Psychological Biblical Criticism

This volume provides an introduction to psychological interpretations of the Hebrew Bible in general—with the Garden of Eden story as a test case. It approaches the text from Freudian, Jungian, and Developmental psychologies, comparing and contrasting the different methods while taking on the hermeneutical issues. The work of Ricoeur is used to establish criteria for adequate interpretation. Genesis 3 presents a particularly fruitful text for psychological interpretation given its importance in modern Western culture. Its themes of sexuality, guilt, consciousness, and alienation are issues of great concern, not only for psychologists, but for everyone in our society. Kille's aim is to locate psychological criticism within the field of biblical studies generally and to propose a hermeneutical framework for describing and evaluating psychological approaches. The second part is devoted to analysis of evaluation of different treatments of Genesis 3 from the three chosen psychological perspectives.