Developmental psychological aspects of personal identity in the characterization of the biblical Nehemiah

Abstract

Personal identity is a complex and essentially contested concept in various contemporary academic disciplines. These include, among others, philosophy, psychology, sociology, political science, and theology. Biblical scholarship in general and Old Testament studies in particular are inevitably intertwined with concerns and categories derived from related discussions, albeit mostly with reference to the themes associated with social and political identity. The gap in the research identified in this study is the relative lack of research on how historical, philosophical and psychological perspectives on personal identity may be compared to what is incidental and implicit in the characterisation of Nehemiah. In response to this, the questions posed in this study are twofold. First, what philosophical and psychological views on personal identity are available. Second, what happens when a particular thinker's ideas are adopted as an experimental lens through which some of the associated assumptions are noted in the book of Nehemiah. The corresponding objectives of this study will be to outline the history of related ideas and to determine the pros and cons of applying a particular point of view to an ancient text, the focus of which lay elsewhere. The hypothesis of the study is that such an approach will provide not only a novel way of looking at the text, but also present challenges arising from the difference between biblical and philosophical/psychological foci, and between experimental psychology and the involvement of a particular theory within a literary ontology limited to characterisation in a narrative. The chosen method adopted in this study will therefore not be philosophical analysis or psychological assessment but will be a form of comparative metacommentary whereby related remarks already present in research on Nehemiah are brought into dialogue with the theoretical framework and its topics selected for the comparison. More specifically, some elements in the theories of Marcia on the formation of personal identity in the context of personhood and personality development will be used for the purpose of the comparison with comments in research on general aspects of characterisation and identity in Nehemiah. Concerning outline, following an introduction to the various themes involved in the research presented in this study (Chapter 1), the conceptual history of personal identity in philosophy, psychology, and elsewhere (Chapter 2), will precede an outline of the chosen framework (Chapter 3), its application with reference to Nehemiah scholarship (Chapter 4) before drawing the relevant conclusions (Chapter 5). Although the primary discipline is that of Old Testament studies, introducing and experimenting with new theoretical frameworks are considered to justify dedicating a comparably large proportion of the study to the relevant conceptual-historical background. The application of the chosen approach to the study of Nehemiah cannot be justified without sufficient attention to the relevant details included in the discussion. Conversely, given how much could possibly be said with reference to the book of Nehemiah, subsequent comments on personal identity in relation to this text will be limited to a selection of texts and theological themes as an illustration of the application. Much more could be said, which will be the task of future related research. Finally, the relevance and novelty of such an inquiry lie not only in its very specific interdisciplinary interests and theoretical topics, but also in its attention to both possibilities and problems associated therewith. Its relation to past and present research is therefore more supplementary and complementary than critical or confirmatory.