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According to the Talmud, each generation writes its own commentary of the Law. In this fashion the Bible, ancient source of inspiration and authority, is brought into consonance with the changing conditions of life and with man's advancing insight into himself and the world about him. Attempts to reconcile the traditional authority for morality with current scientific knowledge have characterized the writings of philosophers like Philo of Alexandria, Ibn Gabirol (Avicebron) and Maimonides, to mention but a few. This book represents a twentieth century effort in the same direction. In this instance, however, the reinterpretation is in terms of modern dynamic philosophy, metaphysics and psychology.
Ostensibly it is the author's purpose to bring to light the collective metaphysical and psychological concepts of 'Biblical man' through a symbolic interpretation of the story of Genesis. The unity of these concepts, he maintains, once served as the basis for the value systems of our culture and enabled the Biblical man to 'overcome social insecurity, the bewilderment of the mind, and anxiety of the soul', as well as the narcissistic mortification of personal extinction.
The methodology of this reinterpretation the author calls 'metapsychology in Biblical research; it is an analysis based upon scientific methods of psychology brought to bear upon metaphysical problems. Hence the objections to the interpretations of theologians, as well as those of psychoanalysis, would not apply to our analysis.' The term 'metapsychology' is used in a sense quite different from its use in psychoanalysis. A wealth of standard symbols culled from folklore, mythology, mysticism and comparative religion is marshalled according to the principles of depth psychology (Jung). Taken together with semantic and anthropological data, this material is used to interpret the story of Genesis in the same manner as a psychoanalyst, apparently, would use associations to interpret a dream. This analys