In his "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind" (1976), psychologist Julian Jaynes postulated that human consciousness as we know it (i.e., introspection) is a relatively new cultural adaptation to language and the written word. He traced the change, as evidenced in ancient writings (especially Homer and the Bible), as occurring over a period of a millennium or so beginning roughly about 1800 BC. During this time the internal commands originally interpreted as the voices of gods came to be viewed as an internal dialogue and the earlier commands to be codified in writing, thus ending the age of the prophets and direct (and new) communication with deities.

In this book by Rabbi Cohn, a supporter of Jaynes' theory, the reader finds the most succinct and accessible summary of the theory I've seen, as well as a closer examination of the Biblical writings Jaynes used in his proofs. There is also a very interesting discussion of tenses as used in the Old Testament, a usage in which Cohn sees a hint of the confusion early Biblical writers suffered in perceiving and expressing their new awareness of time, as introspection and self-awareness began to intrude on their old thought ways. Hebrew in the older parts of the Old Testament included a usage of the letter vav (waw) in which it reversed the tense of a past or future verb (the only two proper tenses in Hebrew). This was called the vav- (or waw-) consecutive or conversive. Vav/waw is usually translated into English as "and", but Cohn makes this point: "One of the amusements of translation is that so many sentences in the King James Bible begin with, 'And.' Yes, those sentences begin with the letter vav, but often vav does not mean 'and'. Instead, the letter vav is our mysterious friend, the vav-conversive." This is a subject I found particularly worthy of followup, especially in a world in which the literalness of the Bible informs so much opinion.

Another interesting statement: "Neither the New Testament nor the Mishnah/Talmud will admit that it is a new religion: both Christianity and Rabbinic (modern Orthodox) Judaism claim that they are simply fulfillments of the Old Testament. This is philosophically untrue (modern Orthodox Judaism has very little in common with Old Testament Judaism), but strategically effective (and successful, historically, in terms of survival)."

And there are questions about: the dramatic difference between the Western world's religions today and the religions of the Bible; the reason for the abrupt end to the time of the prophets; the lack of concern about the afterlife in the Torah and only minimal interest being shown in the latest books included in the Old Testament; and the difference in the classical Jewish and Christian ideas of God.

I have only one criticism, and that is that the book is too brief (only 77 pages). There is a lot here which could be expanded on, although thankfully there is an interesting-looking bibliography. (The book is currently available from Amazon for Kindle.) ( )

A short work which takes "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind" by Julian Jaynes as a starting point, and provides a more in-depth reading of the Old Testament from a "Bicameral" perspective.

Available for download from http://www.julianjaynes.org/publications ( )