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How should we re-evaluate the biblical prophets in the light of what we now know about mental illness? Many of them heard voices and saw things which are classic primary symptoms of mental illness.

For example Abraham who was supposed to sacrifice his firstborn son, and then at the last moment gets told, "no, leave it, it was only a test", which is classic voice hearer behaviour. Or take Moses with his burning bush, seems clearly schizophrenic and in psychosis.

It seems a lot of prophets of different religions qualify in some sense for treatment as mentally ill.

Denker 7 June 11
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0

The bible should be Dismissed completely. Their view of the world was little better than cavemen.

IzMark Level 4 June 11, 2018
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There was a wonderful book came out around 40 years ago called The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind by a Princeton psychologist named Julian Jaynes that speculated about that. Apparently the consensus is that he's wrong which is is shame because it's such a great idea it really ought to be true.

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According to Paris Williams in “Rethinking Madness”, psychoses are a person’s technique for escaping an unbearable life situation. Most people work through their psychoses and emerge with heightened spiritual awareness with joy and appreciation for life.

If Williams is correct, saying that the prophets of the Bible had experienced psychoses would not be an argument against theism.

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One person hearing voices and having an imaginary, all powerful friend is mental illness. A billion people doing so is religion.

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There are a lot of things going on w/r/t prophecy in the OT. There was an official union of prophets; they were kind of like Greek oracles, they would have fits and foam at the mouth and scream gibberish and maybe something comprehensible would come out of it. Then you've got the science-fiction prophets, Elijah and Ezekiel; might as well throw in Jacob and Aaron as well, who seemed (to some people in the space age) to have had available high-technology. Then there are the people who just wrote stuff down, the so-called minor prophets. Then there were folks like Jeremiah who spoke clearly in public, even though he was yelling and in his underwear. IMHO the real stars were people like Nathan and Shulamit who just told people who needed to be told the way it was.

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There would be nothing to reevaluate. that was then this is now you have to deal with the now people who don't have enough common sense to realize it's all fantasy.

The bible is still an interesting piece of history, and sorting out some of the obvious cases of mental illness would help historians. Would there be anything at all left of god, you think?

@Denker Point well taken

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I don't need to reevaluate any of it.
They were all mentally deranged.
The bible is fiction anyway.

0

It is all made up nonsense and has nothing to do with reality.

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