Issues involving 'character' have been the object of increasing interest and debate in recent years. Social psychologists attempt to determine the role of character as a cause of human behavior, moral philosophers explore the significance of character for understanding ethics and virtue, and literary scholars investigate the depiction of character in narrative. Weighing Hearts represents the first serious attempt to integrate all these approaches in order to gain a deeper and more precise understanding of how readers evaluate characters in biblical narrative. While the primary focus is on the Hebrew Bible, the author also includes several comparative analyses involving other ancient and modern literary works. Weighing Hearts also shows how biblical historians and redaction critics can make their analyses more precise and nuanced, by taking into account what psychology has learned about the consistency of character and the 'attribution errors' people make when evaluating others.

Stuart Lasine is Professor of Religion at Wichita State University, USA.

Preface
List of Abbreviations
Part I. Methods, Theories, and Texts

1. Introduction: Seeing with the 'Eyes of Evaluation'
2. Searching the 'Innermost Parts': Consciousness, Self and Mental Space in Ancient Literature
3. When Should We Psychologize? Evaluating Character in Redacted Biblical Texts

Part II: Prophets and Personality

4. Prophets without Personality: Lionized Prophets and the Power of Lying in 1 Kings 13 and 20
5. Prophecy, Personality and Death: 'Psychologizing' Elijah at Horeb

Part III: Characterizing Kings

6. Reassessing the Character of Condemned Kings: New Perspectives on Jeroboam and Jehoram
7. Kings Wicked and Weak: The Characterization of Ahab in Comparative Perspective

Part IV: Character and the Ethics of Reading the Bible

8. The Witnessing Heart: Self-Evaluation in the Stories of Job and King David
9. Art Thou The Man? Judging King David and Judging Ourselves

Bibliography