The Bible and the Psyche

We must read the Bible or we shall not understand psychology. Our

psychology, whole lives, our language and imagery are built upon the
Bible.-C.G. Jung.1
As the twenty-first century approaches we are witnessing the emergence
of a whole new world-view growing out of depth psychology. This new
science studies the psyche as an experienceable, objective phenomenon.
It takes old data and approaches them in a new way. For instance, mythol¬
ogy, religion and sacred scriptures of all kinds are taken out of their tra¬
ditional contexts and understood psychologically, that is, are seen as the
phenomenology of the objective psyche.
From this view the Bible is considered to be a self-revelation of the
objective psyche. As Jung says, “The statements made in the Holy Scrip¬
tures are also utterances of the soul. . . . they point to realities that tran¬
scend consciousness. These entia are the archetypes of the collective
unconscious.”2 Heretofore these transcendent psychic entities have
appeared as metaphysical contents of religious dogma, but now, writes
Jung, “a scientific psychology must regard those transcendental intuitions
that sprang from the human mind in all ages as projections, that is, as
psychic contents that were extrapolated in metaphysical space and hypostatized.”3
It is no easy transition from the metaphysical standpoint of religious
faith to the empirical standpoint of the psyche. Between these two moun¬
tain ridges lies a dark valley, the valley of lost faith, alienation,
meaninglessness and despair. For those who are perched safely on the
ridge of religious faith, the psychological approach can be seen as an
interesting addition to the more secure viewpoint they already possess.
However, for those who, consciously or unconsciously, have already slip¬
ped off the ridge of faith and are in the dark valley, the discovery of the
psychological approach may just possibly be life-saving. This approach is
an admission of spiritual bankruptcy; it is available only to the “poor in
spirit,” for as Jung says,
1. The Visions Seminars, vol. 1, p. 156.
2. “Answer to Job,” Psychology and Religion, CW 11, par. 557.
3. “Concerning the Archetypes and the Anima Concept,” The Archetypes and the Col¬
lective Unconscious, CW 9i, par. 120.
11
72 The Bible and the Psyche
I am not . . . addressing myself to the happy possessors of faith, but to
those many people for whom the light has gone out, the mystery has faded,
and God is dead. For most of them there is no going back, and one does
not know either whether going back is the better way. To gain an understand¬
ing of religious matters, probably all that is left us today is the psychological
approach. That is why I take these thought-forms that have become histori¬
cally fixed, try to melt them down again and pour them into moulds of
immediate experience.4
The Old Testament documents a sustained dialogue between God and
man as it is expressed in the sacred history of Israel. It presents us with
an exceedingly rich compendium of images representing encounters with
the numinosum,5 These are best understood psychologically as pictures of
the encounter between the ego and the Self, which is the major feature of
individuation. The Old Testament is thus a grand treasury of individuation
symbolism. These venerable stories derive from countless individual
experiences of the numinosum and their psychic substance has been
augmented through the ages by the pious worship and reflection of mil¬
lions. When these facts are realized we discover once again that the Old
Testament is indeed a Holy Book. It is quite literally the ark of the covenant
in which resides the power and glory of the transpersonal psyche. We must
therefore approach it with caution, honoring its numinous power.
The psychological approach takes the Bible as it is, on the hypothesis
that the collective psyche has (semipurposely) selected and arranged it
over the course of the centuries. While respecting the methods of biblical
criticism, the psychological standpoint is not concerned that a particular
passage of the Pentateuch comes from the “J” source rather than the “E.”
Also the sequence is considered significant. The Hebrew Bible based on
the Masoretic text (600-900 a.d.) consists of 24 books gathered into three
parts: The Law, The Prophets and The Writings. The arrangement of Old
Testament books in the Christian Bible derives from the Septuagint Greek
translation made from 280-150 B.c This arrangement emphasizes a linear
developmental process consistent with the historical, time-bound quality
of the Western psyche. According to this version, the Old Testament is
composed of 39 books arranged sequentially in three categories: 17 histor¬
ical books, 5 books of wisdom and poetry and 17 prophetic books (as
shown opposite).
I see this arrangement as a balance. On one side are the historical books
in which Yahweh deals with Israel collectively as a nation. At this stage,
individuation imagery is carried by the nation as a whole, the chosen
people. On the other side are the prophetic books, each one named after
a great individual who had a personal encounter with Yahweh and was
4. “Psychology and Religion,” Psychology and Religion. CW 11, par. 148.
5. See Rudolph Otto, The Idea of the Holy, for a discussion of the concept of the
numinous.
The Bible and the Psyche 13
Old Testament Books
Historical Poetical-Wisdom Prophetic
Genesis Job Isaiah
Exodus Psalms Jeremiah
Leviticus Proverbs Lamentations
Numbers Ecclesiastes Ezekiel
Deuteronomy Song of Solomon Daniel
Joshua Hosea
Judges Joel
Ruth Amos
1 Samuel Obadiah
2 Samuel Jonah
1 Kings Micah
2 Kings Nahum
1 Chronicles Habakkuk
2 Chronicles Zephaniah
Ezra Haggai
Nehemiah Zechariah
Esther Malachi
fated to be an individual carrier of God-consciousness. In the middle are
the poetical-wisdom books, with Job at their head. Job is the pivot of the
Old Testament story. That is why Jung focused his Bible commentary on
Job. Here for the first time a man encounters Yahweh as an individual and
not as a function of the collective. Similarly, Yahweh did not deal with
Job as a representative of Israel but rather as an individual man. This book
thus marks the transition from collective psychology to individual psychol¬
ogy—from group and church religion to the individual s lonely encounter
with the numinosum.
After Job comes the wisdom literature, as though the individual ego’s
encounter with the Self has generated wisdom or, as Jung puts it in "Answer
to Job,” as though the demonstration of Job’s greater consciousness has
obliged Yahweh to remember his feminine counterpart. Divine Wisdom
(Sophia).6
The events of the Bible, although presented as history, psychologically
understood are archetypal images, that is, pleromatic events that repeatedly
erupt into spatio-temporal manifestation and require an individ