in which Christ’s kingdom will
be fully realized.
The centerpiece of the story of Jesus is of course the events of the passion and res-
urrection. Each of the gospels devotes a huge proportion of its material to the death
28 STEPHEN EVANS
and resurrection of Jesus. Jesus’ death is seen, already in the gospels and even more
explicitly in the rest of the New Testament, as atonement for sin, a victory over death
and Satan. Jesus’ resurrection is an affirmation that God did accomplish these things
in Jesus. The resurrection has particular importance in differentiating the story of
Jesus from the stories of other Biblical figures. The identity of Jesus is given by the
historical narrative. We know him as the one who changed water into wine, who
called fishermen to be his disciples, who taught in memorable parables such as the
story of the good Samaritan and the prodigal son, and who freely went to his death
on a cruel cross at the hands of the Romans. However, the resurrection implies that
this historical figure is not merely historical. It is crucial that the one whom we iden-
tify through this historical narrative is alive today. The Christian Church proclaims
him as a living reality, one whom we can know and love, and who can be present
through the Spirit of God in the worship and lives of believers. In this case historical
faith is not merely historical, but the vehicle for an on-going relation with the person
who is most crucial in understanding human life and the human task.
In one sense of the term “faith,” I would argue that from a Christian perspective,
the person of Jesus is the only object of historical faith. Of course there are many
senses of “faith.” I should like to distinguish what I will call “ordinary historical
faith” from religious historical faith in a strict sense. (My distinction here overlaps
somewhat but is not identical with that which Kierkegaard’s pseudonym Johannes
Climacus makes in Philosophical Fragments between “ordinary historical faith” and
what he terms “faith in the eminent sense.”12) All historical beliefs that are based on
evidence or other grounds are underdetermined by those grounds. We can conceive
of even well-attested historical beliefs turning out to be false, though in some cases
doubts about historical beliefs would be bizarre and pointless. Thus, following
Kierkegaard, we can say that all historical beliefs involve faith in the sense that the
belief involves a commitment that outruns the evidence and runs some risk, however
slight, of being false. In this ordinary sense, historical belief in any Biblical charac-
ters requires “faith.”
However, religiously, faith is more than belief. The most fundamental object of
faith is not a proposition but a person, and faith in a person involves trust in that per-
son. In this sense, the resurrection of Jesus implies the possibility of faith in Jesus in
a special sense. Jesus is portrayed as one with whom I can have a living relationship,
a person whom I can build my life around. I can trust Jesus to hear my prayers and
fulfil his promises to me in ways that would make no sense in the case of a deceased
historical figure. Such faith is far more than assent to historical propositions, though
if I am right to say that the identity of Jesus is given through an historical narrative,
it presupposes or includes such propositional belief.
The narrative about Jesus is not merely the story that discloses the identity of
Jesus, but also the vehicle for the creation of this faith. The New Testament claims
that “faith comes by hearing,” and it is in an encounter with the narrative that the
possibility of faith is offered. When I read or hear the story of Jesus, I find God him-
self speaking to me.13 God speaks in different ways: I hear commands, questions,
promises, as well as assertions. In the story of the good Samaritan, for example, God
commands me to love my neighbour, questions me as to whether I am acting as a

neighbour, helps me see why I need the help of God to love my neighbour, and
implicitly promises me the help of God to love my neighbour as myself. In the death
and resurrection of Jesus I come to see the seriousness and depth of my own evil and
the power of God to overcome that evil.
We can say then that the narrative is one that has mythic power. It tells me who
I am, what my condition is, what kind of world I inhabit, and how myself and that
world can be restored and renewed. Just as is the case with non-historical mythical
narratives, the story is one that is intertwined with my own identity. Christians
believe that the story of Jesus gives me a picture of what it means to be human, and
it gives me insight into what I should be, how far from that ideal I have strayed, and
how I am to recover my true self. However, in this case the mythic power of the story
is logically tied to its historicity. The story does not merely express in a symbolic
way timeless truths, but discloses what God has actually done and is doing in history
to overcome evil. The faith that the story engenders is not in myself or some power
immanently present within the self, but faith in a living figure whose identity is
grounded in history. The story turns my attention outside myself to an historical fig-
ure, not within myself to truths which I already possess. As Kierkegaard saw, the self
on such a view is not something already whole, to be “re-collected,” but something
that that must be “re-taken” (Danish Gjentagelsen, “repetition” or “taking again.”).
The story does not symbolically express a truth I possess already but transforms me,
establishes a relationship with one who is himself the Truth and can give truth to my
life. Jesus is therefore uniquely the object of faith for the Christian.
This conclusion underlines the profoundly historical character of human exis-
tence. If a narrative turns out to play a crucial role in the formation of our identity
as selves, it is appropriate that the narrative be an historical narrative. The self is not
an eternal possession but an historical achievement, at least when we consider it in
terms of its ultimate destiny. For Christians the story of Jesus plays precisely this
role, and therefore stripping the narrative of its historicity is also to strip it of much
of its power.
One might think, then, that my paper is mistitled. If Jesus is the object of histori-
cal faith in a unique sense, then I should not have promised to write about “Biblical
persons as objects of faith” but only of a Biblical person. However, it should not be
forgotten that even the story of Jesus is part of the grand Biblical story. While for
Christians the story of Jesus is the centrepiece of this grand narrative, the centrepiece
in turn must be seen in the context of that wider narrative. Without seeing God as the
creator of the world and the human race, and the one who elected Israel to be the spe-
cial vehicle of his salvation, one cannot understand who Jesus is or properly read his
story. And that wider narrative contains many other memorable figures. Insofar as
Abraham, Moses, David, Elijah, and others are crucial to that wider narrative, then it
is proper to speak in a secondary sense of those figures as objects of historical faith
as well. Without historical faith, at least in the ordinary sense, in these Biblical fig-
ures, the story of Jesus would lack intelligibility. And insofar as belief in this grand
narrative is part of faith as trust in God, then these historical figures become objects
30 STEPHEN EVANS
of faith in a deeper way as well. They are not the objects of devotion and piety in the
same sense as Jesus, but we have faith that God was at work in them and through
them and we believe we can learn about God through their stories.
5. THE EPISTEMOLOGICAL QUANDARY: CAN RELIGIOUS FAITH

BE HOSTAGE TO HISTORICAL INQUIRY?
However, in arguing that historical faith in the narrative of Jesus (in the primary
sense) and other Biblical figures (in a secondary sense) is vital, have I not made
Christian faith hostage to the critical claims of contemporary historical scholarship?
If faith in Jesus, as well as faith in the grand narrative, necessarily includes historical
belief, then is not Christianity in the grip of an epistemological crisis? Is it possible
to have good grounds for historical beliefs about events that occurred so long ago
and for which the main sources for our knowledge are clearly interested parties? To
have good grounds for such beliefs, must one adopt a scientific method that commits
one to an objectivity that stands in tension with genuine faith?
Certainly, the prevailing climate of opinion between the two world wars was that
such historical beliefs were uncertain at best. The collapse of the original quest for
the historical Jesus led to widespread skepticism about the New Testament as well as
the Old Testament. However, the situation today appears different. I have attempted
to describe our situation in some detail in my book The Historical Christ and the
Jesus of Faith (Evans, 1996). Here I can do no more than sketch the outlines of the
story I give there.
There are, I believe, two strategies that have been developed for dealing with the
question of how we can have access to the historical Jesus and other Biblical figures.
I call these strategies the evidentialist and non-evidentialist strategies. Both strategies
offer promising alternatives to the Christian who thinks it is vital to hold to the historic-
ity of Biblical figures, especially the figure of Jesus. I shall sketch each strategy in turn.
The evidentialist strategy is rooted in the traditional epistemological tradition that
sees knowledge as justified true belief, and sees justification for our beliefs, whether
they amount to knowledge or not, in terms of evidence. Traditional evidential apolo-
getics has assumed this perspective, and attempted to give evidence for such things
as the resurrection of Jesus and his divinity. With the onset of critical, supposedly
scientific, historical methods, the historical credibility of the Biblical narratives was
severely damaged for many.
Those critical methods are perhaps best described in the work of Ernst Troeltsch,
who summarizes them under three principles: the principle of criticism, the principle
of analogy, and the principle of correlation.14 The principle of criticism implies,
roughly, that the genuine historian must take a critical view of all sources and accept
none as absolutely authoritative. The principle of analogy means that the historian
must assume a kind of uniformity of natural processes; in particular, one must not
believe that miraculous and supernatural events that do not occur today were preva-
lent in some past time. The principle of correlation implies that the historian must
understand all historical events in terms of a web of immanent causes.
Troeltschian critical history is still dominant in historical Biblical studies, but

there have been some substantial changes. The underlying aim of Troeltsch seems to
have been to have the historian take an independent, critical view, free from ecclesi-
astical control or bias. However, it is increasingly recognized that Troeltsch’s own
critical principles are not free from bias either. As understood and practiced by
many, these principles seem to embody, not a neutral, scientific perspective, but a
perspective informed by a naturalistic worldview, one that dogmatically rules out the
appearance of the transcendent in human experience. Thus, an historian who denies
the possibility of miraculous events is no more “neutral” or “scientific” than the his-
torian of a previous generation who affirmed the reality of such events. Even “criti-
cal” history is not in reality free from personal commitments.
I am not a Biblical scholar myself, and so anything I say about this issue should be
taken as the perspective of an outside observer. Nevertheless, it seems to me that recent
Biblical scholarship has moved away from this dogmatic anti-supernaturalism towards
a more genuinely open perspective. Biblical scholars such as John Meier, whom I take
to be somewhat typical on this point, affirm that the historian must be guided by the
canons of an imaginary “unpapal conclave,” a meeting of scholars of various ideolo-
gies who must seek consensus.15 Such an historical scholar may not be free, as histo-
rian, to affirm the reality of the miraculous, but he or she is also not free, as historian,
to deny such events. In a postmodern world, we may still have doubts about the value
of such a method. Who is to be included in the conclave? Can we really expect any
agreement in such a situation? In a postmodern world, we may doubt whether absolute
neutrality is really possible, and I share these doubts. Still, it still seems clear that
Meier’s account of critical Biblical method is at least an advance on Troeltsch.
The result has been a new appreciation of the role of miracles and the supernatural
in the narrative of Jesus. There is surprising agreement among critical scholars today,
not that Jesus performed miracles, because critical history, even as practiced by
Meier, does not allow such an affirmation, but that he was believed by his contempo-
raries to have performed miraculous deeds. N.T. Wright even goes beyond this affir-
mation: “Many scholars from widely differing backgrounds now accept that Jesus
did remarkable “mighty works”; this consensus is strong enough to sustain the point
at least that Jesus’ contemporaries, friend and foe alike, believed him to be doing
such things, and that the best and simplest explanation of this is that it was more or
less true.”16 There is also a large consensus that Jesus’ followers believed from a
very early time that God had miraculously raised Jesus from the dead. On such a
view, the historian may not play the role of apologist, supplying the traditional his-
torical “proofs” of Jesus’ divinity. However, the historian, at least the historian who
has rejected the supposed neutrality of “scientific history” for a more genuinely open
and modest perspective, can credibly inform us about the testimony of Jesus’ earliest
followers, and we are free to form our own views about the character of that testi-
mony. It appears that contemporary historical methods, unlike the dogmatic anti-
supernaturalism of Troeltsch, at least allows, even if it does not require, an
interpretation of the historical Jesus that is consistent, in its major outlines, with
what the Church has traditionally affirmed about the identity of Jesus.
32 STEPHEN EVANS
However, the evidentialist strategy is not the only option for the Christian who
wishes to affirm the historical truth of the Biblical narratives. Many recent episte-
mologists have abandoned the “internalist” conception of knowledge as justified true
belief in favor of an “externalist” epistemology, that focuses on knowledge as some-
thing that occurs when human persons are rightly related to the external world.17
Externalist epistemologies were originally developed by naturalistic philosophers
who wished to see knowing as a natural process. The externalist sees knowledge as a
true belief that is caused by external reality in the right way, or as a true belief that is
the result of a reliably functioning faculty. Such epistemologies were thus developed
independently of any religious motivation. The basic idea behind such epistemolo-
gies, as I see it, is that the attempt to achieve Cartesian certainty and vanquish
scepticism once and for all should be given up.
If we humans are being deceived by an evil demon, or if we are actually living in
a virtual reality created by “The Matrix,” then too bad for us. Knowledge would just
be impossible if such was our predicament. Rather, we should assume that we do
know things and ask how we get our knowledge. The right answer seems to be that
knowledge happens when we are rightly related to the world that we know, when our
beliefs “track” that external world. Our ability to “track” the world in such a manner
is not completely under our control, but depends on the facts about our cognitive
equipment and our relation to the external world. From such a perspective, episte-
mology gives up any pretence of providing an absolute foundation or certification
for all knowledge claims, but rather sees itself as reflection on a process of knowing
that precedes philosophical reflection about that process.
What is the relevance of epistemological externalism to the problem of historical
religious knowledge? Simply this: such an epistemology raises the possibility that
there might be a way of achieving the relevant kind of knowledge that is independent
of the methods of the critical historian.18 If there are processes and events that reli-
ably put humans in touch with the relevant reality and produce true beliefs, such
beliefs may amount to knowledge, even if the knowers cannot justify such beliefs on
the basis of common evidence.
Reformed theologians have traditionally affirmed that there is indeed such a
process. Suppose that Christianity is substantially true and that Jesus is the person
whom Christians affirm him to be. If knowledge about the historical Jesus is reli-
giously vital, then it seems exceedingly implausible that such knowledge could only
be obtained through critical historical investigation. Surely God would not have
become incarnate for the sake of saving the human race, and then limited the knowl-
edge of such events to those who have the relevant knowledge of ancient events, lan-
guages, and texts. Rather, one would expect such knowledge to be available to
ordinary people and not to be dependent on esoteric skills and learning.
How might this be possible? John Calvin’s answer was that the knowledge is
gained through what he called the “internal testimony” or “witness” of the Holy
Spirit. When the individual reads or hears the story of Jesus, the Spirit of God acts
within the person to produce an understanding of the person’s own need and how
God has answered that need in Jesus. God creates faith within the individual, and
that faith includes a conviction that the narrative is true. Jesus is a living reality
whose identity is rightly given by the story.
Calvin’s account has, I think, often been misunderstood because his talk of the
internal testimony of the Spirit has been understood in internalist, evidentialist
terms. From such a perspective, an appeal to the witness of the Spirit appears weak,
a grasping at a mysterious, private form of evidence. Suppose, however, we do not
look at the work of the Spirit as an experience being viewed as evidence, but as a
truth-conducive process, the way in which God brings about a true conviction in the
individual about who Jesus is and a trust in the power of Jesus to bring about real
transformation. From this perspective, when God speaks to the individual through
the narrative, through God’s questions, commands, promises, and claims, this is the
Spirit of God witnessing to the individual. Perhaps we might term this whole process
by which God induces true beliefs “faith” and thereby make sense of the claim of
Calvin and other theologians that there is such a thing as knowledge that is gained by
faith, rather than seeing faith and knowledge as mutually exclusive categories.
Is the outcome of such a process knowledge? Certainly not from an internalist,
foundationalist perspective, which insists on an evidential guarantee for knowledge.
However, from an externalist point of view, if the beliefs formed in this way are true
and the process by which they are created is a reliable, truth-conducive one, they
may indeed be knowledge. The question as to whether we can know who Jesus is
may then turn out to be logically tied to questions about the truth of the claims made
about Jesus. Jesus, and by extension other Biblical figures, can be legitimate objects
of historical faith if God was really present in them and their lives. There may be no
neutral, risk-free way to decide whether such claims are true. My argument here par-
allels that made by Alvin Plantinga in his recent Warranted Christian Belief, where
he argues that any objection to the claim that Christian belief is unwarranted must
take the form of an argument that Christian beliefs are false (Plantinga, 2000).
A decision about whether Christian beliefs are justified cannot be made indepen-
dently of a decision about their truth. We human beings are finite, situated knowers.
We are profoundly historical beings, and we cannot escape the risks of history even
when we are doing history.
NOTES
1
I shall in this paper refer to those Scriptures often termed the “Hebrew Bible” as the Old Testament,
mostly because this paper is written from an explicitly Christian point of view. Without in any way
denying the fundamental Jewishness of these writings and that they belong first and foremost to
Judaism, the Christian Church has traditionally accepted these writings as part of its canon as well, and
have regarded the Christian Bible, including the Old Testament, as forming one body of revelation.
2
See Frei (1974), p. 10.
3
See, for example, Alter (1992) and Sternberg (1985).
4
For a popular reference see Christianity Today, Jan 7 2002, p. 13.
5
Kierkegaard (1992), p. 359.
6
Ibidem, p. 360.
7
Kant (1964), p. 76.
8
Kant (1960), p. 56.
34 STEPHEN EVANS
9
Lewis (1970), p. 66.
10
Campbell (1968), p. 40.
11
Campbell (1968), p. 191.
12
Kierkegaard (1985), pp. 86–88.
13
For a powerful account of what it means to say that God speaks to humans and a defense of this possi-
bility, see Wolterstorff (1995).
14
A fuller explication and criticism of these principles is provided in Evans (1996), pp. 170–202.
15
See Meier (1991); see also Vergote, this book.
16
Wright (1996), p. 194. Many New Testament scholars could be cited in favour of Wright’s claim here,
including such unorthodox scholars as John Dominic Crossan (1991).
17
For a clear account of the distinction see Alston (1989). The other essays in this volume are invaluable in
understanding the contemporary situation in epistemology.
18
I defend such a view in Evans (1996), chapter 11. The fullest account of how the Biblical narratives
could be known to be true historically is found in Plantinga (2000). This volume is the culmination
of Plantinga’s trilogy on “Warrant” that develops a “Reformed epistemology” that is externalist in
character. See Plantinga (1993a, 1993b).
REFERENCES
Alston, W. P. (1989). Internalism and externalism in epistemology. In W. P. Alston, Epistemic justifica-
tion: Essays in the theory of knowledge (pp. 185–226). Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press.
Alter, R. (1992). The world of biblical literature. London: Society for the Promotion of Christian
Knowledge (SPCK).
Campbell, J. (1968, 2nd Ed.). The hero with a thousand faces. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Crossan, J. D. (1991). The historical Jesus: The life of a Mediterranean Jewish peasant. San Francisco:
Harper & Collins.
Evans, C. S. (1996). The historical Christ and the Jesus of faith. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Frei, H. (1974). The eclipse of biblical narrative. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Kant, I. (1960). Religion within the limits of reason Alone (Th. M. Greene & H. H. Hudson, Eds. &
Trans.). New York: Harper and Row. (Original work published 1793/1794).
Kant, I. (1964). Groundwork of the metaphysic of morals (H. J. Paton, Trans.). New York: Harper and
Row. (Original work published 1785).
Kierkegaard, S. (1985). Philosophical fragments (H. V. Hong & E. H. Hong, Eds. and Trans.). Princeton:
Princeton University Press. (Original work published 1844).
Kierkegaard, S. (1992). Concluding unscientific postscript (H. V. Hong & E. H. Hong, Eds. & Trans.).
Princeton: Princeton University Press. (Original work published 1846).
Lewis, C. S. (1970). Myth Became Fact. In C. S. Lewis, God in the dock (pp. 63–67). Grand Rapids,
Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans.
Meier, J. P. (1991). A marginal Jew: Rethinking the historical Jesus, Volume I. New York: Doubleday.
Plantinga, A. (1993a). Warrant: The current debate. New York: Oxford University Press.
Plantinga, A. (1993b). Warrant and proper function. New York: Oxford University Press.
Plantinga, A. (2000). Warranted Christian belief. New York: Oxford University Press.
Sternberg, M. (1985). The poetics of biblical narrative. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press.
Wolterstorff, N. (1995). Divine discourse. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Wright, N. T. (1996). Jesus and the victory of God. Minneapolis: Fortress Press.
PART II
PROPHECY: THEOLOGICAL
CHAPTER 4
INTRODUCTION TO PROPHECY
Theological and psychological aspects
GERRIT GLAS
The section on prophecy begins with a chapter by Neil Gillman on Abraham Joshua
Heschel, focussing especially on the latter’s famous work The Prophets. Gillman
is Aaron Rabinowitz and Simon H. Rifkind Professor of Jewish Philosophy at the
Jewish Theological Seminary of America in New York and studied with Heschel.
Gillman’s treatment nicely captures the issues that emerged in the previous section
and which were addressed briefly in the Introduction to that section. It describes
Heschel as a masterful writer on religious experience, and emphasizes the notions
of “radical amazement” and “insightful sensitivity” that are among the key terms
Heschel uses to depict the essence of religious experience.
Gillman’s main point is that Heschel’s notion of divine pathos is “both the
impetus for his understanding of prophecy and also the core of his own mature
theological inquiry.” Pathos refers to the intimate involvement and loving care of
God for his creation. This relational dynamic has ontological priority. God will
never appear as the endpoint of a chain of reasons; He is there at the outset. This
position is reflected in the order of analysis of Gillman’s chapter, in which, just
like in Evans’s chapter, epistemological concerns follow – instead of precede –
the exposition of Heschel’s worldview with its notion of God as the “ontological
presupposition.”
From a systematic point of view, Gillman raises a number of theological and
philosophical issues that would be interesting to pursue. I will limit myself to one
issue which seems to be of importance for later discussions in this volume. The issue
is theological, but with psychological and philosophical ramifications. It finds its
background in Gillman’s suggestion of the embeddedness of Heschel’s notion of
divine pathos in Polish Hasidism, with its even deeper background in 16th century
Lurianic mysticism. Rabbi Issac Luria, a Palestine-born Jewish polymath, taught
that creation is the result of emanation out of God’s own being. This position brought
37
© 2007 Springer.
38 GLAS
him close to pantheism, which is a heresy in Jewish thinking; a danger, however, that
he tried to counterbalance by adopting another almost heretical thought, i.e., the
assumption of a duality in God. According to this thought, as Luria composed it,
God, on the one hand, transcends earthly reality; this is God as Ein Sof (“without
end”), a transcendent and hidden God, Deus absconditus, independent of creation.
On the other hand, there is the immanent God, usually referred to as She’khenah,
who is present in and throughout creation.
This reference to a mystical, pantheistic/dualistic background makes one aware of
the intricacy of the notion of divine pathos and its close ties with systematic theolog-
ical issues. It urges one toward a more clear view of the way God relates to His cre-
ations. Heschel describes God as the One, for whom human beings are significant.
God needs human beings, and this “neediness,” so to speak, precedes our neediness.
Humans are part of His world and, it seems, even of His existence. Formulations
such as these could be interpreted as if Heschel is blurring the Creator/creation dis-
tinction. However, it is possible to argue that this quite traditional distinction in itself
is the product of the rational and detached epistemic attitude which Heschel, and
others, seeks to criticize. Thus, one may ask: What if the notion of pathos is not con-
ceived as a bias toward immanence, but as referring to a reality beyond the split
between transcendence and immanence? Traditional religious language is bound to
the concept of border. Heschel’s approach may be interpreted as one with deep
philosophical and practical implications by implying a divine reality that is always
simultaneously possessed of immanence and transcendence.
One could hardly imagine a greater difference in approach and atmosphere, than
between the other two chapters in this section. In the first, Old Testament scholar
Bob Becking, professor at the Theology Department of Utrecht University in the
Netherlands, reviews contemporary scholarly approaches to prophecy and interprets
the latter from the perspective of Ancient Near East systems of divination. This
means that prophecy is seen as part of a larger, widely spread practice of reading
signs and cultivating sensitivity to messages conveyed in dreams, visions, and ecsta-
tic experiences. Becking analyzes this practice from the perspectives of hysterical
frenzy, shamanism, and manic-depression (the latter term is taken in a broader sense
than is usual in clinical practice). He construes an interesting connection between the
degree of authority the prophet was allowed to have and socio-economic changes at
the time. Prophecy flowered in times of uncertainty, especially when the domestic,
kinship-oriented production and distribution of goods changed into a tributary sys-
tem in which goods had to be produced for the ruling class. Jeremiah is a book that
could be read through these lenses, however, as Becking also notes, this does not
exclude that other approaches might be relevant too. One of the interesting facts
about Jeremiah is, for instance, that it counts such a high rate of first person reports.
With this the attention shifts to psychological factors. Elements in Becking’s
account, like the theme of double loyalty and of the “prison within,” also emerge as
important in the chapter of Bryna Jocheved Levy, who teaches at the Women’s Insti-
tute for Torah Studies in Jerusalem. Levy sketches a colorful, intriguing, and often
moving portrait of the prophet Jeremiah. Her approach is a fine example of rabbinic
INTRODUCTION TO PROPHECY 39
interpretation in which textual sensitivity is used to improve psychological insight.

Levy’s working hypothesis is that the psychoanalytic concept known as projective
identification can illuminate how Jeremiah copes with his pain and his intense con-
flicts, and this in such a way that it does not detract him from his prophetic mission.
Jeremiah was torn by his conflicting empathies to his people and to God. He suffered
from his marginalization as priest of Ana‘tot (a village to which Abia‘tar the priest,
and possible ancestor of Jeremiah, was banished after the former aligned himself
with Adonijah’s unsuccessful revolt against Solomon). Jeremiah felt ashamed of his
descent from a mother with a dubious, possibly adulterous life style. His ambiva-
lence becomes eminently clear in the leitmotif of the womb/tomb – the womb as
place of healing and comfort, but also a grave, a place of misery and woe. The
ambivalence is, finally, also apparent in the transition from the theme of seduction
(Jeremiah as the prophet who is enticed by the Lord to announce terror and destruc-
tion to his people) to the theme of fellowship and union.
To support the latter theme, Levy reviews the many compelling midrashic pas-
sages in which Jeremiah and God are depicted as both weeping about the fate of the
people of Israel. Jeremiah’s “crisis of confidence” finds its temporal solution in pro-
jective identification with his God. This type of projective identification can be seen
as identification with the aggressor, at first glance, however, the midrashic texts go
beyond this interpretation to suggest a total identification of Jeremiah with God,
which would – also – imply a psychological unity with the sadness and tears of God.
From this point on, it is only one step to speculate about the possibility of God iden-
tifying with Jeremiah. Textual hints in the Midrash and its medieval rabinic com-
mentaries bring Levy to the conviction that God indeed identifies with Jeremiah.
This identification means that God – “in the moment of destruction” – becomes one
with his servant in his suffering and pain for those who are destined to suffer (Israel).
Levy’s portrait of Jeremiah is lively, complex, and part of an impressive tradition
of reading and meditating on the Book of Jeremiah. Levy’s re-reading occurs clearly
in the context of this tradition. She does not separate the scholar from the believer.
Equally pleasing is that she does not provide a specimen of reductionistic psychoan-
alytic reading, in which Bible stories and biblical personalities are deemed to be
“nothing other than” illustrations of more general psychoanalytic insights. To the
contrary, Levy’s use of the term projective identification gives it a wider and
more existential meaning than is customary in the clinical context, while at the same
time retaining the classical content of projection of psychic contents onto inner rep-
resentations of the other and keeping these unwanted contents under control within
these representations.
Becking’s approach differs from Levy’s: he distinguishes sharply between the
scholar and the believer. For the scholar component, as he sees it, the Old Testament
prophets can and ought to be understood in the same light as other Near Eastern
omen-readers and mantists. Yet as a believer, Becking has his faith preferences, but
these preferences belong to “another discourse,” apparently private. The division is
interesting, especially when compared to Heschel’s insistence on the “ontological”
priority of divine pathos and the way this position affects one’s view about what is
40 GLAS
going on between the prophetic messenger and the audience of listeners and readers.
How does the detached attitude of the scientist relate to the reality of the prophetic
pathos and the existential responses to this pathos? Indeed, is a “calm” split between
the scholar and the believer possible at all? Does such a split not suggest that there
are places in the world (or in one’s mind) in which it is possible to be safeguarded
from the “heat” of divine pathos? 1
Of course, there is no simple either/or formula for the dilemma of acceptance or
denial of the claims of the prophets, and there exists a great number of ways to
respond to these claims. However, I think it legitimate to probe the issue further,
rather than merely accepting the simple assertion of a division between two dis-
courses. The scientist can not withdraw from these claims, at least not without criti-
cal self-examination of how his or her scientific work relates to these claims and,
also, how and in what sense scientific scholarship could modify the meaning of these
claims. Part of this critical self-examination is a rethinking of the nature and concep-
tual underpinnings of the respective types of scientific inquiry on which biblical
scholarship is based. Becking, to be sure, illustrates this type of conceptual self-
examination when he resists modern positivistic approaches according to which
Jeremiah would “fade away into the dusky twilight of history.” Instead, he joins
Brueggemann when he says that every historical presentation is both mediation and
construction. The element of mediation is the part that manifests how normative and
existential claims are present in the text and exert their influence on subsequent tra-
ditions and on the readers in these traditions.
NOTE
1
This issue returns in another form in the chapter by Avi Ravitzky on the notion of the “holy land.” The
believer who is considering going back to the holy land basically confronts himself with the question of
what the conditions are under which it would be possible to stand the heat of divine presence.
CHAPTER 5
THE DYNAMICS OF PROPHECY IN THE WRITINGS
OF ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHEL
NEIL GILLMAN
Aaron Rabinowitz and Simon H. Rifkind Professor of Jewish Philosophy

Jewish Theological Seminary of America, New York
1. INTRODUCTION
It was my privilege to study with Abraham Joshua Heschel at the Jewish Theological
Seminary of America from 1954 to 1960. I was subsequently his colleague on the
Faculty of that school until his death in 1972, and I have spent over four decades
studying and teaching his thought. I have long been convinced that his early writings
on prophecy, together with the Hasidic environment into which he was born, served
as the major springboards for his mature theology. I have long wished for an oppor-
tunity to explore that relationship in a more rigorous manner.
My paper will have three sections. I will begin by locating Heschel’s writings on
prophecy in the context of his life’s work. Second, I will focus more narrowly on the
theological core of his thought, namely the concept of God that, Heschel believed,
served at the heart of the prophet’s self-awareness. Finally, I would like to speculate
on how Heschel might have dealt with some of the epistemological issues raised by
the phenomenon of prophecy.
2. HESCHEL’S THREE WORLDS
Abraham Joshua Heschel was arguably the most insightful Jewish theologian of the
twentieth century. He was born in Warsaw in 1907 and died in New York in late
December, 1972 at the age of 65. His career can be divided into three separate
phases, each of which can be identified with the three countries in which he spent his
life: first, his early years in Warsaw from his birth until 1928 when he left his home
as a young man of 21 to study first in Vilnius and later in Berlin; second, his stay in
Germany from 1929 to 1938 when he was expelled by the Nazi regime and returned
41
© 2007 Springer.
42 GILLMAN
to Poland until 1940 when, literally weeks before the Nazi invasion, he left for
America; and finally, the years of his maturity, teaching first at Hebrew Union Col-
lege in Cincinnati until 1946, and then at the Seminary in New York from 1946 until
his death in 1972.1
Each of these three worlds – Warsaw, Berlin, and America – left a decisive imprint
on his character and his thought. The hothouse world of Eastern European Hasidism
shaped the mystical core of his theology. It can be claimed that Heschel began as a
Hasid and remained a Hasid throughout his life. It was also there that he gained his
incredible mastery of the entire corpus of traditional Jewish biblical and rabbinic
learning together with medieval Jewish philosophy, kabbalah, the Jewish mystical tra-
dition, and finally Hasidism, the latest incarnation of the Jewish mystical tradition. He
simply knew it all. In Berlin, he was exposed to the world of Western scholarship, to
philosophy, science, and the academic study of religion, and to what was arguably the
most cosmopolitan Jewish community in Europe at that time. Finally, these two
worlds fused with the America of the postwar years where he published an extensive
series of scholarly and popular books in just about every area of Jewish thought in
English, Hebrew and Yiddish, and at the same time, became the leading Jewish liberal
activist on a wide range of social and political issues, pre-eminently the issues of race,
Jewish-Christian relations, and the opposition to the Viet Nam War.
It was in the second of these three periods, in Germany in the years 1930–1932,
that Heschel first devoted himself to the subject of prophecy. His doctoral disserta-
tion at the University of Berlin was titled, Das Prophetische Bewusstsein. That
dissertation was eventually published by the Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences in
Kracow in 1936 as Die Prophetie, and later in America in an expanded English
translation, in 1962, as The Prophets.
These dates are significant. In 1930, Heschel was a 23 year-old doctoral student.
His study of prophecy is his first extended scholarly work, and, apart from a popu-
lar biography of Maimonides which was published in 1936, it became his first
published scholarly book, though his bibliography lists over thirty monographs and
a number of Yiddish poems that were published between 1922 and 1936.2 As a doc-
toral dissertation, it was conceived of and written in the classic, western academic
format, with extensive footnotes referring the reader to the scholarly literature,
Jewish and otherwise, on the topic. Even in its later English version, The Prophets
is strikingly different than the books that Heschel published during that same period
and which established his reputation in the Jewish and Christian theological
communities. It is strikingly different in tone and style than Man is Not Alone
(1951) and God in Search of Man (1956), his two major theological statements, or
The Sabbath (1951), still his most widely-read book, all written in the poetic style
for which he became renowned. The Prophets, in contrast, remains the most
classically academic of his books.
But for all of its overtly scholarly format, The Prophets is a passionate book. It has
a thesis, in the technical sense of that term, and this thesis is advanced with feeling
and with power. It is also in its own way a highly personal book. It may have
begun as an academic exercise but Heschel’s choice of that topic for his doctoral
THE DYNAMICS OF PROPHECY 43
dissertation was far from accidental. In the television interview that Heschel granted
just weeks before his death, he remarks that his decision to work on the expanded
English version of the book, precisely in the 1960’s, at the height of the uproar over
the Viet Nam war and in the midst of the racial crisis in America, was intended to be
a calculated political and spiritual statement. He clearly felt that America needed to
hear a prophetic voice and he was determined to serve as that voice.
3. THE GOD OF THE PROPHETS
Heschel’s study of prophecy is an attempt to penetrate the prophetic consciousness

on its own terms. He systematically rejects all attempts to reduce the prophetic expe-
rience to simple humanism, to self-delusion, or to a literary fiction. He insists that we
take at face value, the prophets’ claim that they were speaking God’s word. What he
provides is a phenomenology of the prophetic mind-set. But the work is also his first
serious theological inquiry, and it touches upon just about every detail of his later
theological writings. He places God at the heart of the prophet’s self-awareness, and
then asks, what does this experience tell us about the God of Israel, about the
prophetic image of God? At a certain point in Israelite history, over a span of about
three centuries, a group of men claimed to be speaking in the name of the God of
Israel and delivered God’s message to their community. How did they understand
their role? And what kind of a God is it who appoints prophets?
The term that Heschel settles upon to characterize the character of the God of the
prophets is “the God of pathos.” The four central chapters in the English version of
the book – a total of about 60 pages – deal with his understanding of that term. At
least three other chapters allude to it, and the book as a whole concludes with an
appendix titled “Note on the Meaning of Pathos,” in which the author reviews the
history of the various uses of that term from Aristotle and Cicero through Hegel and
Northrop Frye, most of which, he notes, differ from the way in which he uses the
term.3 It is abundantly clear, then, that the term is central to Heschel and that he has
a great stake in our proper understanding of what he means by it.
What does he mean by the divine pathos? This is his first attempt at a definition.
“To the prophet . . ., God does not reveal Himself in an abstract absoluteness, but in a personal and intimate
relation to the world. He does not simply command and expect obedience; He is also moved and affected
by what happens in the world, and reacts accordingly. Events and human actions arouse in Him joy or sor-
row, pleasure or wrath. He is not conceived as judging the world in detachment. He reacts in an intimate
and subjective manner, and thus determines the value of events. . . . (M)an’s deeds may move Him, affect
Him, grieve Him . . ., gladden and please Him. This notion that God can be intimately affected, that He pos-
sesses not merely intelligence and will, but also pathos, . . . defines the prophetic consciousness of God.”4
Using a metaphor from music, Heschel claims that pathos is “the ground tone” of all
God’s relationships to the world, the attitude or stance that underlies all other divine
attitudes.5 To use a more popular term, underlying the prophetic consciousness and
inspiring all prophetic activity is the assumption that God cares–God cares, person-
ally and passionately, about the Jewish people, about humanity, about human civi-
lizations and history, indeed about all of God’s creation.
44 GILLMAN
Heschel is very much aware of the scandalous nature of this image of God, partic-
ularly for the philosophical and conventional religious mind-set. He is amply aware
of the distinction between the God of the philosophers and the God of Abraham,
Isaac and Jacob, and of the distinction between the “living” God and the “idea” of
God. This awareness impels him to initiate a sustained inquiry into the history of
how God has been imaged in the literature of philosophy and religion. This forms the
scholarly core of his book; it remains the most sustained scholarly inquiry in all of
Heschel’s writings and it exhibits the incredible range of Heschel’s philosophical
learning. His purpose is to recover what he understands to be the “biblical God,” to
claim that this image has to be taken seriously, and that this biblical image of God
should enjoy the same serious consideration as the God of the philosophers. In
effect, Heschel sends us back to the Bible and urges us to read the Bible on its own
terms, not colored by our exposure to philosophical speculation. Why, he asks
rhetorically, should we assume that the God of the prophets is inherently less sophis-
ticated, less worthy of intellectual approbation, than the God of the philosophers?
Allow me to outline briefly, the main arguments in this sustained inquiry. In trying
to isolate these points, I encountered once again, my enduring frustration in trying to
teach Heschel. Even in this, his most scholarly book, Heschel does not write in a
classic academic style. He does not pursue a vectorial argument, going from point
one to point two, then to points three and four, and onward. He does not write in a
straight line, where the argument builds from assumptions to conclusions. Instead,
he writes in a spiral form, where a central point is made early on, then is dropped,
then reoccurs, then is dropped again, only to reappear in a new form, enriched by
what has come in between. I advise my students who are reading Heschel for the first
time: If you don’t understand a point, never drop out; just move on; it will return,
again and again. Eventually, you will catch on!
First, pathos is a relational term; it is a statement, not about God in God’s essence, but
about God’s relation to humanity. It therefore locates the human person within the range
of God’s concern. It also brings history into the heart of God’s concerns. The prophetic
God is involved in human history. Instead of viewing God as the object of human
inquiry, as it is in the philosophical enterprise, Heschel claims that in prophecy, human-
ity becomes worthy of serving as the object of God’s perception. The roles are reversed.
Second, pathos is a dynamic term, in contrast, for example, to covenant which he
claims is a static term. If covenant defines God’s relation with humanity, there are
only two possibilities: either the covenant is upheld or it is dissolved. In contrast,
pathos allows for a dynamic multiplicity of relationships, precisely the multiplicity
of relations captured in the biblical narrative where God appears as in turn hopeful
about humanity, then frustrated, then yearning, pleased, angry, resigned, and then
hopeful again, only to become frustrated once again.
Third, pathos separates the biblical God from the philosophical God as portrayed,
for example in Aristotle. For Aristotle, God is the unmoved mover, “. . . pure form,
eternal, wholly actual, immutable, immovable, self-sufficient, and wholly separated
from all else.”6 In contrast, Heschel will argue, the biblical God is “the most moved
mover.” “An apathetic and ascetic God would have struck biblical man with a sense,
not of dignity and grandeur, but rather of poverty and emptiness.”7 The biblical God
is needy, lonely, vulnerable. The God of the prophets can be hurt, for once we care
about someone, we have left ourselves open to being hurt by that person.
Fourth, the world ruled by the biblical God contrasts sharply with the notion of a
world ruled by fate, by some supreme force to which even the gods are subject, a
blind, primeval, determining power which ultimately governs all that happens on
earth and upon which even the gods are dependent, as in all forms of pagan religion.
In biblical religion, in contrast, nothing is predetermined. As God is free, so are we,
and we have the power to compel God to change every divine decree. The plans of
the biblical God can change, as people change. The biblical God creates the possi-
bility of repentance and return. The fate of the world, the fate of history rests on
human decisions. In the meantime, God waits.
Fifth, and finally, the notion of pathos affirms the legitimacy of the emotions. Heschel
undertakes an extended inquiry into the way in which philosophy has understood the
place of emotion in human life and in God. With manifold references to the scholarly
literature, he discusses the philosophical understanding of emotion as an expression
of passivity and as undignified, the elevation of reason over feelings, the affirmation
of apathy as more elevated than emotion, the history of mind-body dualism in philo-
sophical literature, and the place of emotion in the Bible and its anthropological impli-
cations. He concludes with this passage which, I confess, I continue to find one of the
most powerful in all of his writings:
“Is it more compatible with our notion of the grandeur of God to claim that He is emotionally blind to the
misery of man than profoundly moved? In order to conceive of God not as an onlooker but as a partici-
pant, to conceive of man not as an idea in the mind of God but as a concern, the category of divine pathos
is an indispensable implication. To the biblical mind, the conception of God as detached and unemotional
is totally alien.”8
In legitimizing God’s emotional life, Heschel at the same time legitimizes human
emotions. If God can get angry, so can we.
God’s anger poses a particular problem to many readers of the prophets and Heschel
devotes two entire chapters (chapters 16–17) to this issue. He understands that our
embarrassment at God’s anger stems from our discomfort with our own anger. Again,
he traces the long cultural history of anger and again, he tries to understand the precise
form in which anger appears within God’s pathos. For anger, he proposes to substitute
the term “righteous indignation”9 which he opposes to indifference. He notes how thin
is the line between anger and love, that in fact, anger is often an expression of love. The
God of the prophets “. . . is not indifferent to evil.”10 But God’s anger is contingent, reac-
tive, conditional, and always momentary–in contrast to God’s love which is abiding.
4. HESCHEL’S SOURCES
Another of my enduring frustrations in studying Heschel’s writings is his reluctance

to acknowledge the thinkers or the books that influenced his own thought. In trying
to trace the influences that led him to formulate the notion of divine pathos, I am
indulging in a measure of speculation.
46 GILLMAN
My sense is that there are three such influences, two of them from his earliest
years and the third, from his maturity. The first of these lies in Lurianic mysticism
which shaped the Hasidic world into which Heschel was born. Lurianic kabbalah is
a rich and complex body of mystical speculation which I can only begin to capture in
these brief remarks.
Isaac Luria was a seminal thinker who lived in Safed, Palestine in the 16th century
and who promulgated a myth of cosmology and redemption that transformed and
transfixed the Jewish world for generations. One of the cornerstones of Lurianic
cosmology is a myth of creation by emanation. Here, Luria departs radically from
the apparent plain sense of the biblical notion of creation. In Genesis, God is
described as creating a world that is separate and apart from God. Eventually, in the
post-biblical tradition, this led to the notion that God created the world ex nihilo,
literally “out of nothing,” though this is not precisely the plain sense of Genesis,
chapter 1. An exploration of this issue would, however, take us far afield.11
In place of the biblical account of creation, Luria taught that God created the
world by emanation out of what may crudely be called God’s own being. God
does not abide outside of, apart from, or independent of the created world.
Instead, creation as a whole is imbued with the presence of God. This notion
skirts one of the classical Jewish heresies, namely pantheism. But Luria avoids
that heresy by nearly tumbling into another possible heresy, namely that of dual-
ism. He suggests that one dimension of God, God as Ein Sof, God as Infinity, the
transcendent or hidden God, the deus absconditus, persists independently of that
dimension of God that is identified with the created world and which is conven-
tionally called the Shekhina, the immanent God, that aspect of God as present in
and throughout creation.12
This notion of God as immanent in creation transformed Jewish thought and
became one of the core theological assumptions of Hasidism which reigned among
Eastern European Jewry from the 18th century to our own day. Heschel was born into
this world; he traced his ancestry to the circle of Hasidic masters surrounding the
founder of Hasidism, Rabbi Israel Ba’al Shem Tov (roughly 1700–1760).13 Heschel’s
father was a Hasidic rabbi and Heschel himself had been designated to inherit the
leadership of his father’s community until he decided to leave Warsaw to study in
Berlin. He imbibed Hasidism from the cradle. But the notion that God is everywhere
to be perceived, in the most intimate and immediate dimensions of reality, is at the
core of the notion of the divine pathos.
The second influence is much easier to trace. It lies simply in Heschel’s study of
Scripture, which he read from his infancy and which he encountered without any of
the philosophical assumptions that guide the reading of those of us who begin with a
western education. Heschel encountered western culture later in life. At the outset,
he read the Bible on its own terms, and his encounter with the biblical image of God
led him to the immediate conclusion that God was intimately involved with all of
history, and that God cared passionately about the world and about all of creation.
That conclusion required no great leap. It was simply obvious, present in every verse
of the Bible. When we read these biblical passages, we have to overcome our
philosophical assumptions. Heschel had nothing to overcome. He simply read what

was there. What other conclusion could he possibly derive?
The third influence was his own gradual, emerging passion for social justice. That
message too he found in prophetic literature, but he also discovered it in himself dur-
ing his stay as a Jew in Germany in the 1930’s, and it flowered in America in his
encounter with American racism and with the Viet Nam war which he believed was
nothing less than a holocaust perpetrated by America on innocent women and chil-
dren. He used to ask in class, “What would Isaiah do if he lived in America in the
1960’s? What would he say about racism? What would he say about this war in
which America was systematically killing widows and orphans? What would he say
about poverty? About oppression?” As it was inconceivable to the young Heschel
that he himself could be indifferent to what was going on in the world about him, it
was simply inconceivable to him that God would be indifferent to the course of
20th century history. But then what does this tell us about God? 14
5. GOD’S PATHOS IN HESCHEL’S MATURE THEOLOGY
I claimed, at the outset, that Heschel’s notion of divine pathos eventually served as
the cornerstone of his later, mature constructive theology. In teaching Heschel,
I insist that my students begin their reading of the later Heschel by studying the
chapters on pathos in The Prophets. For evidence of that influence, simply look at
the titles of his two major books, first Man is Not Alone (Heschel, 1951), and then,
God in Search of Man (Heschel, 1955). Between these two, he published a collection
of papers on prayer and symbolism which he titled Man’s Quest for God (Heschel,
1954). His very use of these titles assumes a God who is in intimate relationship with
humanity.
But it is not simply a matter of titles. The core of both of these studies is Heschel’s
description of religious experience. He views it as transactional, as demanding both
an active or aggressive revelatory role by God and an equally aggressive perceiving
role by human beings. Heschel uses various terms to characterize these mutual
roles – his terminology is never precise – but for the human role, he settles on “radi-
cal amazement,” and for the divine role, he reverts to “pathos.” By “radical amaze-
ment” he means, as the literal meaning of the term radical implies, a stance of “root”
amazement, a stance that takes nothing in the world for granted, that views the world
in perpetual wonder. In one of his formulations, he characterizes this stance as one of
wonder over the fact that there are facts in the first place. Or, again, it is a stance that
views a grain of sand as a drama.
When we view the world through the eyes of radical amazement, what we per-
ceive is a world infused with the presence of God, a God who stands not in detach-
ment from the world, but who is present everywhere, who cries for attention – not
only in history but even in nature as well, a God who pursues us, a God who is
perpetually in search of human acknowledgment. This is partly the Shekhina of Luri-
anic kabbalah, that dimension of God present throughout creation. But it is also the
divine pathos of The Prophets, now extended and reconceptualized into a driving,
48 GILLMAN
aggressive, forceful power that demands recognition – though for the better part of
our lives, that divine presence is obscured, hidden, by the overwhelming grayness
that is so characteristic of the way we are educated to encounter the world. To use
another Hasidic metaphor, we have to learn to see through the shells that encase the
natural world.
The God that permeates all of creation is the same God that appoints prophets.
The biblical God has this quality of self-transcendence which expresses itself both in
the act of creation and in prophecy. If, as Heschel claims, man is not alone, then, nei-
ther is God alone. This God is in need of a world, in need of man, in need of recog-
nition by humanity. This God is then also “in search of man” and the prophet is the
most vivid expression of this divine need.
Much of the time this divine need is frustrated. But then there are those rare moments
of illumination, when “heaven and earth kiss . . .,” moments in which “. . . there is a
lifting of the veil at the horizon of the known, opening a vision of what is eternal in
time.”15 These moments are pre-symbolic, pre-conceptual, and universal because they
precede verbal, cerebral, and hence creedal formulation. They are, simply put, intuitive
to human nature as such. All of the institutions of religion are designed to create settings
where these rare moments may occur and to treasure their memories through the gray-
ness of the in-between.16
6. HESCHEL’S EPISTEMOLOGY
A few words, now, on the epistemological issues raised by this understanding of

prophecy and the religious experience. One cannot read prophetic literature without
wondering how the community was to know who was the true prophet and who, the
false prophet. The biblical test is articulated in Deuteronomy 18:21–22: “(I)f the
prophet speaks in the name of the Lord and the oracle does not come true, that oracle
was not spoken by the Lord; the prophet has uttered it presumptuously: do not stand
in dread of him.” That test is quite useless before the fact–but that is precisely when
the question arises. Besides, we have at least one biblical prophet–Jonah–whose
prophecy did not come true, precisely because his prophecy was attended to, i.e. he
was Israel’s only successful prophet. Nineveh repented and God changed His
mind. That Jonah was furious at God for making him look like a false prophet
(Jonah 4:1–2), exposes the deuteronomic test as singularly futile.
Heschel does not deal with this epistemological issue in The Prophets, but he does
deal with it in his later theological writings in his typically unsystematic way. His
view can be summarized in his claim that God has to be understood as an “ontologi-
cal presupposition.”17 By this he means that God can never emerge as the conclu-
sion of an inquiry, but rather as its assumption, as its presupposition. God’s very
being–what we sometimes call crudely, “the existence of God”–has to be presup-
posed. If God is not present at the outset, God will never emerge at the end.
Let us put this in another way. We never experience the outside world as it really
is, objectively. We construct our experience of the world; we bring our own
linguistic, educational, gender, and cultural backgrounds, even our biochemical
make-up with us as we shape our experience of the world. To use some obvious
examples, black Americans and white Americans literally see a different America,
as do Israelis and Palestinians who see a different Middle-East. Which is the “real”
America? Is there a “real” America? We never capture reality as it is. Rather, we
construct reality.
My sense is that believers and non-believers “see,” that is, construct, a different
world out of the “out there.” To use another metaphor, they use a different set of spec-
tacles. When Heschel refers to God as an ontological presupposition, he says that the
believer– and primarily the prophet, for our purposes here–begins with the prior con-
viction that there is a God in the world, that this God cares about the world, and that
God has selected this prophet to speak to the world on God’s behalf. The divine
pathos, then, is one dimension of the spectacles with which the prophet constructs his
reality. Or, to quote a Hasidic maxim, “Where is God? Wherever you let God in!” To
seek to verify the claim that God cares for the world is precisely to miss the point; the
experience of God’s presence, of God’s demand, is infinitely more overwhelming
than any proof. The prophet’s experience of God’s call is self-verifying.18
I concede that this “constructivist” epistemology is much more my own extension
of Heschel’s thought than his own personal conclusions. But as an attempt to justify
this extension, it is clear that Heschel dismisses the entire issue of verification as
simply illegitimate for anyone who has had the direct, unmediated, and overwhelm-
ing experience of God’s presence – as did the prophet. To question the objective real-
ity of that experience, even to harbor the suspicion that it may be purely subjective
or, even worse, illusory, is, however unwittingly, to deny the experience itself.
“This then is the order in our thinking and existence: The ultimate or God comes first and our reasoning
about Him second. Metaphysical speculation has reversed the order: reasoning comes first and the ques-
tion about His reality second; either He is proved or He is not real. However, just as there is no thinking
about the world without the premise of the reality of the world, there can be no thinking about God with-
out the premise of the realness of God.”19
The prophet never questions the reality of the God who speaks to him. Nor should
the believer.
This notion of pathos is Heschel’s metaphor for God, his image of how this
transcendent, fundamentally unknown and unknowable God, appears to the
prophet. It is the prophet’s perception of God, more than God’s self-perception.
My own theological assumptions force me to conclude that no human being
knows what God is in God’s essence – that is what makes God, God, and me, a
simple human being. But again, I hasten to add that on this point, I write more
for myself, not for Heschel. In many ways, Heschel’s epistemology is an anti-
epistemology, a denial of the very possibility of human beings knowing anything
objectively about God. It is one of those many issues that I would have loved to
pursue with Heschel, possibly to encourage him to confront some of the many
issues that this approach raises.
The Bible records a rich, complex and fluid system of metaphors to capture God’s
nature, reflecting the equally rich, complex and fluid nature of one community’s
experience of God over many generations. Heschel’s divine pathos captures the
50 GILLMAN
ground tone of this system – the underlying image that underlies all of the remaining
more specific images in which God appears to this community. All of these other
images – shepherd, judge, parent, lover, spouse, rock, man-of-war and the rest – all
of these assume what Heschel tries to capture in the term pathos.
7. CONCLUSION
I suggested, at the outset, that Heschel’s notion of divine pathos is both the impetus
for his understanding of prophecy and also the core of his own mature theological
inquiry. Ultimately, these two functions are one, for the prophet’s self-understanding
constitutes his own implicit theology and his implicit theology is Heschel’s. More
than any other 20th century Jewish theologian – certainly more than Martin Buber,
Franz Rosenzweig, or Mordecai Kaplan, to isolate the three other theological giants
of the period – Heschel compels us to return to the Bible, to recapture biblical cate-
gories and to take them seriously.
Without the divine pathos, there would be no prophecy, but then, neither would
there be a Bible, or a people of Israel, or Torah, or covenant, or Jewish religion. The
foundation of the entire enterprise is the awareness of a God who cares passionately
for the world, for humanity, even for the cosmos as a whole.
Even more, my personal recollection of Heschel, traversing the country, speaking
out against war, racism, poverty and oppression, enables me, in my imagination, to
recapture the image of Amos or Isaiah preaching the identical messages, centuries
ago. To many Americans who have only the slightest interest in theology, that image
of Heschel endures to this very day – and because of that, the prophets remain alive.
That may be his most enduring legacy.
But this writer is interested in theology. At various points in this paper, I have sug-
gested some of my personal frustrations with Heschel’s work, and there are others
that I have discussed elsewhere. What remains for me, the very words with which
I began, is his remarkably insightful sensitivity to religious experience. He was a
creative theologian, a brilliant analyst of traditional Judaism, and a master of the
classical literature. Above all, he was superb phenomenologist of religion. He is at
his very best when he traces the contours of the religious experience, the wrestling
that occurs when God and human beings search, find, lose and then rediscover each
other once again. And nowhere does this skill emerge more clearly than in his work
on prophecy. It displays Heschel at his very best.
NOTES
1
See the first volume of a projected two-volume biography of Heschel’s life by Edward K. Kaplan and
Samuel H. Dresner (Kaplan & Dresner, 1998). This first volume takes Heschel from his birth to his
arrival in America in 1940. The second volume authored by Kaplan alone–Dr. Dresner passed away in
2000 – is in preparation.
2
A “selected” bibliography of Heschel’s writings can be found in Kaplan and Dresner (1998), p. 364ff.
3
All of my page references to The Prophets (Heschel, 1962) come from the original hardcover edition
published by The Jewish Publication Society of America in 1962. The pertinent chapters are 12–18.
The Appendix is on p. 498ff. Readers should note that the paper edition of the book is in two volumes
and in this edition both chapter numbers and the pagination differ.
4
Heschel (1962), pp. 223–224.
5
Heschel (1962), p. 223.
6
Heschel (1962), p. 234.
7
Heschel (1962), pp. 258–259.
8
Heschel (1962), p. 257.
9
Heschel (1962), p. 283.
10
Heschel (1962), p. 284.
11
The plain sense of Genesis 1 seems to suggest that according to this version of creation, God’s creation
was more a matter of bringing order out of a pre-existing anarchy, rather than creating something out of
nothing.
12
For a masterful overview of the teachings of Isaac Luria, see Gershom Scholem (1941), Seventh
Lecture.
13
Heschel’s Hasidic roots are traced in Kaplan and Dresner (1998), pp. xi–xiii and p. 2ff.
14
An anthology of Heschel’s writings on social and political issues can be found in Heschel (1966).
15
Heschel’s most extensive discussion of religious experience is in his God in search of man (Heschel,
1955).
16
Heschel (1955), p. 138.
17
The term appears in The prophets (Heschel, 1962), p. 260, and in God in search of man (Heschel,
1955), p. 114ff.
18
The clearest statement of these claims is in God in search of man (Heschel, 1955), p. 114ff. See in
particular, pp. 120–122.
19
Ibidem. For a more extended discussion of this issue, see: Gillman (1998).
REFERENCES
Gillman, N. (1998). Epistemological tensions in Heschel’s thought. Conservative Judaism Journal, 50(2–3),
77–83.
Heschel, A. J. (1951). Man is not alone. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux.
Heschel, A. J. (1954). Man’s quest for God. New York: Scribner.
Heschel, A. J. (1955). God in search of man. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux.
Heschel, A. J. (1962). The prophets. Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society of America.
Heschel, A. J. (1966). The insecurity of freedom: Essays on human existence. New York: Farrar, Straus
and Giroux.
Kaplan, E. K., & Dresner, S. H. (1998). Abraham Joshua Heschel: Prophetic witness. Volume I. New
Haven: Yale University Press.
Scholem, G. (1941). Major trends in Jewish mysticism. New York: Schocken Books.
CHAPTER 6
THE PROPHETS AS PERSONS
BOB BECKING
Utrecht University, The Netherlands
1. INTRODUCTION
What is a prophet? Many people have in their mind-set one of the two following
concepts of a ‘prophet’.
1. The ‘Martin Luther King’-idea. A prophet is a person who – guided by divine
inspiration, or allegedly so – is more than anyone else in his surroundings able to
X-ray the current situation and – on that basis – to design the fabrics of a world
to come.
2. The more traditional idea, held both by Jews and Christians that prophets are to be
construed as mediators foretelling the future. To Christians prophets were of great
importance since they were construed as persons who sketched the outline of the
life and death of Jesus Messiah.
Pivotal to both positions is the concept that prophecy is a religious phenomenon sui
generis. In other words a prophet is seen as a special person and prophecy as a reli-
gious feature that has no connection with other religious features. Prophets are seen
as unique persons. Modern research, both by biblical scholars and by orientalists,
has broadened the scope on prophets and prophecy. Prophecy is now generally seen
as part of the Ancient Near Eastern system of divination. (Cryer, 1994)
It is not very easy to give a definition of divination. It is a set of elements based
in a magic conception of the world. We, generally, construe the world as disen-
chanted. Persons living in the Ancient Near East believed that the world was full
of signs and signals that hinted at the will of the gods. Prophecy was just one of
the channels to these signs (see basically Cryer, 1994). This position has two
implications.
First, the somewhat biased view that in the Hebrew Bible we find the real
prophets, while in Israel’s context we find a variety of astrologers, omen-readers,
and other mantists, now has to be abandoned. Texts from the archives of the Old
53
© 2007 Springer.
54 BECKING
Babylonian city of Mari, some Neo-Assyrian inscriptions from the reign of the kings
Esarhaddon and Ashurbanipal (seventh century BCE), as well as some other texts
have shown that prophecy is a common Ancient Near Eastern means of divine com-
munication. On the other hand, within the Hebrew Bible traces of mantic practices
can be found.1
Second, prophetic texts are not so much future related but should be construed as
related to their own specific times including its troubles and needs. A basic feeling of
uncertainty about one’s life has been the fertile ground for divination.
This change of perspective implies that – from a scholarly point of view – I will
treat all Ancient Near Eastern prophets alike. Whether they came from Mari, Arbela,
Anathot or Jerusalem, they represent an intriguing phenomenon. When it would
come to claims regarding my personal faith, I would prefer the prophets from the
Hebrew Bible, but that would be another discourse. Although there are many differ-
ences to be found between the members of the ‘company of prophets’, various fea-
tures are shared by them. Therefore, I dare to discuss them using three labels:
‘frenziness’, ‘shamanism’, and ‘(manic-)depressive’. In doing so, I am trying to
uncover some psychological aspects from these Biblical (and Ancient Near Eastern)
figures.
2. FRENZINESS
At first sight, it might seem strange to talk about prophets and prophecy in terms of
frenziness or possession. The aloofness to do so is caused by the fact that greater
parts of the prophetic books in the Hebrew Bible contain oracles in poetic form. The
message of the Israelite and Judaean prophets finally took the form of texts, or books
if you prefer, with high literary quality. That feature is indeed far away from the idea
of prophets as raving individuals receiving their divine revelations when in an ecsta-
tic state. But the form of the final phrasing of the prophetic message does not hint at
the character of the process that took place while receiving the ‘message’. The Old
Testament is not very informative on this process. We are told about dreams and
visions. Nevertheless, there are a few glimpses that hint at the presence of ecstatic
forms of receiving the divine message. Isaiah 6, where Isaiah relates his prophetic
call while in the Jerusalem temple, can be read as a text narrating the transformation
of the prophet into a different mental situation. Jeremiah 31:26, in the middle of a
series of oracles, reads: ‘Thereupon I awoke and looked, and my sleep was pleasant
to me’. This text indicates that the prophet has been ‘elsewhere’. Elements of
possession are narrated in 1 Samuel 10:10–13 (see also texts like Numbers
11:24–30; 1 Samuel 19:20; 1 Kings 22:10; Joel 3:1):
When they were going from there to Gibeah, a band of prophets met him [= king Saul]; and the spirit of
God possessed him, and he fell into a prophetic frenzy along with them. When all who knew him before
saw how he prophesied with the prophets, the people said to one another, “What has come over the son of
Kish? Is Saul also among the prophets?” A man of the place answered, “And who is their father?” There-
fore it became a proverb, “Is Saul also among the prophets?” When his prophetic frenzy had ended, he
went home.
THE PROPHETS AS PERSONS 55
In texts from the context of scripture the theme of frenziness or possession is more
explicit. This is especially true for the prophetic figures we come across in inscrip-
tions from pre-Islamic Arabia (see most recently Hämeen-Anttila, 2000). Of great
interest here are the designations for the prophets in the Mari letters and the
Neo-Assyrian archive. The most common indicator in the Mari texts for a person
with – what we would call – ‘prophetic behaviour’ is muhhum. In the neo-Assyrian
texts these persons are mainly called mahhû/mahhutu or raggimu/raggintu the sec-
ond word being the more colloquial variant. Etymologically these Akkadian words
are to be derived from the roots mahû, ‘to become crazy; to go into frenzy’, and
ragāmu, ‘to cry out; to proclaim’.2 Etymology, though informative, is, however, a
restricted supplier of meaning. The meaning of a word only comes into existence
when used in an actual phrase. In the letters reporting prophecy from Mari, the
phrase ‘(s)he went into a frenzy’ regularly occurs:
Ahatum, a slave girl of Dagan-Malik, went into frenzy and spoke. . . .3
The exact nature of the frenzy in this case is, unfortunately, not revealed. From
Mesopotamian and other Ancient Near Eastern texts, however, it becomes clear that
a whole set of means were at hand: whipping oneself to the point of fainting; sting-
ing oneself with pointed spindles; cutting oneself with swords and flint knives etc.
All these acts could have an emotional outburst as their result.
In the Neo-Assyrian archive we find, for instance, a report to the palace in which
the verb ragāmu, ‘to cry out’, occurs frequently as description of the ‘prophetic’ act.
In a letter to King Esarhaddon, written 671 BCE by a certain Mar-Issar, then royal
agent in Babylonia temporarily under Assyrian rule, mention is made of the death
and burial of a substitute king. Substitute kings were appointed in order to cheat the
gods and to protect the king from heavenly wrath and divine terror. But in this letter
it is written that a prophetess had disturbed a meeting of the assembly of the country
and had cried out in loud voice to the substitute king then still alive: ‘You will take
over kingship!’. This message as well as the way it was delivered scared the inhabi-
tants of Babylon. Mar-Issar, however, being a good diplomat found ways to calm
down the emotions.4
The Neo-Assyrian prophets are best classified as persons living in an ambiguous
double loyalty. On the one hand, the royal court whose interest it was to receive reli-
able and trustworthy messages from the divine realm employed them. On the other
hand they were associated with persons in and around the temple of the goddess
Ishtar of Arbela, whose more or less frenzied behaviour was perceived as odd by the
majority of the people. They were torn between two lovers and it was, in my opinion,
this double loyalty that should be seen as fertile soil for their frenzy behaviour
(see also Nissinen, 2000).
As said or implied all, or almost all, the Neo-Assyrian prophets were related to the
goddess Ishtar of Arbela. The ‘odd behaviour’ of these prophets should be construed
as based on a process of identification with this goddess. As Martti Nissinen puts it:
‘As proclaimers of the word of Ištar, the prophets acted as Ištar. The primary role of
the prophets as intermediaries between the divine and the human spheres reflects the
56 BECKING
role of Ištar/Mulissu as the mediator between the gods and the king . . .’.5 (Nissinen,
2000: 96). In other words the final aim for all these ‘prophets’ would be a unification
with Ishtar.6 (Parpola, 1998: xxxiv).
So far, I have referred to Ishtar as a goddess, but basically she is an androgynous
deity in which the differences of the sexes have been overcome. Throughout the
three millennia of religious devotion known to us from Sumer and Akkad, from
Babylonia and Assyria Ishtar is related to concepts of shifts in gender roles. In an
ancient Sumerian hymn to Inanna we read:
May she (= Inanna/Ishtar) change the right side into the left side
Dress him in the dress of a woman
Place the speech of a woman in his mouth
And give him a spindle and a hair-clasp.7
In the phrase ‘to change the right side into the left side’ the words ‘right’ and ‘left’
should be construed as euphemisms for ‘male’ and ‘female’. The ‘he’ character in
this strophe refers to a male cult functionary of Ishtar, a so-called kurgarru or
asinnu. Such functionaries were known as being dressed and as acting like women.
In the Neo-Assyrian archives some texts hint at a quite fundamental personal
shift. Some prophets seem to change their gender-role during the period of ecstasy.
The Neo-Assyrian prophets and prophecies are known to us, since they were col-
lected and archived on large tablets. These tablets contain sets of prophecies with
the name of the prophet included. I would like to pay attention to two persons here:
Bayâ and Illusa-amur. There is something strange with them. Bayâ occurs in the
following oracle:
ša pi-i MÍ.ba-ia-a DUMU URU.arba-ìl
By the mouth of the woman Baya, son of Arbela.8
The female determinative MÍ before the personal name clearly hints at a female
person. The name Bayâ is listed elsewhere as referring to women9 (Parpola, 1998:il)
and to men.10 The logogram DUMU, ‘son’, marks Bayâ as a male person coming
from the city of Arbela. He is of an unclear gender. With Illusa-amur – the name
means ‘I have seen her godhead’, probably not a name given at birth – something
comparable is at stake. Although the name is feminine, the grammatical construction
indicating the place of birth, the gentilic adjective, refers clearly to a masculine
person. This indistinctness of the gender of the prophets can be interpreted as a sign
that they were ‘men turned into women’. Parpola offered the somewhat speculative
view that this was the result of an act of self-castration.11 The state of ‘men turned
into women’ could also be interpreted as an indication that they reached their aim of
being an androgynous person, which makes them perfect for their role as mouth-
piece of the goddess Ishtar.
I am not implying that all prophets from the ancient Near East were cast in an
indistinct gender role. That view would contradict the available evidence. I displayed
the androgynous persons Bayâ and Illusa-amur as illustration of the deeper motifs
behind the frenziness or ‘odd behaviour’ of so many ecstatics and prophets from the
Ancient Near East: the wish to be a pure and adequate vessel for the divine message.
3. SHAMANISM
At first sight, it might sound strange to discuss Shamanism in a discourse on Bib-

lical and Ancient Near Eastern prophets, since most of us would construe Shaman-
ism as a feature from a culture quite different from the Ancient Near East.
However, I will argue that the `îš hā’elohîm, ‘the men of God’, Elijah and Elisha,
performed roles that can be construed as analogous to the roles of the Shamans in
Siberia and Alaska.
Elijah and Elisha allegedly uttered their prophecies in the ninth century BCE. This
implies that they operated during a period of great changes in Ancient Israel as can
be detected from the archaeological evidence, in combination with the general
knowledge on the Ancient Near East. On the level of longe durée a shift in the social
organization in Ancient Israel is observable during Iron Age II. This shift basically is
economic. The organization of the production of goods (e.g., food; clothing; tools)
gradually changed from ‘domestic’ or ‘kinship-related’ into a more tributary system.
In other words a situation in which people ‘raised what they ate and ate what they
raised’ changed gradually into a production of surplus to satisfy the needs of a
dominant ruling class that might have been subordinate to international power.
A ‘domestic’ economy tends to be egalitarian, since that is an appropriate way to
survive and to endure. Tributary societies are by implication not egalitarian.
A minority group is dominant over the society and wants to continue and extend its
control (see McNutt, 1999).
The shift from one form to the other has been provoked by the contact that
Israel had with competitive (e.g., Phoenicia and Syria) and dominant (Assyria)
powers during Iron Age II. To use an obvious anachronism: Israel became part of
a process of globalisation. I prefer to label this shift in socio-economic terms
above a depiction of a more administrative character, such as a change from ‘seg-
mentary society’ to ‘state’, or from ‘tribal organisation’ to ‘monarchy’, since
changes in the organization of the production of goods is more fundamental than
a shift in the accompanying administration. The latter can be seen as a conse-
quence of the former. To both types symbol systems are related which do not
match. I will come to that later.
Before that I will have a quick look at the textual organization in 1 Kings 21, the
well-known story on the vineyard of Naboth. This story contains two parts that are
interrelated (Becking, 2000).
1 Kings 21:1–16 can be seen as a coherent and well-composed narrative. It is a
story about acquisition. The main narrative program can be labelled as follows:
The king, who at the beginning of the story is not the owner of the vineyard adja-
cent to his palace, acquires this piece of land. Just when Naboth loses both his
vineyard and his life. He could have saved his life by agreeing to the proposal of
the king to exchange his vineyard for another piece of land or for money. But he
did not agree and that provoked the anguish of the king and the anger of Jezebel,
the queen. It is very important to note an embedded narrative program. King
Ahab wants to change the function of the vineyard into a gan yārāq. This change
implies that the piece of land will lose its agricultural function for a luxury one.12
58 BECKING
The prize for the acquisition is high: The loss of a man’s life and the shift in the
economic function of the piece of land.
The second part of the story shows that the prize for the acquisition has been too high.
This part has, as can be easily seen, two elements: A prophetic announcement of doom
(vss. 17–19) and royal repentance leading to a delay in the execution of the punishment
(vss. 27–29). Elijah has to reproach the king for economic and social misconduct. The
accusation in verse 19 runs: ‘Have you done murder and moreover taken possession?’ It
is interesting to question on what the king’s repentance and humiliation are based. Is it
mere self-defence? Is it solely an act to save one’s life? Or is there more at stake?
The deuteronomistic editors of the Book of Kings have deliberately changed the
point of the story. In the more original form of the story, Ahab’s misconduct was of
a social character. In editing the story and adding a few verses they changed the char-
acter of the conflict into a religious clash. The stress is now on sin and idolatry.
I already suggested that to societies based on different types of economic produc-
tion, different belief-systems or symbol-systems relate. I don’t have time to elaborate
on that here much. I will only make a few observations. In the more original version
of the story on Naboth’s vineyard glimpses of two symbol-systems are observable.
On the one side there are some features that function as symbols for a kinship-
related traditional local market economy. Most characteristic is the denotation of the
vineyard as a nahālā indicating that the piece of land belonged to the inherited acres
of Naboth’s family. Within the story it is only in direct speech uttered by Naboth that
the kèrèm is depicted as nahālā. The symbol expresses tradition and continuity and
the belief in God as the eventual owner of the land.13 Moreover, the depiction
nahālā, ‘ancestral property’, might suggest that the ancestors of Naboth were buried
on this piece of land and that the veneration of the ancestors yielded prosperity.14
On the other hand, some features in the story refer to a tributary economy. To
mention a few: (a) The concept of kèsèph, ‘silver; money’, used as a medium of
exchange; (b) The shift of the vineyard into a garden.
As for the characters in the story, apparently Naboth and Elijah are presented as
representatives of the traditional society while Jezebel obviously is in the other
camp. With regard to the role of Elijah, it is interesting to refer to an observation
made by Overholt. When traditional societies were socially and politically disorgan-
ised after the initial contact with Europeans, native shamans more than once reached
important positions in and from the traditional community helping them ‘to maintain
their distinct identity and worldview.’15This, in my view, is the case with Elijah and
Elisha too. Not only in the story on the vineyard of Naboth, but also elsewhere in the
Book of Kings these prophets are portrayed as persons that deliberately defend the
traditional values of a society that is slowly vanishing.
4. DEPRESSION AND THE CHARACTER OF JEREMIAH

Jeremiah is one of the most intriguing prophets in the Hebrew Bible. Reading
the Book of Jeremiah implies the encounter with a strong person. This impression
is based on the fact that in the Book of Jeremiah not only oracles have been
collected – some of doom and a few of salvation. The biblical book also contains
stories on the prophet – for instance, on his encounters with the royal court, his
imprisonment and his liberation. Very specific for the Book of Jeremiah is the
presence of ‘first person reports’: texts in which the prophet is presented in the first
person singular: ‘I did’; ‘I spoke’. Most famous are the ‘confessions of Jeremiah’.
How to read and how to construe these first person reports? Various options emerge.
We can read these reports in a naïve historical way: the texts are trustworthy reports
on actual deeds and thoughts of the historical Jeremiah.16 The historical-critical
approach advocates an interpretation in which a clear distinction is made between
the historical kernel of the book and the present form that emerged out of a process
of redaction and tradition. According to this approach we have to sift the text in order
to dig up the historical Jeremiah. A recent trend in biblical scholarship more or less
denies the possibility of reconstructing the historical Jeremiah. According to this
trend we have to accept that the Book of Jeremiah is an ideological construct from
the Persian Period (if not later). The picture of the prophet is not based on historical
information about a person living around 600 BCE, but a product of the mind of the
emerging Judaism.
These modernistic, positivistic approaches seem to close the possibility to say
anything about Jeremiah as a person since he seems to fade away into the dusky twi-
light of history. However, as Brueggemann correctly noted, ‘every historical presen-
tation of a person is a mediation and a construction.’17 To phrase the same idea
otherwise: any text is an interpretation of the past. This implies that the Book of Jere-
miah, whether it was written by him, by his scribe Baruch, or the final product of
complex redaction-history, is a specific perspective on the person, and since we can-
not check the information wrapped in the specific perspective, we have to deal with
the present text. So, when I use the personal name ‘Jeremiah’, it actually means: the
prophet as represented in the biblical book.
What portrait is pictured? The image of Jeremiah presented in this book is intrigu-
ing. Here we meet a person who was personally involved in the message he had to
bring which is as such a characteristic of a ‘true prophet’. We meet a person who is
suffering from the fact that he had to bring this message of doom to the people he
construes himself as a part of. We meet a person who is full of emotions as regards
his public appearance and the message he felt he had to convey. We do not meet a
cool-hearted person who like an engineer in a factory is laboring the divine machin-
ery as if he were not involved.
I cannot display the portrait of Jeremiah in full here. I would like to pay your
attention to one specific trait in the portrait. In Chapter 20 we read that Jeremiah is
imprisoned as a reaction to his prophecies of doom (vss. 1–2):
Now the priest Pashhur son of Immer,

who was chief officer in the house of YHWH,
heard Jeremiah prophesying these things.
Then Pashhur struck the prophet Jeremiah,
and put him in the stocks
that were in the upper Benjamin Gate of the house of YHWH.
60 BECKING
Jeremiah is released the next morning. Jeremiah answers this release with a very bit-
ter and unconditional prophecy of doom: Jerusalem will soon be captured and its
leaders will be taken away into captivity. This prophecy is also applied to Pashhur in
uncompromising words (vs. 6):
And you, Pashhur,
and all who live in your house,
shall go into captivity, and to Babylon you shall go;
there you shall die, and there you shall be buried,
you and all your friends, to whom you have prophesied falsely.
After this encounter a poem written in a first person singular style is placed. Here we
meet the inner world of the prophet since the emotions that were triggered by the
experience of imprisonment are displayed. Moreover, it should be noted that within
the composition of the Book of Jeremiah this poem (Jer. 20:7–20) is the concluding
pericope of the first set of oracles of Jeremiah. This implies that the poem can also be
read as some sort of hermeneutic key to the first part of the collection of Jeremiac
oracles. The poem under consideration consists in three parts:
• Utterance of acceptance: once and again YHWH has enticed Jeremiah in his
ambivalence towards his ministry to carry on despite all opposition (vss. 7–10);
• Exclamation of joy and faith: YHWH is with me (vss. 11–13);
• Expression of bitterness: I wish I had died in my cradle (vss. 14–20).
Jack Lundbom quite adequately labeled the first stanza as ‘the prison within’
(Lundbom, 1999: 851–59). The prison in which Jeremiah spent the night is mir-
rored by a prison within where Jeremiah is bound by his struggle between two
loyalties: (a) a loyalty towards his friends and his people and (b) a loyalty towards
YHWH. In this prison within as probably during the whole of his prophetic
career, Jeremiah moves hither and tither between the two poles just mentioned
(Jer. 20:8b–9).
For the word of YHWH has become for me
a reproach and derision all day long.
If I say,
“I will not mention him, or speak any more in his name,”
then within me there is something like a burning fire shut up in my bones;
I am weary with holding it in, and I cannot.
In this disbalance YHWH has forcefully enticed him to keep his prophetic role. This
implies that Jeremiah makes a choice to be loyal to the divine impetus. This choice
leads by itself to the theme of the second stanza. In the textual unit Jer. 20:11–13,
YHWH is depicted with metaphors of governance:
But YHWH is with me like a fearless warrior;
therefore my persecutors will stumble, and they will not prevail.
But YHWH is also described in terms that hint at a personal relationship between the
prophet and the divine being:
O YHWH of hosts, you test the righteous,
you see the heart and the mind.
The encounter with this intimate but strong God that delivered Jeremiah from the
prison within calls for a lyrical song of praise:
Sing to YHWH;
praise YHWH!
For he has delivered the life of the needy
from the hands of evildoers.
This summons for praise would have been a perfect ending of the Pashhur-episode.
If verse 13 would have been the final line of Chapter 20, then this episode could eas-
ily have been labeled: ‘From prison to praise’. However, the Psalm in Jeremiah 20
continues. In the beautiful, but bitter language of the last stanza word is given to an
emotion:
Cursed be the day on which I was born!
The day when my mother bore me, let it not be blessed!
Cursed be the man who brought the news to my father, saying,
“A child is born to you, a son,” making him very glad.
Let that man be like the cities that YHWH overthrew without pity;
let him hear a cry in the morning and an alarm at noon.
[Let that day be like . . .]18 because he did not kill me in the womb;
so my mother would have been my grave,
and her womb forever great.
Why did I come forth from the womb to see toil and sorrow,
and spend my days in shame?
There exists a giant leap between verses 13 and 14: from praise to depression. This
giant leap has been soothed by assuming that vss. 14ff. were part of a later redac-
tion.19 Such an assumption, however, only postpones the problem to the redactor: how
could he (or she) be so dumb to connect two unconnected pieces from the tradition?
Moreover, there is no linguistic argument for the alleged literary-critical operation
since both 7–13 and 14–18 are written in the same style and language. It would be
better not to bring down the tension, but to see both parts of the poem as utterances of
faith in tension,20 or even better: of a person in tension. This tension has been noticed
by the Rabbis, e.g., in Pesikta Rabbati 26:3–4. They, however, argued in such a way
that the tension is teased and in a way blurred in a complex network of references and
cross-references to Israel’s sinful behavior, as has been displayed by Bryna J. Levy in
her chapter in this volume.
I have noticed that Jeremiah was a person with a double loyalty, as were the
prophets from Mari and Assyria discussed above. This double loyalty is aggravated
by the two-sidedness of Jeremiah’s prophetic self-understanding. According to his
prophetic call in Chapter 1, he was appointed:
See, today I appoint you over nations and over kingdoms,
to pluck up and to pull down, to destroy and to overthrow,
to build and to plant.
In other words Jeremiah was not a prophet with a one-dimensional message, but a
prophet who had to utter oracles of doom as well as oracles of salvation. All this
leads me to the conviction that Jeremiah’s prophetic consciousness provoked a
62 BECKING
distortion of the balance inside. He himself was unable to restore this balance and
therefore he had to go through seasons of trustful resolution and periods of bitter
alienation.
5. CONCLUSION
It is not easy to summarize what has been said, since I have only dealt with some of
the problems involved. Had I chosen other examples, a slightly different picture might
have occurred. But I hope that I have made clear that the prophets from Ancient Israel
as well as from the Ancient Near East were persons of flesh and blood and not just
emotionless transmitters of divine messages. I hope that I also have made clear that
their being a prophet or being a diviner set them in a double loyalty that eventually
provoked a distortion of their prophetic personality. I am not claiming that such a dis-
tortion took place as a rule, but I hope that my examples have been convincing.
NOTES
1
Nissinen (1998); Petersen (2002), pp. 1–45.
2
See most recently Weippert (2002), p. 32.
3
ARM 26 214, pp. 6–7; see Durand (1988), pp. 442–443; Van der Toorn (2000), p. 78.
4
ABL 347 = SAA 10 352; see Nissinen (1998), pp. 70–80; Parpola (1993), pp. 288–289.
5
Nissinen (2000), p. 96.
6
Parpola (1998), p. xxxiv.
7
UM 29-16-229 ii 4f.; Sjöberg (1975), p. 224.
8
SAA 9 1.4 ii:40; see: Parpola (1998), p. 6.
9
Parpola (1998), p. il
10
Nissinen and Perroudon (2000), p. 253.
11
Parpola (1998), il; Van der Toorn (2000), p. 79; see, however, the criticism in Weippert (2002), p. 33.
12
Halpern (1996), p. 50, interprets the gan yārāq in view of Mesopotamian evidence not merely as a
‘vegetable garden’ but as a luxury one. He, however, slightly overcharges the evidence when he con-
strues a ‘royal park filled with exotic import’.
13
See Bendor (1996), pp. 129–133; Kessler (1996).
14
Van der Toorn (1996), p. 199.
15
Overholt (1996), p. 3.
16
As has been done traditionally by Jews and Christians alike. For the Rabbinic position see the chapter
by Bryna J. Levy in this volume.
17
Brueggemann (1988), p. 11.
18
For the reconstruction of this fourth strophe, see: Lundbom (1999), pp. 865–873.
19
E.g. Holladay (1984), pp. 548–549.
20
Brueggemann (1998), 185–187; Petersen (2002), pp. 114ó116; Polk (1984), pp. 152–162.
REFERENCES
Becking, B. (2000). No more grapes from the vineyard? A plea for a historical-critical approach in the
study of the Old Testament. In A. Lemaire & M. Saeboe (Eds.), Congress Volume Oslo, 1998
(pp. 123–141). Leiden: E. J. Brill.
Bendor, S. (1996). The social structure of ancient Israel: The institution of the family (beit ’ab) from the
settlement to the end of the monarchy (Jerusalem Biblical Studies, 7). Jerusalem: Simor.
Brueggemann, W. (1998). A commentary on Jeremiah: Exile and homecoming. Grand Rapids, Cambridge
UK: Wm. B. Eerdmans.
Cryer, F. H. (1994). Divination in its ancient near eastern environment: A soci—historical investiga-
tion (Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement Series, 142). Sheffield: Sheffield
Academic Press.
Durand, J. -M. (1988). Archives épistolaires de Mari I/1. Paris: Éditions Recherche sur les civilisations.
Halpern, B. (1996). The construction of the Davidic state: An exercise in historiography. In V. Fritz &
Ph. R. Davies (Eds.), The origins of the ancient Israelite states (pp. 44–75). Sheffield: Sheffield
Academic Press.
Hämeen-Anttila, J. (2000). Arabian prophecy. In M. Nissinen (Ed.), Prophecy in its ancient near eastern
context: Mesopotamian, biblical and Arabian perspectives (pp. 115–146). Atlanta: Scholars Press.
Holladay, W. L. (1984). Jeremiah 1: A commentary on the book of the prophet Jeremiah chapters 1–25
(Hermeneia). Philadelphia: Fortress Press.
Kessler, R. (1996). Gott und König, Grundeigentum and Fruchtbarkeit. Zeitschrift für die Alttesta-
mentliche Wissenschaft, 108, 214 –232.
Lundbom, J. R. (1999). Jeremiah 1–20 (Anchor Bible, 21A). New York: Doubleday.
McNutt, P. M. (1999). Reconstructing the society of ancient Israel. Louisville: Westminster John
Knox Press.
Nissinen, M. (1998). References to prophecy in neo-Assyrian sources (State Archives of Assyria Studies,
Vol. VII). Helsinki: Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project.
Nissinen, M. (2000). The socio-religious role of the neo-Assyrian prophets. In M. Nissinen (Ed.),
Prophecy in its ancient Near Eastern context: Mesopotamian, biblical and Arabian Perspectives
(pp. 89–114). Atlanta: Scholars Press.
Nissinen, M., & Perroudon, M. –C. (2000). Bāia. In H. D. Baker (Ed.), The prosopography of the neo-
Assyrian empire. Vol. 2, I. Helsinki: Helsinki University Press.
Overholt, Th. W. (1996). Cultural anthropology and the Old Testament (Guides to Biblical Scholarship).
Minneapolis: Fortress Press.
Parpola, S. (1993). Letters from Assyrian and Babylonian scholars (State Archives of Assyria, Vol. X).
Helsinki: Helsinki University Press.
Parpola, S. (1997). Assyrian prophecies (State Archives of Assyria, Vol. IX). Helsinki: Helsinki Univer-
sity Press.
Parpola, S. (1998). Letters from Assyrian Scholars to the kings of Esarhaddon and Ashurbanipal.
Lian : Mandodori.
Petersen, D. L. (2002). The prophetic literature: An introduction. Louisville/London: Westminster John
Knox Press.
Polk, T. (1984). The prophetic persona: Jeremiah and the language of the self (Journal for the Study of the
Old Testament Supplement Series, 32). Sheffield: JSOT Press.
Sjöberg, Å. W. (1975). “i n – n i n š à – g u r4 – r a. A Hymn to the Goddess Inanna by the
en-priestess Enheduanna”. Zeitschrift für Assyriologie, 65, 161–253.
Van der Toorn, K. (1996). Family religion in Babylonia, Syria and Israel: Continuity and change in the
forms of religious life. Leiden: E. J. Brill.
Van der Toorn, K. (2000). Mesopotamian prophecy between immanence and transcendence: A com-
parison of old Babylonian and neo-Assyrian prophecy. In M. Nissinen (Ed.), Prophecy in its ancient
near eastern context: Mesopotamian, biblical and Arabian perspectives (pp. 71–88). Atlanta:
Scholars Press.
Weippert, M. (2002). König, fürchte dich nicht! Assyrische Prophetie im 7. Jahrhundert vor Christus.
Orientalia Nova Series, 71, 1–54.
CHAPTER 7
JEREMIAH INTERPRETED
A Rabbinic analysis of the prophet
BRYNA JOCHEVED LEVY
Women’s Institute for Torah Studies, Jerusalem
The most vivid autobiographical portrayal in prophetic literature is that of Jeremiah.

