Families of the Bible: A New Perspective

Blessing, Kamila, Families of the Bible: A New Perspective (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2010).

Reinterpreting the Bible through Family Systems Theory, this fascinating exploration shows how the theology of creation, restoration, and salvation can be meaningfully and uniquely understood through the lens of the biblical family.

The most often mentioned and most profoundly alone being in the Bible is God. The second is Jesus. In fact, the single person turns out to be of central importance in the Bible, despite the overwhelming emphasis on extended biological families. Since the only consistent definition of "family" in the Bible is "covenant," the orphan, the single person, the gay person, and others who are often on the fringes of the Church are just as much part of the family of God as the husband-wife-child unit.

It is not possible to recreate a "biblical" family in the modern world. Thus, we must think of the principles of faithful family life demonstrated in the Bible and express them in a new way. That is the idea underlying Families of the Bible: A New Perspective. Examining themes related to family health, connection, spirituality, and psychology, the author relates stories from the Bible to modern-day experience in an effort to help readers strengthen and heal their own families, whatever their structure.

While the book addresses the family of the patriarchs and other major traditional families in the Bible, it also specifically examines Jesus' new definition of family, showing how his psycho-spiritual family has a different—and more inclusive—shape than the "natural family." The author, who is an Episcopal priest, insists that the Bible shows God as faithful in providing for his people. The many disadvantaged in our society, as well as those who are alone and those who have found that wealth does not provide satisfaction, will benefit from this thoughtful reinterpretation. (publisher)

Kamila Blessing has been a long-time participant in the Psychology and Biblical Studies Section, and will be presenting at the 2010 meeting in Atlanta.

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A Cry Instead of Justice: The Bible and Cultures of Violence in Psychological Perspective

Daschke, Dereck and D. Andrew Kille, Eds. A Cry Instead of Justice: The Bible and Cultures of Violence in Psychological Perspective. Library of Hebrew Bible/ Old Testament Studies. (New York/London: T & T Clark, 2010).

Within a book widely touted as the path to peace, violence has incongruously been central to the Bible and how it is used. This collection book examines the manifestations of violence in Scripture, and the ways that Scripture itself - whether violent in content or not - can be used to justify violence and aggression in specific social circumstances today. The book is divided into two parts. The first half explores some incidents of Biblical violence that, rather than appearing at the forefront of the narrative, reflect that ancient Jewish culture (including the early Christian movement recorded in the New Testament) treats violence as an undeniable fact of the social world in which biblical figures live. In these essays, psychological theory and interpretation focus on the effect of this culture of violence in the behavior, expectations, and failures of Biblical figures, in order to re-evaluate the messages of these texts in light of their accepted, but largely unacknowledged, aggression. (Publisher)

This book is a collection of essays that have been presented in the Psychology and Biblical Studies Section over the past several years Dereck Daschke and D. Andrew Kille have both served as Chair of the Psychology and Biblical Studies Section.

Psybibs Sessions in Atlanta, November 2010

There will be four Psychology and Biblical Studies Section sessions at the Society of Biblical Literature meeting in Atlanta, GA this coming November 20-23. Sessions will include:

• The Making of Fornication: A Book Review Panel on The Making of Fornication: Eros, Ethics, and Political Reform in Greek Philosophy and Early Christianity by Kathy Gaca
  
• New models for Psychological Criticism: Exploration of new methods and theories for psychological biblical criticism.
• Cognitive Approaches to the Bible: Applications of Cognitive Theory.
  
• The Bible in Healing and Transformation
  

For details on the times and locations of the sessions, see the Psybibs website.

Psychology and Bible Study Sessions 2009

The Annual Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature will be in New Orleans November 21-24, 2009. Sessions sponsored by the Psychology and Biblical Studies Section will include Panel Reviews of Donald Capps, Jesus, the Village Psychiatrist, and Peter G. Jeffery, The Secret Gospel of Mark Unveiled; Imagined Ritual of Sex, Death, and Madness in a Biblical Forgery. Paper sessions will include "Otherness and Motherness: Psychological Forays into the Hebrew Scriptures," and "New Testament Texts and Methods: Jesus, Marriage, and Personality."

Full program listings with times and locations are now online at the Psybibs Website.

Call for Papers: SBL 2009, New Orleans

We invite paper proposals on the theme Psychological Perspectives on the Historical Jesus. Papers might propose psychological approaches to understanding Jesus, critique previous psychological interpretations of Jesus, or examine how contemporary readers relate to Jesus.

There will be book review sessions on Fraser Watts, ed., Jesus and Psychology (2007) and Donald Capps, Jesus the Village Psychiatrist (2008).

We also invite any proposals for papers that address Biblical texts, themes, figures and/or readers using the concepts and interpretive tools of any field of psychology.

Contact Chair D. Andrew Kille at psybibs@att.net or the Psychology and Biblical Studies website at www.psybibs.org for more information.

The Destructive Power of Religion: Violence in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam

Ellens, J. Harold, editor, The Destructive Power of Religion: Violence in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2007)

Description: Hailed in reviews as "unsettling but thought-provoking," "compelling," and "critical coverage," the set from which these chapters were drawn has a core theme that demonstrates the three major religions share the ancient notion that history and the human soul are caught in a cosmic conflict between good and evil, or God and devil, which cannot be resolved without violence, a cataclysmic final solution such as the extermination of nations, the execution of humans, or even the death of God's own son. As Archbishop Desmond Tutu wrote, "This is a groundbreaking work with tremendous insight."

This is a one-volume edition condensed and updated from the four volume set of The Destructive Power of Religion.

RBL Review

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Jesus the Village Psychiatrist

Capps, Donald (2008). Jesus the Village Psychiatrist. Louisville: Westminster John Knox.

From the jacket: Capps argues that one of Jesus' purposes was to heal people from mental illnesses, which people in the ancient world would have called possessions and seen manifested in physical ailments such as blindness, paralysis, or other symptoms. As Capps argues, Jesus' mission involved attending to and overcoming the various psychological and cultural causes behind these illnesses.

This book was featured in a session of the Psychology and Biblical Studies Section at the SBL Annual Meeting in New Orleans in November 2009.

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