Personal Interpretation

Personal Interpretation

The Personal Voice in Biblical Interpretation

Reading and interpreting the Bible, whether as an 'ordinary' or critical reader, has always been strongly influenced by a person's own experience. They demonstrate the variety of ways in which the Bible can have meaning for different people. The contributors offer challenging new perspectives on the ancient biblical books and individual texts of the Torah, the prophets, the Gospels, (Pauline) letters and Revelation. The Personal Voice in Biblical Scholarship contains the original essays of distinguished Jewish and Christian scholars of the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament from all over the world and a variety of backgrounds.

A Critical Psychology

If the reader will excuse a brief anecdote from my own intellectual history, I would like to use it as an introduction to this book. In 1957, I was a sophomore at an undergraduate liberal arts college major ing in medieval history. This was the year that we were receiving our first introduction to courses in philosophy, and I took to this study with a passion. In pursuing philosophy, I discovered the area called "philosophical psychology," which was a Thomistic category of inquiry. For me, "philosophical psychology" meant a more intimate study of the soul (psyche), and I immediately concluded that psychology as a discipline must be about this pursuit. This philosophical interest led me to enroll in my first introductory psychology course. Our text for this course was the first edition of Ernest Hilgaard's Introduction to Psychology. My reasons for entering this course were anticipated in the introductory chapter of Hilgaard's book, where the discipline and its boundaries were discussed, and this introduction was to disabuse me of my original intention for enrolling in the course. I was to learn that, in the 20th century, people who called themselves psychologists were no longer interested in perennial philosophical questions about the human psyche or person. In fact, these philosophical questions were considered to be obscurantist and passe. Psychology was now the "scientific" study of human behavior. This definition of psychology by Hilgaard was by no means idiosyncratic to this introductory textbook.