We are fortunate to have records not only of his oracles and pronouncements, but of his
prayers and confessions. In those personal statements, Jeremiah shares with us his
deepest anguish and most profound hopes, not only regarding the fate of the nation but
also regarding his own personal destiny. More than any other prophet, Jeremiah allows
us to peer into the inner chambers of his heart and witness his poignant struggles.1
We are afforded our first glimpse of the intensely human aspect of Jeremiah’s
prophetic career at its very outset, in his description of God’s call to him. By defini-
tion, a prophetic call narrative defines for the candidate the mission he is to perform.2
But among the great seers of Israel, Jeremiah alone was not only informed what his
mission would be, he was told who he was. His prenatal appointment was revealed to
him in no uncertain terms:
The word of the Lord came to me: Before I created you in the womb, I selected you; before you were
born, I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet unto the nations (1:4).3
Seemingly, given this clear predestination, there is no room for Jeremiah to shirk his
prophetic mission. Furthermore, we expect that Jeremiah will have the authority and
power to carry out this mission: “Behold, I make you this day a fortified city and an
iron pillar and bronze walls against the whole land” (Jeremiah 1:18). Nevertheless,
Jeremiah turned out to be the most tortured and self-tortured of the prophets whose
literary legacies are available to us. It is hard to imagine a more moving prophetic cri
de coeur than Jeremiah’s plaint:
I have become a constant laughingstock; everyone jeers at me. For every time I speak, I must cry out, must
shout, ‘Lawlessness and rapine!’ For the word of the Lord causes me constant disgrace and contempt.
I thought, ‘I will not mention Him, no more will I speak in His name’ – But [His word] was like a raging
fire in my heart, shut up in my bones; I could not hold it in, I was helpless (Jeremiah 20:7–9).
65
© 2007 Springer.
66 LEVY
In this and many other passages in the book, we are granted precious perspectives on
the experience of prophecy and its impact on the prophet’s life. Jeremiah’s confes-
sions are grippingly human, and readers of the Bible throughout the generations have
found in them spiritual inspiration and sources of strength.
One group of readers deeply concerned not only with the preaching but with
the life of Jeremiah were the Rabbis of the early centuries of the common era –
the creators of the homiletic works known as Midrash.4 The Rabbinic interpreta-
tion of Jeremiah goes beyond the explicit statements of the prophet to identify
textual nuances throughout the book that hint to the psychological factors affect-
ing the persona of the prophet. In this chapter I would like to show how the Rab-
bis portray Jeremiah, the prophet of doom, as a man whose identity is forged not
only by the preordained immutability of his call, but by his own doubts. The
midrashic texts depict Jeremiah as undergoing a complex process of personal
assertion and denial in which he identifies with both God, his source of strength
and suffering, and with the people of Israel, whom he loved desperately and who
failed him incessantly. In doing so, the Rabbis display sophisticated psychologi-
cal insight and deep literary sensitivities which are of great value to all readers of
the Biblical text.
1. JEREMIAH’S CONFLICTING EMPATHIES
Classically, the triadic relationship between prophet, people and God is clear. The
prophet’s calling is established by God, and relates to the situation of his people.
In the case of Jeremiah, the mechanism is different. His all-consuming empathy
and hence his effectiveness as a prophet remove all barriers and allows him, or
perhaps forces him, to identify powerfully with his people and/or with the Lord.
Take for example, Jeremiah’s confession of the sins of the people in first person
plural: “Though our iniquities testify against us, act, O Lord, for the sake of Your
name; though our rebellions are many and we have sinned against You” (14:7).
And in speaking of the wrath of God, Jeremiah says: “But I am filled with the
wrath of the Lord, I cannot hold it in. I pour it on the infant in the street and on the
company of youths gathered together . . .” (6:11). These and other statements
throughout the book testify to Jeremiah’s strong projective identification with
God and Israel.
A comment made in the Tannaitic Midrash, the Mekhilta5 sums up this notion.
There, Jeremiah is contrasted with two other giants among the prophets, Elijah and
Jonah. Each is labeled according to the banner which they raised. Elijah is said to
have championed the cause of God, and Jonah to have championed the cause of his
people. Jeremiah, however “Championed both the honor of the Father and the honor
of the son.” This statement highlights the conflict which was endemic to Jeremiah’s
long and frustrating prophetic career. It is easy to be a zealous firebrand or a com-
passionate draft-dodger; being torn by conflicting loyalties is by far the greatest
burden.
JEREMIAH INTERPRETED 67
Let us now see how the Rabbis interpreted several passages in the book in keeping
with their understanding of Jeremiah as a constantly conflicted personality in search
of identity.
2. THE OUTSIDER AS ORACLE: JEREMIAH MARGINALIZED
Rabbinic psychoanalysis of Jeremiah begins the moment the prophet is introduced in

the text.
The words of Jeremiah son of Hilkiah,6 one of the priests of Anatoth in the territory of Benjamin (1:1).
Jeremiah is a priest, a distinction liable to render him a man of esteem. Yet the rabbis
have Jeremiah despairingly testify to the unfortunate nature of his priestly status,
which has been undermined:
One of the priests of Anatoth (Jeremiah 1:1) R. Berachyah said: Jeremiah asserted: My name is disparaged
among the priests (ashuk shemi bacohanim). In Moses’ day, ‘May God bless you’ (Num 6:24); in my day,
‘May they represent a curse’ (Jeremiah 29:22). In Moses’ day, ‘And protect you’ (Num 6:24); in my day,
‘Those consigned to the plague to the plague’ (Jeremiah 15:2). In Moses’ day, ‘May God shine His coun-
tenance upon you’ (Num 6:25); in my day, ‘He made me dwell in darkness like those long dead’
(Lam 3:6). In Moses’ day, ‘And deal graciously with you’ (Num 6:25); in my day, ‘For I will show you no
mercy’ (Jeremiah 16:13). In Moses’ day, ‘May God bestow His favor upon you’ (Num 6:26); in my day,
‘A ruthless nation that will show the old no regard and the young no mercy’ (Deut 28:50). In Moses’ day,
‘And grant you peace’ (Num 6:25); in my day, ‘For I have withdrawn my peace from this people, declares
the Lord, My kindness, My compassion’ (Jeremiah 16:5). [Pesikta de-Rab Kahana 13:13].
The midrash begins with a contrast between Jeremiah’s prophetic role with what he
would have preferred to have been doing as a priest. Instead of invoking the Aaronic
priestly benediction, a vehicle of love and blessing, Jeremiah is forced to intone
imprecations and predictions of disaster. There are numerous midrashic texts which
portray Jeremiah bemoaning his regrettable fate as the prophet of destruction.7 This
one, however, is different; the key phrase is ashuk shemi bacohanim, “my name is
disparaged among the priests”. In other words: I have been barred from serving in
the priestly capacity, in the beatific posture which I covet.
This rabbinic formulation may be understood as a midrashic paraphrase and
editorial comment on the phrase min hacohanim asher beAnatoth “Of the priests of
Anatoth.” The city of Anatoth8 is located in the territory of the tribe of Benjamin, six
kilometers north of Jerusalem. It is listed among the Levitical cities in Joshua 21:18,
but becomes relevant to our story by way of the priestly line that dwelled there. In 1
Kings 2:27 we are told that Abiathar the priest was banished to Anatoth by King
Solomon as a result of his political miscalculations, having backed Adonijah rather
than Solomon as heir to the Davidic throne. He was not executed for this misde-
meanor, rather banished to Anatoth. Presumably, Jeremiah’s family is from this line
of banished priests.9 But the link with Abiathar and the priests of Anatoth is, in fact,
a long-range link to the notorious line of priests from the house of Eli (1 Sam 14:3),
who proved themselves unworthy custodians of the ark at Shiloh.10 The corruption
and downfall of the house of Eli is described graphically in the Book of Samuel.
Eli’s sons are accused of abusing their priestly privileges and engaging in audacious
68 LEVY
acts of sexual license. Their crimes against God and man resulted in their disenfran-
chisement as officiating priests, the capture of the ark by the Philistines and the ulti-
mate crushing blow, the destruction of the sanctuary at Shiloh.11
All of this is Jeremiah’s priestly legacy. It is little wonder, therefore, that Jeremiah
is the only prophet to mention Shiloh12 (7:12,14; 26:6,9). It was the destruction of
Shiloh which served as a powerful image in the recesses of Jeremiah’s memory fuel-
ing the fires of his impassioned Temple Sermon:
Therefore I will do to the House which bears My name, on which you rely, and to the place which I gave
you and your fathers, just what I did to Shiloh (Jeremiah 7:14; cf. 26:6).
Although Jeremiah’s scathing words are directed to his constituency, who have
abused the Temple and looked for cheap external forms of atonement, relying upon
the cultic efficacy of the Temple rather than their own religious rehabilitation, there
is a self-reflective dimension to this image as well. The repercussions of the fall of
Shiloh began a process which, in effect, eventually lead to the banishment of Jere-
miah’s family from Jerusalem and their exclusion from serving in the Temple. In
Jeremiah’s prophecy, as well as his psyche, therefore, the fall of Shiloh and the
destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem are paralleled not merely as historical events
but as a catalyst for personal retrospective. The urgency and horror of the destruction
of Shiloh may be temporally located in the distant past, but for Jeremiah of Anatoth
they are part of his eternal psychological present. The breakdown in the infrastruc-
ture of religious leadership during the time of the Elides impacted upon Jeremiah’s
family, ultimately stigmatizing Jeremiah as an outcast priest – min hacohanim asher
beAnatoth – and subconsciously undermining his self-worth.
Abiathar, founder of the priestly colony in Anatoth (1 Samuel 22:20, 14:3),
was the sole survivor of the massacre of the priests of Nob ordered by Saul
decades earlier.13 That macabre story, too, must have painfully reverberated in
the soul of the prophet and in the recesses of his unconscious. The travesty of
Saul, king of Israel, heinously murdering an entire city of priests was an act of
unprecedented horror. Such a trauma doubtlessly left a scar on Jeremiah’s family
of survivors. As a priest of Anatoth, a scion of that line, Jeremiah will relive the
terror of carnage, not as victim but as the agent through whom destruction and
violence will be proclaimed.
Anatoth, therefore, serves as a constant reminder of the reality of territorial ban-
ishment for Jeremiah on a micro level. When publicly branded as an outcast, he is
derisively labeled “the Anatothite”14 by the people of Judea – a Cohen rusticated to
the fields of Anatoth, a priest unfit to serve in the Temple. On a macro level, Jere-
miah of Anatoth has been chosen as the harbinger of the ultimate banishment – the
exile.
Jeremiah’s appellation as a “priest from Anatoth”, therefore, holds great signifi-
cance in terms of his self-definition. It powerfully defines what he is not, the task he
will not perform. The unrequited goals for which his soul yearns will remain pathet-
ically beyond his reach – goals of religious leadership and of pristine spiritual min-
istry abounding in blessing and hope.
Does Jeremiah identify with his ancestor Abiathar, an eyewitness to terror, a ban-
ished survivor? Does he psychologically compensate for the sins of his forbearers
the Elides by prophetically imputing their guilt and lack of chastity to contemporary
priests and prophets? It is hard to avoid drawing such a conclusion. Throughout the
book, Jeremiah indignantly targets the priests as unworthy and contemptible.15 Yet
in the eyes of the Rabbis, his disappointment with and disdain toward the priests is
transposed into his own personal frustration that ashuk shemi bacohanim – “my
name is disparaged among the priests.” This phrase becomes the reflection of the
inner thoughts of Jeremiah as an outcast priest, a man whose hands are tied and who
finds himself undermined and maligned at every juncture.16 Jeremiah’s marginaliza-
tion is a defining feature of his prophetic identity.
3. EXPOSING HIS MOTHER’S INFIDELITY
Recognition of Jeremiah’s priestly descent is present in another passage in the

Pesikta, which grimly portrays him performing one of the priestly functions – with
an unexpected twist:
He (Jeremiah) was one of two who cursed and execrated the day on which they were born, Job and Jere-
miah. Job said, ‘Perish the day on which I was born’ (Job 3:3); Jeremiah said, ‘Accursed be the day that
I was born’ (Jeremiah 20:14). Said Jeremiah, ‘Let me tell you to what I can be likened. To a high priest who
has been chosen to administer the bitter waters’ [to the Sotah, the wife suspected of adultery (Num 5)].
They bring him the woman, he uncovers her hair, takes the cup to give her to drink, looks at her and real-
izes that she is his mother. He begins to wail and says: Woe is me! My mother whom I tried to honor –
I have shamed you! So said Jeremiah, ‘Woe unto you Mother Zion! I was certain that I would prophesy
good tidings and consolation, and alas! I prophesy catastrophe’. [Pesikta Rabbati 26:4].
The image offered in the Pesikta portrays Jeremiah’s guilt, shame and distress in the
presence of his harlot mother. Jeremiah’s wish has been granted, he may officiate as
a priest, but little does he know what devastating task awaits! He is chosen to bring
the bitter waters to the lips of his beloved mother who has been accused of infidelity.
She, who represents comfort, loyalty and protection, is none of these things for Jere-
miah. She herself is the personification of that from which he longs to escape! The
prophet is destined to live a life of sorrow and a life of shame: “Why did I ever issue
from the womb, to see misery and woe, to spend all my days in shame.” (20:18).
The Rabbis did not choose by chance the image of the priest administering the bit-
ter cup. The textual rubric for this description is Jeremiah 25:15–18:
For thus said the Lord, the God of Israel, to me: ‘Take from My hand this cup of wine – of wrath – and
make all the nations to whom I send you drink of it. Let them drink and retch and act crazy, because of the
sword that I am sending among them.’ So I took the cup from the hand of the Lord and gave drink to all
the nations to whom the Lord had sent me: Jerusalem and the towns of Judah, and its kings and officials,
to make them a desolate ruin, an object of hissing and a curse as is now the case.
Jeremiah, a ‘prophet unto the nations’17 anticipated that his position would be to take
the nations to task. He is notified by God that he is indeed to bring the poisoned chal-
ice to the lips of the nations, yet he is rudely awakened to the discovery that the
first in line is his beloved Jerusalem. Jeremiah 25 is not explicitly mentioned in
70 LEVY
the Pesikta previously cited but it is the basis of a parallel midrashic rendition in
Eicha [Lamentations] Zuta 1:7:
Since he did not want to prophesy such stringent prophecies upon them (Israel) until he was told: ‘Before
I created you in the womb, I knew you; before you were born, I consecrated you; I appointed you a
prophet concerning the nations.’ Immediately, he took the prophetic task upon himself and Jeremiah
assumed that he was designated for the nations. When Jeremiah accepted the task, God said to him: ‘Take
the cup of wine of wrath . . .’ (Jeremiah 25:15). Immediately Jeremiah took it, as it says, ‘And I took the
cup from the hand of the Lord’ (25:17) and he assumed that he was to give the nations to drink. Thus God
said to him: ‘Take a lesson from what is customary; don’t we give the most important to drink first? Note
who is first among the nations – give Jerusalem first, for she is first among all of the nations.’ To what can
it be likened? To a Sotah who comes into the Temple court to drink of the bitter waters; the priest comes
to administer them, only to see that she is his mother. Immediately, he is embarrassed and recoils, wailing
and screaming about his mother. So Jeremiah, when God told him to give Jerusalem to drink, screamed
and wailed and said to God, ‘Master of the universe, did you not tell me that I was appointed prophet of
the nations? Now you have begun my prophecy to my own nation! ‘You have enticed me and I have been
enticed, overpowered me and prevailed.’’ (20:7) God answered him: ‘You have accepted and there is no
turning back.’ At this point he took the cup from His hand and drank it all down.
It is noteworthy how the two midrashic versions portray Jeremiah’s reaction at dis-
covering his mother’s guilt. In Eichah Zuta this causes the prophet to be personally
embarrassed and to recoil. He is informed, though, in no uncertain terms, that there
is no turning back, that he must go through with the painful task. In contrast, in the
Pesikta his sympathies are directed exclusively to his mother and his concern is for
her dignity: “He began wailing and said: Woe unto you my mother, whom I tried to
honor and instead I disgrace!”18 It is significant that the Pesikta switches direction in
midstream. It turns from the Biblical text in which Jeremiah bemoans his fate into a
vignette in which Jeremiah laments his mother’s fate. “Woe unto me that I was ever
born” becomes “Woe unto you my mother, whom I wanted to revere and I must dis-
grace.” He does not speak of the shame which her action has brought upon him (as in
Eichah Zuta), but of the pain he feels bringing shame upon his mother by exposing
her as a wayward Sotah and by subjecting her to the ordeal of drinking the bitter
waters. This midrashic transformation collapses the barriers between Jeremiah and
his mother; her shame is his. Jeremiah projectively identifies with his mother. His
degree of empathy bridges all identity gaps between them. One might expect that
Jeremiah the son would be repulsed by his mother’s crime, yet what is evoked in him
is a heightened sense of loyalty to her. Rather than being repelled by her, Jeremiah is
drawn to her and longs to defend and protect his mother irrespective of her crime.19
Such an image is a psychologically compelling illustration by the Rabbis of what
they sensed to be at the root of Jeremiah’s persona – self-doubts about his status,
worth, and legitimacy. These are portrayed as radically undermined by a mother
whose infidelity casts a deep, dark shadow and makes her unworthy of trust. Even
those closest to the prophet are suspect. It is little wonder that lack of chastity and
integrity become an overriding theme of his prophecy and are passionately decried
by him at every juncture.
The midrash itself unpacks its metaphor of the Sotah mother, making it clear that
she is symbolic of Imma Zion – Mother Zion, Jerusalem personified. Jerusalem is
Jeremiah’s spiritual matrix, but she has disappointed the prophet and betrayed her
God. It will fall to Jeremiah to press the bitter cup of doom to her lips and to seal her
fate. Though he accepts that her actions have made the outcome unavoidable, his
pain at having to be the messenger of its advent is no less than if he were forced to
pronounce his own mother’s death sentence. The midrash depicts Jeremiah, in the
throes of this pain, draining the bitter cup himself, choosing to share the fate of his
beloved city.
Another confrontation between Jeremiah and his Sotah mother, one which is
described as having taken place earlier on in the life of Jeremiah, appears in a dif-
ferent passage in the Pesikta. Here, too, Jeremiah’s mother is transposed into the
character of Imma Zion – Mother Zion. It is she who is the target of Jeremiah’s
devastating ministry and the designated object of Jeremiah’s intense projective
identification.
At Jeremiah’s coming forth into the world, he cried a great cry as though he were already a full-grown
youth,20 and exclaimed: ‘My bowels, my bowels! I writhe in pain! The chambers of my heart are in
agony. My limbs are all atremble. Destruction upon destruction! I am the one who will announce
destruction to the whole world.’ And whence do we know that Jeremiah spoke thus? Because it is so
written: ‘My bowels, my bowels! I writhe in pain! The chambers of my heart! My heart moaneth within
me . . .’ (Jeremiah 4:19). Jeremiah opened his mouth, and reprimanding his mother, said: ‘Tell me,
mother, isn’t it true that you did not conceive me in the manner of other women, and that you did not
loose me from your bowels in the manner of other women who give birth? Have your ways been per-
haps like the ways of all faithless women, and did you cast your eyes upon another? As one who has
been faithless to her husband, why do you not drink the bitter waters? Or do you mean to brazen out
your guilt?’ Whence do we know that Jeremiah spoke thus? Because it is written: ‘Yet thou hadst a har-
lot’s forehead’ (Jeremiah 3:3). When his mother heard his reprimand, she asked: ‘What makes this
infant speak thus? Surely on account of no sins of mine?’21 Jeremiah opened his mouth and said:
‘I speak not of you, mother; I assure you, mother, not of you. I prophesy of [Mother] Zion – of [Mother]
Jerusalem. [Pesikta Rabbati 26:3]
The roar with which Jeremiah enters the world is presented as expression of his
excruciating pain. From the very moment of birth he is afflicted by his unbearable
destiny; “I am the one who will announce destruction to the whole world!” Since
God has appointed him to be a prophet while still in the womb (1:4), the Rabbis have
no difficulty with portraying his prophetic career as beginning the minute Jeremiah
issues forth into the light of day. Immediately, however, he perceives his mission as
a punishment so severe that some terrible crime must have brought it about. Since he
is a newborn babe, the responsibility cannot be his. And so he immediately accuses
his mother, holding her accountable for his fate.22 Quickly, though, he explains that
he is not speaking of her but rather of Imma Zion.23 He is presented as acutely aware
that his mother is not to blame, his people are.
These three midrashic texts portraying Jerusalem in the form of Mother Zion are
unique to the Rabbinic exposition of the Book of Jeremiah. It is easy to understand
why. Of all the prophets, Jeremiah’s empathy and identification with his city and
people is the strongest and most profound. By metaphorically presenting Jerusalem
as Jeremiah’s mother we can more fully understand his intense loyalty to her in the
face of her repeated disappointments and betrayals.
72 LEVY
4. WOMB TO TOMB
The Rabbis began the Pesikta passage with a comparison between Job and Jeremiah.
Both bewailed their birth24 as a result of the unbearable pain life forced them to
endure. But, whereas Job is generally viewed as the epitome of suffering, the portrait
of Jeremiah’s pathos presented in this midrash is perhaps even more painful. Job’s
suffering is personal, and despite his protestations, he endures and is granted a sec-
ond life. Jeremiah, in contrast, is unconsolable, and bewails the suffering which he is
forced to unwillingly inflict upon those closest to him.
The textual springboard for the Pesikta is Jer 20:14–18, wherein Jeremiah fulmi-
nates about his ineluctable fate, using words unmatched in their harshness:
Accursed be the day that I was born! Let not the day be blessed when my mother bore me! Accursed be
the man who brought my father the news and said, ‘A boy is born to you’, and gave him such joy! Let that
man become like the cities which the Lord overthrew without relenting! Let him hear shrieks in the morn-
ing and battle shouts at noontide! Because he did not kill me before birth, so that my mother might be my
grave, and her womb big [with me] for all time. Why did I ever issue from the womb to see misery and
woe, to spend all my days in shame?25
This image conflates the death wish with the healing and comfort offered by the
mother’s womb.26 Such imagery is described by Freud as follows:
To some people the idea of being buried alive by mistake is the most uncanny thing of all. And yet psy-
cho-analysis has taught us that this terrifying phantasy is only a transformation of another phantasy which
had originally nothing terrifying about it at all, but was qualified by a certain lasciviousness — the phan-
tasy, I mean, of intra-uterine existence.27
The womb/tomb metaphor accentuates the analogy with Job, with which the midrash
began. Job, too, speaks of returning to the womb when he is clearly talking about
death: “He said, ‘Naked came I out of my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return
there; the Lord has given, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the
Lord’.” (Job 1:21).28 The irony in Jeremiah’s use of this metaphor, is, of course, that
God has informed him that he has already been singled out for his mission in utero.
Even staying in the womb will not save him from his excruciating destiny as the
prophet of doom.29
5. AFTER THE STORM, A SEARCH FOR COMFORT
The preceding midrashic homilies depict Jeremiah’s relationship with his city and
people in the early stage of his career – when he labored at upbraiding the nation and
warning them of the fate that awaited if they would not mend their evil ways. In
Pesikta Rabbati 26:9, the character of Imma Zion30 appears once again, this time
after her tragic fall. Jeremiah is now older and sated with tragedy; he finds no com-
fort in the fact that his predictions of disaster have come to pass. And so, his rela-
tionship with Mother Zion is different in this scene.
Jeremiah said, As I ascended the mountain to Jerusalem, I looked up and saw a woman sitting alone on the
mountain top, wearing black garments, her hair disheveled, screaming, imploring someone to comfort her.
I, too, screamed and asked: ‘Who will comfort me?’ I approached her and spoke to her. I said, ‘If you are
a woman – speak to me; if you are a spirit – be off with you.’ She answered, ‘Don’t you recognize me?
I am the woman who had seven children. Their father disappeared, and before I was able to cry over him,
I was told that my house collapsed and killed my seven sons. I do not know for whom to mourn and tear
out my hair.’” I responded, ‘You are no worse than Mother Zion who was reduced to grazing land for the
beasts of the field.’ She said, ‘I am your Mother Zion; I am the mother of seven, as it says: “She who bore
seven is forlorn” (Jeremiah 15:9). [Pesikta Rabbati 26:9].
There are several notable similarities between this midrash and Jeremiah’s midrashic
encounter with his mother the Sotah. Just like the Sotah was customarily dressed in
black and her hair was disheveled,31 so too, this mysterious woman. He desperately
seeks solace; how ironic to chance, unawares, upon a mother figure likely to afford it
to him. Whereas in the initial passage Jeremiah does not recognize his mother until
he uncovers her hair and looks at her, here, even with her hair uncovered, she is still
unknown to him. In both midrashic texts, his obliviousness is pronounced. In this
passage he gives it verbal expression, asking the woman whether or not she is a spirit
or real. In fact, she is a spirit, of sorts: “I am your Mother Zion!”
In a subsequent passage, Jeremiah says that her fate will be like that of the
restoration of Job, bringing the midrash to a happy ending.32 But what is of con-
cern to us is the final stage of the relationship between Jeremiah and Mother Zion
which is played out in this midrash. By rights the prophet has finished his mis-
sion. The punishment has been administered, history has requited him. He is free
to go back to Anatoth and never encounter this nation again. Yet Jeremiah hap-
pens upon Imma Zion and is naturally drawn to her. He offers her comfort; just as
Jeremiah stood by his mother the Sotah, so he will stand by his people to the bit-
ter end.
These midrashic dramatizations do much to develop the picture of Jeremiah’s
mother, and understandably so. Jeremiah, the celibate prophet33 had no wife and no
daughter. While he, like the other great prophets of Israel,34 speaks of the people’s
infidelity in terms of the adulterous wife and wayward daughter,35 the midrashic
texts develop the image in terms of his mother. The mother-son relationship is the
most psychologically powerful of the three. Ernest Jones has argued that “The cen-
tral conclusion based on psychoanalytic research is that the religious life represents
a dramatization on a cosmic plane of the emotions, fears, and longings which arose
in the child’s relation to his parents.”36 These midrashic accounts give expression to
this notion.
6. A SHADY PROGENITRESS
In the initial midrashic homily, Jeremiah is depicted as being closely associated

with a woman of questionable moral standing, that woman being his mother the
Sotah. In another midrashic tradition, the Rabbis link Jeremiah to a different
“woman of ill repute” – Rahab the harlot, who is presented as being an ancestor of
the prophet. Whereas, at first glance, their clear exegetical agenda is to glorify
Rahab37 the righteous gentile, by having her merit illustrious progeny, it can be
understood in our context that they are again making a statement about Jeremiah’s
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identity and self-perception. Consider the following passage from Pesikta de-Rab
Kahana 13:12:
R. Samuel b. R. Nahman said, there were four who came from debased families . . . , Israel mocked Jere-
miah and said: ‘Is he not from the sons of Rahab the Harlot?’, so scripture had to distinguish him: ‘The
words of Jeremiah the son of Hilkiah’ (1:1).
In this midrash it is not that Jeremiah happens upon the knowledge of his mother’s
infamy by chance; it is hurled at him by the people. They ridicule him by way of his
tainted pedigree and his forebears’ questionable status. The ignominious slurs are
intended to discredit his own standing. The student of the midrash is left to ponder
how this skeleton in Jeremiah’s closet was supposed to have impacted upon him. Did
he view it simply as a personal assault, or as yet another penetrating and indelible
stigma causing him additional insecurity? As the people call his integrity into ques-
tion, does he begin to question it himself? Or was the opposite the case? Was it pre-
cisely Rahab’s shameful status, and by extension Jeremiah’s, which yielded
greatness? Did memories of moral imperfection propel Jeremiah to overcompensate
in the ethical sphere? Or was Rahab consciously or otherwise a heroine in Jeremiah’s
mind’s eye, a sterling example of the successful actualization of far-reaching spiri-
tual potentiality? Let us consider the rabbinic embellishments of these ideas.
R. Samuel b. Nahmani taught, ‘But if you do not dispossess the inhabitants of the land, those whom
you allow to remain shall be stings in your eyes and thorns in your sides, and they shall harass you in
the land in which you live; so that I will do to you what I planned to do to them’ (Num 33:55).
The Holy One Blessed be He said to Israel, ‘I told you: ‘You must proscribe them the Hittites and the
Amorites . . .’’(Deut 20:17), and you did not do it, rather ‘Only Rahab the harlot and her father’s fam-
ily were spared by Joshua’ (Josh 6:25), therefore Jeremiah came, and he was from the descendants of
Rahab the Harlot, and does things to you like stings in your eyes and thorns in your sides, and so the
text had to say ‘The words of Jeremiah’. [Eicha Zuta 1:34].
Israel will be castigated for their crimes and harassed incessantly by Jeremiah the
son of Rahab, the pagan thorn whom they spared. Iniquity breeds iniquity; through
their negligence in sparing idol worshipers they have been enticed by them, and
brought punishment upon themselves.
Might the midrash be implying, though, that it is Jeremiah’s punishment as well?
This midrash lures us into the prophet’s unconscious. How, in the view of this
midrash, does the prophet understand his link with Rahab? Is it simply that idol
worship, a consequence of her survival, will be Jeremiah’s ongoing challenge; the
trap in which his people will be constantly ensnared? Or, in terms of personal self-
reflection, is Rahab a ghost, reminding Jeremiah of his negative origins, a constant
thorn in his own side, the sting in the eyes of this great seer of Israel? Is she a
blemish on his coat of arms? Due to her, will he always remain manqué? Will he,
psychologically, on some subconscious level, perceive of himself as part idolater, as
a prophet unworthy of sanction?
Is Jeremiah an incarnation of Rahab, and is he, therefore, in some way responsible
for the guilt of his people? Is he the thorn in the side of the people as was she? Or
could it be that he will be the survivor, as was Rahab, and so his subconscious feel-
ings of guilt are compounded, knowing that he will live as others will die? Through
assuming guilt, Jeremiah again dissolves all barriers between himself and his
charges. Powerful is the prophet who feels the guilt of his people; more powerful still
is one who identifies with that guilt; more powerful yet is one who holds himself per-
sonally responsible for it.
These midrashic nuances conjure up shadows past, and yield negative reverbera-
tions in the tortured prophetic soul of Jeremiah. However, the opposite is also true.
Rahab is a symbol of much which is positive. The triumph of Rahab’s spirit may
have, nonetheless, inspired Jeremiah to hope against hope. Tikva Frymer-Kensky,
makes the following observation:38
But it is an important message, and Rahab is the oracle who declares that God has given Israel the land.
She is the first of the prophets who appear in the historical books to announce to Israel the paths of their
history and the first of the women who declare and pronounce the will of God. The lines of women and
prophets begin with Rahab and converge again at the end of 2 Kings and 2 Chronicles in the figure of
Huldah the prophetess, who announces the destruction of Judah.
Rahab is approached on the eve of the destruction of Jericho by Israelite spies. Rather
than assuming an adversarial posture she gives reverential expression to her heartfelt
preparedness to submit to the will of the God of Israel. She is thereby awarded life
and posterity in the land. Frymer-Kensky depicts Rahab as the first oracle of God’s
will and Huldah as the last. In contrast, the Rabbis stress the link between Rahab and
her descendant Jeremiah.39 Rahab acknowledges the initial phase of entry into the
land in keeping with Divine will and directives; Jeremiah, in the final stages, will
bring this saga to a close. He will loudly bewail the discordance between the will of
God and the devastating reality the people have created. He will eulogize all ideals
and lay all dreams to rest.
The attribution of Rahabite ancestry to Jeremiah highlights another profound
tragedy in the life of the prophet. While Rahab was successful in bringing about a
reprieve for her family, Jeremiah, descendant of Rahab, is not even able to secure for
himself a safe haven in the land of Israel.40
There is, however, a positive lesson Jeremiah might have derived from his con-
templation of his relationship with Rahab. Rahab, like Abiathar of Nob, is a survivor,
who witnessed physical destruction but whose spiritual fortitude afforded her life
and well being in the Land. The unlikelihood of Rahab, a pagan harlot, achieving a
total turn-about may have inspired her offspring Jeremiah to optimistically aspire to
the possibility of the spiritual rehabilitation of the wayward people of Israel, and to
cling to hope for the averting of catastrophe to the very last.41 Jeremiah’s midrashic
pedigree may once again highlight his utter suitability as prophet due to his ability to
sympathize, empathize and become one with his abject people while never totally
despairing of a possible turn-about like that of his forbearer.
7. THE PROPHET SEDUCED
Let us return to the midrashic theater, to the scene of Jeremiah bringing the poisoned
chalice to his mother’s lips. Beyond the shame, pain, and pathos highlighted in the
midrashic texts we have explored, there is an additional barrage of feelings by which
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the prophet is overwhelmed. These include his feelings of being deceived, seduced
and powerless. Surprisingly, through these emotions he was transformed from a vas-
sal of the Lord into His vessel. Once again, both by way of Scripture itself and
through the prism of midrashic exposition we are afforded insight into the prophet’s
psyche. This time, though, the prophet’s identification is not with the people Israel,
but rather with the Almighty Himself.
Let us recall the midrash of Eichah Zuta cited above:
So Jeremiah – when God told him to give Jerusalem to drink, he screamed and wailed and said to God,
‘Master of the universe, did you not tell me that I was appointed prophet of the nations? (1:5) Now you
have begun my prophecy to my own nation!’ ‘You have enticed me and I have been enticed, overpowered
me and prevailed’(20:7).
Realizing that he has been duped,42 Jeremiah flies into a rage knowing that he
has been deceived by God. The midrashic drama is a heartrending illustration of
Jeremiah’s most searing confession.
You enticed me, O Lord, and I was enticed; You overpowered me and You prevailed. I have become a con-
stant laughingstock, everyone jeers at me. For every time I speak, I must cry out, must shout, ‘Lawless-
ness and rapine!’ For the word of the Lord causes me constant disgrace and contempt. I thought, ‘I will
not mention Him, no more will I speak in His name’ – but [His word] was like a raging fire in my heart,
shut up in my bones; I could not hold it in, I was helpless. I heard the whispers of the crowd – ‘Terror all
around: Inform against him!’ All my [supposed] friends are waiting for me to stumble: ‘Perhaps he can be
entrapped, and we can prevail against him and take our vengeance on him . . .’ (20:7–10).
While Jeremiah’s other confessions43 poignantly move the reader, here we are jolted
by violence. Not only by the violence of God seducing and overpowering the prophet,
but by the frightening mode of expression Jeremiah uses to describe his experience.44
This confession is about assault. It begins with a description of Jeremiah being
physically assaulted by Pashhur, the priest and chief officer of the House of the Lord,
and proceeds to describe the violence and scorn of his mocking adversaries. He is a
constant target of their contempt. They seek his ruin and await any opportunity for
revenge. His response to Pashhur and to the belligerent multitude is to verbally
return the assault. But his most intense wrath is directed not against the people or
even against Pashhur but rather against God, whose unconscionable coercion has
placed him in this baleful position. He wishes he could suppress and contain his
prophetic impulse, but he cannot banish God’s controlling voice.
A close reading of the passage highlights the prophet’s intense superego. He has
been duped and experiences anger and impotence, but he is unable to shirk his
responsibility. He feels that long ago he had been tricked into becoming a prophet,
and now again he has been deluded. All of God’s assurances and reassurances have
come to naught.45 Jeremiah, under attack, reacts to the collapse of trust in God’s
promised protection. Yet the confessional framework into which this prophecy fits
makes it clear that the prophet’s protestation is, in fact, his supplication: “Indirectly,
implicitly, this accusation is his appeal. There is none in this prayer if it be not in the
words with which it opens: ‘Thou hast enticed me’; ‘Thou hast overpowered me.’ If
this is a plea by indirection, as indeed it appears to be, the plea is for release from an
imposed task which has proved too burdensome to bear.”46
But the image of seduction is powerfully suggestive. There is something else

going on here, something far more intimate. A union is being forged between
Jeremiah and God.47 John Skinner describes the process which takes place in
chapter 20 as one in which force of circumstance actually compels Jeremiah to reject
his nation. This phenomenon, in turn, catapults the prophet directly to God: “Dis-
owned by men and driven in upon himself, he found in the truth of his rejected
prophecy an indissoluble link of communion between his own soul and God. Amid
all his tribulations and the defeat of his lifework, it was a blessedness of which noth-
ing could rob him that the God of Israel, had spoken to him, and received him into
His fellowship. And in this individual response to the voice of God he discovered an
earnest of that instinctive and universal sense of the divine in which he recognized
the permanent essence of religion.”48
This ‘fellowship’ is described at this stage in Jeremiah’s prophetic career, since he
finds himself in a ‘crisis of confidence’. His utter vulnerability has been exposed
through engendering direct altercations with the people and has, consequently, brought
about what Michael Fishbane calls a reunification of his will with God’s: “This
remarkable prayer reveals a tragic moment wherein a prophet despairs but cannot fully
rebel. Jeremiah struggles to suppress God’s voice within him. But his realization that
God’s word is in his bones, and his recognition of divine protection in v. 11, point
to the reunification of his will with God’s. Jeremiah’s spiritual restoration lies in
the full acceptance of his unique task in the world: to be a faithful and trusting divine
messenger.”49
So much for what is explicit in the Biblical text. I would like to suggest that while
in canonical context the incident with Pashhur, which serves as an introduction to the
confession probably took place c. 605 BCE,50 in the midrashic context the seduction
is placed at the very outset of his prophetic career, precisely because it is the psychi-
cal disintegration which results from becoming the object of God’s forcefulness that
obliges Jeremiah to become one with Him, and it is this which transforms him into
the prophet of God.
Jeremiah’s identification with God may be understood in psychological terms as
his identification with the aggressor. Let us consider several explanations of this
idea. Among the classic psychological defense mechanisms, Anna Freud describes
identification with the aggressor as follows: “Identification with the aggressor is suc-
ceeded by active assault on the outside world, which moves the person from passive
to active role, this is a preliminary stage in the development of the superego. This
defensive measure is a projection of self criticism and guilt.”51
Jeremiah’s ministry required of him to actively assault the outside world. Jeremiah,
as prophet, assumed the admonitory role as the superego of the people Israel. But by
identifying with God he could avoid some measure of self-criticism and guilt. Were
he more similar to Elijah, exclusively defending the honor due the Father, he may
have met with total success. Unfortunately, as the prophet who defended the honor
due the son as well as the Father, self-criticism and guilt always lingered.
James Clark Moloney describes Jeremiah’s identification with the Lord in far more
radical terms: “Rather than kenosis being an emptying from the God (authoritarian)
78 LEVY
system into the self-system, I conceive it as being exactly the opposite: the memorial
self-system empties into the memorial authoritarian-system. God does not, I feel,
become man, but through the experiencing of God in theophany and related occur-
rences man becomes God or, through experiencing an inspiration, becomes God-like
in the sense of becoming able to comprehend or achieve what was formerly felt diffi-
cult or impossible. It is the sudden release of bound energy noted above which consti-
tutes the sense of emptying, and the flashes of light.”52
The possibility of the prophet becoming God-like through divine inspiration is, in
truth, anchored in the biblical text itself.
We have already mentioned the verse in which Jeremiah describes himself as pour-
ing out wrath upon the people (6:11). In yet another passage, the prophet describes the
unbearable heaviness of being which again turns him into a divine instrument.
Oh, my suffering, my suffering! How I writhe! Oh, the walls of my heart! My heart moans within me,
I cannot be silent; for I hear the blare of horns, my soul is the alarm of war (4:19).
This alarm of war is the vehicle employed by God Himself against His enemies:
“When I will sound the alarm of war against Rabbah of the Ammonites, it shall
become a desolate mound” (49:2). We see that Jeremiah‘s soul has now metamor-
phosed into the clarion call of the Lord of hosts.
At first blush, it may appear audacious to claim that seduction yields total identifi-
cation of the prophet with God. The overpowering of the prophet by the Lord has
turned him into the aggressor. But midrashic hyperbole goes beyond this claim and
describes a remarkable degree of interchangeability between Jeremiah and the Lord.
Not only does Jeremiah take on the role of God; God, as it were, takes on the role of
the prophet. This touching interchange is found, not in the context of the God of
wrath but in the context of the God of mercy. One such example is the midrashic
treatment of Jeremiah 8:23: “Oh that my head were water, my eyes a fount of tears!
Then would I weep day and night for the slain of my poor people.”
‘Oh, that my head were water, my eyes a fount of tears! Then would I weep day and night for the slain
of my poor people’ (Jeremiah 8:23) Jeremiah wails through the Holy Spirit and says, ‘Bitterly she
weeps in the night’ (Lamentations 1:2). Who cried? Israel cried; some say: Jeremiah cried. [Eichah
Zuta 1:17].
In context, it is clear that the verse from Jeremiah refers to his own tears. A second
voice is introduced into the midrash by way of the verse from Lamentations. The
tears of the prophet blend with those of the people. This midrash has condensed the
image; Jeremiah and his people cry as one. But remarkably in Eichah Rabbah “Oh,
that my head were water” is ascribed not to Jeremiah but to the Almighty Himself:
‘Oh that my head were water and my eyes a source of tears’. Who said this verse? If you say Jeremiah, did
he not eat and not sleep, rather who said it? He who neither eats nor drinks as it says (Ps 121): ‘Behold the
Guardian of Israel neither sleeps nor slumbers.’ [Eichah Rabbah 1:52].
The midrash debates whether Scripture describes the pathos of Jeremiah or that of
God. The conclusion is that God has replaced Jeremiah as the devastated lamenter of
the people. The identification is complete.
When God takes on the role of the prophet he also takes on the experience of the
people. Alan Mintz takes this process one step further, making the following obser-
vation: “This is an audacious appropriation indeed, and it is made possible by
the confidence the Rabbis had in the powers of their exegetical instruments. . . .
Transformed at the moment of the Destruction, the figure of God switches from the
monitory enforcer of punishment to the dazed sufferer whose suffering derives in
part from His own pain over the loss of His children and in part from his empathy
with their affliction.”53
The possibility for which this interpretative ingenuity allows is astonishing. Not
only does Jeremiah identify with God, God identifies with Jeremiah. Jeremiah iden-
tifies with Israel, and so does God. Jeremiah has risen to astounding spiritual heights
in his role as a prophet. What he has not been able to accomplish is inspiring the peo-
ple to identify with him or with the Almighty. Regrettably, without such spiritual
momentum, they cannot be saved. Jeremiah’s relentless attempts did not succeed,
and so, try as he did, his mission failed.
We are reminded of the words of Lord Macaulay: “It is difficult to conceive any
situation more painful than that of a great man, condemned to watch the lingering
agony of an exhausted country, to tend it during the alternate fits of stupefaction and
raving which precede it’s dissolution and to see the symptoms of vitality disappear
one by one, till nothing is left but coldness, darkness and corruption.” How does the
prophet deal with this devastation? How does he endure, overcome by disappoint-
ment, grief and failure? Jeremiah himself explains:
When your words were offered, I devoured them: Your words brought me the delight and joy of knowing
that Your name is attached to me, O Lord, God of Hosts (15:16).
The words of God have consumed the prophet and will consume the nation – in a dif-
ferent, destructive sense. Yet Jeremiah gladly devours and assimilates them. They
allow him a degree of happiness, which he could not experience with his family or
his nation. Hence, the name of the Lord is upon him and provides him with his sin-
gular identity. The Divine word serves as his touchstone with the eternal covenant
and becomes his ongoing point of convergence with the Almighty. This union will
bring the battle-weary prophet a modicum of solace.
See, I appoint you this day over nations and kingdoms: To uproot and to pull down, to destroy and to over-
throw, to build and to plant (1:10).
The burdensome task which was assigned to Jeremiah the son of Hilkiah was
clearly outlined in terms of destruction and dissolution. Yet beyond the discourse
of blame and predictions of doom, contained within it were constructive elements
of building and planting. It is not only Israel who undergoes this process; we
witness Jeremiah himself experiencing the same. He is broken down and disman-
tled by vehement attacks both physical and spiritual, as graphically described in
Scripture. Yet it is the Rabbinic portrait of Jeremiah which focuses upon how those
incidents in his life built his character and planted within him seeds of strength
which blossomed into greatness. The midrashic images of the banished priest and
the illegitimate son illustrate the process of psychic disintegration that allowed
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Jeremiah of Anatoth to ‘champion the honor due the son’ in a way no other prophet
could. His seduction by the Master of the Universe, which the Rabbis place at the
early formative stage of his prophetic career, produced a prophet who was not
merely an intercessor, but a full partner with the Almighty. The prophet under-
mined, whose realities were denied, became a prophet who denied the realities of
others. It was this process which gave rise to a giant among the prophets, a prophet
of pathos and of wrath, of tears and of fire, whose love, justice and truth inspire and
guide us to this very day.
NOTES
My thanks to Dr. Ora Elper and Dr. Pesach Lichtenberg for their useful comments. I owe a special debt of
gratitude to my esteemed colleague and dear friend Prof. Moshe Halevi Spero whose important insights
served as an invaluable catalyst for this paper.
1
Other prophets who share glimpses of their personal struggles include Elijah, Jonah and Amos. In
terms of the breath and depth of his own torment, however, Jeremiah most resembles Moses. The
parallel is developed by the rabbis in Pesikta de-Rab Kahana 13:6 [ed. Braude & Kapstein, 1975],
pp. 256–257.
2
Moses, for example, is commissioned at the burning bush and told: “Come, therefore, I will send you
to Pharaoh and you shall free My people, the Israelites, from Egypt” (Exodus 3:10). His mission is
clearly delineated, yet he is never given the title ‘prophet of redemption’. The closest parallel to
Jeremiah is Samson. Scripture is explicit as to who he is, in addition to what he will do. “For you are
going to conceive and bear a son; let no razor touch his head, for the boy is to be a Nazirite to God from
the womb on. He shall be the first to deliver Israel from the Philistines” (Judges 13:5). And yet the
dissimilarity is also pronounced. Samson’s identity and calling are not reported to him directly, but
rather to his mother who is instructed to begin the process of raising a Nazirite, in utero.
3
In addition to the epithet ‘prophet unto the nations’ (navi lagoyim), the overarching terms of the task
are outlined in 1:10: “See, I appoint you this day over nations and kingdoms: To uproot and to pull
down, to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant.”
4
For a general introduction to the midrashic literature, see Holtz (1984), pp. 177–211; Wright (1956).
5
Mekilta de-Rabbi Ishmael [ed. J. Z. Lauterbach, 1961], Tractate Pisha, pp. 8–9. In his chapter ‘The
Prophets as Persons’, Bob Becking (this volume) relates to Jeremiah’s divided loyalties, drawing the
following conclusion: “He himself was unable to restore this balance and therefore he had to go
through seasons of trustful resolution and periods of bitter alienation.”
6
The prophet Ezekiel is identified as Ezekiel ben Buzi HaCohen (the priest) and it is generally agreed
upon that he was a member of a priestly family who served in the sanctuary in Jerusalem. This is used
to account for his interest in the Temple and his knowledge about its ordinances. It is unclear how old
Ezekiel himself was when he was exiled in 597 and if he served as a priest prior to that time. Jeremiah,
on the other hand, is identified only as Jeremiah ben Hilkiah, leaving open the question as to whether
or not his father was an officiating priest in the Temple. Targum Jonathan on Jeremiah (the Aramaic
translation composed in the early centuries of the common era) suggests that Hilkiah was a Temple
priest; cf. Hayward (1987), p. 47, n. 1. The Rabbinic midrash Pesikta de-Rab Kahana 13:12, [ed.
Braude, pp. 262–263] similarly suggests that his father was an officiating priest. The 13th century
Provencal Jewish Biblical exegete Joseph Kimhi (quoted in his son David Kimhi’s commentary to
Jeremiah 1:1, published in standard Rabbinic bibles) goes one step further and identifies Hilkiah with
Hilkiyahu the Priest mentioned in 2 Kings 22:4 ff. as the priest involved in refurbishing the Temple at
the request of King Josiah. The same notion is found in the commentary of Don Yizhak Abravanel to
Jeremiah 1:1, Perush al Neviim Ahronim, (Jerusalem: Torah Vadaat, 1954), p. 304; cf. church fathers
Clemens Alexandrinus (ca. 250) (1908), Stromata 1:21 and Hippolytus on Susannah 1:1 who considers
Susannah the daughter of Hilkiah the high priest to be the sister of Jeremiah; cf. Louis Ginzberg
(1911), p. 384, n. 10. Shemuel Yevin in his article, “Mishpachot U’Miflagot Bemamlechet Yehuda”
[Heb.], Tarbiz 12 (1941) p. 258, presents a cogent argument distinguishing between the two Hilkiahs.
He demonstrates that the high priest during the time of Josiah was a scion of the priestly house of
Zadok whereas Hilkiah the father of Jeremiah, who was alive during the time of Josiah, was not the
high priest. In fact it is indeed doubtful that he served in the Temple at all since he was from the priestly
line of Abiathar and hence one of the banished priests of Anatoth. Cf. S. Yevin, “Anatoth”, Encyclope-
dia Mikrait [Heb.] Vol. 3, pp. 161–162. For a comprehensive genealogical outline of the respective
priestly families, see Myers (1965), pp. 164–168. The possibility that Jeremiah’s family of Anatothite
priests became official Temple priests after the Josianic reforms is explored by Holladay (1986), pp. 1,
16. One additional theory, suggested by S. Abramski, sees Jeremiah as an official priest in Jerusalem
and not a descendant of Eli’s priestly family from Anatoth, see ‘The Connection Between Shiloh and
Jerusalem: Echoes of Events and Historiosophy’[Heb.] in the B.-Z. Luria Festschrift (Jerusalem: The
Society for Biblical Research in Israel, 1979), p. 337.
7
E.g. Pesikta Rabbati 27:9 [ed. William G. Braude, 1968]: “. . . Jeremiah said: Master of the Universe,
what iniquities have I committed that no other prophets before or after me were charged with destroy-
ing your Temple but I!”
8
Albrecht Alt, ‘Anatoth’, Palestinajarbuch des deutschen evangelischen Institutes fuer Altertumswis-
senschaft Jerusalem 22 (1926), pp. 23–24, suggested that the biblical Anatoth is what is today called
Ras el Harrubeh, which is a few hundred meters southwest of contemporary Anata. For more recent
studies, see Biran (1985), Nedelman (1992) and Yevin (1971).
9
See Haran (1972), p. 164, n. 34; Kimhi (1952), pp. 61–65. A dissenting opinion is voiced by Abramski
(see above, n. 6).
10
Ya’acov Gil (1988), ‘The Story of Eli and Samuel in the Book of Samuel’ [Heb.], Beth Miqra, 33,
pp. 74–75.
11
Cf. Psalms 78:60.
12
See W. Holladay (1964), Jeremiah’s Self-Understanding: Moses, Samuel, and Psalm 22. Journal of
Biblical Literature, 63, p. 163.
13
In fact there are those who choose to explain Saul’s massacre not as related to Ahimelech’s assistance
to David. They propose that the priests from the house of Eli fled Shiloh and settled in the vicinity of
Nov and Givah, lands belonging to the family of Saul; see Schley (1990). Saul’s actions were intended
to banish the Elide priests and reclaim the ancestral lands for the tribe of Benjamin. See also Regev
(1988), pp. 53–66.
14
In 29:27 the people use this pejorative term about the stark raving mad prophet, whom they wish to
silence.
15
Cf. 2:8, 4:9, 13:13. See chapter 29 for parallel allegations hurled against false prophets.
16
Note that even when Jeremiah contests his initial calling on the grounds that he is a mere youth, he is
reprimanded with the words: “And the Lord said to me: “Do not say, ‘I am still a boy!’” (1:7) – i.e.
denying him the ability to achieve any self-definition whatsoever and undermining this aspect of his
identity as well.
17
The designation ‘a prophet unto the nations’ is presumably intended to describe Jeremiah’s role in pro-
claiming the downfall of the nations (see chapters 46–51) .Yet the Rabbis offer an alternate reading:
that Israel is now no different than the other nations see. See Sifre on Deuteronomy, Shoftim 175 [ed.
L. Finkelstein. NY: The Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1969], p. 221.
18
Holladay (see above, n. 12) makes the following observation: “These references to birth and mother are
unparalleled in the extant pre-Jeremianic prophetic literature.”
19
Klein (1957), pp. 309–345; Moloney (1954) and Searles (1979), p. 31.
20
Cf. the Rabbinic comment in Exodus Rabbah 1:24 that the infant Moses also had the voice of a lad,
which is in keeping with the parallels between the two prophets.
21
This translation is based on the reading ‘shelo beavonotai’, and is preferred by M. Ish Shalom, Pesikta
Rabbati (Vilna, 1880) chapter 26, p. 129, note 11, and Pesikta Rabbati 26 [ed. Braude], p. 526, note 4.
A different reading is offered by Leo Prijs, Die Jeremia-homilie Pesikta Rabbati Kapitel 26 (Berlin-
Koln-Mainz, 1966), p. 31, note 28: ’shelo b’onato’ ‘Before his time,’ referring to the precocious moral
sense of the neonate Jeremiah.
82 LEVY
22
Underlying this portrayal is Hosea 2:4. For the relationship between Jeremiah and Hosea, see
Lalleman-de-Winkel (2000), pp. 231–233. Pesikta Rabbati 27:9 depicts Jeremiah as convinced that
some personal crime has brought his fate upon him.
23
For an early parallel to this midrashic metaphor, cf. The Book of the Apocalypse of Baruch the son of
Neriah 3:1–4 [in R. H. Charles (1977), p 482]: “And I said: O Lord, my Lord, have I come into the
world for this purpose that I might see the evils of my mother? Not (so) my Lord. If I have found grace
in Thy sight, first take my spirit vehemently constrain me: for I cannot resist Thee, and my soul, more-
over, cannot behold the evils of my mother. But one thing I will say in Thy presence, O Lord. What,
therefore will there be after these things for if Thou destroyest Thy city, and deliverest up Thy land to
those that hate us, how shall the name of Israel be again remembered?” In this passage Jeremiah’s
mother, the land, and the city are one. Jeremiah struggles with not being able to see the evils of his
mother yet not being able to restrain himself from prophesying against her.
24
The irony, in Jeremiah’s case is that he was singled out in utero, cf. Isaiah 49:1.
25
Cf. 15:11, where Jeremiah’s mother alone is pitied: “Woe is me, my mother, that you ever bore me – a
man of conflict and strife with all the land! I have not lent, and have not borrowed yet everyone curses
me!”
26
Gerhard von Rad says in ‘The Confessions of Jeremiah’: “One can say with caution, which here should
be the first commandment of the interpreter, that physical death per se does not increase suffering,
rather it provides a release.” (in L. Perdue and B. Kovacs [Eds.] [1984], p. 344). See also Mintz (1982),
p. 3: “The serviceableness of the image of Jerusalem as an abandoned fallen woman lies in the precise
register of pain it articulates. An image of death would have purveyed the false comfort of finality; the
dead have finished with suffering and their agony can be evoked only in retrospect. The raped and
defiled woman who survives, on the other hand, is a living witness to a pain that knows no release.”
27
Freud (1955), p. 244.
28
Elsewhere Job counterposes womb and grave: “Why did You let me come out of the womb? Better had
I expired before any eye saw me, had I been as though I never was, had I been carried from the womb
to the grave” (Job 10:18–19). See also Job 3:10–12: “Why did I not die at birth, expire as I came forth
from the womb? Why were there knees to receive me, or breasts for me to suck? For now would I be
lying in repose, asleep and at rest.” Cf. also the chapter of Moshe Halevi Spero, in this volume.
29
The mother/womb image to describe the tomb/death is movingly used in Ben Sira (Ecclesiasticus)
40:1: “A great concern has God assigned, a heavy burden to the sons of men, from the day man comes
forth from his mother’s womb until he returns to the Mother of all the living”.
30
The image of the bereaved mother as personification of Zion has its source in Isaiah 49:21, and is also
used in the apocryphal Book of Baruch 10:16. See Mintz (1982), pp. 8–9.
31
Mishnah Sotah 1:5, 6; cf. also Heinemann (1982).
32
“Jeremiah told her, ‘Your afflictions are like those of Job; Job’s sons and daughters were taken from
him as were yours, Job’s riches were taken from him as were yours, Job was cast to the dump heap as
were you. Yet just as I returned and comforted Job so too will I comfort you. Job’s sons and daughters
were doubled; so too will yours be doubled, his riches were doubled so will your be, I raised him from
the dumps and you too will be raised from the dust (Isaiah 52:2). Zion, you were built by man and
destroyed by man, but in the future I shall build you, as it says, “He will build Jerusalem and gather the
exiles of Israel” (Psalms 147:2), Amen. May it happen speedily in our day that the Holy One, Blessed
Be He will uphold the verse, “And the ransomed of the Lord shall return and coming with singing to
Zion, crowned with joy everlasting they shall attain joy and gladness while sorrow and sighing flee”
(Isaiah 35:10).
33
In keeping with the divine command recorded in 16:1–9. Cf. Falk (1972).
34
E.g. Hosea 1:2–3 (wife); Isaiah 3:16, 4:4 (daughters).
35
See Diamond and O’Connor (1999) and Bauer (1999).
36
Quoted in C. G. Schoenfeld (1962). God the Father – and Mother: Study and Extension of Freud’s
Conception of God as an Exalted Father. American Imago 19 (3), p. 230.
37
See a plethora of sources cited by Ginzberg (1911), p. 386, n. 14.
38
See Frymer-Kensky (1997).
39
See: Peskita de-Rab Kahana 13:14: “As Benjamin was the last of the tribes, so too Jeremiah was the
last of the prophets. But didn’t Hagai, Zachariah and Malachi follow him? R. Leazar . . . said: Theirs
were abridged prophecies. R. Shmuel b. Nahman said: Their prophecies were rehashed traditions”. See
also Wieder (1975).
40
Ecclesiastes Rabbah 5:4 asserts that Rahab saved not only her own family but two hundred families
related to her family by marriage.
41
The resounding contrast between Rahab’s success and the failure of Israel is expressed in Pesikta de-
Rab Kahana 13:4: R. Joshua of Sikhnin, citing R. Levi, began his discourse with the verse “A servant
that dealeth wisely shall have rule over a son that doeth shamefully; and shall have a part of the inheri-
tance among the brethren” (Proverbs 17:2). The words, “A servant that dealeth wisely” apply to
Jeremiah; the words shall speak in prophetic parable of a son that doeth shamefully mean that Jeremiah
had in mind Israel who brought shame on themselves through service to idolatry. R. Abba bar Kahana
applied to Israel the verse “You are not as the harlot who made her deeds comely” (Ezekiel 16:31), and
then said: Let the descendant of a shameless woman who made her deeds comely, present himself and
reprimand the son of a comely woman who made her deeds shameless. You find that all those words of
Scripture which are used in tribute to Rahab contain reproach of Israel. Thus Rahab is quoted as saying
“Now therefore, I pray unto you, swear unto me by the Lord, since I have dealt kindly with you”
(Joshua 2:12); and of Israel it is said, “Surely they swear falsely” (Jeremiah 5:2). Rahab is quoted as
saying “Save alive my father and my mother” (Joshua 2:13) ; but to Israel it is said, “In thee have they
made light of father and mother” (Ezekiel 22:7). Of Rahab it is said, “She had brought them up to the
roof” (Joshua 2:6); but of Israel it is said, “They that worship the host of heaven upon the housetops”
(Zephaniah 1:5). Of Rahab it is said that “She hid them with the stalks of flax” (Joshua 2:6); but of
Israel it is said, “Who say to a stock: Thou art my father” (Jeremiah 2:27). Rahab is quoted as saying,
“Get you to the mountain” (Joshua 2:16); but of Israel it is said, “They sacrifice upon the tops of the
mountains” (Hosea. 4:13). Rahab is quoted as saying “Give me a true token” (Joshua 2:12); but of
Israel it is said, “Truth they speak not” (Jeremiah 9:4). You thus see that all those words in Scripture
which are used in tribute to Rahab contain a reproach of Israel.”
42
Another midrashic depiction of Jeremiah’s feeling of being deceived by God is given in Pesikta Rab-
bati 26 (ed. Braude, pp. 534–536): “In that time the Lord said to Jeremiah: ‘Rise, go to Anatoth and
buy the field from thine uncle Hanamel.’ Thereupon, Jeremiah thought in his heart: ‘Maybe God means
to turn Jerusalem over to its inhabitants and allow them to carry on their living as usual with it. Hence
[to assure them of His intention], the Lord says to me: Go, buy the field for thyself.’ . . . In the mean-
time, the prophet Jeremiah left Anatoth to come back to Jerusalem. He lifted his eyes and saw the
smoke of the temple rising up. So he said in his heart: ‘Maybe Israel has returned in penitence to bring
offerings and now the smoke of incense is rising up.’ But when he climbed closer and stood upon the
wall, he saw the temple overturned into heap upon heap of stones and the wall of Jerusalem broken
down. Thereupon he cried out to God, saying: ‘Thou hast enticed me, and I was enticed; Thou hast
overcome me, and hast prevailed’ Jeremiah 20:7).”
43
Which include 4:19, 6:11, 11:18–23, 12:1–6, 15:5–21, 16:15–21, 17:9–18, 18:18–23; cf. Polk (1984).
44
The harshness of prophetic rhetoric caused classical commentators to take issue with the metaphor of
God the seducer; the imagery was considered provocative to the point of sacrilege. See e.g. the com-
mentary of 15th century Spanish Jewish exegete Don Yitzhak Abravanel ad loc.: “The sixth question: It
says, ‘You have enticed me, God and I have been enticed’. How can the prophet ascribe to the exalted
God enticement and seduction, contemptible actions based upon lies and deceit? It is reminiscent of
what the prophet [Ezekiel 14:9] said: ‘And if a prophet is seduced and does speak a word [to such a
man], it was I the Lord who seduced that prophet; I will stretch out my hand against him and destroy him
from among My people Israel.’” Indeed, the prophetic enticement in Ezekiel refers to false prophets;
cf. 1 Kings 22:22–23. Modern commentators also made an effort to modify the harshness of Jeremiah’s
accusation. See, for example, Clines and Gunn (1978), who translate the verse: “You tried to persuade
me [to be a prophet] and I was persuaded; You [i.e. your arguments] proved too strong for me, and you
overpowered me”. In contrast, A. J. Heschel stresses the full violence with which this image is commu-
nicated as being precisely what the prophet had in mind: “The meaning of this extraordinary confession
84 LEVY
becomes clear when we consider what commentators have failed to notice, namely, the specific meaning
of the individual words . . . The words used by Jeremiah to describe the impact of God upon his life are
identical with the terms for seduction and rape in the legal terminology of the Bible.” (Heschel, 1962,
p. 114, n. 5); cf. Sheldon Blank (1949), The Confessions of Jeremiah and the Meaning of Prayer. HUCA,
21, p. 346. Michael Fishbane notes the structural analogy between Jeremiah and Jacob. The latter pre-
vailed over man and God; the former was overwhelmed by both (Fishbane, 1979, p. 99).
45
Fishbane (1979), pp. 94–95.
46
Blank (1949; see n. 44), p. 347.
47
Heschel (1962), pp. 114–115, talks not of entering into fellowship with God but of betrothal: “And yet,
the life of Jeremiah was not all misery, tension or pressure. He also knew the bliss of being engaged to
God, ‘the joy and delight’ of being as it were, a bride. ‘Thy words were found, and I ate them, Thy
words became to me a joy, the delight of my heart, for I am called by Thy name, O Lord, God of hosts.’
(Jeremiah 15:16). The words ‘joy’ and ‘delight’ occur four other times in the book of Jeremiah, and
always in connection with nuptial festivities (7:34; 16:9; 25:10; 33:11). The bearing of a name was a
sign of betrothal. ‘Let us be called by your name,’ the unmarried women called to a man (Isaiah 4:1).
The prophet’s situation was one of betrothal to the Lord, to the God of hosts.”
48
Skinner (1963), p. 219.
49
Fishbane (1979), p. 102.
50
Bright (1965), 175.
51
Freud (1937), p. 173. Cf. Merkur (1985), pp. 13–14, who suggests a different explanation to account
for Jeremiah’s identification with the aggressor.
52
Moloney (1954), p. 129.
53
Mintz (1984), p. 58.
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Alt, A. (1926). Anatota. Paletsinajarbuch des Deutscher evangelischen Institutes fier Altertum swissenschaft,
Vol. 22 Jerusalem: R. Mass.
Bauer, A. (1999). Dressed to be killed: Jeremiah 4.29–31 as an example for the functions of female
imagery in Jeremiah. In A. R. P. Diamond, K. M. O’Connor, & L. Stulman (Eds.), Troubling Jeremiah
(pp. 293–305). Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press.
Biran, A. (1985). Towards the problem of the identification of Anatoth [Heb.] Eretz Yisrael, 18, 209–214.
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(pp. 123–145). Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press.
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Books.
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Institute of Psychoanalysis.
Frymer-Kensky, T. (1997). Reading Rahab. In M. Cogan, B. L. Eichler, & J. H. Tigay (Eds.), Tehillah le-
Moshe: Biblical and Judaic studies in honor of Moshe Greenberg (pp. 57–67). Winona Lake, Indiana:
Eisenbrauns.
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Ginzberg, L. (1911). Legends of the Jews. Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society.
Haran, M. (1972). Biblical eras and institutions [Heb.]. Tel Aviv: Am Oved.
Hayward, R. (1987). The targum of Jeremiah. Delaware: Michael Glazier Inc.
Heinemann, J. (1982). A Homily on Jeremiah and the fall of Jerusalem (Pesiqta Rabbati, Pisqa 26). In
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PART III
MARTYRDOM: THEOLOGICAL
CHAPTER 8
INTRODUCTION TO MARTYRDOM
GERRIT GLAS
Leiden Universitey, The Netherlands
The three chapters in the forthcoming section on martyrdom may be viewed as

three cautionary theological statements on a concept that, from a psychological
point of view, generally is seen as single. According to the common, psychological
reading, martyrdom refers to a situation in which the person sacrifices his existence,
or at least gives up something important, for a greater cause. Martyrdom, in this
sense, is sometimes met with approval and honour – in cases in which the cause is
highly valued – and at other times encounters disapproval, disdain, and even anger
and shame – in cases in which self-sacrifice is perceived as improper or even
manipulative.
The late Hyam Maccoby,1 who was a research professor at Centre for Jewish
Studies at the University of Leeds (UK), gives an introduction to the theological
background of the concept of martyrdom, mainly from the perspective of Judaism.
Jacob van Bruggen, research professor of New Testament at the Theological Univer-
sity of Kampen (the Netherlands), and Bishop H.W.M. Tájrá of the Ordre de Sainte
Marie la Vierge in Paris, follow with chapters on Paul, the apostle. All three authors
try to pull their exegetical work in tow with a larger, overarching framework of
Christian understanding from which the possible spiritual and psychological impli-
cations for contemporary believing can be further investigated.
The general impression that emerges is one of intense complexity. Our authors
make it clear that there are apparently various sets of questions to be pondered.
There are, first, a number of questions on the relation between martyrdom and reli-
gion. Is martyrdom a religious phenomenon at all? If it is, is it restricted to monothe-
istic religions? If not, is there still a way to distinguish religious martyrdom from
non-religious martyrdom? Could one possibly be considered a martyr for an evil
cause (e.g., sacrifice for the values of a dictatorial system)?
89
© 2007 Springer.
90 GLAS
Another series of difficulties relates to martyrdom, volition and psychopathology.

Is self-initiated and/or self-achieved martyrdom still martyrdom? Where do we have
to draw the boundaries between martyrdom, self-afflicted harm, and suicide? Do
sufficient criteria exist for distinguishing martyrdom from masochism?
Finally, there is also a set of queries around martyrdom and sacrificial atonement.
How is martyrdom related to the concept of sacrifice? How are we to conceive the
atoning meaning of sacrifice? What are the conditions of such atonement? How
could a sacrifice, human or not, acquire the meaning and power of atonement?
Maccoby does much of the conceptual work. He provides guidelines that help dis-
tinguish between martyrdom, excessive heroism, sacrifice, and suicide. He discusses
differences between the Judaic and Christian attitudes toward martyrdom, and he
makes a strong case for the distinction between martyrdom and sacrifice. The notion
of sacrifice encloses the idea of dying for the sake of one’s own death. Such a death
is regarded as having itself an effect on the salvation of others. In martyrdom, how-
ever, it is not death itself that acquires value, but the sake for which one dies.
As Maccoby and Tájrá make clear, there is a difference between the Jewish and
Christian conception of martyrdom. Judaism puts emphasis on what is called in
Hebrew qiddush ha-Shem, which means ‘the sanctification of the name (of God)’.
The martyr is a person who is totally devoted to God’s holiness, even at the cost of
life. There are three classical situations in Judaism in which one’s life deserves lesser
care than duty and which, therefore, require martyrdom. These situations concern
the imperative need to prevent apostasy, the prohibition against taking the life of
another person, and the prohibition against the worst forms of sexual depravity
(incest, adultery). In the Christian tradition martyrdom is associated with the original
meaning of the term martyr, which is ‘witness.’ The Christian martyr is a believer
who bears testimony to the truth of Christianity, and as such might be called upon to
accept martyrdom under a wide variety of applications that would not be acceptable
under Jewish law. Overall, this missionary element is lacking in Judaism.
These different conceptions of martyrdom are related to a different conception of
Jesus. Jesus was undoubtedly a martyr, according to Maccoby. However, from the
Jewish perspective, this does not mean that his death had a sacrificial meaning and
still less that it had the effect of atonement of the sins of others. The notion of ‘vic-
arious atonement’ is in fact absent in Judaism, as Maccoby points out. So, Jesus was
a martyr, but it was Pauline theology which provided the additional conceptual appa-
ratus to transform his death into a sacrifice and to imbue the death of later ‘wit-
nesses’ of Christ with a sacrificial meaning.
This latter statement, I think, needs some further qualification. Material for such
reflection can already be found in the chapters under discussion, so, I will highlight
a few points from these chapters which bear relevance to this issue.
It is interesting to notice that the Jewish scholar Maccoby and the Protestant New
Testament expert van Bruggen both deny that Judaism and Christianity favour mar-
tyrdom as a state the believer ought to deliberately seek. Tájrá’s view is slightly more
difficult to interpret, but is, I think, not very far from this position. Both traditions rec-
ognize martyrdom as valuable in cases in which it is the unintended and unavoidable
INTRODUCTION TO MARTYRDOM 91
result of the affirmation of one’s religious convictions. However, they do not glorify
martyrdom as such, nor do they encourage the believer to suffer or sacrifice life when
it is possible to avoid these outcomes. The individual who deliberately seeks martyr-
dom when it is possible to escape from it would thus be regarded as culpable, says
Maccoby. Van Bruggen affirms that Paul did not glorify martyrdom as such, but only
the effects of suffering on his own spiritual life.
There is a slight difference between van Bruggen and Tájrá here, especially in
their appreciation of the passage in which Paul describes how he is torn between the
desire to depart and be with Christ (‘which is better by far’) and the necessity to
remain alive and in the body in order to help the young church in its ‘progress and
joy in the faith’ (Philippians 1:21–25). Van Bruggen emphasizes Paul’s choice for
life, which is, indeed, undeniable on the basis of what Paul writes. Tájrá puts more
emphasis on Paul’s spiritual growth during his period of imprisonment, most notably
his ‘immersion’ in Christ and his psychological and spiritual identification with
Christ’s sufferings. These sufferings are – by acts of identification with Christ – in
fact a loosening of earthly ties. Death is the endpoint of this process and a transition
to the indissolubly joining with Christ. The fluidity of this transition is nicely cap-
tured by the notion of libation (literally: drink offering). Tájrá, interestingly enough,
underscores that Christian authors use the verb only in a passive voice – concurring,
thereby, with the position of Van Bruggen and Maccoby that death by martyrdom
should not be strived for as a value in and of itself. It is not Paul who offers his life as
libation; rather, he is ‘called upon’ and ‘allowed’ to do so by the Almighty, accord-
ing to Tájrá.
The difference between these points of view can be best seen, I think, in the appre-
ciation of death. Van Bruggen – we can only guess what Maccoby’s view here would
be – would not resist Tájrá’s emphasis on what Paul is saying about the gain acquired
by dying, but he would perhaps hesitate about the glorifying way in which Tájrá
speaks about immersion and identification with Christ in the process of dying. This
glorification has gradually become part of what Tájrá calls the Holy Tradition. Tájrá
sketches a process of gradual spiritual and psychological appropriation in which ini-
tial stupefaction and silence about the death of the apostles Peter, Paul, and James in
the first and early second century reside for eschatological interpretations and, later
on, for liturgical celebrations. These celebrations began in simple and subtle ways, in
the construction of a rudimentary niche or cella over St. Paul’s tomb; they became
more exuberant and impressive later on, in the creation of the Basilica of St. Paul in
Rome, for instance, and in the public acknowledgment of the days of commemora-
tion of the martyrdom of St. Peter and St. Paul on June 29th.
So, we end up with three totally different atmospheres: Maccoby’s sobering con-
clusions about the limited role of martyrdom in Jewish spirituality, van Bruggen’s
emphasis on the overarching nature of Paul’s religious worldview (not allowing mar-
tyrdom to become an end in itself), and Tájrá’s both ardent and honorific account of
the spiritual dimensions of Paul’s martyrdom. In spite of these differences, some
unexpected similarities appear as well. These similarities underscore the enormous
distance between Christian and Jewish martyrdom on the one hand and modern or
92 GLAS
secularized forms of martyrdom on the other hand – think for instance of the suicide
bomber, or the social process of victimization, or the manipulative use of the role of
the victim in legal cases, to mention only a few of the possible variants. With respect
to suicide bombing one has to remind oneself that none of the monotheist religions
allows for martyrdom in which the lives of innocent others might be involved.
These three chapters show that a lot of work is still needed in order to illuminate
in what way ‘martyr-like’ behaviours, psychopathological or not, are related to their
original versions, and how meanings are derived, transformed and used in these
behaviours. And, beyond the study of the individual as such, we still need to learn
more about the manner by which we might establish contact with the minds and
hearts of persons displaying these behaviours. Could it be that the anorectic patient
with her (seemingly?) self-sacrificial behaviour could be better helped if we could
uncover and articulate these transformed and distorted, hidden religious dimensions?
Would it be helpful to address the sacrificial aspect (pseudo or not) of the masochis-
tic patient with a vocabulary that is derived from the great religious traditions? In
short, is there some validity to the hypothesis that these pathological behaviours rep-
resent closed and distorted variants or copies of behaviours originating in religious
practices and would it be possible to ‘open up’ these behaviours by creatively mak-
ing use of the vocabularies belonging to those practices?
NOTE
1
Hyam Maccoby passed away almost a year after the completion of the revised version of this manu-
script, on May 2, 2004.
CHAPTER 9
MARTYRDOM
Theological and psychological aspects. Martyrdom in Judaism
HYAM MACCOBY Z.L.†
Research Professor, Centre for Jewish Studies, Leeds, United Kingdom
1. BIBLICAL BASIS
The biblical basis of martyrdom (according to Rabbi Akiva, a famous martyr him-
self) is the injunction ‘Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy . . . soul’
(Deuteronomy 6:5; the Hebrew word for ‘soul’, nefesh, being also translatable
as ‘life’).
2. DEFINITION OF MARTYRDOM: SOME DISTINCTIONS
In the simplest sense, this envisages a context in which a person is given a choice by
an oppressor between death and abjuring allegiance to his/her religion. Among the
earliest examples of this are to be found in 2 Maccabees, 7, where a heroic mother
sacrifices her life and urges her children to do likewise rather than abjure Judaism by
eating forbidden meat. The figure of this heroic mother became an important model
to the Christian martyrs of a later age, who died rather than offer incense before the
statue of the divinized Roman Emperor. Integral to this definition of martyrdom is
the concept of monotheism; it is hard to see how martyrdom could occur in a poly-
theistic religion. Yet should we deny the name ‘martyr’ to those polytheists who
gave their lives for their country in battle or in refusal to give information to the
enemy? Is there a form of martyrdom arising from patriotism, as well as that arising
from religious loyalty? Or can martyrdom arise from loyalty to any kind of cause,
other than religion or country? Have there been martyrs in the cause of Communism,
or even Nazism?1
Even more puzzling, especially in psychological terms, is the question of deliber-
ate martyrdom. Does a person, who deliberately seeks martyrdom, placing himself
voluntarily in a situation where he courts death, qualify as a martyr, or should he be
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94 MACCOBY
classed as a suicidal maniac? Many figures who have been revered as martyrs may
come into this category – for example, the Christian missionaries who embarked on
attempts to convert prominent Muslim leaders, placing themselves at their mercy.
On the other hand, many people who may be classed as martyrs cross the boundaries
of these distinctions. It is sometimes difficult to define exactly the cause for which a
person may offer his life, since patriotism, for example, may be closely bound up with
a particular religious belief. Was Samson a martyr? He died in the national cause of
Israel in its war against the Philistines, and yet at the same time, he was striking a blow
for Israelite monotheism against the polytheistic creed of Dagon, whose temple he
brought down at the cost of his own life. Is a person a martyr who involves others in his
own death, or must a martyr, to qualify as such, offer up only his own life? Here we
enter the vexing question of the Muslim suicide bombers, who give up their lives in
order to kill the enemy, even when the people defined as enemies are non-combatants.2
Another question with both psychological and theological implications is that of
the distinction between martyrdom and atoning self-sacrifice. Martyrs, especially
in Christianity, are often regarded as producing an effect of vicarious atonement
(the supreme example of this is Jesus himself, in the traditional Christian interpre-
tation, though not necessarily in his own estimation, as I shall argue in expounding
the Jewish attitude towards the death of Jesus). By giving his life, it is thought, the
martyr performs a deed of salvation that benefits others; he takes upon himself a
death and suffering that spares others from undergoing such ordeals. Is this part of
the definition of martyrdom? If so, it may sometimes be difficult to distinguish
between a voluntarily-undertaken martyrdom, a salvific act of sacrifice, and an act
of suicidal mania.
Indeed, in general, it will be necessary to develop criteria by which it may be pos-
sible to distinguish between martyrdom (highly regarded in all religions) and suicide
(generally regarded as a sinful destruction of human life).
3. JEWISH DEFINITIONS OF MARTYRDOM
All the above questions are carefully considered in the Jewish sources, and the
answers provided there are important contributions to the subject-matter of the pre-
sent colloquium.
First, it should be said at once that in Judaism (in general, though with some dis-
agreement of sources) martyrdom is not encouraged as a deliberate act. Anyone who
deliberately seeks martyrdom when it is possible to avoid it is regarded as culpable,
not as admirable. It is only when the victim is forced to choose between performing
some heinous act and suffering death that the choice of death is regarded as not only
admirable but as the highest deed possible to humanity: this is what is called
in Hebrew qiddush ha-Shem, which means literally ‘the sanctification of the name
(of God)’ (though this term originally had wider connotations, and only gradually
acquired the specialized meaning of ‘martyrdom’).3 A martyr honors God in a way
that transcends all other virtuous conduct. He or she acts entirely without base
motives of self-interest and overcomes the natural human fear of death, being
MARTYRDOM 95
motivated entirely by love of God and loyal conviction of God’s holiness which must
be asserted even at the cost of life itself. The promise of reward in a future life is sec-
ondary in Judaism, though it is not entirely absent. It is noteworthy that the chief
instance of martyrdom (or attempted martyrdom) in the Hebrew Bible, that of Daniel
and his companions, makes no mention at all of future reward, though to the authors
of Maccabees, this doctrine (especially in the form of bodily resurrection of the
dead) had acquired some importance.
Along with the imperative need to avoid apostasy, two other categorical injunc-
tions were regarded as more important than the duty to preserve one’s own life, and
therefore as providing occasions for martyrdom: the prohibition against taking the
life of another person, and the prohibition against the worst forms of sexual deprav-
ity (incest or adultery). The locus classicus on this subject is Babylonian Talmud,
Sanhedrin 74a, which describes a meeting of rabbis to discuss the question, ‘Which
are the laws of the Torah which one must observe even at the cost of death?’ It
should be noted that the vast majority of the laws of the Torah were not included in
this category; that is to say, only three laws were singled out as so important that
their preservation was a matter of martyrdom. In the case of the other laws (includ-
ing for example the laws of the Sabbath and the laws that forbid the eating of certain
foods) it was decided that they should be infringed rather than lose one’s life. In fact,
all the ceremonial laws were regarded as unfit topics for martyrdom, and a great
many of the moral laws too.
Rather than kill an innocent person, one should suffer death. This law of martyr-
dom (which, outside Judaism might not be considered to come under the concept of
martyrdom, but rather under the concept of conflict of duties) is graphically illus-
trated in a story (Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 74a) about the famous Babylonian
teacher known as Rava. He was approached by a Jew who told him: ‘The governor
of my province has ordered me to assassinate a certain person; otherwise I myself
must die. What shall I do?’ Rava replied: ‘Die and do not kill. Is your blood redder
than his?’ The Talmudic passage which tells this story then asks the question:
‘From which biblical proof-text did Rava derive this decision?’ The answer given
is: ‘From none. It is a matter of reason (sevara).’ In other words, the Talmud regards
Rava’s decision as derived from natural law, an expression of fundamental human
rationality.
Rava’s question, ‘Is your blood redder than his?’ presents some important impli-
cations. It asserts the fundamental equality of all human life. What qualifies a person
to live is not any feature or talent or even virtue that he possesses but simply the fact
that he is a living person, one through whose body blood flows. The man who ques-
tioned Rava is not to consider whether his own life is in some way more valuable
than the life he is being compelled to destroy, and therefore as justifying an evasion
of the martyrdom required of him.
Further, Rava, by his reply, forestalls the perennial excuse of the subordinate ‘I was
only obeying orders.’ Rav’s questioner might argue that he had a duty of obedience to
the ruler of his province; this was the refuge of an Eichmann, who pleaded obedience
to legitimate authority as his excuse for mass murder, and was even surprised that
96 MACCOBY
anyone could doubt the validity of this excuse. In Judaism, a crime can never be
excused in this way. There is the famous saying of Shammai, when asked about
whether a criminal could ever be regarded as merely the ‘representative’ of his
employer in a criminal act, the employer being regarded as responsible: ‘There is no
‘representation’ in crime. A person must obey the command of the true Master (God),
not the command of the putative master (the employer).’ (b. Kiddushin 42b). Every-
one is responsible for his or her own deeds, and this may lead at times to a duty of
martyrdom.
4. STATUS OF THE DUTY OF MARTYRDOM
Yet martyrdom, when considered as a ‘duty’, has certain peculiar features. Mai-
monides, the leading Jewish philosopher of the Middle Ages, has this to say about a
person who, through lack of heroism, avoids martyrdom in circumstances that
require it: ‘He profanes the name of God and fails to fulfill the command to sanctify
the Name; nevertheless, because he transgressed under compulsion, he is not liable
to punishment by flogging, much less by death, even if he committed murder under
compulsion, for there is no punishment by flogging, or death except for one who
transgresses willingly, and by the evidence of witnesses and after due warning.’
(Mishneh Torah, Yesodei ha-Torah, 5:4). Martyrdom may be enjoined in Judaism as
a duty at times, but it differs from heroism and it is never regarded as less than an act
of heroism.
The question is, then, ‘Can it sometimes be an act of excessive heroism?’ The
martyrs of the books of Maccabees are represented as undergoing death rather than
transgressing the Jewish dietary laws by eating forbidden foods. But it appears that
in later Judaism this was regarded as unnecessary martyrdom, since the dietary laws
are not included among the three prohibitions mentioned in b. Sanhedrin 74a as
requiring martyrdom (murder, incest and idolatry). Did the mother and her six sons
give away their lives for nothing, in the eyes of later interpreters of Scripture? Can it
even be that their action was blameworthy, since they neglected the important duty of
preserving their own lives in favor of lesser duties? Should we even regard their
action as suicide, rather than martyrdom, and therefore as not only unnecessary or
blameworthy but as seriously sinful?
The answer to these questions is ‘No.’ The later formulation of the conditions
of martyrdom does not, after all, rule out the heroic behavior of Hannah and her
sons as either unnecessary or as blameworthy. For, the rabbis of the Talmud,
while confining martyrdom to the three major prohibitions of Scripture, made
certain conditions. They said that the minor prohibitions should be infringed
under pain of death, but only when such infringement did not amount to an act of
apostasy. If the infringement of even minor laws was staged by the oppressor in
such a way as to symbolize the renunciation of Judaism, then the correct response
is martyrdom. Such a staging could be in one of two ways: either by making the
infringement a public show (not merely an act performed in private), or by mak-
ing the infringement a mere episode in a general campaign of suppression of
MARTYRDOM 97
Judaism. The permission given by the rabbis to the infringement of minor laws
was confined to circumstances when such infringement took place in private and
was not part of a general religious persecution. The mother and her sons were
thus genuine martyrs in rabbinic eyes, and even though their deed is most fully
recorded in works that that were not included in the Jewish canon of Scripture,
there are rabbinic works of authority that do mention it in terms of the highest
reverence (Midrash, Lamentations Rabbah 1:16, b; Gittin 57b).
5. MARTYRDOM AND SUICIDE
A question now arises that has given cause to much controversy among Jewish reli-
gious thinkers. Suppose a person chooses death rather than infringe a minor prohibi-
tion, in circumstances when no repudiation of Judaism as a whole is implied? Is this
martyrdom, or is it suicidal foolishness? Does the Talmudic passage which isolates the
three great commandments for which the sacrifice of life is demanded merely permit
the preservation of life for lesser commandments, or does it positively enjoin this? In
other words, is it a positive duty to preserve one’s life in such circumstances, or is it
merely condoned? Judaism makes a distinction between conduct that is obligatory on
every ordinary person, and conduct that is (to use a Christian term) supererogatory;
that is, not obligatory but meritorious in the highest degree. This is called in Hebrew
‘middat hasidim,’ or ‘the quality of saintliness;’ it includes such conduct as the cancel-
lation of a debt owed by a poor person. The question, then, in this case, is whether a
person who refuses to accept the condonation offered for minor infringements is acting
as a saint or as a fool. There is even the possibility that he may be acting wickedly, by
neglecting the important duty of self-preservation in favor of lesser duties.
Maimonides takes the view that someone who chooses death rather than infringe a
minor commandment (in private and at a time when no general religious persecution
is in force) is actually wicked, and should be classed as a suicide (Mishneh Torah,
ibidem 5:1). While this is the mainstream view, it has been challenged by some
highly-respected authorities.
We must distinguish here carefully, in Jewish thinking, between a situation of
oppression, when infringement of commandments is demanded by a tyrant on pain of
death, and the very different situation when there is no oppression, but dangerous cir-
cumstances arise in which the infringement of commandments is required in order to
save life. For example, when a person who is dangerously ill is prescribed forbidden
foods by a doctor as a cure, he may eat such foods because the preservation of life takes
precedence over all dietary laws. Similarly, if a fire breaks out on Sabbath threatening
life, it may be quenched despite the law forbidding fire-quenching on the Sabbath. In
this case, there is no question that the flouting of the Sabbath law is not only permitted,
but is an actual duty, and that anyone who fails to flout the law and thus endangers life
is acting wickedly. This is the situation known in Hebrew as ‘piqquach nefesh.’ The
paradigm biblical case cited in the Talmud is that of David (1 Samuel 21), who
demanded of the High Priest that he should hand over the sacred loaves of show-bread
in order to sustain the lives of starving men. This, according to the Babylonian Talmud
98 MACCOBY
(Menahot 96a), was a perfectly justified demand, despite the extreme sanctity of the
show-bread. This case of David is actually cited by Jesus (Mark 2:25) to justify the
plucking of corn on the Sabbath by his starving disciples; which shows that Jesus, far
from merely despising the Sabbath was appealing to the ancient Jewish principle that
preservation of life comes before the observance of Sabbath, as of other ritual laws.
Jesus on this occasion even quotes (Mark 2:27) the saying, familiar from rabbinic writ-
ings, ‘The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath’ (for this saying see
Mekhilta on Exodus 31:13). The incidents in which Jesus is opposed by the Pharisees
for healing on the Sabbath are best understood as anti-Pharisee propaganda of a post-
Jesus date, inserted by the editors of the Gospels into Jesus’ mouth.4
Thus the Jewish laws of martyrdom form part of a complex of ideas regarding the
observance of the commandments of the Torah and the circumstances in which such
observance can be waived. To obey the laws of the Torah is regarded as the expression
of love of God, but to obey them to the point of death was never part of God’s inten-
tion. To support this, some rabbis quoted the biblical text, ‘He shall live by them’
(Leviticus 18:5) – on which they comment, ‘but you shall not die because of them’
(Babylonian Talmud, Yoma 85b). Only the three holiest laws, essential to all morality,
require martyrdom. The others are all open to infringement, according to circum-
stances. Yet this infringement of the laws, when permitted, contains various grades of
significance. Sometimes the infringement is a definite duty, sometimes a mere per-
mission. Sometimes there is more love of God in breaking a law than in keeping it.
Thus while Judaism is a religion of commandments, there is always a certain rela-
tivism which rescues the religion from the charge of mere inelastic heteronomy and
obedience. All the laws are subject to considerations of love of God and love of
humanity. Even the most absolute of laws, that against killing a human being, is sub-
ject to exceptions; one may kill in self-defense, or to rescue a fellow-human from a
pursuing murderer. Normally, killing can be done only through judicial process,
which requires evidence of two eye-witnesses of the capital crime; but citizen’s
emergency justice (self-defense or rescue) can justify a private killing, which how-
ever must be succeeded by full judicial enquiry. Martyrdom itself can be viewed in
this relativistic light as an exception to an important moral principle: it is an excep-
tion to the law against suicide; two expressions of love have conflicted.
This leads me into some linguistic considerations. The Christian term ‘martyrdom’
means ‘giving witness’ and the concept underlying this term is one of testifying to the
truth of Christianity and avoiding all denial of its truth. In Judaism the term is instead
‘sanctification of the Name.’ The Christian term, then, makes martyrdom a matter of
loyalty to a cause, while in Judaism the term has wider connotations. Loyalty to the
cause of Judaism as a religion is only one of the motivations for accepting death,
though it has been an important ingredient in Jewish martyrdom generally, since
acceptance of death is required to avoid any act or affirmation defined as idolatrous,
and such an act would constitute apostasy. But the avoidance of murder and of incest
are regarded as just as important motivations, and these are not primarily matters of
‘witness’ to Judaism but matters of universal principle. Even non-Jews are required to
undergo death rather than commit such acts (though the question of whether Judaism
MARTYRDOM 99
demands martyrdom from non-Jews has been disputed). There seems here to be an
important distinction between the Jewish and the Christian definitions of martyrdom,
so that in view of the etymology of the word it can even be doubted whether the word
applies to Judaism at all. An important element in Christian martyrdom is to bear tes-
timony to the truth of Christianity in such a way as to further an ongoing campaign to
convert the whole world to Christianity. In Judaism, this missionary ingredient is
missing, since in Judaism salvation is granted for non-Jews by adherence to monothe-
ism and to the basic principles of morality contained in the Seven Noachic Laws.
6. UNIVERSALITY IN CHRISTIANITY AND JUDAISM
It should be explained that there is an important difference between Judaism and

Christianity on the question of what is often called (misleadingly in my opinion)
‘universality.’ Christianity is a universal religion in the sense that it aims at the con-
version of the whole world to its belief, and even (at least in its medieval form)
denies salvation to all non-Christians (extra ecclesiam nulla salus). Judaism teaches
that non-Jews, who adhere to monotheism and the rest of the Seven Laws are fully
acceptable to God. Judaism accepts converts to Judaism, but does not go out of its
way to acquire them since it is not essential for salvation to be a Jew. Judaism is a
two-covenant religion: there is the covenant of God with Noah, which applies to all
mankind, and there is the covenant of Sinai which applies to Jews only (including of
course voluntary converts to Judaism). Another way of putting this matter is that
Christianity is both a universal religion and a universal Church, while Judaism is a
universal religion, but not a universal Church. For a long time, this was held against
Judaism, which was decried as particularism. More recently, however, it has been
increasingly recognized that Judaism’s ‘particularism’ should be more correctly
called ‘pluralism.’ Underlying this pluralism is another important distinction
between Judaism and Christianity, the question of Original Sin. Judaism does not
believe that mankind was condemned by the sin of Adam, and therefore does not
require a salvific remedy applying equally to all mankind.
Out of the seven laws of the Noachic Code, three are actually identical with the
three laws of martyrdom. Indeed the very wording of the Three Laws, as enunciated
in the Talmud, shows that they were based on the wording of the Seven Laws. It is
thus an important and intriguing fact that the rabbis who sat down to formulate the
most basic laws of Judaism, for which martyrdom is required, did so by annihilating
the distance or difference between Jews and Gentiles and asserting a manifesto that
was common to all.
7. VICARIOUS ATONEMENT
There is also an important element in Christian martyrdom that is absent in Judaism,

and that is the element of vicarious atonement. It might be said that the archetypal
Christian martyr is Jesus himself, and his sufferings on the Cross and especially
his death are regarded in Christian theology as atoning for the sins of mankind.
100 MACCOBY
The question may be raised, however, ‘Can Jesus be regarded as a martyr at all? Or
should his death be described as a sacrifice rather than as martyrdom?’
8. MARTYRDOM, SACRIFICE AND SUICIDE
I think that it is important to make a strong distinction between martyrdom and sac-
rifice (even though martyrdom may have an additional sacrificial function). A martyr
always dies for a cause, to which he bears witness by his death, or, in more Jewish
terms, he dies in order not to submit to tyrannous pressure to commit an act of
betrayal of principle. In case of a sacrifice, however, the person dies for the sake of
his own death, which is regarded as having an efficacy of its own in producing salva-
tion for others. The death of a martyr is an unfortunate necessity, a tragic incident in
the course of a campaign whose manifesto can be formulated, while the death of sac-
rifice is valuable in itself as conferring a vital benefit on others simply by its occur-
rence, and associated with no manifesto except belief in the efficacy of the sacrifice
itself for salvation. In Pauline Christianity, Jesus’ death was sacrificial. Jesus did not
die in pursuance of some program of reform or because he was avoiding the perfor-
mance of some execrable act. The Cross itself was its own aim and motivation. In the
Gospels, on the other hand, we do find some adumbration of a case for Jesus as mar-
tyr. He is represented as advocating reforms in Judaism and as arousing the tyran-
nous resentment of the authorities through his proposals. Even here, however, this
notion is not carried through as the reason for his crucifixion, which, in the end, is
ascribed to his own deliberate salvific aim. He decided to die on the Cross, even
though he could have called on the angels to rescue him, because it was his destiny
and personal decision to die on the Cross as a ransom for mankind. He arranged his
own death by deputing Judas Iscariot to betray him. Thus even in the Gospels, Jesus
can hardly be described as coming into the category of ‘martyr.’
Of course, this does not mean that, in historical fact, Jesus was not a martyr. In my
view, it was Pauline theology that transformed him from a martyr to a sacrifice. His
death at the hands of the Romans and their Jewish gauleiter, the High Priest, was
brought about because he was regarded as a serious threat to the Roman Occupation
of the Land of Israel. By proclaiming the coming of the Kingdom of God, Jesus was
rousing hopes in the Jewish people of the ousting of the Romans and the return of
Jewish theocracy. Jesus was thus in the tradition of Jewish messiah-figures, many of
whom were executed by the Romans, and who count, in Jewish estimation, as martyrs
in the cause of Judaism. John the Baptist, too, as Josephus makes clear (Antiquities,
xviii. 5.118–19), died because his preaching was regarded as stirring the people to
rebellion, not for the reasons given in the Gospels. Jesus, in my own opinion, was
undoubtedly a martyr, but Pauline theology of the Cross took him out of this category.
Yet Pauline theology of the Cross ensured that all Christian martyrs in ensuing
ages acquired a sacrificial aspect, so that the Christian word ‘martyr’ acquired a
nuance that differentiates Christian martyrs from their Jewish equivalents, such as
Rabbi Akiva. The cruel death of Rabbi Akiva at the hands of the Romans (for the
offence of continuing to teach Judaism at a time when this was forbidden by the
MARTYRDOM 101
Emperor Hadrian) has never been regarded as having an atoning effect for the sins of
other Jews, who must atone for their own sins by repentance and reparation. In
Judaism, the concepts of martyrdom and sacrifice are clearly distinguished.
Here again, however, some qualification is necessary. There was one rather late
period in Jewish history when the concepts of martyrdom and sacrifice became con-
fused with each other. This was in Germany in the period of intense persecution of the
Jews by the motley masses of Crusaders, setting off to liberate Palestine from the Mus-
lims, but taking the opportunity to take vengeance on the so-called ‘Christ-killers’ on
the way – a procedure that combined religious zeal with safety, since the Jews who
were massacred were, unlike the Muslims, unarmed. At this time, many Jews facing
inevitable death for themselves and their children took an understandable psychologi-
cal line by embracing death with pious fervor. Here the psychology of martyrdom
merged with the psychology of suicide, a not infrequent phenomenon in all varieties of
religious martyrdom. Once this development had taken place, a further displacement
occurred: martyrdom was confused with sacrifice. Jewish fathers, rather than wait for
their children to be burnt alive by the Christian mob, cut their own children’s throats,
and mentally identified this tragic act with the willingness of Abraham to sacrifice his
son Isaac at the behest of God. The fathers then killed themselves and their wives, in
emulation of the acts of mass suicide at Masada and Jotapata narrated by Josephus in
his account of the Jewish defeat by the Romans (War, III. vii; War VII, viii). These acts
of desperation at least rescued the Jewish victims from a posture of total passivity in
the face of irresistible oppression. Thus Jewish history is not entirely without its
episodes of suicidal mania, masked as holy acts of sacrifice. There is some evidence
(found in certain unpublished manuscripts by the scholar Shalom Spiegel) that these
aberrations were partly derived from an underground Jewish tradition that the sacrifice
of Isaac (which according to the Bible story was cancelled) actually took place and was
followed by Isaac’s resurrection. This unofficial version of the story shows that the
sacrificial mystique developed centrally by Pauline Christianity did exist in Judaism
but in a form that remained peripheral and uninfluential until the tragic events of the
Middle Ages brought it back to the surface in one ravaged area of the Jewish world.
The willing acceptance and even courting of death as an act of supreme piety and
obliteration of self is the aspect of martyrdom illustrated here, rather than the aspect of
atonement for the sins of others.
9. VICARIOUS ATONEMENT IN JUDAISM
On the other hand, the idea that the sufferings of the saintly can be of benefit to oth-
ers by atoning for their sins, and thus enabling them to escape their due punishment,
can indeed be found in earlier sources in Judaism, though again in a peripheral form.
There is a story in the Babylonian Talmud (Bava Metzia 85a) about the sage Rabbi
Judah the Prince (the redactor of the chief rabbinic text, the Mishnah) which goes as
follows: Rabbi Judah once showed lack of sympathy with an animal whom he was
leading to be slaughtered and which was attempting to escape. He said to the animal:
‘Go; for this you were created.’ This rough behavior was regarded by God as a sin,
102 MACCOBY
and, as a punishment, Rabbi Judah suffered for the next ten years from a painful
stomach complaint. This complaint departed when Rabbi Judah on one occasion
showed unusual compassion for some animals. His maid was about to clear away
some young weasels found in his house, but he stopped her, quoting the biblical
verse, ‘His tender mercies are on all his works’ (Psalms 145:9). Because he showed
compassion, compassion was showed to him, and his stomach pains ceased. During
all the years that Rabbi Judah suffered, the harvests were unusually profuse. His suf-
ferings atoned for the sins of his neighbors, who benefited by escaping normal pun-
ishment for their sins in the way of agricultural failures.
This story is quoted here to show that the idea of vicarious atonement is not
entirely absent from Judaism. The story also shows how peripheral this idea is in
Judaism, for it is not even the main point of the story, which concerns chiefly the
question of compassion towards animals. While Rabbi Judah’s neighbours benefited
unwittingly from the saintly rabbi’s sufferings, they were never encouraged in any
way to look to such sufferings as a means of escaping punishment for their sins. This
contrasts startlingly with the atmosphere of Christianity, in which people are cen-
trally aware of the availability of the sufferings of Jesus as a means of atonement.
Moreover, it could be argued that Rabbi Judah is not a sacrificial martyr in the
same sense as Jesus, whose sufferings are totally undeserved. Rabbi Judah suffers
for a sin that he has committed. True, it is a very minor sin, which in a less saintly
person, would have been overlooked by God. Nevertheless, it is a sin of lack of com-
passion. The Jewish story is saying that the sufferings of the saints can produce a
measure of atonement even though not voluntarily undertaken and even when
incurred as a punishment. Such suffering does not come under the Jewish concept of
martyrdom (qiddush ha-shem), which seems to be confined to the undergoing of
death. Here there appears to be a difference between Judaism and Christianity, in
which suffering, even without death, can be characterized as martyrdom. For exam-
ple, the hardships of Paul, accepted by him, are described by Dr. Jakob van Bruggen
in this volume as themselves a form of martyrdom. There seems to be some ambiva-
lence on this issue, however, for Msngr. Dr. Harry W. M. Tájrá in another chapter in
this volume, makes a distinction between Paul’s ‘persecution’ and his ‘martyrdom,’
confining the latter term to his death. The possibility of broadening the term ‘mar-
tyrdom’ in Christianity to include non-lethal sufferings may arise from the aspect of
atonement for others which is never absent in the Christian concept of ‘martyrdom’
but never present in the Jewish concept of qiddush ha-Shem.
It should be mentioned, finally, that both the Hebrew Bible and the rabbinic writ-
ings contain the idea of sufferings imposed on a blameless person as a test and also
as qualifying him for some special reward. The chief biblical example, of course, is
Job, but Abraham also comes into this category, especially as rabbinic theory holds
that the Akedah was the last of ten trials imposed on him by God. In rabbinic
sources, sufferings imposed on a blameless person as a test are called ‘sufferings of
love’ (yissurin shel ahavah). On a pragmatic level, some instances are recorded of
rabbis who were unwilling to accept these sufferings, and escaped from them by the
formula, ‘I do not want either them or their reward’ (lo hem ve-lo sekharon).
MARTYRDOM 103
In my opinion, sufferings of this kind cannot be included in the concept of ‘mar-

tyrdom’, however defined, since essential to that concept is the willing acceptance of
suffering in loyalty to a defined good cause. Sufferings (‘trials’) undergone for the
sake of accumulating merit or reward for the sufferer is something different.
10. PSYCHOLOGICAL MEANING OF THE JUDAIC/RABBINIC

