Psybibs: Psychological Biblical Criticism

Culturally Endemic Patterns of Childhood Trauma
Reflected in New Testament Narrative and Theology:
Implications for New Testament Origins

Scholars from a variety of disciplines have pointed to parallels between patterns of childhood experience and central themes of Christian theology. For example, Rita Brock, Jon D. Levenson, Lloyd DeMause, Morton Schatzman, Lee A. Kirkpatrick, Phillip Greven and others have argued in various ways that aspects of Christian tradition may portray the experiences of children, including painful experiences such as corporal punishment. In my talk today, I move in the same general direction as these scholars. In advancing my own particular variant of the argument, I take a broad and radical view of the subject and, in the process, emphasize the psychological mechanisms that may be at play.

Since time immemorial, children have been corporally punished to inculcate obedience. As suggested by Proverbs in the Hebrew Scriptures—for example, “he who spares the rod hates his son” [13:24]—the father, in most settings, has been the primary or ultimate disciplinarian. This was certainly the case in the highly patriarchal world of the Roman Empire, where corporal punishment by fathers, or those considered paternal surrogates, such as teachers, was common. The New Testament itself suggests the pervasive nature of such punishments during this period; the book of Hebrews even asserts that all legitimate sons are beaten [12:8]. As an aside, notice that these quotes from Psalms and Hebrews speak exclusively about sons. This itself may point to an underlying historical reality: that just as fathers were the primary disciplinarians, so sons may have been the primary object of paternal discipline.1

Like corporal punishment, the abandonment of children has also been widespread in the West, with historians and anthropologists documenting almost inconceivably high levels of infant exposure and other forms of abandonment. For example, the historian John Boswell, who trail-blazed the study of Roman and medieval child abandonment, estimated that of all children born in Rome during the first three centuries of the Christian era, somewhere between 20 and 40 percent were abandoned.2 In Roman society, the decision to abandon a child, like the decision to punish, was made or overseen by the father. The emotional and physical neglect of children also appears to have been widespread.

Holding in mind these patterns of painful childhood experience, let us consider the religious traditions reflected in the New Testament. Doing so, we find clear thematic parallels between New Testament traditions and the experiences of children.

A central theme of the New Testament is that Jesus, the innocent Son, suffers according to the will of his heavenly Father.3 It is striking that countless generations of innocent children, and perhaps especially sons, also suffered according to the will of their fathers. Jesus laments, “My soul is ready to die with sorrow,” and to avoid the pain that awaits him, he beseeches, “Abba, all things are possible with you; remove this cup from before me.”4 With these words, Jesus recapitulates the desperate pleas of ordinary children faced with impending punishment. The book of Hebrews describes Jesus’ “loud cries and tears” and his intense “fear”5—again, just like ordinary children. And when Jesus ultimately resigns himself to his painful fate, saying, “Not what I will but what Thy will,” he expresses a posture of filial submission that has long been forced upon ordinary children. This entire canonical sequence (if you will allow me to synthesize various texts) of sadness, fear, tears, desperate pleading, and ultimate submissive acceptance forms an almost perfect portrayal of the most painful aspects of historical childhood. In the Passion of Jesus we thus find the passion of ordinary children.

As part of Jesus’ Passion, we also find parallels to widespread patterns of child abandonment and neglect, the most striking of which is the Cry of Dereliction—Oh, God, why have you forsaken me! This cry was taken from Hebrew Psalms and, in Matthew’s Gospel, placed into the context of a Father-Son relationship. No longer is it simply a Hebrew lamenting his forsakenness by God, it is a Son crying out over his abandonment by his Father—just as we might expect of the countless ordinary children abandoned by their fathers.

