Hearing Visions Seeing Voices

The breakdown of traditional African values and the consequences of disconnection from African ancestral beliefs are examined in this attempt to understand the vicious cycle of community violence.

This book’s aim is to enrich and deepen our psychological understanding of biblical concepts and personalities. The book contains masterful analysis of biblical personalities, such as Job, Jeremiah, Paul, and Jesus. It may help theologians to contextualize their discipline by bringing it into contact with contemporary psychological and existential issues and tensions, both at an individual and a societal level.

TABLE OF CONTENTS: Introduction to historical and conceptual issues / Gerrit Glas -- Psychiatry and religion: an unconsummated marriage / Herman van Praag -- Biblical narratives as history: biblical persons as objects of historical faith / C. Stephen Evans -- Introduction to prophecy: theological and psychological aspects / Gerrit Glas -- The dynamics of prophecy in the writings of Abraham Joshua Heschel / Neil Gillman -- The prophets as persons / Bob Becking -- Jeremiah interpreted: a rabbinic analysis of the prophet / Bryna Jocheved Levy -- Introduction to martyrdom: theological and psychological aspects / Gerrit Glas -- Martyrdom: theological and psychological aspects. Martyrdom in Judaism / Hyam Maccoby -- The martyrdom of Paul / Jakob van Bruggen -- Spiritual, human, and psychological dimensions / Msngr. H.W.M. Tájirá. Introduction to messianism: theological and psychological aspects / Gerrit Glas -- Casting a psychological look on Jesus the marginal Jew / Antoine Vergote -- The land of Israel: desire and dread in Jewish literature / Aviezer Ravitzky -- The person of Jesus / Abraham van de Beek -- Imagining Jesus: to portray or betray? Psycho (-patho)logical aspects of attempts to discuss the historical individual / Peter J. Verhagen -- Introduction to interdisciplinary issues: prospects for the future / Gerrit Glas -- The hidden subject of Job: mirroring and the anguish of interminable desire / Moshe Halevi Spero -- Biblical themes in psychiatric practice: implications for psychopathology and psychotherapy / Samuel Pfeifer -- The bible and psychology: new directions in biblical scholarship / Wayne G. Rollins -- Searching for the dynamic 'within'. Concluding remarks on 'psychological aspects of biblical concepts and personalities' / Gerrit Glas.

This book examines how the experiences of hearing voices and seeing visions were understood within the cultural, literary, and intellectual contexts of the medieval and early modern periods. In the Middle Ages, these experiences were interpreted according to frameworks that could credit visionaries or voice-hearers with spiritual knowledge, and allow them to inhabit social roles that were as much desired as feared. Voice-hearing and visionary experience offered powerful creative possibilities in imaginative literature and were often central to the writing of inner, spiritual lives. Ideas about such experience were taken up and reshaped in response to the cultural shifts of the early modern period. These essays, which consider the period 1100 to 1700, offer diverse new insights into a complex, controversial, and contested category of human experience, exploring literary and spiritual works as illuminated by scientific and medical writings, natural philosophy and theology, and the visual arts. In extending and challenging contemporary bio-medical perspectives through the insights and methodologies of the arts and humanities, the volume offers a timely intervention within the wider project of the medical humanities. Chapters 2 and 5 are available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

This book examines how the experiences of hearing voices and seeing visions were understood within the cultural, literary, and intellectual contexts of the medieval and early modern periods. In the Middle Ages, these experiences were interpreted according to frameworks that could credit visionaries or voice-hearers with spiritual knowledge, and allow them to inhabit social roles that were as much desired as feared. Voice-hearing and visionary experience offered powerful creative possibilities in imaginative literature and were often central to the writing of inner, spiritual lives. Ideas about such experience were taken up and reshaped in response to the cultural shifts of the early modern period. These essays, which consider the period 1100 to 1700, offer diverse new insights into a complex, controversial, and contested category of human experience, exploring literary and spiritual works as illuminated by scientific and medical writings, natural philosophy and theology, and the visual arts. In extending and challenging contemporary bio-medical perspectives through the insights and methodologies of the arts and humanities, the volume offers a timely intervention within the wider project of the medical humanities. Chapters 2 and 5 are available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com/books/9781472453983, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivative 4.0 license. Experiences of hearing the voice of God (or angels, demons, or other spiritual beings) have generally been understood either as religious experiences or else as a feature of mental illness. Some critics of traditional religious faith have dismissed the visions and voices attributed to biblical characters and saints as evidence of mental disorder. However, it is now known that many ordinary people, with no other evidence of mental disorder, also hear voices and that these voices not infrequently include spiritual or religious content. Psychological and interdisciplinary research has shed a revealing light on these experiences in recent years, so that we now know much more about the phenomenon of "hearing voices" than ever before. The present work considers biblical, historical, and scientific accounts of spiritual and mystical experiences of voice hearing in the Christian tradition in order to explore how some voices may be understood theologically as revelatory. It is proposed that in the incarnation, Christian faith finds both an understanding of what it is to be fully human (a theological anthropology), and God’s perfect self-disclosure (revelation). Within such an understanding, revelatory voices represent a key point of interpersonal encounter between human beings and God.

God is always speaking . . . even when He doesn't use words. We live in a post-verbal society that communicates through images--television, smartphones, the Internet--and our Creator longs to communicate with us visually if we'll live with our eyes wide open. With absorbing insight, Seeing the Voice of God demystifies nighttime dreams and daytime visions, revealing the science behind the supernatural and giving you a biblical foundation for making sense of what you see. You'll also: · learn to discern if what you see is from God · study the ten most common types of dreams · discover spirit, mind, and medical tips for better dream recall · interpret dream symbols and imagery · review the best iPhone and Android sleep cycle apps Includes a comprehensive Dream Symbols Dictionary with over 1,000 biblical definitions.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • The "poet laureate of medicine" (The New York Times) and author of The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat weaves together stories of mind-altering experiences to reveal what they tell us about our brains, our folklore and culture, and why the potential for hallucination exists in us all. “An absorbing plunge into a mystery of the mind.” —Entertainment Weekly To many people, hallucinations imply madness, but in fact they are a common part of the human experience. These sensory distortions range from the shimmering zigzags of a visual migraine to powerful visions brought on by fever, injuries, drugs, sensory deprivation, exhaustion, or even grief. Hallucinations doubtless lie behind many mythological traditions, literary inventions, and religious epiphanies. Drawing on his own experiences, a wealth of clinical cases from among his patients, and famous historical examples ranging from Dostoevsky to Lewis Carroll, the legendary neurologist Oliver Sacks investigates the mystery of these sensory deceptions: what they say about the working of our brains, how they have influenced our folklore and culture, and why the potential for hallucination is present in all humans.