CONCEPTION OF MARTYRDOM
Martyrdom in Judaism is an extreme expression of courage, loyalty and abhorrence of

evil-doing. It is not a virtue in itself irrespective of circumstances, and not to be sought
out in a deliberate way as conferring meaning on life. But if circumstances demand, it is
not to be avoided, and the martyr is accorded the highest respect. The element of volun-
tariness is essential to the definition of martyrdom, in that avoidance of it by committing
the demanded disloyalty or evil-doing must be possible. The martyr is one who is faced
with a choice and cannot avoid having to make the choice. If he can avoid the whole
choice-situation, he should do so, because otherwise he will have contributed to his own
death. If this option is not open to him, and he succumbs to natural weakness and fails
to become a martyr, he is nevertheless not regarded as subject to any legal penalty, for he
has acted under compulsion. Psychologically then, martyrdom is regarded as belonging
to the realm of extreme morality and as outside the scheme of normal moral behavior,
which is governed by the principle ‘Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself’ (Leviticus
19:18), a principle singled out as basic by several Jewish teachers, including Hillel,
Akiva and Jesus. This accounts for the somewhat surprising fact that despite the very
large numbers of Jews who have died in religious persecutions, there is very little men-
tion of martyrdom in everyday Jewish practice and worship. The concept of martyrdom
does not color everyday thinking in Judaism. There has been nothing in Judaism corre-
sponding to the Flagellant movements in Christianity and Islam, centering on the con-
cept of martyrdom as desirable. The martyrdom of great teachers is, in general, regarded
as a calamity which requires explanation, rather than celebration. Thus the martyrdom
of Rabbi Akiva is deplored by Moses (granted a prevision of it) and is ascribed to the
inscrutable will of God (b. Menahot 29b). Yet (in a rare reaction) Akiva himself wel-
comes it, as an opportunity to ‘love God with his life’ (b. Berakhot 61b). The martyrdom
of the Ten Martyrs of the Hadrianic persecution receives the explanation that it atoned
for the sin of the ancestors who sold Joseph into captivity (Midrash Mishle, 1:13), but
this interpretation was opposed by some important authorities on the ground that it
infringed the principle that children should never be punished for the sins of their fathers
(Deuteronomy 24:16). Thus positive attitudes towards martyrdom are always tempered
by qualifications which prevent it from becoming an ideal or a focus for fanaticism.
11. CONCLUSION
Martyrdom, in Judaism, is defined as death voluntarily undergone when seriously

disloyal or immoral acts are demanded on pain of death by tyrannous power. An act
of martyrdom is regarded as of the highest possible merit, but it is not regarded as
104 MACCOBY
having salvific or atoning effect on others; in other words, it is sharply distinguished

from the concept of sacrifice. It is also sharply distinguished from suicide, which is
regarded as sinful; consequently, martyrdom must be avoided by flight from the
tyrant if possible, and must never be voluntarily sought. Persons who deliberately
court martyrdom, under the impression that they are thereby reaching the greatest
possible religious heights, or are bringing religious atonement to others, are regarded
with disapproval.
NOTES
1
The original meaning of the word ‘martyr’ (according to OED) was: ‘One who voluntarily undergoes
the penalty of death for refusing to renounce the Christian faith or for obedience to any law or com-
mand of the Church.’ Later, however, it came to mean, ‘One who undergoes death or great suffering on
behalf of any belief or cause, or through devotion to some object.’ Here, I employ the second meaning,
as it applies to Judaism, but in view of the fact that the word ‘martyr’ originated in a Christian vocabu-
lary, it is necessary to explore conceptual differences in the Jewish and Christian treatments of the
topic.
2
Recently, some have seen Samson as the prototype of the modern suicide-bomber. This, however, is to
ignore the circumstances of Samson’s action, which was not one of gratuitous violence. He was being
exhibited in public and taunted as a symbol of the humiliation and defeat of his nation and religion.
Moreover, his victims were not randomly-selected ordinary civilians, but high-level representatives of
the enemy.
3
For the history of this term, see Maccoby (1987).
4
For full discussions, see Maccoby (1986), pp. 40–42; Maccoby (2003), pp. 132–135. See also Sanders
(1990), p. 13.
REFERENCES
Josephus, Flavius (1920–1925). Antiquities of the Jews (Loeb Classical Library, edition 1930–1935).
Cambridge (Mass.): Harvard University Press.
Josephus, Flavius (1920–1925). The Jewish War (Loeb Classical Library, edition 1927–1928). Cambridge
(Mass.): Harvard University Press.
Maccoby, H. (1986). The mythmaker. San Francisco: Harper & Row.
Maccoby, H. (1987). Sanctification of the Name. In A. A. Cohen & P. Mendes-Flohr (Eds.), Contempo-
rary Jewish religious thought. New York: Simon & Schuster/Free Press.
Misdrash Halakha, Mekhilta.
Sanders, E. P. (1990). Jewish law from Jesus to the Mishnah. London: SCM Press.
Spiegel, S. (1990). The last trial. New York: Schockem.
CHAPTER 10
THE MARTYRDOM OF PAUL
JAKOB VAN BRUGGEN
Theological University of Kampen, Kampen, The Netherlands
1. INTRODUCTION
St. Paul is remembered by the church not only as the illustrious apostle to the Gentiles,
but also as a martyr of the Roman Emperor. As such he shares his name day with
St. Peter, on June 29. The large statues of Peter and Paul in front of the Sistine Chapel
in Rome are strong and proud, but inside the chapel they are also memorialized as
exemplars in the martyrdom of the Christian church.
The most remarkable fact is that this martyrdom is not seen as a problem, as
harmful to the mission of the apostle and the church. But neither is it glorified as the
real climax of the Christian life. Paul’s comment is very sober at this point. Suffering
and even martyrdom are an unavoidable gate to God’s glory. As he declares already
after his first missionary journey: “We must go through many hardships to enter the
kingdom of God” (Acts 14:22).
We know a lot about Paul’s path to martyrdom, but nothing about his last hours.
The way to the kingdom seems more important than the entrance into that kingdom.
Tradition says that Paul was beheaded by the sword, which is in line with the form of
capital punishment allowed by law for Roman citizens. The Book of Acts, however,
stops at the moment Paul is imprisoned in Rome for two years. We can imagine how
it ended in martyrdom, but we have only Paul’s letters that tell us how he was
prepared to die for his Master, Jesus Christ.
Now that the accent is on the long road of suffering that led to Paul’s final martyr-
dom in the narrow sense of the word, we are in a position to investigate his attitude,
his psychological reactions in times of afflictions. And we can ask the question:
What is decisive in his attitude? What frame of reference do we need if we are to
understand a person who accepts martyrdom, even though he does not seek it. And
can we deduce from his attitude something concerning the relationship between
religion and psychology?
105
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106 VAN BRUGGEN
To answer these questions I will first sketch the facts of Paul’s suffering. In the
second place I will describe his attitude in his afflictions. In the third place I will
look at the motives for Paul’s conduct. Finally I come to a concluding description
of the religious framework that belongs to Paul’s attitude and makes it understand-
able. This leads to a conclusion concering the relation between psychology
and religion.
2. THE FACTS OF PAUL’S SUFFERING
The former persecutor Paul experiences persecutions nearly from the first moment
after his conversion to the person of Jesus the Messiah.1 Already in Damascus the
Jews are trying to kill him, and all along the road this apostle travels we find oppo-
sition from his own countrymen. They dislike the person who in their eyes has
become a traitor and a supporter of a dangerous sect. In the book of Acts we can
follow the trail of this persecution. Again and again, Jews who refuse to participate
in Paul’s radical change try to silence this learned preacher of Jesus. They do this
by opposing him in the synagogues (Acts 9,22–25,29; 13,45–50), by spontaneous
actions to lynch him (Acts 14,19–20), by asking the help of the Roman governors
against him (Acts 17,5–9; 18,12–17), by inciting the mobs against him (Acts
21,27–31), and finally by trying to condemn him in front of the Sanhedrin and
by conspiring for his murder during the expected transportation to Jerusalem
(Acts 23,12–22).
This, in combination with many other troubles along the way, gives Paul the
image of a person who is continuously in trouble. As he writes in one if his letters:
“It seems to me that God has put us apostles on display at the end of the procession, like men condemned
to die in the arena. We have been made a spectacle to the whole universe” (1 Corinthians 4:9).
This long road of hardships and sufferings (cf. the disaster catalogues in 1 and 2
Corinthians)2 leads to a period of continued imprisonment. Arrested in Jerusalem at
the end of his third Missionary Journey, he becomes a prisoner in Caesarea for more
than two years. Thereafter he is brought to Rome in chains. And there he had to stay
under house arrest for two or more years, with a soldier to guard him (Acts 27–28).
There is something strange in this period of imprisonment. In fact, there was no
valid accusation against him. His being kept in custody by Felix looks more like a
protective measure to safeguard him against the plots of his countrymen to kill him.
And after Paul made an appeal to the Emperor, the Roman governor is embarrassed.
Festus does not know what reason he can give for sending this person to Rome. His
Jewish advisor Agrippa can only say that it is merely due to Paul’s own appeal that he
has to be sent to the Emperor. So Paul arrives in Rome with a declaration of
innocence; nevertheless, he remains a prisoner. His road to martyrdom seems to make
no sense at all!
The facts of Paul’s martyrdom are the result of the opposition of his own
countrymen—whom he loved. This is the second remarkable element in the facts.
Paul loves his people. Although there are persons who did him a lot of harm
THE MARTYRDOM OF PAUL 107
(Alexander the metalworker, 2 Timothy 4,14; cf. Acts 20,33–34), he never stops to
pray for his own people. He even writes about them:
“For I could wish that I myself were cursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers, those of
my own race, the people of Israel” (Romans 9:3).
Looking at the facts of Paul’s martyrdom, we conclude that his martyrdom has an
extraordinary character. It seems to be a mistake, a result of misunderstanding.
Nevertheless, it becomes very significant in his life. To him it is the path he has to
follow as a Christian to enter the kingdom of God.3
3. PAUL’S ATTITUDE IN HIS SUFFERINGS
At first sight the apostle seems to enjoy his hardships. He writes in very positive
terms about his situation as a prisoner in his letters. In his letter to Philemon
he proudly presents himself as “prisoner of Christ Jesus” (1) and he speaks about his
being “in chains for the gospel” (13). To the Philippians he says that “what has hap-
pened” to him “has really served to advance the gospel” (1:12): it has become clear
to all that he is “in chains for Christ” (1:13) and because of his chains “most of the
brothers in the Lord have been encouraged” (1:14).
How normal is it to be positive about chains? It might seem to be a mild form of
religious masochism, such as we encounter not only in the history of the Christian
church but also in the history of Buddhism.
Looking more closely, however, the situation with Paul is very different. His attitude
is positive about the effects of his hardships for the gospel and for others. Personally,
however, he dislikes hardships and sufferings, and although he sees the benefits his
chains bring, he does not delight in his chains as such. To the contrary, He seems to
register protest when he writes to Timothy that he is “being chained like a criminal”
(2 Timothy 2:9).
Paul himself has informed us explicitly about the inner process of rejection and
acceptance in his life. He does so in 2 Corinthians. At first he was praying for a quiet
and undisturbed life in his work as preacher. But he learned that God wanted to
prevent that he would become a proud and boasting preacher. His humiliation was
necessary to make manifest to all people that the power of the gospel differs from the
power and success of the human apostle. To the contrary: the power of the gospel
becomes manifest through the vulnerability of its messenger, as Paul testifies
himself with the following words:
“To keep me from becoming conceited . . . there was given me a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan,
to torment me. Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me “My grace
is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly
about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in
weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am
strong” (2 Corinthians 12:7–10).
That Paul doesn’t strive for martyrdom and death as such is very clear from the fact
that sometimes, when he has the opportunity, he makes a choice for life and against
108 VAN BRUGGEN
becoming a martyr at that moment.4 In his letter to the Philippian Christians he tells
them that he doesn’t know what to choose: death or life?
“For to me to live is Christ and to die is gain. If I am to go on living in the body, this will mean fruitful
labor for me. Yet what shall I choose? I do not know! I am torn between the two: I desire to depart and be
with Christ, which is better by far; but it is more necessary for you that I remain in the body. Convinced of
this, I know that I will remain, and I will continue with all of you for your progress and joy in the faith”
(Philippians 1:21–25).
Was Paul really sometimes in a position to make a choice? We know of two
occasions in which he made this choice for life and against martyrdom. When Festus
proposed that he should go to Jerusalem and be tried there, Paul knew that he would
be murdered on his way to the temple city. Being murdered meant to him: entrance
in the kingdom of life! Nevertheless, he chose for life by making his appeal to the
Emperor (Acts 25,10–11). A meaningless appeal, since he was innocent. What did
he try to achieve by his appeal? It spared his life for a few years!
A dangerous trip by sea followed this appeal to the Emperor. It would have been
easy for Paul to enter the kingdom of God through the depths of the waters. Without
his advice the ship should have been wrecked! But Paul, with the utmost exertion,
gave advice and help to all the people aboard with the result that they reached land in
safety (Acts 27). So Paul continued in chains, but he was alive! He had made his
choice, not against martyrdom, but for life.
It is clear that for Paul the advancement of the gospel is the matter that counts, not
his personal fate. He is in service as a messenger, and he carefully calculates what
will most advance his task The result can be to his own advantage or disadvantage,
but that is not what matters to him.
“I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need, and I know what
it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed
or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do everything through him who gives me strength”
(Philippians 4:11–13).
We began our discussion by asking whether Paul in his acceptance of suffering is
not an example of religious masochism. The answer is negative. There is one point
at which we can demonstrate very clearly that he is in any case not a victim of the
type of masochism that finds its origin in feelings of guilt. Paul himself had been a
persecutor of Christians. He regrets that later on, and for the rest of his life. He
humbles himself as the “worst of sinners” and as a display of God’s mercy on sin-
ners in this world (1 Timothy 1:16). It is quite remarkable that he never makes a
connection between his former sins as a persecutor and his being persecuted him-
self. How easily he could have made this connection by seeing his sufferings as
penance for his misdeeds against Christians. One time he says that his sufferings
complement the sufferings of Christ (Colossians 1:24), but he never speaks about
his suffering as deserved punishment for his past sins as persecutor. This can only
be explained by the fact that for Paul the forgiveness and grace of Christ are real
and sufficient. He doesn’t have to feel himself to be guilty any longer, although he
feels himself humble among his brothers and sisters. Where there is no feeling of
guilt, there is no penitential suffering.
The attitude of Paul in his suffering is that of a minister, a servant: willing to

endure the hardships of his task, trying to make them profitable for his Master and
his message.
4. MOTIVES FOR ACCEPTING MARTYRDOM
For Paul martyrdom is not an unavoidable risk, but he turns it into positive gain. In the
first place he sees himself as an example for the Christian road to living in the presence
of God. He leads us on this road, for we all have to endure hardships to enter the king-
dom of God. “Look at me!” Paul says. “Don’t forget my chains” (Colossians 4:18).
And to Timothy he says: “Don’t be ashamed of me his prisoner; but join with me in
suffering for the gospel, by the power of God” (2 Timothy 1:8). Paul has Jesus Christ
as his example: he fills up in his flesh “what is still lacking in regard to Christ’s afflic-
tions, for the sake of his body, which is the church” (Colossians 1:24). And from
prison he writes to the Philippians the song about Christ who as an example for us
“humbled himself and became obedient to death” (Philippians 2:8).
In the second place Paul turns his sufferings into gain and benefit for the propaga-
tion of the Gospel. As messenger he takes care that the gospel is known by the entire
“palace guard and by everyone else” and they learn that he is “in chains for Christ”
(Philippians 1:13). To Agrippa he says frankly: “I pray God that not only you but all
who are listening to me today may become what I am, except for these chains” (Acts
26:29). At sea he tells the people who are in utmost distress:
“Last night an angel of the God whose I am and whom I serve stood beside me and said `Do not be afraid,
Paul. You must stand trial before Caesar; and God has graciously given you the lives of all who sail with
you” (Acts 27:23–24).
In Rome Paul preaches the kingdom of God, “boldly and without hindrance” to all
who come to see him in his prison (Acts 28:31).
In the third place, Paul gives an example of role-acceptance. He not only suffers
his chains, but seeing that it is his task to be a messenger in chains, he accepts that in
a wonderful manner. He even makes jokes about his situation, when he asks a favor
from Philemon. With irony he appeals to his having reached not only the dignity of
an old man, but also that of a prisoner (Philemon 9) and although in his prison he
is dependent on gifts, he playfully asks Philemon to charge him for the costs of
Onesimus’s desertion and solemnly makes that promise in his own handwriting
(Philemon 18–19).5
5. THE RELIGIOUS FRAMEWORK
The motives for Paul’s attitude function within an overarching religious framework.
This framework is specific to Paul and cannot be deduced from a general theory
about martyrdom in religions as such. Viewed superficially it would seem that it is
sufficient to look at only one section in the Handbook of Psychology for the descrip-
tion of the mental attitude of religious martyrs. At first sight Christian martyrs have
110 VAN BRUGGEN
much in common with Jewish martyrs, and both of these in turn have much in com-
mon with Islamic martyrs. In fact, however, the differences become larger when we
take a closer look at the facts. Recent history teaches us clearly the difference
between the suffering martyr of the Jewish and the Christian religions and the fight-
ing, self-destructive martyr of Islam or Buddhism. There are also many differences
between different martyrs within one religion. The situation of Stephen and James is
quite different from that of Paul. James tried at first to avoid conflict with and perse-
cution by his countrymen, and it is only much later that he was willing to die for his
Lord at the moment when there was no escape. We cannot limit ourselves to one sin-
gle, generalized section in the Handbook of Psychology about martyrdom and its
implied mental attitude.
Can we nevertheless learn a general lesson from Paul’s martyrdom? I think so! In
Paul we see how important the religious framework is in the overall structure of his
mental attitudes. Nobody can understand Paul’s attitude in his martyrdom without
accepting the worldview within which he lived, his convictional framework. Even if
someone would deny the reality of that framework in a metaphysical sense and would
deny the reality of God and of the resurrection of Jesus, he cannot deny that for Paul
these are the decisive factors in his life. He can only be explained by accepting the
validity of this framework for his conduct. Thus a psychological treatment of Paul, if
needed, could be neither successful nor scientifically justified apart from studying his
religious worldview. This will be the same with Jewish or Islamic martyrs! It is the
difference in religious frameworks that produces different types of martyrs.
What specifically is Paul’s worldview? We can summarize the decisive compo-
nents of his convictional world in the following points, limiting ourselves to that
which is of immediate importance for his conduct as a martyr. The criterion for
selection is that Paul speaks about some issues with exaltation, with a high level of
emotion. We find in his letters doxological exclamations and poetical eruptions of
religious emotionality. At which moment do we find this exalted kind of writing?
First, when Paul speaks about God the Creator “who is for ever praised, Amen”
(Romans 1,25; cf. 2 Corinthians 1,3; 11,31; Ephesians 1,3) and about Christ “who is
God over all, for ever praised, Amen” (Romans 9,5). From God and through God
“are all things. To him be the glory for ever, Amen” (Romans 11,36).6 For Paul this
is not abstract. He believes in a God who is unseen but active in the world and judg-
ing mankind. For Paul this history is the reality of Gods anger (Romans 1,18ff.) and
grace (Romans 3,21ff.), leading to his final judgment and to the eternal Kingdom of
heaven.
Second, for Paul the resurrection of Jesus is as real as his blindness near Damas-
cus after Jesus spoke to him from heaven. And his letters become poetic when he
speaks about this heavenly Lord:
“God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name
of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that
Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Philippians 2,9–11).7
Third, Paul speaks in an exalted way about the Spirit who works in the hearts of
the believers. Through him we will grasp “how wide and long and high and deep is
the love of Christ and to know this love that surpasses knowledge – that you may
be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God” (Ephesians 3,18–19).
For Paul his religious worldview is proven by his own life story. Conversely, when
we speak specifically about his martyrdom we find that he viewed the glorious way in
which he performed his task during his sufferings as giving testimony to the reality of
which he was convinced through faith. His martyrdom must not only be understood in
the light of Paul’s belief in God’s mighty deeds, it is in turn also an independent
demonstration of the grace and power of Paul’s Lord.
It is impossible for psychology or theology to scientifically confirm this idea,
i.e. that Paul’s martyrdom is proof of the truth of Jesus’ resurrection and of his
heavenly guidance in this world. Of course, psychology and theology can investi-
gate whether there are signs of mental illness or theological inconsistency that
would keep us from taking him and his ideas seriously.8 Is Paul consistent or con-
fused in his convictions? Is there a congruency between his mental attitude and his
life or not? Does he have a certain spontaneous power to convince his environment
and is he accepted by his friends as “normal,” or is he dysfunctional in his own sur-
roundings? Those questions can be asked and to a certain degree be answered. But
assuming that this inquiry would lead to the opinion that Paul does not suffer from
mental illness or logical inconsistency, we still have to answer the question as to
the metaphysical truth of his convictions. It is scientifically sound to be aware of
this fact. The logical stalemate that exists at this point was also present in Paul’s
own lifetime. When Paul spoke to King Agrippa to explain his position and his
work, the Roman governor Festus interrupted his defense by shouting: “You are
out of your mind, Paul! Your great learning is driving you insane!” In his reply
Paul then makes an appeal to the king to prove that he is not insane: the king
knows about the prophets and how their prophecies are fulfilled in the Gospel. But
Agrippa answers: “Do you think that in such a short time you can persuade me to
be a Christian?” Whereupon Paul replies: “Short time or long – I pray God that not
only you but all who are listening to me today may become what I am, except for
these chains.” (Acts 26,24–29).
At the end of this chapter a short word has to be said about the current theory that
we must understand Paul sociologically and no longer psychologically. Malina and
Neyrey (1996) in their book about Paul, subtitled An archeology of ancient personal-
ity, analyze the passages in which Paul speaks about himself as fitting into the
ancient practice of the Encomium. This in fact is the normal role-model for a person
in antiquity. The more a person fits into the standards of his society, the more impor-
tant his personality. Also Paul seems to accommodate himself to the table of honor
that was valid in his social environment. Not only about his birth and education, but
also about his “fortune” does he speak in a positive way. But what about the “deeds
of ill fortune”? Malina and Neyrey (1996) write at this point:
“Although acknowledging his ill fortune, Paul maintains that God defended his honor in these challenges
and repeatedly vindicated him.”9
The authors make a comparison with the lists of trials philosophers overcame that
“are mentioned as proof of the excellence of their teaching.”10 And they conclude
112 VAN BRUGGEN
that “his deeds of ill fortune actually serve as proof of his ultimate good fortune and
favor from God.”
In this way Malina and Neyrey try to fit the martyrdom of Paul into their
Encomium-theory – but it does not actually fit into that scheme. It is precisely in his
sufferings and not in the overcoming of his sufferings that Paul demonstrates the way
of the Kingdom. We cannot understand his suffering psychologically without also
looking at his religious convictions. Nor can we substitute sociological conventions
for psychological motives. Suffering did not belong to the collective ideals of the
original disciples of Jesus. Christians had to learn the necessity of entering the king-
dom through suffering. It is in his martyrdom that Paul makes it very clear that he
cannot be fully explained by sociology or psychology without first taking into
account his religious worldview. For Paul this worldview is not the result of personal
choices or social conventions – it is the result of his life having been turned upside
down by heavenly realities.
NOTES
1
Cf. Segal (1990), pp. 285–300. Segal discusses Paul’s conversion and his conclusion is: “Two problem-
atic issues appear to have curtailed recent psychological investigation into conversion. The first is the
realization that historical data rarely is appropriate for psychoanalytic or therapeutic discussion, so the
most it can do is illustrate some particular facility of the given psychoanalytic notational scheme for
describing experience. The second factor is the realization that the term conversion is culturally
relative. Each group defines what it means by conversion; even ecstatic conversions seem to be behav-
iours learned within a community, though the content of visions may have individual or unique aspects.
As a consequence, a great many contemporary studies of conversion have taken a sociological
approach, defining conversion as a change in religious community, as I have done in describing Paul.”
2
1 Corinthians 4,9–13; 2 Corinthians 4,8–9; 6,4–10; 11,23–28; 12,10.
3
See for the life of Paul and the place of his sufferings in that life van Bruggen (2001) and van Bruggen
(2005).
4
At this point Paul moves along the lines of Judaism (see H. Maccoby’s chapter “Martyrdom: Theolog-
ical and psychological aspects. Martyrdom in Judaism”; in this book).
5
See for Paul’s positive attitude towards the meaning of his suffering also H.W.M. Tájrá’s chapter
“Spiritual, human and psychological dimensions of St. Paul’s martyrdom” in this book. Maccoby (this
book) mentions the element of vicarious atonement of martyrdom as absent in Judaism and as
important in Christianity. His only example, however, is Jesus Christ himself. In any case Paul does not
consider his martyrdom as vicarious or atoning.
6
Cf. Galatians 1,5; Ephesians 3,21; Philippians 4,20; 1 Timothy 1,17; 2 Timothy 4, 18 and many other
passages where Paul speaks about the “glory” of God.
7
Cf. 1 Timothy 3,16.
8
Cf. Bonaparte (1957); Theissen (1983); Van Spanje (1999).
9
Malina and Neyrey (1996), p. 211.
10
Cf. Fitzgerald (1988), p. 114ff.
REFERENCES
Bonaparte, M. (1957). Eros, Saül de Tarse et Freud. Revue française de psychanalyse, 21, 23–33.
Fitzgerald, J.T. (1988). Cracks in the earthen vessel: An examination of the catalogues of hardships in the
Corinthian correspondence (SBL Dissertation Series 99). Atlanta: Scholars Press.
Malina B. J., & Neyrey J. H. (1996). Portraits of Paul: An archeology of ancient personality. Louisville:
Westminster John Knox Press.
Segal, A. F. (1990). Paul the convert: The apostolate and apostasy of Saul the pharisee. New Haven &
London: Yale University Press.
Theissen, G. (1983). Psychologische Aspekte paulinischer Theologie. Göttingen: VandenHoeck &
Ruprecht.
Van Bruggen, J. (2001). Paulus: Pionier voor de Messias van Israël. Kampen: Kok
Van Bruggen, J. (2005). Paul: Pioneer for Israel’s Messiah (Trans. van Bruggen [2001]). Phillipsburg:
Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company.
Van Spanje, T. E. (1999). Inconsistency in Paul? A critique of the work of Heikki Räisänen (WUNT 2,
110). Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck.
CHAPTER 11
SPIRITUAL, HUMAN, AND PSYCHOLOGICAL

DIMENSIONS OF ST. PAUL’S MARTYRDOM
Msngr. H.W.M. TÁJRÁ
Ordre de Sainte Marie la Vierge, Paris, France
1. THE PERSECUTION AND MARTYRDOM OF CHRISTIANS:

AN ENDURING PROCESS
Throughout all Christian history, persecution and martyrdom have been a perennial
fact of life. New Testament is replete with pertinent references. Already, St. John the
Baptist, the great Precursor of the Messiah had been decapitated on the order of the
Tetrarch, Herod Antipas, for having denounced that ruler’s unlawful marriage to
Herodius.1 This violent death pointed directly to Jesus’ own sacrifice: His death on
the Cross for the Redemption of sinful humanity. During the years between 60 and
70 AD St. James the Lesser,2 and Saints Peter and Paul3 were martyred: the enemies
of holy Church believing quite wrongly that slaying the leadership would destroy the
nascent Christian community. The Practice of Christianity was illicit in the whole
territory of the Roman Empire until Emperor Constantine the Great converted to the
Faith in 312 AD.4 Thus the first three centuries of Christianity were marked by
massive persecutions and consequent martyrdoms as successive Roman Emperors
sought to destroy the Faith by murder. Down through the centuries, persecution has
continued at regular intervals led by a variety of adversaries. The French Revolution
of 1789 and the Russian Revolution of 1917 are conspicuous examples of the total
unchaining of dark Satanic forces of violence and evil in the world. These
cataclysmic political events were marked by massive religious persecutions which
claimed the lives of thousands of New Martyrs. including the respective, anointed
monarchs of both countries, King Louis XVI of France and Tsar Nicholas II of
Russia.
The 20th century Church has known the greatest number of martyrs since the
Roman persecutions. The century started with the Armenian Holocaust of 1915
perpetrated by Muslim Turkey and ended with the Timorese Genocide of the 1990s
115
© 2007 Springer.
116 TÁJRÁ
wrought by Javanese Muslims in the name of some jihad or other. Even as we speak
in this year of grace 2002, about 250.000.000 Christians are undergoing persecution
and many are being martyred in various parts of the world at the hands of various
sorts of persecutors, both political and religious.5
In examining St. Paul’s martyrdom it would be safe to say that unfortunately his
death was not an isolated act of violence, but a very early example in a long history
of death and destruction.
The great heavenly vision of St. John the Divine which he had on the island of
Patmos in the year 95 AD, scarcely thirty years after St. Paul’s death, is recorded
in the Book of Revelation, the last book of the New Testament. This great spiritual
writing provides us with a clear view into the nascent Christian community’s
understanding of cosmic war, persecution and martyrdom. It is a text which
greatly helps the modern reader to understand the spiritual and psychological
ambience surrounding St. Paul’s martyrdom and the early Christian community’s
understanding of it.
St. John, author of the sublime Gospel which bears his name, was caught up in the
second great persecution of Christians which occurred under Emperor Domition
who reigned from 81 to 96 AD. Domition continued Nero’s policy of developing the
Emperor-cult and taking on the title of Lord and God (dominus et dues). Such an
assumption of divinity was clearly unacceptable to the monotheistic faith and
practice of the Christian community. The Book of Revelation alludes in many places
to the sufferings of Christians because of their faith in the one-true God. In the
passage below from Revelation 12 the description of Satan’s cosmic war against the
faithful. The dragon, of course, is Satan – the incarnation of all the forces of evil in
the world. His servant is Caesar, who in assuming the title of God places himself in
conflict to God Himself.6
“Now war arose in Heaven Michael and his angels fighting against the dragon: and the dragon and his
angels fought. but they were defeated and there was no longer any place for them in Heaven. And the great
dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan. the deceiver of the whole
world — he was thrown down to the whole earth, and his angels were thrown down with him. (. . .) Rejoice
then, o Heaven and you that dwell therein! But woe to you, o earth and sea, for the devil has come down to
you in great wrath, because he knows that his time is short!
And when the dragon saw that he had been thrown down to the earth, he pursued the woman who
had borne the male child.7 But the woman was given the two wings of the great eagle that she might fly
from the serpent into the wilderness, to a place where she is to be nourished for a time . . . The serpent
poured water like a river out of his mouth after the woman, to sweep her away with the flood. But the
earth came to the help of the woman, and the earth opened its mouth and swallowed the river which the
dragon had poured forth from his mouth. Then the dragon was angry with the woman, and went off to
make war on the rest of her offspring, on those who keep the commandments of God and bear testi-
mony to Jesus.”
2. ST. PAUL’S ACCUSERS AND THE INDICTMENT AGAINST HIM
The passage from Revelation 12 above contains two words essential to our under-
standing of St. Paul’s martyrdom.
SPIRITUAL, HUMAN, AND PSYCHOLOGICAL DIMENSIONS 117
The first word is the Greek noun ho katégoros, which denotes the accuser, the
one who denounces. This is the person who brings forth an accusation or a list
of accusations before the proner judicial authorities in view of obtaining the
defendant’s formal condemnation and punishment. The word can take on the
idea of a betrayer when the accuser comes from the defendant’s own family or
community.
St. Paul’s accusers were multiple, which reflected the challenge posed by his
apostolic ministry to the political and religious establishment of his time. In the
Acts of the Apostles St. Luke has given a clear and detailed list of the charges laid
against the Apostle; charges which were many and variegated. Let us look at some
examples.
In Acts 16, 19–21 we learn that St. Paul’s accusers were slaveholders at Philippi who
dragged him and his fellow missionary, Silas, before the magistrates of that city, accus-
ing the two of causing a disturbance within the municipal confines and of advocating
practices which they contended were unlawful for Roman citizens to accept or follow.
The Latin text reads “non licet nobis suscipere neque facere cum simis Romani”
(“They advocate customs which it is not lawful for us Romans to accept or practice”)
This was quite a dangerous accusation because its real sense was that Paul and Silas
were drawing men away from the cult of the Emperor to the worship of the one true
God and His only begotten Son. As the Latin text states. this was something “non
licet.” It was a direct challenge to the dignity, authority, and power of the reigning
Emperor.
In Acts 17, 5–9, the accusers were members of the Jewish community of Thessa-
lonica, a grouping juridically recognized first under the Roman Republic and then
again under the Principate. The accusations were fundamentally the same as at
Philippi, but they were more forcefully articulated. The Apostles were alleged to be
malefactors who were turning the whole world upside down. In so doing, they were
alleged to have specifically broken the decreta Caesaris, the imperial edicts by
claiming that there was another king (regem alium), namely Jesus Christ. The
proclamation of another king was a dangerous challenge to the Principate it was
a charge of laesum-maiestatis, and this crime, first degree treason, was punishable
by death.
In Acts 18, 12–17, we learn of more legal problems for St. Paul, this time at
Corinth. Here the accusers were once again Jews and the principal charge was that of
persuading people to worship God in a way that breaks the law. The expression
“against the law” ( para ton nomon = contra legem) was intentionally vague and so it
could designate at one and the same time both the old Mosaic Law and its interpre-
tation – which the Principate recognized as constitutive for the Jewish politeuma and
whose use allowed it legal recognition, as well as designating the decreta Caesaris in
matters of honor due to the Emperor. The answer of Gallio, Proconsul of Achaia, to
the charges brought forth in his proconsular tribunal was to dismiss them, thereby
indicating that he believed the accusations to refer to Jewish and not imperial law. As
such the charges could not be subsumed under the heading of a crimen laesum
maiestatis.
118 TÁJRÁ
In Acts 19, 23–41, members of the craftsmen’s guild at Ephesus, whose profession
involved producing cultic objects to accompany the worship of the goddess Artemis,8
formulated charges that St. Paul’s preaching threatened not only the goddess’ cult in
that city, one of the largest in the Roman Empire, but also the whole established reli-
gious order in the Roman world. Once again St. Paul’s monotheistic teachings were
deemed a threat to the turbid form of polytheism prevalent in the Principate upon
which the authority of the ruling dynasty was to a very great extent dependent.
Finally in Acts 21, 27–29, we have the account of the Apostle’s arrest in Jerusalem
and the beginning of the uninterrupted juridical process that would end years later in
his martyrdom. The accusations here came from diaspora Jews, resident in the
Roman Province of Asia whose chief city was Ephesus. The charge was of preaching
against Old Testament law and customs and of profaning the Jerusalem temple by
inviting a non-Jew, Trophimus of Ephesus, within its reserved precincts.
Quite obviously the most lethal and psychologically effective accusations in all
the above list for any Roman judge was the charge that St. Paul, a native-born
Roman citizen, had committed the crime of laesum-maiestatis. Turning men away
from the cult of the Emperor and preaching another king were acts which no Roman
legal instance could ignore as it amounted to a direct challenge to the very ideologi-
cal foundation on which the authority of the whole Principate and of its reigning
Julio-Claudian dynasty rested.
A Roman citizen, like St. Paul, would have his day in court even on such a griev-
ous indictment. He could appeal an unfavorable verdict to a higher court, a right of
which St. Paul availed himself when he cried out in Festus’ court in Caesarea: “Cae-
sarem appello,” demanding thereby that Emperor Nero hear his case in Rome itself.
Nonetheless a condemnation on a treason charge would automatically mean a sen-
tence of death by decapitation.9
3. THE EPISTLE TO THE PHILIPPIANS: ST. PAUL’S MEDITATION

ON LIFE AND DEATH
Let us now examine the second word capital to our study. This is the word hé mar-
tyria. In jurisprudence, this term designates a testimony or a witness. In Christian
tradition it is the act of offering the truth of Holy Faith from Holy Scriptures. The
martyr then is first of all the one who confesses Jesus as the world’s Redeemer. It is
a divinely inspired office as St. Matthew teaches us in his Gospel when he relates
Jesus’ own words to His disciples:
“When they deliver you up, do not be anxious how you are to speak or what you are to say; for it is not you
who speak, but the spirit of your Father speaking through you.”10
As loving Jesus and His divine message of peace and reconciliation and witnessing
to Him as the world’s Redeemer was so dangerous in the First Century, as it is now
in our time, the word hé martyria quickly came to mean the violent terrestrial death
of the witness as a result of his testimony. Spiritually speaking the conditions of
martyrdom are those of charity. An example from the New Testament of this sense of
charity and forgiveness towards the persecutors and towards those doing the actual
killing, are the last words of the Protomartyr St. Stephen, who was condemned at
Jerusalem by the High Priest and the Sanhedrin to be stoned for witnessing to the
heavenly vision he had of the Son of Man:
“As they were stoning him,” St. Luke writes, “Stephen prayed, ‘Lord Jesus, receive
my spirit.’ And he knelt down and cried with a loud voice, ‘Lord, do not hold this sin
against them.’ And when he had said this he fell asleep.”11
The martyr has a deep, continuous relationship with God, in mind, body and soul.
It is God who gives him the power to witness and to remain steadfast until the end.
Exempt from this spirituality is any sense of retaliation, vengeance, or holy war. By
his Christian vocation, the martyr is called upon to pray for his persecutor. Therein
lies the sanctity of the martyr, the culminating point of the process of sanctification
which the Christian believer lives throughout his earthly existence.
Hé martyria is the foundation of the Church. The excellence of martyrdom in the
Christian tradition is that this ultimate form of witness nurtures the community,
strengthens it and spreads the life-giving Holy Gospel even further because the
faithful are encouraged to imitate the virtues and courage of the martyr.
Jesus summarized the spiritual and human dynamics of martyrdom in His teaching
on the Mount as recorded by St. Matthew:
“Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of Heaven.
Blessed are you when men revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on
my account.
Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in Heaven, for so men persecuted the prophets who were
before you.”12
St. Paul’s condemnation and martyrdom are very representative of the Divine
Master’s teaching in His great Sermon on the Mount. The holy Apostle himself is
well aware of the Messiah’s teachings and their applicability to his own circum-
stances. He gives some of his views in his Epistle to the Philippians, which was com-
posed during his first Roman imprisonment about the year 60 AD, a period of house
arrest which followed his appeal to Caesar and corresponded to the period in which he
was awaiting his case to be heard. I have written extensively about the historical and
legal aspects of the Apostle’s two Roman imprisonments in The Trial of St. Paul
(1989) and in The Martyrdom of St. Paul (1994), so I shall restrict myself here to
giving a brief appreciation of the spiritual and personal aspects of these events.
St. Paul writes:
“I want you to know, brethren, that what has happened to me has really served to advance the Gospel, so
that it has become known throughout the whole Praetorian Guard and to all the rest that my imprisonment
is for Christ; and most of the brethren have been made confident in the Lord because of my imprisonment,
and are much more bold to speak the word of God without fear.”13
St. Paul’s arrest and his lengthy confinement, rather than terrorizing the Christian
community at Rome or elsewhere into silence and renunciation, actually encouraged
it to proclaim even more audaciously the holy Word of God, and this without fear or
120 TÁJRÁ
anxiety. The Greek word which St. Paul uses here to describe his state of mind and
spirit is the word aphobos. This term designates both a spiritual serenity as well as
the psychological state of being totally free of anxiety or panic. It describes very
appropriately the state of St. Paul’s mind as an elderly, though still quite active, state
prisoner.
St. Paul’s aphobia, his serenity and freedom from anxiety, is expressed again a
few verses later when he writes:
“It is my eager expectation and hope that I shall not at all be ashamed, but that with full courage now as
always Christ will be honored in my body, whether by life or by death.”14
For St. Paul, the essence of his Apostolic ministry was to always magnify Christ in
thought, word and deed. His words express his total, encompassing love for Christ as
well as his own hopes of participating in the divine glory. At the moment, even in
confinement, this glorification of Christ is made manifest by a corporal, psychologi-
cal and spiritual expression of identification with the sufferings as well as with the
glory of the Divine Master. This sense of total immersion in Christ is in fact
enhanced by his imprisonment. The confinement itself is transformed by the total
faith the Apostle has and by the exertion of his powerful mind and intellect into a
sanctifying experience.
For the Apostle both to live and to die are expressions of this total love for the
Redeemer, a love tangibly expressed “in my body,” the Greek text reading here: en to
somati mou. The love is therefore somatic, that is it is corporeal as distinguished
from the purely psychical. The soma is the seat of the tangible and sensible in
human activities. By leading a holy life, there is a more intimate communion with
Christ. In Christian tradition, the soma is not just the seat of that which is physical:
it becomes a holy temple because Christ is magnified therein. To attain such an
advanced and intimate state of communion with the divine, St. Paul prays for confi-
dence and trust (the Latin word being fiducia) and for courage, expressed in the
original Greek by the term parrésia, which implies courage to speak boldly. The
soma reaches its plenitude by the presence of Christ within it; therefore the soma
becomes an ikonos, the icon of the Savior because in the body of the Apostle the
radiant and eternal glory of Christ is reflected, although still imperfectly; the per-
fect coming only with the total dissolving of the Apostle into the essence of the
Divine Master.
So the Apostle can write in the very next verse:
“For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.”15
The Apostle understands himself as being totally immersed in — and indissolubly

joined to — Christ. He uses the word life (zoé) here not only to designate corporeal
existence, but the total holistic life phenomenon: the zoé of the mind and spirit as
well as the body are centered in Christ, fed by His teaching and redeemed by His
salvific ministry. St. Paul contemplates death, not, of course, as a finality, but as a
transitus from the earthly to the heavenly. Death can thus be defined as tó kerdos,
meaning a gain or advantage moral benefit, or spiritual reward. Death is therefore the
total dissolution of the person Paul into the divine essence of the Son of Man. As
such it is kerdos, a gain. So he says:
“If it is to be life in the flesh (the Greek text reads here en té sarki, the sarx being the physical body) that
means fruitful labor for me. Yet which I shall choose I cannot tell. I am hard pressed between the two. My
desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better. (the Greek verb which St. Paul uses here is ana-
lyo, to depart in the sense of an untying, dissolving all earthly ties in order to return to Christ). But to
remain in the flesh is more necessary on your account.”16
It is clear from the above verses that St. Paul personally would prefer this dissolving
in Christ. His Apostolic ministry is, however, a sacred task and so necessity would
require him to remain in this earthly life so that the Church at Philippi, and others as
well, progress in faith and attain the plenitude of life in Christ.
4. THE IMMINENT APPROACH OF MARTYRDOM: ST. PAUL’S

FINAL MEDITATION
New Testament has an eloquent description of St. Paul, in the evening of his life.
These are fragments of his sentences contained in the II Epistle to Timothy 4, 6–8.
Much of this Epistle is deutero-Pauline, that is to say that its final, canonical form
was compiled after the Apostle’s death by his first and second generation disciples.
It contains his authentic words, or sententiae, as well as other material reflecting the
faith and practice, the cares and concerns of the deutero-Pauline community.
St. Paul’s final meditation was inspired during his second and final Roman impris-
onment. His imprisonment was much more severe than the house arrest of his first
imprisonment (see illustration). This time the Apostle is in a dungeon awaiting exe-
cution. Possibly the greatest painting on this subject is that of Rembrandt van Rijn
which hangs in the Fine Arts Museum in Stuttgart. Only Rembrandt could have cap-
tured the aged Apostle in such a dramatic way, sitting on his pallet in the dungeon,
meditating on his whole life and approaching death. The eyes are so expressive that
they tell the whole story of St. Paul: they are literally a mirror into his soul. The
words from the II Epistle to Timothy could very well serve as a commentary to the
great painting:
“For I am already on the point of being sacrificed; the time of my departure has come. I have fought the
good fight; I have finished the race; I have kept the faith. Henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of
righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award to me on that Day, and not only to me but
also to all who have loved his appearing.”17
Once again, as in the Epistle to the Philippians, St. Paul uses the word analyo, the
untying from corporeal existence. He sees his death in this manner: a gradual dis-
connection with that which is earthly, of this world.
St. Paul’s life is being poured out as a libation. The Greek verb here is spendo: to
offer a libation or drink offering. Unlike the classical Greek writers, Christian writ-
ers use the verb only in the passive voice. The Christian, here it is St. Paul, as God’s
servant is offered up as a libation, that is he is called upon to shed his blood as a wit-
ness in testimony to the one true God and His only begotten Son. This emulation of
122 TÁJRÁ
Christ’s own martyrdom allows the Christian martyr to accede to the glory of the res-
urrected Master to become dissolved from this life, from the terrestrial sarx, in order
to become immersed in the eternal and glorious Body of Christ.
Christ is termed here, the righteous judge. This is the iustus iudex, the divine and
omnipotent judge, who is contrasted to the unjust judge, personified in this instance
by Nero and his court system which sentenced the Apostle to earthly death. A human
court, presided by the unjust judge, sentences St. Paul to death by decapitation; the
sword, a weapon of violence, is their instrument. On the contrary, from the just
judge, St. Paul receives the crown of righteousness. Righteousness here refers to
God’s justice, which can never err. The crown is a powerful, mystical symbol of the
eschatological reward of eternal life awaiting St. Paul and also all who have loved
the advent of the divine master in salvation history.
5. THE SPIRITUAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL RECEPTION

OF ST. PAUL’S MARTYRDOM
It is clear from St. Paul’s final meditation that the multiple dimensions of his arrest,
imprisonment, condemnation, and martyrdom, cannot be fully comprehended,
except within the framework of the Christian community.
The final question in our overview is then how the deutero-Pauline community
received St. Paul’s martyrdom spiritually and psychologically. The word “reception”
takes on a specific shade of meaning when used in the context of Christian tradition.
It signifies here the psychological process whereby the deutero-Pauline Church, that
is the communities founded by St. Paul himself or by his immediate associates and
composed of men and women who had to a very great extent known the Apostle
directly or were in epistolary contact with him, as well as the subsequent Church
down through the ages, spiritually and intellectually understood his violent end and
how they psychologically absorbed and reacted to it. Reception implies, too, an act
of transmission. How then did successive generations transmit the story of Paul’s
offering of himself as a libation in the context of that dynamic which we call Holy
Tradition?
One has to remember that St. Paul’s martyrdom was not an isolated event. We
have already noted the violent death of the great Precursor, St. John the Baptist. This,
of course, as I said earlier, prefigured Jesus’ own death. The Acts of the Apostles
record in the first Christian decade alone, the martyrdoms of the Deacon and Proto-
Martyr, St. Stephen18 as well as that of St. James the Greater, the first of the Twelve
Apostles to perish in witness to holy Faith.19 During the single decade of the 60’s,
the entire leadership of the nascent Church, St. Paul, St. Peter, and St. James the
Lesser were killed, leaving the three biggest Churches, those of Jerusalem, Antioch,
and Rome bereft of their Founders. Many more of the faithful were killed in the
Neronion persecution which broke out in 64 AD, that is concurrently to the deaths of
the leading Apostles. We have to think of these cataclysmic events as a very wide-
spread persecution, an attempt at genocide, not in terms of individual assassinations
of conspicuous members of a yet illicit organization.
There is no trace of collective denial in the early Church’s reaction to this

massacre. The phenomenon of collective denial as we understand it today, is a
modern political problem of which the best example in Christian History is the
collective denial by the government of Turkey which totally refuses to accept its
blatant responsibility for the Armenian Holocaust of 1915, despite all the histori-
cal evidence proving the guilt of that country in this total act of evil. The Christ-
ian community’s immediate reaction to the slaying of so much of its leadership
and so many of the ordinary faithful was one of stupefaction. It was simply too
difficult for the community to absorb the deaths of the Apostles and the ghastly
deaths of so many brethren. The collective psyche was overwhelmed. Thus the
event of St. Paul’s martyrdom was internalized by a bewildered and consternated
community. The martyrdom was prayerfully received, but received silently. The
shedding of the blood of God’s holy servant on earth could only be mentally
understood, worked out psychologically, received and transmitted in cosmic
terms, that is as part of the struggle between the forces of good and evil, between
God and Satan, between Christ and the Antichrist with whom Nero, the slayer of
the Holy Apostle, was identified. As we saw at the beginning of this brief study,
the reception of St. Paul’s martyrdom as well as the deaths of his fellow-believers
could only be understood from an eschatological perspective, i.e., placed in the
framework of the coming Apocalypse about which St. John wrote in the Book of
Revelation.
About the second generation after the Apostle’s death there sprang up very
gradually – but very intensely lived – a liturgical celebration of the martyrdom. At
the same time the Christian community began the construction of the first rudi-
mentary niche or cella over the tomb of St. Paul at the ancient Roman cemetery
running along the Via Ostia, outside the walled city. These liturgical celebrations
begat in turn a considerable amount of Christian Apocryphal literature concern-
ing the life and death of the great Apostle. These types of writings were popular
between the fourth and sixth Centuries. Works such as the Acta Pauli, the Acta
Petri et Pauli, and the Martyrium Sancti Pauli, were produced or translated into
such languages as Greek, Latin, Armenian, Syriac, and Coptic. Due to their late
dating and somewhat heteroclite content, i.e., a mixture of a historical nucleus
with much legendary accretion, they were never received by the historical Patriar-
chal Sees as scripture. They do provide, however, a very useful perception of how
the Byzantine period received the deaths of the Apostles. At present, the com-
memoration of the martyrdoms of St. Peter and St. Paul is a major feast-day,
celebrated annually on 29 June. In Rome, of course, there stands the splendid
Basilica of St. Paul without the Walls over the tomb of the Apostle. The Basilica
was first built in the fourth Century under Emperor Constantine and later re-built
under Emperor Theodosian at the end of the fourth Century. The construction and
reconstruction of first the rudimentary cella and then the major Basilicas over the
tomb of St.Paul testify to the continuing reception of his martyrdom in Holy
Tradition and how much the soul and psyche of the Christian Church was
impacted by St. Paul’s martyrdom.
124 TÁJRÁ
NOTES
1
St. Matthew 14,3–12; St. Mark 6, 17–29 (The Holy Bible. Revised Standard Version [1953]. New
York: Thomas Nelson & Sons).
2
Eusebius of Caesaria. Historia Ecclesiastica II.23
3
Ibid. II.25.
4
Lactantius. De Mortibus Persecutorum XLIV; Eusebius of Caesarea, Historia Ecclesiastica X.4.16.
5
Figure provided in the documentation of Christian Solidarity Worldwide, London: Annual Report for
the year 2001.
6
The most beautiful artistic representation of this cosmic war is the 14th century Tenture de l’apoca-
lypse. In this tapestry, one of the most sublime works of Western Sacred Art, now in the Chateau
d’Angers (Angers, France), the viewer sees the seven-headed dragon (representing Satan at his most
powerful) generating the seven-headed beast (Rome at its most powerful) who then proceeds to wage
war on the faithful and especially on the Woman and Child. Hennequin of Bruges who painted the
cartons for the Tenture fully penetrated the psychology of the Book of Revelation and represented in a
visible and tangible artistic work the psyche of St. John the Theologian.
7
The reference here is to the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of the Christ-Child. The Blessed Virgin is
Mother of the Church, so the “woman” also refers to the visible Church, the Ecclesia, which is a
feminine figure attested as such in Christian art.
8
In the Roman pantheon Artemis took on the name of Diana.
9
Acts of the Apostles 25, 11
10
St. Matthew 10, 19.
11
Acts of the Apostles 7, 59–60. It is interesting to note that St. Paul was present at St. Stephen’s
martyrdom and approving of it.
12
St. Matthew 5, 10–12.
13
Philippians 1, 12–14
14
Philippians 1, 20
15
Philippians 1, 21.
16
Philippians 1, 22–24.
17
II Timothy 4, 6–8.
18
Acts of the Apostles 7, 60
19
Acts of the Apostles 12, 2.
REFERENCES
Eusebius of Caesaria. (1959). Historia Ecclesiastica, I–V [Loeb Classical Library]. Cambridge: Harvard
University Press.
Lactantius. (1984). De Mortibus Persecutorum. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Tájrá, H. W. (1989). The trial of St. Paul: A juridical exegesis of the second half of the Acts of the Apostles
[Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament 2. Reihe 35]. Tübingen: Verlag Mohr
Siebeck.
Tájrá, H. W. (1994). The martyrdom of St. Paul: Historical and judicial context, traditions, and legends
[Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament 2. Reihe 67]. Tübingen: Verlag Mohr
Siebeck.
PART IV
MESSIANISM: THEOLOGICAL
CHAPTER 12
INTRODUCTION TO MESSIANISM
GERRIT GLAS
With the issue of Messianism, we come to the most sensitive and critical subject of
the present volume. No wonder, therefore, that the style of some of the authors
becomes more personal and that in other chapters we find a great deal of reflection
about whether and how the issue of Messianism should be addressed at all. Avi
Ravitzky’s contribution is an exception to this general picture, mainly because his
subject is the concept of the Holy Land, instead of Messianism per se. There are
connections between the two subjects, however, not the least because the desire for
the Holy Land often has been fused with Messianic hopes.
Antoine Vergote, who is a retired professor of psychology of religion, theologian
and psychoanalyst from Leuven (Belgium), describes the person of Jesus from three
vantage points:
1. mystical experience and desire; or: from which perspective Jesus is representative
of the perfect union with God?
2. moral consciousness, guilt feelings, and sin; or: from which viewpoint is it possi-
ble to see Jesus as exemplification of perfect morality? And
3. prophecy, self-consciousness and eschatology; or: from which vantage point is
Jesus the representative of perfect religious disposition?
Vergote follows a difficult and intriguing path. On the one hand he discards the his-
torical criticism of Rudolf Bultmann and others; on the other hand, he also rejects
the attempts of so-called psycho-theologians who seek psychological evidence for
the unique religious meaning of a biblical person or concept. The interest of the psy-
chologist of religion will never be purely scientific, according to Vergote. In the case
of Jesus, it does matter whether he was a religiously original and authentic person. If
Jesus qua human personality is considered original and authentic, psychology may
rightly proceed with phenomenological analysis of the religious content of Jesus
words and deeds and their psychological implications. This phenomenology will
127
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128 GLAS
inevitably transcend the boundaries of scientific psychology if it is to mean anything

at all. The same, Vergote says, holds for phenomena like love and guilt. In this
manner, then, psychology of religion is the attempt to grasp a range of phenomena
that by their nature transcend the limits of psychology proper.
In fact, this ambiguity returns in each of the three perspectives just mentioned.
Mysticism is marked by a certain “duality” or “bipolarity,” Vergote remarks. It does
not just refer to a particular range of experiences, but rather to the experience of
something which absolves itself from the experiential. The source of this experience
comes from without and not from within. With this statement Vergote criticises
Gnostic appropriations of divine reality which focus on origins from within, and
sides with the mysticism of Jan Ruysbrock, Teresa of Avila, and John of the Cross
who chose a perspective from without. It is clear that Vergote holds that this criticism
also applies to current psychology of religion with its one-sided emphasis on the
experiential and cultural aspects of religion.
With respect to moral consciousness and feelings of guilt we stumble upon a
similar duality, in the sense that it not easy to say whether Jesus underwent feelings
of guilt. To give an affirmative answer to the question would imply that Jesus
committed sin; to deny this might indicate a possibly pathological absence of moral
consciousness or, as I am inclined to add, would give Jesus a superhuman status that
would derogate the Christian idea of divine identification with human misery.
Vergote, rightly, points out that Jesus allowed himself to be baptized, thereby
indicating his willingness to repent and to ask for forgiveness of sins (Mark 1:9–11;
Matthew 3:13–17; Luke 3:21–22). However, instead of focusing on Jesus’s personal
consciousness of sin and his need for being cleansed of impurity, the evangelists
direct our attention to Jesus’ radical identification with his people who were in need
of God’s grace and renewal. The correlate of this act of humiliation finds its expres-
sion immediately afterwards, i.e., in acts which are manifestations of divine mercy,
like the performing of miracles and sharing the lives of sinners and the wretched. By
giving up himself and identifying with his people God gives expression to His
inclination to save a fallen humanity and to show the richness of creation.
Jesus’s prophetic mission, finally, also seems to be a source of confusion. As a
prophet Jesus is a peculiar person. His predictions are ambiguous and not very precise
at first sight: the Kingdom of God is coming, but at the same time the Kingdom is
already there. Old Testament prophets and even John the Baptist announced divine
judgement and wrath as future events, although as we have seen in the previous
section these future events were already “sensed” in the present. In Jesus’ preaching,
however, past, present, and eschatological future seem to merge in one perspective:
hence, the notion of the presence of the Kingdom.
These peculiarities and ambiguities raw our attention to the uniqueness of
Jesus. This uniqueness is not of a kind that invites one to imitate his personality.
For it is not his personality, nor Jerusalem, or even the Holy Land, that occupies
the centre of the gospels. It is the world as a whole that is the object of Jesus’
teachings. This world is God’s working place, waiting for renewal, brought about
by His mercy.
INTRODUCTION TO MESSIANISM 129
To summarise, Jesus life suggests that there is conception of presence beyond the
ordinary dualities of presence and absence, presence and past, and/or presence and
future. The reality of this merciful presence manifests itself in a sphere which one
could call a “concrete beyond,” i.e., it manifests in a sphere in which, for instance,
relationships flourish and loving and caring people reach beyond their limits.
Psychology of religion will never be able to fully comprehend and conceptualise this
“beyond,” and yet it cannot do without it either.
Abraham van de Beek, professor of theology at the Free University in Amster-
dam, opens the next chapter with a personal reading of the story of Jesus as told in
the four gospels. What emerges from this reading are four portraits, four images of
Jesus: Jesus the radical in Matthew, the more human person of Mark, the wise
teacher of Luke, and the mysterious preacher of love in John. These different
personalities do not allow us to completely reconstruct the personality of Jesus and
combine the traits of the different portraits into one. In fact, they even prevent us
from constructing a unitary image and this fact itself, van de Beek suggests, may
have a deeper religious meaning. In a sense, it may indicate another dimension
of “the One incomprehensible God, appearing in the man who explodes all
our schemes.”
There is no natural psychological bond with Jesus, according to van de Beek,
neither is there a duty to behave like Jesus, i.e., as radical, wise, and mysterious as He
was. There is a lot in this approach which is similar to Vergote’s. Van de Beek seems
to go one or two steps further by drawing a line from the epistemological “explosion
of our schemes” to the existential moment of “dying with Christ in baptism.” With
this he means that the message of Jesus is oblique to natural thinking and feeling. The
gospel is an offence. Van de Beek quotes the theologian van Ruler(1969) who once
said that “all indwellings are accompanied by considerable struggle.” Van Ruler
aimed, thereby, at the unease brought about by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Van
de Beek asserts something similar about Jesus. His presence brings turmoil and con-
flict. Therefore, the more real the person of Jesus becomes, the more conflict there is.
The unrest indicates the beginning of spiritual recovery. Therefore, the person needs
to go under and, in a sense, drown in the water of baptism and to give up his self-inter-
est and longing for earthly goods. The more unease, the closer one approaches to truth
and salvation.
It is interesting to notice in which way this element of unease returns in the
chapter by Ravitzky on the Jewish concept of the Holy Land. Avi Ravitzky is pro-
fessor of philosophy in the Department of Jewish Studies of the Hebrew University
of Jerusalem. His topic is the conceptual ambivalence toward the Land of Israel,
giving rise to “a perpetual oscillation between desire and dread, attraction and
retreat.” It is true that much more has been written – and sung – on the yearning
than on fear for the land of Israel. Nevertheless, awe and fear are not absent and
images about the prosperity and comforting aspects of the Holy Land were always
accompanied by images of possible destruction of the people living in it, or of the
temple or Jerusalem itself. Ravitzky finds evidence of this ambivalence already in
late 13th century writings of Rabbi Meir of Rottenburg, and sees it returning in the
130 GLAS
work of 17th century Prague emigrant to Eretz Israel, Rabbi Isaiah Horowitz, and
in 18/19th century commentary on the Bible by Raphael Berdugo from Morocco.
Ravitzky analyzes an intriguing dialectic between a modern position in which
there does not exist mythical unity between sacredness and place, on the one hand,
and, on the other hand, the position taken by some of the authors just mentioned, in
which the encounter with the concrete is also an encounter with the absolute. In this
latter conception sanctity is not confined to a certain place, because it emanates from
that place. The sanctity of it transcends the centre and fills all space. This approach
gives a totally different view on the meaning of the sacred: defining a sacred space is
now recast as a way to limit the working sphere of the sacred, instead of adding
sacredness to a space. In order to live, one has to limit the intensity of divine
holiness, so to speak; there is thus a need to be “delivered from the immense burden
of living in an atmosphere of undiluted sanctity.”
Peter Verhagen, a psychiatrist and theologian working in Meerkanten, a psychiatic
hospital in the centre of the Netherlands, has the final word in this section.
He addresses the concept of Messianism from the perspective of the inner image, or
representation, of the person of Jesus. He first gives an overview of the three quests
for the historical Jesus, and, then, delves into some detail with respect to the work
and the personality of Albert Schweitzer. Schweitzer was convinced that all of the
portrayals of Jesus in his century were in fact products of the character of the author
of each portrait. A personality “can only be awakened to life by a personality,”
argued Schweitzer, and this was view managed to debilitate entirely any attempt to
rescue the historical Jesus from the Jesus who was experienced as a contemporary
moral and/or psychological example.
Again, we are confronted with a split between the objective (the historical Jesus)
and subjective (Jesus as moral example). And, again, we see an author trying to
make the move toward a third position, in which the dynamic between the object
under study and the investigating subject gains priority. This time, it is Schweitzer
himself who observes that the best or most sensitive lives of Jesus are written by
those who are driven by hate or by love. Writing about Jesus is a search for one’s real
self, according to Schweitzer: the more real the self, the better the writing; the sub-
jective and the objective are totally interwoven at this level of understanding.
It was the Protestant pastor and psychoanalyst Oskar Pfister who gave a psycho-
logical interpretation of this struggle, by using the term “introjection” and by pointing
to Albert Schweitzer as the perfect example of a person who had fully “introjected”
Christ. Introjecting Christ means not merely contemplating about or talking to Jesus,
but living Him in a demonstration of pure love. The encounter with Jesus, then, leads
to a reversal of positions and roles: instead of one trying to grasp Jesus, one enables
oneself to be grasped by Him. He fills one’s life instead of that a person is attempting
to fill his neediness and emptiness with Him.
In the second part of his paper Verhagen gives an overview of some of the
object-relational and cognitive (schema-focused) models of this process of
“introjection.” He also discusses three examples from the empirical literature. This
shift of emphasis complicates the picture: Verhagen not only studies the factual
INTRODUCTION TO MESSIANISM 131
images of Jesus, but also some of the psychodynamic factors contributing to the
formation of these images and the theories about these factors. The image cannot
be studied apart from the process of imagining, nor can this process be compre-
hended without a theory about it.
At the end of Verhagen’s chapter, the essence of this process of imagining is
captured with terms like “strangeness” and “confrontation.” Ultimately, Jesus
cannot adequately be portrayed; he resists imagination. This has an alienating and
transforming effect on the reader. This transformation may be conceptualized
with the conceptual tools of reception aesthetics, i.e. as a sequence of processes
indicated with terms such as the poiesis (making concrete the narrative of Jesus in
one’s life), aisthesis (opening one’s mind), and katharsis (changing one’s moral
attitude). Such transformation is also known in a Christian variant, as meditatio,
compassio and imitatio.
CHAPTER 13
CASTING A PSYCHOLOGICAL LOOK ON JESUS

THE MARGINAL JEW
ANTOINE VERGOTE
Catholic University of Louvain, Belgium
1. INTRODUCTION AND OVERVIEW
I will first make some epistemological remarks on psychology of religion in order to

justify my approach to the present study, to emphasize its limits and to explain my
choice for using three categorical domains of psychology of religion as working
hypotheses to Jesus: mystical experience and desire; moral consciousness, guilt
feelings and sin; and prophecy, self-consciousness, and eschatology.
With respect to mystical experience and desire I will first explain these concepts,
discuss some authors (Jung) and consider the historical Jesus, leaving theology,
even that of the early Church aside. I will argue that Jesus represents the perfect
accomplishment of the love union with the God of biblical religion, i.e. the encom-
passing union that Christian mystics believe they may desire and which they pursue
systematically.
With respect to moral consciousness, guilt feelings and sin I will first analyze
consciousness of pathological guilt, normal guilt, and religious sin, as well as the
psychopathic absence of moral consciousness. I will then concentrate on Jesus as
associating with sinners and in His complex attitude of mercy and of recalling God’s
judgment. The author highlights Jesus’ superior freedom, His conflict with religious
authorities, and the fact that He does not confess sin. It is concluded, with Kant, that
Jesus embodies the archetype of perfect morality with regard to God.
Regarding prophecy, self-consciousness, and eschatology – the typical biblical
category of prophecy has been taken up by students of psychopathology and applied
even to the personality of Jesus Himself in order to characterize paranoid self-
centred delusions. However, the consciousness of the historical Jesus is totally
focused on God and His Kingdom, to the extent that Jesus does not speak about
His own identity, trustingly accepts His apparent failure, declares ignorance of
133
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134 VERGOTE
God’s future acts and interprets the hostility against Him as aimed at the Kingdom of
God. Compared with this historical Jesus, the paranoiac is an awkward caricature.
With regard to a phenomenology that implicitly proposes concepts which provide
direction and orientation to psychology, including psychology of religion, the author
concludes that Jesus is the paradigm of the ideal religious disposition.
2. JESUS AS “MARGINAL JEW”
From the superb study of John P. Meier (1991, 1994) I take over the formula “mar-
ginal Jew”, in order to clarify that I will consider the historical person of Jesus of
Nazareth from a psychological point of view. I will parenthesize theological inter-
pretations which the early Church developed after its acceptance of Jesus’ resurrec-
tion as being true and which would eventually permeate later documents about the
historical Jesus. As the word Eyangelion translated by “Gospel” suggests, these texts
do intend to bear witness to Jesus’ divine redemptive activity. Theological insights of
the first Christian Church involve the conviction that God brought His Kingdom to
humans through the historical person Jesus and that He divinely elevated Jesus as a
response to Jesus’ faithful and obedient complying to His intention. The early
church is inclined to report the words and deeds of Jesus as factual because resurrec-
tion would otherwise be meaningless. This believing, retrospective look at Jesus as
well as the different intentions of the witnesses and preachers of the new belief, how-
ever, results in a variety of approaches which in their turn anticipate later theological
convictions, apologetic explanations and new expressions. Modern philological and
historical research is nonetheless able to analyse and distinguish the layers of the
text. I am convinced that the existence of the historical Jesus is better documented
than the most famous people of antiquity are. However, notwithstanding this, at that
time he was a very marginal figure in the political and cultural world of the Roman
Empire and was also marginalized by the contemporary Jews who did not follow
Him. We must now discard the radical scepticism R. Bultmann expressed in 1923:
“We can now know almost nothing concerning the life and personality of Jesus,
since the early Christian sources have shown no interest in either, and, moreover,
are fragmentary and legendary.”1 “No interest”: a comment such as this is essentially
a kind of theological judgment or point of view and certainly not an objective
historical statement, revealing the heavy influence of Heidegger’s thought. As well,
Bultmann’s use of the term “legendary” seems to be an interpretation partly derived
from the supposed intimate connection between early Christianity and Gnostic
literature.
3. THE INTEREST AND LIMITED POSSIBILITY OF A PSYCHOLOGY

OF JESUS AS A PERSON
Before the advent of psychology as a science in the 19th century, psychological

interpretations, in particular those concerning Jesus, were immersed in theological
spirituality and philosophical anthropology. When psychology began to develop
CASTING A PSYCHOLOGICAL LOOK ON JESUS 135
beyond the strictures of its scientific discipline into an overall new science of man,
liberal Protestantism tried to explain Jesus’ message by attempting to reconstruct His
inner emotions, experiences and thoughts in terms of the supposed general features
of a religious person. Such psychological portraits of Jesus may make a literary
career, in the way that novels do, by subdividing Jesus’ life into a series of subplots
or themes. However, psychology which intends to be scientific should only interpret,
not invent facts. To preclude any misconception, I will first clarify some initial
questions concerning the possibility and limitation of a psychological study of Jesus.
This reflection leads to the more general question of the scope and competence of
psychology of religion. Finally, I will explicitly consider the interest of our study and
consider what we may gain from it.
Jesus comes to the foreground as a real human being made up of a physiological
body, a psychic life and a rational mind. He expresses various human emotions: joy,
sorrow, anger, tenderness, mercy, friendship, admiration and anxiety. Psychology for
an important part consists of the examination of how, to what extent and in what
sense affective dynamism influences conscious life of ideas and behaviour. On the
other hand psychology that does not wish to lose itself in imaginary psychologism,
also endeavours to distinguish the influence of consciously expressed ideas on affec-
tive life. In this correlational study psychology tries to observe and interpret possible
contradictions, conflicts and changes (Vergote, 1997a).
Human beings have an historical existence and it is precisely for this reason that
psychology must contain a dimension of psychohistory (Van Belzen, 1994). That is
to say, psychology, in principle, cannot confine itself to an understanding of an indi-
vidual’s religious feelings and belief by referring only to the inner psychic condition
and tendencies of that person. Jesus, as a real human being, is undoubtedly inheritor
of the century old Jewish monotheism and its historical evolution. So He could
preach regularly in the synagogues, debate about the interpretation of the Scripture
with people trained in commenting on the Hebraic biblical texts. Moreover He had
been educated in His homeland Galilee in the religious reawakening that retrieved
the conceptions of the patriarchal time.
Generally speaking, the psychological study of a person is the study of his per-
sonal development, the awakening and evolving of his self. It is by self-examination
that a person appropriates or opposes ideas and affective dispositions, which are
transmitted by the past. This very personal process is partly unconscious in the
descriptive sense of the word. In the creative mode, conflicting circumstances can
incite an explicit consciousness which further evolves into mature responsibility-
taking and the adoption of a personal stance. Because of its normally unconscious
and conflictual nature the developing psychic life is exposed to unconscious
repression and, hence to conflicts that are not worked through, thus resulting in
more or less pathological structures. I think that I have demonstrated that psycho-
analysis should liberate itself from Freud’s tendency to pathologize too generally
the unconscious.2
Psychologists may nevertheless ask whether Jesus’ behaviour and speech manifest
the presence and influence of instinctual-affective representations that are unconscious
136 VERGOTE
in the pathological sense of the word. The psychological analysis of an eminent reli-
gious and conflict-prone personality urges for a clinical point of view, i.e. for a well-
informed clinical psychological mindset. Due to the potential for bias, both Christian
or non-Christian sentiments may easily lead to misinterpretation of Jesus’ feelings and
behaviour, for instance when such sentiments, prone to substituting faith for empirical
fact, or opposing faith, result in neglect of normal psychological processes and dynam-
ics. The intense anxiety of Jesus, for instance, when He was conscious of His apparent
failure and awaited His persecutors, illustrate the common anxiety that overpowers a
person the moment before the effective brutal aggression, he expects, occurs. This non-
pathological weakness of Jesus’ psychic body embarrasses believers who want to see
Jesus triumphing over all human affective frailty with divine power.
Psychiatrists and clinical psychologists have expressed methodological doubts
regarding Jesus’ mental health, as they did with reference to other people who
were manifestly convinced of being divinely elected for an exceptional prophetic
or revolutionary task. A clinical psychologist should cautiously analyse Jesus’
self-consciousness and pay attention to speech and behaviour that might be
considered symptomatic in the strict sense of the term under ordinary circum-
stances. And, indeed, when symptoms are evident, the psychologist may try to
interpret them by applied psychoanalysis, for instance by viewing them as resolu-
tion of repressed conflict. But when no symptoms are apparent, it would be
presumptuous if not preposterous to simply “explain away” the exceptional char-
acteristics of Jesus’ personality by automatically classifying such uniqueness as
pathological.
The paucity of personal biographical data regarding the life of Jesus the man
greatly limits the possibility of psychological interpretation and explanation. No
historically valuable report exists of any life event of Jesus before the age of about 30,
when He first appears on the scene as one among the Jews who had begun to follow
John the Baptist. The Gospels do not even allow us to make up a schedule of His short
public life span. We thus ignore the psychological family dynamics and His personal
mental, affective and sexual development. However the Gospels allow us to take for
granted the fact that Jesus shared the sufficiently documented Judaic rituals and belief
of His homeland.
What may then be the task of the psychologist who is faced with Jesus? He
observes, as he is professionally trained, an individual, a fellow human being, who
experiences situations of conflict. He concentrates on any available evidence for
inner conflict. Professionally defined, psychological observation essentially means
listening, in order to hear, and in some sense even tot “see” (i.e., through body
language or concrete metaphors that evoke visual imagery) the affective dynamisms
to which the person is subjected. Moreover, the psychologist is interested in hearing
the type of language the person uses: affectively rich or poor, logical or confused,
open or defensive and full of distrust.
This psychological study, I think, should be concentrated on some basic categories
which structure the biblically religious mind. I will highlight three topical categories
where the psychological and religious dispositions undoubtedly meet: mystical
experience and desire; moral consciousness and guilt feelings; and, finally, prophetic
self-consciousness and eschatological preoccupation.
What may we expect from this study? As I have tried to indicate, it would be a
commitment to ideology rather than to science to expect a priori that psychology
should be able to explain the very particular personality of Jesus and His incompara-
ble influence on the history of religion and civilization. But contending that a psy-
chological study demonstrates that in Jesus’ words and deeds God’s gracious acting
and speaking are perceivable, would turn psychology into psycho-theology. Such a
psycho-theology is a chimera from a psychological point of view; and Gnosticism
from a theological point of view. Nonetheless, as is often the case in psychology and,
in particular, in psychology of religion, it will be obvious that the interest in our topic
is more than purely scientific. With respect to the person of Jesus we are without any
doubt interested in what is original and particular to Him and we surmise that this
originality and particularity must be of utmost importance for religion and for our
conception of being human. Consequently we look for what is new in the ideas of
this marginal Jew. If His originality is authentic and non-pathological, then one may
proceed with the analysis of the proper religious content of His words. In other
words, psychology then leads us to a phenomenology which – using the methods of
comparison – proceeds to what may be considered as an ideal form of the ethical
and/or religious way of life. This phenomenology of course transgresses purely
scientific psychology, like any psychology does when it considers mental health, the
capacity of loving, interpersonal communication, et cetera.
4. MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE AND DESIRE
Since the early days scholars who have been positively disposed toward religion
were inclined to select “experience” as its key concept, often in connection with
mysticism. The work of William James, one of the founding fathers of psychology of
religion, incorporates the arguments and ambiguities of this trend in a paradigmatic
way. Later, Freudian psychoanalytic theory was applied to undermine the tenets of a
theory that considers mystical experience as the core of religion. Freud indeed
considered the biblical religion of the Father as the most spiritualized outcome of
religious history. However, today many people in the West who are at the fringe of
the Christian tradition, show a lively personal interest in what seems to be mysticism
to them. For many of them Jesus is a beloved mystical person. The question whether
Jesus was a mystic is thus presently a meaningful question.
When Dionysius the Areopagite introduced the adjective mystical into Christian
literature he gave it a meaning that could be taken up and developed by mystical
currents of Christian spirituality and, centuries later, in modern psychology of
religion. With the adjective mystical Dionysius qualified the part of his theology that
elaborates the non-conceptual knowing of God, consisting of an “incomprehensible
union” with Him. The words “non-conceptual”, “incomprehensible” and “union”
evoke the epistemological dimension which Saint Bernard of Clairvaux in the
12th century identified as experience (Van Hecke, 1990) and associated with
138 VERGOTE
Christian mysticism of which he is an important initiator. Today, the word experience

is largely and often loosely connected with religion, to the extent that the expression
“religious experience” becomes an ecumenical melting pot for all kinds of personal
involvement with religion. We hear people speaking of religious experience, the
experience of faith, and the experience of the divine or of God. The word experience
highlights the personal, subjective appropriation of religious content. Therefore, the
expression “religious experience” has come to naturally include an interest in mysti-
cism, understood as happily effectuated religious experience. Thus, the expression
“religious experience” refers implicitly to a divine realm that is not present in the
person’s usual immediate awareness. In this context, the word mysticism signifies a
duality which structures the combination of “experience” and “religious.” However,
with regard to the interest in mysticism scholars often emphasize the subjective side
to the exclusion or underappreciation of what theology considers as the ultimate,
inherently “other-than-human” side. So in a recent congress on psychoanalysis and
religion I heard a speaker quoting Saint Augustine’s words: “God who is more innerly
in me than my most inner self.” However, this speaker omitted the second part of this
quotation: “and more high than my highest self.” This anecdote is a good illustration
of the subjectivist turn within the psychology of religion, which opposes religious
experience and mysticism to what is then negatively called: the Church. A widespread
sociological hostility against all institutions strengthens this opposition between
mysticism and the Church because the Church is an institution with “dogmatic”
pronouncements, laws and prescriptions, and organized rituals.
The opposition between the Church and mysticism came about with modern
subjectivism. It has been systematically elaborated by liberal Protestantism with the
aid of historical and philological criticism of the history of the Churches and of
Christian theology. Liberal Protestants interpret the Kingdom of God which Jesus
preached, as a purely interior spiritual accomplishment of man’s universally
religious nature. They, accordingly, explain Jesus’ important saying “the Kingdom
of God is entos hymôn” (Luke 17, 21), by translating it as: “is in you”, i.e. present in
your mind and heart. In the year 1902, when W. James published his book on
religious experience, the sociologist E. Troeltsch took up a thesis of Max Weber.
While correcting it, he suggested viewing the Church type as historically the first
one in Western Christianity, to interpret sects as protests against the lack of religious
perfection in the Church, and then to understand the mystical type as the failure of
both types and as the final Christian form of developed individualism.
Troeltsch’ sociological typology represents an adequate description of the way
many more or less religiously interested contemporary people think. Troeltsch
however seems to ignore the long Christian tradition of mysticism of which Saint
Bernard is a prototype. As others prior to him, Saint Bernard had turned the focus of
his followers’ attention to the call of the personal piety of faith – which, to be sure, in
itself is a tendency inherent to all Christian religion. From the perspective of Medieval
mysticism the opposition implied in the sociological typology of Troeltsch and others
appears to be false. On an underlying level of the discussion, there seems to be a fun-
damental question at stake; that is the question of whether Jesus did, or did not, simply
preach the Kingdom of God and said that it is by nature in the hearts and minds of
his people. The answer to this question determines the conceptions of liberal
Protestantism and the above-mentioned sociologists. A positive answer to this question
is already at the basis of the early Gnostic interpreters, like the author of the Gospel of
Thomas. As for liberal Protestantism and its typical sympathy for mysticism and a
mystical view of Jesus, one may ask whether the theological accent on the radical
sinfulness of humanity did not provoke a turn in the opposite direction, which could
then join modern subjectivism.
C.G. Jung represents par excellence the Gnostic psychological interpretation of
religious belief.3 For this reason he attracted Christians and non-Christians who
entertain a sympathy toward mysticism. He seemed to give their search a scientific
basis in “depth-psychology.” He reformulated religious ideas in a manner that
situates the supernatural contents to which religions refer, in the inner psyche. So,
“God” is an archetype that structures the “subconscious” and fulfils it with its expan-
sive “libidinal” energy.4 Jung criticizes the modern irreligious rational and technical
mind that, he says, represses the religious anima and identifies the human being with
his rational animus. This repression avenges itself either through depression in
which people feel the void of their existence, or in a delirious search for the experi-
ence of divine energy. These symptoms reveal that “God will become human”; not
completely, however. Jung warns against religious megalomania.5
Jesus’ predication is, in fact, in accordance with mystical desire and experi-
ence. Jesus, however, radicalizes the tense polarity I noticed with respect to
mysticism; a polarity which Saint Augustine adequately formulated in a more
philosophical terminology. Jesus announces the actual presence of “the Kingdom
of God in your midst.”6 It came and still comes to people who listen to Him and
who follow Him with belief. This kingdom is not a natural endowment, an ele-
ment of the extended physical universe, in the hidden centre of the self, but comes
from God in and through the words of Jesus who announces its presence amidst
His followers. To be sure, for the ones who believe in Jesus’ words, the affective
qualities of peace, joy and trust, characteristic of the Kingdom of God, are felt by
inner experience and signal the divine transformation of the self. We may call the
experience of the qualities of the Kingdom of God mystical. The self, however,
does not produce this experience from within. It is mediated by the performative
speech act of belief and by assenting to the performative language of Jesus who
brings the Kingdom of God amidst His Jewish listeners. The mystical mood
opposing religion, or the Church, always falls back into Gnosticism, often in an
even more subjectively affective way than the Gnosticism of the Thomas Gospel
and its more mythological Jungian variant.
The various figures and trends in true Christian mysticism, elaborated by Jan
Ruysbroeck, John of the Cross, Teresa of Avila and many others refer to Jesus as
their paradigm and permanent divine guide. In this Christian mysticism love far
more than experience is the key concept. This is significant, for, as Freud stated so
poignantly, love is an act of the ego in totality (Vergote, 1988). Mystical love
assumes the whole self in the union with the personal God coming to humans in
140 VERGOTE
the Kingdom of God as preached by Jesus. Christian culture developed a special

sensitivity for this mystical core of Christian belief from the 12th century onwards,
the epoch in which in the West love poetry articulated and stimulated a refined cul-
ture of affective expression and of enchanting metaphors of love and its subtle
wanderings. In this context, Christian mysticism analyzed the law like regularities
of the kind of love that responds to God’s coming into the world and which can be
found in the words announcing Him. This mysticism springs from the desire for
union with God, as it seemed to be announced and foreshadowed by Jesus. Mysti-
cism then is the accomplishment of this desire, going through the systematic
purification of the affective, ethical and intellectual components that mediate and
hold back the love intention.
I would like to compare the conception of these Christian mystics with the
insights gained by extensive empirical research examining the “mystical compo-
nent” in the religion of contemporary believers in the U.S.A. (Hood & Williamsen,
2000). As a major result, it is shown that the mystical component is present in their
religious attitude and that it consists of three combined but distinct factors: the extro-
verted insight that “All is one”; the introverted factor of subjectively experienced
one-ness with a greater unity; and an ineffability factor which, I think, points at an
intuitive consciousness of one-ness and union, which is not transferable by means of
language. Apparently, this “mystical” element has a more articulated content when it
is religion that gives it to its subjects. If the mystical component extends beyond a
particular religion, it is at any rate observable in subjects who express their belief by
adhering to a religion. This research thus contradicts the conception that religion, or
the Church, should be opposed to mysticism, at least for the population examined.
The scope of the research imposes its limitations. It would indeed be worthwhile to
examine the specifically psychological dimensions of the progress along the mysti-
cal way – given that the mystical state is so much more generally viewed as at least
partly a divine and hence utterly non-psychological phenomenon – as this has been
enlightened by the mystics. It would also be most interesting to rigorously compare
the “mystical component” as found in the experience of believers and in the experi-
ence of people not belonging to a particular religion.
Mysticism is a fundamental dimension of different religions. In Christian religion
there are various forms of mysticism which systematically elaborate one essential
component of Christian belief: the love union with God. Of course, Christian mysti-
cism is concentrated on the God of Jesus. God is mediated by Him, and consequently
also by the Church as He founded it. Jesus is then also the paradigm for Christian
mystics. May we then consider Jesus Himself to be a mystic?
In the historical Jesus we observe an attitude which is analogous to the one I have
noticed when speaking about the opposition between mysticism and religion, an
opposition Christian mystics do not show. Jesus indeed regularly confronted the
Jewish religious authorities, essentially the priests. Of course they suspected
Him because he was a layman from the countryside, far away from Jerusalem, its
temple and its priests. When this charismatic layman made his appearance, it was
with a most important claim for a new divine event that was happening with Him.
In the case of other religious authorities, such as the Pharisees and the scribes, Jesus
had rather irenic debates. In case of the high priests, however, the confrontation was
hostile. In their minds He was obviously threatening their religious power. An addi-
tional factor, underneath the conflict and contributing to this hostility, might be that
Jesus’ predication of the Kingdom of God “amidst you” in fact radically undermined
the importance of atonement by sacrificial rite. Like in most religions of that time
these rites were the centre of religious behaviour and sentiment. The conversion to
the present and coming Kingdom of God indeed constitutes a radically new moment
in biblical history. It is significant that the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews tries
to connect the sacrificial ritual and Jesus’ death in obedience to God. In accordance
with John the Baptist, Jesus concentrates His message on conversion to the King-
dom. When He baptizes, it is in accordance with this conversion, i.e. not primarily
in view of God’s judgment, but in view of the Kingdom of God coming with Him,
here and now.
If Christian mysticism is regarded as the sustained effort to fulfil one’s desire
for union with God and His coming Kingdom, we may consider Jesus to be a mys-
tic and may view Him as the paradigmatic instance of Christian mysticism. The
reason for this is that it is He who in fact fully lived, thought, spoke and felt
in union with the God He announced. He and His followers could enjoy God’s
presence. They, therefore, did not share the austere way of life of the Baptist
(Mark, 2:18–20). Nevertheless, there remains an important distinction between
Jesus Himself and all subsequent mystics who emulate and refer to Him. Jesus
enjoyed the divine presence in love from the beginning of His public life, as far as
we know from historical witnesses. In Him we do not observe any trace of a desire
leading Him to search explicitly for union with God. Nor does He seem to pass
through moments of intensified experience, silence of affect and struggle with
imaginary obstacles. We might, therefore, call Him a superior or accomplished
mystic. To be sure, nonetheless, Jesus remains the human person who lovingly
exhibits and lives His union with God and who maintains a relationship of prayer
with His Father. And although He emphasizes the actual presence of the Kingdom
of God, Jesus also refers to its future coming and an ultimate fulfilment beyond
human history.
To sum up my view of Jesus from the vantage point of the category of mysticism:
I would refer to Jesus as the mystic par excellence from the point of view of being
the living, total achievement of the union with God, for which Christian mystics
strive. He helps to conceptualize what humans are doing when searching for union
with God; or when acknowledging in a more implicit way the presence of a mystical
factor in their lives. Because Jesus perfectly represents the person living and experi-
encing the mystical “component,” we understand that for the mystics following Him,
His words and behaviour have been a light by which to detect the imaginary and
affective strings of mystical desire.7 When Nygren (1982) interpreted the mystical
desire of Christians referring to Jesus as being a non-converted form of pagan eros
he actually denied that Jesus was calling man to follow Him along the mystical path
towards mystical perfection that He Himself represents.
142 VERGOTE
5. MORAL CONSCIOUS, GUILT FEELINGS, SIN
Because Jesus was a human being – or, to the degree that he was a human being – it is
often supposed that He must have shared with humans the possession of a universal
moral consciousness that enables man to distinguish between good and evil in the eth-
ical sense (i.e., not by divine omniscience but by moral deliberation and choice).
Moreover, Jesus belonged to the Jewish religion and was educated in its concepts. In
His talks He regularly referred to the biblical conviction that God is the lawgiver for
the people He elected and guided. Did Jesus also manifest the typical biblical con-
sciousness of sin? We could also ask whether He experienced and expressed feelings
of shame, which are so important in civilizations in which people refer to public judg-
ment, rather than to a god with whom they do not entertain a very personal relation-
ship like the Jewish people. We may wonder whether it is possible to understand Jesus
if His personality is understood as an example of the common observation Freud
correctly formulates: “. . . it is precisely those [more virtuous] people who have
carried saintliness the furthest who reproach themselves with the worst sinfulness.”8
I leave aside the pathological dramatisation of Freud’s commentary: “. . . virtue
forfeits some part of its promised reward; the docile and continent ego does not enjoy
the trust of its mentor and strives in vain, it would seem, to acquire it.” Actually, aside
from the instances of the use of confession for self-accusation and self-punishment,
virtuous persons may confess their sins to God in the spirit of entering into the enjoy-
ment of His loving mercy. Thus, we may ask: what can be said about Jesus Himself as
person and his own “human” consciousness of guilt?
This question is important because the absence of guilt feelings normally signals
real psychopathology. Moral consciousness is not given by birth but rather is the
result of a developmental process, including a long, complex and multifactorial
education. The personal appropriation of moral laws and virtues takes place by inner
transformation of instincts that are immoderate by their very nature. This labour on
the self and by the self implies transgressions and guilt feelings which are awakened
by the violation of ethical principles. These guilt feelings are painful and humiliating
and, therefore, may be unconsciously repressed. This process may lead to a guilt
neurosis without guilt consciousness.9 The development of moral consciousness,
however, can also be completely absent, so that guilt feelings may not even become
manifest. This is what many psychopathologists mean when they use the technical
term: psychopathy. Guilt feelings are also virtually absent in severe forms of
psychopathology called: paranoid psychosis. Guilt consciousness in this case is
externalized and projected onto the imagined rival or persecutor. Dauntless
psychopathologists have tried to explain the enigmatic Jesus by applying the label of
paranoia to Him.
The first public appearance of Jesus, however, should immediately lead astray
psychopathologists looking for symptoms of paranoia. Jesus associates Himself with
John and with other Jews responding to the claim of the prophet. He allows Himself
to be given “the baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins” (Mark 1, 9–11;
Matthew 3, 13–17; Luke 3, 21–22). The four Gospels offer testimony to this fact
(even though this event was initially considered by the Church as somewhat
embarrassing!). Afterwards, Jesus thoroughly modifies His life and starts off His
preaching and healing activity. One might, therefore, correctly state that He was, in
fact, converted by John.
But was this a moral-religious conversion from sin unto God, as John preached to
sinners and as Jesus Himself begins to preach when He announces the Kingdom of
God and the conditions for entering into it? Reading cultural anthropological as well
as biblical studies one is inclined to agree with the way in which J. P. Meier tackles
this question in his A Marginal Jew. Rethinking the historical Jesus.10 “Modern
Christians”, he says, “especially Catholics, think of repentance and confession of sin
very much in terms of the personal sin of the individual penitent with an uneasy
conscience.” Western civilisation indeed evolved, among others by the influence of
Christian religion, to a more distinct consciousness, i.e., to the exploration and
expression of inner subjective enjoyment and suffering. The word “subject” changed
its meaning by referring to personal individuality, instead of to what is objectively
given to personal individuality. In the modern West the act of submitting oneself to
John’s baptism would normally be a public confession of personal sin in itself. But
as J. Meier writes, nothing in the Gospels permits us to look into the personal
subjective consciousness of Jesus. Only one thing can be taken for sure: He recog-
nizes that He is a member of sinful people and He associates with the Jews who by
confessing their sins recall God’s gracious deeds for His ungrateful people. In the
prophetic texts of Israel grateful remembrance, repentance and renewal are associ-
ated with the lived history with God. The psychologist who interprets biblical texts
with the eye of subjective introspection only will miss the point, as I have illustrated
in a study on Saint Paul’s famous text on sin in Romans VII.11
After His baptism Jesus emerges as a very particular prophet who follows John’s
preaching while radically modifying it, as we have seen. He exhorts to conversion,
refers to God’s judgment, but instead of warning us of the tremendous divine justice,
He performs God’s saving mercy and speaks abundantly of the joyous experience of
belonging to the already present Kingdom of God. He performs miracles, not as a
magician exhibiting his special power, but as the person through whom the Kingdom
of God already brings forth happy healing as well as forgiveness of sin. Jesus
Himself manifestly enjoys God’s creation and, therefore, ascetic puritans are hurt.
He scandalizes moral-religious authorities by His personal relationships and table
intimacy with sinners and outcasts. Jesus’ behaviour oftentimes seems paradoxical,
if not contradictory: He expresses an ambiguous complicity or at least familiarity
with sinners, and permits no reproach of this affiliation, for His is the way of love.
Divine mercy is expressed in His words and embodied in His behaviour.
Additional characteristics augment this observation, for example, Jesus’ attitude
toward the Jewish ritualistic custom of avoiding contact with the “impure.” For the mod-
ern mind this is a most enigmatic concept. The idea of the impure pervades the biblical
tradition, as it does other pre-modern civilisations. In the Bible it is not only meeting a
prostitute which leads to impurity, but also contact with the dust of the market place
where Gentiles circulate. The impurity of animals like pork, shrimp or serpent is well
144 VERGOTE
known. As the anthropologist Mary Douglas demonstrated, the “primitive” idea of

