The Murmuring Deep: Reflections on the Biblical Unconscious - Paperback

by Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg (Author)

A book that enhances our appreciation of the Bible--"explaining, exploring, and deepening our sense of what it means to be a human being of faith in a world as fractured and fragmentary as ours" (Forward).

Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg informs her literary analysis of the biblical text with concepts drawn from Freud, Winnicott, Laplanche, and other psychoanalytic thinkers to make a powerful argument for the idea that the creators of the midrashic commentary, the medieval rabbinic commentators, and the Hassidic commentators were themselves on some level aware of the complex interplay between conscious and unconscious levels of experience and used this knowledge in their interpretations.

In her analysis of the stories of Adam and Eve, Noah, Jonah, Abraham, Rebecca, Isaac, Joseph and his brothers, Ruth, and Esther, Zornberg reveals the interaction between consciousness and unconsciousness.

Author Biography

AVIVAH GOTTLIEB ZORNBERG is the author of The Murmuring Deep: Reflections on the Biblical Unconscious, The Beginning of Desire: Reflections on Genesis and The Particulars of Rapture: Reflections on Exodus. She lectures widely in Israel, the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. She lives in Jerusalem.