Interpreting Dreams and Visions

Australasian Pentecostal Studies, 2012

05 Toward an Old Testament Theology of Dreams and Visions from a Pentecostal-Charismatic Perspective

Pastoral Psychology, 2007

European Scientific Journal, 2014

This paper addressed the contextualization of dream interpretation in the transformation of traditional African theories of origin of the universe and how the universe operated in Ile-Ife. It highlighted prominent demonstration of spiritual ability that abounded among members of the New Religious Movements (NRMs) at Ile-Ife. The NRMs were the Cherubim and Seraphim Unification Church of Nigeria (C&SUCN), the Church of the Lord Aladura (CLA) and Eckankar (Eck) at Ile-Ife. It employed biblical contextualization of ancient Near Eastern and Old Testament interpretation of dreams in exposing the theology of the NRMs that influenced moral change among the youths at Ile-Ife. It concluded with the recommendation that every idea of fatalism and predestination needed to be confronted with an ideology of a redeemable world by emphasizing virtues of discipline and submission to authority for maturity in interpersonal relations.

1990

2019

This chapter compares dream visions and prophecies in mythic historiography with analogous stories in the gospels. Most of the visions and prophecies reveal the birth of a divine child. Fathers have dreams or oracles instructing them not to thwart the divine will. Older prophets play a role and have intimate conversations with mothers. The comparison of Simeon in Lukan myth and the Roman Nigidius Figulus is developed at length.

This volume, edited by Elizabeth Hayes and Lena-Sofia Tiemeyer, is devoted to dream and vision reports in the Hebrew Bible. The description here is slightly misleading, however, because there is also some coverage of the topic in the Dead Sea Scrolls, the New Testament (Revelation), and Targum Jonathan. The book is the result of a research group that met at the annual meetings of the European Association for Biblical Studies (EABS) to investigate "Vision and Dream Accounts in the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament, Early Judaism, and Late Antiquity" (p. xiii).

The phenomenon of dreams and visions in conversion accounts of Muslims is increasingly present in missionary reports and testimonials. What is perhaps less well known is that the phenomenon of dreams and visions as vehicles of divine communication is well documented in both Old and New Testaments. In the case of Saul of Tarsus and Cornelius (Acts 9/10) dreams/visions serve prominently in the conversion narrative.

Pastoral Psychology, 2009

Dream content is meaningfully related to waking life religiosity, so much so that reading a person's dream reports "blindly," without any other personal information or associations from the dreamer, can reveal with surprising accuracy his or her basic waking attitude toward religion and spirituality. Two long-term dream journals are analyzed in this manner, and the results demonstrate that dream content is an accurate reflection of a person's religious beliefs, practices, and experiences. The significance of this for pastoral psychologists lies not in specific new techniques of dream interpretation but more fundamentally in supporting the practice of paying attention to dreams in the first place. The goal of the article is to build a bridge between pastoral psychological interest in dreams and the latest findings in the scientific study of dreaming. Contrary to the assumption that religion and science inevitably conflict with each other, dreaming offers an area of potential religion-science convergence.

Dreaming, 2004

Anthropological ethnographies sometimes postulate that new religious ideas may originate in individual dreams, visions, or madness. An illustration is given of the foundation of the Earth People of Trinidad, for whom dreams may still contain prophetic insight or knowledge. Their oneiric understandings have to be placed against their cultural baseline of village dream theory and the dreamlike visions of the Shouter Baptists. It is argued that the physical conditions of the community's daily life are perhaps conducive to visionary perceptions in a half-waking, half-sleeping state.