Beyond Depth Psychology – Biblical Discourse in the Light of Social Scientific Criticism

Amadeusz Citlak

Instytut Psychologii, Polska Akademia Nauk , Poland
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6550-1891


Abstract

The article presents the most important trends and achievements of the psy­chological interpretation of the biblical text in recent years. The main goal, however, is to propose going beyond the quite controversial – though interesting – research from the per­spective of depth psychology (Tiefenpsychologie), which completely dominated psycho­logical biblical criticism in the 20th century. Therefore I`ll focus on well verified psy­chological theories (especially social psychology and social cognition) which are widely recognized among psychologists, and which seem to significantly enrich the conceptual apparatus of the contemporary biblical scholar and allow for a better understanding of the social milieu in biblical books. Psychological biblical criticism can be very valuable and useful method in contemporary exegesis, but it have to overcome the limitations of depth psychology.

 

Keywords:

psychological biblical criticism, biblical psychology, depth psychology, social psychology, social cognition

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Published
2021-01-28


Citlak, A. (2021). Poza psychologię głębi – dyskurs biblijny w świetle social-scientific criticism. The Biblical Annals, 11(1), 121–139. https://doi.org/10.31743/biban.10655

Amadeusz Citlak  acitlak@wp.pl
Instytut Psychologii, Polska Akademia Nauk https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6550-1891



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