Precise parallels with childhood are also evident within the salvational structure of Christianity. In childhood, disobedience leads to punishment by the father, whereas obedience leads to benign treatment and expressions of love. Starting with Paul, the pattern has been the same within the Christian tradition.6 In that tradition, the sin of disobedience—Adam—leads to punishment by the heavenly Father, whereas obedience—Jesus—leads to salvation. The strength of this parallel is made clear if we allow ourselves to apply the term “salvation” to childhood. Then we can say: salvation for the child within the family, as for the believer within the cosmos, is attained through filial obedience. In fact, I would go so far as to say that Christian concepts of salvation through Jesus’ obedience represent an almost direct transposition of punishment-avoidance schemes from childhood.7

These canonical parallels with childhood involve multiple and layered coincidences and therefore, I think most would agree, are not likely due to chance. Furthermore, these themes are absolutely central to the New Testament and to the broad Christian tradition. Jesus’ experience of sorrow, fear, physical suffering, abandonment, and filial submission define and epitomize the Passion of Christ. The theology of salvation through Jesus’ obedience is a crucial emphasis in Paul’s Letter to the Romans, and is certainly one of the most influential ideas in the entire history of Christian thought. To find strong parallels with childhood precisely at these defining points in the text is remarkable—and leads us directly to the question I want to address today: How did these parallels arise?

The answer, I argue, is that central New Testament themes were shaped as a reflection of the painful realities of childhood. Expanding this assertion slightly, I would say that those persons responsible for shaping the Christian myth, having been reared in the highly patriarchal world of the early Roman Empire, unknowingly projected or mapped patterns of childhood—especially their own childhood—onto an imaginatively constructed religious cosmos. According to this explanation, canonical themes of innocent suffering, paternal abandonment, salvation through filial obedience, and the like were formed on a template provided by childhood. This explanation is elegant in its simplicity; it also makes intuitive sense, in that it conforms to the commonplace notion that religious traditions arise from and reflect their cultural milieu.

A moment ago, I referred to projection and mapping, and in so doing I broached the subject of psychological mechanism. Let me continue on this path and say a bit more about the ways in which childhood reality might get “translated” into the language of religious symbolism. At least five psychological mechanisms, or models, come to mind:

First, normal modes of metaphoric thought, which are ubiquitously evident in dreams and figures of speech, provide a ready explanation for the creation of religious metaphors about childhood. On this model, we can say that core New Testament themes arose as waking dreams or extended figures of speech about painfully concrete childhood realities.

Second, there is the phenomenon described by the partial misnomer “childhood amnesia.” I’m referring to the process by which mental imprints from early childhood appear to be “forgotten,” in part because they are stored in a fragmentary manner. On this model, we can say that core New Testament themes arose from memories of a “forgotten” childhood.8

Third, there is the process of dissociation that results from psychological trauma, a process which, like childhood “amnesia,” could create a pool of fragmentary memories and emotions. On this model, we can say that dissociated memories of childhood trauma provided the substrate for the imaginative construction of religious narratives and beliefs.

Fourth, there is the process described as transference. In its broad sense, “transference” refers to the insertion of emotions from important early relationships into current, thematically related circumstances, as well as to the interpretation of current experiences on the pattern of past experiences. On this model, we can say that New Testament themes were shaped, at their fundamental level, through transference.

Fifth, within the field of cognitive science, the generation of narratives, as well as a range of other mental phenomena, including hallucinations, have been explained as arising from the selective pruning and interpretation of sensory information. This pruning and interpretation is highly sensitive to both conscious and unconscious concerns. On this model, we can say that canonical narratives and belief structures arose through psychologically driven cognitive processes.9

What can we say about these five mechanisms? Were they really involved in the creation of seminal Christian traditions? Because the human mind is a black box, not accessible to direct observation, it is not possible to know with certainty if any of these invisible mechanisms really played a role. But all of these mechanisms are plausible. One, all, or any combination of them could have contributed to the “translation” of childhood experience into religious myth. These five mechanisms thus provide a kind of redundant mechanistic plausibility to the thesis I am presenting today.

As the final part of my talk, I will now explore how the thesis I am presenting, and the psychological mechanisms I just described, could have played out on the stage of early Christian history. I will do so by discussing two processes of religious formation though to have played a key role in the development of Christianity—specifically, revelation and oral tradition.

Because revelation can happen within the individual mind, it provides an obvious route for the production of symbolic expressions about reality. Specifically, religious revelations could arise from internally generated expressions about one’s own experiences, including one’s own childhood. This process truly is a kind of revelation, but not in the usual, supernatural sense. It is instead an unrecognized form of self-revelation.

