Psychological Biblical Criticism

Psychological biblical criticism is a re-emerging field within biblical criticism that seeks to examine the psychological dimensions of scripture through the use of the behavioral sciences. The title itself involves a discussion about "the intersections of three fields: psychology, the Bible, and the tradition of rigorous, critical reading of the biblical text." (Kille, 2001). Known figures within biblical scholarship advocating this interdisciplinary field in the United States include Rev. D. Andrew Kille (2001; 2004), J. Harold Ellens (2004), Wayne G. Rollins (1983; 1999; 2004), and, in Europe, Eugen Drewermann (Beier, 2004), Gerd Theissen (1983, 1987, 2007).

Rollins was the first to define psychological biblical criticism as having the hermeneutical intent of examining

"... texts, their origination, authorship, modes of expression, their construction, transmission, translation, reading, interpretation, their transposition into kindred and alien forms, and the history of their personal and cultural effect, as expressions of the structure, processes, and habits of the human psyche, both in individual and collective manifestations, past and present." (1999:77–78)

Read more about Psychological Biblical Criticism:  The Worlds of Scripture, The Bible and Psychology in Transition, See Also, Bibliography

Famous quotes containing the word criticism:

    I am opposed to writing about the private lives of living authors and psychoanalyzing them while they are alive. Criticism is getting all mixed up with a combination of the Junior F.B.I.- men, discards from Freud and Jung and a sort of Columnist peep- hole and missing laundry list school.... Every young English professor sees gold in them dirty sheets now. Imagine what they can do with the soiled sheets of four legal beds by the same writer and you can see why their tongues are slavering.
    Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961)