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.