One reason certain types of self-awareness might be experienced as divine revelations is that the information comes from parts of the self that are not normally accessed and not normally thought of as self at all—for instance, “forgotten” memories from childhood or dissociated experiences of trauma. This information, because it is not integrated into the individual’s sense of self, may be experienced as coming from outside the self. The Psychiatrist Morton Schatzman has described divine “revelations” that apparently resulted from, and reflected the content of, childhood traumas occurring decades earlier. Schatzman explains the process like this, “Experiences that arise from regions of one’s mind of which one is not ordinarily aware may appear to have extraordinary sources and qualities.”10

I believe something like this may have occurred during the formation of Christianity. Religious seers such as St. Paul—whose revelations helped shape early Christian ideas—were, I believe, perceiving symbolic information about their own early life experiences. Their minds were, so to speak, painting the ambiguous canvas of the universe with unremembered, unrecognized, suppressed or dissociated memories of their own childhood. And because their childhood experiences were part of a widespread cultural pattern, their revelations, which reflected these experiences, were relevant and meaningful to wide segments of the culture.

One might even say that those early Christians who experienced such revelations provided a specialized service to other members of the culture. In essence, I believe, they dreamed the post-traumatic dreams of an entire culture and made this “dream” available to the community in the form of an emotionally resonant myth about a divine Father, his innocent Son, punishment and abandonment, and myriad variations on themes of filial obedience and disobedience.

In contrast to revelation, which can arise from the individual mind, oral traditions could have provided a social mechanism for shaping religious myths on the pattern of childhood. Oral traditions, which are generally thought to have played a central role in the spread of early Christian narratives, can change during the transmission process. As one scholar describes it:

There is an important feature of oral tradition that demands our attention—namely, its fluidity. Oral tradition is typically in a continuous state of evolution, as it absorbs new experiences and adjusts to new conditions and needs within the community.11

This quote, with its reference to “evolution,” suggests how religious parallels with childhood could have developed and intensified over time. Because the mechanism has specific parallels to Darwin’s theory of evolution, it is useful say a few words about Darwin’s ideas.

Although it is sometimes forgotten, Darwin’s innovation was not that species evolved. Many before Darwin believed that. Darwin’s insight was that evolution might occur by a simple and specific mechanism, termed natural selection. According to Darwin, random variations in physical or behavioral traits that produce a better “fit” with the environment—that is, traits which better enable an organism to survive—tend to be preserved in the species. Theses traits are preserved, Darwin believed, because the individuals who possess them are more likely to reach reproductive age and therefore to pass the traits to their offspring. After relatively few generations, even traits that impart only modest survival advantages may begin to spread within the population. Conversely, traits that result in a poorer “fit” with the environment tend to be extinguished.

Understanding natural selection is useful when considering the development of religious ideas. Individuals who have had traumatic upbringings, I believe, can experience powerful emotional resonances when they encounter religious teachings that express themes from their own childhood. Such resonances, I believe, tend to render a religious teaching engaging and believable. If a pattern of childhood trauma is endemic in a culture, then such resonances could be widespread; as a result, the religious teachings would have, a la Darwin, a good “fit” with their cultural environment. The teachings would be thought worthy of communicating to others; and, like a favorable genetic trait, they would spread in the culture. To place this idea clearly in the context of early Christian narrative, I believe that, within the patriarchal world of the Roman Empire, a religious myth about an innocent Son who suffered obediently according to his Father’s will would resonate powerfully and tend to be believed; this myth would “fit” well in the culture and therefore would spread and persist.12

Although Darwin observed random variations within species, and recognized that natural selection could explain why some traits became prevalent in the population, he did not understand how the variations arose in the first place. It is now known that trait variations arise primarily though genetic mutation, and that this mutational diversity provides the substrate upon which natural selection acts. Analogizing to religion, we can say that oral traditions tend to mutate rapidly, and that those mutated variants with the best cultural “fit” would tend to be preserved. Thus, like the process of “revelation,” the natural selection of variant religious traditions could provide a mechanism through which experiential themes from childhood could have entered the canon.13

To summarize and conclude: I have argued that central New Testament traditions arose as a reflection of painful but ordinary childhood experiences of punishment, abandonment, and neglect in the highly patriarchal world of the early Roman Empire. I based my argument on strong parallels, which cannot readily be explained by chance, between experiential patterns of childhood and canonical narratives and belief structures. I argued that this explanation is elegant in its simplicity and that it is also intuitive, in that it conforms to the commonplace notion that religious traditions arise from and reflect their cultural milieu. I argued further that this explanation is mechanistically plausible both in terms of underlying psychological processes and in terms of processes of religious formation, such as revelation and oral tradition. This thesis, if correct, has profound implications for our understanding of the New Testament and of Christianity as a whole, for the themes in question are central to both scripture and later Christian thought.

