Theologies of the Mind in Biblical Israel

The Author: Michael Carasik teaches biblical Hebrew at the University of Pennsylvania. He earned his doctorate in bible and the Ancient Near East at Brandeis University in Massachusetts. His articles and book reviews appear regularly in journals in the field of biblical studies, and he is the editor and translator of The Commentators’ Bible.

«Michael Carasik’s ‘Theologies of the Mind in Biblical Israel’ is the first book to systematically explore how the biblical writers understand the workings of the mind. By carefully exploring key biblical terms, as well as such notions as memory and creativity, he brings to life in a clear and articulate fashion what it meant ‘to think’ from a biblical perspective. This clearly written book offers many sensitive readings of a variety of texts that help to bring out the wide variety of biblical notions concerning the mind. Several of the conclusions, for example, that most biblical writers ‘regarded human creative thought as dangerous or evil,’ will surprise many readers, but these are all argued in a lucid fashion, using post-biblical literature, anthropological and psychological literature, and apt analogies from everyday life. Given the centrality of the issue explored to almost any biblical passage, this book has the potential to reshape and deepen our understanding of many biblical passages.» (Marc Zvi Brettler, Dora Golding Professor of Biblical Studies, Chair of Department of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies, Brandeis University, Massachusetts)