impurity belongs to a cultural unconscious which is determined by the a priori scheme
of living beings which are well formed.12 This scheme, consequently, implies disgust
for creatures which are deformed and monstrous. These creatures are seen as the
embodiment of bad powers investing the world. In the Bible avoiding contact with
impure beings implies a religious recognition of the Creator. Having contact with the
impure means to comply with demonic powers which oppose Him in His goodness.
The anthropological notion of the impure was applied to Gentiles and prosti-
tutes. For, as they do not belong to the holy nation, they are considered to be cont-
aminated by demonic forces. In the Christian tradition the idea of the impure was
unfortunately transferred to the domain of sexuality. The idea of the impure could
so become the metaphor for sin. This metaphor may even express the general
human, more or less guilty lack of dignity in the face of the Holy God, such as is
exemplified in the vision of Isaiah VI. Cleansing through baptism also derives its
meaning from biblical consciousness. When Jesus submits Himself to baptism He
associates Himself with sinners and with people who are conscious of being
impure over against the holy God, as Isaiah was. Nothing, however, lets us think
that Jesus Himself had the experience of Isaiah when God’s holiness was revealed
to Him. Concerning the traditional avoidance of the impure, Jesus at any rate
showed a radical freedom from this collective unconscious category and its reli-
gious dualistic derivatives. Neither His behaviour nor His words signal the neu-
rotic symptoms of repression of the unconscious fear of sexual impurity. When His
disciples, following their guide, feel liberated from the imperative of the impure,
by clearly proclaiming the principle which is religiously lucid and psychologically
healthy, Jesus retorts to the scandalized Jews: “Not the thing entering into the
mouth defiles the man, but the thing coming forth out of his mouth, this defiles the
man.” (Matthew 15, 19).
This moral religious principle has major consequences for honest self-consciousness
with regard to moral judgment and the confession of sin. Jesus calls for an honest
examination of personal intentions, for this factor is decisive for God. From the view-
point of the new morality of heightened self-awareness and self-experience that
Jesus wished to inculcate, fantasying about adultery is equal to committing adultery
and the complicity with feelings of hatred is already committing the sin of homicide.
This rigorous call to purify one’s subjective intentions accompanies Jesus’ renuncia-
tion of religious hypocrisy He observes in the merciless judgments of some
authorities. A psychologist may appreciate the healthy character of Jesus’ principle,
for it helps the avoidance of repression as well as of psychopathic perversion. Freud
would surely agree with Jesus, but he would draw attention to the danger that is
implied in this acutely honest examination of the intention: the danger of torturous
guilt anxiety. However, a major correction to Freud’s reasoning should be added
here. The pathology of guilt anxiety is caused by repression, but the confession of
sin is not mere self-enclosed introspection. On the contrary, confession of sin is a
word spoken to God who is forgiving mercy. Jesus moreover does not expect His
followers to be perfect in the sense of being perfect (teleos), as God is perfect; this is
not a biblical but a Greek idea taken over by Matthew 5,48.13 Jesus calls us to be
merciful as God is and He invites to pray: forgive us our trespasses as we forgive.
Again, the historical Jesus intrigues the psychologist. For, from his vantage point
he can only agree with human wisdom and with the Bible when it reports, describes
and analyzes the evil that pervades humanity. Jesus is as conscious of human evil as
He is of the holiness of His God, the Father, and He Himself prays: hallowed be thy
name. But he does not add as Isaiah does “I am impure.” And when He allows John
to baptize Him, we can only say that He is deeply conscious of being part of the
sinful people He calls to convert and to enter into God’s Kingdom, present and
future. Jesus clearly looks at sinners in a way in which He manifests Himself as
divine lucidity and as divine mercy actively seeking for salvation for his people. By
highlighting God’s mercy, Jesus at the same time affirms that God does not save
people who sin against the Holy Spirit; I understand: people who consciously and
radically oppose God. This idea may be hurtful. It is in accordance with an encom-
passing biblical conviction. In the face of God who created man in His image as a
free personal being, this person is called to freely assent to God and is thus given the
possibility to refuse. The Gospel narrative concerning Jesus’ temptation in the desert
is a theological composition; but it very clearly states that in His work and as a per-
son Jesus from the beginning personifies the opposite of the satanic refusal to assent
to God combined with self-divinisation. For this sin no remission can exist. The
reader may of course doubt whether a human being is capable of this radical sin.
As a psychologist I will conclude with Kant’s repeated statement that the histori-
cal Jesus is the human archetype of perfect morality.14 In Jesus this perfection is
coterminous with His very personal relationship with His God.
6. PROPHECY, SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS, ESCHATOLOGY
The category of prophecy does not belong to the general psychology of religion
because it refers to ideas and behaviour that do not belong to the domain of universal
human motives and experiences. This category, however, has been taken over from
the Bible and transferred to psychopathology for describing delusions that show
some resemblance with prophecy. No wonder this psychopathological category has
been applied to the enigma of Jesus’ personality.
The biblical prophet is a person, who is seized by the divine Spirit and who,
speaking on behalf of this supra-human instance, reveals mysterious divine judg-
ments and future interventions in the history of humanity. The popular idea of the
prediction of future events reduces prophecy to a kind of magical knowledge, just
like the magician is thought to perform “miraculous” acts as personal exploits. The
strange speech and symbolic actions of biblical prophets could give the impression
that they were mad. When Jesus commences His prophetic activity some of His
relations indeed suspect Him of madness and try to force Him to go back to His
family and take up His job of carpenter again. (Mark 3, 21). In modern times,
many and overly self-confident psychiatrists have repeated this “diagnosis” with
146 VERGOTE
more sophistication, but perhaps with more pretension than comprehension or

competence, as one can observe in a book the otherwise interesting Kretschmer
warmly recommends.15
The peculiar originality of a person often disturbs people who work in the field of
science, art, philosophy, etc. For some Jews Jesus was and is a token of contradiction
and He has remained that for many throughout history. He defies the rationalist
mindset that for ages would govern the human mind, the soul and conceptions of
mental health. A suspicion of delusion then prompts the psychological and clinical
examination of Jesus.
Jesus surely acts and speaks like a biblical prophet, but He does so in a very
particular way. He exalts His initial mentor John as a prophet, as even more than a
prophet, for He considers him to be the last and key-transitional prophet before the
coming of the Kingdom of God. And Jesus repeatedly claims that the Kingdom is pre-
sent and at the same time He declares that it is an event yet to take place. But when in
the face of the persecution unto death Jesus is aware that He apparently failed in
establishing the Kingdom of God, Jesus Himself prophesizes with trust that His
divine Father will establish His Kingdom despite His apparent destruction. Jesus is
also confident that His God will save Him from death, but He does not predict
anything more precise. No more does He attempt to delineate a definite time schedule
for the eschatological accomplishment of the Kingdom of God. Four features in this
summary about the historical Jesus are significant for psychology pondering the phe-
nomenon of prophecy: Jesus’ self-consciousness, the universality of His project, the
absence of dualism and the trusting acceptance of His impressive failure.
Jesus insistently proclaims that the Kingdom of God is coming with and through
the announcement He Himself makes. We may infer from this that Jesus is conscious
of the key function He occupies in the coming of the Kingdom. He Himself created
this expression. However, He never proclaims that He is the Messiah establishing
the Kingdom of God. We thus may say that His self-consciousness was an oblique
one accompanying the dominant focus on the Kingdom of God, the only object of
His solicitude. Jesus expresses the same selfless concern when He simply says that
He is ignorant with respect to the moment of the eschatological fulfilment of God’s
Kingdom.
A second impressive feature lies in the tension between Jesus’ personally limited
missionary activity and the encompassing universality of the Kingdom of God He
announces and makes present. Jesus says that “Many from the east and west shall
come and shall recline with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the Kingdom of God.”
(Matthew 8, 11). It is not clear whether He alludes to the future conversion of the
Gentiles. What is striking, however, is that He never views Zion as the future centre
and ultimate home of the patriarchs. The Kingdom of God indeed focuses the
attention on the presence of the universal God, not on His biblical transitional
dwelling place.
In the third place, the psychologist may also be impressed by the duality of time
in Jesus’ view of the Kingdom of God. This time conception contrasts with philo-
sophical and with mythological religious dualism. Jesus enchants His listeners with
His specific way of speaking in parables. They are indeed literary masterpieces,
preserving their incomparable eloquence throughout different epochs and civiliza-
tions. Their metaphorical language is psychologically very significant. Jesus
metaphorically weaves together divine creation as given to humanity, the presence
of the coming Kingdom and the future eschatological presence of God. By this
feature the parables are in accordance with the meaning of the miracles and signs
Jesus performed. I refer to healing miracles which John P. Meier in his magnum
opus Rethinking the Historical Jesus, Vol. II, thoroughly examines and considers
as historical. I leave aside the nature of miracles like Jesus’ walking on the water
and his stilling the storm, which we may interpret as symbolic narratives. For Jesus
Himself, in His healings, He made already visible the coming of the Kingdom of
God He preached. Jesus asserted His authority and the meaning of His miracles by
interpreting their meaning Himself. They fulfill Isaiah’s prophecy: “The blind see,
the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised” (Matthew 11,
5 ff.). For Jesus the miracles are the beginning of the actualisation of the tri-
umphant coming of God’s Kingdom. This significance of the miracles becomes
once more clear when we compare Jesus with John the Baptist. The Baptists’
preaching is heavily oriented towards the near last times and God’s final judgment.
And neither the Gospels nor the Jewish Roman historian mention a miracle the
Baptist would have accomplished.
For Jesus, the miracles He performs have a function in the revelation of God’s
providential power. God will fulfill His Kingdom in a future time no human
being knows, even not “the Son of man.” Jesus did not put Himself in the centre of
the Kingdom of God and surely did not consider Himself as disposing of divine
knowledge.
The time structure of Jesus’ parables also excludes a dualistic conception of the
world. Jesus was an itinerant celibate prophet, totally dedicated to God’s Kingdom,
which was coming and already present. He manifestly enjoyed God’s creation. In
His parables nature and normal human activities are the symbols of the already
present Kingdom of God and of its future divine accomplishment. The behaviour of
the convivial Jesus and His attention to sinners was scandalous in the eyes of people
our clinical psychology would evaluate as sick of culpability or as more dangerously
dualistic (Matthew 11, 19 ff.). The Kingdom of God he announces to people of all
kinds demands not to judge the others, but to free oneself from anxiety and enslave-
ment of possessions, and to trust in Gods loving presence. Jesus also opposes
religiously and psychologically dubious ritualism and obsession with ritual purity.
Contrary to what one would observe doomsday prophets, Jesus accepts the
Jerusalem temple and its festivities as still belonging to the present time of the divine
and human history. But as prophet he foretells the destruction of the temple and its
historically contingent order of things.
Fourthly, Jesus is conscious of the harsh hostility towards Himself, but He does
not place Himself in the centre of the aggression. It is the Kingdom of God that
suffers from violence, and Jesus and His disciples together with it. Jesus manifestly
ponders the mystery of evil in humanity, but He is not scandalized, as are the Jewish
148 VERGOTE
believers who expect that God will reappear in the form of a divine triumphant and
glorious messenger. Jesus’ attitude is a psychologically perplexing combination of
wondrous love for God’s present coming and the sharp consciousness that God’s
Kingdom is so radically different from human desires and imaginings that the
announcement of its nearness, or even the very allusion to its potential qualities, will
inevitably, almost by nature, elicit revolt and reactionary persecution. In the face of
this hostility Jesus’ conception of God and His Kingdom does not allow the use of
violence in order to impose it. Neither does Jesus substitute Himself for the future
judgment of God. The conversion of the apostle Saul-Paul may support these state-
ments. The deeply believing and faithful Saul helps with the execution of the first
Christian martyrs. We may understand this behaviour. Prior to his conversion, Saul
represents the true disciple of Moses who takes the sword against what he considers
to be false venerators of false gods. Saul persecutes with the sword the false worship
of the true God. So did Mahomet also, centuries later. Saul was probably deeply
impressed by the words and deeds of Stephen, the apostle. The witness and conduct
of this early martyr were probably important factors in Saul’s conversion to Jesus
Christ and a significant model of the nature of the coming Kingdom. In his powerful
missionary activity Paul refuses to use violence in the service of God. Jesus’ death
on the cross is the paradigm case, reflecting the non-violent nature of the true
disposition to faith.
I like to illustrate the attitude of Jesus Himself by referring to the parable of The
lost sheep (Matthew 18, 12–14; Luke 15, 4–7): Jesus did not come to judge, but to
save. In the parable of The weeds among the wheat (Matthew 13, 24–30) Jesus
rejects a violent conduct that would eliminate from society people the disciples of
Jesus judge to be bad people. One should let the weeds grow among the wheat until
the harvest, that is, the Last Judgment. Otherwise one will “uproot the wheat along
with them”, i.e., with the weeds. Jesus initiates the Kingdom of God in the time of
this world. But for Him this first epoch of the Kingdom of God is the time of a
mixture of good en evil, of faith and unbelief, and this in persons and in society. The
use of violence in the service of God’s Kingdom would destroy this one as it is
growing in the secret intimacy of persons and in human institutions.
By comparison, alongside Jesus’ prophecy the paranoid “prophecies” present an
awkward caricature. When reading the psychoanalytical interpretation the late
Jacob A. Arlow proposes, on the basis of some texts of Isaiah torn from their con-
text, one would rather apply the diagnosis of paranoia onto the interpreter. The
“consecration” of the prophet, he says, is a dramatic event accompanied by
acoustic and optic hallucinations. The future prophet undergoes his consecration
in passive submission and ecstatic exaltation. He then considers Himself to be the
mouth of God and not just the one who predicts the future. He is a lonely man, iso-
lated from other people, focused only on God the Father. He withdraws his libido
from all other realities and all people. In Him the oedipal conflict with the father
reaches the highest intensity and he decides in favour of the Father. The dynamical
oedipal conflict, however, is not smoothed away and the prophet manifests a most
intense ambivalence with respect to authority, to mention only these two points.
This “psychoanalytic” interpretation goes on without any serious consideration of

the message prophets like Isaiah proclaim. And all this in an apparently scientific
journal!
7. CONCLUDING THOUGHTS
Does our study offer a contribution to psychology of religion? To Christian belief?

Or to the critical examination of psychology of religion?
All psychology of essential human phenomena shares the same ambiguity: it
studies phenomena that are rooted in the human psyche but which are inserted and
inscribed in it by that which is beyond psychology; by that which is neither physio-
logical nor purely rational. This state of affairs is not unique for the psychological
study of religion, but also characteristic for the psychology of love, ethics, language,
and art. To look at Jesus from the vantage point of psychology, however, is a most
instructive and perplexing venture. Our study regularly has led us to interpretations
that were not only partial, as is often the case with psychological explanations of the
unempirical dimension of reality, but often also into a realm which resists explana-
tion and rational interpretation. Normally, psychology examines an ensemble of
motives that in an ambiguous way – preconsciously or unconsciously – determine
the observed religious attitude and which consequently foster a crisis and a develop-
ment, in adults as well as in children. In Jesus we observe only one motive: the lov-
ing and faithful accomplishment of God’s will to make the Kingdom come through
Him, Jesus the Jewish layman of the little marginal countryside. Jesus represents the
perfection of the religion Allport called “intrinsic.” This attitude is evident from the
start of Jesus’ public life, and from that point onward it seems that no actual or
potential disappointment, owing to real events or to strong emotional frustration, is
able to shake it or leads to a mindset requiring a kind of new conversion. No
moments of ecstasy lift Him up from normal consciousness. Jesus lives from the
beginning in the intimate union with God, which the mystic desires to accomplish
and to experience, and for which he submits himself to a philosophically and
psychologically justified strategy of gradual conversion. In the mystics a variety of
felt absences and joyful experiences of God may produce rapturous visions. In Jesus
we observe no such a mystical way of progress. The perfect serenity and the merci-
ful encounters with sinners witness the absence of any uneasiness about personal
guilt. And if we consider Jesus’ idea of His God the Father, we must conclude that
we cannot think of an idea of the father that would better match the paradigm we are
looking for when we reflect on anthropological, psychological and clinical data. At
any rate, there exists an immeasurable difference between the latter view and Freud’s
conception of divine providence, as the extension of human illusory desires or as the
magnified father idea resulting from unresolved oedipal rivalry.
To sum up: I concur with the view according to which it is possible and useful to
apply the notion of a psychological type, as a descriptive concept, to the biblical
individual known as Jesus. Jesus – as a person – is the ideal type of a religious
person. For the psychologist Jesus is a human and supra-human figure, which may
150 VERGOTE
serve as the background model for psychological interpretation and evaluation of

religious phenomena. Concerning the fundamental human factors he studies, be it
love, mental health, moral consciousness, creative intelligence, the psychologist
indeed necessarily keeps in mind an ideal form which he is unable to squeeze into
rational concepts.
For the theologian, this psychological conclusion may be of value insofar as it
offers some clues with regard to why and how Jesus’ message could objectively
communicate the coming of the invisible God. And does this psychological conclu-
sion not give some valuable support to the Christian belief that to be Christian for an
essential part consists of a personal “imitation” of Jesus?
NOTES
1
Bultmann (1934), p. 14.
2
Vergote (1997b), pp. 77–170.
3
Noll (1997), pp. 98–164.
4
Jung (1952), pp. 98–108; Jung (1957), p. 107.
5
Jung (1948), p. 128; Jung (1951), p. 44ff.
6
Meier (1994), pp. 423–430.
7
Vergote (1988), pp. 153–167.
8
Freud (1930), 246.
9
Vergote (1988), pp. 50–51.
10
Meier (1994), p. 113.
11
Vergote (1990), pp. 95–130.
12
Douglas (1966), pp. 41–57.
13
Dupont (1985), pp. 539–550.
14
Bohatec (1966), pp. 351–357.
15
Arlow (1951), pp. 374–397; Lange-Eichbaum 1928; cf. von Muralt (1946), pp. 242–254.
REFERENCES
Arlow, J. A (1951). The consecration of the prophet. The Psychoanalytic Quarterly, 20, 374–397.
Bohatec, J. (1966). Religionsphilosophie kants. Huldesheim: Georg Olms.
Bultmann, R. (1934). Jesus and the word. London/Glasgow: Fontana.
Douglas, M. (1966). Purity and danger. An analysis of the concept of pollution and taboo. London: Rout-
ledge and Kegan.
Dupont, J. (1985). Études sur les Évangiles synoptiques. Volume II. Leuven: Leuven University Press.
Freud, S. (1930). Civilization and its discontents. Standard edition of the complete psychological works of
Sigmund Freud (ed. by J. Strachey) Volume XXI. London: Hogarth Press.
Hood, R. W., Jr., & Williamsen, W. P. (2000). An empirical test of the unity thesis: The structure of
mystical descriptors in various faith samples. Journal of Christianity and Psychology, 19, 222–244.
Jung, C. G. (1948). Ueber die Psychologie des Unbewußten. Zürich: Rascher.
Jung, C. G. (1951). Aion. Untersuchungen zur Symbolgeschichte. Zürich: Rascher.
Jung, C. G. (1952). Symbole der Wandlung. Zürich: Rascher.
Jung, C. G. (1957). Psychologie und Religion. Zürich: Rascher.
Lange-Eichbaum, W. (1928). Genie, irrsinn und ruhm. Köln: Komet Verlag.
Meier, J. P. (1991). A marginal Jew. Rethinking the historical Jesus. Volume I: The roots of the problem
and the person. New York/London: Doubleday.
Meier, J. P. (1994). A marginal Jew. Rethinking the historical Jesus. Volume II: Mentor, message and
miracles. New York/London: Doubleday.
Noll, R. (1997). The Aryan Christ. The secret life of Carl Gustav Jung. New York/Toronto: Macmillan.
Nygren, A. (1982). Eros and Agape. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Van Belzen, J. A. (Ed.). (1994). Psychohistory in psychology of religion: interdisciplinary studies.
Amsterdam/Atlanta: Rodopi.
Van Hecke, L. (1990). Bernardus van Clairvaux en de religieuze ervaring. Kapellen: Pelckmans/Kok
Agora.
Vergote, A. (1988). Guilt and desire. Religious attitudes and their pathological derivatives. New
Haven/London: Yale University Press
Vergote, A. (1990). Explorations de l’espace théologique. Leuven: Leuven University Press.
Vergote, A. (1997a). Cause and meaning, explanation and interpretation in the psychology of religion.
In J. A. van Belzen (Ed.), Hermeneutical approaches in psychology of religion (pp. 11–34).
Amsterdam/Atlanta: Rodopi.
Vergote, A. (1997b). La psychanalyse à l’épreuve de la sublimation. Paris: Cerf.
Von Muralt, A. (1946). Wahnsinniger oder Prophet? Zürich: Europaverlag.
CHAPTER 14
THE LAND OF ISRAEL

Desire and dread in Jewish literature
AVIEZER RAVITZKY
Department of Jewish Thought, Hebrew University, Jerusalem
1. INTRODUCTION*
Can the Holy Land also be a homeland? Can the same place serve as a “the King’s
palace” or gateway to Heaven, on the one hand, and a national home and nurturing
mother,1 on the other? And how are we to reconcile this dichotomy, which has
figured so prominently in Jewish history and in the Jewish sources?
The home (or homeland), protects its inhabitants, and creates a sense of intimacy
and comfort, while the sacred makes demands, and elicits feelings of awe and dread.
While the home an existential concept and the homeland a historical/national notion,
the sacred is a religious/normative concept, and the sacred place a metaphysical
notion. The purpose of the home is to protect and nurture, while the purpose of the
sacred is to demand, or even threaten. Despite these differences, these two concepts
have, in the course of Jewish history, converged.2 This convergence, however, has
generated considerable tension and even conflict that has sometimes reached critical
proportions.
If religious awe of the sacred is a familiar phenomenon,3 traditional fear of the
holy place is even more commonplace. In the history of religions, however, this
fear has usually been directed toward a specific center or place, such as a moun-
tain, city, or shrine, rather than toward an entire country.4 In all the above
instances, the sacred, whether emanating from one or several sources, accommo-
dates pockets of routine – or even profane – space. Not so the Holy Land in the
Jewish post-biblical tradition, which considered the entire land holy. The tran-
scendent center shifted from one, or even several, foci to a single, communal
focus [“a land of earthly gateways, mirroring the gateways of heaven” – Judah
Ha-Levi].5 Consequently, the tension between attraction and dread also broad-
ened to encompass the entire land. For although the Holy Land wove bonds of
153
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154 RAVITZKY
love around its children, its religious demands and metaphysical intensity also
struck fear into their hearts (especially into the hearts of its exiles). In extreme
cases, this fear evolved into a taboo, and the entire land became forbidden terri-
tory that could neither be touched nor enjoyed: “‘You shall limit the people round
about’ (Exodus 19:12): around Jerusalem and around the land of Israel . . . ‘Take
heed to yourselves, that ye go not up into the mount, or touch the border of it’:
this is the Land of Israel and the Temple Mount” (R. Eliezer of Wirtzburg,
13th century.)6
Naturally, exile and geographical distance exacerbated this tension. Precisely the
same people who exalted and cherished the land in yearning and hope, were those
who, in the course of time, withdrew from the land and refused concrete contact with
it. As time passed and distances increased – and the glorification of the earthly
Jerusalem intensified, so much so that it came to resemble the heavenly Jerusalem7 –
it followed that no-one was worthy of entering its gates or of crossing its threshold.
Like a lover who avoids his beloved for fear of frustration and profanation, so the
exiles feared contact with the Holy Land. They, too, idealized the Land of Israel
from afar.
Since antiquity, the religious consciousness entertained a conceptual ambivalence
toward the Land of Israel. In time, another – this time, historical – layer of duality
evolved: the real Jew versus the ideal land.8 These two dichotomies gradually rein-
forced one another and even merged, giving rise to a perpetual oscillation between
desire and dread, attraction and retreat. In some cases, not only exile but also the
destruction, of Temple and land, highlighted this tension and infused it with a dark,
demonic quality that only the chosen few could resist. While Jewish historical
research has dealt extensively with yearning for the Land of Israel, it has almost
completely ignored awe and fear of it.9 The only literary genre that has given this
theme the importance it deserves is the new Israeli poetry.10 However, this motif of
retreat has failed to make its mark on the historic, philosophic or ideological
discourse relating to the nation’s allegiance to its land.
One exception should be noted: A. B. Yehoshua’s article, entitled: “Exile: a Neu-
rotic Solution.” According to Yehoshua, Jews dread the land and see exile as “an
escape to a conflict-free situation.”11 Yehoshua, however, draws a distinction
between the people’s conscious and (repressed) subconscious attitude to the land.
He argues that while Jews consciously abhor exile and feel an intensive pull
toward the land of Israel, subconsciously they fear the land and seek to escape
from it into exile.12 Yehoshua considers this discrepancy as a pathological, neu-
rotic state that requires resolution. Although I agree with Yehoshua’s claim regard-
ing the traditional fear of the land, I disagree with his “diagnostic” distinction
between the conscious and subconscious attitude toward the land. I will attempt
to show that Jews consciously acknowledged dread of the land, not only desire
for it, throughout history. Many sages have developed this theme into theoretical
and hypothetical constructs and even, on occasion, into existential positions
and philosophical theories. And Jewish authors have, over the generations, been
aware that the attitude to the Land of Israel has always been characterized by
THE LAND OF ISRAEL 155
tension, dichotomy and ambivalence. It is only contemporary scholarship, with its

entrenched, ideological bias, which has refused to acknowledge this. It is time we
make amends.
2. THE KING’S PALACE
We shall begin our discussion with examples of ambivalence toward the Land of
Israel in the writings of some sages, from the medieval Rhineland to present-day
Morocco, and continue with a more systematic study of the subject. Although
most of the texts I shall be quoting viewed immigration to the land as a positive
step, albeit reserved for the chosen few, some, more radical texts, were so over-
come by the feelings of dread that they issued a total and permanent ban on such
immigration.
In the late 13th century, Meir of Rottenburg (Maharam), one of the greatest
sages of the Rhineland, compiled a collection of responsa on the subject of immi-
gration to the Land of Israel. In principle, his Responsa come out in favor of immi-
gration. However, when discussing the special religious demands the Holy Land
make on its inhabitants, Maharam changes his tune, invoking most of the dire
admonitions in the Jewish sources against those who fail to meet these demands.
He describes the need for extreme piety and asceticism, and for strict observance
of the precepts relating to the land. Maharam does not depict God’s providence
over the land as a benign force, but rather as a sinister one (a vigilant eye which
misses nothing). Most importantly, Maharam draws a distinction between a sinner
inside or outside the Holy Land. Fear of the enemy in the land metamorphosed into
a fear of divine radiance emanating from the Holy Land. True, untold blessings
awaited those who were able to rise to the challenge and resist the dangers, but
these were the select few, and not the masses of simple, law-abiding Jews. To
quote Maharam:
One who commits one sin in the Land of Israel is punished far more severely than one who commits
all manner of sins elsewhere. This is because God constantly watches over the land, his eyes never
leave it, and his providence is permanently there. One cannot compare he who defies the King in his
palace to he who defies him from afar. For the land is “a land that eateth up its inhabitants” (Numbers
13:32). Likewise, the verse states: “That the land vomit not you out also as it vomited out the nation
[that was before you]” (Leviticus 18:28). The land spews out transgressors.13 As for those who behave
in the land with levity, of them I say: “But when ye entered, ye defiled My land” (Jeremiah 2:7).14
Those, however, who go to the land with pure hearts, and behave there with piety, will be amply
rewarded.15
More than three centuries later, Isaiah Horowitz (Shelah), another German sage, also
took the theme of “a Land that eateth up its inhabitants,” and transposed it on to a
spiritual-mystical plane. It was Horowitz’s contention that the biblical threat was
directed not only at those who sinned in the Land of Israel, but also at those who
moved there for material reasons alone, seeking to lead a sheltered existence there, in
defiance of its unique, religious character. It destroys those who wish to settle there
simply to enjoy its fruit and derive gratification therefrom.”16
156 RAVITZKY
In 1621, Horowitz emigrated from Prague to the Land of Israel. What concerns
us here is his perception of Jewish life in Eretz Israel, and the psychological-spiritual
demands the country made upon its inhabitants. Horowitz adopted a signally anti-
existential position. Jews should not go up to the Land of Israel in order to live a safe
and settled life, he argued, but rather, as a stranger (ger) and sojourner: Those who
dwell in the Holy Land should not feel a sense of permanence and belonging, but
rather a sense of transience and ethereality. They must feel that their presence there
is constantly endangered both existentially and metaphysically. The biblical motif of
dependence on rain, in particular in Eretz Israel, was extended by Horowitz to
embrace physical existence in its entirety. It follows that life in the Holy Land is
closely associated with insecurity, vulnerability, transience and alienation from the
rest of the world.17
We see from the above that Horowitz perceived religious consciousness in psy-
chological terms, as a sense of dependence and transience that alone can lead to total
submission to the divine will. It follows that life in Eretz Israel, which epitomizes
impermanence and dependence on the divine will, represents the peak of religious
consciousness.18 Horowitz’s perception of the Land of Israel, therefore, is not that of
a home or homeland, but rather that of a crucible that purges and purifies. It is
wholly inspired by a “dread of the commandments and of the whip poised to
strike.”19 His immigration to Eretz Israel made him all the more anxious to preserve
this religious tension and highlight the more rigorous aspects of holiness.20 And yet,
Horowitz still calls on the chosen few to come to the Holy Land and take up the
gauntlet: “In this context it is said, ‘And the just do walk in them; But transgressors
do tumble therein’ [in the Land of Israel].”21
Thus we see that, despite the four centuries and different historical contexts that
separated them, both Maharam in 13th century Germany and Horowitz in 17th
century Eretz Israel, were torn between love of the land and dread of its holiness.
This might lead one to assume that their views were typical of Ashkenazi Jewry
throughout the generations. However, the last example I am about to bring, the
biblical commentary of Raphael Berdugo in18th/19th-century Morocco, refutes
this assumption. Despite the radically different cultural context, it, too, contains
most of the leitmotifs present in Maharam’s responsum. Like his predecessors,
Berdugo transforms mundane fear (of the enemy) into a metaphysical fear (of
holiness and its demands).
Praise of Eretz Israel figures prominently in Berdugo’s works. In one of his
sermons, he even castigated Jews who built luxurious houses for themselves in
the Diaspora.22 Despite, or perhaps because, of the above, Berdugo does not mince
his word describing the spiritual demands and dangers of life in the Land of Israel.
The Land, he alleges, is meant only for those who have undergone a thorough
spiritual cleansing and are ready to devote their lives entirely to the worship of God.
Moreover, although the land is well-disposed toward the God-fearing, it is ill-
disposed toward sinners. In support of his thesis, Berdugo cites Jeremiah’s call to the
inhabitants of Jerusalem to abandon the besieged city and surrender to the enemy
(Jeremiah 21:9). According to Berdugo, the prophet’s warning was based not so much
on pragmatic considerations (lest the enemy attack those imprisoned in the besieged
city), but rather on theological grounds (lest God direct his wrath specifically at the
inhabitants of the holy place).
He who sins in the king’s palace, under the king’s eyes, cannot be compared to he who sins outside the king’s
palace . . . This is why, when they angered God during the destruction, the prophet says that those who leave
the city will be saved, while those who remain in the land will endure great hardships. This, for the afore-
mentioned reason, namely, only a true servant of the Lord, who is scrupulous in his actions and engages in
Torah study has the right to dwell in the chosen land. Anyone else would do well to keep distance.23
In other words, those who choose to dwell at the top of the mountain (the holy) may
also find themselves at the epicenter of an erupting volcano. Those incapable of
withstanding the tension inherent in such a situation “would do well to leave” and
make for the plain (the profane). Berdugo, in his original interpretation of Jeremiah’s
words, points not only to Jerusalem as the source of potential danger but to the entire
country. Again, like Maharam’s transformation of a physical threat into a metaphys-
ical one, Berdugo transposes the physical danger referred to by Jeremiah on to a
metaphysical plane. He goes even further, and claims that it is not only the enemy, or
even sin, that invites retribution, but the place itself, as the natural habitat of divine
retribution: “those that remain in the land will endure great hardships.”
Despite the different cultural and geographical contexts, all three aforementioned
sages saw immigration to the Holy Land as a feasible – and positive – option for select
individuals or groups.24 However, their fear of the banalization of Eretz Israel
(Maharam: “those who behave frivolously”), of normalization of life there (Horowitz:
“to live there peacefully as if it were their due”) and, worse, of the profenation of the
land (Berdugo: “he who sins in the king’s palace”) led them to emphasize the more
daunting aspects of life in the Holy Land, and to restrict immigration to the Holy Land
as an option for the chosen few, only. For them, Eretz Israel was first and foremost a
center of transcendence that tolerated only those aspiring to purity and perfection.
3. NEUTRALIZATION AND DREAD
Contemporary research on the status of sacred place in the history of religions has been
enormously influenced by the writings of Mircea Eliade. According to Eliade, the
sacred place organizes the universe for religious person, providing one with an anchor
within a chaotic and amorphous reality. For religious people, a reality that lacks an axis
of sanctity is simply a chaotic flow of amorphous profanity. A world that lacks a path-
way to the transcendent is a world that lacks structure: It has no “up and down,” no
“front and back” Without an axis of meaning it also lacks solidity. The sacralization
of place (and time), on the other hand, restructures the world around a solid, cosmic
center. One takes a territory, separates it from the rest, and transforms it into a con-
crete, existential axis of reality: Chaos becomes cosmos, and the amorphous
becomes distinct. In this way, sanctity builds the entire religious universe.25
According to this interpretation, the sacred place is human’s true habitat, one
cosmic home. Therefore, the religious person wishes to draw as close as possible to
the source of concrete, absolute reality. Humans yearn for an authentic experience of
158 RAVITZKY
closeness to God; they constantly seek out a sacred cosmic axis – a pivot of reality –
a lifeline in the sea of chaotic, amorphous emptiness that threatens to engulf them.
By repeatedly re-establishing this reality (“the eternal return”) one is able to reach
the very center of the universe.
Eliade’s disciple, Jonathan Smith, has convincingly criticized his master’s theory.26
Smith27 claims that Eliade did justice only to a certain type of cultural and religious
phenomenon. True, there are cultures that revolve around a sacred axis, that con-
stantly reaffirm a centralized perception of sanctity, and aspire to dwell in a restricted,
centripetal world. On the other hand, there are other cultures that have a more open,
centrifugal approach to the sacred, that seek to transcend boundaries, and occasion-
ally create new opportunities and new sacralizations.
The centrifugal approach to the sacred, claims Smith, can be found mainly in
religions that have become geographically remote from their natural centers. Unlike
local religions, in which the believer is defined by the sacred place, a religion that is
divorced from its geographical source frequently transcends place, opening up new
horizons for the believer. Instead of encouraging an “eternal return” to the center, it
creates a new u-topia (=non-place). For example, in the Graeco-Roman Empire, as
the exiles’ affiliation to the center weakened, they began creating new pathways to
the divine that lay outside the sanctuary and even outside place. Not only did the
exiles sacralize alternative places, they frequently even “anthropologized” the holy
place (transferred the religious focus from the holy place to the holy man). In this
and other ways, they neutralized the territorial center of the universe, and created
new anchors and pathways.
Jewish history provides numerous examples of such attempts to neutralize the
Holy Land (until the advent of the redeemer). From Philo of Alexandria (first cen-
tury)28 to the new Hassidim, symbolic or spiritual perceptions of Eretz Israel have
periodically resurfaced. As well as enabling the Jews to achieve religious fulfillment
outside the Holy Land, they gave them a religious ethos and aspirations that tran-
scended time and place. These perceptions underwent interesting mutations in the
Middle Ages, when mystics and philosophers sought to portray Eretz Israel as an
extraterritorial concept. “Any place where there is wisdom and fear of sin, is consid-
ered a part of Eretz Israel,” wrote the 13th-century scholar, Menachem Ha-Meiri.29
“[The name] Zion refers to the souls of sages who are distinguished [metzuyanot, a
play on the word “Zion”] in their abode, and amongst whom the divine presence
dwells,” wrote the mystic, Isaac of Acre in the same period.30 Similar viewpoints
have, naturally, emerged in the modern era, and have occasionally been translated
into popular idioms (“The Jerusalem of Lithuania” to describe Vilna, for example).
These viewpoints have also frequently been sharply criticized: “I have heard several
fools claim that each city, and each country were they live, are as holy as the cities of
Israel and Judah” [Moses Hagiz].31 This topic has formed the subject of in-depth
research in recent years, as it its due.
What concerns us here, however, is a far more dialectic phenomenon.32 What hap-
pens when an exile neither neutralizes the sacred center, nor seeks a provisional alter-
native to it, but, on the contrary, is still vividly aware of it, and despite the physical
distance, continues to direct one’s religious consciousness and cultural creativity

towards it: when there is no other sacred place, nor any religious fulfillment outside.
Will such a person be wholly overpowered by the existential and ontological pull of
the place, or might one expect a more complex and subtle reaction? Moreover, what
happens if historical reality changes, and suddenly the absolute center becomes acces-
sible to the individual or masses? Will they strive to turn the “cosmic home” into a
real home, or will they be deterred by its absoluteness? Although Eliade maintains
that existence is contingent on closeness to the absolute, it is surely, at times, contin-
gent also on distance from the absolute.
Zali Gurewitz and Gideon Aran, in two illuminating articles, recently claimed that
Jewish tradition, by its nature, creates a distance between the people and their
place.33 It does not allow Jews to become fully entrenched in their country. Since the
concept of “place” always precedes the place itself, a complete, harmonious
encounter with the “place” and “the land” is never possible. The land is always just
beyond reach, just around the corner, and the Jews are always poised on the thresh-
old. According to Gurewitz and Aran, therefore, the Jewish perception of the sacred
place differs from Eliade’s. It does not attempt to create an ancient, mythical unity
between sanctity and place, but places the sacred beyond place. And although the
land may be perceived as a meaningful object of desire, it is not perceived as a
cosmic axis or source of holiness.
No doubt, many Jewish sources support this argument. However, I am concerned
here in a far more radical phenomenon; namely: what happens when the place is the
very idea? When the real land harbors all the hopes and demands of the ideal land?
According to Maharam, Berdugo and many other sages, it is impossible to live in the
earthly Eretz Israel while maintaining a distance from its heavenly counterpart. The
encounter with the concrete is also an encounter with the absolute, and the touch of
the geographical is necessarily also a touch of the transcendent.34 This approach is
different from that of inaccessibility dealt by Gurewitz and Aran. According to them,
even if we reach the place, we have not yet encountered “its essence,” the “true”
place. On the other hand, the texts I deal with reflect the fear that one may touch the
“essence” itself, and “ascend the mountain.” They do perceive the concrete land as a
center of intense, immanent holiness, one that not only transcends place, but
emanates from it, too.35
Consequently, there is a religious consciousness that is diametrically opposed to
that described by Eliade. Eliade holds that there is no religious existence – only
chaos and profanity – without the act of sacralization. According to him, the start-
ing point, i.e., the need to establish an axis of sanctity, is triggered by a state of
chaos and meaninglessness. The opposite, however, is also true. The religious start-
ing point could also be the premise that everything is holy, and that nothing is
devoid of holiness. The metaphysical experience could begin with a feeling of a
divine immanence that fills all worlds. It follows, therefore, that, by designating a
specific place as a center of holiness, we are really defining the sea of profanity sur-
rounding it. By “confining” the sacred to a single, circumscribed place, we are
declaring all other places neutral.36 Similarly, by designating certain times as holy
160 RAVITZKY
or “awesome,” we imply that all other times may be spent in worldly, routine, and
even profane pursuits. As stated by Abraham Ibn Ezra (12th century):
Since the glory of God fills all space, and man cannot maintain the proper level of spirituality every-
where, a limited place has been designated for prayer, and must be honored as such. Similarly, man is
supposed to thank and praise God at every single moment . . . however, since he is usually involved
in worldly affairs, fixed times have been designated for prayer, namely, evening, morning and
afternoon.37
In other words, since no one is able to meet all the demands of the immanent divine
presence, God’s glory was confined by the human act of sanctification to a specific
point in time and place. This being so, could it be that the spiritual elevation of the
distant land – as well as providing the exiles with a point of reference – also has
delivered them from the immense burden of living in an atmosphere of undiluted
sanctity?38 Has the “eternal repetition” of the act of sacralization always brought
the Jew closer to his land, or has it also perhaps distanced the lover from the object
of his love?
4. A DESIRABLE LAND
We shall begin this section by reviewing the four major factors that have, over the
generations, fueled religious yearning for Eretz Israel. We shall than proceed by
revealing the ambiguity (desire-dread) inherent in them with examples taken from
medieval and modern literature.
4.1 The Pull of the Commandments
The observance of land-related commandments enriches the lives of the inhabi-

tants of the land. Therefore, devout Jews yearned for the land, in order to observe
the Torah more completely. Already in the Second Temple period, the sages issued
regulations that set Eretz Israel apart from other lands. As R. Simlai stated in the
Talmud: “Why was Moses so eager to enter Eretz Israel? Did he perhaps wish to
taste its fruit, or eat of its produce? But thus spoke Moses: The Jews have been
given many commandments that can be observed in Eretz Israel only. Let me enter
the land so that I can keep them all.”39 Indeed, some of the medieval sages consid-
ered observance of the land-related commandments as the main purpose of
dwelling in the land: “One is not allowed to leave the land,40 since he is thereby
“relinquishing the obligation of observing the land-related commandments”
(Rashbam).41
4.2 The Desire for Holiness
Eretz Israel has drawn Jews not only because of the unique way of life it offers, but also
because of its ontological, religious appeal. Religiously sensitive Jews desired the Holy
Land because of the divine presence with which it is imbued. It is a land of prophecy,
providence, atonement, and inspiration, a religious point of reference that has been
sanctified by the deeds of the patriarchs and by the act of Revelation. The Tanaim
already emphasized its supernatural qualities and its unique place within the universe.42
The wish to translate the physical experience of the land of Israel into a metaphysical
dimension was extremely prevalent among the medieval sages.43 Some sages lauded the
land’s superior geographical and climatic properties, or its astrological and astral
superiority.44 Above all, however, they credited the land with an intrinsic holiness that
set it apart from other lands and relegated it to a different order of existence. Naturally,
other sages rejected or refuted this concept of intrinsic holiness, attributing the unique-
ness of the Holy Land to its commandments only. The concept of intrinsic holiness,
however, struck a chord within many – particularly mystical – circles.
4.3 The Desire for Collective Fulfillment
Eretz Israel is the Promised Land not only for the individual Jew but also for the
entire nation, the congregation of Israel. The desire for collective fulfillment has
been associated with it since time immemorial. Just as the historical memory associ-
ated with king, judge, prophet and priest has always been rooted in the Holy Land,
so, too, has the desire for the nations’ religious and political fulfillment. Although
Jews never believed that “the Jewish nation came into being in Eretz Israel,” they
have determined, in their collective memory, that the nation walked proudly in this
land, and will do so again. In other words, messianic expectations fed Jewish desire
for the land over the generations.
4.4 Dreams and Legends
Finally, the Land of Israel is the object not only of formal halakhic, political, philo-
sophical or mystical doctrines, but also of pure yearning, as reflected in legend,
poetry, imagery and folklore.45 “For Thy servants take pleasure in her stones, and
love her dust” (Psalms 102:15). Sometimes this yearning expressed itself as a crav-
ing for the physical land, “for its very houses and dwellings,” and sometimes for the
mythical land, one that “it was impossible to believe that it existed in the real world,”
one that “people were sure it was placed at another plane entirely.”46 The desire for
Eretz Israel, therefore, also found expression in dreams, visions and legends.
5. “LEST I SIN”
If the Land of Israel was so desirable, why did so few Jews actually immigrate?
Surely all the aforementioned factors should have induced people to immigrate, espe-
cially after Nachmanides (13th century) and his followers issued a halakhic ruling
that immigration to Eretz Israel was a positive biblical commandment. Why then was
there so little immigration? Was it because of political-economic factors only, or con-
siderations of comfort and self-interest? Or was there perhaps an internal dialectic at
work here, within the desire itself? Did every failure by an individual or community to
162 RAVITZKY
immigrate necessarily signify an ideological or theological betrayal, or was a more

complex, psychological and existential principle called into play?
The congregation of Israel shouted out their vow – “lest you arouse and awaken the love” – against the
ingathering of Israel. For even if the whole people of Israel is prepared to go to Jerusalem, and even if all
the nations consent, nevertheless, it is absolutely forbidden to go there. Because the End is unknown and
perhaps this is the wrong time. Indeed, tomorrow or the next day they might sin, and will yet again need
to go into exile, heaven forbid, and the latter [exile] will be harsher than the former. Therefore the congre-
gation of Israel beseeched – “until it shall please” – that is to say: until the time comes when the entire
world shall be filled with knowledge [of the Lord].47
These words, uttered by R. Jonathan Eybeschuetz in a sermon in Metz in the middle

of the 18th century, graphically portray the collective Jewish dread of sin and retri-
bution in Eretz Israel. This dread, which reaches a peak in this passage, prevents the
real (as opposed to the ideal) Jew from entering the land. Since evil inclination or
human nature in general will not permit the real Jew to attain absolute purity, it bars
the way to the sacred place, too. In other words, Eretz Israel is relegated to some
utopian era, beyond real history. Until such a time and until man’s nature undergoes
a radical transformation, the way to the land is sealed.
It is worth noting that, for Eybeschuetz, the traditional fear of precipitating the mes-
sianic era is only one specific aspect of his overwhelming dread of sinning in the Holy
Land. Redemptive activism is not disqualified here on theological grounds only (precip-
itating the end), but also because of its inherent danger (sinning in the Holy Land) in an
unredeemed, imperfect world. Eybeschuetz’s diatribe is an example of Jewish dread of
the land taken to an extreme. Three basic factors feed this dread: (1) fear of sin and ret-
ribution; (2) fear of the sacred place; and (3) fear of precipitating the end48 (correspond-
ing to the three, aforementioned, magnetic fields: the commandments, sanctity, and
collective fulfillment). Despite, or perhaps because of, the intensity of this passage, it
can serve as a yardstick for assessing more moderate expressions of dread of the land.
Before reviewing the causes of fear of the land through Jewish history, I wish to
emphasize that the sources brought in this chapter do not represent all, or even most, of
the sources of Jewish literature through the generations. There is no symmetry between
the expressions of dread and the expressions of desire of the land: For every expression
of the first type, there are ten of the second. However, since the expressions of dread
have been suppressed in the research and ideological literature,49 there is all the
more reason for revealing them. Only then will we obtain a clear picture of traditional
Jewish ambiguity toward the Holy Land.
6. FEAR OF DEMANDS
Let us begin with the primary source of religious tension, the commandments
relating to the land. “R. Hananiah b. Akashia says: The Holy One blessed be He
wished to confer merit on Israel, therefore he plied them with Torah and com-
mandments.”50 On the face of it, this aphorism seems simple enough: Command-
ments enhance a person’s merit, refine one’s personality,51 or help one triumph on
the Day of Judgment (according to various interpretations of this aphorism).
However, a more careful reading of this aphorism reveals a polemical undertone,

as if it were designed to counter the (Pauline) claim that the yoke of the com-
mandments was too onerous, and liable to cause man to sin. Although this Pauline
argument was, of course, rejected by Jewish sages, there was still the specific bur-
den of the commandments pertaining to the Land of Israel, not to mention the
strict standards of spiritual piety that the life in the Land demanded. Perhaps, in
this respect at least, there was room for preserving the religious status-quo that
pertained in the diasporas?
For example: it was not by chance that the theme of the demands Eretz Israel
placed on its inhabitants was taken up, in the late 12th century, by the French
Tosafists who showed a special interest in the laws pertaining to Eretz Israel (some
of them were even to emigrate there):
“Rabbi Hayyim [Cohen] claims that there is no obligation to dwell in Eretz Israel nowadays, because there
are several commandments pertaining to Eretz Israel . . . that we are unable to perform as required.”52
Clearly, in the traditional religious context, this statement is paradoxical. What it

says, in effect, is that not only do the land-related commandments not encourage
immigration, they actually deter it. Similarly, not only does Eretz Israel not atone for
our sins, it actually enhances our potential for sinning. Although earlier generations
rose to this challenge (and presumably future ones, would, too), the current genera-
tion, with its weak moral fiber, fell short of the task.53
6.1 Dread of Holiness
This leads us straight on to the second deterrent factor – fear of the land’s spiritual
immanence and divine radiance. These attributes, while conferring special meaning
on any act performed in Eretz Israel, also demanded high levels of piety and purity of
its inhabitants. This being so, “Who shall ascend into the mountain of the Lord? And
who shall stand in His holy place?”
Just as the congregation of Israel balks at collective immigration (see Eybeschuetz
above) so does the individual hesitate to “dwell in the sacred place [for fear that the]
sanctity will not endure him.”54 Like the prophet Jonah who fled from Eretz Israel,55
to “a place where the divine presence was neither present nor revealed,” so did many
Jews prefer to remain in exile, where they were safe from the religious intensity
demanded by the sanctity of the Holy Land. Even the lover of Zion, R. Hayyim of
Volozhin (19th century) supposedly sharply limited the immigration to the holy
place: “Only for a person who is a pure soul, and no body, it befits to dwell in the
holy city. In our contemporary situation, however, the soul of God is contained in our
bodies, and therefore, we must not travel there in these times.”56
6.2 Absolute Place and Time
The third magnetic field alluded to above was the Jewish desire for collective reli-
gious and political fulfillment. This messianic expectation was, naturally, closely
164 RAVITZKY
bound up with the land. However, by “precipitating the end” and violating the
Talmudic pledge to remain nationally and historically passive during the period of
exile, it immediately triggered a negative backlash.
In another article, I discussed this topic in detail, in an effort to show that the bar-
riers this pledge erected between the people and its land were far stronger than most
historians and researchers would have us believe.57 Since the internal logic of this
pledge dictated that a geographical redemption was contingent on a temporal
redemption, it was not possible to enter the absolute place (Eretz Israel) before the
appropriate time (the messianic era). I will illustrate this idea by one radical exam-
ple. At the beginning of the 13th century, the leader of German pietism or
Hasidism, Eliezer of Wurzburg, issued one of the strongest warnings against immi-
gration (to the land) in the history of Jewish literature. As he saw it, any attempt to
break through and ascend to the land prior to the messianic times would involve a
metaphysical disorder. The Land of Israel is likened by him to Mount Sinai as it was
at the very moment of divine revelation – forbidden to approach or touch. Anyone
who dared to break through put his very soul in danger! In Eliezer’s words:
“You shall limit the people round about” (Exodus 19:12): around Jerusalem and around the land of Israel.”
“Beware of going up the mountain”: for he has adjured Israel not to force the End and not go up to the
land prematurely . . .”
“Whoever touches the mountain shall surely die”: whoever hastens to go up to the land shall surely die.”
“No hand shall touch it, for he shall be stoned”: whoever hastens [to go there] shall not live – whoever
goes up before the End – for while the Exile persists they shall not go free.”
“And when the horn sounds long, they shall ascend the mountain”: when shall the people of Israel leave
the Exile to ascend to the land of Israel? When the horn shall be blown [at the time of redemption].”58
According to this extreme position, the way to the Land of Israel was blocked by an
iron wall. The Exile represents the reality of history; the land, the utopia of the
End of Days. Any attempt to remove the barriers separating them would be self-
destructive. The author not only lent compelling, binding power to the oath not to
force the messianic realization; he also heightened the traditional religious reluc-
tance to approach the holy precinct, casting the whole Land of Israel as a religious
object, a transcendent and awesome entity.
Finally, although the present chapter has focused on literary and theoretical
expressions of ambivalence toward Eretz Israel, it is important to bear in mind how
this ambivalence has also found expression in feelings, visions, and images that
have less to do with doctrines and creeds than with passions and hopes. These pas-
sions and hopes also oscillated between the twin poles of desire and dread – desire
for the heavenly Jerusalem and dread of the earthly Jerusalem, desire for the
“home” and “mother’s breast,” and dread of disillusionment and desolation.
7. CONCLUSION
Although in this chapter, my main focus has been on the relation to the land of Israel
at the Middle Ages and the modern era, I have also touched on a major nerve of the
contemporary Jewish and Israeli experience. I have attempted to answer questions
such as: Can the Holy Land also be a homeland? Does religious allegiance necessarily
entail an anti-existential approach that precludes engagement with concrete history?
In actual fact, the three factors discussed in this article can be viewed as a metaphor
for the way in which an entire society contends with the three dimensions of its past:
The normative dimension (the commandments), the metaphysical dimension (sanc-
tity) and the eschatological dimension (redemption). Although many would argue
that only recently this struggle has filtered through to the collective consciousness,
I have attempted to illustrate, on the contrary, that it has been an integral feature
of the collective consciousness from ancient times. In any event, it is certainly no
“neurosis,”59 but rather, a deep-seated tension that has either a paralyzing or catalyz-
ing effect, as the case may be.
NOTES
* For a broader (Hebrew) discussion of the questions discussed in the present paper, based on many
Medieval and modern Jewish texts, see Halamish and Ravitzky (1991), Ravitzky (1998) and Ravitzky
(1999), pp. 11–48, 279–294.
1
“He who relinquishes [his life] in his mother’s bosom [Eretz Israel] cannot be compared to he who
relinquishes [his life] in a stranger’s bosom” (Jerusalem Talmud, Kil’ayim, 9c). Cf. Mo’ed Katan, 3a.
2
Philo of Alexandria drew a distinction between holy city and homeland. Jerusalem, for example, is a
metropolis and a holy city for the Jews, but the homeland is the place where one was born in exile. See:
Kasher (1979).
3
See: cf. Douglas (1966); Eliade (1972), p. 384; Otto (1969), pp. 12–40; Shulman (1980), pp. 42–43.
4
Following the Babylonian exile, the national center of gravity shifted from country to city and shrine.
See: Weinfeld (1984), pp. 126–127; Wilkin (1992), pp. 18–19. The Bible refers to “the holy mount” and
to “Jerusalem, the holy city,” but does not refer explicitly to the Holy Land. However, early allusions to
the Holy Land can be found in verses such as: Exodus 15:13; Isaiah 57:13; Psalms 78:54. In any event,
explicit references to Eretz Israel as the holy land can be found only in the literature of the sages and in
Hellenistic Jewish literature. On various aspects of the sacred place in the Bible, see: Japhet (1998).
5
Ha-Levi (1946), p. 12.
6
Ta-Shema (1995), pp. 315–318. See below, no. 58.
7
This process began already in the Babylonian exile. See: Levenson (1976); Smith (1987), pp. 8–10.
8
Gafni points out that most statements of the sages praising the land, its centrality and merits, were
made after the failure of the Bar-Kokhba Revolt and the decline of Jewish settlement in the land. See:
Cf. also Gafni (1977); Gafni (1984), pp. 227–232.
9
For an interesting discussion of this topic by the Safed kabbalists, see: Pachter (1991), pp. 313–316;
Zohar (1998), pp. 331–334.
10
See, for example, Yehuda Amichai, Chaim Goury, Zelda, Dahlia Ravikovitch, Avigdor Hameiri, Eyal
Meged, and others. There are frequent allusions to the theme of dread in S. Y. Agnon’s stories.
11
Yehoshua (1980), pp. 33–59.
12
Although Yehoshua considers the physical fear of Eretz Israel – fear of enemies and economic hard-
ship – a conscious fear (ibid, 41–44), he does not perceive “metaphysical fear” of Eretz Israel in the
same way.
13
Sifra, Aharei Mot, 13; Nahmanides, Commentary on the Bible, Leviticus 18:25; Numbers 35:33.
14
See the commentaries of Radak and Malbim in loco.
15
Meir of Rothenburg, Responsa [Ed. E.M. Bloch]. Berlin, p. 5. Cf.: Sefer Ha-Tashbetz, Lwow, 1858,
51b. In this and subsequent quotations, I have added my own punctuation and written out the abbrevi-
ations in full.
16
Isaiah Horowitz (Shelah), Sheney Luhot Ha-Berit, Warsaw, 1863 (photocopied edition: Jerusalem, 1963).
17
These traits are usually associated with exile! See: Ber (1980); Eisen (1986); Scholem (1976), p. 190.
18
Sheney luhot ha-berit, 3, 11a.
166 RAVITZKY
19
As R. Eleazer Azkari put it, in his Sefer Haredim, Venice, 1601, 60b, quoted in Sheney Luhot Ha-Berit,
1, 76a. See also infra, note 48.
20
See my comments on Nahmanides’ Rosh Ha-Shana Sermon, in Ravitzky (1991), p. 45.
21
Sheney Luhot Ha-Berit, 75b. According to Hosea 14:10.
22
Raphael Berdugo, Rav Peninim, printed with a Passover Haggadah, Tel Aviv, 1975, pp. 74–75.
23
Berdugo, Mey Menuhot, 1, 20b. Cf.: Ibid, 5, 128a.
24
Maharam tried to immigrate, and Horowitz actually immigrated, to Eretz Israel.
25
It follows that the act of sacralizing a place is also an act of creation. According to Eliade, any house
built by religious man obeys this principle, namely duplicates the paradigmatic mold of creation
(Eliade 1952, 1954, pp. 33–72; 1959a, 1959b, pp. 20–67, 1972, pp. 367–387).
26
For a comprehensive critique of Eliade’s doctrine, see, for example, Carrasco and Law (1991). In
recent years many critiques of Eliade have been published. For details, see Dan (1997), 166–168.
27
Smith (1978), pp. xv, 93–103; Smith (1987). Cf. Dummont (1970); Neusner (1979), p. 124.
28
See: Halpern-Amaru (1986).
29
Menachem Ha-Meiri, Beit Ha-Behirah, Ketubot, 111a (A. Sofer edition, [Jerusalem, 1947], p. 505).
For a more radical philosophical outlook, see: Rashbash, Responsa, Constantinople 1546, §3.
30
Isaac of Acre, Ozar Hayim, MS Moscow-Ginzburg 775, 198a (Cf: 94a). Idel (1981), p. 126, note 40.
31
Moses Hagiz, Sefat Emet, 14a.
32
Unlike neutralization, which in most cases is an ideological response, the dread discussed here is
basically an existential and ontological response.
33
Gurewitz and Aran (1992); Gurewitz and Aran (1994).
34
Schwartz (1997), pp. 17–21, 71–80.
35
The perception of the inherent sanctity of the land appears frequently in Jewish sources, especially in
mystical and Hassidic literature. However, it was rejected by various schools, especially by the Mai-
monidean school. See: Fax (1986); Levenson (1985).
36
Habad Hassidism was particularly opposed to this idea. Thus, for example, R. Menahem Mendel
Schneersohn ordered that Torah classes be held on weekdays, too, not only on Sabbath and festivals.
He also made a point of playing down the holiness of the synagogue vis-à-vis other buildings and
places, on the grounds that everything is holy. See: Ravitzky (1996), pp. 184–185.
37
Abraham Ibn Ezra, Commentary on Ecclesiastes, 5a (published in various editions of Miqraot Gedolot
on the Torah). One would expect to find this kind of religious perception mainly in pantheistic, imma-
nentist or neoplatonic philosophies (of which latter Ibn Ezra was an adherent).
38
Ravitzky (1991), pp. 16–27.
39
Babylonian Talmud, Sotah, 14a. For an extreme reading of this statement, see: S. Ravidovitz (1969), I,
p. 113.
40
Babylonian Talmud, Baba Batra, 91a.
41
Rashbam, Commentary on Baba Batra, ibid. Published in the regular editions of the Talmud; cf. Bleich
(1977), p. 7.
42
For example: Babylonian Talmud, Ta’anit, 10a.
43
R. Judah Ha-Levi, Tzyyon ha-lo tishaly. In Shirman (1955), I, 486.
44
See Melamed (1991); Melamed (1998); Schwartz (1991); Schwartz (1998) and Shavit (1998).
45
Ben Sasson (1977), pp. 167–169.
46
Nahman of Bratzlaw, Liqutey Moharan Tinyana, (no publisher) Jerusalem 1985, §115. This is a typical
expression of an attitude that surfaced repeatedly throughout the generations.
47
Eybeschuetz, Ahavat Yehonathan, Warsaw 1875, Weekly Portion Va-Ethanan, 74a.
48
In other words, he combines the normative, ontological and eschatological dimensions.
49
They were not suppressed, needless to say, in the anti-Zionist ultra-orthodox literature.
50
Mishnah, Makot, 3, 16; Avot, Kinyan Torah, end; Avot de-Rabbi Natan, end.
51
Urbach (1971), p. 321.
52
Tosafot, Ketubot, 110b.
53
Some tried to restrict the validity of this dictum to R. Hayyim’s generation only “due to the special cir-
cumstances that pertained at that time” (Raphael Trebitsch [1740], ah Ve-Adom, Constantinople, p. 7).
54
Bornstein (1912), §454. The author related seriously to this concern, but ruled against it.
55
Mekhilta, Bo, 12.
56
Assaf (1947), p. 67.
57
Ravitzky (1996), pp. 211–234.
58
Supra, note 6.
59
Supra, note 11.
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Jewish thought (pp. 326–355). Jerusalem: Yad Ben-Zvi.
CHAPTER 15
THE PERSON OF JESUS
ABRAHAM VAN DE BEEK
Department of Theology, Free University, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
1. INTRODUCTION
When we speak about the person of Jesus in the context of psychology, it must be
clear from the very beginning that we actually do not know very much about Jesus’
personality. Those of his contemporaries who wrote about him were not greatly
interested in his psychology.1 It is very difficult to reconstruct his character from
their writings. Therefore I will not attempt to make such a reconstruction, but rather
sketch the images of his personality that arise from the texts that most explicitly and
extensively describe his life, namely, the four gospels. It is clear they are written with
a theological interest, instead of a psychological one. But if we take this into account
they do give us an interesting view of how people thought about what kind of man
Jesus was – and why they thought so.
The gospels of the New Testament are definitely closer to his life and person in
time than any other statements about these questions. So if we can find anything
authentic about the psychological structure of Jesus anywhere, then it will be in these
scriptures. We might at least expect to find reports about the impression he made on
people during his life. These impressions could reveal a glimpse of his real being.
However, as will turn out to be the case, even if we analyze all the data of the gospels
that can help us, we will find very little. Moreover, the pictures of Jesus in the four
gospels differ considerably among one another. Consequently, the conclusions we
are finally left with are unimpressive and almost trivial for a person who had an
impact as great as Jesus did.
Nevertheless, it is interesting to read the gospels from the perspective of
Jesus’ psychology. Usually we read them from a theological paradigm or with
historical literary interest. By changing our perspective we find new views on the
Jesus of the gospels and these views, in their turn, offer a contribution to theology
as well.
169
© 2007 Springer.
170 VAN DE BEEK
I have tried to describe the impression of the person of Jesus that each of the gospels
evokes in me, in the sequence in which the gospels appear in the New Testament,
leaving aside issues related to chronology and interdependence, which are more or less
generally accepted in New Testament scholarship. I read the gospels, starting from the
beginning of each book, trying to imagine what kind of person is described as I read
the text, just as when I try to gain an impression of the main character of a novel. So, I
will not begin with detailed analyses of small passages or enter into dialogue with
other scholars about the interpretation of these passages. I will give a synthetic
overview of each of the gospels, by focusing on the portrait of Jesus they evoke in me.
I try to put between brackets what I learned about theology and literary criticism. I will
concentrate on the texts as documents that tell a story about a human person and by
doing so evoke images of his personality. In the end, of course, I will have to check
these images with details in the text, to see whether they concur or contradict the
portraits that I am developing.
2. MATTHEW
Starting with the Book of Matthew, Jesus’ radicalism was the most striking aspect of
his public appearance from the very beginning. Right after calling the first disciples
from their work and family obligations and responsibilities (4:18–22), Matthew
launches into the teaching of Jesus, with the long Sermon on the Mount (chapters 5–7).
The requirements of this longest uninterrupted address by Jesus in any of the gospels2
are too radical to be followed by human beings. Even the commandments of Moses
pale in the light of the absolute demands of Jesus. This image continues through the
Book of Matthew: Jesus is an extremely radical person who does not leave room for
any ‘Yes, but . . .’.
Moreover, his radicalism is directed at how people have to relate to himself. It is
not commandments as such that should be followed, but he himself as the One who
asks everything. From the very first moment Jesus appears in the life of his disciples,
their only choice was to follow him (4:19). It is like Jesus later says: ’He who
loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and he who loves son or
daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and he who does not take his cross and
follow me is not worthy of me.’ (10:37f). The Jesus of Matthew is a radical himself,
who calls on his followers to be so too.
This radicalism extends so far that Jesus pronounces laws himself (5:21–48). He
does not hold to the old tradition, even not to the commandments of Moses. He vio-
lates the Sabbath in the eyes of the strict Jews, not only by healing people on that day
(12:9–14), but also by accepting his disciples plucking ears of grain (12:1–8). He
and his followers do not wash their hands before the meal, thus breaking the law of
purity (15:2; cf. 15:11–20). Obviously Jesus is not living the kind of uncompromis-
ing life that ultra-orthodox people share. He has his own way of telling what is
important, and laws regarding food and drink do not belong to that sphere. Therefore
they call him a glutton and a drunkard (11:19). That does not, however, weaken his
uncompromising rules. Moses has accepted divorce if it is done in a well-ordered
THE PERSON OF JESUS 171
way, but Jesus forbids any divorce (19:1–9), just as he requires that our yes is a yes
without restriction (5:37).
This attitude brings him into serious conflict with the teachers of the law and
Pharisees. Sometimes you have the impression that he enjoys the conflicts with
them. He insults them publicly, calling them white-plastered tombs (23:27). In
discussions he is a master of debate; he frequently puts them to shame, sometimes
literally. Imagine that poor law student standing there with the coin of the
emperor in his hand (22:20), a coin that he should not even touch! A person who
consigns his opponents – who belong to the leading groups of society – to such a
position cannot but expect that they will retaliate one day. Jesus is a terror for his
opponents, and by exposing them to shame he makes bitter enemies.
You should not have Jesus as your enemy. As a friend, however, he also can be very
blunt. When the disciples point to the marvelous buildings of the temple he responds,
‘There will not be left one stone upon another.’ (24:2.) And he is just as gruff with his
own family when they want to see him (12:46–50). Far worse is his reaction to John
the Baptist when John is in prison (11:1–6). Are you the One we hope for? Jesus
quotes fine verses from the prophet Isaiah, pointing to what is happening in his liber-
ating work. But the liberation John waits for is left out when Jesus quotes the prophet:
‘To proclaim liberty to the captives.’ (61:1). It is no wonder that the section ends with
the words: ‘Blessed is the man who does not fall away on account of me.’ (11:6)
All this does not mean that the Jesus of Matthew is a heartless man. On the con-
trary, repeatedly the gospel tells us that Jesus is moved by compassion for the crowds
that follow him (9:36; 14:14; cf. 20:34). His conflicts with the Pharisees have to do
with his love for people who suffer because the yoke the teachers of the law put
on their shoulders (11:28). In his radicalism he sees through the hypocrisy of the
Pharisees (23:23). Therefore he rebukes Simon the Pharisee on behalf of the woman
who calls for his mercy (26:6–13). The contrast is also sharply expressed at the
moment his disciples want to send away the children (19:13–14). What Jesus said
about children in the previous chapter is still fresh in mind: ‘Whoever receives one
such child in my name receives me; but whoever causes one of these little ones who
believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened
round his neck and to be drowned in the depths of see.’ (18:3–6) A sharper protest
against any abuse of children cannot be found. He is radical – also in his help for
those who need help.
This radicalism includes our desertion of him (26:31). Ultimately he will be left
alone. Nobody is able to go to the very end with him. That does not mean that this
does not touch Jesus. No other evangelist writes more about Jesus’ feelings than
Matthew. Jesus might be blunt towards John the Baptist, but after John’s death he
leaves for a lonely place, to be alone (14:13). When his own death is near he tells his
disciples that he is worried, and Matthew paints his agony in deep colors (26:36–46).
But both times he rises to the calling of people and his Father. When he wants to be
alone his compassion for the crowd is stronger than his longing (14:14) and when he
fears the fate he will suffer his obedience to the Father is stronger than his anxiety
(26:42, 46).
172 VAN DE BEEK
Jesus is a human being, with pain and worry, but with all his radicalism he refuses
to give in. He refuses to defend himself to the judges (26:62–63; 27:14). He is above
their judgment, and after their sentence he only expresses that they will be judged by
him (26:64) – at least the Jews. Pilate is not worthy of any comment from him,
except for the disparaging ‘You have said so.’ (27:11)
The Jesus of Matthew is a radical person who provokes many conflicts, but with a
vulnerable heart and without ever giving in. His death is just as radical as his life.
People often want to know what the last words of their beloved ones were. According
to Matthew, the last words of Jesus were ‘My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken
me?’ (27:46).
3. MARK
At first glance the Jesus of Mark is similar to Matthew’s Jesus. But the radicalism is
far less clear. That has mainly to do with the absence of the Sermon on the Mount
and other teachings of Jesus. Almost all other elements of Matthew are in Mark, but
without the first gospel you would not feel them so very much.
It is remarkable how some differences make Jesus another kind of man. When
John the Baptist is killed, Jesus and his disciples go to a lonely place, just as
Matthew tells us. However, in Mark it is on behalf of the disciples, so that they can
rest after they preached the gospel (6:30–32), and not because of Jesus’ own feel-
ings, as Matthew suggests. And again, after the busy day that follows, Jesus lets the
disciples go away, while he himself remains behind to send away the crowd (6:45).
The Jesus of Mark seems to be less self-centered, less demanding of the ultimate
from people on his behalf.
He also pays explicit attention to women in need. Unlike Matthew, Mark tells us
that Jesus speaks immediately with the Phoenician woman, and not just after the dis-
ciples challenged him to do so (7:27). Matthew does not tell us about the old woman
who gives all she has in the temple, but Mark does (14:41–44) – and none of the
evangelists pays more attention to the woman who had a flow of blood for twelve
years than hasty Mark (5:25–34; cf. Matt 9:20–22; Luke 8:43–48). Women with
troubles don’t rise above the horizon for Matthew’s radical Jesus. Thus Mark’s Jesus
has a compassion that Matthew’s Jesus lacks. There is a difference between the two.
Certainly, it is not a fundamental difference. But the Jesus of the first gospel radi-
cally demands that we follow him, while the second gospel reveals human feelings
in the person of Jesus that Matthew overlooks.
4. LUKE
The Jesus who arises from the Gospel of Luke is quite another person. He has the
traits of a wise man: a very intelligent, authentic person who is above human feelings
and interests. He can be likened with a Stoic philosopher.
Luke paints Jesus in his youth as a very intelligent boy who is interested in
religious affairs at the expense of all others (2:39–50). When Jesus starts his work, he
is not an exorcist as in Mark (Mark 1:21–28), but a teacher who soon becomes well
known and is praised by all (4:14–15). He refuses to be claimed by the people of
Nazareth as their idol, and when they become angry at this rejection, a characteristic
scene follows: they want to push him from the cliff, ‘But passing through the midst of
them he went away’ (4:30). He exudes an authority that makes him untouchable.
People cannot change the way he wants to go, either in a negative or in a positive
sense. When the crowd tries to keep him from leaving them because they are longing
for his words, he refuses to stay, for he knows his calling is wider than his own region
(4:42–44). The same thing occurs a chapter later when many people come to hear him
and to be healed by him. He goes to lonely places for prayer (5:16). In chapter 4
he still has an argument: ‘I must preach the good news of the kingdom of God to the
other cities also.’ In chapter 5 he does not give an answer at all. He has an authority
which has no need for apology.
From this perspective the scenes about the Sabbath and the conflicts with the
Pharisees appear in a different light compared to Matthew: it is not radicalism, but
wisdom that is above the rules of law and the small-mindedness of pious people.3
Though they are watching him to see what he will do on the Sabbath, he heals a
man with dropsy (14:1). He will not wait until the next day because of the suspi-
cious attitude of people, any more than he lets himself be pressured by people’s
requests for help.
The status of Jesus is also expressed by the circles in which he lives. Wealthy
women sponsor his work (8:2–3). A special delegation of the leaders of the
synagogue in Capernaum comes to him on behalf of the Roman centurion (7:3).
There is no direct confrontation of different powers in the world as in Matthew
(8:5–13), but a story – as we can imagine – that takes place in civilized circles. It fits
into this picture that Herod not only fears that Jesus is John redivivus (cf. Matt. 14:1;
Mark 6:14), but wants to see him personally (9:7–9). And when the king tries to kill
him Jesus is not intimidated, but sends back a challenging answer (13:31–33). The
scene of Martha and Mary also expresses Jesus’ interest: he prefers the student
disciple to the woman in her practical work (10:38–42).
It is characteristic of Luke’s Jesus that he rejects any group interest. He is above all
parties. When someone asks him to help him receive his fair share in an inheritance,
he refuses to be a judge (12:13–14). Riches in God are more than possessions. The
word of God also surpasses earthly family bonds. When a woman praises the mother
who brought forth such a child, Jesus immediately responds that hearing the word of
God is the highest benediction one can receive (11:27–28). In the perspective of eter-
nity, all human differences appear in a different light. The Galileans who were killed
in an accident were not greater sinners than other people (13:1–5).
Jesus’ resistance to group interests becomes clearest in his reaction to the Samari-
tans. On several occasions, of which the parable of the Good Samaritan (10:30–37)
is the best known, Luke tells that Jesus breaks through the high walls between the
two peoples who inhabited Palestine at that time.4 The same breaking of walls is
obvious in his contact with tax collectors. Some stories also appear in the other
gospels, but within the context of Luke they acquire a different quality, especially in
174 VAN DE BEEK
the case of the story of the praying Pharisee and tax collector (18:9–14). In this light,
we should read the famous parables of chapter 15 about the lost sheep, coin and son
not so much as expressing Jesus’ love for the lost, but rather as acceptance of
socially rejected groups in society. The chapter begins by the sentence: ‘Now the
tax collectors and sinners were all drawing near to hear him. And the Pharisees
and the scribes murmured, saying, “This man receives sinners and eats with them.” ’
(15:1–2).
It fits fully in this picture that Luke’s Jesus does not show much in the way of
emotions. Unlike Matthew and Mark, Luke does not have Jesus speak to his
disciples about his anxiety in Gethsemane (Luke 22:39–46). Nor is his worry present
from the beginning of the account. Only after the prayer in the garden of Gethse-
mane does Luke tell us about it. Jesus’ strength is not based on the support of others,
not even his most intimate friends. Neither does the secret of his strength find its
source in his personality as such. It is in his prayer – in Gethsemane, but also earlier.
Luke tells us that before he calls his disciples Jesus prayed to his Father (6:12–16).
On the whole, no gospel gives more attention to prayer than Luke.5
Jesus does not call for his disciples’ support; it is the other way around. Even
when he is in the court he does not forget Peter, who just denied knowing him
(22:61).6 It must have been terrible for this man to see the consequences of his com-
ing: not peace but fire on earth. It is only when he speaks about this that his usual
tranquility seems to be disturbed (12:50). Even on the cross his attention is directed
to his fellow men. It makes a real difference if Jesus says ‘My God, my God why
hast thou forsaken me’, as Matthew (23:46) and Mark (15:34) report, or according to
Luke, ‘Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they do’ (23:34), ‘Truly, I say
to you, today you will be with me in Paradise’ (23:43) and ‘Father, into thy hands I
commit my spirit.’ (23:46)
5. JOHN
Already in his first meeting with his first disciples it becomes apparent what kind of
person Jesus is in John. He asks them, ‘What do you seek?’ Their answer is evasive:
‘Where are you staying?’ (1:39). One never gets complete clarity in the case of
Jesus. There is always some mystery around him, as in His answer to Nathanael:
‘Before Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree, I saw you.’ (1:49) How
did he know? It is this man who responds to his mother in an astonishingly blunt way
and subsequently does what she wants (2:1–10). It is this man who chases away the
merchants in the temple because it is his Father’s house (2:13–17), and subsequently
speaks about breaking it down (2:19), in such a way that nobody but his disciples
understand what he actually means – and this only after his resurrection (2:20–22).
He is a mysterious man whom you never really understand, but who gives the
impression that he understands you very well. He knew what was in people’s hearts
(2:24) and therefore he did not trust himself to them. Jesus is never fully open to the
people, precisely because he knows them so very well – and thus they intuitively feel
uneasy with him because he confronts them with their own uncertainties. If you want
to know more about this man you can not openly ask him – neither the disciples of
John (1:39) nor the Pharisee Nicodemus, who came to him in the night (3:1). At the
latter occasion a discussion follows full of misunderstandings, ending in a mono-
logue by Jesus, after which Nicodemus fades out of the story.
Frequently the evangelist tells us that people ask for an explanation, or that they
do not understand what he tells them. They do not understand what he says, or who
he is, while he knows them very well. It is by him that their words acquire a mean-
ing they themselves never intended, as in Caiaphas’ argument that ‘it is expedient
that one should die for the people, and that the whole nation should not perish.’
(11:49–52)
It is thus not surprising that finally people ask for a clear sign about his identity
(6:30). But according to John the first sign was already given (2:12). And after this
question Jesus does not answer with a sign, but with a speech with so many layers and
cryptic associations that it gives occasion to a great variety of interpretations right
down to the present day. The following reaction is only to be expected: ‘This is a hard
saying; who can listen to it?’ (6:60) ‘After this many of his disciples drew back and no
longer went about with him.’ (6:66)
People are always wondering what he means, where he will go and what he will
do. Will he come to the feast or not? (11:56). He tells his family that he will not go
(7:8), but nevertheless comes to Jerusalem – though not publicly but in secret (7:10).
Somewhat later he teaches openly in the temple (7:14). Later the people ask: ‘Will he
maybe go to the Jews in the Diaspora?’ (7:25) Or even: will he commit suicide?
(8:22) When for once Jesus does show His feelings and weeps at Lazarus’ grave
(11:35), we do not know why he wept. Is it grief? Or anger? And anger about what?
The Jesus of John is an inscrutable man – intriguing and irritating as well. Only the
few who were saved by him have an unambiguous relation with him. But it is the sort
of relation that cannot be expressed in words. It cannot be described in terms of a
definition of his identity. His relation to them exists only because it was he who
saved them. The story of the man born blind (chapter 9) is typical. After being
healed, it takes a long time and many words before he confesses Jesus as the Son of
God – and then only after Jesus has recited the words that he has to agree with
(9:35–38). The only thing that is actually important for him is that he was blind and
now sees (9:25) – and the man who did this is his Savior. And, according to John,
even that is not compatible with Jesus’ real intentions. The healing was not about
salvation or sin, but aimed at the honoring of the works of God (9:3).
At the beginning of chapter 13 the evangelist suggests he is about to unveil Jesus’
mystery. Because Jesus knew that his time had come, he performs a clear act: the
foot washing. This deed is explicated as showing ‘he loved them to the end.’ Jesus’
identity is revealed as love. Nowhere in the Bible (except for the first letter of John)
does the word ‘love’ occur more frequently than in the following chapters. Now that
his time has come a new day dawns, with a new law: love one another. But Jesus is
again misunderstood. None of the participants at the Last Supper understands what
Jesus says about ultimate love and betrayal (13:28). They think about a trivial expla-
nation of what happens. Nobody understands that he who knows what is in Judas
176 VAN DE BEEK
(13:11) sends his disciple to fulfill his sinister task – let alone that they understand
that it serves the fulfillment of the Scriptures.
The love of Jesus is a strange love. The chapters about his last night are difficult to
understand. They tell about love and they resonate on the level of feelings and
emotions. Finally, however, they are not about emotions at all, but about obedience.
‘Whoever does my commandments loves me.’ (14:15, 21; 15:10) ‘And you are my
friends when you do what I commanded to you.’ (15:14) It is especially on the basis
of these chapters in the gospel of John, that the word agape has been defined as deep
authentic love, in opposition to eros as sensual love.7 Eros tries to gain something,8
agape is qualified by surrender to the other. But actually agape means sober
trustworthiness. It is a word from economics:9 Are you a trustworthy partner in busi-
ness transactions? We can trace this meaning of agape in the discussion of Jesus and
Peter after his resurrection. Jesus asks Peter (21:15–17): were you more trustworthy
for me than the others, since you promised to die with me? And again: Are you
trustworthy? Then finally: Are you my friend10 – as I declared you to be my friends
because you know everything I heard from my Father? (15:15) They should know
everything, like friends you can trust in all your affairs. But Peter failed – and so did
all the others. They did not succeed in being friends of this unfathomable man.
Though he has told them all, his question, ‘Do you now believe?’ (16:31), at the end
of his last speech to them, sounds almost cynical, because he immediately proceeds
by saying that they will leave him alone. The only one he can trust is his Father. They
do not know the way (14:5) and they do not understand that he is love and asks for
love: to live in trust to the very end.
This love is the core of the incomprehensibility of John’s Jesus, as obviously
appears in the Gethsemane scene (18:1–11). In John this scene is not about Jesus’
agony. Not a word about that. The focus is directed at Judas. Certainly, Judas is not
trustworthy. But is that really true? The passion story of John only once says that
Jesus was emotional. This is when he speaks about Judas’ betrayal. Judas is one of
his disciples – one of those who are his friends. Can you give up your friendship if
your friend betrays you? Were not the feet of Judas too washed by Jesus?11 If love
is not about emotions but about unconditional trust in affairs, can you then exclude
any person from the love for those who are entrusted to you by the Father? None of
them is lost but the son of perdition. It is in this way the Scriptures will be fulfilled
(17:12). Because of the commandment of the Scripture, Jesus has to accept Judas’
role. But it runs against who he is as the unconditional Word of God. Or is Judas
trustworthy even in his betrayal – exactly because he fulfils the Scriptures, by
being obedient to the Word of God at the cost of himself? Is he ultimately not at
the same side as Jesus? This is the conflict Jesus mirrors in the passion story of
John. This story culminates in John 18:8–9. It is remarkable that in John Judas
does not betray Jesus with a kiss. It is only mentioned that he was there. He is
there, because he has to be there according to Scripture. But he does not play the
role of a dirty scoundrel who kisses his master while he betrays him. Then Jesus
says: ‘If you seek Me, let these men go.’ This was to fulfill the word which he had
spoken, ‘Of those whom thou gavest me I lost not one.’ Precisely in the context
where Judas should be the focus, the subsequent phrase ‘but the son of perdition’
is left out.12
The text provokes thought. It offers no solution – as John never gives solutions.
The Jesus of John confuses our thought. He disturbs our systems. Again and again
it is clear that people, even those who are closest to him, cannot understand him.
There is only one thing clearly in view: love. Doing what you promised to do, doing
the things you are called for. Jesus did so. Before he dies he restores the honor of his
mother (19:25–27). Then everything is fulfilled (19:28). Then he speaks about
his thirst – a sign for his thirst for the Word of God that he fulfilled – and concludes,
‘It is finished’. (19:30)
The Jesus of John is a person you never can grasp. He is intriguing and continues
to be so to the very end. Nevertheless, the evangelist reveals the secret of this man:
the fulfillment of his life is love. However, this love is just as mysterious as the
person himself. It is the love that explains nothing, but performs what has to be done
in responsibility to one’s calling. Most people have obscure acts and try to cover
these with clear words of explanation; this person has obscure words that can be
understood from his deeds alone. For, He is who He is. The Jesus of John speaks a
lot. However, his words are meaningless unless you understand the secret of his life:
to be the Word of God in person.
6. DISCUSSION
We can try to find common features from the four gospels.13 It is clear that all four
pictures give the image of a strong person. Jesus was not a person you could easily
ignore. This however is almost the only general trait in the gospels. As was
already noted, to say this is almost trivial for a person who had such an impact on
history. We can also change our method, and instead of trying to extract what is
common in all four pictures, we can try to make a composite which includes all, just
as we could listen to four students telling about a professor, each with their own
story, and get an impression of him by making a composite of the four stories. That
is the way biographers use to work. The problem, however, is that the four pictures
sketch quite different personalities. Precisely because the stories are about such a
strong person, the characteristics are pronounced – and they are hardly compatible.
The wise man of Luke has a very different nature from the radical of Matthew, who
has little in common with the mysterious man of John. So our conclusion has to be
that the gospels do not help us to reconstruct the personality of Jesus.
Does this make our results valueless? Not at all! We must use them, however, in an
appropriate way.
First of all, the different portraits prevent us from describing the real character of
the man of Nazareth. Thus we avoid those people who would be like him claiming to
be more similar to the Lord than other people are. There is no natural psychological
bond with Jesus, and the contrasting characters of the gospels prevent us from
constructing one. Neither should we try to behave like Jesus: being wise, or radical,
or mysterious. We all have to behave in our own way, in accordance with our own
178 VAN DE BEEK
character and calling. Such behavior should have a visible result: to be trustworthy.
In relation to Jesus this does not mean we have to strive for similar feelings or
express ourselves in similar ways. On the contrary, it means to trust the love of God,
who was trustworthy for his people until the very end. Ultimately, then, this is not
about the psychology of Jesus in the four gospels together, but about their theology
concerning Jesus: the One, incomprehensible God, appearing in the man who
explodes all our schemes.
The evangelists were obviously not interested in the psychology of Jesus per se,
just as they were not interested in his physical appearance and do not write anything
about it. They wrote from a theological perspective, as they were interested to tell a
message about God who acted in Christ. That colors the character of the Jesus they
wrote about. Therefore their accounts are not trustworthy, according to the require-
ments of psychology. They use psychological features only to make a theological
point. This is the reason why there is so little empirical material to base our conclu-
sions on. Only more or less fragmentary impressions of Jesus’ personality arise from
the gospels. Because they are used for theology, they do not tell us about the real
Jesus (except at a very low and general level), but rather about the way the evange-
lists thought the theological message about Jesus could be served by psychological
traits. This does not mean they do not inform us about Jesus at all. However, what
they tell us is not about his psychology but about his religious meaning according to
the gospels. In that perspective the four psychological portraits give us a fine insight
into how people in the early church used psychology to express their faith – and into
what, according to them, was the characteristic Christian personality. This depends
very much on the context you live in and the interests you have.
This conclusion clarifies why certain people prefer one gospel to another. Chris-
tians in modern bourgeois society are impressed by Luke, probably unconsciously,
because of the personality that Luke evokes. We like neither radicalism nor mysteri-
ous persons. Modern civil society prefers wise people who instill balance in rela-
tions. For the gospel of Luke we can draw the same conclusion as Overbeck (1965)
did for the letter to Diognetus more than a hundred years ago: ‘Why are people so
impressed by this text? Because they discover themselves in it.’ Therefore revolu-
tionaries prefer Matthew’s Jesus, and theologians Mark’s, since the latter does not
obstruct theology with too much psychology. One can read Mark without allowing it
exert a too strong appeal to one’s personal involvement. For the same reason John is
interesting for people who like mystery – reading texts that sound profound, without
understanding their meaning. I am a theologian – I would prefer the Jesus of Mark as
my neighbor. Matthew’s Jesus is too inconvenient for me. Luke’s is too wise for me;
I would feel myself so immature next to him, though I would prefer him to the radi-
cal man of Matthew. John’s Jesus would always leave me feeling uneasy. What does
he mean? What does he know about me that I would rather not have him know? And
therefore maybe he is even more threatening then the intractable Jesus of Matthew.
However, if we can not cope with the images of Jesus that we extract from the writ-
ings of early Christianity, and thus not with their ideas of true Christianity, how could
we cope with a situation in which the master himself would be our neighbor – or even
worse, would move into our house and live with us? It might be as Van Ruler (1969)
says: all indwellings are accompanied by considerable struggle. Van Ruler was speak-
ing about the Holy Spirit. Jesus would not be better. In order to exercise the practice
of Christian living a little bit more, we should not allow our selves to be guided by the
easiest image (for theologians Mark, and for respectable laymen Luke) but by
Matthew – unless one is a radical. In that case I would advise you to pay attention to
John, to the mysterious man who knows you better than you know yourself, because
you hide yourself in activity. Worse for our longing to have rest is the Jesus which
John describes after chapter 13: the Jesus without restriction because his time has
come. Nothing has to be hidden any longer: he is love itself, the one who without
restriction does what he is called to do. Ultimately John’s Jesus might be more radical
than Matthew’s. But worst of all for our hope to save ourselves is the person he points
to: Jesus himself. Christian life begins with baptism: dying with Christ (Romans 6:4).
7. CONCLUSION
The evangelists do not give a biography or a characteristic of the personality of

Jesus. They tell us about God who is acting in him. This does not mean that Jesus did
not have a specific personality. However, we cannot reconstruct it, because the
authors who wrote about him are not interested in psychological description. This
means that by listening to their message we should not be interested in following
Jesus by imitating his personality. Following Jesus is: to believe that God in Him
revealed himself in his way that ended on the cross. This makes Christian life always
uneasy according to the standards of natural human inclinations. It also implies that
we can choose our own favorite feature from the psychological portraits the evange-
lists sketch. For, they do not speak about the true Jesus as a human character, but
about the One who expresses the incomprehensible God in our midst.
NOTES
1
Consequently present New Testament research pays more attention to the theological motives and the
literary perspective of the authors than to the personality of Jesus. The failure of nineteenth century
reconstruction of the ‘Leben Jesu Forschung’ was described once and for all by Albert Schweitzer
(1913). Later efforts to seek the historical Jesus, as in the New Quest and the Third Quest, are more
interested in his historical and social context and Jesus’ interaction with that than in his own personal-
ity, and even these new quests produce very ambiguous answers. More recent Christologies, such as
those by Eduard Schweizer (1968) and by Marinus de Jonge (1988), often restrict themselves to the
theology of the gospels. Schweizer even makes the inscrutability of Jesus the core of his book, and De
Jonge refers to ‘The One with Whom it all began’ only in his last chapter, and restricts himself to his
opinion on Jesus’ own vision of his relation to God. Only in his Epilogue does De Jonge express his
personal relationship in faith to Jesus.
2
The gospel of John has many addresses by Jesus, often evolving from an encounter that fades away into
a sermon. But even the long address before his death (John 14–17) is interrupted by his leaving the
room during the last supper (14:31), and ends in a prayer (chapter 17).
3
This is also the case with Jesus’ teaching. Most of the words of Jesus in Matthew can also be found in
Luke. As is almost generally accepted now in modern research there existed a common source with
sayings of Jesus that is called Q (the unknown Quelle of these words), similar to the Gnostic Gospel of
180 VAN DE BEEK
Thomas. In the reconstruction of this source, however, though interesting in itself, it should not be
overlooked that these sayings have different functions in Matthew and Luke. There are major differ-
ences between a situation in which they are put together at the beginning of Jesus’ work as a massive
message, as Matthew does, and a situation in which these sayings are scattered through the entire
gospel, depending on the context. It is exactly this that makes the difference between prophetic radical-
ism and mature wisdom.
4
Matthew only once mentions the Samaritans, and then in a negative perspective: ‘Do not enter any
town of the Samaritans.’ (10:5) The attitude of Jesus according to Luke is quite different. The negative
commandment not to enter into a town of the Samaritans is changed into a positive message to prepare
accommodation in a Samaritan village. When, subsequently, the Samaritans themselves refuse to
receive Jesus, the disciples want to destroy them, but Jesus rebukes his followers severely for this atti-
tude (9:52–56). Jesus in his wisdom goes to another village instead of calling fire from heaven. Further,
only Luke tells us the story of the ten lepers of whom only one, a Samaritan, returned for thanksgiving
(17:16). And again, he travelled through Samaria (17:11). It fits in this perspective that Luke in the
book of Acts frequently tells about the gospel in Samaria (1:8; 8:1–25; 9:31; 15:3). The only other
evangelist who has a positive attitude to Samaritans is John, in the long story of the Samaritan woman
in chapter 4.
5
See esp. chapter 11 and 18:1–8 but also the prayers of Jesus himself (5:16; 6:12; 9:28; 22:32).
6
Cf. the difference between Matthew 26:74 and Mark 14:72.
7
See esp. Nygren (1953), and somewhat more nuanced Kopmels (1990).
8
‘Eran ist das leidenschaftliche Lieben, das den andern für sich begiert’. See E. Stauffer (1957).
Agapao. In: G. Kittel (Ed.), Theologisches Wörterbuch zum Neuen Testament I. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer
Verlag, p. 34.
9
Stauffer (1957, see note 8) refers to the colourless meaning of the word ‘agapao’ in common Greek
language. He states that the etymology of the word is unknown. Personally I think it is borrowed from
Semitic languages (’ahab) and introduced into the Greek world by tradesmen. That would explain why
it is not used in higher language. The substantive is almost restricted to biblical language, but it is too
far-reaching when Kopmels states that it is shaped by an exclusive biblical meaning. The verb was used
in classic Greek already since the time of Homer, but with little of its later distinct meaning. Precisely
because it did not have much to do with feeling, it was useful for reference to the commandments: not
what you mean but what you do is important.
10
Actually the term ‘fileo’ refers far more to what Nygren means with ‘agapè’ than ‘agapè’ itself.
11
13:1–11. Judas is mentioned explicitly in 13:2 and 11. He does not leave before 13:30.
12
See further on this topic van de Beek (2003).
13
Burridge’s (1994) Four Gospels, One Jesus? A Symbolic Reading is for the main part devoted to the
variety of the portraits of the gospels and directed to the theological perspective. Only less than five
pages deal with the one Jesus, and in that part we are told that we have only interpretations of Jesus.
That does not make the book of less value: on the contrary, it makes clear how impossible the recon-
struction of a coherent portrait of Jesus, based on the sources we have, really is.
REFERENCES
Beek van de, A. (2003). Elia en Judas. Nederduits Gereformeerde Teologiese Tydskrif, 44, 171–184.
Berger, K. (1995). Wer war Jesu wirklich? Stuttgart: Quell Verlag.
Burridge, R. A. (1994). Four gospels, one Jesus? A symbolic reading. London: SPCK.
Jonge de, M. (1988). Christology in context: The earliest Christian response to Jesus. Philadelphia:
Westminster Press.
Kopmels, L. A. (1990). Liefde tweeërlei: een kritische apologie van eros. Voorburg: Publivorm (also pub-
lished as dissertation, Leiden).
Nygren, A. (1953). Agape and Eros. London: SPCK.
Overbeck, F. (1965). Studien zur Geschichte der alten Kirche 1. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchge-
sellschaft.
Schweitzer, A. (1913). Geschichte der Leben Jesu Forschung. Tübingen: Mohr.