1 Girls were certainly punished as well but—as a result of their lower social status and the greater role that mothers played in their upbringing—they may have received a less systematic paternal discipline. Furthermore, boys are generally socialized to be more self-assertive and aggressive than girls, and this may have resulted in greater willfulness in all contexts, including in the family and school, and hence greater punishment. In addition, it has sometimes been argued that girls, as a group, tend naturally to be less inclined than boys to the willfully assertive behavior that, in some contexts, leads to punishment.

2 Boswell, John. The Kindness of Strangers: The Abandonment of Children in Western Europe from Late Antiquity to the Renaissance. Vintage Books. New York. 1990. p. 135.

3 Regarding the Passion as expression of the Father’s will, see, e.g., Matt 26:39, Mark 14:36, Luke 22:42; Rom 5:18-19, 8:31-32, John 3:16, 12:27-28, 18:11; Acts 2:23, 4:27-28

4 Mark 14:32; see also Matthew 26:39 and Luke 22:44.

7 The situation of the child and that of the believer can be compared and contrasted as follows: for the ordinary child in his interaction with his earthly father, disobedience and obedience are attained directly, by the actions of the child himself; whereas for the believer, in his interaction with his heavenly Father, disobedience and obedience are primarily attained indirectly, through metaphysical affiliation with Adam and Jesus—that is, disobedience through Adam, obedience through Jesus.

8 On the apparent endurance of mental imprints of childhood experience, notwithstanding the appearance of partial or complete amnesia for explicit autobiographical recall of events, see, e.g. Howe, Mark L. The Fate of Early Memories: Developmental Science and the Retention of Childhood Experience. American Psychological Association. Washington, D.C. 2000.

9 See, e.g., Daniel Dennett, Consciousness Explained, Back Bay Books, 1992, pp. 10-16

10 Schatzman, Morton. Soul Murder: Persecution in the Family. Random House. New York. 1973, p. 53.

11 Lindberg, David C. The Beginnings of Western Science: The European Scientific Tradition in Philosophical, Religious, and Institutional Context, 600 B.C. to A.D. 1450. University of Chicago Press. Chicago. 1992, p. 6

12 Perhaps such teachings, in such a context, might even provide the ultimate basis of religious faith.

Like Richard Dawkins’ concept of memes, and several other approaches to understanding aspects of human thought, the evolutionary approach presented here is based on the differential “survival” of ideas or cultural units within the human mind and population. I do not use Dawkins’ terminology because Dawkins envisions the meme as self-replicating or self-copying, a formulation I believe is inaccurate except as a very loose figure of speech. Almost by definition, the meme formulation tends to deemphasize the external or “environmental” factors—such as personal experience—that contribute to fitness within the culture, placing emphasis instead on an intrinsic copying function that does not, in fact, exist.

13 The process of evolutionary selection described here may be relevant to all religious ideas and narratives, not just those that arise through oral tradition. For example, ideas arising through revelation could be preserved or eliminated from the culture based on their resonant “fit” or lack of “fit.” The same is true of narratives that are knowingly created by a storyteller or writer. Once a seer reports his vision, or a narrator tells his tale, the message becomes, in a sense, public property, whose fate within the culture—preservation, elimination, or alteration—could be determined through evolutionary processes. Similarly, an idea arising from oral tradition or another source could, once it becomes ‘public property’ and hence the possession of each individual mind in the culture, provide raw psychological material contributing to a new revelation, in much the same way that it can be woven into a symbolic dream narrative by an individual dreaming mind. This process of evolution, I suspect, can be seen not only in the initial formulation of a religious tradition but in many stages of religious development, including the selective survival of specific religious texts and the subsequent interpretation of those texts by individuals or groups.