4:31 PM
Gil Student
(The first post on this subject is here.)
I found, online, an article mentioned in one of the comments recently: Imitate the Ramban, Not the Professors: An interview with Shalom Carmy from Hamevaser, vol. 38 no. 1
One reason that people shrink the larger than life personalities of Tanakh to pop-psychology size is that they are accustomed to treat themselves the same way. What characterizes pop-psychology? Casual deterministic assumptions, clichéd depictions of emotion, a philosophy that cannot grasp the dramatic, absolute, momentous solemnity of the moral-religious life. This is not the way I think of myself; it is not the way I think of you. It is not the way one should think about any human being created uniquely in the image of God. Once people see nothing wrong in entertaining secular conceptions of themselves, once they take for moral and psychological insight the tired idiom of the therapeutic, it's no wonder that they are tone-deaf to the grandeur of the Avot and Immahot.There is much to discuss in this brief paragraph. First, people automatically see themselves in others. A crude person will always see the worst in others; a devious person will always assume that others are crooked; a good person will always see the positive in others. It is just human nature. We are most familiar with our own outlooks and automatically transpose them onto others and read them into their actions.
Furthermore, those whose occupation is dealing with the emotionally disturbed will see hints of emotional disturbance in many places. That is what is on their mind for a good part of the day, so it is only natural that when they see what might be symptoms their minds move toward a tentative diagnosis. Similarly, those whose minds are busy with Torah and mitzvos all day, whose lives shun sin and immorality, will automatically read the Torah with a bias towards finding a religiously positive image.
Additionally, those who fail to comprehend the complexity of human experience and, instead, diagnose everyone and everything with simple formulae - if only David had possessed greater self-esteem... - lose not only the truth of Torah but also the ability to learn about the human and religious experience from Tanakh.