Schweizer, E. (1968). Jesus Christus im vielfältigen Zeugnis des Neuen Testaments. München/Hamburg:
Siebenstern Taschenbuch Verlag.
Stauffer, E.(1957). Agapo. In:G.Kittel (Ed.), Theologisches Wörtertruch Zum Neuen Testament 1.
Struttgart: Kohlhammor Verlag, p.34.
Van Ruler, A. A. (1969). Structuurverschillen tussen het christologische en het pneumatologische gezicht-
spunt. Theologisch Werk I (pp. 175–190). Nijkerk: Callenbach.
CHAPTER 16
IMAGINING JESUS: TO PORTRAY OR BETRAY?
Psycho(-patho)logical aspects of attempts
to discuss the historical individual
PETER J. VERHAGEN
Meerkanten, Ermelo, The Netherlands
1. INTRODUCTION: IMAGES OF JESUS
Even subsequent to what scholars have termed the third quest, in the past three
decades, the search for the historical Jesus – Jesus the individual, as it were –
remains an intriguing and interesting history or even a fascinating historical preoc-
cupation. Intriguing and interesting for several reasons, most notably because such
searching tells us much about the nature of the development of modern critical
views of the New Testament and its method of handling of and wrestling with one
of the key dilemmas of faith and history. That is, given the cultural distance
between modern society and the life and death of someone 2000 years ago, how
could modern psychological, sociological, and cultural conceptions enable us, or
hinder us, to relate here and now to a religious person of the past (beyond the sim-
ple sense in which all heroes of mythic proportions, whether they existed in actual-
ity or not, may provide helpful moral exemplars for emulation [Evans, 1996])?
Moreover, the story of the quest is also intriguing and fascinating because it reflects
the perceived motivations of significant others. This perception is, though depen-
dent on many variables, certainly influenced by the personality traits and needs of
the researcher, of the seeker. This, of course, underscores one of the central
ambiguities of the whole project of the search for the historical Jesus that have
characterized such searches from their earliest beginning. I will focus at this ambi-
guity in the course of my investigation and I will interpret it as a tension between
the portrayal versus the betrayal of the historical Jesus. In fact, I aim to show that
these two polarities – portrayal and betrayal – almost always operate in tandem
rather than in simple opposition, and I will attempt to explain why this interaction is
important.
183
© 2007 Springer.
184 VERHAGEN
In this chapter I want to draw attention to one specific source of the creation of the
image of Jesus (or God): the personality or the self of the writer, researcher, patient
or believer. As one might expect, the literature is replete with theories and constructs
regarding the influence of the narrator’s or researcher’s personality on the creation of
an historical image (which I shall refer to as “the imagining” or imaging)1 of an
important biographical personage. Many authors outline this influence in terms of
psychosexual theory (Erikson, 1959), object relations theory (Rizzuto, 1974, 1979),2
transitional phenomena (Meissner, 1992), attachment theory (Murken, 1998), and
cognitive schemata (Schaap-Jonker, Eurelings-Bontekoe, Verhagen, & Zock, 2002).
Although stated in different ways by each of these theorists, one of the main themes
common to their approach is that the vicissitudes of the imagining process reflect
the ongoing interaction between the specific representation of God – in this instance,
I am concerned with the representation of Jesus – and the imagining person’s own
self-representation. Viewed in this way, the Jesus representation must be connected
to one’s sense of self in a highly personal way, including one’s sense of meaning
and purpose in life. And in so far as a person can attach priority to such a highly
valued object, he can transcend his own priorities freed from the constraints of self-
interests, in favor of a greater cause.
According to many authors, the ability to make this distinction is one of the criti-
cal signs of mature religion (Symington, 1994). Moving beyond the individual level
to the institutional level, fragments of psychological representational constructs such
as these circulate in the minds of scientists, historians, and mental health profes-
sions. These theories and constructs are usually intended to deepen the ability to
understand, evaluate and even explain the ins and outs of that influence. However it
is not my intention, nor do I think it possible, to develop a comprehensive overview
of all the theories and constructs that influence the creation of mental representations
of the divinity. I will confine my attention here to a small portion of the empirical
research that deals with the way Jesus (and God) is imagined and represented.
One other introductory comment is needed here. It seems appropriate to make a
distinction between the image of Jesus – traditionally regarded as vere home, vere
Deus – and the image of God. This is so not only owing to theological considera-
tions. Let us consider, for instance, the old hypothesis that the God image is modeled
after the father (whatever the truth of this hypothesis), it is not at all clear beforehand
that the same will hold for the image of Jesus. As far as I can see, there are no or at
least no compelling empirical research data to warrant a sharp distinction between
the representation of these two images on a psychological level. What we have to
consider is that not only the images are different, but the process of imagining as
well in so far as we understand the imagining as an interactive process. However, for
our quest we have to accept that we need to make use of the results of empirical
research on the psychological aspects of imagining God, although our main interest
in this chapter is the image of Jesus.
In the first part of this contribution I will develop a historical outlook on portraits
of Jesus. I will briefly pay attention to the theologically-oriented, yet science-based
criticism that Albert Schweitzer formulated in his landmark study on the “Lives of
IMAGINING JESUS: TO PORTRAY OR BETRAY? 185
the historical Jesus” (Schweitzer, 2001). Schweitzer, as may be well known,

reviewed the scientific shortcomings in these “Lives” of the Jesus and then hypothe-
sized about the possible background of these shortcomings, errors and biases. What
was surprising in his essay, written so relatively long ago, was that he also forwarded
some ideas about the influence exerted by the inner world of the scientists and writ-
ers who each in a sense crafted their own historical Jesus. Schweitzer even tried to
add support for his psychological hypothesis by referring to certain historical facts
and life events in biographies of these scholars. We are most interested in this
hypothesis, especially since it was expressed in the magnum opus of a man who
became famous because for his own creation of an image of Jesus, that has been
called the “religious construct of strangeness.”3
In the second part of this chapter I will discuss a modern psychological theory
regarding imagining Jesus or God, but in a limited sense. That is, I will concentrate
on just one aspect of the imagining: the self as a source of projection. Even this
restricted focus will require additional limitation. I will confine my comments to the
description and discussion of three recent examples of empirical research on the role
of psychological sources in the imagining of Jesus or God. When mentioning the
third study, I will narrow our focus to the role of personality pathology and the imag-
ining of God.
In the conclusion I will try to bring all the disparate pieces together and make a
few critical comments under the heading: Jesus and his strangeness. It was
Schweitzer who coined this strangeness construct.4 This construct of the strangeness
of the historical Jesus is, as it will appear, not meant to point to a rather mysterious
or mystical aura. By strangeness we mean in a rather technical sense the counterin-
tuitive quality of the representation of the historical Jesus as a person, and in his say-
ings and doings (see also the chapter of van de Beek in this book).
2. LIVES OF JESUS: THREE QUESTS
Scholars usually discriminate among three, more or less distinct phases in the scien-
tific approach to the figure and personality of the historical Jesus (McGrath, 1994;
Theissen, 2003). A few lines may serve as introductory remarks.
The nineteenth century is the famous era of the first quest as becomes apparent in
the numerous “lives of Jesus.” From the rationalist perspectives of the Enlightenment
period, the idea of a supernatural redeemer, God incarnate, was no longer acceptable.
This abstract, perhaps even aloof notion was replaced by the idea of God as an
enlightened moral teacher (McGrath, 1994). This first quest, in other words, was
based on the idea that there necessarily had to be a gap between the historical Jesus,
who actually lived and worked as religious teacher, and the more mystical Christ
concept of the early church. Learning more about that historical figure, the first quest
supposed, would result in a more adequate version of Christian faith.
In the course of the nineteenth century we see a subtle shift in this approach.
Parallel to the increasing interest in the budding psychological and social sciences
there originated a heightened awareness of the religious aspects of the essentially
186 VERHAGEN
human functioning of the personality of Jesus. For the most part, this enhanced the
momentum of the style of the first quest. It was now believed that, not only did His
remarkable personality lay the foundation for Christian faith, but also his religious
personality could be imitated by anyone. It is during this period, and ever since, that
numerous “lives of Jesus” were published and became very popular. It is in this way
that Jesus was modernized. It was Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965) who in his famous
survey The Quest of the Historical Jesus, surveying the period beginning from
Reimarus (1694–1768) and ending well in to the nineteenth century, brought these
“lives” together in a highly critical approach (Evans, 1996; McGrath, 1994; Rollins,
1999; Schweitzer, 2001).
The critical appraisal by Schweitzer did not herald the end of the portrayals of
different images of Jesus. Since the twenties of the last century, Weaver (1999)
enumerated more than forty variegated portrayals and popularizing icons of Jesus,
each of which were nevertheless (i.e., for all of their scientific objectivity) deeply
rooted in national and cultural traditions and identities. According to Weaver, one
could discern a distinctly identifiable German, English and American Jesus, each of
which claiming to be historical! Weaver agrees with Schweitzer unhesitatingly
about “the propensity to find in Jesus that which we need to find and to paint him in
the colors of our own time and culture” (italics added by P.J.V.). Weaver continues,
“In this sense the deniers of Jesus’ historicity were right: there is no historical Jesus,
not because he did not exist, but because he is available only in pluriform ways.”5
Consider even the view of Jeremias (1961) who actually represented a rather
extreme position in the period of the second quest. Jeremias was prepared, on one
hand, to suggest that the basis of the Christian faith lies in what Jesus actually said
and did,6 yet stated with an almost perceivably ironic smile:
“Die Rationalisten schildern Jesus als Moralprediger, die Idealisten als Inbegriff der Humanität, die
Ästheten preisen ihn als den genialen Künstler der Rede, die Sozialisten als den Armenfreund und
sozialer Reformer, und die ungezählten Pseudowissenschaftler machen aus ihn eine Romanfigur.”7
The second quest is generally considered to have started with a lecture by Käsemann
in 1953.8 The main points of departure from the first quest are, first, the idea that
there is a discontinuity between the earthly Jesus and the exalted Christ, almost to
the degree of portraying each as if they were unrelated figures. Secondly, it was now
emphasized that there is continuity between the preaching of Jesus and the preaching
about Jesus. The earthly, historical Jesus and the exalted and proclaimed Christ are
no longer unrelated. The first quest had suggested that discontinuity prevailed.
According to the second quest it was no longer needed to deconstruct or reconstruct
the Christ of faith in terms of the earthly Jesus. The main interest of the second quest
is primarily the historical foundation of the kerygma.
Since the seventies and eighties of the twentieth century we see yet another ideo-
logical shift. Since the onset of writings that characterize this period, one notices that
particular attention was trained upon the relation between Jesus and his environment
in first century Judaism. The Jewish background of Jesus, as he actually lived and
worked in the Holy Land during the first century became extremely important.
For, Jesus stood up against mainstream Judaism with its practices and beliefs of the
Jewish religion. The superb trilogy with the revealing title A Marginal Jew –
Rethinking the Historical Jesus written by John P. Meyer (1991–2001) would be the
classical exemplar of this third approach.
The two chapters in this volume, written by Van de Beek and Vergote (chapters 15
and 13 respectively), are related to this new shift. But how different are their
approaches! Van de Beek takes a critical stance to the third quest. According to him,
this new quest produced only new ambiguous answers, not much new under the sun,
and also, in his commentary, incurs a loss. That is to say, according to Van de Beek,
due to the third quest’s efforts to attend more and more to Jesus’ interaction with his
Jewish environment from a historical and sociological point of view, results in a
diminution of attention to that which had been gained, and still needs to be dis-
cerned, regarding his personality. And yet despite his critique, Van de Beek admits
that a reconstruction of the personality of Jesus is not really possible. The Jesus of
Van de Beek’s approach is the “One incomprehensible God, appearing in the man
who explodes all our schemes” (this volume, p. 223).
Van de Beek’s account has the character of a narration, It refers to social interac-
tions, mental events, like emotions, and to actions (including speech acts). By nar-
rating he portrays a character, that is to say four different characters: the wise man of
Luke, the radical character of Matthew, the mysterious man of John and the more
compassionate person of Mark. Interestingly enough, Van de Beek also tells us quite
a lot about himself in relation to these four characters. And so the narrative becomes
connected with his self-concept as a theologian! Nevertheless as a narrative the
imagery is based on the four Gospels as the constitutive narrative for the Christian
outlook. And it is in the light of this narrative that the reader or believer has to inter-
pret his or her life, as Van de Beek in fact illustrates by his approach.
How different, therefore, from the somewhat postmodern approach of Van de
Beek is the fascinating portrayal depicted by Antoine Vergote. Vergote’s aim is to
look at the historical person of Jesus. Compared to Van de Beek, Vergote is rather
optimistic about the possibility of drawing a portrayal of the historical Jesus,
although Jesus was marginalized in his time and culture. And, contrary to Van de
Beek, Vergote feels that he is able to discern common features from among the four
Gospels, giving us something that is, on one hand, unified, and yet not less divine;
that is, not merely an image of “yet another” strong, dramatic biblical personality.
Jesus, as painted by Vergote, is a profound mystic, the human archetype of moral
perfection, a sound prophet, and far from being a paranoiac. “Jesus is the paradigm
of the ideal religious disposition” (this volume, p. 168).
There is more involved here than just science, or pure psychology of religion.
Vergote is interested in what is new, particular and original to Jesus, for all religious
belief and for the very conception of being human. In these few words we hear
Vergote’s commitment to his object of study. When he, a theologian and psycho-
analyst himself, ends his chapter with a rather rhetorical question, we sense the
admirational identification9 which was alluded to earlier in his text (see: chapter 13,
this book).
188 VERHAGEN
3. PSYCHIATRIC EVALUATION OF JESUS’ CHARACTER
It is certainly not without reason that Vergote portrays Jesus as far from being para-
noiac. In the course of time Jesus often, indeed, became depicted as mentally disor-
dered, even during his lifetime. Albert Schweitzer not only brought the nineteenth
and early twentieth century “lives of Jesus” together, he also paid special attention to
the medical history of Jesus, so to speak, and published his medical thesis under the
title: Die psychiatrische Beurteilung Jesu (Magdalen, 1994; Rollins, 1999;
Schweitzer, 1913). In this thesis, as he did earlier in his study The Quest, Schweitzer
questioned and radically criticized the suggestion made by several authors that Jesus
may have been suffering from a hereditary disease, paranoia and megalomania, or
that he should be considered as an epileptic or hystero-epileptic. In Schweitzer’s
assessment, the first two studies could not stand the test of scientific criticism against
the criteria Schweitzer sought to uphold. Furthermore, he found no evidence what-
soever to support Rasmussen’s diagnosis. Of course there appeared several other
studies whose sole intention was to disprove the conclusions jumped at by these
writers. But the judgment Schweitzer passed on these psychiatric conclusions was
brief and to the point: apologetic in character, not tackling the problem at its scien-
tific core.10 Schweitzer concluded:
“Whether ideas which in modern terms appear fantastic are either more or less so is entirely unimportant.
To identify elements which appear strange to us as symptoms of insanity betrays a layman’s attitude of
mind. All that a psychiatric evaluation does is to consider the development and nature of a man’s logic in
the formation of his ideas and their relation to his behavior as a whole.”11
Schweitzer himself evaluated, as might still be well known, the ideas and behavior of
Jesus as determined by eschatological thinking. Some of Schweitzer’s contemporaries,
however, considered precisely that form of eschatological thinking, along with Jesus’
belief in his messianic dignity, as a sign of mental derangement and madness in and of
itself, because such thinking could not conform to the way of thinking of healthy men.
Schweitzer contested this quite firmly. Those particulars of the life of Jesus that could
possibly be interpreted as indicating insanity ought in reality to be assessed against the
context of his life as a whole, argued Schweitzer. For example, how could Jesus’ dri-
ving the money-changers from the temple be seen so simply as an attack of epileptic
grand mal, or his struggle in Gethsemane as an attack of epileptic petit mal? Is it not
impossible to execute such a project or even to make relevant utterances during such an
attack? Schweitzer felt that such conclusions needed to be “completely ruled out.”12
Thus, according to Schweitzer these kinds of portrayals amounted to nothing
more than betrayals. The uniqueness and exceptionality of the person of Jesus was
preposterously betrayed as pathological without a cautious analysis.
4. A MAN’S TRUE SELF IN THE WRITING OF A LIFE OF JESUS
In his explanation and formulation of the problem of imagining or reconstructing the

portrait of Jesus, Schweitzer clarified that according to his conviction the historical
investigation of the life of Jesus does not originate from a purely historical interest.
Aside from what Schweitzer interpreted as a struggle against the tyranny of the
dogma of the dual natures of Jesus Christ, he felt that the main motive of our
research was to present the so-called historical Jesus in a form intelligible during the
time of the interpreter:
“But it was not only each epoch that found its reflection in Jesus; each individual created Jesus in accor-
dance with his own character. There is no historical task which so reveals a man’s true self as the writing
of a Life of Jesus. No vital force comes into the figure unless a man breathes into it all the hate or all the
love of which he is capable.”13
Schweitzer went so far as to state that the greatest of the lives written of Jesus were
inspired by hate: the lives written by Hermann Samuel Reimarus (1694–1768) and
by David Friedrich Strauss (1808–1874). They hated, according to Schweitzer, the
“supernatural nimbus” with which Jesus traditionally had been surrounded, which
coerced them into needing to depict him as an ordinary person in Galilee. The life
of Jesus written by Reimarus was published after his death. But the “Life of Jesus”
written by Strauss and published in 1835 made his career as a professor in theology
impossible. The facts were that after he took up the position of “Repetent” in the
theological college of Tübingen, he lectured on Hegel – who himself studied theol-
ogy in Tübingen and hated his studies (Solomon, 1988) – with great success. But
his book destroyed his prospects. Strauss was a radical representative of the “spec-
ulative theology” and was included among the “Hegelsche Linke” (Hegelian Left-
ists). In 1833, Strauss wrote, “If I know myself rightly, my position in regard to
theology is that what interests me in theology causes offence.”14 And offence he
caused. In the words of Karl Barth, Strauss confronted the spirit of his times with
the force of a theologian turned unbeliever.15 An angry “No!” could be heard in his
doctrine of faith, and thus he came to adopt a more comfortable but dilute, panthe-
istic worldview. Nevertheless – and this is Schweitzer’s point – Strauss, due to his
misgivings, produced a major contribution to the topic of the historical Jesus in his
introduction of the category of myth and mythical language as reflection of the New
Testament writers’ cultural outlook.16
I would like to return for a moment to Strauss’s interpretation of the life of Jesus.
Twenty-five years after he began his researches, Strauss commented himself: “It
made my life a lonely one,” and yet the book, “preserved the inward health of my
mind and heart.”17 How great was the contrast with the enormous success of the Vie
de Jesus written by the French philosopher and historian Ernest Renan, published in
1863. It was a major success, resulting in eight imprints within three months.
Renan’s romantic and sentimental portrayal of Jesus made a tremendous impression
on many readers in those days. And yet, according to Schweitzer, Renan’s story
made no sense at all and was certainly inferior to Strauss’s depiction.18 Schweitzer,
and later on Barth, respected Strauss for his major and provoking contribution to the
topic of inquiry.
What about those “lives of Jesus” inspired by love? According to Schweitzer, they
all demonstrated an immense struggle to acknowledge and express in a believable
way a truth full of pain. But sometimes they lack conscience, and there is occasion-
ally even a hint of insincerity in such stories, as in the case of Renan.19
190 VERHAGEN
And what about Schweitzer himself as a commentator on the lives of Jesus? To what
degree did his own true self gain expression in his writing about these lives, despite the
fact that he did not compose a distinct life of Jesus himself? Whether or not the kind of
characterizations he used regarding others can be applied to Schweitzer himself
remains difficult to say a century later. However, we may perhaps seek assistance
through the writings of the Protestant minister and psychoanalyst, Oskar Pfister
(1873–1956). At the end of his study on Christian faith and anxiety, Pfister, who even-
tually became a close friend with Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) and after 1921 with
Albert Schweitzer as well (Nase, 1993), brought forward the example of the kind of
writer who fully introjects Christ. Such a personality does not just live in some sort of
relationship with Christ, but, if we can state so, lives Him in a convincing demonstra-
tion of love.20 Pfister paid special attention to Albert Schweitzer because he considered
the latter to be a stellar example of just such a type. Pfister’s comment is just as remark-
able as moving. He saw Schweitzer as the man who demonstrated, though perhaps less
so in his limited foray into the realm of theological studies, the lasting meaning of
Jesus for modern mankind; i.e. through his medical devotion as an expression of love.
I want to suggest at the end of this first part of my comments that it is not the case
that everybody, sophisticated or not, simply creates his or her story and representations
of Jesus from inner, obviously unconscious motives, and that each of these representa-
tions is theologically beyond dispute. That would be an outrageous simplification. But,
in general, a personality is to some extent defined by the world of thought within which
the individual finds himself or herself and shares with his or her contemporaries. In the
case of Jesus there is a difficulty with the nature of the sources of the life of Jesus,
although we know quite a lot about his public ministry. The interpretation of what
sources we possess is necessarily inseparable from the scholar’s own religious com-
mitments and political and other aims and also inseparable from the strong emotions,
love and hate, that these commitments generate. In this regard the biographical notes of
Schweitzer even illustrate a kind of passionate wrestling with the material. What we
discovered is that Schweitzer himself not only developed his own religious construct as
his portrayal of Jesus. In addition, he presented also a psychological hypothesis about
the influence and meaning of the commitments of the scholars he studied on their
object of study. He tried to elucidate how the true self of the writer might became
involved simultaneously in the portraying and betraying of the historical Jesus by love
and by hate. And his own life became the utmost demonstration of a participative nar-
rative within the larger sphere of the basic constitutive narrative of the Gospel.
We will come back to these findings after the next part of this chapter. In what
follows, I wish to focus on the psychical sources of this personal contribution to the
portrayal and betrayal of the image of the Jesus.
5. IMAGINING GOD AND JESUS
In the first part of this chapter I attempted to develop an historical outlook on the topic
of imagining Jesus. It was a remarkable finding, I believe, that Albert Schweitzer
himself also developed a psychologically-oriented thesis. He paid attention to the
personal character of all these “lives of Jesus.” His contention – which rings with
classical and even contemporary psychological notions of empathy and identification –
was that “a personality can only be awakened to life by a personality.”21 On the basis
of this assumption, he almost constantly informed his readers about the lives of these
writers themselves, as if their biographies were almost as important for understanding
their writings and portrayals of Jesus as the facts of Jesus’ life. This was most out-
standing in the case of his analysis of the works of Strauss, to whom Schweitzer even
dedicated a whole chapter “the man and his fate.”22
Be this as it may, did Schweitzer really intend to use these biographical notes as
source for the imagining of Jesus? I suspect that a psychological-methodological
question of that kind perhaps demands too much of Albert Schweitzer. Yet in the
next part of this chapter we will take up precisely this question from a contemporary
psychological perspective.
In the practice of psychotherapy it is often observed that certain specific personal-
ity correlates are closely related to the religious experience of the patient
(e.g., Schaap-Jonker et al., 2002). Hence, the “image” of God or of Jesus can be de-
scribed as an individual’s affective experience of God or of Jesus, or as connected to
the internal, mental representation of God or Jesus. It is important to note that the
term image refers to emotional experiences in general and not to visual experiences
only. Feelings and emotions are in this respect even more important than cognitions
(Lawrence, 1997; Rizzuto, 1979). What God represents to a particular person deter-
mines to a large extent his relationship with God. Insight into any individual’s image
or representation of God is therefore a prerequisite for a full understanding of some-
one’s relationship with God (Tisdale et al., 1997). Ana-Maria Rizzuto was the first to
formulate a comprehensive theory about God images, based on the perspective of
object-relations theory (Rizzuto, 1974, 1979, 1996).
Subsequent studies have shown that the quality of internalized early self-object
relations is associated with the overall representational quality of the image of God.
Persons with early traumatic experiences and/or developmental difficulties more
often tend to experience God as irrelevant or distant from their lives, and more often
tend to experience God as controlling and more often as angry and punitive than
people with more stable early relationships. Likewise, people with caring and
empathic early environments experience God as more loving, available and constant.
Persons with disturbances in the development of object relations are more likely to
have enduring problematic relationships with others, which may extend to the
relationship with God (Brokaw & Edwards, 1994).
Yet the psychological image of God is not only associated with the internal repre-
sentation of self-object relationships, but also with the image of the self. An accept-
ing attitude towards the self and others is associated with belief in an accepting God
(Benson & Spilka, 1973; Tisdale et al., 1997).
Given the association between psychopathology, disturbed self-object relations,
low self esteem and the type of God image, it is to be expected that psychopathology
is associated with negative God images. There are some studies that tend to confirm
this hypothesis: the more people show disturbed psychological functioning, the more
192 VERHAGEN
they tend to view God as distant, punitive and revengeful. And it cannot be ignored
that psychotic patients, as compared to neurotic patients, as well as patients in closed
versus open treatment settings, experience less closeness to God. Longer hospitalisa-
tions are associated with more distant and unloving images of God (Brokaw &
Edwards, 1994; Tisdale et al., 1997). We will take a closer look at the few research
data in order to develop these ideas and insights more fully.
But before we proceed, there is one point that should be discussed. One of the
important topics in today’s continuous education for residents and professionals in
psychiatry and psychotherapy is the capacity to develop competence in recognizing
possible biases against religious and spiritual issues in clinical practice and in
scientific research literature regarding the relationship of religion and spirituality to
mental health, and to deepen one’s understanding of the origins of these biases. The
educational objectives of the presentation of such research material and possible
biases in courses and training are changes in knowledge and attitudes. According to
Spero (1992), it is the very sanctity with which many continue to regard the projec-
tion theory installed by Freud, as if no other explanation for religious experience had
ever been offered (such as Winnicott’s or others), that represents a psychological
bias, even though Freud’s theory is not completely invalid from a psychological and
possibly even to some degree from a theological worldview. The very essence of his
analysis is that Freud’s observations really are descriptions of a special kind of expe-
rience, that not only can be interpreted in the psychological realm as Freud did in an
illuminating way, but also in a religious realm as an event taking place between a
person and a real object named God. Very intriguing and important in this respect is
Spero’s observation that not only neurotic but also psychotic processes actually
enrich our understanding of religion. Psychotic or primitive defences might offer
insights into some of the dimensions of God as well, for instance his infiniteness,
unboundedness and ubiquitousness.23 I will come back to this contribution later. But
the main point of interest in Spero’s work is that it is not the case that a real model of
religion and psychology (and psychiatry) should portray only the dynamics of devel-
opment in relation to empirically evident primary objects or primary care takers, but
also in relation to the not empirically verifiable divine reality. In Spero’s words:
“To date, the professional literature contains no theoretically sound and clinically sophisticated model for
distinguishing between the religious patients’ view of God as an objective reality and the psychological
view of the image of Gods as a product of representational dynamics.”24
Since 1992 this picture has not really changed.
6. THREE TYPES OF EMPIRICAL RESEARCH
6.1 Image of Self and Image of God
It was Freud who suggested that the God concept is modeled after the father.
Religion became a cultural projective system. The God image is formed through a
projection of paternal and/or parental qualities. That is just in three lines the theory.
What is known about the evidence in favor of this specific projection theory?
Beit-Hallahmi and Argyle (1975) give an early review of empirical research. They
found six studies and, in spite of severe limitations, enough support to the notion that
the deity is a projected love-object, but limited support for Freud’s more specific
hypothesis that this image must be a paternal object.
The first example of empirical research I would like to refer to is a study published
fourteen years ago by Roberts (1989). Roberts presents his study as a re-examination
(only one study on the same topic is mentioned) of divine images from the viewpoint
of self-esteem theory, which is a variant of projection theory according to him: God
as a projection of self (Beit-Hallahmi & Argyle, 1997). These two, relations to the
parents and self-esteem, stand out as important factors shaping the God image. At
the same time there is more than enough evidence that the parental relations are a
major influence on a person’s self-esteem. So these two elements are intertwined.
Other factors are relationships to significant others and groups, religious practice
and religious teaching (Wulff, 1991). What Roberts considers to be the most striking
finding concerning God images is the description of God along two dimensions: nur-
turance and discipline. These two dimensions appear time and again in the literature,
although the descriptive labels slight differ from one study to the other (Beit-
Hallahmi & Argyle, 1997; Murken, 1998; Vergote & Tamayo, 1981; Wulff, 1991).
Roberts’ study is a typical questionnaire survey among a random sample of 236
households (response rate 78% = 185 respondents). Respondents had to evaluate
how often they thought of God according to each of ten adjectives (listed in random
order) allowing to rank each adjective separately on a scale from one equals never to
five equals always. Ten adjectives referring to self were selected corresponding to
the ten divine adjectives (corresponding, but not identical, and with a “semantic
image” similar to the divine adjectives). Subjects were asked to rank the so-called
self-adjectives or phrases along the same five point scale.
The findings were consistent with the results found elsewhere in the theoretical and
small amount of empirical literature. God was imagined along the two dimensions of
nurturance and discipline. Roberts suggested that personality profiles can be discerned
that reflect God images along the two dimensions just discussed. He hypothesized that
individuals will imagine God like themselves. Those who imagine God as nurturing
described themselves as generous, sincere, and as prone to forgive and forget. Women
described God as nurturing more than men. Church attendance was found to be an
important determinant of the nurturing image of God. Some evidence was found for a
relation between critical self descriptions and a disciplining image of God.
Although these findings are consistent with other findings, as I stated, no satisfy-
ing answer can be given to the question as to why these two dimensions reappear
time and again. The principle of projection only suggests a relation with the genesis
of divine images, but does not hint at the overall and certainly not the full quality of
what is projected. For this reason Roberts explored a few other theories (e.g. attribu-
tion theory) in the search for alternatives for the projection theory. But nevertheless
he assured the readers that the projection theory is not useless but rather incomplete.
In his theoretical understanding and explanation he seemed to place importance on
the social context as source and as limitation on the quality of what is projected.
194 VERHAGEN
6.2 Image of Jesus: A Historiographic Approach
The second study I want to review briefly was executed by Piedmont, (1999; see also
Piedmont, Williams, & Ciarrocchi, 1997). Piedmont and his group studied the self as
source of the origins of the image of Jesus by utilizing historiography as a mode of analy-
sis of legendary or historical persons. The Adjective Check List (ACL) was used for the
purpose of experimentally generating a composite portrait of Jesus. Secondly they
evaluated the ACL ratings in relation to self-ratings in a five-factor model of personality
(Piedmont, McCrae, & Costa, 1991). Participants (77 women; 38 men) completed both
the ACL and the Neo Five-Factor Inventory as an additional form of self-evaluation. The
profile of Jesus thus derived was then compared to the self-rated personality profiles in
order to evaluate the degree to which images of Jesus correlated with individuals’ own
self image.
The Jesus profile that resulted can be characterized as a compassionate, consider-
ate, warmly embracing individual. According to the ACL portrayals, “Jesus” is a
caring and concerned individual who yet maintains a certain degree of detachment
from those around him. He was not perceived as emotionally distressed, selfish or
slipshod. This profile, according to the researchers, accurately reflects the overall
biblical presentation of Jesus. Ratings like these are also consistent with the various
images of God that can be found in many religions. Yet, perceptions of Jesus are
significantly related to the needs and temperaments of the individuals themselves.
Extraversion and openness to experience had the most influence in forming the
profile of Jesus.
The great advantage of using a strategy as the one in this study is the use of trait
(personality) instead of state (signs or symptoms as depression or anxiety)
characteristics. In this way, in a manner far superior to that used in Roberts’
study, the multidimensional nature of the image of God or Jesus gains better eval-
uation. The findings of this study are also consistent with other findings. Of spe-
cial interest is the fact that Piedmont’s group noted an interesting connection with
attachment theory. The dimensions of extraversion and openness reflect an
individual’s capacity for warmth, empathy and acceptance. These qualities under-
lie the ability to form and maintain emotionally sustaining relationships with oth-
ers. On the other hand, fear of rejection, anxiety, and jealousy are related to
neuroticism, whereas low trust, emotional detachment and self-orientation are
related to (low) agreeableness. These dimensions reflect a preoccupied and/or
fearful attachment style.
The findings in this study show that the five-factor model offers a suitable and
valid method for the description of personality and the perceived personalities of
religious figures. Using this strategy one could, for instance, obtain ratings for
parents or significant caregivers, which could then be used for the further study of
the developmental aspects of the image of Jesus or God.25 According to McCrae
(1999), for another example, openness to experience is probably the most relevant
factor for the study of religion, compared to the other dimensions of the five-factor
model.
6.3 Image of God and Personality Pathology
There are few empirical studies focusing on the association between personality
pathology and images of God. Most studies are qualitative (Banschick, 1992;
Rizzuto, 1979). To our knowledge no study has investigated the association between
DSM-IV personality disorders and image of God in a manner similar to our own
effort (Schaap-Jonker et al., 2002).
The main aim of the study was to investigate the association between personality
disorder traits according to DSM-IV and God images. We were particularly inter-
ested in the possible association between personality disorder features and certain
characteristics of God images. We also investigated the association between sympto-
matology, personality disorder features and image of God. Finally, we explored the
association between religious subculture (level of orthodoxy), on the one hand, and
God images and personality pathology, on the other hand.
According to Murken (1998), the image of God can be studied by paying attention
to two dimensions: (1) feelings about God, subdivided into positive and negative
feelings, and (2) the perceived experience of divine action, indicated with adjectives
like supportive, dominating, punishing or passive. These dimensions have been
investigated by using one part of a larger German-based questionnaire, developed by
Murken (1998); more specifically, the component that focuses on God experience.
This component has been translated into Dutch and consists of 49 questions, divided
into five subscales.
The results show that God images are influenced by pathological personality
traits. Personality traits in the borderline, avoidant, schizotypal, schizoid, dependent
and paranoid spectrum appeared to be associated with negative feelings about God.
Personality traits were also associated with negative views on God’s actions, espe-
cially in respondents with schizotypal, avoidant, obsessive-compulsive and paranoid
traits. It is well known that patients with personality pathology, especially borderline
patients, are characterized by strong, non-integrated feelings of anger and by nega-
tive affectivity (Kernberg, 1992). As a consequence, interpersonal relationships are
often disturbed.
More specifically, respondents with high scores on cluster A traits tended to offer
God images referring to God as passive, aloof, distant and unsupportive. This is sim-
ilar to the way people with schizoid, schizotypal and paranoid traits typically behave
toward others: interpersonal relationships of people with these traits are character-
ized by distance, aloofness, mistrust and detachment. Respondents with high scores
on cluster C traits, especially those with obsessive-compulsive traits, appeared to
experience God as dominant and punishing. This could readily be deemed analogous
to the way obsessive-compulsives relate to others: these people tend to be control-
ling, rigid and inflexible. They adhere to rules and regulations and have rigid ideas
about good and evil.
The absence of an independent association between cluster B pathology and God
might be explained by a correlation between cluster B traits on the one hand and
cluster A and C traits on the other. Co-morbidity between the A, B and C cluster
196 VERHAGEN
personality disorders is a well-established fact. There also existed an association

between Axis I symptomatology and negative God images. However, this associa-
tion appeared to be mediated by personality pathology. This should be taken into
account in future studies. In our study no empirical evidence could be found for the
presumed predisposing role of religion with respect to depression (Molenkamp,
1993; McCandless, 1991). It could be hypothesized that that those who suffer from
personality pathology are more prone to depression because of their religious con-
victions. According to this hypothesis, religious convictions are not in themselves
pathogenic, but rather are sometimes the result of the selective focus on certain of
these convictions under the influence of wider personality pathology. Personality
pathology, then, leads to one-sided emphasis on the negative, threatening aspects of
religion.
Living in a strict orthodox culture appeared to be associated with the image of
God as judge. However, membership of an orthodox church showed no relationship
with positive or negative feelings about God, or personality pathology in general.
Therefore, one must conclude carefully that God images in orthodox communities
are not typically threatening, nor related to personality pathology.
What is often described as “orthodox” theology may have contributed to the image
of God as judge. Such theologies tend to describe God as an entity who notices every
sin and who judges every person by his works at the day of the Last Judgment.
However, we have to be careful to not propound a simple causal relation between
theological doctrine and quality of God images. Our results suggest that religious
culture largely determines the type of God image, but predicts to a much lesser
extent the affective quality of these images. It seems, instead, that personality
pathology is associated with the affective valence and emotional intensity of
God images, especially when they are negative. Our results, finally, illustrate the
importance of the study of the interaction between religious culture and personality
pathology on the one hand and the type and emotional meaning of God images, on
the other hand.26
6.4 Object-Relational and Cognitive Schema-Focused Perspectives
Since in our study the concept of the image of God is conceptualized in an object-
relational sense, we decided to further scrutinize our findings from the perspective
of a psychodynamic object-relational approach (Kernberg, 1992). However, since
God images can also be viewed as frames (or schemas) for certain types of object-
relations, Young’s schema theory (Young, 1994) might offer an appropriate concep-
tual framework as well (Schaap-Jonker et al., 2002).
From a psychodynamic object-relational perspective one could say that the way
one relates to God mirrors the way one relates to others. Thus, in their relationship
with God, patients who espoused religious beliefs assume the role of the abandoned
child (cluster A patients) or of the controlled and dominated subject (cluster C
patients) complementary to, respectively, the aloof, emotionally distant and the
dominating, demanding and controlling object. This type of object relation seems
very similar to early object relational configurations between patient and parents. It
is suggested that the early environment of schizoid and paranoid patients is charac-
terized by coldness, detachment and abandonment (Gabbard, 1994; Glickauf-
Hughes & Wells, 1997). In such circumstances, children defend themselves by
withdrawal and detachment. The history of the obsessive-compulsive patient is
characterized by the conditional provision of love and attention: care is only given if
the patient behaves perfectly, according to the parents’ wishes. The threat is here:
loss of love by the primary object (Gabbard, 1994). The relationship with God would
thus seem to offer a repetition of early traumatic object relationships and, hence,
cannot but evoke very painful affects. Although in relationships with others the
patient “survives” by identifying with the abandoning or controlling object, i.e., by
using defence mechanisms like identification with the aggressor and turning passive
into active, he seems to be unable, or unwilling, to use these defences in his relation-
ship with God. So, in his relationship with God there seems to be a fixation to
trauma. Kernberg (1992) describes precisely such a relationship in the case of fixa-
tion to trauma. According to Kernberg, the patient does not simply identify with the
bad object, but with the whole relationship to the bad object, so that there is both an
identification with the victim, as well as with the aggressor. In identifying with both
the suffering victim and the sadistic object, the subject himself is swallowed up by
all-encompassing aggression in the relationship.
From the schema-focused cognitive perspective as developed by Young (1994),
one could argue that internal self-object relationships are represented in the form of
cognitive schemas. Cognitive schemas are information-processing structures, guid-
ing the subjective perception of the social environment, and as such determine the
emotions and behaviour that are elicited by interpersonal contacts. Young (1994)
describes that personality disordered patients have early maladaptive schemas, orig-
inating in early life as a consequence of experiences with caregivers. These early
maladaptive schemas are ego-syntonic, rigid and inflexible and tend to remain
unaltered during life. Such persons show a great resistance to change, especially
because the personality disordered patient tends to seek and select the environment
that fits his or her maladaptive schemas best (schema confirmation). In addition,
activation of the early maladaptive schemas in the present leads to strong affective
arousal, disproportional to the objective impact of the event.
We have suggested that the negative image of God one finds among personality-
disordered patients should be considered as an early maladaptive schema. We assume
that God images originate in early childhood and, often, are rigidly experienced as
“the” truth about God. Negative God images, then, are confirmed by selective atten-
tion to information which is congruent with the image and by discarding schema
incongruent information (Schaap-Jonker et al., 2002).
Young describes 16 types of schemas. In case God is experienced as abandon-
ing, passive, and aloof, the schema of abandonment and instability of care is
activated. In cases in which schema of incompetence and defect is activated, the
subject is convinced that abandonment by God is justified: one does not deserve
his love.
198 VERHAGEN
When God is experienced as punishing, schemas of perfectionism, emotional

inhibition, and negativity/pessimism and being-worthy-of-punishment are operative.
The subject assumes that he has to live up to Gods standards, with fear of failure,
perfectionism, emotional inhibition, and preoccupation with guilt, shame, and
punishment as the inevitable result. Like all early maladaptive schemas, negative
God images could conceivably lead to considerable distress.
Young’s (1994) schema-focused psychotherapy for personality-disordered patients
might be relevant for patients with maladaptive God images. The cognitive, experien-
tial, interpersonal and behavioural techniques of Young’s approach could then be used
to change pain provoking images into more benign, adaptive ones, thereby reducing
their distress. Interventions in cognitive schema-focused psychotherapy, for example,
aim at challenging both the content of religious cognitions and the operations in
thinking (Johnson, 2001; Nielsen, 2001; Propst, 1996; Robb, 2001).
All of the preceding suggestions need empirical confirmation. Future research
therefore needs to focus on (1) identification of early maladaptive schemas involving
negative God images in personality disordered patients, for instance by using
Young’s schema questionnaire; and (2) investigation of the feasibility and effective-
ness of this type of treatment, especially in patients with negative God images.
Finally, since cross-sectional studies do not allow causal interpretations,
follow-up studies are needed to evaluate the effects of schema focused therapy on
negative God images. Such studies would ideally address themselves to the ques-
tion: Can negative images develop into more benign ones and is this related to
better mental functioning, and under what conditions might such a favorable tran-
sition occur?27
7. PUTTING THE PIECES TOGETHER AND AN OVERALL OUTLOOK
Before this chapter will be concluded, I would like to reflect for a while on our
findings.
We were, first, impressed by Albert Schweitzer’s thorough and critical discussion
of the many lives of the historical Jesus. We acknowledged his intuition and insight
in psychic dynamics, an insight that anticipates later developments in psychology
and psychology of religion.
Subsequently, I reviewed the literature on constructs like projection, especially
with respect to the use of such mechanisms to maintain an inner equilibrium of self-
and object representations, and the depiction of the self as one of the sources of such
mechanisms. There appeared to be some evidence for correspondence between the
nature of self-representations and images of God or Jesus. However, the stronger
claim of Freudian paternal projection theory could not be confirmed. Piedmont et al.
(1997), for instance, found that only 11% of the variance in Jesus image ratings
was associated with the subjects’ self-perception. Their claim that this represents
“a moderate sized association” seems an overstatement.
Many questions remain unanswered. What has projection to do with its very
recipient? Is it possible that the recipient induces the mechanism? And if this is the
case, is the recipient affected by projection? How do we account for the impact of
projection mechanisms on the relationship between subject and recipient, as
perceived by the subject, in so far as the representation of the unique object known as
God is concerned?
At this stage, we perhaps are best advised to adapt our frame of reference by intro-
ducing the concept of projective identification, instead of projection. With such a
conceptual shift a different picture emerges: religious pathology is, then, related to
non-recognition of the difference between the projected image and the perception of
reality. In other words, the way Jesus and God are represented and dealt with
becomes pathological in a religious sense to the extent these images and representa-
tions are interpreted as “real” objects. The “absence” of the Other (parent, loved one,
divine object), the (unbridgeable) gap between our conceptions/images and the real-
ity of the object, is no longer tolerated and is falsified by a quasi-hallucinatory act of
identification between phantasy and reality. This theme emerges in the chapter “The
Psychologistic Approach to the Image of God” of Spero’s book:
“In fact, (. . . . .), the same tendency to mistake and construe our projected and transferred representations
of the object for the veridical object (. . . . .) exists throughout the gamut of human relationships.”28
Religious pathology could, then, be viewed as the result of projective identification,

which in its turn may serve many aims: to avoid separation, to control the object, to
get rid of bad parts of the self, or to protect good parts of the self. From this object
relational perspective we might better understand the tension and ambiguity, and the
more than occasional simultaneity, between portrayal and betrayal.
At the background of this discussion there looms a still broader philosophical
issue: the supposed dichotomy between objectivist and subjectivist accounts of
religious “objects.” This dichotomy dates back to Descartes and early Enlightenment
rationalist philosophy. In our view it is absolutely necessary to somehow get beyond
this dichotomous mode of thinking (Jones, 1996; Spero, 1992). At the same time, it
is also clear that despite the fact that we are all post-Cartesians, our thoughts and
conceptual schemas are still deeply permeated by the Cartesian mindset.29
8. “PARADIDÓMI”
We will bring our considerations to a close with a theoretical or experimental investi-

gation of the recipient of the projections and projective identification, the religious
object. What is happening between the recipient and the reader, the listener, the
believer? To do this, I will focus on the New Testament Greek verb “paradidómi.” The
term “paradidómi” can be translated in two ways. The word occurs frequently in the
passion story, in which is used to indicate the betrayal of Jesus, his being handed over
to Pilate, and for his being delivered up by Pilate at the apparent will of the people.
The other meaning of the verb is “tradition;” that is to say – the accuracy with which
the image of Jesus is portrayed. For example, the essential teaching for Paul is the
purity with which the Christian tradition is handed down or handed on. In a certain
way, this double meaning has haunted the way Jesus is imagined and represented
200 VERHAGEN
from early times till now. This ambiguity has been the leitmotiv of this study as well.
Were Jesus actual teachings handed down or handed over? Or do we have “teachings”
somehow debrided of the personality of the man who crafted these teachings? Is Jesus
portrayed or betrayed? Or do these two always go together?
There is some evidence for this third position. Van de Beek (chapter 15, this
volume) for instance, seems inclined to the same position in his description of the
different impressions the person of Jesus makes on him. The psychological portray-
als of Jesus as they are found in the four gospels, give us “insight into how people in
the early church used psychology to express their faith – and into what according to
them was the characteristic Christian personality” (italics added by P.J.V.), depend-
ing on the context they lived in and the interests they had. That kind of approach
even clarifies why in contemporary times people tend to prefer the Jesus of one
gospel to the Jesus of another, a radical Jesus to a wise Jesus, or a mysterious one to
a moderate person. Van de Beek takes a position in which the influence of religious,
political and emotional commitments on the interpreter are taken for granted. In
these preferences of today, as in the nineteenth and early twentieth century, we
perceive the ambiguity between portrayal and betrayal. Van de Beek, however, does
not hide his own personal opinion regarding to the role these influences have played
on his appreciation of the person of Jesus.
9. JESUS AND HIS STRANGENESS
What about the influence of the legendary or historical person him- or herself on that
imagining by ordinary and scholarly people, with or without pathological personal-
ity traits? What can be said about the self in the presence of God, or the presence of
Jesus? Is it possible, for instance, that our self-conceptions and self-perceptions
change owing to the actual influence of the presence and absence of Jesus – either by
sudden conversion, or over the years, through the dynamic tension between opposing
self-images and object-images?
With this question in mind I think it appropriate to reinstate the notion of the
strangeness of Jesus (Theissen, 2003). By doing so, I return to Albert Schweitzer and
one of his remarkable open-ended final sentences:
“He comes to us as one unknown, without a name, as of old, by the lakeside, he came to those men who
did not know who he was. He says the same words, ‘Follow me!’, and sets us to those tasks which he must
fulfil in our time. He commands. And to those who hearken to him, whether wise or unwise, he will reveal
himself in the peace, the labours, the conflicts and the suffering that they may experience in his fellow-
ship, and as an ineffable mystery they will learn who he is”.30
In Schweitzer’s last chapter, at an earlier point, he felt that he had ascertained that
theology can only be surprised and dismayed by this elusiveness. And yet it is this very
strangeness that in so many important ways exerts an impact on the reader, the believer
and the scholar, and elicits their most profound reactions, whether religious, political,
emotional, or scientific. This is what Theissen referred to when he introduced the con-
struct of psychological strangeness.31 It is this strangeness, whether in the authority
and perfection or in the humbleness and weakness of Jesus, that inevitably leads to a
confrontation. This confrontation, or encounter, and the perceived reactions of the

ultimately unimaginable Other are incentives for (re-) enactment and identification of
the self with part-objects, and this with various aims. In this way the potential of the
relationship is challenged, in both directions, toward the other and toward the self, by
re-enactment and transformation of rigid interactive patterns.
From this psychological perspective it could be maintained that relational patterns
gradually become imbued with values. These relational patterns, though related, are
not identical to the truth of the narrative (Wolterstorff, 1995). What does the object
of the act of imagining do with the subject? What do biblical narratives effect upon
their readers? What happens in that so-called enactment? What is the impact of
strangeness of the historical Jesus? How can we perceive the ongoing process of
creation and maintenance of the imagining of Jesus throughout the life cycle?
In partial response, note that according to a variant of the performance mode of
text interpretation (Wolterstorff, 1995), the so-called reception aesthetics (Jauss,
1991), three processes become active. In the process of “poiesis” the reader reveals
his life history, context and expectations by handing on the meaning of the narrative
of Jesus and by concretizing that meaning in his life story. In the process of “aisthe-
sis” the reader receives a new view, an (re)open(ed) mind, a new perceiving of moti-
vations and needs, elicited by the enactment. The third process, the “katharsis,”
means the efficacious change in moral judgment, commitment and way of life in
communication with others. The Christian variant of these three processes are
named “meditatio,” “compassio” and “imitatio.” It is the encounter with the Jesus of
the Gospels in his strangeness that brings about this alteration in attitude, desire,
habit and emotional proclivity.
NOTES
1
I prefer the participle “imagining” to the noun image. We are used to the distinction between the God
concept and the God representation or God image (Lawrence, 1997). The God concept is a more or less
intellectual cognitive paraphrase of God. The God image in a psychological sense is an internal model
of how an individual imagines God to be; ‘“a compound memorial process”, aggregating memories
from various sources and associating them with God’ (Lawrence, 1997; Rizzuto, 1979). It would be a
misunderstanding if we assumed that such an internal model would be fixed from a certain point of
development. We should be aware of the fact that the creation of the image of God or Jesus is a process
that continues throughout the life cycle (Erikson, 1959; Meissner, 1992). I would like to stress this
ongoing process of creation and maintenance by using the word “imagining.”
Religious imagination is an intriguing and provoking topic. According to Aristotle imagination
is suspect, because it is too free and unconstrained. Usually imagination (and religious imagination) is
placed between sensation and thinking. We imagine things not given by perception, and imagination
is not constrained by logic and examination. In his recent review Gregersen argues in favor of the
naturalness of religious imagination (Gregersen, 2003). This naturalness is implied by two aspects:
(1) religious imagination develops “effortlessly, as a result of the workings of the human mind”, and
(2) religious imagination “depends on non-cultural constraints, such as genes, central nervous systems
and brains” (Gregersen, 2003, p. 3).
2
See also Wulff (1991), pp. 317–368.
3
Theissen (2003), p. 288.
4
Schweitzer (2001), pp. 478–487; Theissen (2003), pp. 6–7, 285–294.
202 VERHAGEN
5
Weaver (1999), p. 360. This multiformity can also be demonstrated in another way. Since the end of the
1960s new christological sketches appeared in the countries of Africa, Asia and Latin America. These
sketches belong to what is called the contextual theology. In these sketches we meet Jesus for instance
as the chief, the ancestor or the healer according to African christologies. Or we see Jesus as the black
Messiah in the context of the struggle against white racist presumptions. Again, the same ambiguity as
noticed by Weaver can be found. Or, in the words of Wessels, in these sketches a bi-paly is going on
between “portrayal or betrayal” (cited by Küster, 2001, p. 1).
6
McGrath (1994), p. 326.
7
Jeremias (1961), p. 14.
8
McGrath (1994), p. 325.
9
The portrayal of Jesus by Vergote has the characteristics of an “admirational identification” (Jauss,
1991). The important (O)ther (the hero or the saint) is perfect, elicits admiration and is an example. The
“imitatio” in this scheme is not a mere obsessive, slavish observance, but a free and personal shaping
of similar behaviour and style of living.
10
Schweitzer (2001), pp. 292–294.
11
Schweitzer (2001), p. 295; see also Schweitzer, 1913, pp. 43–46.
12
Schweitzer (2001), p. 294.
13
Schweitzer (2001), pp. 5–6; italics added by PJV.
14
15
Barth (1981), p. 495.
16
Evans (1996), pp. 43–44; McGrath (1994), p. 329; Schweitzer (2001), pp. 74–90.
17
Cited by Schweitzer (2001), p. 6.
18
Schweitzer (2001), pp. 158–167.
19
Schweitzer (2001), pp. 7, 167.
20
Pfister (1944), p. 485.
21
22
Schweitzer (2001), pp. 65–73.
23
Spero (1992), p. 49.
24
Spero (1992), p. 49.
25
Piedmont (1999), pp. 341–344.
26
See Schaap-Jonker et al. (2002), pp. 67–68.
27
See Schaap-Jonker et al. (2002), pp. 68–70.
28
Spero (1992), p. 91.
29
See also the introductory remarks to the historical and conceptual issues made by Glas and his con-
cluding chapter in this book.
30
31
Theissen (2003), p. 289.
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PART V
INTERDISCIPLINARY ISSUES: PROSPECTS
FOR THE FUTURE
CHAPTER 17
INTRODUCTION TO INTERDISCIPLINARY ISSUES

Prospects for the future
GERRIT GLAS
The variety of the contributions to the last section in this volume illustrates the
enormous richness of the field we are surveying, both in its content and in its vari-
ety of interdisciplinary tools and methodologies. Spero focuses on the interface
between psychoanalytical insight and biblical/rabbinic exegesis in a fascinating
essay on the “hidden subject of Job.” Pfeifer’s account is concentrated upon the sur-
facing of biblical themes in psychiatric practice in a clear and wise overview that
could very well be considered an example of integrative thinking. Rollins offers a
well-informed description of the history, presence and future of “psychological crit-
icism” as a new type of biblical scholarship. The author of this Introduction ends
the section with a contribution in which some of the conference’s loose ends are
picked up and unfinished discussions are carried on for a while, culminating in an
agenda for the future.
The first chapter, or essay, if one prefers, deals with the well-known biblical
character of Job. Its author is Moshe Halevi Spero, psychoanalyst, scholar in the
humanities and in rabbinic studies, and co-editor of this book. Spero distinguishes
Job the person, or character named Job, from Job, the book with its inherent struc-
ture as a written instrument, its themes and its history of interpretations. The hid-
den “subject” of Job, therefore, does not refer to a hidden theme of the book, but to
a subject who is not present and may even “not be” at all, at least not in the ordi-
nary sense of the verb “to be,” that is – philosophically speaking – in terms of an
ontology of presence. Spero is persuaded that the unknown author of Job lends
eloquent representational expression to one of the earliest intersubjective develop-
mental tasks, which form part of what is called the “mirroring phase.” Phrased in
this way, the “subject” of the book is not simply a theme which can be analysed,
207
© 2007 Springer.
208 GLAS
interpreted, and related to other “themes.” Spero suggests instead that the author of
Job obeyed
“an inner compulsion to transmit an inherently and intrinsically turbulent psychological force – one not
quietable by nature, one that cannot be defined in any simple sense, and one whose “solution” is not nec-
essarily identifiable in the form of any specific datum of knowledge.”
Let me put some emphasis here on the notion of “force.” With this notion Spero takes
up and elaborates on one of the key issues in the previous sections and their introduc-
tions: the ambiguity of speaking and writing about a (religious) dynamic which is
both undeniable and almost inconceivable, not only for the scientific mind but for
every Cartesian form of understanding which views the object as Gegenstand , i.e., as
something out there to be analysed, broken down into pieces and reconstructed by
human logic. According to Spero’s existentially- and religiously-enriched psychoana-
lytic terminology, the author of Job was in some manner especially sensitive to some
dimension of “inherent turbulence” within the self, a dimension that borders on the
inexpressible. Yet, at the same time, this heroic author was able to perceive “a dimen-
sion of pragmatic articulability” which allowed a form of narration that – though dim,
primordial and ephemeral – could transfer important meaning.
In a series of fine and intricate analyses, Spero makes a case for the view that Job
should be read as a myth which has survived precisely because its mythical quali-
ties reveal underlying structures and contents that otherwise would have been lost to
the mind, or, remain inexpressible. From a psychological point of view, myth brings
the mind to an imaginary realm in which unconscious content gains symbolic
meaning. This is accomplished not by adding meaning to such content extrinsically,
but by letting oneself become engaged in a dynamic of unfolding and closing of
unconscious structures and contents. In this manner, myth – because of its deriva-
tiveness on unconscious processes – brings us into the sphere of absence: myth
comes from nowhere, so to speak (e.g., the unidentifiable land of Uz) and is always
about “something else.” Its language re-presents in such a manner that it enables
absence to be preserved. Absence, again, is not sheer non-existence, but refers to a
sphere of symbolization and power which works precisely in so far as its mystery is
maintained and valued.
From this perspective, Job must be read as the story of a myth-writer – Moses
himself, according to Talmudic sources – who provides the rare opportunity to be
witness to a process of personal evolution, referring to the earliest stages of inner
development. The monologues of the friends, Job’s prayers, his rebuttal to the
friends and his bitter complaints, the words of Elihu, God’s self-manifestation,
and finally Job’s repentance – are all reconceptualized as parts of an intense inter-
nal dialogue. Or, putting this more clearly, they indicate the very early phases of a
process which, after completion, imaginatively could be represented as such a
dialogue. The process itself, Spero suggests, shares many features with phenom-
ena which emerge in the so-called mirroring phase, one of the earliest phases of
psychic development, as interpreted by Jacques Lacan and other, mainly French,
psychoanalysts.
INTRODUCTION TO INTERDISCIPLINARY ISSUES 209
This background is important because of Lacan’s criticism of what – in his

estimation – were naive American ego psychological approaches to the concept of
identification, in which mirroring phenomena were seen as part of a process creating
something new, a sphere of mutuality and sharing, between infant and caretaker.
Lacan emphasized instead the inherent alienation which is set in train by the mirror-
ing process and a certain estrangement which becomes part of the ego.
To understand this, the reader is asked to adopt the Lacanian view that the mirror
image not only serves unifying goals, but also signifies alienation and rage. The mir-
ror image is unifying because it enables the retroactive imagination of the self as
fragmented “body-in-pieces” – an imagination which itself is only possible from a
position with some solidity and permanence. However, the mirror image also, and
more hideously, indicates and instils a sense of alienation, envy and rage, in so far as
it can be seen as fulfilling an imagined lack within the other, instead of oneself. In
other words, the mirror image is not simply taken as an “external” representation of
a more or less unified self, but also, and perhaps even more importantly, as repre-
senting the self as object of desire of the other. Crucial to this desire is that it signi-
fies a lack (or absence) in the other; the desiring object misses something. The child,
subsequently, identifies with this lack, thereby permanently creating a new lack
within itself. Thus, during the mirroring phase the child’s self-perception changes: a
preoccupation for the coherence of shattered part-images of the self is transformed
into a readiness to absorb and internalize the desire of (not for!) the other, with its
inherent negativity (or lack).
I realize that these statements are too brief to do justice to the intricacy and depth
of both Lacan’s thinking and Spero’s use of the Lacanian conceptual framework in
his analysis of Job/Job. But one other brief comment is necessary in order to avoid
at least one common misunderstanding. Lacan’s use of terms like the Imaginary and
symbolization are not meant to denote a rather primitive, subjectivistic epistemol-
ogy, in which realities are represented just in the way the subject prefers to view
them. Lacan’s basic thesis is much more radical. For, it is only from within the
sphere of imagination that the Real can be recognized as “real.” It would otherwise
be incomprehensible, no more real than unreal or ir-real. Symbolization, then, leads
to further distinctions within the sphere of the Imaginary. In Lacanian jargon, there
is no such thing as the real, there is no reality “as such.” Therefore, fragmentation
and emptiness become only real under conditions in which there is something to
“mentalize;” i.e., in a context in which psychic contents can be contained at least
for a while in some form – and in which the mental appears as a function of narra-
tion, one might say – and in a context which the subject has achieved at least a lim-
ited capacity to represent.
One of the most intriguing aspects of Spero’s essay in this respect is his observation
of the importance of metaphors related to oral phenomena (in the sense of the psy-
chosexual phases of psychological development); more specifically, references to the
skin, the mouth, clothing, coverings and garment. These metaphors often sound cold
and frightening in The Book of Job, at first sight. Job is “emptied out of his protective
shell.” He “begins to sense that he may not be whom he believes himself to be” and
210 GLAS
“can do no more than surrender his “self” to God, trusting in some form of rewriting,
reidentification, or resignification.” Again, this reidentification does not occur as an
affirmation, or assertion, of something present, but in two stages, after the first and
second instalments of the whirlwind. The first manifestation is preceded by God’s
question to Job:
Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?
Declare, if you have the understanding. (Job 37:4)
Confronted with this question, Job remains silent. It is only after the second manifesta-
tion of divine glory and power that Job finds his tongue and begins to speak; this time,
however, without any invitation to do so. Spero takes this to mean that God leaves
room for Job to desire to speak. Earlier, God’s questions and His self-manifestation
were in a certain sense also affirmations of His desire for Job. However, these were so
overwhelming as to leave little space for “mentalization” and consolation. On the sec-
ond occasion, however, there is room for a learning process to start; there is time for
mourning, repair, and consolation. God’s “affirmation” of Job, thus, retains its inherent
negativity. God does not just restore order. Neither does He give a full answer to Job’s
desire for recognition, explanation, or justification. However, it is only by maintaining
this inherent negativity that Job is invited and actually able to take part in a dynamic
which opens up his existence and helps him surmount the turmoil in the way of imagi-
nary representation and symbolic appropriation and, finally, of acceptance of lack,
longing, and incompleteness, as “realities” even in God.
Spero gives many textual and psychological clues to support his hypothesis that
Moses’s own struggles were what inspired him (Moses) to his role as “myth-writer”
of Job. I will leave it to the reader to savour the subtlety of the passages in which
these textual hints are analysed and imaginatively explored, both in the context of
rabbinic scholarship and of current psychoanalytic theorizing.
The next chapter is by Samuel Pfeifer, a Swiss psychiatrist and director of psychi-
atric hospital “Sonnenhalde” in Riehen (Switzerland), and one of the driving forces
behind the Conferences for Psychotherapy and Counselling in Gwatt (Switzerland)
(now under auspices of the Akademie für Psychotherapie und Seelsorge). With his
chapter, Pfeifer brings us back to clinical practice and illustrates the case he wishes
to make with clinical vignettes.
The first part of the chapter is devoted to biblical themes in different forms of
psychopathology: depression, schizophrenia, anxiety and personality disorders. The
second part briefly reviews the theme of religious attribution of causes of mental ill-
ness. Pfeifer discusses his own research on the subject in which it was demonstrated
that demonic causal attributions were not specifically related to psychosis (schizophre-
nia) but to the ego-dystonic quality of certain perception, feelings, and actions. Pfeifer
uses the term ego-dystonic in its classical sense of the quality of unfamiliarity and
strangeness; what happens in one’s perception, feeling, or action does not belong to
oneself and is, in cases of demonic attribution, explained by the influence of demons.
The third part of his chapter argues for the need to build bridges between biblical
“models” and bio-psycho-social psychiatry. Biblical models of mental distress are
INTRODUCTION TO INTERDISCIPLINARY ISSUES 211
far more complicated and rich than is suggested by concepts like sin, curse, and
demonic possession. Biblical texts do support an integrative view on the patient in
which biological, psychological, and sociological aspects are interwoven. I am not
certain whether Pfeifer would support the claim of some of his religious colleagues
to add a fourth, spiritual dimension to the bio-psycho-social model of psychopathol-
ogy. However, it is clear that spiritual issues do matter, that this is reflected in social
and psychological functioning of patients, and that there exists a great need for
carefully designed, sufficiently rich empirical research on the impact of spiritual
functioning on mental well-being.
In the final paragraph Pfeifer offers a plea for a supportive, integrative and value-
sensitive approach of the patient. It is not unethical to challenge the assumptions of
the world of the patient if this world is perceived as dysfunctional by the clinician.
Religion may indeed play a dysfunctional role. However, this should be done care-
fully and with sufficient sensitivity with respect to the impact that this probing is
likely to have upon the self-image and religiosity of the patient.
Pfeifer’s contribution is clinically oriented and offers much needed suggestions about
how to deal with religious issues in psychotherapy and psychiatry. The overall impres-
sion is that of the extensiveness of the interactions between religion and psychiatry.
Pfeifer argues for a view in which the clinician takes the role of “interpreter” between
the religiously loaded, assumptive world of the patient and the bio-psycho-social frame-
work of the psychiatrist.
Wayne Rollins, professor emeritus of Assumption College and of Hartford Semi-
nary (Worcester, Massachusetts, and Hartford, Connecticut; respectively) and one of
the founders of a research section on Psychology and Biblical Studies of the Society
of Biblical Scholarship (1991), traces the interactions between psychology and bibli-
cal scholarship, especially those amounting to the recognition of a new discipline in
the field of biblical studies known as “psychological criticism.” The overall impres-
sion of the history of these interactions is that of a “spirited dialogue” between psy-
chologists and bible scientists. In ancient times, early predecessors of what now is
called psychology were concerned with the soul, an inclusive term encompassing
both mental and spiritual aspects of psychic functioning. Bible scholars, on the other
hand, were aware of all sorts of psychological factors which are operative in the con-
text of Bible interpretation. They even played a significant role in the acceptance of
psychology. It was, for instance, Melanchton who introduced the term psychology to
the academic world. And after the Reformation period, theologians were inclined to
counter hesitance about the term and its new content by referring to a long history in
which it was quite normal to discuss psychological factors in the lives of Biblical per-
sonalities and in the appropriation of their stories by contemporary believers. This
dialogue was temporarily broken up under the influence of Schweitzer’s criticism of
the psychiatric study of Jesus and of positivism and behaviourism in psychology, but
gained new impetus after the demise of behaviourism and the dethroning of historical
literary criticism as dominant approach in the Bible sciences.
Rollins defines psychological criticism as a discipline which investigates the
role of psychological processes in both the construction of the text and in its later
212 GLAS
appropriations. A second focus is “biblical psychology,” that is, the images of the
self and of the human person which are evoked by stories and personalities in the
Bible. Rollins then focuses on seven areas of concern for this new type of scholar-
ship: unconscious factors at work in the text and its readers (collective unconscious
factors included; with a reference to Jung); interpretation of biblical religious
phenomena; analysis of psychodynamic factors in biblical texts; psychological
analysis of biblical portraits of personalities; biblical psychology (mentioned above);
psychological hermeneutics; and, finally, history of effects of the Bible and of Bible
interpretation.
Psychology, on the other hand, might learn from religion and biblical studies,
for instance from its concept of a unified soul or self and from its notion of spirit.
The human spirit transcends earthly reality in so far as it is a reality perceived by the
senses.
The book concludes with a chapter by the author of these Introductions, who is
psychiatrist and philosopher. In this text I share some reflections on the thematic
content of the conference. I first focus on the wide-spread dissociation between per-
sonal and scientific approaches of the Bible and draw some analogies with similar
incidents of dissociation in psychiatry. I then highlight what throughout the book has
been called the “transformative power” of religion. In the previous chapters this
transformative power emerged as one of the most central and inescapable aspects of
religion. After this, I try to point out how the main themes of the conference could
have a bearing on psychiatry and psychotherapy, both clinically and scientifically.
I finish with some thoughts about the possible contribution of biblical psychology to
the practice of psychotherapy and psychiatry. This contribution should be sought in
a variety of ways: first, in the further expansion of psychological criticism; second,
in the development of a biblical worldview which may serve as mediating frame-
work between the world of the Bible and the world of psychiatry and psychotherapy;
and, finally, in the analysis of psychological processes occurring between text and
reader, and between readers, both contemporary and historical readers.
CHAPTER 18
THE HIDDEN SUBJECT OF JOB

Mirroring and the anguish of interminable desire
MOSHE HALEVI SPERO
Postgraduate Program of Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy,

School of Social Work, Bar-Ilan University
Weinstock Oncology Day Hospital, Shaare Zedek Medical Center
Department of Psychiatry, Sarah Herzog Memorial Hospital
Behind every strategy of the symbolic world,
there exists a theology to legitimate it.
Umberto Eco (1981, p. 912)
The subject of Job, whatever might be its theological or literary dimensions,1 would
seem to be Job, or God, or Job and God, and there ought to be no mystery about this.2
But there is mystery here, not least of which derives from the well-known problem
that we do not even know who wrote Job, or why. And that is precisely why the title
of this essay alludes to the fact that I am interested in a hidden subject. I will not say
at this point who that subject might be, but the question I directed toward the first four
words of this chapter may become sharper if I rephrase things ever so slightly and ask:
Who is the subject of Job (not Job), or, who is the subject named Job? I will tweak the
reader’s attention by hinting that I have in mind a subject who might not be. This
subject-who-might-not-be is, in my opinion, the proper subject of Job.
This essay, hopefully, will underscore something much deeper and more funda-
mental in Job than the usual themes having to do with the human propensities for
crises of faith, obsessions about theodicy, and self-immolation over tragedy, evil,
unjust suffering, and similar kinds of themes that have preoccupied previous
writers.3 Of course, these moral and theological issues are certainly among the
outstanding contributions of the book. And, like any investigator with a modicum of
interest in evidential hypotheses, my attention will also gravitate toward many of the
same stylistic, syntactic, and thematic idiosyncrasies that have perplexed previous
writers. If my thesis is on the right track, it should be possible to elevate many of
these idiosyncrasies – in particular, the mystery of the so-called “missing subject”4
of Job, 42:6 – to an entirely new plane of meaning.
213
© 2007 Springer.
214 SPERO
However, my professional perspectives are psychological as well as religious,

and I am persuaded that the unknown author of Job has managed to lend eloquent
representational form to one of the earliest, and among the most critical intersub-
jective developmental tasks that challenge the human mind during childhood and
in modified form throughout a lifetime. Furthermore, though more difficult to
prove, I believe that the author of Job set out intentionally to create this represen-
tation. Establishing such an intention, or at least lending strong support for same,
would do much to resolve some of the perennial conundrums that characterize
this book.
But what is the scope of the term “intentional”? I certainly do not mean that
the author was conscious of wanting to create a psychoanalytic, developmentally-
oriented text in the contemporary sense of these scientific terms. Rather, I am per-
suaded that the author of Job was conscious (or mostly conscious), and painfully
so, of certain intuitions bearing upon what we today call the mirroring phase, its
joys and terrors, and was able to fashion an extensive mythic story, organized
from bits of preexisting myths as well as from personal experience, that could
successfully articulate the intense and stunningly paradoxical psychological
forces that comprise this phase, and endow the mind with the capacity to move
beyond it.
One caveat: I do not intend to quote much chapter and verse in this essay; it is not
that kind of essay, and I must assume that the reader is sufficiently versed in Job as
to be able to link up quickly with such allusions as I do make to the text. When the
substance of the text is critical, I will cite such material in full. But there are other,
less familiar working assumptions that influence my writing, and these require some
introduction. I want to provide this introductory matter because I think that the man-
ner in which I intend to go about interpreting Job is as important as my actual thesis
regarding Job.
1. A META-ANALYTIC INTRODUCTION
Pauvre Job! If the dreadful trials and tribulations reported in the biblical text were
insufficient to bring him to apostasy, and his compatriots’ admonitions unable to break
his resolve, our incessant reinterpretations of the individual, his dilemmas, and his text
may eventually break the man, ironically restoring to Temptation its forfeiture.
Yet here is another essay, and so I, too, have succumbed to the compulsion.
Centuries’ worth of scholarship has persisted in the attempt to illuminate the mysteries
of Job’s personal attributes – his righteousness, his suffering, his quest, his celebrated
patience,5 and the nature of his relationship with his wife, his friends and God – and to
resolve the conundrums of the text, such as its origin, the dramatic prologue and com-
paratively naive epilogue, the interdigitation of the dialogues, its famous aporia, and of
course its provocative theology, both explicit and implicit.6 These manifold dimen-
sions are indeed fascinating, encompassing a great stock of objective oddities yet to be
resolved. But no reader of Job can put aside the impression that something much
deeper lies at work beneath the surface of this text; something that, more so than with
THE HIDDEN SUBJECT OF JOB 215
any other biblical text, outstrips its historical, moral, and literary qualities, and runs to
the root of a fundamental mystery of human selfhood.
Now from a strictly deterministic psychoanalytical point of view, one might say,
matters could not possibly be otherwise. After all, the works of man under all condi-
tions express the vicissitudes of the psyche and the frustrations of human subjectivity;
sublimated to this degree or that, to be sure, yet always emerging from some device or
crevice in a given piece of art, literary text, or spoken narrative. And from the oppos-
ing direction as well, the reader of or participant in human kraft cannot help but
respond on some level – be it empathic resonance, enjoyment, resistance, or renunci-
ation (see Freud, 1905/1906) – to the latent, generally unconscious psychological
factors that course through the given text, piece of music, or work of art.
From this point of view, then, our chronic preoccupation with Job can be
expected ex principium to be the consequence of very powerful, unsettling, and
conflict-bound psychodynamic forces operating in the very core of intersubjective
relations. Presumably, these would be forces that, although they have been carried
“through” the text, have yet to be adequately articulated or contained within the lit-
erary, moral, or philosophical packages we have designed to date, such that the
unrest in the heart of the reader of Job corresponds to unrest in the heart of the
author. The scholar may naively (and forgivably) believe he has exercised his own
conscious choice in deciding to alight upon this poorly metered strophe or that
overarching philosophical dilemma, but in reality, he has succumbed to an incon-
testable pull emanating from deep within the text. It is for this reason that the com-
pulsion to interrogate the text in search of sense, any sense, continues to beckon
even when the “objective” scholarly agenda has been allegedly resolved. This may
even be an additional aspect of what is tragic about Job.7
Yet this kind of theory sets into motion a very important line of inquiry. To what
degree was the author of Job himself aware of this internal disquietude, to what
degree could he assign some form of meaningful structure to the anxiety-provoking
elements of his self-consciousness, and to what degree did he intend to share such
structures, if there were, with others? If the author knew what was bothering him, if
he had some modality for comprehending and articulating his perplexity – as the
very existence of this eloquent text would seem to suggest – then the task of subse-
quent readers is not an impossible one. Meaning of some kind, and in a positivist
sense, exists; this meaning was conveyed, either explicitly or implicitly; and mean-
ing may be rediscovered.
With such an argument in mind, numerous contemporary authors (we shall briefly
consider some below) have attempted to analyze Job’s personality, or to seek that
which the author of Job knew and wished to communicate, without ever questioning
on the meta-analytic level whether or not Job conveys something which can be
known at all, or whether it expresses a state of mind that can be evaluated as mean-
ing this or meaning that or is capable of importing a specific moral or psychological
lesson with a potential solution.8 Presumably, to raise questions of such radically
basic nature would appear to question whether or not Job was sane at all or mentally
capable of expressing a sentient message.
216 SPERO
Now there is not a shred of evidence to suggest that Job as we encounter him, or
the author of Job, was anything less than sane. Nevertheless, I have raised this meta-
question because I believe that Job’s torment and the “notion” with which he strug-
gles have very much to do with psychological experiences on the edge of what is
knowable or capable of being articulated. For another argument can be made. It is
possible to assume that the author of Job obeyed an inner compulsion to transmit an
inherently and intrinsically turbulent psychological force – one not quietable by
nature, one that cannot be defined in any simple sense, and one whose “solution” is
not necessarily identifiable in the form of any specific datum of knowledge! If such
were the case, then our anticipations regarding the text must be different. One would
need to anticipate that all subsequent generations of readers would find themselves
equally unable to modify this situation, despite all the interpretive might at their
disposal. This possibility would naturally render much of our scholarly investment in
Job an exercise in futility. Moreover, it would cast aspersion on the traditional theo-
logical principle that considers prophetic writings purposive and pregnant with
coherent messages of transgenerational importance.9
I believe that exactly this kind of paradox lies at the core of Job, and yet there is no
need to despair of working with it, for an alternative conceptualization can be
evoked. It is not an unfamiliar one. This conceptualization is drawn from the
methodology utilized by those who have grappled with similar paradoxes that have
emerged in the encounter between the almost nihilistic, reductionist deconstruction
of postmodernism and the Cartesian positivism to which psychoanalytic theory and
interpretation aspired.10 This approach acknowledges, on one hand, the extensive
domains of incoherence, irrationality, instability, and turmoil within the human psy-
che, and the inherent impossibilities of perhaps all knowledge conducted through
“languaged minds.” This range of complexity and incoherence is believed to exist on
some level, whether we like it or not, in the most highly sophisticated and seemingly
durable ethical and philosophical teachings. This inchoate domain is exemplified
by the primary unconscious, the secondary or repressed unconscious, and the
dimensions of preverbal mental experience, silent deep grammar, and implicit
mental operations – all of which are active on some level within the subterranean
levels of human activity.11
The saving grace of this alternative approach, on the other hand, is that it points to
the fact that, despite the postmodern critique, humanity seems to be able to create
relatively stable configurations and structures around these domains, ranging from
the most concrete vessels of containment, such as the cave dweller’s rudimentary
pot, to the multidimensional abstractions of thought and the intricate if fragile sys-
tems of ethics with which man attempts to maintain social behavior. This alternative
conceptual framework acknowledges the role of chaos, unknowability, impossibility,
and disarray in human events, but also acknowledges that human history is charac-
terized by periods, stages, and, at deeper substrata, by long-term ranges of stability
and inner coherence, during which times it is possible to grasp a bit of the swirling
chaos and give it expression, to capture some of that which lies at the event horizon
of human consciousness and lend it permanent expression. In the clinical context,
the argument has been that, while to some degree much of human nature is always in
the process of contextualizing and decontextualizing itself, other important dimen-
sions of human experience – particularly those that have been internalized and set to
a temporal pace most suitable for the circumstances in which the individual finds
himself – can be deemed “stable,” knowable, analyzable, and, most important, capa-
ble of being expressed and retained in narrative form.12 This the human mind does in
full cognizance (at least, since contemporary consciousness has become increasingly
able to deal with this possibility) that some of these expressions may continue to
strike a familiar chord for eons while the vast majority may be interpreted differently
by future minds.
Thus, my meta-assumption for what follows is that the author of Job was some-
how particularly sensitive to a specific dimension of “inherent turbulence” within the
self, one which borders on that which is ultimately inexpressible and even madden-
ing about the earliest steps of the formation of self. At the same time, and to our
good fortune, this author simultaneously perceived a dimension or grid of pragmatic
articulability (for lack of a better way of saying it) – dim, primordial, ephemeral, yet
nevertheless one that he felt he would be able, with his narrative gifts, to lend some
meaningful, linguistically-transportable quality, so that something about this state
could be grasped and discussed in a consensual way. And if this is the case, then we,
like the author of Job himself, have good reason to anticipate that our new perspec-
tives will enable us to add an increment of coherence to that which, ultimately, will
always exceed the bounds of articulation.
One of the introductory apprehensions that I raised can be settled if the preceding
characterization is accurate.13 That is, it now seems very likely that the reason we
continue to penetrate Job is not so much in order to resolve specific textual dilem-
mas, or to evolve ultimate philosophical resolutions for Job’s moral quandaries as
such. Rather, we interpret Job – and continuously inquire anew, and write and
rewrite – because this is the truest consolation one can offer Job, and may be, in fact,
the only consolation he sought. By the time we conclude, I hope it will be clear that
this is no trivial assertion.
2. WHO WROTE JOB?
Among the major quandaries surrounding The Book of Job is its unclear paternity.
Since this issue commands an extensive literature, yet only concerns us peripherally,
I beg to briefly summarize the extent of the problem.
From the point of view of biblical research, Job’s authorship has been placed as
far back as predating Abraham, drawing from ground material with Mesopotamian
and Akkadean roots (see Pritchard, 1955),14 and extends as late as the period of the
Babylonian exile.15 Much of the debate focuses upon terminology, style, and cross-
reference,16 and far less frequently upon the context of the psychological quality of
Job’s message (which is made more difficult owing to our general bias toward uni-
versalizing the biblical message). Traditional Jewish opinion itself is rife with con-
troversy on the matter, attributing the text variously to Solomon, Mordekhai, and the
218 SPERO
returnees from the Babylonian exile, while some rabbis believed that Job lived dur-
ing a much earlier period, may have been married to Dina, the daughter of Jacob, and
may even have been a descendent of Esau.17 This debate notwithstanding, the
Talmud offers the radical opinion that Job was not Jewish but a member of the right-
eous among nations who comprehended divine truths intuitively.18 In a similar vein,
another view (Talmud, San’hed‘rēn, 106a; Exodus Rabbah, 21:7) has Job appearing
as a counselor in the court of the Pharaoh who enslaved the Hebrews, alongside
Jethro and Bēl‘am – his righteousness being attributed to his unwillingness to see the
Jews enslaved, and his trials being a punishment for his failure to speak out boldly
against the destructive decree.
There exists one other particularly important rabbinic tradition, attributed to the
talmudic sage Rabbi Shē‘mon ben La‘kēsh (ca. end 200 CE), which merits full cita-
tion (Jerusalem Talmud, So‘tah, 5:6):
Rabbi Shē‘mon ben La‘kēsh taught: Job never existed and is not destined to exist [i.e., bears no prophetic
message bearing on events that need to be anticipated]. But does this not contradict the opinion [we heard
in the name] of Rabbi Shē‘mon ben La‘kēsh citing bar Ka’pra that Job lived in the days of Abraham? Say
therefore [that Rabbi Shē‘mon intended to teach]: Job existed, but his trials never existed. Then why were
they attributed to him [in the text]? To teach that had such trials befallen him he would have been able to
withstand them.
There are variations on this theme (see also Talmud, Baba Bat’ra, 15a; and
Greenberg, 1992), but the essential idea – and it is the view adopted by Maimonides
(Mo‘reh Ne’vu‘khēm, 3:22) – is that the narrative of the Book of Job is nothing other
than a ma‘shal, a fable or morality tale. Furthermore, in the talmudic discussion of
the authorship of the different books of the Jewish canon, the author of Job, fable or
testimony, was considered to be none other than Moses himself.19
Surveying this confusion, Baskin concludes (1983, p. 7; see also Baskin, 1992):
“The problem of Job’s identity is inherent in the book itself. Other biblical narratives
are rooted in time and place, but Job seems to exist outside of time.” Baskin’s turn of
phrase is important because it highlights a central dimension of the psychological
reality expressed in Job and that is: its supratemporal quality.20 It is the specific qual-
ity of being above time, or of being timeless, that tends to characterize cultural myths
that are of the greatest relevance to psychological development.
Indeed, I believe four factors in particular suggest strongly that the proper listen-
ing frame for Job is the frame of myth, and that what we need most to comprehend
in Job can only be comprehended by attending to its mythic dimensions as opposed,
say, to what the text reveals directly. Extracting from the preceding literature that
which is most useful for us here, we note, first, that the content of the narrative itself
seems almost intentionally disinterested in marking its historical context. Second, far
from being simply tacked on to a preexisting narrative, the Prologue and Epilogue
play an important role in bringing the entire text together as a kind of dream narra-
tive. I predicate this assertion upon the crucial role played in these subtexts by the
Hebrew term ne’h.a‘mah or consolation, and this is because I believe that the term
alludes to consolation of a very specific kind, further presupposing a psychological
accomplishment of a specific kind. Third, as the literature referred to above reveals,
there do exist very ancient precedents to the text, all of which focus upon some kind
of interlocution between a suffering protagonist and his friends as they search, indi-
vidually and as a group, for some meaning or purpose behind the suffering. These
background texts may be seen as latent, deep structures of the kind that tend to sur-
vive only on the condition that they have achieved mythic quality.
Finally, aside from the Talmud’s own testimony that the author of Job is Moses, a
great many rabbinic commentaries felt that the purpose of the text is not especially to
introduce the biographical personality of Job and his historical trials, but rather the
epic ma‘shal or myth and its universal lessons. But I think that something very
important about human biography or psychology does emerge in the details of the
text. If we cull from all of the ancient textual precursors of Job and from the texts of
Job itself, the common theme that emerges is the desire to know the deity’s will or, if
I may put it differently, the wish to discover the face of the loved one whom we
beseech. Aside from any type of religious seeking, concretely construed, I believe
that there are structures hidden even deeper within this wish. And it seems to me
quite natural that these manifest and latent structures were brought together in their
fully poetic form by Moses.
3. JOB AS MYTH: WHAT LICENSE DOES THIS PROVIDE?
Why is it so important to classify Job as myth? This question actually opens a much
larger discussion than I can entertain here. The sole aspect of the discussion that con-
cerns us here is the epistemological legitimacy of analyzing the biblical personality
through contemporary psychological methods.
Classifying Job as myth – that is, aiming an analysis at its mythic dimensions –
enables us to steer clear of making claims regarding the actual or historical identity
of the personalities involved, while enabling us to focus upon the deep message that
seems to have survived centuries of revision, and which may be evolving into its
current form, so to speak, in the guise of certain “mythic” structures espoused by
contemporary psychoanalytic theorists.
Let me begin by stating that myth makes it possible to conceptualize that which
might otherwise remain not-able-to-be-experienced mentally, or unknowable, in the
human condition. Myth does this not simply by adding another “story” to the store-
house of human literature, but rather by actually augmenting the available internal
representational space of the mind so as to enable whatever kind of creative psychic
work may be necessary in order that the mind, now enveloped within a new structure
provided by myth, can come to know an important new bit of psychological data
(Lévi-Strauss, 1949, 1955). The classic illustration of this point is the way in which
the great Oedipus myth enabled the human mind to begin to grapple with specific
elements of incestuous strivings – long before the formal methods of psychoanalysis
developed alternative (better?) ways of doing so. Some myths draw their importance
from the way in which they express specific thematic content, while others lend pal-
pability to even more fundamental structures, such as the very nature of the forma-
tion of the human mind and other primary processes of psychological functioning.
220 SPERO
As Ricoeur points out (1981, 1991), the mimetic effectiveness of the poem or text, its
capacity to conduce toward some modicum of identification, works best because it
re-creates by means of what the Greeks termed mūthos, a fable, which reaches the
most profound depths of reality. From our point of view, perhaps it is more signifi-
cant to state that a story or myth has effectiveness to the extent that it engages and
somehow captures a moment of opening and closing of the symmetrical and asym-
metrical tendencies of the post-linguistic, post-specular mind, giving us a bit more of
an opportunity to “flirt” with the abyss as glimpsed through the navel (Freud, 1900a,
p. 525) of the myth or dream, along the edge of the unconscious (i.e., the dimension
of total unconscious symmetry). Myth, in Maud Mannoni’s eloquent expression of
these paradoxical qualities (1993, p. 129):
always participates in a complicity between discourse and what discourse casts off into ‘somewhere else.’
It is this rejected material that is important, because the field of speech is that of desire. Myth in this sense
comes from nowhere, that is, from the unconscious. Myth always takes place at the origin, and we come
up against an imaginary mind bounded by death on one hand and desire on the other.
Thus, myth is always about that “somewhere else,” that “something else” that cannot
be expressed through the structures of language that reign in every given epoch. Put
differently, the mythic place, or the myth qua place, refers to that geographically unlo-
calizeable Land of Uz. where Job takes place and doesn’t take place since, after all, Job
never existed except as a tale! If myth is not heard or “read” in this way, “then the
modalities – especially that of paradox – will deliver obstacles to the comprehension of
the rational mind, instead of providing lures and stimulations to the depths of the imag-
ination” (Bomford, 1999, p. 90). All the more substantial, therefore, is the prevailing
assumption that the component structures of the myth have an inherent integrity which
must be respected – indeed, maintained – in order for any of the components to exert
their structure-imposing influence over the maw of the symmetrical unconscious.
Lévi-Strauss makes another assertion that is significant in this regard (1958,
p. 216): “One of the main obstacles to the progress of mythological studies [is] the
quest for the true version, or the earlier one. On the contrary, we define the myth as
consisting of all of its versions.” He proceeds to explain that Freud’s redaction of the
Sophoclean Oedipus myth demands that Freud himself be included within the new
dimensions of the myth. I have always taken this to mean that the dynamic structure
of the myth includes not only Freud’s novel psychoanalytic perspective on Oedipus
(i.e., the problem of bisexual reproduction as opposed to the original concern, the
denial of the autochthonous origin of man), but even the dynamic conflicts within
Freud himself as he rewrote or re-narrated the original myth, even the particularities
of the writing process itself insofar as inherent to these were Freud’s mastery of key
maternal and paternal psychosexual conflicts. Similarly, and paradoxically, as we
attempt to bring forward that which we might hold to be latent in the deep core of the
story of Job we are simultaneously modifying the myth, and becoming part of it.21
We recall that myth enables thought to have dimension, which means it can also
give dimension to non-things, absences, and negativizations, and thereby include
these mythologized, and otherwise impossible dimensions of experience within the
mind (Bion, 1963, 1967). This dimension includes that which we referred to above
as the “somewhere else” and “something else” that by definition are always being
“dropped” or remaindered from every linguistic human expression in so far as no
human locution can ever be completely adequate to the task of expressing the total-
ity of our desires, or to locating (through semantically-ensconced invitations) the
definitive object of our desires. Now myth can capture this gap, as paradoxical as it
may seem, yet in order for this to happen, all of the elements in the myth must inter-
act in order to preserve those special qualities they have acquired by virtue of their
integrative role in the myth (Bion, 1963, pp. 45, 92).
Myths may be helpfully viewed as a first clause in a statement of psychological
fact. That is, myth – in particular, what are known as primary myths, to which group
I intend to recommend Job – states that the ground of the unconscious must be
booted up, broken in or “transgressed” in order to write upon it. The subcomponents
of the mind, such as the basic ego functions, must themselves become symbolified
(see Spero, 1996, 1998) in order to create a psychic apparatus suitable for the
processes of signification, representationalization, and symbolization that ongoing
mental life requires.
The present analysis subscribes to the belief that the discovery of new interpreta-
tions for myth are not necessary artificial or exterior to the myth. Rather, these addi-
tions or revisions reflect the natural, ongoing maturation of the myth itself. This is so
largely because myths are never arbitrary nor merely ante facto carriers of completed
historical achievements, but rather derive their main characteristics as well as their
content from deep structural properties of the human mind, including the very struc-
tural elements of the basic cogwheeling of mental processes themselves (i.e., a myth,
like certain types of dreams, may portray the history of the instantiation of the sym-
bolizing process itself within the mind).
This trait highlights what may otherwise seem to be contradictory qualities of the
myth. On the one hand, myth is akin to symbolic metaphor and, as such, “cannot
take just any conceivable form, but must instead display considerable morphological
stability” (Michon, 1985, p. 290). On the other hand, and precisely by comparison to
deep structures within the mind, myth also discloses an active property. Myths are
not hermetically sealed against the accretion of new elements, but rather evolve
through certain relatively predictable processes of evolution into more complex
forms. This occurs almost exclusively secondary to major transformations in psy-
chological perspectives that demand some kind of adaptation or revision of the struc-
ture of myth in order for the myth to retain its relevance.
The process of change in myth and mythopoesis is instigated by at least two cen-
tral sets of oscillating forces: First, there is the desire to escape the psychology of the
group, occurring simultaneously with the fact that the myth continues to express
symbolically the tensions and linguistic structures that are deeply identified with the
group (Freud, 1921c, pp. 136–7). Second, the renunciation of direct forms of instinc-
tual expression through the expedient of constant advances in symbolization, which
occurs simultaneously with the fact that the very presence of the myth gives testi-
mony to the indestructibility of instinctual life and desire, and “primitive” modes of
222 SPERO
perception (Freud, 1932a, p. 191). These antagonistic psychodynamic vectors pro-

vide a major impetus for the introduction of variation into myth (Arlow, 1961, 1969,
1982; Hartocollis & Graham, 1991).
Thus, the introduction of variation into the text of the myth indicates that the myth-
reviser has already been influenced by subtle psycho-cultural changes, or that he has
perceived what one might term a readiness for change with the culture or ideology
which awaits the actual revision of the myth in order to initiate or augment the full
potentiality of such change, at least in terms of its communicability. On rare occa-
sion, one gets to witness the personal evolution of a selfsame myth writer who within
his or her own lifetime revises a mythic structure in accordance with changes within
the micro subculture within himself. The same processes also essentially characterize
the mediating function of the psychoanalyst as he compares and contrasts the subjec-
tive and symbolic aspects of the analysand’s myth-generating tendencies against the
baseline of the analyst’s own professional metaphors and myths. Again, in this
instance the goal is the empirical discovery of the invariants, surfeits, pleonasms, and
gaps that emerge from the interaction between these two sets of structures.22
4. PREVIOUS PSYCHOANALYTIC APPROACHES

