Aspirant Sage or Dysfunctional Seer? Cognitive Dissonance and Pastoral Vulnerability in the Profile of Daniel

Abstract

Employing a psychological lens and using the "I"-Window as a port of entry, this essay focuses on uncovering the internal profile of Daniel through his first-person visionary report (Dan 7-12). Incorporating a three-world reading strategy, I intentionally foreground the juxtaposition between the world of the text and the world in front of the text (the community of pastors). The idea of cognitive dissonance emerges as I compare the "private Daniel" with the "public Daniel" through textual construction. As a demonstrated example of the "empirics" of engaging text emotively, I seek to appropriate the internal turmoil of Daniel as a result of the impact of the exotic visionary experience upon him to the vulnerability of the pastoral vocation.