The Bible as Dream: A Jungian Interpretation

In The Bible as Dream, Murray Stein shares important themes and images in the biblical narrative that from a psychological perspective, stand out as essential features of the meaning of the Bible for the modern reader.

The Bible presents a world elaborated with reference to a specific God image. As the mythographer Karl Kerenyi puts it in writing about the Greek gods and goddesses, every god and every goddess constitutes a world. So it is too with the biblical God, whose name Stein exceptionally capitalizes throughout out of cultural respect. The biblical world is the visionary product of a particular people, the ancient Hebrews and the early Christians, who delved deeply into their God image and pulled from it the multitude of perspectives, rules for life, spiritual practices, and practical implications that all together created the tapestry that we find depicted in the canonical Bible. Yahweh is the heart and soul of this world, its creator, sustainer, and destroyer. The Bible is a dream that tells the story of how this world was brought into being in space and time and what it means.

Don't miss these timeless lectures—a work of respectful and loving interpretation.

Table of Contents:

Part I. A Psychological Reading of the Bible

Lecture One – On Reading the Bible Psychologically
Lecture Two – In the Beginning – Creation
Lecture Three – The Shadow
Lecture Four – Faith and Individuation
Lecture Five – Anima Images
Lecture Six – Animus Images
Lecture Seven – Election and Adoption – Envy and the Self
Lecture Eight – From King to Servant – Ego Relativization

Part II. The Gospel According to John

Lecture One – “Word”
Lecture Two – “Light”
Lecture Three – “Way”

Murray Stein, Ph.D. is a Training and Supervising Analyst at the International School of Analytical Psychology Zurich (ISAP-ZURICH). He is a founding member of The Inter-Regional Society of Jungian Analysts (1977) and of the Chicago Society of Jungian Analysts (1980). He was president of the International Association for Analytical Psychology (IAAP) from 2001 to 2004 and President of ISAP-ZURICH from 2008 to 2012. He has lectured internationally and is the author of Jung’s Treatment of Christianity, In MidLife, Jung’s Map of the Soul, Minding the Self, and most recently Outside Inside and All Around and Jung’s Red Book for Our Time Volume 1 and 2 (co-edited with Thomas Arzt. He lives in Switzerland and has a private practice in Zurich.