TO THE CONTENTS OF JOB
The psychoanalytic methodological approach I have adopted maintains that one is best
advised to approach myths – and occasionally even historically veridical documents –
as one approaches the “actors” and “events” that unfold during the course of a dream.
That is, as we know from the case of dreams, the actors in the story are relevant not as
individuals per se, nor even as dramatis personae, but rather as representations of dif-
ferent aspects and components of human personality (generally, the author’s) that have
been depicted as if engaged in various internal relations as the story unfolds (see Freud,
1908 [1907], 1916, pp. 311–317, 1919, p. 232n). In addition, some of these compo-
nents might be fragmentary or “part” representations and others might be more
completely internalized or “whole” representations.
According to this approach, for example, the image of God and the Satan might be
seen as representing, respectively, positive and malignant superego introjects of
varying qualities, and Job’s four companions can be viewed as representing different
levels of the ego’s self-observational functioning. It might not be obvious at first
blush what is represented by the famous divine tempest or whirlwind, yet one would
need to assume that this element as well gives expression to some aspect of the inter-
nal mental state of the mind of the author, or of the author’s sense of some larger
group or even universal psychological trait.
Very few interpreters of Job have followed this approach. The English poet, mystic,
and illustrator William Blake was possibly the first to view God and other elements of
the text not as realities but rather as states of mind. Most interestingly – and also most
vexingly from the standpoint of research – Blake offers his interpretation not in the
form of analytical prose but as a series of 21 steel engravings, each surrounded by
various passages from the Bible and accompanying linear symbolisms, entitled
Illustrations of the Book of Job (1820–25) (see Damon, 1966; Wicksteed, 1924). In
these, Satan is portrayed as the accuser within, the search for God as man’s own
search for self, each of the friends as a different state of consciousness, and so forth.
The contribution of Blake’s 21 steel engravings would probably have been lost
had it not been for the fascinating reconsideration of his work by Marion Milner, a
British psychoanalyst influenced by Klein and Winnicott. Milner’s evaluation (1956)
is not strictly an analysis of Job but rather an analysis of Blake’s commentary on Job
through his engravings, and one must bear in mind that her insights therefore are in
large measure an interpretation of Blake’s psyche as well as of the themes set into
independent motion by the author of Job. Nevertheless, the value of the analysis
inheres in the degree to which Milner has touched on universal elements in the text.
Milner chiefly emphasizes the notion that Job’s “sin,” comprehended in the psycho-
logical sense, lies in denying the destructiveness (or the existence of the death drive
itself) inherent in human nature and in some form of difficulty accepting the deep
emptiness or void that lies at the bottom of the self. What effectively cuts off a man
from his full creative powers, argues Milner, is the failure to acknowledge the existence
of evil within oneself, and ultimately the failure to acknowledge the existence of the
unconscious. This form of manic denial reaches its zenith when, as Blake depicts it
graphically, Job, already depleted by the first wave of his afflictions, gives his last crust
of bread to a beggar (despite the fact that there is no rabbinic source for this last ele-
ment). It is owing to this disproportionate philanthropy that God allows Satan to attack
Job for the second and far more disastrous time.23 The image of God that Job worships
in order to legitimize such excess, in Milner’s analysis, is Job himself, and he must
learn to decentralize that image in order to balance the fantasy of omnipotence with a
more full awareness of his own potential destructiveness (which takes the form of the
image of Satan, externalized in the text as if it were independent entity).
Milner notes that up until a specific point in the work, Blake depicts the back-
ground image of God as having a face identical to Job’s! At that point where Blake
begins to distinguish the faces, from Milner’s point of view, a “therapeutic” change
has come about due to Job’s having finally worked through the so-called depressive
position, inaugurating a more mature resignation to the loss of omnipotence through
mourning and new levels of symbolization. In Blake’s intuition, as Milner adds in
her gloss (p. 183),
It seems he has now no need to create such a central image of himself as God in order to counterbalance
its opposite, the denied knowledge of his own capacity for ruthless destructiveness. He no longer needs to
protect himself from the terrible grief and shame of knowing that he is capable, in the secret depths of his
heart, of wishing to destroy those he loves most when they frustrate him; because, in recognizing the
destructiveness he has also brought in another force that has power to control it. . . . Here I think Blake
indicates that the process of getting rid of the wrought image of oneself is something that accompanies the
discovery of the new kind of power over destructiveness.
Milner continues:
I think this means that Job has now become able to face the destructiveness that he has done in his secret
thoughts and to realize how, in his early belief in the omnipotence of thought, he felt he had really
destroyed those he loved and so had to built up the wrought image of his own perfection to compensate.
224 SPERO
Extrapolating from Milner’s interpretation, religious or moral maturity resides in

acknowledging these polarities within ourselves, as opposed to concretizing them,
splitting them into exaggerated opposites (i.e,. reaction formation as opposed to sub-
limation), and projecting one or the other (or both) onto quasi-real objects in the out-
side world. Symbolization and mourning, then, would be the type of psychological
advances that militate against the inferior resolutions of the dilemma, ultimately
leading to the representational sense of restitution deeply within the personality.
The psychoanalyst Carl Gustav Jung’s famous Answer to Job (1952), rich with the
terminology of archetypes, collective unconscious, and other elements particular to
Jung’s version of psychoanalysis, also follows this approach, but with an important
variation. For Jung (who was in some ways no less a mystic than Blake!), Job is an
analysis of the conflicting forces or structures within the mind, only the mind in
question is God’s. The guilt motif that permeates the book, at least according to the
view Jung endorses, is recast as God’s guilt for creating an imperfect creature, a
creature that God somehow comes to view as morally superior to Himself. This
seemingly outrageous portrait is nevertheless not too unfamiliar to the psychoana-
lytic conception of the types of internal envy that carom about amongst the structures
of the mind. Satan is depicted as an element of God’s mind (the Yahweh element),
expressive of a paranoid, destructive force that, much as God may have on one hand
sought for man, Job, to enable Him to contain that force, also generated intense jeal-
ousy, equally destructive, of the very possibility that He might need man for such
assistance (see esp. pp. 44, 74–6, 88, 96, 163).24
This internal conflict is ultimately resolved – Jung’s explanation here is complex,
but presciently suggestive of the process of the containment induced unconsciously
via the mechanism of projective identification – through the union of masculine and
feminine process within the unique quaternary represented by Jesus. This final reso-
lution indicates God’s having finally evolved a mode for loving man without resort-
ing to splitting.25 Of course, as with much of what Jung had to say regarding the deep
unconscious, it remains unclear to what extent he refers to God as an independent
entity and to what degree as a representation of human unconscious.
5. THE PSYCHOSEXUAL FOUNDATION FOR A DEEPER

PSYCHOANALYTIC DIMENSION
I am going to propose that Job takes us to one of the deepest levels of self-discovery
imaginable. The analysis I shall present will be couched in terms of a contemporary
psychoanalytic understanding of the relationship between early mirroring, the
formation of language and symbolic structures, and the losses that are part and
parcel of these developments. The processes to be discussed are believed to be
critical during the earliest years and even months of development, and it would be
anticipated, accordingly, that a text alleged to represent these would also demon-
strate evidence of complementary landmarks characteristic of this early period of
life. That is, it is always preferable to find that the unconscious fantasy level of the
narrative – say, in classical psychosexual terminology – matches or overlaps with
the current developmental-linguistic theme of the text. In particular, investigating

the narrative of the text, one ought to be able to provide ample evidence of themes
expressive of the oral psychosexual phase of development. Even more specifically,
might there be evidence for the role of the skin, itself an oral phenomenon, in its
unique role as precursor for the psychic enveloping structures without which mind
as we know it cannot develop.26 Though this kind of analysis is simple enough to
perform, no such attempt has ever been reported in the literature.
Surveying the prevailing metaphors that psychosexual theory would lead one to
anticipate, one discovers the following data:
1. References to skin (‘or): 2:4, 7:5, 10:11, 13:28, 16:15, 18:13, 19:20, 26; 30:18, 30,
31:30, 32:19, 40:31. This number is without parallel among the prophets, and
whereas Leviticus, a pentateuchal text, obviously provides numerous references to
skin, the context is literal rather than metaphoric. There are only 3 references to
skin in Lamentations, and one in Jeremiah.
2. References to flesh (ba‘sar): 2:5, 4:15, 6:12, 7:5, 10:4, 11, 12:10, 13:14, 14:22,
19:20, 22, 26; 22:6, 33:25, 34:15.
3. References to clothing, garments, or coverings (begg‘ed, le‘vush, kē‘suei): 9:31,
13:28, 15:27, 16:18, 21:26, 22:6, 23:17, 24:7, 26:6, 29:14, 30:18, 31:19–20, 33,
37:17, 38:14.
4. References to uncoveredness or nakedness (‘ur, ‘e‘rom): 1:21, 18:7, 16; 22:6,
23:29, 24:7, 10, 26:6.
5. References to womb (re’h.em): 3:11, 10:18, 24:20, 31:15, 18; 38:8. Only Jeremiah
comes close.
6. References to voids, emptiness, confusion (to‘hu, te‘hom): 6:18, 12:24, 26:7,
28:14, 38:16, 30, 41:24.
7. References to mouth (pe, peh): 3:1, 5:15, 16, 15:5–6, 13, 30; 7:11, 8:2, 21, 9:20,
16:5, 10, 19:16, 21:5, 23:4, 12, 29:9, 23, 31:27, 33:2, 6; 35:16, 39,27, 40:4, 23.
Exceeding Proverbs and Psalms.
8. References to words, speech (mē‘lah, mell‘el, mē‘lem): 4:2, 4, 6:26, 8:2, 10,
12:11, 13:17, 14:2, 15:3, 13, 16:4, 18:2, 16, 19:2, 23; 21:2, 23:5, 24:25, 26:4, 29:9,
22, 30:9, 32:11, 14, 15, 18; 33:1, 3, 8, 32, 34:1, 3, 16; 35:4, 16, 36:2, 4, 38:2. The
number exceeds even that of Psalms!
The preceding overview makes it quite clear that the prevailing range of unconscious
fantasy activity in the text of Job is the oral phase of development. To be sure, it is
possible to locate specific references characteristic of the second, so-called anal psy-
chosexual phase (2 references to e‘fer [ash] and 26 references to ‘a‘far [ash, humus,
or dirt]), but these do not compete in overall quantity with the above list nor are they
cross-supported by a wide variety of other anal metaphors. Thus, the latter more than
likely have the effect of extending the boundary of the central Jobian metaphor to
include the transition from the late oral phase to the beginning of the anal phase.27
This makes sense inasmuch as the additional psychological developments to be
underscored occur in fact during this transitional period, and would tend to be less
typical during the earliest, most archaic moments of orality.28
226 SPERO
The oral metaphors are primarily cold and frightening. Consider one example.
Both Jeremiah (20:14–18), no stranger to suffering, and Job (3:3–11) rued the day
they were born. Yet, whereas Jeremiah speaks in terms of a relationship to his
mother, and of an ambivalent yearning for his mother’s womb that once protected
him (e.g., Jeremiah, 20:17–18), Job generally speaks of body parts, the stomach,
the breasts and the womb unconnected to any mothering figure, or of his mother’s
womb as a portal to an inhospitable world (e.g., 1:20, 3:10–12, 10:18–19;
cf. 31:18).
In this light, the skin metaphors and metonyms are of importance, especially since
they exert their foreshadowing influence immediately in the Prologue. It is through
an awareness of the human narcissistic propensity to exchange “skin for skin” (2:4)
that Satan succeeds in provoking God into granting license to deepen Job’s torment,
followed immediately by the skin affliction from which Job suffers for the duration
of the main text.
Yet you will plunge me in a ditch,

And mine own clothes shall abhor me. (9:31)
Why, therefore, I shall take my flesh in my teeth,
And put my life in my hand. (13:14)
I am like a wine-skin that consumeth,
Like a garment that is moth-eaten. (14:28)
I have sewed sackcloth upon my skin,
And have laid my horn in the dust. (16:15)
And even after my skin, this is destroyed,
Then without my flesh shall I see God. (19:27)
By the great force [of my disease] is my garment disfigured,
It bindeth me about as the collar of my coat. (30:18)
My skin is black, and falleth from me,
And my bones are burned with heat. (31:30)
Repeatedly, the author of Job offers images of rotting, black, burnt skin, worm-ridden
skin (7:5) strangulating skin, skin that clings to bone limply and in a manner inca-
pable of providing protection (29:20), only occasionally mitigated by comparison to
dimming memories of the once protective “garment” of his own righteousness
(29:14). If Job had once been protected by an enveloping barrier, as Satan himself
acknowledged (1:10), Job’s abnormal skin formations have now become symbolic
of elementary suffocation and restricted movement (3:23, 19:8). The general impres-
sion is that for the creator of Job the skin and its representatives had at some critical
point lost their crucial protective quality, rendering him vulnerable to the dangers of
unfiltered oral dreads and voids.
Taken as a whole, the above description is similar to the clinical phenomenon
known as a pathological “second skin” (Bick, 1968). In these cases, instead of the
mind being enveloped by beneficial, protective representations of its own bound-
aries, one finds that the skin boundary or frontier representations are characterized
as a kind of primitive, autistic-like barrier, or as a hostile, strangulating enclave

(O’Shaugnessy, 1992), retreat (Steiner, 1994) or protective, insular shell within
which one desperately attempts to basic, poorly differentiated mind-body regula-
tory functions in a highly concrete, barely symbolified manner (or, if symbolified,
only in a single- or minimally two-dimensional way).29 Characteristic of the most
disturbed level of function at this range of personality is the complete lack or gross
impoverishment of so-called higher-level defense mechanisms based on repression,
as these require the operation of symbolic functioning. Generally, the themes or
motifs of this level of personality emphasize disease, the skin, boundaries, touch,
maneuvers of holding and containment, contiguity, falling and chaos, and black
holes, strangeness and alienness, shame, humiliation, and trance-like states, neo-
phobia or dread of change.30
It is self-evident that many of the aforementioned themes dominate the literary
content of Job. This is precisely why the researcher must differentiate between
thematic content so turgid and one-dimensional that the inference would need to
be that one is dealing with the work of a psychotic personality, as opposed to the-
matic content which offers a bouquet of a distinct kind of psychosexual metaphor
simultaneous with other kinds of higher-level literary and thematic structures
that, taken in sum, suggest the work of a creative personality. Thus, even among
individuals whose speech or literary content points to preoccupation with skin
metaphors, our overall evaluation of such content will change if we find evidence
of the following factors: the achievement of relatively stable sense of object con-
stancy and a sense of object permanence, tight organization within the functions
and representations of the mind, the availability and salubrious influence of what
are known as background “objects,” presences, or matrices (Grotstein, 1981,
2000, chap. 6; Ogden, 1986), and the capacity for caring, gratitude, and so-called
depressive affect.
Once again, it is self-evident that Job bears these higher-level traits as well as the
more archaic ones. Thus, if we adopt the notion that the core of Job is drawn from
deeply primitive fantasy material, we will need some additional explanation that
enables us to square this characterization with the more ennobling and mature
aspects of the content and structure of the text: Job’s consistency, the persistence of
his dialogue with his friends, his specific insistence upon being granted permission
to challenge God and get a response to his personal and moral brief, his conviction
of innocence, and his steadfast loyalty to and obvious love for God. Put differently,
is there a latent or hidden question beneath Job’s dense intellection that, when
stripped of its semantic structure, more closely approximates the realities of the
early oral-skin envelope phase of mental developmental? What might be implied by
Job’s powerful wish:
Oh that my words were now written!
Oh that they were inscribed in a book!
That with an iron pen and lead
They were graven in the rock for ever. (19:23–24)
228 SPERO
a wish so intense that it continues to be echoed by his eventual challenge of offering

to God his “signature” or written mark (taw‘ē [31:35]) – or, according to an equally
legitimate translation of the key term, his desire? This suggests to me that, contrary
to a long-standing tradition in the literature, Job’s demand, at the end of the day, does
not really have its focal point on a specific intellectual issue or bit of cognitive
knowledge. Rather, Job seems to be demanding that God help Job determine what
Job’s desire might be, to what or whom is it directed, and why is it making him ill?
He perhaps had tried, up to a point, to encapsulate his pain in the form of a specific
indictment – the good are left to suffer unfairly (z.a‘ddēq ve-r‘a lo) – and, to a degree,
this did enable him to defend himself against all those who attempted to challenge
his sense of righteousness. However, after a certain point in the dialogues with his
friends, emptied out of his protective shell, and left without the most elementary
boundaries – as his metaphors tell us – Job begins to sense that he may not be
whom he believes himself to be, and cannot be defined as he had in the past. In this
spirit, he can do no more than surrender his “self” to God, trusting in some form of
rewriting, re-identification, or re-signification.
This perspective, which we shall now proceed to outline, also allows us
to modify the general question that all previous scholars have posed. And that is,
not simply “Does Job get an answer?,” but rather: Does Job indeed receive
an adequate response appropriate to the level of his demand for a protective,
warm, nonarbitrary, and not overfull and suffocating psychic envelope
through which to be able to bear up better against the painful mystery of the
unfulfillability of desire?
Finally, presuming that God’s answer was delivered during the two whirlwinds,
what in particular did God add between the first and second whirlwinds – at first
blush, seemingly nothing new in content! – that seems to have been able to transform
Job’s attitude in the presence of God from almost dumb humility, hand over mouth
(40:1–5), to a more adequate reconciliation, rich with sustenance, and, by Job’s own
testimony, consoling (ve-nē’h.am‘tē [42:1–6])? My response will be based on the
probability that Job expresses an internal struggle of Moses’s – in particular: the sub-
version of early childhood mirroring, and the emergence of the painful acknowl-
edgement of the inherent alienness of the self.
6. COMMON GROUND BETWEEN MOSES AND JOB
The link between Moses and the character Job probably evolves somewhere within
the episode known to us as Moses’s request of God to be shown His mysterious
“glory” (ka‘vod). A variety of additional textual and thematic items help sustain the
parallel. Since each could easily open up into a major digression, I shall simply list
the main features, and then draw a working conclusion that will enable us to return to
the hidden subject of Job.
I begin by noting that the episode in question (Exodus, 33:1–23) takes place in
the context of the awful and frustrating transgression of the golden-masked calf.
Despite divine promises and the anticipated elevating effect of the Revelation at
Sinai, a large group of dissidents from among the Children of Israel, immature and
insecure in their newfound freedom and unfamiliar with a nonmaterial God, perpe-
trate a sin so great that God is prepared to eradicate this group and fulfill the
promise to the forefathers by building a new nation through Moses alone. Moses
intercedes on the people’s behalf repeatedly, strenuously, and successfully. As the
text reveals without hesitation, there will be additional episodes of tension and rage,
though Moses remains steadfast in his love and loyalty for the people as a whole till
his dying day. Nevertheless, we know in retrospect that a pattern, subtle and incipi-
ent, has begun to unfold, whereby the distance between Moses and the masses
increases in direct proportion to the intensification of his yearning for prophetic
intimacy with God. The first manifest expression of this formula is contained in
this chapter.
Moses’s request or demand of God has specific metaphoric features. The most
outstanding are: (a) an unparalleled abundance of references in a single context to
the “face” (pa‘nēm) of God and the expressed wish to see God’s face, or that God
no longer hide His face, and ultimately the inability of the human to conceive of
God’s face (33:12, 14, 15, 19, 20, 23), (b) a background context of prophetic con-
sciousness, the cloud of glory, and the suddenness of God’s anger, (c) an unex-
celled description of the aching desire on Moses’s part to share the deepest level of
relationship. God’s response, however, makes it clear that this desire can only be
met with partial satisfaction. Moses is instructed to stand by a rock – which is in
itself situated in some divine space or place that in a sense is not of this earth
(ma‘kom yesh ‘ē‘tē [33:21])31 – and he will be permitted to see God only as He
“passes by” and only by peeking through the narrow crevice or gap in the rock
(nē‘krat ha-z.ur).
This emphasis on pursuing a mutual gaze, or the wish to be enveloped by the face
of God, and its frustration, are echoed in several passages in Job. For example:
Lo, He passes by me, and I see Him not,
He passes on also, but I perceive him not. (9:11)
Behold, I go forward, but He is not there,
And backward, but I cannot perceive him. (23:8)
Because I was not cut off before the darkness,
Neither did He cover the thick darkness from my face. (23:17)
Wherefore do You hide Your face,
And hold me as Your enemy. (33:24)
Indeed, the gravamen of Job’s pursuit, as many have sensed on some level, is not pri-
marily, if at all, to obtain a specific response from God regarding a specific indict-
ment. On the occasion that Job does seem to have specific charges in mind, it is
mostly because his friends have irked him into a defensive position by accusing him
of this or that shortcoming. However, overall, Job’s wish is global, as best repre-
sented by the following passages:
You would call, and I would answer You,
You would have a desire for the work of Your hand. (14:15)
230 SPERO
Oh, that I knew where I might find Him,

That I might come even to His seat;
I would order my cause before Him,
And fill my mouth with arguments;
I would know the words which He would answer me,
And understand what He would say unto me.
Would He content with me in His great power?
Nay, but He would give heed unto me. (23:3–6)
These and numerous other passages make it clear to me that Job essentially seeks
a basic dimension for relationship with God, not a particular item or quotient of
data (14:13):
Oh, would that You would hide me in the nether-world,
that You would keep me secret, until Your wrath be past;
that You would appoint me a set time, and remember me.
Two additional important details will be useful in declaring Job Moses’s fantasy.
First, when Moses initially addresses God, he insists that the Children of Israel be
guided through the desert directly by God and requests to be permitted to compre-
hend God’s ways (33:13):
And now, if, please, I have found favor in your eyes,
make known to me Thy ways, that I may know them, in order
that I might find favor in your eyes. . .
The passage is redolent with desire, and highlights the role of the eyes or facial gaze.
What did Moses mean by reference to the “ways” of God? We can answer this ques-
tion quickly. The Talmud (Be’ra‘khot, 7a) explains that he demanded a solution to
the problem of why good things happen to bad people, and why bad things happen to
good people. This again places Job squarely into the mindset of one of Moses’s cen-
tral preoccupations. Yet no answer is ever supplied to this question, for it is beyond
the human ken.
There then ensues a give-and-take that repeats this refrain, with subtle differences.
Moses will accept no intermediary and demands God’s face, for without this:32
With what, however, will I know that I have found favor in your eyes, I and my nation. . .?
Here, once again, the emphasis appears to center upon a quasi-erotic solicitation of
the feminine quality of h.en or “favor.” Yet even when God consents to this request of
Moses, Moses increases the demand and asks to know God’s glory. While we have
no idea what such glory entails – I will suggest some possibilities later on – God
accedes and indicates that He will share some of this with Moses, with the ultimate
exception: God’s face remains inaccessible. Man can only comprehend small bits of
divine wisdom after the fact, retroactively, and always incompletely.
A final element helps bring into focus the challenging, even aggressive stance
Moses was capable of adopting toward God, which I believe accords with the feisty
spirit one finds throughout Job, at least until God’s response in the whirlwind.
Exhausted by the chronic rebelliousness of the people as well as by God’s seem-

ingly incomprehensible anger with them, Moses complains that his efforts on behalf
of the people have apparently “not found favor” (Numbers, 11:11) in God’s eyes. He
wonders ironically about the limits of his responsibility:
Have I conceived this entire nation?
Am I the one who gave birth to it, that you might say to me,
Carry it in your bosom, like a nursemaid carries the nursling?
Moses then adds that he has no meat to feed the people – as if to say that the people
are basically demanding Moses’s very own flesh and milk, as the nursling demands
of the nursemaid – and that he cannot satisfy their needs.
And if you will thus [plan to] do to me,
kill me, I beg you, out of hand, if I have found favor in your eyes,
and that I not see my own calamity [be-ra‘a‘tē].
Studying this verse, the 11th century commentator Rashi notes, “The text ought to
have stated ‘their calamity’ [be-ra‘a‘tam], but the sages amended the word.” Other
midrashic sources suggest that the original term must have been be-ra‘a’te‘kha, “Your
calamity,” referring to God. One way of correlating these disparate views has been
suggested by Zvi Hirsch Meklenburg (1785–1865) (ha-Ke‘tav ve’ha-Kabb’a‘lah, loc.
cit.), who interpolates the verse as follows: “Moses begged – ‘Kill me, so that I will
not have to see the evil caused by your lack of intervention on their behalf which
will then be blamed on me.” Be matters as they may, I think that we may reinterpret
this portrait of confusion (“yours,” “theirs,” “mine”) – drawing an inference from the
conspicuous effort at censorship as well as from what escapes censure – as a narrative
depiction of the temporary dissociation and loss of identity that gathered intensity
with every increasing increment of oral depletion, angry detachment, and inadequacy
of the gaze. Increasingly, as well, Moses is even willing to risk death if that be the
closest approximation to the total fulfillment of desire (divine “glory”), “favor” and
closeness.33
Shortly after this episode, we encounter another element that considerably
reinforces the profile of the quadratic configuration of eyes-mouth-face-skin. This
concerns the highly symbolic and ritualized skin ailment z.o’ra‘at, generally identified
as leprosy, which appears twice in Moses’s life. God employs a leprous skin condition
as an interventive sign or “punishment” when Moses’s siblings Miriam and
Aaron impugned his divine election (Numbers, 12:1–13). In this context, as in the
immediately prior “cleft in the rock” episode, similar terms aggregate: suddenness
(12:4), the appearance of God in a cloud, words, knowledge, and prophetic versus
dream consciousness. Most noteworthy is the declaration that the uniqueness of
Moses’s relationship with God is that they converse peh el peh, “mouth to mouth,”
with no alteration in consciousness (12:8).34 And then, just as the glory cloud
ascends, Miriam and Aaron are aghast to find that they are stricken with the skin
change. Abashed, Aaron beseeches Moses (12:12):
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Let [her] not, I pray, be as one dead,

of whom the flesh is half-consumed when he comes out of
his mother’s womb.
This characterization, rudimentarily oral in quality, runs right alongside the quality
of Job’s dark references to the coldness of the womb as well as the condition of his
own deteriorated skin and flesh.
The second reference to the skin condition of z.o’ra‘at actually appeared in
the initial divine encounter at the burning bush when God enlisted it as a sign
(Exodus, 4:6). Here, white z.o’ra‘at was effected when Moses put his hand in his
bosom at God’s request. The appearance of this sign is accompanied by an interest-
ing reference to the “voice of the sign” (kol ha-ot), an almost ironic allusion to the
way in which God will buttress Moses’s speech impediment (ke‘vad peh ve-ke‘vad
la’shon a‘nē). God then utters words that the reader will immediately recognize in
spirit and almost in identical style to counterparts in the divine whirlwind in Job:
And the Lord said to him: Who gives speech [peh, mouth] to man,
or who makes [a man] dumb or deaf or alert or blind;
is it not I?
And now go, and I shall be with your mouth,
and I shall instruct you as to what you shall speak.
It should be abundantly clear by now that the peh and pa‘nēm around which Moses’s
attention and desire rivet are the very same as those which gain such complex allegor-
ical turn in the Job myth. That is, in this allegory, God, Satan, Job, his wife, and his
friends are important not so much for their cognitively appreciable diatribes, retorts,
and clever rejoinders as for their role as representations of wagging mouths in search
of words, facial encounters garnished with verbalizations that camouflage the attempt
to define oneself through the gaze of the other. To put it differently, the entire Book of
Job is an enlarged stammer, or a paroxysm, or similar kind of effervescence that arises
from a self that is attempting violently to adjust himself perfectly, and impossibly, in
front of a mirror in the effort to secure the illusion of absolute, glorious reflexivity,
and in so doing, to calm oneself into a façade of having achieved self-knowledge.
This stammer, further, takes place alongside an equally powerful and violent effort to
escape being ensnared in the mirror, even if the risk be intense loneliness and the need
to resign oneself to the unslackability of desire.
7. THE MIRROR STAGE AND ITS RELEVANCE TO DESIRE
The concept of mirroring as it is generally understood in the clinical context was up

until recently associated with the work of Heinz Kohut (1968, 1971). Notably, Kohut
advanced a conceptualization of the “idealizing” and “mirroring” subspecies of the
transference, believed to recreate within the analytic relationship the pathological
versions of normative mirroring phenomena that transpire generally around the time
of the symbiotic and immediately post-symbiotic period of infancy.
In fact, the “looking-glass phase,” as it was originally promulgated, was to be

presented by Jacques Lacan in 1936 at the Marienbad Psychoanalytic Congress, but
was only presented in full at the Sixteenth Psychoanalytic Congress in Zurich
(Lacan, 1949) at which presentation he referred to the more familiar “mirror stage”
(le stade du miroir).35
While Lacan was quite knowledgeable in the available developmental research on
mirroring,36 he was not primarily interested in the mutual aspects of mirroring, the
sharing by infant and caretaker in the “creation of something new that was never
there before” which tends to preoccupy contemporary developmental researchers.37
Even at this early date Lacan had become an outspoken critic of what he deemed the
naive American ego psychological approach to identification and to the equation of
the subjective self with the ego. Instead, Lacan emphasized an inherent alienation set
in train by the mirroring process. Furthermore, he posited that the ego or moi (as
opposed to a more existentially authentic self or “I”) that emerges through the
process of identifying with these alienations becomes overinvested in concerted
efforts throughout a lifetime in to avoid dismantling this alienation.38
Yet Lacan actually had much more in mind than the contrast between virtual
and real perceptual input. Lacan conceived of the mirroring phenomenon as an a
priori structure or intuitive possibility and not simply in terms of the concrete act
of looking in the mirror. The mirror stage is a priori in the sense that, while a
self-reflective, unitary structure such as the “ego” cannot exist from the start, it
will inevitably take form as a consequence of the mind’s inherent capacity to
apprehend itself being taken as an object by others. As such, mirroring may
derive from either a concrete specular-reflected image or from the reflection of
the self in the eyes of another human being – or, more importantly, from any
sufficiently scintillating object, hole, or gaze that stimulates the seductive
intuition of mirroring.39
Thus, the impact of “seeing oneself being seen” – or, in the case of dialogue, yet
bearing the same meaning, of “hearing oneself being heard” – becomes in and of
itself a major structuring event even before complete self-other differentiation has
taken place. By the time true self-consciousness has been achieved, the gaze is expe-
rienced more as an intrasubjective sense of self-recognition which, however, always
harkens in some deeply repressed manner to the earlier pre-mirror (pre-specular)
capture in the gaze of the other.
As such, the mirror phenomenon embodies a major existential paradox: On one
hand, even as the mirror introduces the individual to what seems to be the novel
possibility of a unified self, it by this very possibility introduces an inherently
alienating social structure which interferes with the original pure desire for the other.
Put differently, the child takes the image it sees as being that which the other desires,
thereby fulfilling the other’s imagined lack, even though by so doing he permanently
creates a new lack within itself; i.e., all of the psychic space now occupied by
this new self-image which is (even though it is not) himself. Thus, the image in the
mirror that the human infant introjects, assuming it to be his own (the roughcast
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of the later “ego”), actually represents a transition between a prior stage (knowable
only retroactively) in which the child imagined himself to be a fragmented “body-in-
pieces” and, following the unifying experience of the mirror intuition or event, a sub-
sequent stage akin to the primary narcissism of classical theory.40
Now a fundamental emotional or affective dimension of the paradox needs to be
noted as well. On one hand, the unifying aspect of the experience fascinates the child.
On the other hand, the child develops a unique, primordial envy of this image
inasmuch as it is the one upon which he and others lavish so much desire, an object
external and internal to him at one and the same time, which in turn creates more
alienation within the budding self. This confrontation with an exact replica of himself
generates an intense jealousy and aggressiveness (Lacan, 1948). In Lacan’s view,
contra Kohut, this aggressivity is not simply an enraged insistence upon getting more
and more symbiotic mirroring, but rather the indication of an effort to rebel against
and destroy this false ego structure.
Paradoxically, it is the mirror stage itself that contributes to the sense of discon-
nectedness. How does this happen?
As briefly as the matter can be articulated, Lacan hypothesized that during the
mirror stage the sheer intensity of the desire on the part of the other (the father,
the mother, the deity, or the specular image of the infant-in-the-mirror) to render the
infant its object serves to disrupt the sense of symbiotic union that had prevailed until
that point by creating a sense of lack or gap which can only be fulfilled by the child’s
presenting itself as that object-of-desire. This lack announces separation and holds
forth the potential for differentiation, but only if it can reach the level of representation
and internalization. Until that more advanced phase, the real, brute, unfathomable, and
inarticulable sense of being “cut off” or “fragmented” (i.e., not yet that which the
infant will eventually comprehend by virtue of these words!) seems real. However, the
mirror stage, at its more progressive end, helps to mold and transform the real sense of
“fragmentation” into the imaginary or fantasy (i.e., protosymbolic) representation of
the body-in-pieces. For, as is axiomatic in Lacan, it is only from within the imaginary
register that the real can be recognized as real, just as it is only from within the subse-
quent symbolic register, which follows the internalization of linguistic signifying
processes, that the imaginary itself becomes further distinguished.41
There is an emotional or affective face to this paradoxical state of affairs as well.
On one hand, as we noted, as the mirror stage ends, in Lacan’s view, it “inaugurates,
by the identification with the imago of the counterpart [i.e., the mirror-image self]
and the drama of primordial jealousy, the dialectic that will henceforth link the I to
socially elaborated situations.”42 These eventual identifications with that image tend
to “camouflage” or “overcome” the anxiety of mental fragmentation,43 leading to an
experience of jubilation.44 The anxiety that is masked by this jubilation stems from
the loss of prior symbiotic unity, or the symbiotic envelope, ever to be denied by the
perpetually-differentiating laws of language and the symbolic. On the other hand,
the mirroring intuition stimulates the primal cycle of seduction-confrontation-rivalry
with the image in the mirror, leading to increased aggressivity. This rivalry forms the
basis for a primary masochism that reappears whenever the individual finds himself
overtaken by imaginary identification with some substitute for the true other,
especially when the individual cannot discern that the rival “other” is essentially a
counterpart-image emanating from the mirror.
Hence, the mirror experience or intuition has the capacity to unify, by virtue of the
imposition of a first, basic structure on the mind. At the same time, and by that very
expedient, it brings to consciousness a more clear awareness of the dimensions of dan-
gers and desires that earlier were only dimly perceived. By the time the conception
of unity becomes more developed, which tends to lure the infant further away from pre-
mirror-type experiences, the infant has already become “trapped” in the inexorable
misidentification of himself with the “self” in the mirror or the mirroring other, what
Lacan (1949, p. 4) calls the “armor of alienating identity.” Or, to put things more posi-
tively, one may say that, increasingly, non-narcissistic ways of being in and relating to the
world are taken in by the child and symbolized – the premier symbolism being language
itself – which gradually enable the child to internalize lack or want in a fundamentally
constructive way and to adapt non-defensively to that certain inherent separateness, dis-
unity, and limitation that characterizes intersubjective experience. Only once the specular
image, and the subsequent “ego” upon which it is based, can be understood as an imagi-
nary figure – that is, when the child can play with it as a ludic symbol – do we find that
the true self becomes capable of escaping the stagnating, temporally static ego.
In order to achieve the highest, most internalized levels of the sense of unity (i.e.,
those that include the sense of lack), one must internalize the symbolic structures of
language. Language alone – the dialogue of one symbolic linguistic code intercon-
necting with another one, seeking out common units, aporia, disparities, spaces,
fullnesses – enables a less defensive attachment achieved through recognizing the
inherence of want of unity. Indeed, the very fact that we speak, are bounded by
language, and must lose a significant proportion of what we have mentalized in the
process of converting the brute “real” into useable representational entities suitable
for mind, means that desire is frustrated, and we experience lack.45 That is to say,
language alone enables the subject to announce specific wishes and demands,
defined as belonging to himself, simultaneously acknowledging that his subjecthood
is predicated upon lack, or “want” within the ideal of unity.
Finally, it is just such destruction – or more correctly, deconstruction – of the false
sense of identity and unity, maintained by the manifold techniques of mirroring that
comprise the bulk of everyday interpersonal relations – which the analyst is called
upon to initiate, despite the fact that, ironically and paradoxically, the patient’s trans-
ference tendencies will soon seek to dragoon the analyst into conformity with the
maintenance of such mirroring.
–
8. ELE‘HU’S INTERVENTION AND THE QUESTIONING
OF MIRRORING
If we can accept that Job represents Moses’s passionate demand for the thrall of mir-
roring, an adult portrait still powerfully (though not pathologically) attached to a
memory of the child’s constant tugging at the face and the “look” of the Other to join
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him in a locked embrace, then we may anticipate that this portrait will ultimately
give expression to the fall or subversion of mirroring, as outlined above. Such a
“fall” requires an acknowledgement that the pragmatic functions made possible by
linguistic signification will always be exceeded and even overwhelmed by desire.
Simultaneously, as dependency upon the concrete efficacy of language and social
ritual begins to fade, we expect the individual to exchange or transform his interest in
the “look” into a tolerance of the gaze.
I believe that one can understand Job’s two first sets of dialogues with his three
friends, with their remarkable patterns – that on the surface seem to be a desperate
search for absolute intellectual or theological consensus – as an imaginary representa-
tion of the struggle to secure absolute mirroring. Their gradually increasing aggressivity,
and Job’s in response, represents the manner in which the infant in search of the desire
hidden within language, beckoning to the independent existence of the other (cf. Mills,
2003), gradually grows suspicious of the enticing maw of the mirror, despite all of the
pleasures that perfect symbiosis – or intellectual consensuality – might temporarily
afford. In Moses’s life, at least as we know of it through the Bible itself, such mirroring
can only be reflected in the few passages in Exodus 33. In his extended discourse
through Job, however, the mirroring can be experienced through tens of excruciating
stanzas exchanged between Job and the subcomponents of his own personality, repre-
sented by the “friends.” Job repeats himself, like all trauma victims, because he does not
yet know how to address the Other that he intuitively knows is part of his pain.46 That is,
he does not yet fully appreciate, though the reader may by now, that the Other is not
even necessarily another person (such as his friends), but rather his own unconscious,
the interminability of his own desire, and the alienated elements of his own self.
The disruption of the textual patterns by the third set of interchanges, noted by all
previous scholars, may then be viewed as the onset of the faltering of the snare of the
mirror. As well, from chapter 28 until 32, there is a conspicuous increase in metaphoric
references to the failure of skin, garments, and other protective envelopes, as if to say
that the author of Job is experiencing increasingly some kind of lack or emptiness that
his friends’ mirroring will not salve and which speech itself cannot yet address. Specif-
ically, the potentially creative if also painful disturbance in mirroring seems to be set in
motion by the growing awareness, at some level of consciousness, that the concrete,
repetitive words and phrases of unidimensional speech have little bearing on the ques-
tion of desire.
To mark this faltering even more persuasively, the author of Job introduces the fig-
ure of Elē‘hu, unknown until this point and not enumerated among the list of Job’s
friends in the Epilogue. Although he, too, will attempt to convince Job that he is
making contentions that draw him dangerously beyond his provenance, Elē‘hu
makes it clear that words themselves are problematic carriers for any such search.
On one hand, speaking in relation to words in general and not necessarily in relation
to any one individual or thesis:
They are amazed, they answer no more;
Words are departed from them. (32:15)
Job speaks without knowledge,

and his words are without discernment. (34:35)
But Job does open his mouth in vanity,
He multiplies words without knowledge. (35:16)
While, on the other hand, as regards himself, Elē‘hu says:

For I am full of words,
The spirit within me constrains me.
Behold, my inwards are as wine which has no vent,
Like new wine-skins ready to burst.
I will speak, that I may find relief,
I will open my lips and answer. (32:18–19)
If you have words to speak, answer me;
Speak, for I desire to justify you. (33:32)
Juxtaposed, Elē‘hu’s declarations offer a reasonable portrait of both the treacheries

and seductiveness of words, and he is himself another representation of the troubling
but also potentially creative polysemy and fullness of semantic signification.
Yet Elē‘hu’s most important contribution by far is his pointing to two alternative,
non-semantic modes of communication of special significance: dreams and symptoms
of illness (33:15–19). Whereas Job had earlier complained that his sleep is mere tumult
(7:4), his illness strangulating (7:5, 15), and his dreams frightening (7:13–14), attribut-
ing to them no propositional significance, Elē‘hu teaches that each of these states can
be coherent and even comforting modes of communication between man and God. The
author of Job, in other words, has begun to share with the reader the budding awareness
that dreams (33:15) and illness (3:19) have unique intersubjective properties, and
begins to hint to the possibility that the specific symptom of devastated skin, and the
rupture of the psychic skin envelope, may be on the mend. At the same time, even
Elē‘hu’s sophisticated new awareness eventually gives way to the frustrating rhetoric
familiar to us from the verbalizations of the other friends (e.g., 37:6, 20), suggesting the
author’s ambivalence and struggle with the sparks of independence from the mirror.
Elē‘hu’s chapter, from my perspective, cannot be considered unnecessary or a
mere literary extravagance. It is far more important to note that it represents
the dawn of an awareness of the inadequacy of mirroring and at the same time
the impossibility of achieving sufficient distance from mirroring in the absence of
some additional psychological ingredient. Elē‘hu, or that which the designation
“Elē‘hu” represents, has not provided this. God, or that which “God” represents,
will. Thus, what is significant about Elē‘hu‘s project is precisely the fact that
it fails! And its failure is marked by chapter 37 through which the reader is made
witness to a singular emphasis on the frightening effect of the divine voice or sound:
Hear attentively the sound of His voice. (37:2)
By the breath of God ice is given. (37:10)
Teach us what we shall say unto Him,
for we cannot order our speech by reason of darkness.
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Shall it be told Him that I would?

or should a man wish that he were swallowed up? (37:19–20)
Depicted here are classical oral anxieties, but also the failure of language in the pres-
ence of an object perceived as omnipotent, complete, self-sufficient, and without
safe spaces or envelopes within which one might register one’s lack. That is, for all
of the demolition of mirroring that seems to have been achieved, or well advanced,
the problematic of desire has yet to be addressed.
As the Elē‘hu fragment gives way to the next chapter depicting the epic divine whirl-
wind, a major developmental change takes place as well, though gradually or in two
distinct phases. On the surface, two fantastical sound-and-light displays are provided,
whipping like a gale storm around an astonished, diminutive Job, the first episode
reducing him to silence (40:3–5) and the second apparently yielding a compliant (some
scholars object: too compliant, even pseudo-compliant [e.g., Wiesel, 1976]), repentant
or at least contrite Job (42:1–6), who shortly has his former wealth reinstated and
receives a new family for his troubles. I sense that something of an entirely different
nature now transpires, which I will first outline briefly and then discuss.
The first installment of the whirlwind is indeed overwhelming in its depth and
quality. However, one of the vital features that one cannot afford to overlook is the
fact that it begins with a major challenge:
Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?
Declare, if you have the understanding. (38:4)
The key interrogative term and adverb – ei‘foh ha’yē‘tah, “Where were you?” – is
critical and we shall return to it. Though God in this installment then proceeds to
pose some 50 additional rhetorical questions to Job, the shadow of this premier ques-
tion is cast heavily over the lot. Of second next importance, the first installment ends
with a powerful question or demand of Job, echoing, seemingly cynically, Job’s own
much-crafted demand of God:
Shall he that reproves contend with the Almighty?47
He that argues with God, let him answer it! (40:2)
As we know, Job just barely manages to offer his Domine non sum digna:
Behold, I am of small account; what shall I answer You?
I lay my hand upon mouth.
Once I have spoken, but I will not answer again;
indeed, twice, but I will proceed no further (40:4–5).
Job’s response is not really the humble muteness it appears to be at first glance,
though it may include that. Rather, it is a response of sorts to God’s demand – to the
fact that God made a demand or asked a question of Job on par with the one he posed
at the onset of the whirlwind, “Where were you . . .?” All the more interesting is the
fact that though Job vows to not speak again, speak he does at the end of the second
installment of the whirlwind. In the single reference in the literature to Job’s cover-
ing of the mouth, Glazov (2002, p. 39) suggests that Job means to indicate by this
gesture something to the effect of, “I thought you wished me to be silent, but in fact
I have been hiding my dissatisfaction, and I probably ought not to.”
So what occurred between the two installments that altered the situation so dra-
matically? I suggest that two factors are in operation. First, I believe that in the initial
installment of the whirlwind, Job had begun to sense what he needed most desper-
ately, and that is: the possibility of the repair of the psychic envelope or container.
For example,
Or who shut up the sea with doors,
When it broke forth and issued out of the womb;
When I made the cloud the garment thereof,
And thick darkness a swaddling band for it. (38:8–9)
It is changed as clay under the seal,
and they stand as a garment. (38:14)
This possibility was presumably healing, providing some respite for the novice self
that had escaped the fractured mirror image. However, the author of Job suggests that
the demand to speak, imposed suddenly upon one who was just emerging from mir-
roring, was premature and effectively regressed Job to the security of dumb silence.
The advent of the second installment offers two new developments. First, it is
almost entirely preoccupied with an illustration of a perfectly sealed or armored
beast – a powerful breast container – an image that is in some sense so magically
omnipotent and “metallic” as to remind us that even advanced oral, post-depressive
developments nevertheless retain certain characteristic qualities in the unconscious
at all times.
On the other hand, and this is the second new development, God ends His
declamations without making any further demand upon Job to speak. The divine
language simply ends, leaving a potential lull or space in which the mind is now
free to regard all of the previous phantasmagoria as one wishes, possibly as imag-
inary as opposed to concrete – possibly as if it never even happened in reality, and
was only a dream! It is this empty space, or absenting, that, in the paradoxical
fashion familiar to the psychoanalyst,48 enables the self to learn from painful yet
salutary experience,49 to speak, to achieve reparation, and be consoled. The
divine gap or lull, coupled with the repair of the psychic envelope, facilitated the
requisite mental peace that allowed Job to “mentalize” what God had essentially
hinted to in the formative question that inaugurated the whirlwind in the first
place. That is, when a being that is supposed-to-be-omniscient (similar to Lacan’s
sujet suppose savoir) asks of one, “Where were you?,” we know that He knows
that we know that He is acknowledging our absence, that we were lacking, and
that we may have even been desired.50 Without at first being cognizant of it, Job
has absorbed the subtle divine message, which I would paraphrase as a neo-
Jobian text:
Job, Moses, all of these fascinating things that you behold, including your own oral and anal by-products,
and your skin, these objects that actually emanate from man’s own unconscious, which is why he is so
frightened and overwhelmed by them – to the point where all he can do, ironically, is to worship them as
240 SPERO
fetishes – are, at the end of the day, alien images created by language. As such, none – possibly even
including your concrete guises for Me – are worthy of being the “armor plating” or skin of your ego,
because none are independently capable of joining you in a questioning dialogue. The fact of the matter
is as you rightly suspected, Job, only you said it a bit too cynically: your truck is with Me, and it is with
Me that you must endeavor to speak, yet I will not be able to fully answer you, and not because I do not
want to, but because I cannot. The unconscious can either answer you totalistically – drowning you in the
swell – or you can admit it into consciousness partially, frustratingly, thereby maintaining your sanity and
your capacity to repeat the search as often as you like.
Thus, it is after the second installment with its lull that Job finds his tongue and
“answers the Lord” precisely because this time the Lord has not demanded him to
say anything! Contrary to the friends, all of whom demand of Job an allegiance to a
value system or theology posited as objet(a), and even from God himself in the first
installment who seems to demand almost the same – and which requires Job to con-
cretely close his mouth and say literally nothing – the final installment leaves Job
free to present himself as absent, to enjoy, humbly, the awareness that he is God’s
lack – and this enables him to speak.
This idea fits hand in glove with the fact that, as we noted, only in Job’s final com-
ment, after he vowed to no longer speak, does the author of Job introduce his clever-
est bit of artistry, the absented subject Job (42:6):
Wherefore I abhor [ ] and repent, seeing that I am dust and ashes.
As I have indicated by inserting square brackets, the text elides the proper subject
of the stated abhorrence: it leaves unclear what Job abhorred. This aporia has
caused some scholars to supply “my words” (i.e., “I recant my contentions
against God”) while others suggest “myself.” Whatever it is in the end that has
been absented from the text, and whatever future readers eventually comprehend,
a psychic process took place in the mind of the author that enabled him to invent
the idea of this narrative hole. As such, this narrative hole itself reflects all of
what transpired that enabled “Job” to repent. Ultimately, this process is what
enabled “Job” and Moses to be consoled and resolved, as the doubly connotative
term vē-ne’h.am‘tē implies.51
9. LACK, HOLES, AND THE CLEFT IN THE ROCK
“The ego is nothing but a hole,” Jacques Lacan said famously (1974–1975). That is
not to say that there is no such thing as an ego, of course, but rather that the overrated
structure we call an ego is essentially a hole because the mirroring upon which it is
based is a hole, because the love of the other in whose presence the self tends to
bask, and with whom the self seeks to identify, reflects back his (the other’s) own
desire, which then places his “otherness” in the center of my self, leaving “me” quite
out of the picture. Getting away from what could easily degenerate into a circular
and impoverished sense of existence requires some doing.
In Lacan’s writings, repeated emphasis is made of the fact that the inherent alien-
ation in man stems from the fact that human desire is defined by the desire of the
Other. This is the case not because the Other holds some concrete key to a secret
“true” or “specific” object of desire but because the first objective of the human
mind is simply to be recognized by the Other. Desire is always “the desire of the
other” which somehow always manages to become confused for the desire for
“something else” (Lacan, 1960). These “something elses” are what Lacan refers to
as the objet(a), objects, things, places, values, even entire dimensions that have no
special importance in and of themselves – or, have strictly limited importance (e.g.,
feces, the breast, the eyes) – that the self elects as the target or focus of his
demands.52 When the hypothetical unity of the pre-semantic (or pre-mirror) “self”
breaks down, as it does in the course of normal development, the “leakage” or
“remainder” of the original sense of wholeness is transferred upon these objets(a).53
By so doing, an apparent sense of the achieveability of desire is created, an illusion
that some concrete entity “out there” can effectively be pursued and captured and
taken into the self, but which in fact has the sad effect of displacing desire ever fur-
ther away from reach.
Thus, it matters a great deal whether or not one lives life through the shading and
coloring provided by objets(a) or clutches to them rigidly, and quite literally for dear
life. For, in the end, objets(a) concretely pursued will always escape the subject. The
only way to begin to suspend total, mindless captivity to the world of the objet(a) –
which we can never do all of time, since our reality demands some objets(a) – is to
recognize that the space of the imaginary ego and all to which it tends to be attracted
in a mirroring-like manner, always represents something that must be left over. At
some point, there must be a reckoning with the fact that an objet(a) is only a marker
for the gap between the real and the non-symbolizeable; that it is an object that can,
if properly framed within symbolic language, come to represent the “lack of” even as
it therefore simultaneously causes longing and desire. Under this kind of philosophy,
Lacan strengthened our understanding of the “symptom,” indicating that it too draws
together the dimensions of the Imaginary and the Symbol, creating through its “neu-
rotic” repetitiveness an ontological structure that conveys a story about the individ-
ual’s relationship to desire.54 Symptoms are required when an overwhelming
outbreak of anxiety signals that the individual has, for some reason, ceased being
able to use an appropriate balance of symbol and imagination to contend with the
myriad holes that language can only partial contain, and whose suddenly insistent
“presence” (can holes be present?) might otherwise bring the self to the brink of dis-
aster.55 Properly speaking, a symptom disturbs, but at the same time readily lends
itself to becoming used as a new objet(a) – at least until the ongoing evolution of
self-consciousness demands otherwise, or, in the case of pathology, until treatment is
undertaken. Giving up one’s symptom, like surrendering one’s absolute fealty to the
objet(a), leads to freedom and also to a kind of destitution, familiar in Kleinian terms
as the existential sadness or grief the infant experiences as it moves away from the
manic omnipotence of the paranoid-schizoid position toward the vulnerable sense of
subjectivity of the depressive position.
The developmental transformations that I have only briefly outlined in the earlier
section on mirroring and in the preceding two paragraphs have a lot to do with the
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infant’s capacity to discover holes in the as yet amorphous but gradually gelling
image of the other. This is not merely a concrete optical discovery of a break in a
geographic plane, but more a discovery introduced by the “breaks” or holes in men-
tal activity instigated by the earliest significations or speech acts which convey
meaning and the existence of desire.56 A semantic term achieves the status of signi-
fier only if it is hole-y, only if it is not so full as to not require a break in the fullness
of pleasure that characterizes the womb, the mirror, or the psychoses. In the Lacan-
ian purview, every cut, blind spot, sore, crevice, textual aporia can become symbolic
of the loss at the juncture between the brute Real and the Symbolic, and these may
further adopt an infinity of imaginary guises.
Eventually, the elementary hole, which rapidly takes its place in the warp and
woof of language, will forever symbolize lack and enable relationship at one and the
same time.
In view of the above, I suggest that the cleft in the rock represents the window or
hole, the three-dimensional sense of depth within the gaze as opposed to the static
icon of the eyes or face as such, that, in average or “good enough” conditions, can be
discovered in the other and then internalized within mature mental representations
that enable the mind to breathe. God allowed this experience to Moses, even if at the
same time thereby introduced new levels of frustration and anxiety. I further believe
that Moses continued to look for ways to portray this experience, putting language,
desire, and lack at the center of things. This he did with Job. Focused frontally upon
the insatiability of his young flock, whose fulminating demands for water, meat, and
other creature comforts continuously underscored the inadequacy of their oral devel-
opment, Moses the leader may have himself begun to experience elements character-
istic of regression-in-the-service-of-the-group. I think we can further hypothesize an
outbreak of anxiety57 as Moses quickly realizes that yet another broadside has come
his way from the direction of the people, which will inevitably be followed by a
responding broadside from God’s direction, and possibly by a third from deep within
his own psyche. The absolute jouissance experienced at Sinai cannot be sustained,
freedom and Revelation have not mixed as anticipated, and the sudden exposure of
weak personalities to the semantic primacy of God has sent the frightened people
flying into orgiastic abandon, displacing their infirm belief in Moses onto the face-
mask demi-god (‘e’gel ma’se‘khah [Exodus, 33:4]), a concrete, degenerate symbol
that substitutes defensively for the perceived loss of protective skin covering.
For Moses, the void threatens again. In this regressive state, we can hypothesize
that Moses must have re-experienced the sense of the original void that opened at the
site of the burning bush and, as yet unsure of speech, his own defensive need for reas-
surance that the skin envelope was still secure. At these moments, the Name-of-the-
Father is suddenly insufficient, or perhaps the level at which it had been internalized
at these points in Moses’s personal history was still premature, to the task of sealing
the relationship between reality and the new order of the Symbolic. It is at this junc-
ture that the symptom appears. As yet uncertain as to how best to meet the desire for
the Other, but also aware that total absorption into such desire would mean psychosis,
Moses, through the text of Job, is willing to risk his family, his possessions, and his
friends, ratcheting his experience of undiluted subjecthood to the highest power. At

the same time, Job augments his now vulnerable ego with the symptom of ruptured
skin, which for Moses is perhaps the skin of the text of Job itself.
Up to a determined point, Job and his friends, imitating Moses’s memories of
leprosy and the hidden pang of desire it awoke, are focused upon the skin, indeed,
cling to the skin; yet Job learns to surrender the body to the symbolism of
language, dreams, and the interpretation of symptoms, even if this is always
incomplete and anxiety provoking.58 All of the objects in the whirlwind, Job
eventually realizes – as Moses did in the cleft in the rock – are objets(a), or symp-
toms; fascinating and seductive structures which can bind the ego under duress,
but which must not be allowed to blind the individual to the hidden desire behind
the dialogue or disable the individual from sensing the inadequacy of any
envelope save that of language itself. In the narrative of Job, Moses hid the hole,
first, by having Job himself cover his mouth in speechlessness until such time as
he could even better acknowledge the emptiness of desire and, on a subsequent
and even more advanced level of symbolization, by absenting the “subject” of Job
from passage 42:6.59
10. JOB AND THE INFINITESIMAL MEASURE OF DESIRE
In light of the preceding comments, we can return to the topic of God’s question to
Job at the beginning of the whirlwind.
The question posed to Job at the outset of the first speech begins with the simple
Hebrew term of inquiry: ei‘foh, “Where were you . . .?” (38:4). This term, it is true,
does not appear especially frequently in the subsequent passages, yet it is clearly
intended to hover over all of the rhetorical questions that follow (“How do you
know... Have you seen?”). It seems to me that the intention of God’s demand of Job
is not to embarrass him, nor to overwhelm him into docile submission, nor even to
coerce him into providing objective or concrete answer for the specific questions
found in the soliloquy. To pursue these avenues too literally would be to commit the
error of treating the text purely as an historical event. Rather, the “inquiry” depicted
by the author of Job needs to be seen as a mythic representation of an unfolding psy-
chological development; it is an imaginary story telling of processes taking place in
intrapsychic space. In story form (for just a moment longer), the theme of a grand
diabolical debate over human desire and loyalty, and the subsequent inquisition of
Job is in reality a product of the author’s memory of having demanded to know
God’s ways and His glory, which was in itself a reaction to God’s demand for the
author’s loyalty, and which now, in this penultimate turn, had been deflected back at
the questioner. Some kind of interplay had to occur; the question had to be tossed
back and forth between man and God. Indeed, the desire to be the sole object of
another’s desire is itself an objet(a), and hence, ironically, God’s touting of Job as
His favorite had to be demolished, no matter how risky a gamble.
“God’s” inquiry, in other words, tells us how Moses attempted to put to words the
rudimentary struggle with the frailty of mirroring, the dizzying lure of desire, and the
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limits of language. Through Job, Moses depicts an impossibility; that is, he offers a
myth for something about which one can speak only partially in theory, and that,
ultimately, one cannot possibly know in its entirety.
And yet Moses manages to go a bit further toward fleshing out the phenomeno-
logical shadow of these unknowabilities. Moses’s ma‘shal depicts the Symbol
behind all symbols, the unconscious paternal law of language, acknowledging a
carefully guarded secret – that symbols only work because they are intrinsically
lacking, that language is predicated upon its incompleteness before desire, and
upon its hidden holes and lacks . . . that “God” himself has lack. After all – and it
has been staring us in the face for centuries – if God can pointedly ask Job where
he was at a given point, then the conclusion is both obvious and stunning: Job was
not there! Job was lacking. If Moses desires God, that desire itself must have come
from somewhere, such that even without God’s direct answer – precisely because
God does not answer – a semantically framed desire is always capable of allowing
the speaker to sense a smidgen of the desire of the Other who introduced the
subject to language. “You, Moses, are my desire!” God, as it were, would have
experienced want or desire, and it is precisely this “acknowledgement” that
Moses-as-Job wanted to hear. The “good” object is an object that has holes in it,
and it is this trait above all else that distinguishes psychotic, omnipotent, static
and impermeable objects from objects that can be internalized in the human mind,
used beneficently, and be spoken of. Such objects can be loved and desired, but
never fully captured. They can be aspired to in relationship because they are never
complete. The fact that Moses’s unconscious may have initially wished to perceive
these objects as absolutely full, without lack – as God taunts Satan about Job’s
perfection – provoked the superego to empty them out, locate their holes, hide the
full glory of their face, yielding the remainder of unsatisfied desire. By traversing
his own fantasy, Moses reveals the evidence of a period of intense alienation
during which, as Fink put it (1996, p. 81):
The subject has successfully lodged his lack-of-being, his wanting unfulfilled, in that “place” where the
Other was lacking. By accepting the place as empty, being is always possible.
This “place” is the mysterious, never geographically designated ma‘kom ‘ē‘tē, which
we now appreciate does not exist except in language, like the Land of Uz., like the
story of “Job” itself. It is this very lack that institutes the symbolic level of relation-
ship – and it is “good.” Thus refined, the internal objects of human subjectivity are,
to be sure, somewhat less powerful, but also therefore more relevant.60
One ought therefore to understand God’s refusal to supply a more specific
answer to Moses’s demand in the same light that we use in order to understand the
psychoanalyst’s preference for his protective veil (or “glory cloud”?),61 and why the
analyst may not directly nor fully respond to the patient’s insistence that the analyst
consent to be permanently identified as having the specific subjective traits that the
patient wishes to impose. Mirroring and psychoses – each of which mutatis mutan-
dis obeys the uniquely symmetrical form of logic that allows for a thing to be the
equivalent of its opposite62 – foster the illusion that perfect synergy and fullness of
desire can be achieved, but this fool’s gold comes at the expense of the break-down
of language and coherence. A God, as generally conceived, could easily be pressed
into demarcating the same region as the mirror or the psychotic core,63 granting
total jouissance to all comers. A mature God, if one may say such a thing, or a well-
differentiated “divine” psychic representational structure, allows desire to be
suspended and deflected, never promising everything, permitting solitary glimpses,
thereby pushing toward a relatively more limited, symbolized, and post-depressive
sentient mind.64
The rabbinic midrash portrays these ideas in customary laconic form, but we can
now hear something of utmost significance in their word play. Commenting on
God’s demand to know Job’s whereabouts during the creation, the rabbis (see Exo-
dus Rabbah, 40:3 [var., 31:1]) opened out their associations to the adverbial
“Where” or ei‘foh [long o, as in “woe”], whose spelling is identical (except for
pronunciation) to the noun ei‘fah [long a, as in “far”]. In biblical times, an ei‘fah
referred to a dry measure of specific quantity (e.g., Exodus, 16:36), but more gener-
ally is used metonymically (e.g., a “handful”).
[God said] You seek to contend with Me [“Shall he who reproves contend with the Almighty?” (40:2)] . . .
Ei‘foh ha’yē‘tah, “Where were you. . . . ?” Tell me, Job, on what spot [place] does your ei’fah depend? On
your head?, your forehead?, or some other limb?
[When] you know the place of your ei’fah you may contend with me.
The term ei‘foh brings to mind the enclitic participle ei‘fo (“then”) that we encoun-
tered in Moses’s impassioned demand during the episode of Moses’s angry perplex-
ity with the Israelites (above, section VI), and which seemed unnecessary. The terms
are spelled slightly differently, yet they may be linking points.65 Whether related or
not, the lack Moses learned to comprehend, however much, in the cleft of the rock,
seems to be the same lack that motivated the trial of Job. Job’s ei‘fah would seem to
be a counterpart to Plato’s agalma, put to such good use by Lacan.66 As played out
through the drama of Alcibiades’s obsession with his love for some treasured yet
indescribable element within Socrates, the agalma represents that hidden “some-
thing” – infinitesimal and even trivial as it may be objectively – which the self is con-
vinced that other has, and which the self desires, but which the self is also in peril of
using to hide his own lack.
God’s question to Job, as paraphrased by the midrash, requires that Job acknowl-
edge that he, too, must undertake the therapeutic effort to identify the way in which
his ei‘fah serves as a cause of desire in others, even God. Ultimately, in a linguistic
world, everyone speaking lacks! In this manner, Job can free himself from being
captured as an objet(a) of God (“Have you considered my servant Job . . .?” [1:8]).
The hidden subject of Job, or the hidden subject Job, is what remains after one is
able to deconstruct the linguistically-erected self, after one can put aside the
objet(a), the token objects that allegedly promise the fulfillment of desire, the arbi-
trary small measure or ei‘fah with which one asserts one’s claim on the other’s
desire for us.
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11. DISCUSSION
I have tried to recast Job as a text that offers a very accurate glimpse of the move-
ment of the infant mind from primitive oral and skin fixations, characteristic of the
earliest representational, enveloping structures of the budding mind, through mirror-
ing and its subversion, toward the recognition of loss by virtue of the acquisition of
words with which to speak. My thesis was foreshadowed by Job’s plea (19:23):
Oh that my words were now written!
Oh that they were inscribed in a book!
That with an iron pen and lead,
They were graven in the rock forever.
Later, Job boldly claims, as if he had completed his brief to God, as best as he is able
pending the appearance of Elē‘hu (31:35):
Oh that I had one to hear me! –
Lo, here is my signature, let the Almighty answer me –
The Hebrew term for “signature,” taw‘ē,67 is drawn from the same root as the Hebrew
term for “desire” (ta’a‘vah). Moses’s signature is his presentation of self, ready for
execration if that is what it takes to reveal the lack that has been filled by the Other’s
desire. Fissures in healthy skin, engravings in stone tablets, clefts in rock – Moses is no
stranger to the act of inscription. Yet an even new level is revealed through Job: signa-
ture as desire – expressing through the engravings of the pen on the writing surface
those cuts which, by effacing the concrete, permit transformation in personality, and
make possible that modicum of pleasure that a writer and a reader can hope to share.
If my analysis has persuaded, then we can sense the depth of Buber’s intuition
when he wrote (1942, p. 52), eloquently joining the primitive and the mature
metaphors of the book, “Job is the first clothing of a human quest in form of speech.”
This is a truly gifted way of putting the point. Inscription has moved to language;
somaticized gouging of the skin with potshards has turned into a metaphoric enve-
lope; real voids in one’s bosom are contained in creative textual aporia. The psychic
“clothing” or mature psychic structures offered to us analogically in the form of tri-
als of Job and his component “fellow” structures has matured from an extremely
primitive state toward mature recognition of the inevitability of lack and the
unquenchability of desire. He finally appreciates that lack is the characteristic of
utmost relevance in the universe, and evil only secondarily.
The crucial element of the change within Job, or perhaps in Moses himself, is the
articulation of one’s awareness of fact that one has developed a novel personal
interpretation of the mind’s relationship to its divine object representations different
from those that had been merely absorbed through tradition. Job did not literally
find a “new” God, or a new self. However, by relinquishing the search for the same
old thing, by questioning whether he needed to forever remain identified with the
ei’fah or other objets(a) he had until now blindly absorbed from others, such as the
standardized explanations designed to render Providence possible, Job discovers
that he has had to refind an entirely unique experience, the processes of negativiza-
tion and symbolization themselves. This, I believe, is the hidden intent of the
famously vexing intransitive phrase Al ken em‘as ve-ne’h.am‘tē ‘al ‘a‘far va-e’fer –
“Therefore I abhor, and repent; seeing I am dust and ashes.” Abhor what?, we
asked. The answer is: Nothing. A lack, a frightening, even abhorrent emptiness, a
yawning gap within the self, vacated for the sake of a more honestly desirous
dimension of relationship.
This analysis allows us to firmly adopt the significance of the Epilogue, so often
portrayed as an irrelevant, even childish add-on. It is true, as most have guessed by
now, that the author of Job could not have thought it satisfactory to simply depict Job
getting his property and children back – this would be manic denial or neurotic
reproduction at best. It is also not the case that Job’s satisfaction would come merely
from the fact that God vindicates his philosophical resistance to his friends’ moralis-
tic remonstrations. Rather, owing to Job’s willingness to enrich his own language
with lack, and his refusal to fill it with the pat texts and anxiety-quelling logic
offered by his friends, he gains the opportunity of encounter.
What is the quality of this “encounter”? The answer is supplied by the surprising
details of the Epilogue. In the Epilogue, the externalized psychic fragments repre-
sented in the myth by Job’s companions coalesce into what might now be described
as a solacing internalized structure. Only following this advent are we told (42:10):
“And the Lord changed the fortune of Job [lit., “returned his captivity” (shav et
she‘vut)],68 when he prayed for his friends.” In other words, God, or Job’s superego
representations, had enfolded symbolically and benevolently upon Job’s acceptance
of the impossibility of the concrete return of anything, save through symbolization.
I understand this to indicate that the “refinding” process had progressed as a result
of further empathic dialogue within the internal forgiving mental structures of Job’s
personality, following which even further advances occur.
As the text portrays it, there is now an in-gathering of all of Job’s former relations,
or psychic constituents which, though belonging to an historically earlier period of
his development, had now matured along with the overall transformation within. At
this point, we are informed of an additional advance in consolation or ne‘h.a‘mah
(42:11). And, reasonably, only following these developments could the text indicate
the return of Job’s former material wealth and the gift of new children. Since
I believe there was no return here of any real thing to any real place – except
intrapsychically – we must paraphrase the conclusion, leaning upon the grammar of
the future anterior tense upon which mature te’shu‘vah (repentance) is based. Such a
paraphrase would run as follows:
Indeed, by the time Job comprehends that he has reworked his terrors, and has relocated his own self
within all of that which he once took to be his but which he gradually came to appreciate was really an
(o)ther’s – and which he therefore only perceived as objets(a) – it will have become clear that he had been
dreaming, and that his children and other physical acquisitions were, in fact, safe and sound.
Thus, what is returned to Job, the literal description of the text notwithstanding, is
not any brute, material “Thing” (Das Ding) or da‘var but rather a new relationship
248 SPERO
featuring new, yet to be experienced dimensions of the other and of the self in inter-
action with it, a refound structure – (“And there returned . . . all his acquaintances
who once knew him . . . ,” ve-khol yo’d‘e‘av le-fa‘nēm [42:11]).
Thus, if we are still impressed that Job is tragic, it is so primarily because it
depicts a phase of development that is profoundly, inherently tragic, and precisely
because the transition it portrays is, at one and the same time, an unavoidable,
painful, impossible, and wonderfully exciting prerequisite for the emergence of nor-
mal human sentience. It is not about the substantive dimension of Job, but rather
about what Job must acknowledge he is not, or has not, and about the manner in
which that uncanny sense of “is not,” that lack and the yearning it creates, essentially
binds him to the Other and, as he was uniquely graced to experience, binds the Other
to him. Moses, the likely author of Job, knew very well that the lesson he had learned
regarding the inherently “something else” of desire that can only be glimpsed in the
gap, in an imaginary Land of Uz., “somewhere else” – a lesson so painful that man
spends most of his life attempting to ignore or deny it – needed to be captured as best
as possible in some narrative form.
In choosing narrative, the author knows that he has committed himself to the
paradoxical satisfactions of symbolic expression as well as the inevitable incom-
pleteness of such expression. And not only the intellectual lesson as such, but also
an ei‘fah, a handful of the desire itself had to be deeply hidden in the text in a way
that retained the full flavor of the unbridgeable gap between any kind of structure
known as “self” and that which is truly other. In the end, then, it is as Lacan states
(1953/1954, pp. 190–1):
What Freud shows us then is the following – it is in as much as the subjective drama is integrated into
myth that has an extended, almost universal value, that the subject brings himself into being.
POSTSCRIPT
In the foregoing I have emphasized the link between absence and desire. In particular,
I have emphasized the role of God seeking man, which by implication acknowledges
man’s absence and the desire it creates as a response to, or as a reverberation along-
side man’s struggle with God’s absence. Contemporary psychologists have become
quite comfortable with these notions, encountering as we do on a clinical basis innu-
merable confirmations of the way in which the symbolization and conceptualization
of the concrete world is the painful but also enticing and rewarding dimension of
psychological participation in reality, and of faith. We understand somehow that
things must be this way psychologically, on the level of the relationship between man
and one’s fellow, as Job, in my opinion, had always been instructing that things must
be this way psychologically, including the level of relationship between man and
one’s Creator.
As confident as I can be of this approach to the challenge of comprehending the
hidden subject of Job, I am nevertheless still wary that the preceding analysis not be
perceived as an apotheosis of absence for the sake of absence per se. I have tried
strenuously to make it clear that I am emphasizing “absence” as a component or

dimension of what presence is all about, and as a dimension without which there
would be endless plenty, a saturation of objects, but no desire. This position –
defended by Hegel and since by Lacan, Levinas, W. R. Bion, Derrida, and others – is
not without its critics. Space does not allow entering into this discussion, but I should
like to make one final comment that acknowledges the danger of overuse of our con-
ceptualization, and also emphasizes its value when maintained at proper proportion.
Having worked throughout the preceding chapter with textual analysis, I will now
use a most ordinary clinical situation to illustrate my point: the analytical approach
to the “handling” of the transference.
What is the motive of the analytic silence with which the psychoanalyst greets
most of an analysand’s demands? Generally, analysts believe the following: When
there takes place, during the course of the clinical process of psychoanalysis, an
existentially monitored, tactical decision to not answer for the patient’s absent or
lacking objects, or to not relent to the patient’s demand that the analyst supply ideal-
ized alternatives for them, the sense of the Other (the analyst, the analytic third, the
unconscious) gradually becomes somewhat less mysterious, somewhat more tolera-
ble in its relatively consistent magnanimity. And this, despite the fact that the chal-
lenge of otherness, precisely at these kinds of junctures, much more clearly conveys
the message: “What you seek is not capable of being completely known.” The devel-
opmental truth I have just posited can be restated in order to place greater emphasis
on religion’s belief in the objective existence of a divine Object (bearing in mind that
at best we only perceive the representational (O)bject called “God”). That restate-
ment would be: A fully internalized, multi-dimensional God, who proved to have
sufficient historical responsibility, mutuality and availability, and who happens
sometimes to be perceived as (or, “is”) absent, can still be experienced as having-
been-present, or, better put, as absent primarily in the sense of “evoking memory and
longing.” Owing to this, a God that is absent in such a way may be experienced as
abandoning or as emancipating, depending upon one’s point of view. Thus, without
a goodly tenure with the more substantial and mutual aspects of the man-and-God
relationship – which is primarily that component of a relationship which must be
remaindered and tolerated as lacking – a sense of true presence is not likely to be
representationalized in the first place, though there may be some cognizance of a
one-dimensional idea or notion of God.
Consider this distinction as it arises in an interesting analysis of contemporary
literature. In his miniscule, heart-wrenching classic Yosl Rakover Talks to God,
Zvi Kolitz (1999 [1963]) portrays Yosl, the sole voice in the text, as he furtively
completes a last letter to God, while surrounded by corpses of adults and a child in
one of the last buildings in a ghetto being systematically destroyed by the Nazis. In
painfully intimate prose, Yosl forthrightly asserts his faith and love for God, and the
sureness that God loves His creatures. And yet Yosl feels he has no conceptual
choice but to view the injustice to the Jews and to humankind in general as the result
of has’ta‘rat pa‘nēm, God’s hiding of His “face” or providence. He cannot compre-
hend why such protracted absence is deserved, and dares to warn God that His
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absence will eventually cause man to snap! Nevertheless, Yosl ends his letter, and the
book, with an assertion of faith.
In the 1950s, in a radio broadcast commentary on the original Yiddish version of
the book, Emmanuel Levinas offered the Hegelian interpretation that the absconding
God whom Yosl addresses is all the more present by virtue of His conspicuous
absence, which ultimately enables faith, albeit a lonely one. At the time of publica-
tion, Levinas’s transcribed talk was not well known, and yet its thesis has since
become a rather familiar existential-theological stance. In a revised edition of Yosl
Rakover that includes Levinas’s essay, Leon Wieslertier (1999) took objection to
Levinas’s position in a manner most relevant to the psychological experience of a
“lacking” God, including one such as Job’s. While not a psychoanalytic assessment
as such, Wieseltier’s main argument highlights the dilemma we have been trying to
comprehend in this chapter in professional, object-representational terms. Wieseltier
states that by turning an absence into a presence, Levinas disrupts the structure and
the tension of Yosl’s complaint. To summarily twist absence into the manner of
God’s manifestation, which is how Wieseltier interprets Levinas, is simply a contra-
diction in terms, “an absent God is a God who has not manifested Himself, and the
rest is nothing more than desire, which is an engine of superstition” (p. 96).
I cannot concur with Wieseltier. Desire is what enables relationship; the concrete
enmeshment of presences can be nothing more than symbiosis, and to insist on pres-
ence can be infantile. As Wieseltier himself acknowledges (p. 98):
There are people, moreover, for whom even the absence of God is absent, who are shaken not by the pri-
vation of providence but by the privation of the privation. Who live in a completely ungoverned and
unconsoling world.
But this condition is not what pervades Yosl, or Levinas’s perception of Yosl. This
condition alludes to the far more painful and lonely state of lacking an object, what
Bion referred to as the failure to mourn and internalize the null-object that alone
enables an “object” to be perceived. By so stating, I think Wieseltier has inadver-
tently revived the value of Levinas’s position: An absent God – one who has been
successfully symbolized and in that sense “absented” – can always be experienced
as present, and not merely in the sense of an endopsychic artifact but in the sense that
a relationship representationalized is a relationship ready to hand, and forever. To be
sure, this may not be as satisfying as His full presence, but how often can man be
sure when that occurs. And recall that we are dealing with the assumption that it was
no one less that Moses who wrote Job, who had partaken of the maximum amount of
divine revelation allowable to humankind – and he still pinned for more. In the cleft
of the rock he learned that more presence is not always the desideratum, but rather an
increasingly refined sense of lack, and more desire. It is only when a God represen-
tation is completely lacking, or has been successfully ablated, that man stands truly
alone.
Wieseltier’s critique raises an additional point. There is a clinical problem when
the religionist’s experience of God is “reduced” wholly to the god-of-individual-
imagination such as spoken of by Jung, Winnicott, and Bion. The maneuver seems fair
enough, something psychoanalysts can abide all too comfortably, yet religion will not
accept to thus limit God’s extension into human reality. We have agreed to not reenter
this argument here, but we can now better appreciate through the present study that an
intellectual-emotional contemplation of the kind that Levinas, Wieseltier, and the
“Yosl’s” of the world, and ancient Job, might be capable of would actually be beyond
the capability of individuals that have not achieved certain basic levels of representa-
tional development. In writing Job, Moses also assumes this basic level of psychic
achievement, as it were. To desire requires sublation, a killing-off of the sense of the
omniscient and omnipresent paternal object that stands in the way of healthy separation
and abstraction, so that absence and lack can be experienced and mourned. The clini-
cian does not anticipate that psychoanalysis will guarantee a valid divine epiphany, yet
the new/renewed availability of more rich and complex dimensions of personality may
enable the believer to grapple with the phenomenon of an absent God as a philosophi-
cally-theologically comprehensible state of relationship rather than as a sheer black hole
which one must either fill with words or plummet into.
As this essay was being composed in Israel,

on the evening of September 9th, 2003,
my dear brother-in-law,
Rabbi Dr. David Yaakov Halevi Applebaum, M.D.
and his precious daughter, Navah
were killed by a terrorist’s cruel designs
on the eve of her wedding day.
Only if we learn from Job
can we comprehend what was taken from us,
and what was not.
Consolation inheres in this.
MHS
NOTES
1
For these, strictly speaking, do not comprise the subject of Job but rather its themes. The difference in
psychological analysis is generally quite important. I, too, shall at some point here become involved in
discussion of what I consider the main psychological theme implicit in the text, but only insofar as this
helps us to say something significant about the subject of Job. Read on.
2
Throughout, when I write Job with italics I am referring to the text as opposed to Job the character.
3
Almost all of the pertinent issues regarding the date and authorship of the book, and many of its the-
matic-narrative issues are best summarized by Crenshaw (1992). Greenberg (1987) offers an excellent
summary of rabbinic views on the nature of Job’s dilemma (e.g., rebel or devotee, Jew or Gentile),
while Baskin (1992), Kurtzweil (1961), Mazor (1995), Rosenberg (1985), and Tsevat (1966) discuss
the fine points of rabbinic exegesis and the moral implications of the book from the Judaic perspective.
The problem of a “patient” or “impatient” Job is discussed by Fine (1955) and Zink (1965), the “pes-
simistic” Job by Reid (1983), the “tragic” or “non-tragic” Job by Steiner (1961), and Yafet (1995) pro-
vides an excellent comparison of the relative difficulties of the trials of Job, Jeremiah, and Abraham.
Glatzer (1969) believes that the talmudic-midrashic interpreters “glossed over motifs of Job’s isolation,
despair, and alienation, and presented God as far more concerned for the weal of Job, and Satan as
more “human” than the two are actually portrayed in the book” (p. 18).
252 SPERO
4
The aporia in question, of course, focuses upon the problematic term “em‘as.”
5
Job’s celebrated patience or hagpomonē is truly a later, Christian emphasis, and was much less a pre-
sumption among rabbinic writings (see Crenshaw, 1992; Fine, 1955; Zink, 1965). The rabbis were quick
to note the distinction between the statement “For all this Job sinned not, nor ascribed anything unseemly
to God” (1:22), following the first satanic attack, and the laconic statement “For all this, Job did not sin
with his lips” (2:10), following the second, more destructive attack, and explained the difference by
acknowledging that following the extreme devastation Job harbored suppressed anger in his heart, though
he did not express it. He was nevertheless not held accountable for apostasy because he was tortured and
hence could be considered as not in his proper mind (Talmud, Baba Bat‘ra, 16b). This of course is one of
the many peculiarities facing the theology of Job: what did Satan expect to accomplish, from the stand-
point, say, of Jewish Halakhah, by pushing Job to the point of denouncing God given that an artificially
induced denunciation would in any event not be held against Job? On the other hand, is not the task of the
Adversary always one of “inducing” or tempting man to transgress? Obviously, the solution lies in the
notion of internalization, and the degree to which external impulsion, and even factors that seem superfi-
cially to be instances of force majeure, are taken internally and identified with. But this is a discussion for
elsewhere. In any event, to the degree that Job endures with any degree of sanity and moral courage the
lengthy psychological process that lies at the center of this episode, whether it is a process of working
through repressed guilt (Reid, 1983) or mourning (Goiten, 1954; Niccolls, 1977; Schimmel, 1987; Van
Praag, 1988) or some other process, as I shall propose, he may be considered a patient man.
6
Job was enumerated by the Talmud (Baba Bat‘ra, 14b) as one of the three unique so-called “poetical”
books of the Old Testament (the other two being Proverbs and Psalms), with distinct stylistic and
grammatical rules and musical inflections that differentiate it from the other 21 books (see Breuer,
1982).
7
Or, if not a tragedy in the full sense of the term, then certainly an epic about tragic suffering (see
Glatzer 1969; Gordis, 1965, 1978; MacLeish, 1955; Raphael, 1960, pp. 37–51; Sewall, 1959,
pp. 9–24); cf. Wiesel (1976) who suggests that Job is not tragic if we can suppose that, despite his
overly humble resignation and abdication before God, Job is secretly refusing to accept humiliation and
the need to repent. For this to work, Wiesel has no recourse but to imagine a “lost” text with an
alternate ending! Kurtzweil (1961) and Steiner (1961) offer more satisfying arguments as to why Job is
strictly not a tragedy. Wedbee (1970), as I mentioned above, goes so far as to propose that the ending
(the Epilogue) effectively renders the book a comedy.
8
The only strong methodological objection one could raise against this argument would be to contest the very
possibility that biblical writers possessed, or displayed in their writings any evidence of a mature sense of
self-reflectiveness. This is an interesting problem for any project that concerns itself with the psychological
qualities of the biblical mind and the biblical author. In a fascinating analysis of biblical narrative, Niehoff
(1992) distinguishes between “free indirect discourse” and “collective monologue” as methods for depicting
characters’ inner mental states. “While free indirect discourse enables [the biblical author] to outline the
half-conscious, fleeting movement of the mind, he uses scenes of collective monologue to confront a figure
with his or her externalized self” (p. 595). The latter, however, is the less mature mode, more akin, I would
suggest, to the child’s mode of addressing all of his assembled dolls (see Vygotsky, 1989, p. 235). Niehoff
provisionally concludes that, while biblical characters overall evince highly complex perceptions based in
profound self-awareness, they are not always completely conscious of their own individuality per se (see
also Cohen, 1978, p. 100; Moye, 1990). The identificatory trait of “free indirect discourse” would be a nar-
rative that renders or transforms the character’s thought into his own idiom while maintaining a third-person
reference and the basic tense of the narration at the same time.
Niehoff does not take account of a very interesting midrashic device, though admittedly it cannot
automatically be attributed directly to the biblical mind, which makes a major effort to depict self-
reflectiveness. On the words va-ye‘hē a‘h.a‘rei ha-de’va‘rēm ha-e‘leh ([“And it was after these
things”] Genesis, 22:20), in reference to the aftermath of the ake‘dah-sacrifice, the rabbinic midrash
(Genesis Rabbah, 56:1, 4, also re: Genesis, 22:1) adds a‘h.a‘rei hēr‘hu‘rei de’va‘rēm she-ha‘yu sham
(“And it was after the internal reflections that took place there . . .”). The midrash continues to delin-
eate some of Abraham’s private musings and anxieties. The interpretation is based on the double
meaning of the word de’va‘rēm, which in Hebrew denotes “things” as well as “words” (or
de’bu‘rēm). Indeed, are not “inner reflections” an appropriate expression of the pathway wherein the
mind metaphorically transforms the otherwise unknowable Ding an sich into words? The question
remains, though: are internal meditations, such as these, and such as Esau’s described in Genesis,
27:41, the equivalent of a mature sense of self contemplating its own subjectivity? Now, if the
hypothesis I wish to present here – which I still need to keep cloaked – is at all valid, Job may repre-
sent the singular example of the struggle with the sense of self and individuality known to biblical
literature.
9
While this belief is axiomatic for several religions, I write in the context of Judaism, and my sources
are drawn from this context. In general, the attitude toward the purposefulness of the prophetic message
is expressed in the Talmud, Be’ra‘khot, 34b and ‘E’ru’vēn, 60b; esp. the view stated in Talmud,
Me‘gē‘lah, 14a (see also Songs Rabbah, iv:22) – Ne’vu‘ah she’hu’z.re‘khah nēkh’te‘vah, ve-she‘lo
hu’z.re‘khah le-do‘rot lo nēkh’te‘vah, “Prophecies that were needed [for future generations] were writ-
ten; those not relevant for future generations were not written.”
10
The literature is too vast for discussion here, and the corrective tendencies of post-postmodernism
have by now been well accepted by most sciences, and the humanities, without losing the signifi-
cant chastening effect of the original postmodern critique. Nevertheless, contemporary psychoana-
lytic theory is heavily influenced by different forms of “narrative constructivism” and what
has recently been termed “perspectival realism” (Carnochan, 2001; Hoffman, 1992; Orange, 1995;
Orange, Atwood, & Stolorow, 1997; Strenger, 1991), which tend to maintain under different rubrics
the essential postmodernist fear of objectivist reductionism, and strongly idealize the notion of the
nonexistence of one-mind (or one-person) psychological facts. These approaches are not as logi-
cally secure as their proponents imagine. With direct regard to the dilemma of the nature of psy-
choanalytic interpretation, theorizing, and formulation in the face of the variability of human
behavior, the best recent considerations are Balter (1999), Eagle (2003), and Leary (1994). Balter,
in particular, pits both “unknowability” and “mere” hermeneutic truth against a more mature
concept of “relative certainty.”
11
A simple illustration will suffice: We all know the pleasures of, say, reading Proust or contemplating
the wisdom of Wittgenstein, yet, at a level that does not concern most fans of these two writers, there
nevertheless must be explanations available, for instance, for what psychic tendencies and structures
enabled each of them to think what they thought, compose the works they did, and what substructures
enabled them to even have the capacity to mentally hold a sentence structure together long enough to
get it written down. It is nice to live in an air-conditioned apartment complex, but, when the ventilation
system breaks down during the summer, there better be someone available who knows his way around
the tubes and machinery that exists in the dark basement of the building. Now, one can cavil that I am
embarking upon reductionism, and add cynically that I will next introduce the need for biological and
chemical analysis of these writers’ brains, their affinity to the smell of certain kinds of vellum and ink,
and so forth. To be sure, depending upon what one wishes to know, such an analysis would be entirely
in order and contribute a great deal to all concerned. However, I have raised the meta-issue here pre-
cisely because of my respect for the author of Job and owing to the intense desire to seek the deepest
possible message he may have wished to convey.
12
Compare recently Miller (1999) and Stolorow, Atwood, and Orange (1999).
13
Regarding other methodological issues concerning the application of psychoanalysis to Jewish studies,
see Halperin (1995).
14
The best summaries of this background material are Crenshaw (1992), Hurvitz (1974), and Tsevat (1966).
See also Pope (1965, pp. 50–66), Sanders (1968), and Terrien (1954, pp. 878–884). Pritchard (1955)
assembles the ancient myths of similar content, among which are Egyptian, Sumerian, and Akkadic vari-
ants. All emphasize the need to confess sin and thereby propitiate a cruel deity, but none, as Crenshaw
emphasizes (p. 865), compares to the complexity of Job, nor does any feature the sustained tension that
persists within the lengthy dialogues in Job and the complex turns of theology they suggest. As regards
the phenomenon of the surfeit of myth texts and variants that tend to surround a given theme, Mali-
nowski’s comment is still apposite (1926, p. 39): “It is easier to write down the story than to observe the
diffuse, complex ways in which the story enters into life, or to study its function by the observation of the
vast social ands cultural realities into which it enters. This is the reason why we have so many texts and
254 SPERO
why we know so little about the [deep] nature of the myth.” Regarding how deeply a mythic structure
might reach within the religious personality, see Jones (1991). McDargh (1983, 1992) and Spero (1992).
15
The central position of the Satan in the role he plays in Job, for example, was anticipated by some to set
a context for dating (see Scharf, 1967; Weiss, 1976), while others, such as Sarna (1963), focused upon
the composition of certain terms, such as the curious appearance of be‘khor mot (18:13), thought to be
a latent reference to an ancient Babylonian demon.
16
For example, Ezekiel, 14:14 refers to Noah, Daniel, and Job in one breath, which led Blumenfeld in
1826 to insist famously that Job is of Babylonian authorship, a view maintained by Tur-Sinai (1954),
who believed that the original text must have been Aramaic and subsequently translated into Hebrew
some time around the 4rth century BCE (see also Habel, 1985, pp. 40–42).
17
These views are found in Talmud, Baba Bat‘ra, 14a, 15b; Jerusalem Talmud, Sotah, 5:6; Genesis Rab-
bah, 19:12, 47:4, 76:9, 80:4. The view that Job may be identified with biblical Jo‘bav, apparently
rooted in the pseudographical Testament of Job, was ridiculed by the commentary Abraham Ibn Ezra
(ad Genesis, 36:33) (for additional details, see Greenberg, 1992, pp. 3–8).
18
In a fascinating account in the Talmud, Baba Bat‘ra, 16a, Rabbi Levi defended the Satan, arguing that
the dark angel only intended to champion the good name of Abraham, who the dark angel had tried ten
times unsuccessfully, in the face of God’s profuse praise of Job. According to the Talmud, when Rabbi
Ah.‘a bar Ya‘akov gave over this teaching in the academy of the city of Papunia, the Satan suddenly
appeared and kissed the rabbi’s feet.
19
Rosenberg (1985) discusses the ma‘shal or parable thesis in additional detail, arguing that by
declaring the text a ma‘shal the rabbis were essentially creating legitimacy for “maximalization of
significance.” Vargon (2001) recently assesses S. D. Luzzato’s struggle to maintain the view that
Moses authored Job against the dissenting rabbinic opinions. Compare with Eisen (1999) concern-
ing Ibn Tibbon’s view of Maimonides’s classification of Job as myth. An interesting variant, asso-
ciated with the Moses-Job link, draws the hint to the link from Moses’s instruction to the spies
(Talmud, Baba Bat‘ra, 15a, Sotah, 35a). This view highlights the passage “Seek out the land . . . are
there trees [ha-yesh bah ez.]?” (Numbers, 13:20) and considers the term ez. an allusion to the Land
of Uz. where Job lived. In this legend, Job is depicted as one of the giants of his generation whose
death was strategically coordinated by God to coincide with the spies entry into the land, distract-
ing the local peoples from the spies’ divagations.
20
It is obvious that many students would consider the lack of time and place for Job a flaw, one that needs
to be corrected as completely as possible. I am obviously building toward a different way of looking at
things, with a view to accepting the temporal dislocation of Job as the central contribution of the text.
La Capra referred in a somewhat different way to the need to occasionally not overemphasize temporal
or other aspects of context (1994, p. 35): “If a text could be totally contextualized, it would paradoxi-
cally become ahistorical, for it would exist in a stasis in which it made no difference whatsoever. It
would be immobilized in its own era. If contextualizations were fully explanatory, texts would be deriv-
ative items in which nothing new or different happened.”
21
Is the resulting revised myth to be considered a new myth? Claude Lévi-Strauss adopted the broad view:
We define the myth as consisting of all its variations; or, to put it otherwise, a myth remains the same as
long as it is felt as such” (1955, p. 217). Lévi-Strauss, of course, had no intention of leaving the defini-
tion of “sameness” solely to subjective impression. He was referring to the use of an empirical method-
ology for structural analysis of mythic variants. Be that as it may, his main point was that the growth of
myth is continuous even though its basic structure is discontinuous and atemporal (1949), at least until
the intellectual impulses that created the myth have been exhausted or transmuted into newer forms.
At the same time as our contemporary interpretations “enter” into and become one with myth, I am
keen to not lose sight completely of the major epistemological and methodological issues that are
involved here. Space limitations forbid my taking these up here in any length, save to make one or two
comments.
First, since all forms of interpretation of texts – be they literary, homiletic, or clinical psycho-
logical interpretations – in the absence of their authors’ current associations, or short of additional
texts by the same author, entail the risk of imputing to the text something whose primary claim to
“belongingness” may be nothing other than the interpreter’s wishes and projections. Given the
degree of subjective considerations and impressions that are involved in textual interpretation
under the best of circumstances, one must perforce acknowledge the inevitability of at least some
degree of what hermeneuticists call appropriation of the text, some degree of “taking over” the text
in response to the apparent sense of the text as opposed to what might be considered the “true”
intentions of its author.
Second, and with specific application to the area of Jewish scholarship, Elman (1996) makes
an important distinction between the task of reverting retrospectively to unearthing hidden truths
(known as the nonliteral pe‘shat) and transcending the text toward progressive truths (known
as de‘rash). The legitimacy for the latter is entirely dependent upon the belief that the biblical
text is intended to be “omni-significant.” Now, if we append – presumably with moderate to good
evidence – a sophisticated psychoanalytic interpretation to the biblical text, or similarly interpret
some aspect of the biblical personality, we face two epistemological possibilities. One view is that
the contemporary interpretation has transcended the intended meaning, i.e., gone beyond what the
text bears, and has posited an extrinsic bit of knowledge, one with no claim to truth based on a kind
of back-handed argument that might claim that the similarity between the contemporary psycho-
logical insights and the biblical text or behavior lends “divine” or otherwise inspired weight to the
contemporary interpretation. An alternative view holds that the contemporary interpretation some-
how reveals the latent or hidden wisdom of the biblical word, whose inherent polysemy is always
rich with dimensions of truth that are rediscovered in different languages and modes in different
generations. Thus, a contemporary interpretation of the biblical text participates in some way with
an earlier prestage inherent to the text, lending special status to that which had until now been con-
sidered “merely” contemporary. I have struggled with these issues elsewhere (Spero, 1982, 1986,
1992, 1994, 1996, 1999).
22
See Bion (1965), pp. 3–5; Brody (1990), pp. 123–4; Edelson (1988), pp. 10–20; Kernberg (1991),
p. 38; Modell (1984), pp. 150–7.
23
The author of the text does indicate (1:5) that Job sensed some guilt regarding the fact that his sons, or
he himself, may have extended themselves beyond proportion. As a mythic structure, however, Job’s
guilt, or that of the author of Job, was not directly about any actual excesses of any actual, concrete
“sons” but rather representationalized something much deeper, as we shall see as the essay continues.
24
For Jung, the ultimate answer to Job is offered when the self-forsaken God on the cross experiences to
the full what it means to be a human (1952, p. 74).
25
Regarding the idea of the God/Devil or Satan split, see Freud (1923d). Two other interesting psycho-
logical analyses of Job merit brief mention. Andresen (1991) adopts some Kleinian-Winnicottian
concepts to highlight the theme of the object’s (God) capacity to survive the subject’s, the infant’s
(Job’s), destructive rages and intense feelings, reaching the point where it no longer operates accord-
ing to the illusions of the subject’s satisfactions, and in this manner gradually acquires independent
qualities of otherness that the subject can internalize and respect, taking joy in the object’s (now,
the object representation’s) existence within the mind. Renik (1991) takes a different approach.
Renik presents a long psychoanalysis of a difficult patient who, on one hand, always complained
of not improving, yet, on the other hand, always excused the analyst of any role in this failure,
despite what Renik viewed as the patient’s obvious anger and disappointment in him. Underneath,
explains Renik, the patient, like Job, had created a powerfully resistant and almost perverse fantasy-
defense according to which the neglect and abuse were a mask secretly created by the patient against
becoming aware of his deeper wish-fantasy that the analyst might harbor a special love toward the
patient.
26
We will need to refer to more specific literature later, but, the link of skin and orality was outlined, fol-
lowing initial suggestions by Freud, by Fenichel (1945, pp. 357, 376 et passim) and has been revived
with great complexity in the work of Anzieu (1985) and his students. See also more recently, Biven
(1982), Charles (2001), and Rucker (1994).
27
A few additional differential comments are in order, as space is at a premium: (a) references to
water (ma’yēm), an obvious oral symbolism, are plentiful, although Jeremiah and Isaiah contain
such references as well (but not complementarily with other oral references as is the case in Job);
(b) references to death (ma’vet) are found as well, and also in other books of the prophets (see [a]),
256 SPERO
but this is a rather broad metaphor; finally, (c) there is essentially no triangular oedipal structure
within Job.
28
Even though – and this is important – the principle of “complemental series” leads one to anticipate
that chronologically-later developmental phases may reactivate the mnemic impact of earlier phases,
lending them some form of secondary expression, despite the fact that the earlier phase was in and of
itself a pre- or non-semantic one.
29
In my clinical work with and investigations of primitive mental experience, I use the term “symbol-
ified” (1998) to denote the basic instantiation of the symbol-creating function of the mind, the booting-
up of the mind for representational functioning, as a result of which it will eventually select material
out of which to fashion specific symbols and symbolisms (see also Charles, 2001; Gaddini, 1984;
Green, 1999b, p. 53).
30
Compare Alhanati (2002), Bick (1968), Brenman (1992), Bucci (1997), Finell (1997), Grotstein
(1990), Kumin (1996), Mitrani and Mitrani (1997), Ogden (1989), Paul (1997), Rucker and Lombardi
(1998), Tustin (1986).
31
Regarding the oddly worded statement yesh ma‘kom ētē, “There is a place with me . . . ,” the rabbis
exposited: “Said the Lord to Moses, Your portion in the World to Come has been reserved for you since
the beginning of creation, and it is here” (A‘vot de-Ra‘bē Na‘tan, 12), and also “The Writ does not say,
‘I am in this place,’ in order to teach that God is the space of the world but the world is not His place”
(Genesis Rabbah, 68:4). Further evidence that this ma‘kom is a non-place might be the fact that it is
enumerated among the 10 a priori entities created “between the watches” (itself a non-time!) on the eve
of Creation, where it lay ready for future use (see Talmud, Pe’sa‘h.ēm, 54a).
32
Regarding the demand to see the face of the other, in a clinical context, see Weissman (1977).
33
This dimension is even further reinforced by the fact that the second-person reference to God in the
passage appears in the feminine form at [long a, as in “far”], instead of a‘tah. The commentators sug-
gest, “[Moses’s] strength was weakened like that of a woman.” However, as Barukh Halevi Epstein
points out (Torah Te’mē‘mah, loc. cit.), it is God whom is referred to in feminine form, not Moses.
Epstein boldly comments that Moses must have been implying, “You [at] weaken me as the woman
weakens the man during the sexual act.”
34
Interestingly, although no human mind, including Moses’s, can sustain any glance or comprehension of
the divine face as such, it is deemed categorical that Moses’s level of prophecy, exceeded by none other,
was direct and without allegorical phantasmagoria, and is referred to as pa‘nēm el pa‘nēm, “face to
face,” or peh el peh, “mouth to mouth,” a level not achieved by any other prophet (Maimonides,
Mish‘neh Torah: Hēl‘khot Ye’so‘dei To‘rah, vii:6; cf. also Hēl. Ye’so‘dei To‘rah, i:10, Mo‘reh
Ne’vu‘khēm, i:21, 37). Thus, the notion of the search for encounter with the face remains associated
primarily with Moses. Nevertheless, the Talmud debates (Ber’a‘khot, 7a; see also Sha‘bbat, 87a)
whether the statement u-te’mu‘nat A’do‘nai ya‘bēt, “and [he] gazes upon the picture of the Lord,”
means that Moses was in some way finally enabled, as a reward for his modesty, to sustain gazing at
God’s face or whether it refers, as in Exodus, only to the “back” of God’s face.
35
Until the upsurge of interest in Lacan in the last ten years, the sole English-speaking author to refer to
Lacan when dealing with the importance of the mirroring function was Donald W. Winnicott (1967)
(who speaks primarily in terms of the literal mirroring of the infant by the mother rather than the
infant’s reflection in the mirror). Interestingly, Margaret S. Mahler, who during this same year intro-
duced what she termed the “mirroring frame of reference” (1967, p. 87), makes no reference to Lacan’s
work. Gouin-Décarie (1965, p. 66), working in Canada, cursorily mentions Lacan’s essay among a list
of French psychoanalytic contributors to early object relations development. Kohut himself got around
to acknowledging his intellectual debt to Lacan only in his last works (1977). The political issues useful
for understanding the slow uptake of Lacan’s work, and other peculiarities of their fate from the
standpoint of the history of ideas, has been discussed amply by Ragland-Sullivan (1989), Smith and
Kerrigan (1983), Turkel (1982), and, most recently, Macey (1988).
36
See Laplanche and Pontalis (1967), pp. 250–53; Muller and Richardson (1982), pp. 1–19; Muller and
Richardson (1985).
37
See Stern (1985), pp. 144–45; Winnicott (1971).
38
The potentially alienating and uncannily disturbing qualities of mirroring have also been noted by
developmental researchers. Priel, for example, concludes her developmental review (1985) by stating
that the mirror image is uniquely anxiety-provoking because, on one hand, it is completely synchro-
nous with the human infant’s movements and kinesthetic sensations, giving rise to the experience of
having a double, yet, by virtue this very experience, the image acquires a quality that only the infant’s
own body has: “This would mean that the child is receiving from the mirror rather bewildering me and
not-me cues” (p. 184).
39
See Ragland-Sullivan (1989), pp. 29, 318, note 62. Recent writers have clarified this even further
by showing that Lacan’s mirror stage concept evolved across at least 3 major revisions (Julien,
1994; Van Pelt, 2000, pp. 21–44). Most important is the clarification that the mirror stage is pre-
ceded by an earlier period characterized by primordial identifications (more correctly, symbiotic,
fused-and-patched-together identity components or incorporations), which are primarily psychotic-
like. Subsequently, with the advent of the mirror phase, a period of primary identifications holds
sway, predicated upon the imaginary (in this period, the individual sees his own desire in the image
of the other). Finally, with full entry into the symbolic, there sets in a period featuring combinatory
identifications (as opposed to the more primary, dichotomized binary identifications). At this point,
the authentic “I” is aware that it plays a role as a signifier within the larger symbolic order, along
with all other signifiers. In this last period, the individual recognizes, as opposed to literally seeing,
his desire as being the desire of the other’s desire. As Julien summarizes the matter (1994, p. 50):
“By means of speech that answers the subject’s demand for love, the subject can come to recognize
himself in what he sees.”
40
Though consistently ignored in most post-Lacanian exposition, Lacan also spoke in terms of a “desire-
in-pieces,” resulting from the constant projection outward of the child’s own desire or libido toward
misrecognized, alienating objects and from the inability yet to satisfactorily combine partial drives or
instinctual-zonal pleasures under such conditions (1953–1954, p. 148).
41
See Muller (1988), p. 352.
42
Lacan (1949), p. 5.
43
Muller and Richardson (1982), pp. 6, 66.
44
Lacan (1953–1954), pp. 168–9; Lacan (1954–1955); Lacan (1960), p. 311.
45
One of the major conceptualizations of André Green (1999a, p. 59).
46
See Caruth (1995) and (1996), pp. 62, 64.
47
In the text, it is the formidable Sha‘da’ei appellation that appears, which has been translated, for want
of any English equivalent, as “Almighty.” It is worth noting that this ancient name of God – the one that
Moses insisted upon moving beyond toward the deeper mysteries of the tetragrammaton (see Exodus,
6:3) – appears 31 times in the Book of Job, a quantity which completely outstrips any other book of the
canon (it appears only 9 times in the Pentateuch, and a total of 8 times in the entire remainder of the
canon!). Could this be another hint to some particular Mosaic inclination?
48
As recently expressed by Julien (1994, p. 189), “The analyst responds to the voice created in the Other
by saying nothing; to the gaze solicited from the other by seeing nothing; to oral and anal demands to
be satisfied by the Other, by giving nothing.”
49
In the sense of the process described by Bion (1963, 1965, 1967), and compare with Job’s own final
admission – “I heard of You by the hearing of the ear; But now my eye has seen You” (42:5).
50
This element of theory, and in particular its relation to the rationale of treatment, is one of the more diffi-
cult but fascinating aspects of Lacan’s contribution to classical psychoanalytic thought. In a nutshell, the
patient must learn to empty himself from his own speech, and from that point, a point of relative nothing-
ness, truly relearn, to whatever degree possible, how to represent himself semantically, and somewhat
more independently, given that he has been learning, with the analyst’s helpful neutrality, how to absent
himself from his semantic chains, and his symptoms. With the rigorous analysis of transference, the
patient ceases having to represent the “other” for the other! Critical throughout this process is the capac-
ity of the patient to ask, “What do you want from me?” See esp. Borch-Jacobsen (1993), p. 150.
51
Usage of the Hebrew term ne’h.a‘mah in the sense of change or recanting one’s prior attitude or policy
is seen in Genesis, 6:7, I Samuel, 15:29 and II Samuel, 13:39. Its use to more strongly denote an emo-
tional consolation – which, of course, nevertheless carries the latent meaning of a transformation in
affective relationship – is seen directly in Job, 40ii:11 and is probably an important aspect of the
intensely ambivalent context in Genesis, 27:42 (see Rashi ad loc.).
258 SPERO
The fact that the term na‘h. em or ne’h. a‘mah oftentimes follows the word shuv [“turn” or “return,” i.e.,
repent] in the biblical text does not automatically helps us to decide under which circumstances
ne’h.a‘mah refers to consolation and the related intrapsychic dynamics of reparation, or to a more rational,
executive type of reconsideration, akin to a philosophically decision to rescind a former commitment. I
suggest Jonah, 3:9–10 as a good example of just how unclear the matter can be:
Who knows whether God will not turn and repent [ya‘shuv ve-nē‘h.am],
and turn away [ve-shav] from His fierce anger, that we not perish?
And God saw their works, that they turned from their evil ways;
and God repented [va-yē’na‘h.em] of the evil, which He said He would do unto them;
and He did it not.
In any event, I suggest that we not draw too fine a line here. For practical purposes, one can state that
in general there are ne’h.a‘mah-like processes that lead up to te’shu‘vah (repentance) and other
ne’h.a‘mah-like processes that result from or run parallel with the advancing stages of te’shu‘vah.
52
Objet(a) (French) stands for objet(a)utre or the inherently “other” object. For detailed discussion of the
functions outlined in the text, see, for example, Benvenuto and Kennedy (1986, pp. 176–79) and
Glowinski, Marks, and Murphy (2001).
53
See Fink (1995), pp. 59–61.
54
See Žižek (1992), p. 155. Lacan initially developed his concept of the symptom, which he intentionally
referred to by its Old French spelling “sinthome” (1975–1976) with reference to James Joyce’s near-
psychotic relinquishing of his body-envelope image, thereby instituting the symptom as the fourth
member of his up-until-that-point triadic order of Real, Imaginary, and Symbolic. For further discus-
sion, see Adams (2003).
55
Discussed by Belau (2002, p. 153) and Caruth (1995, p. 11).
56
See Lefort and Lefort (1980), pp. 46–49. Later, Lefort and Lefort state (p. 327):
There is only one object: the drive object; it is an object that takes its place in a montage, the cir-
cuit of the drives, which absolutely implicates the Other and deprives the object of its Real dimen-
sion by marking it with a loss. That, indeed is why orality can never lead to intrinsic satisfaction,
but rather to . . . a structure that is constitutive of the subject in the signifier.
57
Regarding anxiety and the flooding of the Real into the breach of the hole, see Harari (2001), esp.
pp. 102–11.
58
See Rabate (2000), p. 19.
59
Covering his mouth marks the oral gap, the hole, which he must protect, the “sea of anguish”
(mouth=sea) within him (13:24, 27:7, 33:10).
60
In the preceding paragraphs, I have made much of the role of the ma’kom or “place” – the real cleft
in the geographic rock as well as the symbolic neo-space located nowhere in particular except men-
tally – where Moses and the character of “Job” coincide. I would like to note a curiosity about which
I can only offer some creative conjecture. As is well known, the biblical text is replete with what are
known as masoretic irregularities wherein a Hebrew term appears in a form that is corrupt in some
way (missing a vowel or a letter). Such seeming corruption creates difficulty as it might render the
anticipated singular term plural, or the opposite, or even unpronounceable. And so the matter might
rest, where it not for the oral tradition that instructs how such terms are to be read despite the cor-
ruption. From the viewpoint of Jewish tradition, such corruptions are not mere copyists’ errors, nor
accidents, and are seen instead as the location of various mysteries that must be interpreted for their
fullest meaning. According to the principle of ke‘rē u’ke‘thēv, the word must be written on the bib-
lical scroll in its corrupt form – or else render the text unfit – and yet it is to be pronounced not as it is
written but in accordance with tradition – or else render the reading improper. In the Book of Job,
two unique incidents of condensation stand out: I refer to the two, almost identical terms
mēn’ha‘sa‘a‘rah (38:1) and mēn’sa‘a‘rah (40:6), two unusually “thick” terms that condense the nat-
urally distinct words mēn | ha-sa‘a‘rah, meaning “from | within the storm.” Both terms appear at
the introduction of God’s two responses to Job from within the occult whirlwind. There are only
13 other incidents of condensation in the Bible overall, and the present two incidents have been
interpreted in a variety of fanciful ways. I would like to suggest that the appearance of a conspicuous
lexical knot at precisely this point – whether intentionally crafted or even inadvertently slipped by
Moses himself – represents in graphic terms the tendency toward increasing symmetrization (i.e., the
collapse of the law of contradiction) the deeper one enters into the realm of the unconscious, or into
the cleft containing the divine “space.” To read the condensed term correctly requires the Symbolic,
the oral tradition, and thereby the reintroduction of an asymmetrizing cleavage, which makes possi-
ble the surrender of wildly packing all of one’s pleasure into a single “mega-term” (the whirlwind, or
psychotic omniscience) in favor of our slow, even stammering linguistic sentience.
61
The skin-veil concept continues in Exodus 34:30–35, when Moses, having descended from the moun-
tain for the second time, discovers that he must drape or shield his face from the nation who now, in
turn, and paradoxically, clamour to mirror themselves in Moses’ face and are at the same time fright-
ened of his face. Indeed, the text implies that Moses himself was not immediately aware of why they
were reacting in this way, though the text quickly reveals that the explicit cause of the peoples’ reaction
was the glorious radiance of his face. Taken all together, this episode may express the nation’s height-
ened self-consciousness and sense of shame as a result of increased recognition of the desire for and
dangers of too-literal mirroring (i.e., the type that permitted them to imagine that they could simply and
concretely replace the temporarily absent Moses with any other kind of polished, mask-like surface).
This psychic development must be considered a positive or creative advance.
62
See Matte-Blanco (1975); Matte-Blanco (1988).
63
See Bomford (1999).
64
An entirely different and intriguing approach to the conceptual meaning of God’s pausing to ask Job
about his whereabouts during Creation can be found in an unexpected source. In one of his brilliantly
descriptive neuropsychological accounts of mind-body states generally overlooked by contemporary
observers, Oliver Sacks takes up some of his own experiences with physical alienation and reappropri-
ation of his sense of his own leg – or his relationship to his leg – throughout a difficult period of surgi-
cal repair and rehabilitation following a traumatic accident. In A Leg to Stand On (1984), Sacks relates
at one point (pp. 110–12) the difficult moment just prior to taking his first step forward following a
period of immobility. In the milliseconds of contemplation that Sacks manages to capture just prior to
actually producing this single step, he becomes aware of what he considers a sense of measurement, of
a frame-creating processing that his mind is feverishly calculating, akin to the infinitesimal “pre-
Planck” time just following the Big Bang and just preceding the beginning of qualitatively measurable
time. “Out of nothingness, out of chaos, measure was being made” (p. 113, emphasis added). Sacks
then writes (p. 113):
All at once I thought of God’s questions to Job: “Where were thou when I laid the foundations of the
earth? Who had laid the measures thereof.” And I thought, with awe, I am there, I have seen it. . . . I
stood still, arrested, riveted to the spot, partly because the vertigo made movement impossible, partly
perhaps because I was arrested by these reflections. My soul was transfixed by a rapture of wonder.
“This is the most wonderful thing I have ever known, “ I thought. “Never must I forget this mar-
velous moment. Nor can I possibly keep this to myself.” And following straight on this thought came
more words out of Job: “Oh, that my words were now written! Oh, that they were printed in a book!”
Fortunately for us, this is exactly what Sacks resolves to do.
While Sacks’s prose and interpretation are remarkable, I would differ with him on two points, and
I think it an important avenue of divergence. First, Sacks takes the approach that the necessary key to
re-establishing the cognitive map that eventually enables him to become reacquainted with his leg, and
ultimately permits walking, is “the deed” (p. 114). As if to say, at some arbitrary point, one must sim-
ply walk! I would agree that it may seem this way, but hold that “the word” precedes the deed; indeed,
without some linguistic carriage, deeds and actions fall stillborn into a void. And, in fact, Sacks and his
physiotherapist companions certainly engaged in a fair amount of thinking and talking before he actu-
ally executed the first step. (Arguing from infancy does not change my opinion: the sum of infant
actions are indeed arbitrary and only a select few are destined to fall into a schematic place within the
context of a verbal ambiance that lends to them a basic framework.) Second and more importantly,
260 SPERO
missing from Sacks’s interpretive theory is the role of desire. Ironically, desire is not lacking in the nar-
rative description: Sacks exudes it, and the reader can almost taste it. What I mean to say is that Sacks’s
version of Job would seem to enable Job to retort, “Alright then, God, I admit I was a bit startled at
first, but I have now been enlightened by contemporary neuroscience and can indeed account for my
whereabouts and activities during the first moment of Creation!”
In fact, neither Job nor Sacks, in the end, can fathom that nano-moment of utter suspension just
prior to the first movement of time. Nor would I believe that Sacks had solved the problem by resort-
ing to Kantian a priori or intuition in order to gain closure on his experience (in his 1993 Afterword, he
himself acknowledges this dissatisfaction, but has as yet no alternative). No, even if what Sacks expe-
rienced in that awesome moment indeed had something to do with “framing” or measurement (and I
agree that it does), it is not a measurement that the human mind can comprehend, and not for lack of
insight, but because what he could comprehend of his experience is at best always a retroactive impres-
sion of the “measure” of desire and of lack. At root, the ultimate experience can only be felt as a void,
and it is a void that opens up to desire (for total knowledge, for ethical wisdom, for perfectly mutual
relationship with oneself, the other, even one’s leg). And this is the very void that, apparently by defin-
ition, the unconscious (or God) will always condign to keep incomprehensible to man.
65
Putting aside the spelling distinctions between the terms ei’foh (which ends with the letter heh) and
ei‘fo, the rabbis sensed another, far more significant parallel along the lines of the curious little ei‘fo,
“however.” In Genesis, 27:33, after Isaac learns that it was not Esau who had just brought him the meal
nor upon whom he had just bestowed the blessings, we are witness to an outbreak of horrified anxiety:
And Isaac trembled with a great fear, and he said, ‘Who, then [ei‘fo, “however” or “accordingly”],
was it that hunted for me food and brought it for me . . .
It is based on the appearance of the term ei‘fo here and in the reference (Exodus, 33:16) cited in the text
and in the reference in Job (19:23) that the rabbis deduced that Moses must have been the author of
Job. Rashi (ad loc.) treats ei‘fo as if it were interchangeable in this context with ei’foh, rendering the
term as a portmanteau: mē who ve-ei‘foh who, “Who is he and where is he?” Important for us is the fact
that as the talmudic discussion continues, a further opinion suggests that Job lived during the period of
Joseph, based upon the appearance of the term ei’foh (“Where”) as Joseph searches for his brothers,
despite the fact that as we noted these two terms are not identical. All the more interesting, therefore,
is that the rabbis did not point to the term ei’foh (“Where”) that appears during the whirlwind (possibly
because it was uttered by God and not by the protagonist himself).
I believe I have landed upon another interesting parallel between Moses’s preoccupation with desire
in Job and another midrashic reference to the turmoil that results from the failure to subvert desire
through a questioning that suspends any expectation of concrete response. I have in mind a parallel
between God’s flaunting of Job before Satan, “Have you seen my servant, Job?” – which I think we
could say would also be the way in which God would refer to Moses – and the following morality tale
(Pe’sēk‘tah Ra’bba’tē, 13:6 to Exodus, 17:8):
[Said the Lord] I am continually among you and available for your needs, and yet you [ask]: ‘Is God
in our midst or not?’ By your lives! The dog [Amalek] shall come and bite you, and you will cry out
for me, and then you will know where I am! Rabbi Ber’a’kh‘eah the Priest [transmitted a teaching]
in the name of Rabbi Judah the Prince: [The matter is analogous] to a person who was carrying his
son on his shoulders as they walked out to the [market]. The son spied an object [var., da‘var shel
he’fez.?, “a desirable object”] and said, ‘Father, take that object and give it to me.’ And thus he did.
And so on a second occasion and on a third occasion. Soon, they then met another person. The son
said to the person, ‘Have you seen my father?’ The father said, ‘Do you indeed not know where I
am?’ He threw him off his shoulders and a dog came and bit him.
This tale features the failure of specular or mirrored desire, and perhaps also representationalizes the
need to aggressively subvert mirroring, and to acknowledge the primacy of the (O)ther, in order to
escape the snare of narcissistic demand.
66
See Glowinski, Marks, and Murphy (2001), pp. 1–4.
67
Cf. the use of the term as “mark” or “sign” in Ezekiel, 9:4.
68
Cf. Zephaniah, 3:20, “. . . be-shu‘vē et she’vu‘te‘khem”.
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CHAPTER 19
BIBLICAL THEMES IN PSYCHIATRIC PRACTICE
Implications for psychopathology and psychotherapy
SAMUEL PFEIFER
Klinik Sonnenhalde, Riehen, Switzerland
1. INTRODUCTION
Mental suffering cannot be understood in psychiatric terminology alone. Diagnostic

criteria, structured interviews of psychopathology, imaging techniques and measur-
ing biochemical parameters will never reveal the deeper issues that trouble a per-
son. Value-sensitive therapists will therefore look beyond psychopathology at
individual attempts to understand the inexplicable of mental distress (Kleinman,
1988). In the vast field of transcultural psychiatry, religious topics are an important
aspect that may give us more insight in the individual’s dealing with suffering.
Often religious patients may refer to biblical themes and archetypes (Heilman &
Witztum, 2000) to describe their condition. The Bible contains a wealth of narra-
tives on human suffering, interpersonal conflict, existential struggles and transcen-
dent experiences (Mumford, 1992). It describes human beings in their tension
within themselves, with others and with God, in their motivations and their distress,
torn between good and evil.
The clinical observations which are presented in this article have been gathered in
my function as medical director of a private psychiatric clinic in Switzerland (Klinik
Sonnenhalde in Riehen near Basel). Founded by deaconesses in 1900, it has always
been the goal to integrate professional clinical psychiatry with Christian counseling.
Today the clinic is integrated in the regional psychiatric network and serves as a val-
ued alternative to state psychiatric hospitals. Although we declare our openness for
religious issues, it is our goal to serve all patients, irrespective of their social, cultural
or religious background.
267
© 2007 Springer.
268 PFEIFER
2. THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF BIBLICAL THEMES

IN PSYCHIATRIC PRACTICE
In therapy with religious patients, most of whom come from a Christian background,
it is striking how they express their suffering not only in the descriptive terms of our
culture and our medical vocabulary. Spirituality is an important aspect of their life,
and it is affected, when they suffer from psychological problems. There are major dif-
ferences in the phenomenology and in the religious presentation of various diagnostic
groups. Thus, for didactic reasons, I would like to describe three distinct groups.
2.1 Depression
Religious individuals do not only suffer from the general symptomatology of

depression but especially from the fact, that faith which has been a source of
strength and coping is now darkened and losing it’s supportive function. The gen-
eral tendency of feeling guilty and a failure is then related to a failure in their spir-
itual life. It is important to understand this relation and to help patients see that
their spiritual suffering is part of the depressive disorder. Let me describe a few
examples:
1. Sad affect, loss of joy and interest can lead to a loss of joyful emotion in regard to
God and his creation. This pertains especially to those theological traditions
which emphasize emotions as a proof of salvation or predestination.
2. Ruminating and doubting, inner restlessness and endless brooding can lead to a
loss of the conviction of salvation or predestination.
3. Self reproach and ideation of guilt are experienced as real guilt before God and can
lead to fear of being eternally lost without a way of reconciliation and forgiveness.
4. Lack of energy and inability to make decisions obstruct participation in regular
religious activities, increasing a sense of inadequacy. Even Bible readings and
prayer become a burden.
5. Fear and regression, or inadequate clinging to others can severely hinder the
fellowship with other believers which would normally be the social network of
support.
6. Worries and a lack of perspective take away the confidence which the person had
through faith. Bible quotations telling them not to worry, can increase the sense of
disobedience and inadequacy.
7. Irritability and hypersensitivity can result in dysfunctional behaviour, which is
perceived by the afflicted person as well as family and friends as not compatible
with the love and gentleness of a Christian life.
8. A lack of hope and the wish to die are sometimes supported by Bible quotations
out of context, which seem to encourage suicide.
9. Often patients or their Christian subculture interpret their emotional and somatic
complaints as the activity of demonic powers, thus adding a dimension of terror
to the depressive experience which goes far beyond bare human experience
(Pfeifer, 1994). A brief case illustration follows:
BIBLICAL THEMES IN PSYCHIATRIC PRACTICE 269
Case vignette: Suicidal ideation and the promise of heavenly bliss
M.Z, a 20 year old student, who grew up in a loving family, was very sensitive from her childhood on.
She is very gifted in music, but also suffered from frequent sleep disorders. When she was ten, her father
died within weeks from cancer. She grew up to become a beautiful young lady, started to study music
and was engaged to a stable promising young man. Then however, she failed her exams and had to leave
the Music Academy. She had a growing hesitation to get married and presented with a severe depressive
disorder with marked suicidal ideation and a history of several suicide attempts. Despite regular therapy
and standard medication she suffered from prolonged severe suicidality. In therapy she described her
longing for heaven: “This life is but a preparation for eternal glory; there I will meet my father, there I
will be able to praise God with my music which did not find the world’s approval. My most beautiful
experiences were those moments where I felt close to God, where I ‘felt like heaven’.” The patient’s
description of the promise of heaven was – like all her private logic – so convincing that the religious
therapist had to distance herself from that hope which she basically shared but which became dysfunc-
tional in supporting suicide as the option to find the eternal bliss which the harsh reality of this world
could not offer her.
2.2 Schizophrenia – Religious Delusions with Biblical Content
Schizophrenia is the illness which is most commonly related to religious content,

even in the secular literature and in diagnostic manuals. Religious delusions are often
bizarre, representing a distorted and often threatening image of religious traditions
and ideals. Interestingly, it is by far not only religious individuals who develop reli-
gious delusions. Often they serve the individual to explain the inexplicable in psy-
chosis. Here are the most common features which can contain religious themes.
1. Hearing voices: Although there are some neuropsychological models to
explain this phenomenon, the voices can be so convincing and threatening that
they force the individual to try to find an explanation for him- or herself.
Often, the every-day cultural context will not suffice to give such an explana-
tion. Voices of angels or evil spirits, of God or Satan could help to give order
in the inner chaos – but such descriptions will not be understood by the outer
world, thus alienating the individual in its familiar surroundings. It should be
noted, just as a marginal remark, that not all voice hearing can be interpreted
as schizophrenic – a fact that has been established by the research of Romme
and Escher (1993).
2. Mystical illusions and constructions of autistic meanings: The alienation and the
disturbance of thinking, feeling and behavior, which are so characteristic of psy-
chosis can lead to altered states of consciousness, which again may be experi-
enced or described in religious terms. To distinguish them from real mystical
experiences is not easy and would require the presence of other characteristic
symptoms of schizophrenia See the illustration on the following page.
3. Prophecy: It is one thing to have an individual experience of heavenly bliss, but
something else, when a person feels urged to let others know the revelations he or
she has received. The content of such prophecies can be quite varied, from shar-
ing images to preaching coming doom or the end of the world. Again, one has to
carefully examine the cultural background of a person before asserting so-called
“prophecies” as pathological.
270 PFEIFER
Case vignette: Mystical visions and psychosis
J.B., a 39 year old secretary and member of a charismatic church became increasingly restless and felt
urged by the Holy Spirit to serve her church by prophecies she had received. Often such “visions” were
triggered by real events. When the pastor of the church was severely injured in a road accident she saw
“a cross on the ground, partly covered by snow, and our pastor slain under the cross, and in his hands he
held something like a seed.” Her insistence to share her many prophecies and visions in the Sunday ser-
vice were increasingly resisted by other members of the church and finally led to a complete nervous
breakdown which required psychiatric treatment.
4. Having a mission: This implies further action as a result of visions, prophecies or

revelations. Often patients display delusions of grandiosity, and identification
with religious figures or even the Messiah. World centres of religions and holy
places such as Jerusalem or Rome are frequent travel destinations for individuals
with such delusional systems. A vivid description of the “Jerusalem Syndrome”
has been published by Witztum and Kalian (1999).
5. Rituals and sacrifice: Bizarre rituals, self harm and harm to others can be an
expression of delusional ideation, e.g. as an offering to save the world and to
bring salvation or to identify with the suffering Christ. Although Biblical allu-
sions are frequently made, the underlying delusional system may be quite volatile
and poorly defined, often serving as a post hoc explanation of self harm and sui-
cidal gestures. Examples in the psychiatric literature refer to auto-enucleation of
the eyes and autocastration in Christian and Islamic context or ritual burnings in
the Buddhist culture (for an overview cf. Favazza, 1998).
6. Somatic sensations: Bodily hallucinations can have religious overtones and
Biblical references. In a dramatic and symbolic form they may present as a
delusion of pregnancy from God (associated with awe and feelings of ecstatic
pleasure, but also with the depressing burden of being chosen to carry such a
severe responsibility). Painful sensations or sexual stimulation can be perceived
as demonic affliction.
2.3 Anxiety and Personality Disorders – Biblical Rationalisations

of Behaviour and Defence
Anxiety disorders and Personality Disorders comprise the field that was termed
“neurotic” before the introduction of DSM-III and ICD-10. Space does not permit to
describe the wide variety of biblical texts as a source of conflict or as a means of
structuring defense mechanisms.
They can be understood in terms of the general vessel of psychopathology being
filled with the content of personal concerns and values, which can be primarily
religious in the Christian patient. In his paper on “The phenomenology of religious
psychopathology”, W. W. Meissner (1991) wrote:
“Consideration should be given to how patients use their religious belief systems as a vehicle for the
expression of neurotic needs and conflicts, in particular to identify patterns of symptomatic and charac-
terological expression with their particular religious phenomenology.” (p. 268)
In an empirical study at our own clinic (Pfeifer & Waelty, 1995) we explored
the relationship between religion and the disorders that were formerly described as
neuroses. Whereas we could not demonstrate a pathogenic function of religion per
se, we found the frequent impression of patients that their psychological problems
led to a significant impairment of their religious life.
3. BIBLICAL ASPECTS OF CAUSALITY IN PSYCHIATRY
Probably the most frequent question our patients are asking, is the quest for an expla-
nation of illness. WHAT has caused suffering, WHY is this happening to me, WHY
NOW? It is the question for roots of affliction, for causes, for connections between
trauma, conflicts and suffering. The Bible describes many instances of this probing
for the ultimate cause of illness. In the Gospel of John (chapter 9:1-3, RSV) the fol-
lowing story is related:
“As he passed by, he saw a man blind from his birth. And his disciples asked him: ‘Rabbi, who sinned, this
man or his parents, that he was born blind?’ Jesus answered, ‘It was not that this man sinned, or his
parents, but that the works of God might be made manifest in him.’”
Causal attributions serve to construct a model of explanations to reduce the tension

between painful reality and personal hopes, wishes and ideals. Mental problems are
especially difficult to understand as explanations are often incomplete, and control is
difficult to attain despite efforts to think or act differently. An overview on “Attribution
theory and religious experience” has been published by Spilka and McIntosh (1995).
In my clinical work, the quest for causality is one of the most frequent questions at
the outset of therapy. Obviously, there is a mosaic of explanations for mental
distress. The explanatory framework is multifaceted in the Bible, too, as will be
shown in part three of this article. However, it seems, that in their emotional darkness
patients are narrowing the vast scope of explanations to three topics that – at first
sight – seem to strongly relate to the Bible: Sin – Curse – Demonic affliction.
Sin: The question of personal guilt and rightful punishment for misdeeds (the
Bible contains references to individual guilt, generational guilt and even the collec-
tive guilt of a people as a whole).
Curse: In Deuteronomy 27:14-26 the Levites are reciting a litany of curses culminat-
ing in a curse against all who do not keep the law. However, the causative concept of a
curse is widespread in all cultures of the world, often with no direct relation to the Bible.
Demonic affliction: the ultimate evil cause certainly is the harassment or even
the possession by demons. Again the Bible has multiple references to this concept,
the source of evil spirits being both from Satan and from God (1. Samuel 16:14).
However, there seems to be a wider concept in popular theory of illness, ascribing
all inexplicable behavior to demonic forces. Thus the Arabic culture has a widely
used word for mental illness (madjnoon), meaning “beset by a djinn,” the Arabic
word for a demon.
A few years ago, I conducted a systematic investigation of the frequency of
demonic attributions (Pfeifer, 1994; Pfeifer, 1999) in 343 religious patients with
272 PFEIFER
psychiatric disorders. Diagnoses were divided into five categories: (1) Psychotic and
schizophrenic conditions (PS), (2) Mood disorders (MD), (3) Anxiety and related
disorders (ANX), (4) Personality disorders (PD) and (5) Adjustment disorders (AD).
129 of the 343 patients (37,6%) believed in the possible demonic causation of
their problems. 104 patients (30,3% of the whole sample) looked for help through
prayers for deliverance (figure 1). Two factors were significantly associated with
such beliefs: diagnostic category and religious affiliation (the highest frequency of
52% being found, not surprisingly, in members of charismatic churches).
However, patients’ concepts of demonic influence did not correspond with strict
criteria of “possession.” Often they seem to be rather diffuse efforts to explain psy-
chological distress of anxiety, depression and psychosomatic complaints within the
framework of their religious convictions. The most surprising result of our study was
the fact that demonic causal attributions were not only frequent in schizophrenia but
also in all categories of non-delusional disorders (Pfeifer, 1999). The more intense
the impression of ego-dystonic influence, the more frequent was the suspicion of an
“occult” influence.
Although many patients subjectively experienced the rituals as positive (Bull, Ellan-
son and Ross, 1998), outcome in psychiatric symptomatology was not improved which
corresponds with research on outcome in other non-medical treatments (Finkler, 1980).
4. BIBLICAL ASPECTS OF THE BIO-PSYCHO-SOCIAL MODEL

OF PSYCHIATRY
Today’s most broadly accepted paradigm in clinical psychiatry is the bio-psycho-

social model of mental illness (Engel, 1977). It gives us a broad understanding of the
major factors contributing to the development of mental disorders. It allows for both
genetic and psychosocial factors and it includes the individual’s personal way of
dealing with his or her life events and interpersonal conflicts. But, we must ask: Is
this model compatible with Biblical aspects? Why does it not include the spiritual
life of an observant religious person? Where is God? What about sin? And where are
the dark forces which are so prevalent in causal attributions?
In my discussions with theologians and Christian lay persons I realised that we
have to re-examine the Bible to develop a bridge between theological concepts and
clinical observations. This has led me to the following theses:
1. It is a grave misunderstanding to limit biblical models of mental distress to the
concepts of sin, curse and demons alone.
2. Biblical texts do support the bio-psycho-social model of psychiatry and serve for
a better and more humane understanding of mental disorders.
3. The question of an additional “spiritual” dimension is largely unexplored for its
clinical relevance. Research on religion and mental health seems to reflect social
and psychological implications of the spiritual factor. Clinicians are called to serve
as interpreters between “Biblical models” and bio-psycho-social psychiatry – (and
vice versa!).
Table 1. The bio-psycho-social model and biblical terms
Biological Psychological Social

aspects aspects aspects
General (medical) Genetics Emotions Childhood

terms Neurobiology Reasoning Family life
Temperament Volition Trauma
Physical Behavior Stress
constitution Defense Life events
Coping
Biblical terms Weakness Way of life Burden
Mind Hardships
Heart Trials
Bowels Temptation
Overcoming
Let me describe a model that combines the language of modern psychiatric thinking
and Biblical references to form a teaching concept to understand mental problems
and their treatment (see Table 1). It may be surprising that the model does not con-
tain a specific spiritual factor as a fourth element. However, as mentioned above
(point 3), there is, in my opinion, no sufficient evidence for a separate spiritual fac-
ulty in the human psyche that acts independently of psycho-social factors.
Explaining the “spiritualized” symptoms as basic correlates of a depressive
episode with bio-psycho-social dimensions can become very helpful to the afflicted
person and his or her family, thus relieving the fear of a spiritual crisis with all the
negative perceptions of rejection, guilt, and anxiety directed toward God (thus lead-
ing to a negative image of God [cf. Rizzuto, 1979]).
However, in some instances, the interplay between depressive guilt and real
religious guilt; or the destructive aspects of a depression may be so impressive,
that non-depressed religious persons are inclined to think that a “supra-natural
factor” is at work. Metaphorically, one might speak of a “demonic” flavor in
masochistic, severely depressive and/or anxious behavior and feelings. However,
clinical experience has not yielded evidence that such interpretations (with the
ensuing rituals of “deliverance” or “exorcism”) are sufficient to improve such a
condition. Discussions with family members and religious counselors can then
become an opportunity to give them a broader understanding of mental illness
beyond lopsided spiritual models.
Leaving a reductionistic position in psychiatry, means to give the patient a cultur-
ally sensitive interpretation of his suffering. Eisenberg (1981) described the function
of the physician as an interpreter:
“The decision to seek medical consultation is a request for interpretation. . . . Patient and doctor together
reconstruct the meaning of events in a shared mythopoesis . . . Once things fall in place; once experience
and interpretation appear to coincide; once the patient has a coherent “explanation” which leaves him no
longer feeling the victim of the inexplicable and the uncontrollable, the symptoms are, usually,
exorcised.” (p. 245)
274 PFEIFER
Table 2. Therapeutic implications and ethical guidelines
• Develop a supportive therapeutic setting in collaboration with the patient.

• Biblical aspects as part of a comprehensive model of illness and coping.
• Co-operation with a pastor, priest, rabbi or religious counselor (if possible).
• Psycho-education: Religious life can be affected by mental illness and distress (e.g. depression).
• Determine functional and dysfunctional aspects of religious interpretation.
• “Agree to disagree” – but focus on the areas which help a patient regain his balance
• Value-sensitive therapy: Using references to the Bible without losing sight of the bio-psycho-social
aspects of psychopathology
5. THERAPEUTIC IMPLICATIONS: THE PHYSICIAN

AS AN INTERPRETER
What are the implications of such an interpretation for an integrated therapy? Para-
doxically, it requires first a disentanglement of religiosity and psychopathology in
order to help the person gain new insight into the nature of his or her problem, taking
out some of the conflictual potential of the religious tension. To quote Spero (1976)
in one of his earlier works:
“The orientation of such therapy should not be directed at the destruction of religion nor is the philosoph-
ical background one that denies the usefulness of religion. Rather, the general goal is to separate the
intrapsychic conflict from its “religious” defense system. Such a goal appears to be in the service of both
psychotherapy and religion.”
Table 2 describes some of the guidelines in therapy with religious patients.

Value-sensitive therapy follows ethical guidelines (Richards & Bergin, 1997) and
helps patients understand their illness against the background of their religious val-
ues. Some therapeutic techniques may include a “Narrative construction of distress
and therapy” as described by Witztum and Goodman (1999) in their work with ultra-
orthodox Jews.
Various forms of integrative psychotherapy, such as interpersonal psychotherapy
(Klerman, Weissman, Rounsaville, & Chevron, 1984) may be adequate to work with
patients who are less immersed into a distinct religious subculture. The model
described earlier gives the patient alternative ways to understand his or her
problems without devaluing their basic beliefs. Although some patients are
reluctant to accept medication on the grounds of personal fears and dog-
matic considerations, one should try to win them in their own interest to take
advantage of this aspect of therapy. One patient even has called her neuroleptic
depot medication “my thorn in the flesh” (referring to Paul’s lament in 2.
Corinthians 12:7).
It seems important that therapists working with religious patients have some per-
sonal experience and understanding of faith. Even if they do not share all religious
values of their clients, they should make themselves knowledgeable in their clients’
“religious subculture” (Havenaar, 1990; Worthington, 1988). The process of ther-
apy should be guided by what has been termed “collaborative empiricism” in cog-
nitive therapy. A Case illustration follows.
Case vignette: Integrative psychotherapy and psychopharmacological treatment

in a religious patient
A 48-year old man consulted me with panic attacks, obsessional ruminations and depressive symptoms
including severe sleep disturbance. The panic attacks had already forced him to give up many of his
favourite activities. Often he would feel compelled to curse in an obsessional way.
As a Christian, this caused him great distress, making him feel guilty before God, cursing God who
allowed him to suffer in this way. Various attempts to seek Christian counselling including several ses-
sions of exorcisms had not resulted in lasting success. He was seriously doubting his faith and saw no
more hope through Christian counselling. His suffering was obvious, and his family was suffering with
him. My treatment followed the principles of interpersonal therapy of depression including the prescrip-
tion of clomipramin for the obsessive-compulsive symptomatology.
To make a long story short, about four weeks later, he showed considerable improvement, not only in the
depressive symptomatology, but also in his religious life. In one of the therapy sessions he remarked: “I
would not have expected that, but your treatment really has helped me to regain my faith!”
It may not be unethical to challenge the assumptive world of a patient that is

perceived as dysfunctional. Here the question arises from which perspective the
assumptive world of the patient can be seen as dysfunctional, only in medical/
psychiatric terms, or also in a spiritual sense. Often a dysfunctional spiritual attitude
will also lead to a significant impairment of general functioning. Moreover, a careful
theological analysis of the depressive reasoning would probably yield other religious
aspects which would allow a different interpretation of a patient’s construct.
In terms of the spiritual life, differences between functional and dysfunctional
role of religion can be identified (Spilka, 1989). However, therapists should be
careful to explore religious values in an understanding way, helping their patients to
determine for themselves which changes are necessary for their well-being and
consistent with the Biblical basis of their faith (McMinn & Lebold, 1989). Therapy
should focus on helping the client to get a multivariate view of their conflicts and
their suffering within the framework of personal faith, thus achieving a constructive
re-integration of faith into the whole range of experience and coping with the
existential reality of life.
6. SUMMARY
Human suffering cannot be understood in medical terms alone. Value-sensitive ther-

apists will therefore look beyond psychopathology at individual attempts to under-
stand the inexplicable of mental distress. In this effort, religious patients may refer to
biblical themes and archetypes. The Bible contains a wealth of narratives on human
suffering, interpersonal conflict, existential struggles and transcendent experiences.
It describes human beings in their tension within themselves, with others and with
God, in their motivations and their distress, torn between good and evil.
So strong is the impact of Holy Scriptures in all monotheistic religions that it has
moved individuals throughout history in a deeply meaningful and emotionally stirring
way. In clinical psychiatric practice the Bible may become an issue in three major areas:
Affective Disorders, Functional Psychoses and Anxiety and Personality Disorders.
276 PFEIFER
The Bible serves as a power to heal but it can also evoke deep conflicts in mentally
suffering patients. It can bring consolation to the troubled heart but in some cases it
is also used to construct interpretations that can have detrimental consequences.
Mentally suffering individuals may experience and use their religion in a distorted
and dysfunctional way, their religious belief systems being used as a vehicle for the
expression of neurotic needs and conflicts.
Clinicians who are working with religious patients are challenged to find a bal-
ance, giving helpful support – including the Bible where applicable –, without los-
ing sight of the bio-psycho-social aspects of psychopathology. Therapy should
focus on helping the patient to get a multivariate view of their conflicts and their
suffering within the framework of personal faith, thus achieving a constructive re-
integration of faith into the whole range of experience and coping with the existen-
tial reality of life.
REFERENCES
Bull, D. L., Ellason, J. W., & Ross, C. A. (1998). Exorcism revisited: Positive outcomes with dissociative
identity disorder. Journal of Psychology and Theology, 26, 188–196.
Csordas, Th. J. (1994). The sacred self. A cultural phenomenology of charismatic healing. Berkeley CA:
University of California Press.
Eisenberg, L. (1981). The physician as interpreter: Ascribing meaning to the illness experience. Compre-
hensive Psychiatry, 22, 239–248.
Engel, G. (1977). The need for a new medical model: a challenge for biomedicine. Science, 196, 129–136.
Favazza, A. R. (1998). The coming of age of self-mutilation. Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 186,
259–268.
Finkler, K. (1980). Non-medical treatments and their outcomes. Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry, 4,
271–310.
Havenaar, J. M. (1990). Psychotherapy: Healing by culture. Psychotherapy & Psychosomatics, 53, 8–13.
Heilman, S. C., & Witztum E. (2000). All in faith: Religion as the idiom and means of coping with dis-
tress. Mental Health, Religion & Culture, 3, 115–124.
Kleinman, A. (1988). The illness marratives. Suffering, healing and the human condition. New York:
Basic Books.
Klerman, G. L., Weissman, M. M., Rounsaville B. J., & Chevron E. S. (1984). Interpersonal psychotherapy
of depression. New York: Basic Books.
McMinn, M. R., & Lebold, C. J. (1989). Collaborative efforts in cognitive therapy with religious clients.
Journal of Psychology and Theology, 17, 101–109.
Meissner, W. W. (1991). The phenomenology of religious psychopathology. Bulletin of the Menninger
Clinic, 55, 281–298.
Mumford, D. B. (1992). Emotional distress in the hebrew bible. British Journal of Psychiatry, 160, 92–97.
Pfeifer, S. (1994). Belief in demons and exorcism in psychiatric patients in Switzerland. British Journal of
Medical Psychology, 67, 247–258.
Pfeifer, S. (1999). Demonic attributions in non-delusional disorders. Psychopathology, 32, 252–259.
Pfeifer, S., & Waelty, U. (1995). Psychopathology and religious commitment. A controlled study.
Psychopathology, 28, 70–77.
Richards, P. S., & Bergin, A. E. (1997). A spiritual strategy for counseling and psychotherapy. Washington:
American Psychological Association.
Rizzuto, A. (1979). The birth of the living God. A psychoanalytical study. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press.
Romme, M., & Escher, S. (1993). Making sense of hearing voices. London: Mind Press.
Spero, M. H. (1976). Clinical aspects of religion as neurosis. American Journal of Psychoanalysis, 36,
361–365.
Spilka, B. (1989). Functional and dysfunctional roles of religion: an attributional approach. Journal of
Psychology and Christianity, 8, 5–15.
Spilka, B., & McIntosh D. N. (1995). Attribution theory and religious experience. In R. W. Hood (Ed.),
Handbook of religious experience. Birmingham AL: Religious Education Press.
Witztum, E., & Goodman, Y. (1999). Narrative construction of distress and therapy: A model based on
work with ultra-orthodox Jews. Transcultural Psychiatry, 36, 403–436.
Witztum, E., & Kalian, M. (1999). The “Jerusalem Syndrome” – Fantasy and reality. A survey of accounts
from the 19th century to the end of the second millennium. Israel Journal of Psychiatry and Related
Sciences, 36, 260–271.
Worthington, E. L. (1988). Understanding the values of religous clients: A model and its application to
counseling. Journal of Counseling and Psychology, 35, 166–174.
CHAPTER 20
THE BIBLE AND PSYCHOLOGY

New directions in biblical scholarship
WAYNE G. ROLLINS
Assumption College; Worcester, Massachusetts; USA

Hartford Seminary; Hartford, Connecticut, USA
1. INTRODUCTION AND SUMMARY
As an American biblical scholar engaged in the application of psychological and

psychoanalytic insight to the Bible and its interpretation, it was gratifying to receive
an invitation from the Foundation of Psychiatry and Religion in the Netherlands to
contribute an essay to this volume on psychological aspects of biblical concepts and
persons. In the words of the book of Proverbs, which is never short on psychological
insight: “Like cold water to a thirsty soul, so is good news from a far country”
(Proverbs 25:25).
My objective is to drop the other shoe. Since the initiative for this publication
originated from the psychological half of this inter-disciplinary effort, I would like to
offer a field report from the other half, biblical studies.
It is my aim to sketch the past, present, and possible future of a new discipline
within biblical studies, called psychological biblical criticism. It has been in the
making over the past thirty years, but has come of age as a sub-field within biblical
studies only in the last decade.
One of the more striking examples of its arrival is a document published by the
Pontifical Biblical Commission in 1993 under the title, “The Interpretation of the Bible
in the Church.” (see Pontifical Biblical Committee, 1994). It offers the most comprehen-
sive survey of new developments in biblical scholarship issued by any ecclesiastical
body. His Holiness, Pope Benedict XII states in the preface that “the methodological
spectrum of exegetical work [on the Bible] has broadened in a way that could not have
been envisioned thirty years ago.” One of the pieces of the spectrum is “Psychological
279
© 2007 Springer.
280 ROLLINS
and Psychoanalytic Approaches.” Commenting on these new approaches, Joseph

Fitzmyer, a premier biblical scholar and one of the document’s authors, tells us:
The psychological and psychoanalytical analyses of human experience have proven their worth in the
area of religion and enable one to detect multidimensional aspects of the biblical message. In particular,
this approach has been invaluable in the analytical explanation of biblical symbols, cultic rituals,
sacrifice, legal prohibitions, and biblical tabus. . . . The aid that can come from this approach to [the
biblical-critical] method cannot be underestimated.1
My paper will provide a field report on these developments in three parts. Part One
will rehearse the history of dialogue between biblical scholars and psychologists that
stretches over the past two millennia. I will also comment on the communications
blackout between psychology and religion, beginning in the 1920s, that lasted forty
years, and on the rapprochement that began to surface in the late 1960s.
Part Two will provide an overview on “psychological biblical criticism,” recount-
ing the ways biblical scholars have appropriated psychology as a tool of trade,
identifying key players on both sides of the Atlantic, and sketching their agenda.
Part Three will turn to a final question, namely, what psychology, psychiatry, psy-
chotherapy might learn from the Bible in the light of biblical scholarship over the
past century and a half.
My thesis is that psychology and religion historically are soul mates, or “womb
mates,” like Jacob and Esau, who for years were estranged and antagonistic, but
eventually came to reconciliation in the realization of a common bond. For Jacob
and Esau it was a bond of blood and destiny. For psychology and religion, the bond
is in the rediscovery of a shared history of commitment to the cura animarum, the
care and cure of the human soul.
2. THE HISTORY OF PSYCHOLOGY AND BIBLICAL STUDIES

IN THE WEST: 2000 YEARS OF DIALOGUE
One of the great rewards in any research is the discovery of an idea that overhauls
one’s thinking. I made three such discoveries over the last fifteen years in my
research on the history of psychology and biblical studies in the West. I had started
off with the assumption, shared by many, that psychology is a child of modernity, no
earlier than the last half of the 19th century. I had assumed that prior to Freud, Jung,
Wundt, and Skinner there was nothing. All of this was to change.
The first of these personal discoveries occurred in 1990 during a sabbatical leave
in Berkeley California. I came across the title of a book that literally made me catch
my breath. The author was Franz Delitzsch, a widely-respected 19th century biblical
scholar. The title, in translation from the German, was A System of Biblical
Psychology. Most astonishing was the date, 1855, which was one year before
Sigmund Freud’s birth, twenty years before Carl Jung’s, and twenty-four years
before the so-called “principal founder of modern psychology,” Wilhelm Wundt,
created the world’s first psychological laboratory in Leipzig.
Delitzsch opened with this surprising statement: “Biblical psychology is no science
of yesterday. It is one of the oldest sciences of the church.” Surveying Western
THE BIBLE AND PSYCHOLOGY 281
theology from Tertullian, Augustine, Gregory the Great, Aquinas, and the Reformation
up to his own nineteenth century, Delitzsch concluded “that the ancient church
had a psychological literature that claims respect no less for its extent than for its
substance.”
Naturally, I was excited, and on the basis of the evidence he presented, fairly
convinced. But I also feared that Delitzsch’s work might be a case of selective
historiography that would not stand up to the scrutiny of professional historians
of psychology.
This led to a second new fact, namely that historians of psychology, rather than
scrapping Delitzsch’s claim, provided support.2 I was to learn from every article I read
by professional historians of psychology, that psychology as a self-conscious reflective
discipline in the West began with one seminal thinker and one seminal work in the
fourth century BCE, namely, Aristotle and his Peri Psychès, “Concerning the Psyche.”
They contended further, that in creating the “first systematic psychology”, Aristotle
had “laid down the lines along which the relationship between various manifestations
of soul and mind were conceived” for two millennia.3
Here again my suspicions were aroused, but the evidence they presented was
irrefutable. Aristotle’s opus in combination with the works of Plato, Empedocles,
Anaxagoras, Pythagoras, the Stoics, Plotinus, Hippocrates, and Galen, among oth-
ers, collectively provided a detailed analysis of the nature and habits of the human
psyche. They identified its parts and properties in relationship to the body (soma),
reason (nous), spirit/will (thymos), and desire (epithymia), and to the faculties of
memory, learning, motivation, emotion, socialization, personality, and imagination.
They studied epistemology and perception and the relation of stimulus and sensa-
tion. They identified four passions (grief, fear, desire, and pleasure), the five senses,
and the “four humors” or personality types (sanguine, phlegmatic, choleric, and
melancholic). In proto-Freudian fashion they stressed the primacy of reason over
instinctual drives. They spoke of dreams as the expression of suppressed desire. In
the fifth century BCE, Hippocrates created a glossary of psychological maladies,
ranging from melancholia, mania, and post-partum depression, to phobias, paranoia,
and hysteria, and “declared that mental illness was a medical problem based on an
organic dysfunction of the brain which could best be addressed by oral remedies”
(Solomon, 2001, 15). This intuition was amplified six hundred years later by Galen
(130–200 CE) who prescribed a cure for diseases of the psyche that involved a
process of self-examination and counseling, anticipating Freud’s “talking cure.”4
In the words of one historian of psychology, the Greco-Roman psychological tra-
dition collectively had succeeded in identifying “nearly all the significant problems
of psychology that have concerned scholars and scientists ever since.”5 And in my
third “discovery” I was to learn that biblical scholars and theologians, beginning in
the first century C.E., were involved in the process.
My third “discovery” occurred while I was on the trail of the origin of the word
“psychology.” For purposes of comparison, I had discovered that the term “biology”
first appeared in 1802, “sociology” in 1840, but that the term “psychology” appeared
three centuries earlier, in 1524. Its first use is attributed to an obscure Serbo-Croatian,
282 ROLLINS
Marco Marulic, of whom little is known. But I was delighted to learn that the person to
popularize the term psychologia and introduce it to academic discussion six years later,
in 1530, was neither a philosopher, scientist, or philologist, but a biblical psychologist.
His name was Philip Melanchton, Martin Luther’s associate. The document in which
the term appears was titled, appropriately, Commentarius de Anima, a Commentary on
Aristotle’s Peri Psychès (van de Kemp, 1980).
It was appropriate for Melanchton to introduce the word “psychology” to the aca-
demic world, because he epitomized a fifteen hundred year old tradition of Christian
dialogue on the nature of the human psyche in exchange with non-Christian
contemporaries, beginning with Tertullian and Augustine (the latter often identified
to as the “first modern psychologist”) and culminating in the 19th century work of
Delitzsch, and in 1912 with a comparable work on biblical psychology by M. Scott
Fletcher, The Psychology of the New Testament, written at Oxford, under the
direction of B. H. Streeter.
As with their patristic predecessors, the goal of Delitzsch and Fletcher was to
“interpret the psychological languge and spiritual experiences of the New Testament
in terms of modern thought.”6 They employ “newly-coined words” such as archetype
(Urbilder), the ego, the conscious and unconscious. In the footsteps of Tertullian and
Augustine, they compare staples in the biblical portrait of the human person (e.g. the
terms psyche, spirit, heart, flesh) with ancient and contemporary models of the self.
They study types of psychological experience: rebirth, renewal, sanctification, sin,
and redemption. They compare personality theory among Jewish, Christian and
Greco-Roman writers.
The conclusion to which this “discovery” led was that for the better part of two
millennia in the West, up to 1920, psychology and biblical psychologists were
engaged in spirited dialogue on the question of the nature, origin, habits, destiny, and
care of the human soul or psyche.
What happened in the 1920s that broke off the dialogue between psychologists and
biblical scholars/theologians? From the biblical side, it was triggered by the publication
of Albert Schweitzer’s The Psychiatric Study of Jesus (1913). Schweitzer, an M.D. and
established biblical scholar, repudiated the psychoanalytic judgment of four psycho-
logical theorists who had come to the psychological conclusion that Jesus of Nazareth
was “mentally diseased.” Schweitzer objected less to their conclusion, than to the reduc-
tionist and historically uncritical route by which they had arrived at it. On both critical
grounds, Schweitzer declared their work to be worth “exactly zero.” C. G. Jung later
added his own denunciation of reductionism: “If a work of art is explained in the same
way as a neurosis, then either the work of art is a neurosis or a neurosis is a work of art.”7
Schweitzer’s assault on reductionism in combination with growing distrust of the
materialist and positivist assumptions of behaviorism, the rising star on the psycho-
logical horizon, resulted in a ban among biblical scholars on anything that smacked
of psychology until the last third of the 20th century.
Three factors, however, were responsible for the thaw in that cold war. First was a
change in psychology, marked by a dethroning of behaviorism, concomitant with the
rapid multiplication of new fields of psychology. By 1992 the American Psychological
Association identified no fewer than forty-two specialized divisions, with “each school
bringing its own perspective . . . open to insights from the others.”8 Furthermore, some
of the new fields proved remarkably attractive to theologians, pastoral counselors, and
even biblical scholars.
Second is a change in biblical scholarship, marked by a comparable dethroning of
historical-literary criticism as the dominant critical discipline. John Dominic
Crossan announced in 1977 that “Biblical study will no longer be conducted under
the exclusive hegemony” of one or two disciplines, but rather “through a multitude
of disciplines interacting mutually as a field criticism,” including, among others,
sociological, feminist, ideological and psychological criticism.9
The third change is the so-called “psychologization of western culture.” Everyone
from cabbies to TV talk show hosts, theologians to film reviewers, and now even
some biblical scholars, were allowing psychological terms to slip into their work:
psyche, the unconscious, the id, ego, free association, projection, repression, defense
mechanism, psychological complex, neurosis, and Freudian slips. Largely the legacy
of Freud and Jung, this new vocabulary gave voice to a new level of consciousness
about the nature of the self.
By the last decades of the 20th century, psychology and religion demonstrated
new interest in one another. In the 1980s, Pope John Paul II, addressed the members
of the World Psychiatric Association, the American Psychiatric Association and the
American Psychoanalytic Association, with these words:
By its very nature your work often brings you to the threshold of the human mystery. It involves a sensi-
tivity to the often tangled workings of the human mind and heart, and an openness to the ultimate
concerns which give meaning to people’s lives. These are areas of utmost importance to the church, and
they call to mind the urgent need for a constructive dialogue between science and religion for the sake of
shedding greater light on the mystery of man [sic] in its fullness.
3. PSYCHOLOGICAL BIBLICAL CRITICISM: THE USE OF

PSYCHOLOGY AS A TOOL IN BIBLICAL SCHOLARSHIP
One of the first signals of a break in the forty-year standoff between psychology
and biblical studies came from classicist and New Testament scholar, F. C. Grant in
his 1968 article, “Psychological Study of the Bible.” It appeared in a Festschrift for
E. R. Goodenough, a Yale professor of religion who had regularly applied psycho-
analytic insights to the interpretation of Jewish and Christian texts and artifacts.
Grant wrote that
Dr. Goodenough pointed out the value and importance, even the necessity, of the psychological interpreta-
tion of the Bible. This is a new kind of Biblical criticism. The earlier disciplines are all necessary and
important, . . . . . but psychological criticism opens up a wholly new and vast, far-reaching scene . . . . .
beyond the historical and exegetical interpretation of the Bible lies the whole new field of depth psychology
and psychoanalysis.10
As is often the case with an emergent field of research, Grant did not find
himself alone. Articles and books thinking the same thoughts and asking the same
284 ROLLINS
questions appeared simultaneously from distant quarters. In the same year, 1968,
Helmut Harsch published an article with a title in the form of a question:
“Psychologische Interpretationen biblischer Texte?” Three years later Antoine
Vergote (1971) published a study of Romans 7, “Apport des données psychanaly-
tique à l’exégese: vie, loi et clivage du moi dans l’epître aux Romain 7”. In 1972
Richard Rubenstein struck a bold Freudian posture with his book My Brother Paul,
and Yorick Spiegel produced a milestone collection of essays under the title
Psychoanalytische Interpretationen biblischer Texte, organized around six differ-
ent psychological themes (Spiegel, 1972).
Over the next three decades research would flourish. Highlights include the publi-
cation in 1983 of the first German edition of Gerd Theissen’s Psychological Aspects
of Pauline Theology, which refracts select Pauline texts through the lenses of three
psychological models: analytical psychology, learning theory, and cognitive
psychology (see Theisen, 1987). In 1991, the Society of Biblical Literature, the flag-
ship of American Biblical Scholarship, endorsed my proposal for the creation of a
research section on Psychology and Biblical Studies. In 1995, Martin Leiner did a
doctoral dissertation under Gerd Theissen’s supervision at Heidelberg: Psychologie
und Exegese: Grundfragen einer textpsychologischen Exegese des Neuen Testaments.
Leiner provided a rich survey of psychological interpretation at work across the cul-
ture and proposed a theoretical basis for cooperation between psychology and biblical
studies. In 1999 my book, Soul and Psyche: The Bible in Psychological Perspective,
was published, providing a history, agenda, and bibliography for the field, and in 2001
the book of my colleague, D. Andrew Kille, entitled Psychological Biblical Criticism,
elaborating on Freudian, Jungian, and developmental psychological insight into the
myths of Genesis 3.
By the end of the century, exegetical applications of psychological theory to bibli-
cal texts were drawn from no less than fifteen different schools, including Freudian
and Jungian approaches, learning theory, cognitive and developmental psychology,
existential psychotherapy, and object relations theory. New journals appeared, the
Journal of Psychology and Theology in 1973, the Journal of Psychology and
Christianity in 1982, and Biblical Interpretation: A Journal of Contemporary
Approaches in 1993, all calling for pluralistic biblical scholarship that invites insight
from sister disciplines, including psychology. Encyclopedia and dictionary articles
also begin to surface. Perhaps the earliest is Antoine Vergote’s “Psychanalyse et
interprétation biblique” in Supplément au Dictionnaire de la Bible (Vergote,
1973–75).
What is psychological biblical criticism? It is a discipline that emerges out of a
new vision of the text. Its fundamental premise is that although the Bible is part of an
historical, social, and literary process, it is also part of a psychological process in
which unconscious as well as conscious factors are at work. Where are these factors
at work? In every hand and soul that touches the tradition: in the biblical authors, in
the communities they represent, in the stories and materials they preserve, in biblical
copyists, translators, and publishers, in biblical interpreters and preachers, in schol-
ars who contribute to volumes like this, and in the biblical effects that the Bible has
worked and continues to work in individuals and entire cultures, for good and for ill.
A second focus of psychological biblical criticism is “biblical psychology,” the bib-

lical understanding of the self, to be elaborated below. It urges us to see the Bible as a
manual on the perennial experience of the human psyche/soul, its trials, troubles, suc-
cesses, and victories, employing a vast array of literary forms, from myth and legend,
to psalm, parable, and sermon, to fathom and describe the soul’s nature, origin, habits,
powers, and destiny.
In sum, as important as the historical, social, political, economic, and cultural
factors are in creating texts and interpretations, in the end, the psychic factors,
conscious and unconscious, may prove to be the pre-eminent determinants of what
is recorded in a text, why it was remembered, how it is said, why it is said, how it is
read, how it is interpreted, and how that interpretation is received and translated,
sometimes for immense good and at other times for grievous ill.
What do we see as the agenda for this field? We have time at best to hint at seven
areas of present and future research.
First is the task of raising critical consciousness of at least three types of unconscious
factors at work in text and reader. The first is the personal unconscious of the author and
reader, their personal and social locations, their psychological types, and their personal
psychological histories. John Dominic Crossan reminds us that “Divine inspiration nec-
essarily comes through a human heart and a mortal mind, through personal prejudice
and communal interpretation, through fear, dislike, and hate, as well as through faith,
hope, and charity.”11
A second is the historical unconscious, i.e., remnants of pre-Christian or pre-Israelite
consciousness that might reside unconsciously in Christian and Hebrew sacred texts.
Jung writes, “Everything has its history, everything has “grown,” and Christianity, which
is supposed to have appeared suddenly as a unique revelation from heaven, undoubtedly
also has its history. . . . It is exactly as if we had built a cathedral over a pagan temple and
no longer knew that it is still there underneath.”12
Third is the collective unconscious, which Jung describes as “a sphere of uncon-
scious mythology [bearing on typical life situations] whose primordial images are the
common heritage of mankind.”13 These themes and figures, such as the primordial
garden, the divine child, the wise old man or woman, the satanic trickster, the sacred
mountain, tree of life, golden age, the wicked queen, the archetypal battle between
good and evil, “appear so frequently in widely scattered mythic traditions,” as Walter
Wink observes, “that we are justified in regarding [them]. . . . as a standard compo-
nent in spiritual [and psychological] development.”14
Biblical religious phenomena constitute a second item for psychological-critical
research. In the tradition of William James’ classic, The Varieties of Religious
Experience (James, 1902), this means the study of religious experience, religious
practice, and paranormal experience in the Bible through a psychological lens.
Conventional religious experience would include the phenomena of prophetic
inspiration, messianism, and martyrdom, discussed elsewhere in this volume,
along with conversion, glossolalia, visions, and biblical dreams. Religious practice
would include cultic rites of foot washing, eucharist, burnt offerings, and purifica-
tion. Paranormal experience would include demon possession and exorcism, faith
286 ROLLINS
healing, and parapsychological experiences of telepathy, clairvoyance, and out-of-

body experience. Additional research would focus on the psycho-spiritual experi-
ential phenomena, referred to in biblical terminology as sin, guilt, grace,
forgiveness, salvation, redemption, and rebirth. As Robin Scroggs observes, the
biblical concept of “salvation means changes, changes in how we think, in how we
feel, in how we act. And that means, or so it seems to me that psychological intu-
itions and, perhaps, even explicitly psychological models and terminology can
give us insight into what these changes are.”15
A third area, the analysis of psychodynamic factors in biblical texts, is a
psychological version of literary and narrative criticism. It adds depth to biblical
interpretation, for example, by picking up on the habitual strategies of defense
employed by the human psyche in biblical story lines. One finds examples of
denial (Adam and Eve in the garden), intellectualization (the Johannine Pilate in
conversation with Jesus), projection (Peter’s acclamation of Jesus as a victorious
Messiah), rationalization (Eve’s passing the buck to the serpent), along with pat-
terns of obsessive compulsion (Paul’s persecution of the Way in his earlier
career), and the mitigation of cognitive dissonance (the creation of apocalyptic
scenarios to resolve the problem of evil).
A fourth line of research, the psychological analysis of biblical portraits of per-
sonalities, suggests three lines of exegetical inquiry. One is character analysis of
biblical figures, such as Saul, Jonah, Jacob, King Herod, or Paul; a second is the
analysis of the role biblical personalities can come to play as models or exemplars
for readers, as Moses did for Freud, and the Christ figure for Jung. A third approach
is psychoanalytic. Though in the strictest sense, psychoanalysis of biblical figures is
ruled out by the absence of the analysand, a number of recent studies have suggested
that psychoanalytic observations in the hands of seasoned analysts can provide com-
pelling insight into biblical authors and their characters, as seen for example in
David Halperin’s (1993) study of Ezekiel, and the two recent psychological portraits
of Jesus by John Miller (1997) and Donald Capps (2000).
The fifth area, biblical psychology, as previously noted, calls for a fresh inventory
of the Biblical perspective on the nature, habits, pathologies and therapies of the self
in conversation with contemporary psychological models of the self.
It comprises a three-fold agenda. The first is the descriptive agenda, to identify
the complex of functions, faculties, and behavioral patterns, along with typical
predicaments, problems, and possibilities, that characterize human experience from
a biblical perspective.
Second, the diagnostic-analytic agenda is to identify the biblical perception of
what has gone wrong in the human condition and what is the cure.
Third, the prescriptive agenda focuses on what the Bible sees as the highest reaches
of the self, individually and societally and what methods of nurture, care, and forma-
tion it prescribes for making the reach.
A sixth research area is psychological hermeneutics. The term hermeneutics,
derived from the Greek verb, hermeneuein, “to interpret,” refers to the study of what
transpires between text and reader. A fundamental premise is that reading is not a
one-way street. Texts interpret readers as much as readers interpret texts, and the
transaction is riddled with psychological factors, conscious and unconscious.
What texts are and do, and what readers are and do, are issues of special interest to
psychological biblical critics because both text and reader are available for observation.
One example may suffice. In 1979, Daniel Harrington, a Jesuit biblical scholar,
observed that “interpreters should . . . be conscious of the baggage they bring to the task
of biblical interpretation.” Harrington reviewed his own “baggage” as “a white
American male, living in the middle to late twentieth century,” born of immigrant Irish
parents, a Jesuit for twenty years. He comments:
Each . . . of these elements has some impact upon the way I approach a biblical text. Remove one or two of
them from my biography and substitute something else, and surely my reading of the text would change.
I will spare the reader an inventory of my psychological strengths and weaknesses, but this omission should
not be taken as suggesting that the interpreter’s psychological predispositions are not important.16
A seventh item on the agenda of psychological biblical criticism is studying the history
of biblical effects, both pathogenic and therapeutic. Harvard’s history of religions
scholar, Wilfred Cantwell Smith, provides a psychological critical observation about
the pathogenic potential of religious texts. Smith comments:
Scripture served as the chief moral justification for slavery among those who resisted proposals to abolish that
institution; and indeed as sanctifying many an oppressive status quo against movements for justice . . . . Again,
it has served the degradation of women . . . . Another: the mighty force of a scripture’s binding a community
together has worked to make sharp, and often relentless, divergence between communities. Especially in the
case of the Western triad –– Jewish, Christian, Islamic –– the scripture-based disparagement of those deemed
outsiders has been, and continues to be, disastrous.17
The task of the psychological biblical critic is to bring to light those dark proclivities
in Scripture and in its interpreters that work mischief in human affairs.
Equally, if not more important, is the task of reflecting on the therapeutic effects
of scripture and of religion in general. In his essay, “The State of Psychotherapy
Today”, Carl Jung writes that “religions are psychotherapeutic systems in the truest
sense of the word . . . They express the whole range of the psychic problem in mighty
images; they are the avowal and recognition of the soul, and at the same time the
revelation of the soul’s nature.”18 A primary goal of psychological biblical criticism
is to understand in greater psychological detail the secret of the therapeutic and
catalytic effect of the biblical text and the role it plays in the healing of individuals,
societies, and cultures, a task to which pastoral psychologists have already made
substantial contribution.
4. WHAT MIGHT PSYCHOLOGY LEARN FROM RELIGION

AND BIBLICAL STUDIES?
The brochure for this conference hinted at some of the benefits psychology
might reap in conversation with theology and scripture. It noted for example, that
the Bible provides “lively and penetrating images of man and his age-old struggle
with experiences of vanity and suffering.” It also acknowledged that “the Bible
288 ROLLINS
offers perspectives on human anguish, suffering and interpersonal relationships

which differ in important respects from conceptions based on modern notions.”
A related insight was expressed in 1936 by theologian Emil Brunner in an essay
titled, “Biblical psychology:”
Empirical psychology, which takes as its model the freedom from prejudice of the natural sciences, has
without doubt brought to light a great store of important knowledge which we should be loath to do with-
out. But we must from the beginning draw attention to the fact that this psychology, like every psychology,
is based on a definite world-view as its axiomatic presupposition.19
He identified the world-view of scientific psychology as “naturalistic positivism,”

which “conceives of the soul and psychological realities as objects among objects,”
rather than as subjects that constitute the observer-self. He went on to suggest that
the Bible captures dimensions of the self, not susceptible to proof in terms of the
principles of scientific verification, but nevertheless quintessential to a full portrait
of the human psyche/soul.
Brunner is not alone in suggesting that the biblical vision of the world and self
might know something modern psychology has yet to discover. Freud and Jung offer
similar hints. Late in life, Freud wrote, “My deep engrossment in the Bible story
(almost as soon as I had learned the art of reading) had, as I recognized much later,
an enduring effect upon the direction of my interest.” In similar fashion, Jung states,
“We must read our Bible or we shall not understand psychology. Our psychology,
whole lives, our language and imagery are built upon the Bible.”
Though Freud does not elaborate the effect of the Bible on his interests, Jung
does. The effect of the Bible on Jung becomes evident in the twenty columns of ref-
erences under the category, “Bible,” in the Index to Jung’s Collected Works. Beyond
that, Jung tells us, that the Bible, along with the stories, liturgies, statuary, stained
glass windows, and creeds of religion, are able to describe the “individuation process
with an exactness and impressiveness far surpassing our feeble attempts.”20
What then has the Bible to teach us psychologically? I would like to conclude by
commending two biblical concepts to the serious consideration of the psychological
sciences. Both concepts are ubiquitous in the Hebrew and Christian scriptures; both
are essential to the biblical understanding of the self.
The first of these is the biblical concept of a unified soul or self, denoted in Hebrew
as nephesh or nishamah, and in Greek as psyche. Much of professional psychology
has yet to solve the problem of finding a term or symbol they are willing to use
professionally and scientifically for the conscious and unconscious totality of the
human personality. From Aristotle on, the terms psyche, anima, soul, or self was
available to refer to the total system of emotive, intellectual, volitional, imaginative,
perceiving, spiritual, dreaming, conscious and unconscious life in the human person.
But for the last eight decades, academic psychology has virtually discarded the term
psyche, and supplied no substitute. Carl Jung enjoyed pointing out to his medical stu-
dents the “old textbook for the Medical Corps in the Swiss army which gave a
description of the brain as a dish of macaroni, and the steam from the macaroni was
the psyche.”21
But the problem remains, and today one looks in vain for references to psyche in
introductory academic psychology texts, histories of psychology, and even texts on
the psychology of religion. At the same time we find the field of psychology
continuing to manufacture psych- rooted neologisms to describe new activities in the
field psychometrics, psychodynamics, psychosomatic, psychosexual, psycho his-
tory, with no effort to define professionally what the psych element in these terms
might mean. The same can be said for the term “soul,” which religionists use with an
equal sense of disease and imprecision.
The reluctance to use the term psyche or soul no doubt can be traced to the
17th century British empiricists in what has been called a period of the “banishment
of the intangible.” Thomas Hobbes derided Greco-Roman talk of the psyche as
“pernicious Aristotelian nonsense,” preferring to think of psychological phenomena
as derivatives of the nervous system and brain. More recently B. F. Skinner lost not
only soul and psyche but mind as well as an anthropological constant, which
prompted one wag to say, “Pity poor psychology. First it lost its soul, then its mind,
then consciousness, and now it’s having trouble with behavior.”
Things are improving somewhat among some psychologists. Michael J. Mahoney
writes in his 1991 volume, Human Change Processes: The Scientific Foundations of
Psychotherapy, that “perhaps the single most important (re)discovery of twentieth cen-
tury psychology has been that of the self, which has (again) become a cardinal concept
after a moratorium that lasted over half a century.”22 One hopes this is the case.
A second biblical reality worthy of psychological reflection is the concept of the
spirit, in Hebrew ruach, in Greek, pneuma, sometimes referred to as a “holy” or “dif-
ferent” spirit. No entity plays a more important role as an explanatory concept to
account for the phenomenon of “saving” and “saved” figures in the biblical story. To
my knowledge psychology has no comparable term or concept that captures the bib-
lically attested experience of ineffable moments of grace, of being touched by a
power and presence that enables one to achieve moral, emotional, or ontological
heights that formerly seemed unlikely, or of being filled with the sense of a power
that sustains, informs and inspires one’s being in new transformative ways, all attrib-
uted to the power of the spirit. The biblical prophet tells us he is seized by the spirit;
Jesus is said to have offered a new baptism of the spirit; Paul identifies the spirit as
the determinative factor in transforming his life. And in the last three decades, even
within mainline Christian churches, the phenomenology of the spirit and of spiritual-
ity has emerged as an apparent compensatory factor to balance the one-sided, logo-
centric, left-brained, rationalistic, positivist view of the self.
In 1912, M. Scott Fletcher identified the biblical concept of the “spirit”—with its
attendant experiential categories of new creation, transformation, and rebirth—as a
psycho-anthropological element meriting consideration in understanding the life and
experience of the psyche. Perhaps the most eloquent apologia for reclaiming a sense
of “spirit” in the modern era is voiced by Carl Jung:
We moderns are faced with the necessity of rediscovering the life of the spirit; we must experience it anew for
ourselves. It is the only way in which to break the spell that binds us to the cycle of biological events. . . . The
wheel of history must not be turned back, and man’s advance toward a spiritual life, which began with the
290 ROLLINS
primitive rites of initiation, must not be denied. . . . Scientific thought, being only one of the psyche’s func-
tions, can never exhaust all of its potentialities. The psychotherapist must not allow his vision to be colored by
pathology; he must never allow himself to forget that the ailing mind is a human mind and that, for all its ail-
ments, it unconsciously shares the whole psychic life of man. He must even be able to admit that the ego is
sick for the very reason that it is cut off from the whole, and has lost its connection not only with mankind but
with the spirit. . . . For thousands of years, rites of initiation have been teaching rebirth from the spirit; yet,
strangely enough, man forgets again and again the meaning of divine procreation. Though this may be poor
testimony to the strength of the spirit, the penalty for misunderstanding is neurotic decay, embitterment, atro-
phy, and sterility. It is easy enough to drive the spirit out of the door, but when we have done so the meal has
lost its savor––the salt of the earth.23
When all is said and done in our ongoing pursuit of exchange between psychiatry,
psychology, and psychotherapy on the one hand, and theology, religion, and biblical
studies on the other, we should not forget an additional observation of Jung’s, that
“psychology has only a modest contribution to make toward a deeper understanding
of the phenomena of life and is no nearer than its sister sciences to absolute knowl-
edge.”24 The same can be said for biblical studies. But it may be that in the process
of conversation, we can discover something about the truths and vision housed in
both traditions, that adds to a fuller sense of what is needed for the cura animarum,
the care and cure of human souls.
5. SUMMARY
Interdisciplinary dialogue between psychologists and biblical scholars has come of

age. Though the seed for such dialogue was planted centuries ago with the heated
exchange on the nature of the psyche between early Christian thinkers and their
philosophical counterparts, the conversation has revived in the 20th and 21st
centuries with new vigor.
On the biblical side, academic biblical scholars and church leaders, like Pope John
Paul II, have recognized the contribution psychological insight can make to an
understanding of the psychic landscapes out of which the Bible and its interpreters
have come, and the psychic factors at work in authors, texts, and interpretations.
By the same token, psychologists and psychiatrists have become less gun shy
when it comes to things like religion and the Bible. They are beginning to recognize
that the biblical concepts of soul (nishamah and psyche) and spirit (ruach and
pneuma), along with the biblical portrait of human behavior and development
conveyed in legend, myth, parable, and song, may have something to contribute to
the understanding of the self that complements contemporary psychological and
psychiatric insight.
The travel plan and itinerary of interdisciplinary research between psychologists
and biblical scholars is still in the making, but seven areas of inquiry have already
been taking shape and show promise: the study of unconscious factors at work in text
and reader; examination of the exotic array of religious phenomena spelled out in the
text; the exploration of psychodynamic factors at work in biblical stories and
narratives; the psychological analysis of biblical personalities; the study of “biblical
psychology” and its idiosyncratic reading of the origin, nature, habits, and destiny of
the human psyche; the reconstruction of the history of biblical effects on individuals
and whole cultures, both therapeutic and pathogenic; and research on the effect of
texts on readers, and the effect of readers on texts. It is noteworthy that to date,
exegetical applications of psychological theory to the Bible have been drawn from
fifteen different psychological schools.
Biblical scholarship, to be sure, has many miles to go in catching up on the prepara-
tion necessary for competent psychological analysis. But psychology and psychiatry
also have much to learn of the contribution the Bible might make to a psychological
understanding of the human person. The two camps are united, however, in a common
ultimate mission: the care and cure of human souls.
NOTES
1
Fitzmyer (1994), pp. 51–52.
2
Lapointe (1970), p. 640.
3
Peters and Mace (1967), pp. 1, 4.
4
Rollins (1999), pp. 9–12.
5
Hunt (1993), pp. 6–7.
6
Fletcher (1912), p. vii.
7
Jung (1966), §§ 98-100.
8
Kille (2001), p. 7.
9
Crossan (1977), p. 41.
10
Grant (1968), pp. 112–113.
11
Crossan (1996), pp. 2–4.
12
Jung (1953), p. 84.
13
Jung (1966), § 125.
14
Wink (1978), p. 142.
15
Scroggs (1982), p. 336.
16
Harrington (1979), p. 132.
17
Smith (1993), pp. 213–214.
18
Jung (1970), § 367.
19
Brunner (1936), p. 138.
20
Rollins (1999), pp. 33–60.
21
Rollins (1999), p. 99.
22
Mahoney (1991), p. 211.
23
Jung (1961), §§ 780–783.
24
Jung (1966), §§ 98–100.
REFERENCES
Brunner, E. (1936). Biblical psychology. In God and man: Four essays on the nature of personality (pp.
136–178). London: SCM Press.
Capps, D. (2000). Jesus: A psychological biography. St. Louis: Chalice Press.
Crossan, J. D. (1977). Perspectives and methods in contemporary biblical criticism. Biblical Research,
22, 39–49.
Crossan, J. D. (1996). Who killed Jesus? Crossan responds to Brown. Explorations, 10, 2–4.
Delitzsch, F. (1966). A system of biblical psychology (A. E. Wallis, Trans.) (2nd ed.). Grand Rapids: Baker
Book House. (Original work: F. Delitzsch [1855], System der biblischen Psychologie. Leipzig:
Dörffling & Franke [1861; 2nd ed.]. English trans. by T. & T. Clark, Edinburgh [1869]).
Fitzmyer, J. A. (1994). Scripture, the soul of theology. Mahwah: Paulist Press.
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Fletcher, M. S. (2nd ed.). (1912). The psychology of the New Testament. New York: Hodder & Stoughton.
Grant, F. C. (1968). Psychological study of the Bible. In J. Neusner (Ed.), Religions in Antiquity: Essays
in memory of Erwin Ramsdell Goodenough (Vol. XIV, pp. 107–124). Leiden: Brill.
Halperin, D. J. (1993). Seeking Ezekiel, text and psychology. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State
University Press.
Harrington, D. (1979). Interpreting the New Testament. Wilmington, Delaware: Michael Glazier.
Harsch, H. (1968). Psychologische Interpretation biblischer Texte? In U. Mann et al. (Eds.), Wege Zum
Menschen: Festschrift zum siebzigsten Geburtstag von Adolf Köberle (pp. 281–289). Gˆttingen:
Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.
Hunt, M. (1993). The story of psychology. New York: Doubleday Anchor Books.
James, W. (1902 [1985]). The varieties of religious experience. New York: Penguin Classics. (Original
work published in 1902).
Jung, C. G. (1953). Psychological reflections: A new anthology of his writings, 1905-1961 (J. Jacobi, Ed.).
Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Jung, C. G. (1961). Freud and psychoanalysis. In C. G. Jung, Collected works of C. G. Jung. Volume 4 (G.
Adler& R. F. C. Hull, Eds. & Trans.). Princeton: Princeton University Press. (Original work published
between 1906 and 1929)
Jung, C. G. (1966). Spirit in man, art, and literature. In C. G. Jung, Collected works of C. G. Jung. Volume 15
(G. Adler & R. F. C. Hull, Eds. & Trans.). Princeton: Princeton University Press. (Original work published
between 1922 and 1950)
Jung, C. G. (1970). Civilization in transition. In C. G. Jung, Collected works of C. G. Jung. Volume 10
(G. Adler & R. F. C. Hull, Eds. & Trans.). Princeton: Princeton University Press. (Original work
published between 1918 and 1959)
Kille, D. A. (2001). Psychological biblical criticism. Minneapolis: Fortress.
Lapointe, F. H. (1970). Origin and evolution of the term psychology. American Psychologist, 25, 640–646.
Leiner, M. (1995). Psychologie und Exegese: Grundfragen einer textpsychologischen Exegese des Neuen
Testaments. Gütersloh: Kaiser/Gütersloher Verlagshaus.
Mahoney, M. J. (1991). Human change processes: The scientific foundations of psychotherapy. New York:
Basic Books, Harper Collins.
Miller, J. W. (1997). Jesus at thirty: A psychological and historical portrait. Minneapolis: Augsburg/Fortress.
Peters, R. S., & Mace, C. A. (1967). Psychology. In P. Edwards (Ed.), The Encyclopedia of Philosophy
(Vol. 7, pp. 1–27). New York: Macmillan.
Pontifical Biblical Commission. (1994). The interpretation of the Bible in the church. Catholic
International, 5, 109–147.
Rollins, W. G. (1999). Soul and psyche: The Bible in psychological perspective. Minneapolis: Fortress.
Rubenstein, R. (1972). My brother Paul. New York: Harper & Row.
Schweitzer, A. (1948). The psychiatric study of Jesus: Exposition and criticism (Charles R. Joy, Trans.).
Boston: Beacon Press. (Original work published in 1913).
Scroggs, R. (1982). Psychology as a tool to interpret the text: Emerging trends in biblical thought.
Christian Century (March 24), 335–338.
Smith, W. C. (1993). What is Scripture? A comparative approach. Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress.
Solomon, A. (2001). Review of Out of its mind: Psychiatry in crisis: A call for reform (by J. Allan Hobson
& J. A. Leonard). Cambridge, MA: Perseus. New York Times Book Review (October 7), 15.
Spiegel, Y. (1972). Psychoanalytische Interpretationen biblischer Texte. Munich: C. Kaiser.
Theissen, G. (1987). Psychological aspects of pauline theology (J. P. Galvin, Trans.). Philadelphia:
Fortress.
Van de Kemp, H. (1980). Origin and evolution of the term Psychology: Addenda. American Psychologist,
35, 774.
Vergote, A. (1971). Apport des données psychanalytique à l’exégese: vie, loi et clivage du moi dans
l’epître aux Romains 7. In X. Leon-Dufour (Ed.), Exégèse et Herméneutique (pp. 109–147). Paris:
Éditions du Seuil.
Vergote, A. (1973–75). Psychanalyse et interprétation biblique. In H. Cazelles & A. Feuillet (Eds.),

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Wink, W. (1978). On wrestling with God: Using psychological insights in biblical study. Religion in Life,
47, 136–147.
CHAPTER 21
SEARCHING FOR THE DYNAMIC ‘WITHIN’
Concluding remarks on ‘Psychological aspects of Biblical concepts
and personalities’
GERRIT GLAS
1. INTRODUCTION
In this chapter, I will tie together some of the strands of thought that were developed
in this book, summarize some of the findings and raise a number of questions for fur-
ther reflection.
I begin with a discussion of the science – religion split as it was dealt with in the
previous chapters. I will highlight attempts to overcome this split. Then I will focus
more in-depth upon one pivotal question – that of the ‘negativity’ of divine presence
and its relationship to what throughout this volume I have called the ‘transformative
power’ of religion. In the next section I try to elucidate how this ‘transformative’
element – in one or another form and with all its ramifications, disguised or not –
may emerge in the clinical situation. I will propose that clinicians become experts in
the analysis of and imaginative play with the existential attitudes that structure the
way patients relate to themselves and to others and to the fundamental themes and
accompanying moods that organize their lives. This requires an enriched vocabulary
for the overarching meaning and structuring effects of these basic attitudes, themes
and moods. In the final section I discuss how insight into the main themes of this
volume – prophecy, martyrdom, and messianism – may contribute to the improve-
ment of our vocabulary and may lead to a better understanding of the patient.
2. DISSOCIATION OF SCIENCE AND RELIGION

IN THEOLOGY AND PSYCHIATRY
Let me first recount some of the flavor of the experiences shared by the organizers of
the conference when they discussed its aim and framework with colleagues and
295
© 2007 Springer.
296 GLAS
possible contributors. Generally speaking, the projected theme of the conference

aroused both interest and skepticism – interest, because of the unique combination of
fields which we intended to bring together; and skepticism, because of the relative
lack of historical detail we possess about biblical persons, and the hazards of
anachronistic interpretation that are inherent to any historical psychology. Neverthe-
less, underneath this skepticism there loomed the larger and more fundamental issue
of the relationship between science, worldview and practical religious belief. This
relationship appeared to be determined by dissociation between scientific scholar-
ship on the one hand and the world of religious belief – as expressed in convictions,
behaviors, and lifestyles – on the other hand. We wondered how this would all jell in
an academic setting.
This dissociation has traditionally been most obvious in academic theological
circles, though, non-surprisingly, not absent in other areas of academic interest.
Some theologians said that, while they would not hesitate to use psychological
insight, popular or scientific, when delivering a sermon or in the practice of pastoral
work, as scientists they could hardly take the subject of a psychological understand-
ing of biblical persons seriously. Given the fact that the historical reality of many
biblical persons is doubtful under the best of circumstances, they said, the idea of
psychological identification with a biblical person would simply be beyond the
mark. Biblical persons are in fact personages, literary characters, products of
fictional creativity of gifted people a long time ago. One could possibly identify with
aspects of such a personage or character. However, this identification would at best
lead to an aesthetic experience, not far from the experience of reading Dante or
watching a play of Shakespeare. Such experiences, moreover, would not add any-
thing at all to the scientific understanding of such a character or personage qua real
person with a real personality. Psychological understanding would rather provoke
mystery and detract from the core business of biblical scholarship which aims at
textual analysis and the unraveling of the wider social, historical and religious
context in which a particular biblical personage was living. I already pointed at this
issue in the introduction to the section on prophecy.
For me, as a psychiatrist and philosopher, this dissociation was striking because
of the obvious parallels with what at present is going on in the field of psychiatry
and psychotherapy. In these disciplines one often encounters an almost complete
dissociation between psychopathology ‘as such’, which is defined by classificatory
schemes and diagnostic tools, on the one hand, and the life history and psychosocial
context in which psychopathology unfolds, on the other hand. Life history and con-
text are then seen as the individual, subjective coloring, the scenery against the
background of which the ‘real’ problem occurs. Religious issues in the history of
the patient are seen as part of this scenery.
This dissociation fits in a larger pattern of thinking, according to which religious
phenomena are attributed to the realm of subjective interpretation and of local
culture, whereas science is considered to aim at the world of objective facts.1 Indeed,
throughout this book we have seen that this split between the subjective and the
objective obscures important aspects of religion and its dynamics. It not only denies
SEARCHING FOR THE DYNAMIC ‘WITHIN’ 297
the privilege usually held by religion to have relevance beyond what psychology and
cultural anthropology have to say about it. It is also incapable to give words to and
to understand the range of phenomena we have indicated with expressions like
‘dynamic,’ ‘relationship,’ and ‘power.’ If there is anything important to religion, it is
the transformative power of the realities it is aiming at.
Of course, it would have been possible to organize a conference in which the story
of Jeremiah, or Paul, or Jesus, would be placed on an equal footing with the story of
fictional characters like Hamlet or Othello. Such a conference would undoubtedly
reveal interesting parallels and provide new points of view. However, what interested
us was precisely the distinction between creative writing and religion. What differ-
ence does it make for a patient, a therapist, or a theologian, when biblical persons are
seen as religiously significant, i.e. as persons whose lives and sayings do matter for
us in a religious way? What kind of psychological dynamic is implied when a
person’s religious instead of his/her aesthetic receptivity is awakened?
As I see the matter, the issue is not whether religion does or does not appeal to aes-
thetic capacities; nor is it the appreciation of the role of fiction in the making and read-
ing of biblical stories. For, it is beyond doubt that imagination and fiction have played
and play a role in the construction and reconstruction of these stories. However, these
fictional elements do not contradict a historical, normative, and/or religious under-
standing of the Bible, as Evans (this book; cf. Evans, 1996) and Wolterstorff (1995)
have argued. Rather, the issue is the difference between a religious and a primarily aes-
thetic, moral or anthropological reading of the Bible. What does it mean for a biblical
story to be understood as religiously important and even transforming? What does it
mean for the realities these stories are referring to? How are we to conceive of these
realities? What does it mean for a biblical person or personage to be understood in this
religiously significant way? And what are the psychological correlates of the trans-
forming qualities of religion?
3. ATTEMPTS TO OVERCOME THE SCIENCE-RELIGION SPLIT
It is revealing to read the contributions to the present volume from the perspective I
have just sketched – the perspective of how the authors deal with the epistemological
divide between the subjective and the objective in their analysis of psychological
correlates of divine reality. What strikes me is the great ingenuity and persistence
with which most authors try to overcome the divide. The divergence of their
approaches adds to the overall impression of creativity and of newness of the field.
Some authors open up new worlds with their metaphors; others exploit the implicit
potential for meaning of old vocabularies; still others give an unexpected twist to
existing conceptual frameworks. However, what emerges above all is the conviction
that religious phenomena have a quality which escapes from the subjective/objective
dichotomy and that the dynamics of these phenomena opens up a world ‘beyond’
(or: ‘in-between’) the split between subjective feeling and interpretation on the one
hand and the establishment of objective facts on the other. I aim now to illustrate this
by highlighting some of the key issues that came into view in the previous chapters.
298 GLAS
In the chapter by Steve Evans the discussion is focused upon the notion of history.
Evans explains why the notion of historical truth should not be understood as refer-
ring to ‘objective facts.’ According to his view, historical faith is ‘the vehicle for an
ongoing relation with the person who is most crucial in understanding human life
and the human task.’ Historical faith refers, therefore, to a reality beyond the subject-
object split: an ongoing dynamic between divine reality and the individual which is
fundamental in the sense that it is presupposed in any attempt to interpret it. Faith
should not be based on factual accuracy (inerrancy) nor reduced to a psychological
(emotional) response to certain facts of life. It is, from the moment it exists, itself the
expression of a dynamic which is already going on and in which the unraveling of
meaning is both revelation and interpretation.
In Neil Gillman’s chapter the same issue returns, but now it has been rephrased in
terms of the ontological priority of divine pathos. Heschel’s notion of divine pathos
appeared to refer to a relational dynamic between God and man which precedes any
attempt to rational reconstruction (objective) and which transcends the world of
mere inner feelings and imagination (subjective). I will be brief about the concept of
pathos here, because it was dealt with at some length in the introduction to the
section on prophecy. Surely, Heschel’s conception of the notion of pathos has been
very helpful in paving the way for a non-dualistic understanding of the relationship
with the divine. And Neil Gillman helped us to discern some of the theological
implications of such understanding.
In the chapter by Bob Becking the split seems to prevail at first sight. However, as
we saw in the introduction to the prophecy section, the picture seems to change at the
end of the chapter when Becking quotes the biblical scholar Walter Brüggemann
who said that every historical presentation is both mediation and construction. This
element of mediation seems to suggest that the biblical presentation – as beginning
of a historical chain of mediations and appropriations – is allowed to exert normative
influence on readers and listeners. Interpretation does not start from scratch; it is
preceded by other interpretations to which it relates by definition and to which one
relates oneself. The notion of mediation suggests that there is a ‘working history’
with an inherent normative dimension (Gadamer, 1960).
Ambiguity and mystery are the terms that appear to be crucial in Antoine Vergote’s
approach of the issue. They returned in Peter Verhagen’s comments on this and other
chapters as an ambiguity between portrayal and betrayal. The interest of the
psychologist of religion will never be purely scientific, Vergote declares. He criti-
cizes current psychology of religion with its one-sided emphasis on experiential and
cultural aspects of religion. Psychology of religion tries to grasp phenomena that by
their very nature transcend the limits of psychology proper. It cannot deny these
phenomena. Such self-limitation would lead to a too narrow approach to what is
central to human life. So, psychology of religion contains the split in itself, so to say,
i.e. as a fundamental ambiguity, which is both inevitable and undeniable. It is
inevitable because otherwise psychology of religion would give up its scientific
nature or end in the blind alley of reductionism. It is undeniable because the ‘facts’
urge to an approach in which openness toward the transcendent is maintained
and combined with careful descriptions which remains as close as possible to the
phenomena under study.
Bram van de Beek’s notion of an ‘explosion of schemes’ may be conceived as a
radicalized version of Vergote’s ambiguity and mystery. There is no single picture of
Jesus, van de Beek argues; that is to say, Jesus does not represent something already
known. The many portraits amount to an overall sense of otherness. So, for both
authors the conclusion of the incomprehensibility and mysteriousness of Jesus leads
to recognition of his distinctness and uniqueness.
There is, however, a crucial difference between Vergote and van de Beek with
respect to the degree of this uniqueness and its implications. Both agree that Jesus’
life offers more than a moral example. His excellence as such cannot be imitated. His
life and work, instead, lead to a focus on the presence of the Kingdom of God. The
gospel writers direct our attention from the person of Jesus away to the world and its
future. The difference between Vergote and van de Beek concerns the extent of
dissimilarity between Jesus and us and the consequences of this dissimilarity for
religious life. Vergote mentions Jesus ‘a paradigm case of the perfect mystic’ and ‘a
background model for psychological interpretation and evaluation of religious
phenomena.’ Van de Beek would not agree, I suppose, but instead say that the
uniqueness of Jesus is such that there does not (and can not) exist a natural psycho-
logical bond between Jesus and us. The reality of the Kingdom reveals itself not only
epistemologically in the surpassing of our explanatory models, but above of all
existentially in our death with Him in baptism.
Both notions seem to hang together in van de Beek’s account: spiritual death
implies a death of understanding, and vice versa. As such, the gospel is an offense
against rational thinking. At the same time, it is also saving us: both phenomenolog-
ically and theologically the death of understanding indicates spiritual death, but now
interpreted as a sign of hope, i.e. as the spiritual union with the person who gave up
everything and emptied his existence from all precious relations, memories, and self-
concern. This self-emptying is known as kenosis. Spiritual death, taken in this sense,
indicates one’s willingness to surrender and to give up self-certainty and pride. The
turmoil, agony, and conflict this brings, is itself part of the process of redemption
and, therefore, a sign of hope. It would be a matter of great interest at some future
date to compare the psychological correlates of this process with the psychological
characteristics of the mystic way of life with its emphasis on ascetics, sanctification,
and spiritual union.
Conflict, agony, and turmoil are preeminently present in the chapters by Spero
and Levy on Job and Jeremiah, respectively. Their approach represents a different
kind of attempt to overcome the divide between subjectivist and objectivist inter-
pretations of interactions with the divine. Their conception develops along the axis
of presence/absence (or: consolation/separation). The duality is also at the back-
ground of Ravitzky’s intriguing play with the concepts of sanctity and space and
his reference to the ‘heat’ of divine presence. God’s presence may be a burden and
his absence a gift, allowing man to expand his imagination and to express his
creativity.
300 GLAS
Spero (see especially his Postscript) makes it abundantly clear that absence (of the
Almighty) is not identical to mere non-presence, or even non-existence, but that it is a
highly sophisticated, multi-faceted notion – pointing at such diverse things as the
otherness of the Other, the process of absence-making which is associated with the de-
concretizing that is inherent in the act of symbolization, the lack of an object of desire,
and this lacking-of-an-object as itself the object of desire of the other. So, absence does
not merely indicate non-presence, emptiness, and lack of fulfillment and of an object.
Absence is the knot of a fine relational dynamics which adds a third dimension, beyond
mere presence and non-presence. Crucial for the understanding of this dimension is that
a person may become the object of longing of the other just because of its longing for
another. It is because of his unfulfilled state that man becomes the object of divine long-
ing. The desire becomes the object of desire. From this perspective, absence becomes an
indispensable element in the unfolding of a religious dynamic, for which the Lacanian
developmental framework of the mirror (imaginary) and symbolic stages offers the
psychological vocabulary. This dynamic is sustained by both sides: Job’s absence
(expressed by long periods of silence, lack of understanding, and bitter laments)
becomes as important as God’s absence, at a certain point of time; and in the midrashic
comments on Jeremiah 23 it appeared that Jeremiah’s identification with God blends
with God’s identification with Jeremiah and his people.
Behind this lies an entire ontology which is critical with respect to the dichotomy
between factuality (of so-called objective facts) and imagination (as inner, subjec-
tive representation). This ontology recognizes the fundamental role of imagination
in the construction of a shared world. It is only by the play of imagination that the
real can be discerned from the non-real. Such a conception, we saw, adds relief and
nuance to the concept of border – i.e., the border between the immanent and the
transcendent; and between the inner and the outside world. It offers an alternative
vocabulary to express the richness of the ‘in-between’ and the dynamical inter-
change between what is at both ‘sides’ of the border. Such a new vocabulary is
developed in the moving and thought-provoking psychological analyses of Job by
Moshe Halevi Spero and of Jeremiah by Bryna Levy. In Levy’s essay the concept of
projective identification – with its dependence on the notion of borders between me
and not-me and between the inner and outer world – is exploited beyond its ordi-
nary meaning as a primitive mechanism of defense or as manifestation of counter-
transference. In Levy’s analysis, the process of projective identification not only
connects the intrapsychic with the interpersonal, it also fuels the emotional and
relational dynamic with religious meaning.
4. POSTMODERN SOPHISTICATION, PRESENCE,

AND THE LILIES IN THE FIELD
There is a lot to say about the philosophical and theological issues that are at stake
here and which determine the way our problem is conceptualized. At this point,
I will restrict myself to raising one set of related issues and to making a final sugges-
tion based on the contributions to this book.
Some of the contributions – most notably those of van de Beek and of Spero –
emphasize the ‘not’ and the impossibility of identification (van de Beek) and the
unavailability of the Almighty (Spero) to such degree that one wonders whether
there is still a point (person, reality) to connect with. Are humans not such that they
need at least some ‘presence,’ one is inclined to ask?
The question is familiar and has been raised with respect to negative theology: too
much emphasis on negativity, absence, otherness, and a reality beyond comprehen-
sion, may lead to an existentially thin and merely philosophical God about whom
only sophisticated literates could say anything.3 I am sure this represents neither van
de Beek’s position nor Spero’s. And I realize that I am overstating the issue if my
comment were to be misconstrued as a straightforward comment on their contribu-
tions. What I am saying is that their chapters lead us to questions that are necessarily
beyond their scope, but nevertheless are important enough to be raised.
So, my first question is whether there is a terminus ad quem, an object, a reality to
relate to if this reality is ‘beyond reason’ and referred to by negatives.
A related question concerns the way religious language does in fact function if it
is by definition imperfect, because it refers to a reality which is beyond compre-
hension and even, according to some, inexpressible. In what way do biblical sto-
ries affect the reader and hearer if the reality they are referring to is such that it can
only be suggested? Do words matter at all, in that case? How are words related to
religious practices and these practices to the divine reality they are supposed to
represent? One can understand how easy it is for the negative theologian to replace
the hyper-transcendence of the negative approach into a secularized, horizontal
approach in which God’s presence is absorbed by human activity and/or sociopo-
litical action.
Not far from this emerges a related question, i.e., how the hyperreflexivity of post-
modern and what I called ‘negative’ approaches relate to the kind of faith which is
recommended by Jesus Himself, when he welcomes children in his audience and
when he compares the sorrow and doubt of the disciples with the untroubled exis-
tence of lilies in the field.4 How does such a ‘childish’ and ‘naive’ existence relate to
postmodern sophistication which holds that there is no bedrock foundation for our
beliefs and no ‘natural’ and self-evident access to a reality which is meaningful in
itself. How does it relate to postmodern claims that all longing for certainty and
universality has to be given up, because these desires deny the deeply contingent
nature of reality and the impossibility to transcend the perspectival nature of our
knowledge?
Finally and more specifically, can the ‘negative’ approach do justice to yet another
sort of ‘dialectic’; a dialectic in which the otherness of the other does not primarily
indicate separateness and absence, but freedom and recognition? What I am suggest-
ing is that the dialectic of presence and absence appears in a different light from the
perspective of love. Where love reigns, the otherness of the other ought not to be
perceived or experienced as absence, tragedy or threat, but as a joyful expression of
the inexhaustible richness of creation and a celebration of the diversity of human
persons in that creation. It is this love that makes one free and releases from the
302 GLAS
burden of one’s limitations, whether imagined or not. Persons with such love know
themselves to be recognized and valued by others, like they themselves recognize
and value others in their uniqueness and distinctiveness. Love means, then, respect
and support for one’s innermost self. In sum, how can postmodern conceptions of the
divine otherness account for these other aspects of otherness?
These questions and suggestions are of course not precise enough to adequately
deal with in the present context. So, let me limit myself to my main concern here,
which is the hidden intellectualism behind postmodern epistemic ‘modesty’ – an
intellectualism that also seems to affect some forms of negative theology. What I am
concerned about is that the concentration on what God is ‘not,’ is in fact the intellec-
tual mask of an underlying need to keep the cards in one’s hands and to exert control
on the way we think and speak about how God ‘interacts’ with the world – almost, as
if human beings are in a position to define this ‘interaction.’ Learned ignorance
about who God is, and about his workings in the world, may in other words still be a
sign of intellectual harnessing against the way the Almighty deals with our own
existential needs. Such docta ignorantia may, therefore, in some cases be conceived
as a self-saving maneuver in disguise.
We are, in short, searching for a vocabulary which allows for self-criticism
and intellectual scrutiny and which, at the same time, is able to give expression
to the kind of trust that is characteristic for the faith of children and for the basic
attitude of love. I admit that this is probably too much for one vocabulary. What
is needed, then, is a certain amount of openness within each mode of expression
to permit other modes of expression to present themselves; willingness to pass
from one mode to the other in order to extend the range of one’s understanding;
and eagerness to get a clearer picture of what can not be said in a particular mode
of expression.
These considerations indicate once again the importance of sensitivity with
respect to the way in which one is and chooses to become involved in the analysis of
religion. Each manner of involvement brings its own limitations and opportunities,
by illuminating certain aspects and obscuring other aspects. In the search for the
appropriate language and concepts the speaker or writer relates his existence, or
parts of it, to the subject he or she is dealing with. This is what Søren Kierkegaard
had in mind when he spoke about the method of ‘indirect communication’ and the
impossibility of showing the truth of Christianity by giving a formal and systematic
(i.e., ‘direct’) exposition of its doctrines.5 This kind of systematics tends to exclude
the speaker, thereby ignoring what is most crucial for the understanding of truth, i.e.,
that it implies the involvement of the understanding person. Truth, in other words, is
revealed in what one says as much as it is revealed by the way one relates to this
‘what’. The message itself implies self-relatedness. Being a witness of truth implies
maintaining an attitude of sensitivity for this self-relatedness. This is also what
American and English philosophers have in mind when they talk about the perfor-
mative use of language. This performative element – which becomes apparent, for
example, in promises and assertions – is crucial for the understanding of religious
language, and especially its inherent normativity (cf. Wolterstorff, 1995). The skilled
use of this performative element solicits the sensitivity just mentioned, not only of
lay-believers but also of scientists and professionals.
Religious belief involves a concern for a reality which by its very nature asks for
response and – even – for surrender and commitment in order to be understood. If
this is true, theological research and ecclesiastical doctrine will reveal the nature of
religion to the extent that they are sensitive for this dynamic and know how to relate
to it. Speaking about religion inevitably implies that one is already involved in the
dynamics of religion. This dynamics cannot be objectified without neutralizing it at
the same time. Ultimate truths tend to escape all attempts to speak ‘about’ them as if
they could be addressed as something out there and apart from me. Ultimate truths,
if they are worthy of their name, have a bearing on the searching and longing subject.
They include subjectivity, now understood as commitment and involvement.
Sensitivity for this state of affairs does not imply that the scholar has to abandon
his or her objectifying attitude nor that he need dilute the standards of scientific
scholarship. What is needed is a reflexive attitude which evinces awareness of the
ambiguity and complexities that are involved here. This reflexive attitude amounts to
a second-order type of thought in which the results of the objectifying method are
investigated with respect to their possible existential implications. Awareness and
sensitivity for these possible implications and the capacity for imaginative play with
these implications belongs to the heart of scientific scholarship, and to the profes-
sional activities that are based on the results of this scholarship. This chapter can be
seen as a modest attempt to such imaginative play with conceptual opportunities and
limitations.
The contributions in this book should be read as exercises in raising the kinds of
awareness and sensitivity just mentioned. One could only hope that many psycholo-
gists, psychiatrists and philosophers of religion in the same vein try to improve their
skills with respect to this second-order way of understanding and communicating.
Professionals should ideally become experts in the analysis of and imaginative play
with the existential attitudes that structure their modes of relatedness to themselves
and to others and to the fundamental themes which are embodied in lives, works, and
deeds of others.
5. IMPORTANCE FOR PSYCHIATRY AND PSYCHOTHERAPY
The preceding remarks bring us close to what this approach could mean for psychiatry
and psychotherapy. In order to make this clear, let me begin by sharing a particular type
of clinical experience.
Every psychotherapist or psychiatrist is acquainted with a number of patients
suffering from numerous overlapping problems; problems which can be illuminated
from various diagnostic and theoretical perspectives, none of which is totally
convincing or decisive. In other words, with these patients one is often in a situation
in which all interpretations and explanations are correct, and yet no single one
suffices. It is my impression that in some of these cases, underneath the surface of
symptoms and their possible explanations, there is a more deeply ingrained concern,
304 GLAS
a fundamental conflict or incapacity to engage in life and to shape one’s existence, a

basic paralysis of one’s ability to decide. Addressing this fundamental concern or
incapacity and giving words to what is sensed but apparently cannot be expressed,
often leads to an increased sense of coherence, relevance and even transparency, both
in the patient and in the therapist. Instead of drifting away and loosing contact with
the patient, there emerges in the wake of such an existential interpretational stance a
heightened sense of reality, a more energetic atmosphere, and a lively and more
coherent awareness of what is really going on.6 It is very difficult to catch these
moments and to lend words to what actually happens. Nevertheless, if successfully
addressed, they do exist, those sterling moments in the doctor-patient relationship.
Patients return to them time and again, they are remembered for years and may serve
as biographical anchoring points.
Elsewhere, I have tried to address this dimension of self-relatedness in the context
of the basic fears and anxieties by comparing it with certain dimensions of clinical
description, clinical hypothesizing and testing.7 The conceptual structure of the
model I have proposed is threefold. The model, as it is represented here, refers to
processes taking place in the clinical situation, i.e., in the interaction between the
professional and the patient/client.
1. The clinical descriptive level. Concepts at this level refer to signs, symptoms, and
complaints with which the patient calls for attention of the expert. Terms and
concepts at this ‘surface’ level are merely descriptive, whether they are derived
from everyday experience or from some background explanatory model.
2. The level of causal hypotheses. At this level I locate the explanatory models that
are used to understand the clinical situation and to explain how causes lead to
clinical symptoms. One can think here of all types of biological, psychological,
and social scientific models and theories that may shed light on what is going on
in the patient. These models are, of course, limited to a particular perspective.
Clinical diagnosis is usually considered to consist of a combination of level 1
description and level 2 explanation; i.e., the diagnostician describes the course of
signs and symptoms over time, classifies them and give hints to the explanatory
models that might explain what is going on.
3. The existential (or anthropological) level. This third level consists of an analysis
of the basic theme or existential attitude which gives depth and perspective to the
entire picture. This basic theme or attitude is essentially the embodiment of the
way the person relates to his or her (disordered) existence, or parts of it. It is
the overarching way of self-relatedness. It can be intuited in terms of the basic
themes that characterize a person’s existence.8 The important conceptual move
one has to make professionally is similar to the one I suggested above. The
fundamental themes and attitudes do not manifest themselves primarily as objects
of thought, feeling and decision (although they may become such objects); rather,
they express themselves in thought, feeling and behaving. They are, so to speak,
embodied in the ensemble of one’s thoughts, feelings and behaviors. The anxiety
of a person who is unable to connect with important others is not primarily a fear
about being connected, such as fear for intimacy, or separation, or fusion with the
other. Such anxiety is more fundamental, i.e., it represents an inner dynamic

which manifests itself as disconnectedness and isolation and a whole range of
behaviors which keep the person far from the point at which interpersonal
relations might eventually become meaningful and substantive. Such a dynamic
may remain hidden behind a facade of superficial success, but may then become
finally manifest its destructive tendency in moments of crisis. To mention one
other example: the indecisiveness of the person whose existence is an ‘embodi-
ment’ of such indecision, is not primarily characterized by the incapacity to make
a choice between option A and option B, but is, instead, marked by the fact that
choices do not even reach the level of concreteness which is necessary for making
such choices. The existentially indecisive person is successful in avoiding this
concreteness; he undoes life of its concreteness. This avoiding and undoing is a
manifestation of that person’s manner of self-relatedness.
Addressing these fundamental (or existential) themes is not easy, but it is of
immense importance in cases in which a person’s existence seems dominated by
the destructive power of anxiety or depression or in cases in which one feels lost
in a sea of conflicting interpretations and explanations. Of course, the basic exis-
tential themes may, after their recognition, become objects of reflection and
speech. However, it is important to keep in mind that the dynamic precedes one’s
thoughts and interpretations. Communication about this dynamic is, therefore,
never completely descriptive. For, such communication entails a stance toward
this dynamic, explicitly or implicitly. Ignoring these existential themes may
therefore reflect a basic existential attitude in the therapist or clinician her self (an
attitude of anxiety, for instance).
How are clinicians to perform such ‘existential’ talk? The debate about this issue
has often been structured by making use of the distinction between form and content,
or between psychopathological form and anthropological structure, on the one hand,
and existential (religious, theological) content, on the other hand. Yet the previous
paragraphs and many of the chapters in this book suggest that this dichotomy is
overly simplistic: the religious dynamic reveals an existential theme and at the same
time moulds the way (or: form) in which the theme becomes manifest. The threefold
conceptual structure presented here suggests that psychopathological concepts and
their underlying explanatory frameworks cannot be separated from the dynamics of
existential attitudes – in the patient but also between the patient and the therapist or
doctor. The dynamics of these basic attitudes (and corollary moods) have an overall
structuring effect on cognitive, affective and relational capacities and their unfold-
ing, and, at the same time, present a particular existential theme. So, what clinicians
have to do is to find words for the overarching meaning and structuring effects of
these basis attitudes and concomitant moods. That is to say, therapists have to enrich
their conceptual toolbox with the language of existential themes, prototypes, and
potential meaning-investing scenarios.
Biblical psychology, in my estimation and probably in the estimation of many of
the contributors to this volume, offers many illuminating and characteristic examples
of such themes, prototypes, and scenarios. Theology and psychopathology – with
306 GLAS
philosophical anthropology as the bridging discipline – come quite close to each

other here, without merging with one another. From a philosophical point of view, it
is challenging to contemplate that the unfolding of human functions and capacities is
intrinsically connected and interwoven with the expression of the existential
(religious) dynamic. The direction of this unfolding of functions and capacities is
determined by the dynamics we discussed.9 At the same time, the specific manner or
quality by which this underlying existential dynamic unfolds is partly determined by
the specifics of the particular dysfunctions (emotional, cognitive, social) involved in
each case and the biographical context (age, parental influences, other aspects of the
psychosocial milieu).
6. BIBLICAL PSYCHOLOGY AND THE PRACTICE OF PSYCHIATRY
Throughout this book we observed numerous attempts to improve our language,

insight and conceptual tools with which to address the psychic processes that reflect
the deeper existential dynamic operating at the background. We noticed how
conceptual and terminological refinement could be helpful for the theologian in his
or her attempts to contextualize the message of the Bible. We also saw how the rich-
ness and psychological depth of the world of the Bible may help the clinician to
enrich his vocabulary and capacity for understanding.
Of course, there is a long way to go. To demand immediate applicability and
relevance for the clinical situation is asking for a shortcut. Reiterating one of the main
themes in this book, we do not meet full-fledged prophets, martyrs, and messiahs in
our consulting rooms. However, the themes of prophecy, martyrdom, and Messianism
are certainly present in our professions.
With respect to prophecy, there are of course instances of religious delusion in
which the person thinks he or she is a prophet. However, this is not the only field of
application of the theme of prophecy. Discussions at the conference suggested that
this theme also touches on the role of the profession in our society. What role do
psychiatrists and psychotherapists have with respect to the denial of the importance
of religion for science and society? Our professions, perhaps more than any other
scientific discipline, are prepared to delineate just what can be expected when
religion is suppressed and more or less in just what direction religious-affective
dynamics will unfold when religion is banned from the public sphere and when its
importance is denied. One might, to mention one example, expect an emergence of
all sorts of quasi-religious practices and practices with a hidden religious meaning –
think for instance of the religious connotations of addiction, slavery to power and
domination (as in sadomasochistic relationships), cultism, longing for strong lead-
ers, and hyper-individualism.
With respect to martyrdom: this concept opens up a field of discussion where one
has to define the border area between real and imagined martyrdom. What might we
make professionally, to continue with the metaphor, of the hidden martyr-like behav-
ior of anorexia nervosa patients and patients with obsessive compulsive disorder? To
call these behaviors ‘quasi-religious’ is not meant to disqualify the exploration of the
religious connotations of these behaviors. On the contrary, talking about the ‘quasi-
religious’ may bring the therapist and her patient into much more intense and thera-
peutically useful contact with plain religious dynamics that might be operating in the
life of the patient or between the therapist and the patient.
Messianism, finally, confronts us with the issue of religious longing and its tor-
menting dialectic of keeping distance and searching for closeness. Is this religious
longing a sign of weakness, of lack of independence, and of incapacity to bear the
tragedy of existence – as psychoanalysts have often said? Or is it a genuine desire in
which the totality of one’s existence is involved and is directed to a fulfillment with
transformative qualities? Or, to mention yet another problem, how does one share
one’s religious convictions with persons who espouse different, or no beliefs? Most
religions contain convictions that transform the believer into a special person,
compared to the non-believer. How does the feeling of specialty, or of election or
chosenness, affect personality organization?
These three sets of questions are seldom raised. They show how far psychiatry and
psychotherapy have floated away from the language of basic human needs, hopes,
fears, and convictions.
Biblical psychology has a long history. Its roots may even be traced back to
ancient times, in which the science of psychology even did not exist. Thinking about
the possible contributions of biblical psychology to the practice of psychiatry and
psychotherapy, a number of tracks could be followed.
First, one could think in terms of the kind of study known as psychological criticism,
developed by psychology-minded theologians such as Gerd Theissen and members of
his school and the Psychology of Biblical Studies Group of the Society of Biblical Lit-
erature (Ellens & Rollins, 2004; Rollins, 1999; Theissen, 2003). Kille, for example,
mentions three elements of the biblical text that could provide potential starting points:
symbols and archetypal images, psychodynamic factors represented in narrative and
discourse, and depictions of biblical personalities.10
A second approach might aim at the development of a biblical worldview as a
mediating framework between the world of the Bible and of psychiatry/psychother-
apy (cf. van Bruggen, Levy, van de Beek, and Pfeifer in this volume). This approach
is not contradictory to the previous one, but its emphasis is different; is does not
focus on a particular biblical person or text, but on aspects of the biblical image of
the human person in general. Put differently, the biblical worldview it proposes does
not only entail psychological aspects, or components. It also addresses issues like the
nature and relation of body and soul and views on the nature of creation, evil, and
reconciliation (cf. van Praag, Gillman, Vergote, and Pfeifer in this volume).
Third, further on this track one finds the investigation of inner representations of God
as they are shaped by personal experience and life circumstances. This seems to be a
very promising area of investigation and research. Biblical psychology could develop
into a conceptually richer discipline if it could adopt insights from object-relations the-
ory (see Levy, Spero and Verhagen, this volume). On the other hand, object relations
theory could greatly benefit from theological insight to broaden its vocabulary and to
make it aware of a reality which encompasses the intrapsychic world.
308 GLAS
Finally, one could imagine an approach which aims at the analysis of the psycho-
logical processes that are going on between the text, the reader and the traditions,
contexts and subcultures in which these texts are interpreted. This type of analysis is
still in its infancy. It has a great potential for the understanding of situations in which
the perception of the reader is biased by personal suffering and/or cognitive/affective
distortions.
NOTES
1
This larger pattern of (naturalistic, scientistic, foundationalist) thinking is of course widely discussed in
philosophy and has been investigated and criticized with respect to its meaning for ethics (cf. MacIntyre,
1984; Moreland & Rae, 2000; Taylor, 1989), the appreciation of everyday experience and knowledge
(Dooyeweerd, 1953–1958), religion and belief in God (Evans, 1993; Plantinga, 2000; Plantinga &
Wolterstorff, 1983), cosmology (Polkinghorne, 1998; Ward, 1996), the humanities (Brown, Murphy, &
Malony, 1997; Murphy, 1999), the neurosciences (Arbib, 1999; Clayton, 1999; Glas, 2002, 2004) and
psychiatry and psychotherapy (Bhugra, 1996; Boehnlein, 2000; Koenig, 1998; Schreurs, 2002; Scott
Richards & Bergin, 1997; Shafranske, 1996; Verhagen & Glas, 1996; see: also Glas, 1996).
2
The term ‘transparency’ can be found in the work of Søren Kierkegaard, as an expression for increased
inner depth and coherence in the movement of religiously becoming oneself. See for instance:
Kierkegaard (1980), Part II, Chapter 2 and 3.
3
See: de Vries (1999), for a lucid picture of the recent debate on the nature of religion in postmodern
philosophy. In Jewish religious thought the issue is also well-known, most notably with respect to the
concept of God. See for instance: Jacobs (1987).
4
Few thinkers have been more sensitive for this theme of how to reconcile ‘childish’ faith with a reflec-
tive attitude than – again – Søren Kierkegaard. See the explicit thematizing of it in Concluding Unsci-
entific Manuscript (Kierkegaard [1846/1992], pp. 587–607).
5
See, for instance, Climacus’ objections against the possibility of establishing the truth of Christianity
objectively and his insistence on the importance of the subject’s relation to the truth as part of the truth,
in Kierkegaard (1846/1992), pp. 19–58; 72–188.
6
Cf. Yalom (1980, 1989), who mentions four existential themes: death, freedom, isolation, and
meaninglessness.
7
Cf. Glas (2001, 2003).
8
I discern seven basic themes in the area of anxiety: anxiety related to impending break-down of the
I-self relationship; anxiety related to existence in itself; anxiety related to lack of physical protection;
to isolation and lack of connectedness; to the capacity to take a decision; to meaninglessness and to
death (Glas, 2001). Basically, these are Yalom’s four existential themes combined with anxiety related
to impending loss of oneself in the I-self relationship, in the world around us and in one’s physical
environment. The basic anxieties overlap in most cases.
9
I am not aware of any philosopher who analyzed this intricate relationship more precisely and extensively
than Herman Dooyeweerd (1953–1958) – unfortunately, however, only very shortly with respect to psy-
chic functioning. Cf. Dooyeweerd (1953–1958), Volume II, pp. 181–330.
10
Kille (2001), p. 14.
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M. A. Arbib (Eds.), Neuroscience and the person. Scientific perspectives on divine action (pp. 77–100).
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Sciences.
Bhugra, D. (Ed.). (1996). Psychiatry and religion. Context, consensus and controversies. London: Routledge.
Boehnlein, J. K. (Ed.). (2000). Psychiatry and religion. The convergence of mind and spirit. Washington:
American Psychiatric Press.
Brown, W. S., Murphy, N., & Malony, N. (1997). Whatever happened to the soul? Scientific and theologi-
cal portraits of the human nature. Minneapolis: Fortress Press.
Clayton, P. (1999). Neuroscience, the person, and God: An emergentist account. In R. J. Russell, N. Murphy,
T. C. Meyering, & M. A. Arbib (Eds.), Neuroscience and the person. Scientific perspectives on divine
action (pp. 181–214). Vatican City State: Vatican Observatory Publication & Berkely: Center for Theology
and the Natural Sciences.
de Vries, H. (1999). Philosophy and the turn to religion. Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins
University Press.
Dooyeweerd, H. (1953–1958). A New critique of theoretical thought. Vol. I-IV (D. H. Freeman et al.,
Trans.). Amsterdam: H. J. Paris. Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company.
Ellens, H. J., & Rollins, W. G. (Eds.). (2004). Psychology and the Bible. A new way to read the Scriptures.
Vol. I–IV. Oxford/Westport: Praeger Publishers.
Evans,C. S. (1993). Empiricism, rationalism, and the possibility of historical religious knowledge. In C. S.
Evans & M. Westphal (Eds.), Christian perspectives on religious knowledge (pp. 134–160). Grand
Rapids: Eerdmans.
Evans, C. S. (1996). The historical Christ and the Jesus of faith. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Gadamer, H. -G. (1960). Wahrheit und Methode. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck.
Glas, G. (1996). Psyche and faith – beyond professionalism. In P. J. Verhagen & G. Glas (Eds.), Psyche
and faith – Beyond professionalism (pp. 167–184). Zoetermeer: Boekencentrum.
Glas, G. (2001). Angst – beleving, structuur, macht. Amsterdam: Boom.
Glas, G. (2002). Churchland, Kandel, and Dooyeweerd on the reducibility of mind states. Philosophia
Reformata, 67, 148–172.
Glas, G. (2003). Anxiety – animal reactions and the embodiment of meaning. In K. W. M. Fulford,
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philosophy of psychiatry (International Perspectives in Philosophy and Psychiatry) (pp. 231–249).
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Glas, G. (2004). Philosophical aspects of neurobiological research on anxiety and anxiety disorders. Cur-
rent Opinion in Psychiatry, 17, 457–464.
Jacobs, L. (1987). God. In A. A. Cohen & P. Mendes-Flohr (Eds.), Contemporary Jewish religious
thought. Original essays on crictical concepts, movements, and beliefs (pp. 291–298). New York:
Charles Scribner’s Sons.
Kierkegaard, S. (1980). Sickness unto death (H. V. & E. H. Hong, Trans.). Princeton: Princeton University
Press. (Original work published in 1847).
Kierkegaard, S. (1992). Concluding unscientific postscript to Philosophical Fragments (H. V. &
E. H. Hong, Trans.). Princeton: Princeton University Press. (Original work published in 1846).
Kille, A. D. (2001). Psychological biblical criticism. Minneapolis: Fortress.
Koenig, H. G. (Ed.). (1998). Handbook of religion and mental health. San Diego: Academic Press.
MacIntyre, A. (1984). After virtue. A study in moral theory. Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press.
Moreland, J. P., & Rae, S. B. (2000). Body and soul. Human nature and the crisis in ethics. Downers
Grove [Illinois]: Intervarsity Press.
Murphy, N. (1999). Supervenience and the downward efficacy of the mental: A nonreductive physicalist
account of human action. In R. J. Russell, N. Murphy, T. C. Meyering, & M. A. Arbib (Eds.), Neuro-
science and the person. Scientific perspectives on divine action (pp. 147–164). Vatican City State:
Vatican Observatory Publication & Berkely: Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences.
Plantinga, A. (2000). Warranted Christian belief. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Plantinga, A., & Wolterstorff, N. (Eds.). (1983). Faith and rationality. Reason and belief in God. Notre
Dame/London: University of Notre Dame Press.
Polkinghorne, J. (1998). Belief in God in an age of science. Yale: Yale University Press.
Rollins, W. G. (1999). Soul and psyche. The Bible in psychological perspective. Minneapolis: Fortress
Press.
310 GLAS
Schreurs, A. (2002). Psychotherapy and spirituality. Integrating the spiritual dimension into therapeutic
practice. London: Jessica Kingley Publishers.
Scott Richards, P., & Bergin, A. E. (1997). A spiritual strategy for counseling and psychotherapy.
Washington: American Psychological Association.
Shafranske, E. (Ed.). (1996). Religion and the clinical practice of psychology. Washington: American
Psychological Association.
Taylor, C. (1989). Sources of the self. The making of the modern identity. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Theissen, G. (2003). Jesus als historische Gestalt. Beiträge zur Jesusforschung. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck &
Ruprecht.
Verhagen, P. J., & Glas, G. (Eds.). (1996). Psyche and faith: Beyond professionalism. Zoetermeer:
Boekencentrum.
Ward, K. (1996). Religion and creation. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Wolterstorff, N. (1995). Divine discourse. Philosophical reflections on the claim that God speaks.
Cambridge: Cambridge Universtity Press.
Yalom, I. D. (1980). Existential psychotherapy. New York: Basic Books.
Yalom, I. D. (1989). Love’s executioner, and other tales of psychotherapy. New York: Harper and Collins.
NAME INDEX
Aaron, 232 Ben Sasson, H. H., 166n45

Abiathar, 67, 69, 75 Bendor, S., 62n13
Abraham, 44, 146, 217 Benson, P., 191
Abramski, S., 81n6 Benvenuto, B., 258n52
Adams, P., 258n54 Ber, Y., 165n18
Agrippa, King, 111 Berdugo, R., Rabbi, 130
Ahab, King, 57-58 Bergin, A. E., 6, 274
Akiva, Rabbi, 100, 103 Bernard, St., 137-138
Alcibiades. 245 Bick, E., 226, 256n30
Alhanati, S., 256n30 Bion, W. R., 221, 249-250, 255n22, 257n49
Alston, W. P., 34n17 Biran, A., 81n8
Alt, A., 81n8 Biven, B., 255n26
Alter, R., 21, 33n3 Blake, W., 222-224
Amos, 50, 80n1 Blank, S., 84nn44, 46
Andresen, J., 255n25 Blazer, D. G., 10
Anzieu, D., 255n26 Bleich, J. D., 166n41
Aran, G., 166n33 Bohatec, J., 150n14
Arbib, M. A., 308n1 Bomford, R., 220, 259n63
Argyle, M., 193 Bonaparte, M., 112n8
Aristotle, 43, 44, 201n1, 281 Borch-Jacobsen, M., 257n50
Arlow, J. A., 222, 150n15 Bornstein, A., 166n54
Assaf, S., 167n56 Braam, A. W., 12
Atwood, G. E., 253nn10, 12 Bremner, J. D., 16
Augustine, St., 138, 282 Brenman, E., 256n30
Breuer, M., 252n6
Ba’al Shem Tov, Israel, Rabbi, 46 Bright, J., 84n50
Balter, L., 253n10 Brody, E. B., 255n22
Banschick, M. R., 195 Brokaw, B. F., 191-192
Barth, K., 189, 202n15 Brown, W. S., 308n1
Baskin, J. R., 218, 251n3 Brueggemann, W., 59, 62nn17, 20, 298
Bauer, A., 82n35 Brunner, E., 288, 291n19
Becking, B., 38-39, 57, 298 Buber, M., 50, 246
Beekman, A. T. F., 12 Bucci, W., 256n30
Beit-Hallahmi, B., 193 Bull, D. L., 272
Bēl’am, 218 Bultmann, R., 127, 134, 150n1
Belau, L., 258n55 Burridge, R. A., 180n3
311
312 NAME INDEX
Caiaphas, 175 Elman, Y., 255n21

Calvin, John, 32-33 Elper, O., 80
Campbell, J., 24, 34nn10, 11 Engel, G., 272
Capps, D., 286 Epstein, B. H., Rabbi, 256n33
Carnochan, P. G.M., 253n10 Erikson, E. H. 184, 201n1
Carrasco, D., 166n26 Esarhaddon, King, 55
Caruth, C., 257n46, 258n55 Esau, 218, 280
Charles R. H., 82n23 Escher, S., 269
Charles, M., 255n26, 256n29 Eurelings-Bontekoe, E., 184
Chevron, E. S., 274 Evans, C. S., 3-6, 7n3, 30, 34nn14, 18, 297, 37,
Ciarrocchi, J. W., 194 308n1
Cicero, 43 Evans, S. C., 183, 186, 202n16
Clayton, P., 308n1 Evans, Steve, 298
Clines, D. J. A., 83n44 Eybeschuetz, J., Rabbi, 162-163
Cohen, D., 252n8 Ezekiel, 286
Constantine the Great, Emperor, 115
Costa, P. T., Jr., 194 Falk, Z., 82n33
Crenshaw, J. J., 251n3, 252n5, 253n14 Favazza, A. R., 270
Crossan, J. D., 34n16, 283, 285, 288, 291nn9, 11 Fax, M., 166n35
Cryer, F. H., 53 Fenichel, O., 255n26
Fine, H. A., 251n3, 252n5
Damon, S. F., 223 Finell, J.S., 256n30
Dan, 166n26 Fink, B., 244, 258n53
Daniel, 95 Finkelstein, L., 81n17
David, King, 81n13, 97-98 Finkler, K., 272
de Kloet, E. R., 16 Fishbane, M., 77, 84nn44-45, 49
de Vries, H., 308n3 Fitzgerald, J. T., 112n10
Deeg, D. J. H., 12 Fitzmyer, J. A., 280, 291n1
Delitzsch, F., 282 Fletcher, M. S., 282, 289, 291n6
Descartes, 199 Frei, H., 25, 33n2
Diamond, A. R. P., 82n35 Freud, A., 84n51
Dina (daughter of Jacob), 218 Freud, S., 10, 72, 82n27, 84n51, 135, 137, 142,
Dionysius, 137 144, 150n8, 190, 192-193, 215, 220-222,
Dooyeweerd, H., 308nn1, 9 255nn25-26, 286, 288
Douglas, M., 144, 150n12, 165n3 Frye, N., 43
Dresner, S. H., 50nn1-2, 51n1 Frymer-Kensky, T., 75, 82n38
Dummont, L., 16n27
Dupont, J., 150n13 Gabbard, G. O., 197
Durand, J. -M., 62n3 Gadamer, H.-G., 298
Gaddini, E., 256n29
Eagle, M. N., 253n10 Gafni, Y., 165n8
Edelson, M., 255n22 Gallio, Proconsul, 117
Edwards, K.J., 191-192 Gil, Y., 81n10
Eisen, A. M., 165n17 Gillman, N., 5, 37, 51n19, 298, 307
Eisen, R., 254n19 Ginzberg, L., 80n6, 82n37
Eisenberg, L., 273 Glas, G., 7n4, 17, 308nn1, 7-8
Elē’hu, 235-239, 246 Glatzer, N., 251n3, 252n7
Eli, High Priest, 67, 81n13 Glazov, G.Y., 238
Eliade, M., 158-159, 165nn3, 25 Glickauf-Hughes, C., 197
Eliezer of Wirtzburg, Rabbi, 154, 164 Glowinski, H., 260n66
Elijah, 57, 66, 80n1 Goiten, L., 252n5
Elisha, 57 Goodenough, E. R., 283
Ellens, H. J., 307 Goodman, Y., 274
Ellis, A., 10 Gordis, R., 252n7
NAME INDEX 313
Gouin-Décarie, Th., 256n35 Jacob, 44, 146, 218, 280

Graham, I. D., 222 Jacobs, L., 308n3
Grant, F. C., 283, 291n10 James, St., 110, 115, 122
Green, A., 256n29, 257n45 James, W., 137, 138, 285
Greenberg, M., 251n3, 254n17 Japhet, S., 165n4
Gregersen, N. H., 201n1 Jauss, H. R., 201, 202n9
Grotstein, J. S., 227, 256n30 Jeremiah ben Hilkiah (also ben Buzi),
Gunn, D. M., 83n44 38, 54, 58-61, 65-86, 80n6, 156, 226,
Gurewitz, Z., 166n33 255n27, 300
Jeremias, J., 186, 202n7
Habel, N. C., 254n16 Jesus Christ, 5, 14, 22, 26-33, 53, 91, 94,
Hadrian, Emperor, 101 98, 100, 105, 108, 118, 122, 127-128,
Hagiz, Moses, Rabbi, 158 133-152, 169-182, 183-204
Ha-Levi, Judah R., 153, 166n43 Jethro, 218
Ha-Levi, Y., 165n5 Jezebel, Queen, 57-58
Halperin, D. J., 253n13, 286 Job, 72, 82nn28, 32, 207, 210, 213-266
Halpern, B., 62n12, 166n28 John Paul II, Pope, 283, 290
Hämeen-Anttila, J., 55 John, St., the Baptist, 115-116, 122, 128, 136,
Hananiah ben Akashia, Rabbi, 162 141, 146, 171, 174-175
Hannah (martyr), 96 Johnson, W. B., 198
Haran, M., 81n9 Jonah, 48, 66, 80n1, 163
Harari, R., 258n57 Jones, E., 73
Harrington, D., 287, 291n16 Jones, J. W., 199
Harry W. M, 102 Jonge de, M., 179n1
Harsch, H., 284 Joseph, 103
Hartocollis, P., 222 Josephus Flavius, 101
Havenaar, J. M., 274 Joshua, Abraham, 37
Hayward, R., 80n6 Judah the Prince, Rabbi, 101-102
Hayyim of Volozhin, Rabbi, 163, 166n53 Judas (Iscariot), 176
Hegel, F., 43, 189, 249 Julien, P., 257n48, 257n39
Heilman, S. C., 267 Jung, C. G., 10, 133, 139, 150nn4-5, 212, 224,
Heinemann, J., 82n31 250, 280, 282, 285, 287-289, 291nn7, 12-13,
Herod Antipas, King, 115 18, 23-24
Heschel, A. J., 5, 7n1, 37-39, 41-44, 46-47, 49,
50n3, 51nn4-10, 14-18, 83-84n44, 84n47, 298 Kalian, M., 270
Hilkiah, 80n6 Kant, I., 23-24, 33nn7, 8, 133, 145
Hobbes, T., 289 Kaplan, B. H., 10
Hoffman, I. Z., 253n10 Kaplan, E. K., 50nn1-2, 51n1
Holladay W., 81nn12, 18 Kaplan, M., 50
Holladay, W. L., 62n19 Karasu, T. B., 6, 17
Holtz, B. W., 80n4 Kasher, A., 165n2
Hood, R. W., Jr., 140 Kennedy, R., 258n52
Horowitz, Isaiah, Rabbi, 130 Kernberg, O., 195-197, 255n22
Hosea, 82nn22, 34 Kerrigan, W., 256n35
Huldah, 75 Kessler, R., 62n13
Hunt, M., 291n5 Kierkegaard, S., 7n2, 23, 28-29, 33n5, 34n12,
Hurvitz, A., 253n14 302, 308nn2, 4-5
Kille, A. D., 307, 308n10
Ibn Ezra, Abraham, 160, 166n37 Kille, D. A., 284, 291n8
Idel, M., 166n30 Kimhi, D., 80n6, 81n9
Isaiah, 50, 54, 82n34 King, Martin Luther, 53
Ish-Shalom, M., 81, n21 Kittel, G., 180n8
Ishtar, 55 Klein, M., 81n19, 223
Issac, 44, 146 Kleinman, A., 267
314 NAME INDEX
Klerman, G. L., 274 Marks, Z., 258n52, 260n66

Koenig, H. G., 12, 308n1 Marulic, M., 282
Kohut, H., 232, 234 Mary, the Virgin, 124n7, 173
Kolitz, Z., 249 Maslow, A., 10
Kopmels, L. A., 180n7 Matte-Blanco, I., 259n62
Kumin, I., 256n30 Matthew, St., 118, 129, 170-172, 177, 179n4, 187
Kurtzweil, B., 251n3, 252n7 Mazor, L., 251n3
Küster, V., 202n5 Meier, J. P., 31, 34n15, 134, 143, 146-147,
Kutz, I., 14 150nn6, 10
Meir of Rottenberg, Rabbi, 129, 155-156, 165n15
La Capra, D., 254n20 Meiri, Menachem, Rabbi, 158, 166n29
Lacan, J., 208-209, 233-235, 240-241, 245, Meissner, W. W., 184, 201n1, 270
248-249, 256n35, 257nn42, 44 Meklenburg, Z. H., Rabbi, 231
Lalleman-de-Winkel, H., 82n22 Melamed, A., 166n44
Laplanche, J., 256n36 Melanchton, P., 282
Lapointe, F. H., 291n2 Merkur, D., 84nn46, 51
Larson, D. B., 10, 12 Meyer, J. P., 187
Law, J.M., 166n26 Michon, J. A., 221
Lawrence, R. T., 191, 201n1 Miller, J. W., 286
Leary, K., 253n10 Miller, M. L., 253n12
Lebold, C. J., 275 Mills, J., 236
Lefort, R., 258n56 Milner, M., 223-224
Leiner, M., 284 Mintz, A., 79, 82nn26, 30, 84n52
Levenson, J. D., 165nn7, 35 Miriam (brother of Moses), 232
Levinas, Emmanuel, 249-250 Mitrani, J. L., 256n30
Lévi-Strauss, C., 219-220, 254n21 Mitrani, T., 256n30
Levy, Bryna J., 38-39, 61, 307 Modell, A., 255n22
Lewis, C. S., 24, 34n9 Molenkamp, R. J., 196
Lombardi, K., 256n30 Moloney, J. C., 77, 81n19, 84n52
Luke, St., 117, 129, 172-174, 178 Mordekhai, 217
Lundbom, J. R., 60, 62n18 Moses, 80n2, 103, 148, 160, 170, 211, 218-219,
Luria, Isaac, Rabbi, 37, 46 227, 229-232, 242, 254n19, 256n34, 286
Luther, Martin, 282 Moye, R. H., 252n8
Muller, J. P., 256n36, 257n41, 257n43
Maccoby, H., 89-91, 104nn3-4, 112n4 Mumford, D. B., 267
McCandless, J. B., 196 Murken, S., 184, 193, 195
Mace, C. A., 291n3 Murphy, N., 308n1
Macey, D., 256n35 Murphy, S., 258n52, 260n66
McCrae, R. R., 194 Myers, J. M., 81n6
McCullough, M., 12
McDargh, J., 254n14 Naboth, 57
McGrath, A. E., 185-186, 202nn6, 8, 16 Nahman of Bratzlaw, Rabbi, 166n46
McIntosh, D. N., 271 Nahmanides, Moses, 161
MacLeish, A., 252n7 Nase, E., 190
McMinn, M. R., 275 Nathanael, 174
McNutt, P. M., 57 Nedelman, Y., 81n8
Magdalen, M., 188 Neeleman, J., 10
Mahler, M. S., 256n35 Nero, Emperor, 118
Mahoney, M. J. 289, 291n22 Neusner, J., 166n27
Maimonides, Moses, 96, 218, 254n19 Neyrey, J. H., 111-112, 112n9
Malina, B. J., 111-112, 112n9 Niccolls, T., 252n5
Malony, N., 308n1 Nicodemus, 175
Mannoni, M., 220 Niehoff, M., 252n8
Mark, St., 172, 187 Nielsen, S. L., 198
NAME INDEX 315
Nissinen, M., 55-56, 62nn1, 4-5, 10 Renik, O., 255n25

Noll, R., 150n3 Richards, P. S., 6, 274
Nygren, A., 141, 180n7 Richardson, W. J., 256n36, 257n43
Ricoeur, P., 220
O’Connor, K. M., 82n35 Rifkind, Simon H., 37
O’Shaugnessy, E., 227 Riskin, S., 13
Ogden, T. H., 227, 256n30 Rizzuto, A. M., 184, 191, 195, 201n1, 273
Omran, A. R., 10 Robb, H. B., 198
Orange, D. M., 253nn10, 12 Roberts C. W., 193-194
Otto, R., 165n3 Rollins, W.G., 186, 188, 207, 211-212, 291nn4,
Overbeck, F., 178 20-21, 307
Overholt, Th. W., 62n15 Rosenberg, S., 251n3, 254n19
Rosenzweig, F., 50
Pachter, M., 165n9 Rounsaville, B. J., 274
Parpola, S., 55-56, 62nn4, 6, 8-9, 11 Rubenstein, R., 284
Passhhur, 76, 77 Rucker, N., 255n26, 256n30
Pattison, E. M., 10 Rümke, H. C., 10
Paul, M. I., 256n30
Paul, St. (also Pauline), 91, 100, 102, 105-115, Sacks, O., 259-260n64
143, 163, 274, 286 Samson, 94, 104n2
Perroudon, M. -C., 62n10 Samuel, Rabbi, ben Rabbi Nahman, 74, 83n39
Persaud, R., 10 Sanders, E. P., 104n4
Peter, St., 91, 115, 174, 286 Sanders, P. S., 253n14
Peters, R. S., 291n3 Sarna, N., 254n15
Petersen, D. L., 62nn1, 20 Satan, 28, 107, 115, 116, 123, 124n6, 145,
Pfeifer, S., 207, 210-211, 268, 271-272, 307 222-225, 226, 232, 244, 251n3, 252n5,
Pfister, O., 130, 190, 202n20 254nn15, 18, 255n25, 260n65, 269, 271, 285
Philemon, 107, 109 Saul, King, 54, 68, 81n13
Philo of Alexandria, 158 Schaap-Jonker, H., 184, 191, 195-197, 202nn
Piedmont, R. L., 194, 198, 202n25 26-27
Pilate, Pontius, 199 Schilder, A., 12
Plantinga, A., 33n5, 34n18, 308n1 Schimmel, S., 252n5
Plato, 245 Schley, D. G., 81n13
Polk, T., 62n20, 83n43 Schneersohn, M. M., Rabbi, 166n36
Polkinghorne, J., 308n1 Schoenfeld, C. G., 82n36
Pontalis, J.-B., 256n36 Scholem, G., 51n12, 165n17
Pope, M. H., 253n14 Schreurs, A., 308n1
Pope Benedict XII, 279 Schwartz, D., 166nn34, 44
Priel, B., 256n38 Schweitzer, A., 130, 179n1, 184-186, 188, 190,
Pritchard, J.B., 217, 253n14 198, 200, 201nn4, 10-14, 16-19, 21-22, 30,
Propst, L. R., 198 211, 282
Schweizer, E., 179n1
Rabinowitz, Aaron, 37 Scroggs, R., 286, 291n15
Ragland-Sullivan, E., 256n35, 257n39 Searles, H., 81n19
Rahab, 72-76, 78, 83n41 Segal, A. F., 112n1
Raphael, D. D., 252n7 Sewall, R. B., 252n7
Rasmussen, K., 188 Shafranske, E., 308n1
Rava, 95-96 Shammai, 96
Ravidovitz, S., 166n39 Shavit, Y., 166n44
Ravitzky, A., 40n1, 129-130, 166nn20, 36, Shē ‘mon ben La’kēsh, Rabbi, 218
38, 57, 299 Shirman, H., 166n43
Regev, E., 81n13 Shulman, D., 165n3
Reid, S. A., 251n3, 252n5 Silas, 117
Reimarus, H. S., 186, 189 Simlai, Rabbi, 160
316 NAME INDEX
Sjöberg, W., 62n7 Van Ruler, A. A., 129, 179

Skinner, J., 77, 84n48 Van Scheyen, J. D., 12
Smith, J. H., 256n35 Van Spanje, T. E., 112n8
Smith, J. Z., 158, 165n7, 166n27 Van Tilburg, W., 12
Smith, J., 158 Vargon, S., 254n19
Smith, W. C., 287, 291n17 Vergote, A., 127-129, 135, 139, 150nn2, 7, 9, 11,
Socrates, 245 187-188, 202n9, 284, 298-299, 307
Solomon, A., 281 Verhagen, P. J., 130, 184, 298, 307, 308n1
Solomon, King, 67, 217 Vermetten, E., 16
Solomon, R. C., 189 von Muralt, A., 150n15
Sonnenberg, C. M., 12 von Rad, G., 82n26
Spero, M. H., 192, 199, 202nn23-24, 28, 207- Vygotsky, L., 252n8
210, 221, 254n14, 255n21, 274, 299-301, 307
Spiegel, S., 101 Waelty, U., 271
Spilka, B., 191, 271, 275 Ward, K., 308n1
Stauffer, E., 180nn8, 9 Weaver, W. O., 186, 202n5
Steiner, G., 251n3, 252n7 Weber, M., 138
Steiner, J., 227 Wedbee, W., 252n7
Stephen, St., 110, 118, 122 Weinfeld, M., 165n4
Stern, D. N., 256n37 Weippert, M., 62n2, 11
Sternberg, M., 21, 33n3 Weissman, A. M., 256n32
Stolorow, R. D., 253nn10, 12 Weissman, M. M., 274
Strauss, D. F., 189 Wells, M., 197
Strenger, C., 253n10 West, W., 6
Symington, N., 184 Wicksteed, J. H., 223
Wieder, A. A., 83n39
Tājrā, H. W. M., 89-91, 102, 112n5 Wiesel, E., 238, 252n7
Tamayo, A., 193 Wieseltier, L., 250-251
Ta-Shema, Y., 165n6 Wilkin, R. L., 165n4
Taubes, S., 9, 253n14 Williams, J. E. G., 194
Theissen, G., 112n8, 185, 200, 201nn3-4, 307 Williamsen, W. P., 140
Timothy, St., 107 Wink, W., 291n14
Tisdale, T. H., 191-192 Winnicott, D. W., 192, 223, 250, 256nn35-36
Trebitsch, R., 166n53 Witztum, E., 267, 270, 274
Troeltsch, Ernst, 30-31, 138 Wolterstorff, N., 34n13, 201, 297, 302, 308n1
Tsevat, M., 251n3, 253n14 Worthington, E. L., 274
Turkel, S., 256n35 Wright, A. G., 80n4
Tur-Sinai, N. H., 254n16 Wright, N. T., 31, 34n16
Tustin, F., 256n30 Wulff, D. M., 193, 201n2
Wundt, W., 280
Urbach, E. E., 166n51
Yafet, S., 251n3
Van Belzen, J. A., 135 Yalom, I. D., 308n6
Van Bruggen, J., 89-91, 102, 112n3, 307 Yehoshua, A. B., 154, 165nn11, 12
Van de Beek, A.M., 129, 180n12, 187, 200 Yevin, S., 81n6
Van de Beek, B., 129, 299, 187-200, 301, 307 Yosl Rakover, 249
Van de Kemp, H., 282 Young, J. E., 196-198
Van der Toorn, K., 62nn3, 11, 14
Van Hecke, L., 137 Zink, J. K., 251n3, 252n5
Van Os, J., 16 Žižek, S., 258n54
Van Pelt, T., 257n39 Zock, H., 184
Van Praag, H. M., 3-6, 13, 15-16, 252n5, 307 Zohar, Z., 165n9
Van Rijn, Rembrandt, 121
SUBJECT INDEX
Absence and desire, link between, 249; see also Biblical scholarship, psychology as a tool in,
under God, absence of 283–287
Ambiguity, 298 Biblical themes in psychiatric practice, 267–276,
Anatoth, City of, 80–81n6; see also under 306–308; see also under psychopathology,
Jeremiah psychosis
Answer to Job, 224 anxiety and personality disorders, 270–271
Anxiety, as emotion in Biblical themes, 120, 135, bio-psycho-social model of psychiatry,
136, 144, 147, 171, 174, 190, 194, 204, 272–273
210, 215, 234, 241, 242, 243, 247, 256n38, causality in psychiatry, 271–272
258n57, 260n65, 270, 272–273, 305, 308n8 depression, 268–269
Aphobos, 119; see also anxiety phenomenology, 268–271
Asinnu, 56 religious delusions, 269–270
Atheism, 10 schizophrenia, 269–270; see also
Atonement, 16, 28, 68, 90, 94, 99, 101–104, separate entry
112n5, 141, 161; see also under vicarious therapeutic implications, 274–275
atonement in Judaism and ethical guidelines, 274
Bio-psycho-social model of psychiatry, Biblical
Behaviour, Biblical rationalizations of, 270–271 aspects, 272–273
Bible Book of Job, The, 209, 217–218
mental health and, imposing figures of, 13–14 Book of Revelation, The, 116, 123
psychology and, 279–291
psychological Biblical criticism, 283–287; Causality in psychiatry, Biblical aspects of,
see also separate entry 271–272
psychology and biblical studies in the west, Christian mysticism, 140–141
280–283 Christianity and Judaism, universality in, 99
religion and biblical studies, benefiting Church and mysticism
psychology, 287–290 opposition between, 138
salvation in, 26 Cognitive schema-focused perspectives in
Biblical conviction imagining Jesus, 196–198
of God, 44, 142 “Collaborative empiricism”, 274
Biblical effects, history, 287 Collective unconscious, 285
Biblical narratives, see narratives, Biblical Commandments, 160
Biblical persons as objects of faith, 29–30 “Consecration” of the prophet, 148
Biblical portraits of personalities, analysis, 286 Contextual theology, 202n5
Biblical prophet, 145 Crimen laesum maiestasis, 117
Biblical religious phenomena, 285 Curse, 271–272
317
318 SUBJECT INDEX
Decreta Caesaris, 117 fundamental object of, 28

Defence, Biblical rationalisations of, 270–271 historical faith in the narrative of Jesus, 30
Delusions, 14 nature of, 27–30
Demonic affliction, 271–272 Fear of demands, 162–164
Depression, 268–269 absolute place and time, 163–164
religion and, 12 dread of Holiness, 163
Desire Fiducia, 120
absence and, link between, 248 ‘Fileo’, 180n10
interminable mirroring and the anguish of, Five-factor model, in imagining Jesus, 194–195
213–256 Force, notion, 208
Job and, 243–245 Four Gospels, One Jesus? A Symbolic Reading,
Deus absconditus, 38, 46; see also under God, 180n13
absence of Fragmentation, 234
Divination Frenziness, 54–56
definition, 53
implications, 53 God
Doubt, 136, 268, 275 Abraham Joshua Heschel on, 5
self-doubt, 66, 70 absence of, 38, 46, 129, 149, 199, 200, 208,
Dread, 157–160 220, 239, 248–251, 299, 300–302
DSM-IV personality disorders and God biblical conviction of, 142
images, 195 concept, 10–11
Dynamic ‘within’, searching for, 295–308 earthly reality and, 38
Biblical psychology and the practice of face (pa‘nēm) of, 229, 256n34
psychiatry, 306–308 God in Search of Man, 47
postmodern sophistication, 300–303 God’s pathos, in Heschel’s mature theology,
psychiatry and psychotherapy, importance, 47–48; see also pathos
303–306; see also under psychiatry and image of, 195–196
psychotherapy dimensions, 195
science and religion, dissociation, in theology and DSM-IV personality disorders, 195
and psychiatry, 295–297 pathological personality traits, 195
science-religion split, attempts to overcome, image of self and God, 192–193
297–300 imagining God and Jesus, 190–192
tracks to be followed, 307–308 Issac Luria, Rabbi, on, 46
Jesus’ conception of God and His Kingdom, 148
Ego, 240–243 object representation of, 198, 246, 250, 255
ego-dystonic influence, 272 of the prophets, 43–45
Ei‘foh, 243–245, 260n65 Gospel of Thomas, 139
Elē‘hu’s intervention Guilt feelings, 142–145
and the questioning of mirroring, 235–240 depressive guilt and real religious guilt,
Embeddedness, 37–38 interplay between, 273
Empathy, 66, 70–72, 79, 191, 194 moral consciousness and feelings of, 128
En to somati mou, 119
Entos hymon, 138 Handbook of Psychology, 109–110
Epistle to the Philippians, 119, 121 Hasidism, 37, 42, 46, 164
Epistle to Timothy, 121 Hearing voices, 269
Eretz Israel, 160; see also Israel, Land of Hebrew Bible, 33n1
Eschatology, of Jesus, 145–149 He martyria, 118–119
‘Explosion of schemes’, 298 Heschel, Abraham Joshua
Externalist approach, 4–5, 32 in America, 41
Extra ecclesiam nulla salus, 99 in Berlin, 41 doctoral studies at, 42
epistemology, 48–50
Faith God of the prophets, 43–45
Christian perspective, 28 as a Hasid, 42
SUBJECT INDEX 319
Heschel’ mature theology, God’s pathos in, Interpretation, 273

47–48 physician as an interpreter, 274–275
Heschel’s sources, 45–47 ‘introjection’, 130
Heschel’s three worlds, 41–43 Israel, Land of, 153–168
on the image of God, 44 collective fulfillment, desire for, 161
prophecy in the writings of, 41–50 desirable land, 160–161
Prophets, The, 37, 42 dreams and legends, 161
in Warsaw, 41–42 fear of demands, 162–164; see also
Historical Jesus, 189 separate entry
Historical truth Holiness, desire for, 160–161
for Christians, 5 Horowitz’s perception of, 156
Evans on, 4–5 immigration to, 155–157
Historical unconscious, 285 land-related commandments, 160
Ho katégoros, 117 ‘LEST I SIN’, 161–162
Holiness, 160–161 Neutralization and dread, 157–160
Holy Land, 153 Iustus iudex, 122
Human Change Processes: The Scientific
Foundations of Psychotherapy, 289 Jeremiah
depression and the character of, 58–62
Identification (man with God, God with man), Jeremiah interpreted, 65–80
39, 66, 71, 76–78, 91, 120, 128, 187, 191, conflicting empathies, 66–67
197–199, 201, 202n9, 209–210, 220, 224, exposing his mother’s infidelity, 69–72,
233, 235, 257n39, 270, 296, 300–301 73–75
Ikonos, 120 human aspect of, 65
Illness and religion, 269–270 identification with God, 77–78
Imagining Jesus, 183–204 Jeremiah marginalized, 67–69
Adjective Check List (ACL) in, 194 Pesikta portraying, 69
attachment theory, 184 as a ‘priest from Anatoth’, 68, 80–81n6
cognitive schemata, 184 priestly descent of, 69
empirical research, three types of, 192–198 seduction, 75–80
extraversion and openness, 194 shady progenitress, 73–75
five-factor model, 194–195 womb to tomb, 72
historiographic approach, 194 Levy’s portrait of, 39
and the image of God, 184, 190–192 Jerusalem, 154
image of God and personality pathology, Jesus; see also person of Jesus
195–196 attitude toward Jewish ritualistic custom, 143
image of self and God, 192–193 baptism, 143
images of Jesus, 183–185 as biblical prophet, 145–146
object-relational and cognitive schema-focused character, psychiatric evaluation of, 188
perspectives, 196–198 conception of God and His Kingdom, 148
object relations theory, 184 from the vantage point of mysticism
paradidómi, 199–200 category, 141
psychosexual theory, 184 hostility towards, 147
Schweitzer on, 186 images of, 129
transitional phenomena, 184 imagining Jesus, 183–204; see also separate
Imitatio, meditatio, compassion, 131 entry
Imma (Mother) Zion, 70–73 Jesus’ parables, time structure of, 147
Impurity, 143, 145 on Kingdom of God, 146–147
anthropological notion, 144 lives of Jesus, three quests, 185–187; see also
‘primitive’ idea of, 144 separate entry
Integrative psychotherapy, forms of, 274 as the marginal Jew, psychological look on,
Interdisciplinary issues, 207–212 133–151
Internalist approach, 4–5, 32 moral conscious, guilt feelings, sin, 142–145
320 SUBJECT INDEX
mystical experience and desire, 137–141 Land of Israel, see Israel, Land of
portrayal versus the betrayal of, 183 Leg to Stand On, A, 259n64
preaching of Jesus and the preaching about ‘‘LEST I SIN’, 161–162
Jesus, 186 Lives of Jesus, three quests, 185–187
prophecy, self-consciousness, eschatology, 1953 (second quest), 186
145–149 by David Friedrich Strauss, 189
prophetic mission, 128 by Hermann Samuel Reimarus, 189
resurrection of, 28 man’s true self in the writing of, 188–190
story of, 27–30 nineteenth century (first quest), 185
strangeness of, 200–201 Van de Beek’s account, 187
uniqueness, 128 Lost sheep, The, 148
Jews/Jewish Luke, Jesus of, 172–174
definitions of martyrdom, 94–96
literature, desire and dread in, 153–168; see also Man is Not Alone, 47
under Land of Israel Man’s Quest for God, 47
tradition, on people and their place, 159 Marginal Jew –Rethinking the Historical Jesus,
Job, 208–210 A, 143, 187
chronic preoccupation with, 215 Mark, Jesus of, 172
contents of, previous psychoanalytic Martyrdom, 89–92, 306
approaches to, 222–224 and conception of Jesus, 90
countertransference reaction, Jobian patience as definition of, 93–94
(Renik), 256n25 Hyam Maccoby on, 89–91
Epilogue, the, 218, 236, 247, 252n7 imminent approach of, 121–122
hidden subject of, 213–256 Jewish and Christian conception, 90
infinitesimal measure (ei‘fah) of desire and, Jewish definitions of, 94–96
243–245, 259n64 Judaic/Rabbinic conception, psychological
Lacanian conceptual framework, 209 meaning, 103
lack, holes, and the cleft in the rock, in Judaism, 93–104
240–243 martyrdom of Paul, 105–112; see also
meta-analytic introduction, 214–217 under Paul
Milner’s interpretation, 223–224 occasions for, 95
mirror stage and its relevance to desire, queries around, 90
232–235; see also under mirroring sacrifice and suicide and, 100–101
concept status of the duty of martyrdom, 96–97
Moses and, link between, 228–232 suicide and, 97–99
as myth, 219–222 Tájrá on, 90–91
paternity, complications in, 217–219 theological and psychological aspects, 93–104
psychosexual foundation for a deeper universality in Christianity and Judaism, 99
psychoanalytic dimension, 224–228 vicarious atonement, 99–100
signature, Job’s (taw‘e), 246 vicarious atonement in Judaism, 101–103
suffering of, 213, 214, 219, 226, 252n19 Martyrdom of St. Paul, The, 119
John, Jesus of, 174–177 Masochism, religious, xiii, 90, 107–108, 234
Judaism Matthew, Jesus of, 170–172
martyrdom in, 93–104 on Jesus’ radicalism, 170
vicarious atonement in, 101–103 Mental disorders, 9–10, 16
religion and, 11–13
katharsis, 131, 201 Mental suffering, 267
kenosis, 77, 299 Messianism, 307
kerdos, 121 Avi Ravitzky’s contribution, 127
kèsèph concept, 58 Peter Verhagen on, 130
Kingdom of God, 146–147 theological and psychological aspects, 127–131
kurgarru, 56 Metanarratives, 25
SUBJECT INDEX 321
Metaphor, xii, 14, 43, 60, 136, 140, 147, 253n8, ‘Naturalistic positivism’, scientific psychology
273, 297, 306 as, 288
God as seducer, 83n44 Ne’h.a‘mah (consolation), 218, 241, 241, 247,
hasidic “seeing”, 48–49 257n51–258n51
impurity as sin, 144 Neo-Assyrian prophets, 55
Job vs. Jeremiah, metaphors compared, 226 Neutralization, 157–160
land as mother, 82n23, 165 New Testament, 21, 169, 179n1
myth as metaphor, 221–222, 225–226 Non-delusional disorders, 272
skin, oral, 210, 226, 236, 246 Non-psychological phenomenon, 140
sotah vs. mother, 71
womb as tomb, 72 Objective (the historical Jesus) and subjective
Midrash, 66 (Jesus as moral example)
Mirroring concept, 232–235 split between, 130
binary identifications, 257n39 Object-relational
combinatory identifications, 257n39 and cognitive schema-focused perspectives,
developmental research on, 233 in imagining Jesus, 196–198
disturbing qualities of, 256–257n38 Old Testament, 21, 33n1
Elē‘hu’s intervention and the questioning of, Oppression, 97–98
235–240 ‘Orthodox’ theology, 196
mirroring framework (Mahler & Winnicott),
256n35 Paradidómi, 199–200
primary identifications, 257n39 Parresia, 120
primordial identifications, 257n39 Passions, 281
Moral conscious, 142–145 Pathos, 37, 72, 75, 78, 80, 298
Moral treatment, 9 divine pathos, mystical, pantheistic/dualistic
Moses, 13, 21, 27, 67, 80, 80n2, 81n2, 103, 148, background, 38
160, 170, 208, 210, 218, 236, 239, 254n19, as a dynamic term, 43–44
256n31, 256n33, 258n60, 260n65 emotions and, 45
and Job, link between, 228–232, 242–247 Heschel’s notion of, 37
My Brother Paul, 284 as a relational term, 44
Mystery, 298 separating biblical God and philosophical
Mysticism, 128 God, 44–45
mystical adjective in Christian literature, 137 Paul
mystical illusions and constructions of autistic about God the Creator, 110
meanings, 269 about spirit, 110–111
religions and, 140 Paul, martyrdom of, see separate entry
Myth, mythopoesis, 4, 24–25, 29, 46, 130, 146, religious worldview, 111
183, 190, 208, 210, 214, 232, 243, 248, on resurrection of Jesus, 110
253n14, 254n19, 255n23 Paul, martyrdom of, 105–112
Biblical narratives as, 24–25 Acts of the Apostles, 117
Job as, 219–222 Acts 16, 19–21, 117
methodological issues, 159–161, 219–222 Acts 17, 5–9, 117
Acts 18, 12–17, 117
Na‘h.em, 258n51; see also ne’hh.a‘mah Acts 19, 23–41, 118
Narratives, Biblical, as history, 21–33 Acts 21, 27–29, 118
Evans on, 4 motives for accepting, 109
literary value, 22–23 Paul’s suffering, facts, 106–107
miracles and supernatural in, 31 attitude in his sufferings, 107–109
as moral exemplars, 23–24 imprisonment, 106
as myths, 24–25 religious framework, 109–112
story of Jesus, and the nature of faith, 27–30 St.Paul’s accusers and the indictment against
value, if not tied to history, 22–25 him, 116–118
value, if tied to history, 25–27 St. Paul’s final meditation, 121–122
322 SUBJECT INDEX
St. Paul’s meditation on life and death, 118–121 Prophets, The, 37, 42, 47
aphobos, 120 shamanism, 57–58
spiritual, human, and psychological Protestantism, 135
dimensions, 115–124 Psyche (also ‘nephesh’ ‘nishamah’), xiii, xiv, 17,
persecution and martyrdom of Christians, 68, 76, 123, 124, 139, 149, 215, 223, 242,
115–116 273, 281, 288–291
Person of Jesus, 142, 169–181 Psychiatric evaluation
and gospels of the New Testament, 169 of Jesus’ character, 188
Jesus of John, 174–177 Psychiatric Study of Jesus, The, 282
Jesus of Luke, 172–174 Psychiatry and psychotherapy, importance,
Jesus of Mark, 172 303–306
Jesus of Matthew, 170–172 professional and the patient/client, interaction
mental health, 136 between, 304–306
psychology of, interest and limited possibility, clinical descriptive level, 304
134–137 existential (or anthropological) level,
radicalism of, 170 304–305
resistance to groups, 173 level of causal hypotheses, 304
status, 173 Psychoanalysis, applications of, xii, 16, 67,
in the context of psychology, 169 135–136, 219, 224, 249–251, 254n13,
vantage points, 127 283, 286
Personality Psychodynamic factors in biblical texts,
disorders, in Biblical theme, 270–271 analysis, 286
personality pathology and images of God, Psychological Aspects of Pauline Theology, 284
195–196 Psychological Biblical criticism, 211, 283–287
personal unconscious, 285 present and future research areas, 285
types, 281 biblical portraits of personalities, analysis, 286
Pesikta de-Rab Kahana, 6, 67, 74, 80 nn1, 83 n41 biblical psychology, 286
Pesikta Rabbati, 21, 26, 61, 69–73, 81nn7, 82n22, collective unconscious, 285
83 n42 historical unconscious, 285
‘place’ concept, 130, 159, 229, 244, 256n31, history of biblical effects, 287
258n60–259n60; see also under space personal unconscious, 285
Politeuma, 117 psychodynamic factors in biblical texts,
Principle of analogy, 30 analysis, 286
Principle of correlation, 30 psychological hermeneutics, 287–288
Principle of criticism, 30 Rollins defining, 211
Projective identification, 39, 66, 71, 199, 224, 300 Psychological hermeneutics, 287–288
Prophecy, 37–40, 269 Psychology of the New Testament, The, 282
of Jesus, 145–149 Psychopathology, 3, 14–15, 90, 133, 142–145,
as a religious phenomenon, 53 191, 210–211, 267, 270, 274, 296, 305
in the writings of Abraham Joshua Heschel, Psychosis, 14, 142, 210, 242–244, 269–270, 274;
41–50; see also under Heschel, Abraham see also under psychopathology
Joshua
Prophets Q (the unknown Quelle of these words), 179n3
biblical prophet, 145 Quest of the Historical Jesus, 186
concept, 53
‘consecration’ of, 148 Radicalism, 170–171
Jeremiah, depression and the character of, Reductionism, 39, 216, 253n10, 253n11, 274,
58–62 282, 298
Neo-Assyrian prophets, 55 Regem alium, 117
as persons, 53–62 Religion
frenziness, 54–56 biblical studies and, benefiting psychology,
Martin Luther King-idea, 53 287–290
traditional idea, 53 boredom and, 10
SUBJECT INDEX 323
mysticism and, 140 Shamanism, 57–58

psychiatry and Shekhina, 46–47
great divide, 9–11 Sin, 128, 142–145, 271
Herman van Praag on, 3 moral judgment and the confession of, 144
for individuals, 12–13 sin unto God
meeting points between, 11–17 moral-religious conversion from, 143
possible interactions between, 3 skin-veil concept, 259n61
religion and mental health, 11–13 Somatic sensations, 270
spirituality and, 11 Sotah (unfaithful wife, analogy), 73–75; see also
Steve Evans on, 3 under Jeremiah
psychotherapy and, 16–17 Soul and Psyche: The Bible in Psychological
religiosity, levels, 12 Perspective, 284
religious belief Soulfulness, 17
C.G. Jung interpretation, 139 Space, representational, 130, 153, 160, 220, 233,
religious consciousness 235–238, 243, 299; see also uder ‘sacred’;
Horowitz perception, 156 ‘place’
religious delusions with biblical content, Spendo, 121
269–270 Spirit concept, 289–290
religious imagination, 201n1 Spirituality and religion, 11
religious individuals, depression in, 268–269 Spiritual therapy, van Praag on, 6
religious patient Stress, 11–12, 16
integrative psychotherapy and psychophar- Suffering, xiv–xv, 5, 22, 39, 59, 66, 72, 78–79,
macological 82n26, 91, 94, 101–102, 104n1, 105,
treatment in, 275 109–112, 112n3, 116, 120, 143, 188, 197,
Responsa, 155, 166n29 200, 252n7, 267–268, 270, 275–276
Rethinking the Historical Jesus, 147 Sufferings of love, 102–103
Revelation, 12, 116 Sufferings of Rabbi Judah, 101–102
Rituals and sacrifice, 270 Suicide, martyrdom and, 13, 90–94, 97–99, 100,
102–104, 175, 268–269
Sacrifice, martyrdom and Symbolism
distinction between, 100 anal, 225, 239
Samaritans, 173, 180n4 face (or gaze), 13, 24, 145, 219, 223, 229, 230,
Satan, n18, 28, 107–108, 115–116, 123, 124n6, 145, 231, 235, 242, 249, 256n34, 259n61
222–223, 226–227, 232, 244, 251n3, 252n5, glory, 105, 110, 120, 160, 210, 228–231,
254n15, 255n25, 260n65, 269, 271, 285 243, 269
Schizophrenia, 269–270 oral, 209, 225–226, 231–232, 238–239, 242,
having a mission, 270 246, 255n26, 258n56
hearing voices, 269 womb, 39, 61, 65, 69, 72, 80n2, 82n28, 82n29,
mystical illusions and constructions of autistic 225, 226, 232, 239, 242
meanings, 269 Symptom, 242–243, 258n54
prophecy, 269 System of Biblical Psychology, A, 280
rituals and sacrifice, 270
somatic sensations, 270 Teleos, 144
Scholar and the believer, 39–40 Trial of St.Paul, The, 119
Science and religion, dissociation, in theology
and psychiatry, 295–297 Uz, Land of, 208, 220, 244, 248, 254n19
Science-religion split, attempts to overcome,
297–300 Value-sensitive therapy, 274
ambiguity, 298 Vicarious atonement in Judaism, 99–103
‘explosion of schemes’, 298
mystery, 298 Weeds among the wheat, The, 148
Self-consciousness, of Jesus, 145–149
Sententiae, 121 Zoe (life), 120

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HEARING VISIONS AND SEEING VOICES

Hearing Visions and

Moshe Halevi Spero

Herman M. van Praag

Printed on acid-free paper

All Rights Reserved

PART 1. HISTORICAL AND CONCEPTUAL ISSUES

1. Introduction to Historical and Conceptual Issues 3

2. Psychiatry and Religion: An Unconsummated Marriage 9

3. Biblical Narratives as History: Biblical Persons as

PART 2. PROPHECY: THEOLOGICAL

4. Introduction to Prophecy: Theological and Psychological Aspects 37

5. The Dynamics of Prophecy in the Writings of

6. The Prophets as Persons 53

7. Jeremiah Interpreted: A Rabbinic Analysis of the Prophet 65

PART 3. MARTYRDOM: THEOLOGICAL

8. Introduction to Martyrdom: Theological and Psychological Aspects 89

9. Martyrdom: Theological and Psychological Aspects.

10. The Martyrdom of Paul 105

11. Spiritual, Human, and Psychological Dimensions

PART 4. MESSIANISM: THEOLOGICAL

12. Introduction to Messianism: Theological and Psychological Aspects 127

13. Casting a Psychological Look on Jesus the Marginal Jew 133

15. The Person of Jesus 169

16. Imagining Jesus: To Portray or Betray?: Psycho(-patho)logical Aspects

PART 5. INTERDISCIPLINARY ISSUES:

17. Introduction to Interdisciplinary Issues: Prospects for the Future 207

18. The Hidden Subject of Job: Mirroring and the Anguish

19. Biblical Themes in Psychiatric Practice: Implications

20. The Bible and Psychology: New Directions

21. Searching for the Dynamic ‘Within’. Concluding Remarks

Index of Names . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 311

Index of Subjects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 317

Abraham van de Beek

Jakob van Bruggen

Hyam Maccoby, Z.L.†

Bryna Jocheved Levy

Herman van Praag

Moshe Halevi Spero

It is in this spirit, we hope, that this volume will be read.

University of Leiden, The Netherlands

naturalness of religion. However, his focus is different. Evans’s main concern is

PSYCHIATRY AND RELIGION

HERMAN M. VAN PRAAG

University of Maastricht, The Netherlands

1. THE GREAT DIVIDE

2. SPIRITUALITY AND RELIGION

3. MEETING POINTS BETWEEN PSYCHIATRY AND RELIGION

3.1 Religion and Mental Health

permissive towards intolerance and disrespect up to enmity towards others in the

3.2 The Bible and Mental Health

though previous experiences have shown it to be distinctly counterproductive (Kutz,

3.3 Religious Psychopathology

Psychopathological phenomena with a religious charge are by no means rare,

3.4 Psychotherapy and Religion

Does religion have a role to play in psychotherapy? On face value I am inclined to

symposium on which this volume is based, only one religious/behavioral interface

BIBLICAL NARRATIVES AS HISTORY

Baylor University, USA

2. WHAT VALUE DO BIBLICAL NARRATIVES

2.1 Literary Value that does not Depend on Historicity

2.2 Biblical Narratives as Providing Moral Exemplars

Kierkegaard’s thought here is that if the example is provided as historically actual,

2.3 Biblical Narratives Viewed as Myths: Symbolic