Mind, Morality and Magic

Cognitive Science Approaches in Biblical Studies

Istvan Czachesz, Risto Uro

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781844657339
• eBook ISBN: 9781317544401
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

The cognitive science of religion that has emerged over the last twenty years is a multidisciplinary field that often challenges established theories in anthropology and comparative religion. This new approach raises many questions for biblical studies as well. What are the cross-cultural cognitive mechanisms which explain the transmission of biblical texts? How did the local and particular cultural traditions of ancient Israel and early Christianity develop? What does the embodied and socially embedded nature of the human mind imply for the exegesis of biblical texts? "Mind, Morality and Magic" draws on a range of approaches to the study of the human mind - including memory studies, computer modeling, cognitive theories of ritual, social cognition, evolutionary psychology, biology of emotions, and research on religious experience. The volume explores how cognitive approaches to religion can shed light on classical concerns in biblical scholarship - such as the transmission of traditions, ritual and magic, and ethics - as well as uncover new questions and offer new methodologies.

Chapter 1

THE COGNITIVE SCIENCE OF RELIGION: A NEW ALTERNATIVE IN BIBLICAL STUDIES

István Czachesz and Risto Uro

The academic discipline of biblical studies has traditionally been one that adopted pioneering methods and insights in the study of religious texts. In the 1970s and 1980s, feminist, literary, and social-scientific modes of criticism were introduced. Since then, the field has also been deeply influenced by postmodern thought. The array of methods emerging in the last quarter of the twentieth century has now been applied for a considerable time, demonstrating both its potential and its limitations. In the meantime a new, interdisciplinary field has emerged in religious studies, one that can also bring fresh insights to the study of biblical literature. Since the academic discipline of biblical studies can be seen “as both a past ancestor of and a present partner within religious studies” (J. Z. Smith 2009), it is only natural that new trends in religious studies have aroused the interest of biblical scholars. What is happening in religious studies carries potential relevance for biblical studies as well.

The contributors to this volume argue that the cognitive science of religion (CSR) provides a new alternative for biblical scholars seeking fresh insights into ancient texts, and into the religious beliefs and practices that shaped those texts. Some initial steps toward applying CSR to biblical and related materials have already been taken (see also Czachesz 2008a). In August 2002, a conference organized by Luther H. Martin at the University of Vermont assessed the implications of Whitehouse’s modes theory (see below) for the historical study of religions (Whitehouse & Martin 2004). The following year, Luther Martin (2003) and István Czachesz (2003) suggested in programmatic essays that cognitive science can be applied fruitfully in the study of ancient religions and in biblical interpretation, respectively. In 2005, a pioneering workshop on “Body, Mind, and Society in Early Christianity” was organized by Risto Uro in Helsinki, in collaboration with Petri Luomanen and Ilkka Pyysiäinen, and the following year Czachesz and Tamás Biró arranged the “International Workshop on Religion and Cognition” in Groningen. The aim of the former workshop was to initiate a dialogue between the more traditional social-scientific study of the Bible and CSR approaches. The 2006 workshop focused on change and continuity in religious traditions, with particular emphasis on biblical literature and ancient religions. The two edited volumes based on these workshops offer experimental and pioneering endeavors in enriching biblical studies with perspectives and insights from the research undertaken in CSR (Luomanen et al. 2007a; Czachesz & Biró 2011). Finally, a special issue of Evangelische Theologie featured four articles on cognitive approaches in New Testament exegesis in German—in particular, on innovation and social structures (Czachesz 2011b), ritual theories (Uro 2011b), moral emotions (Kazen 2011b), and counterintuitive Christological ideas (Theissen 2011).

Encouraged by the success of these workshops and related activities, the editors of this book took the initiative of establishing a program unit entitled “Mind, Society, and Tradition” within the context of the International Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature. During its two three-year terms (2007–12), the program unit was successful in offering an open forum for a number of biblical scholars interested in cognitive approaches to develop their ideas and comment on each other’s research.¹ Scholars outside the sphere of biblical studies, including researchers representing various cognitive and evolutionary approaches, were invited as well. The present volume is the outcome of the work undertaken in this SBL program unit.

COGNITIVE SCIENCE OF RELIGION FOR DUMMIES

In spite of this rising interest, most biblical scholars are probably still unfamiliar with developments and findings in CSR. What is this new field all about? Why should a biblical scholar be interested in it?

To give a brief answer to the first question: the cognitive science of religion is a multidisciplinary and cross-disciplinary research program that seeks to explain religious beliefs and practices by utilizing the knowledge achieved in various fields studying the human mind. Rather than interpreting cultural particulars or local theological meanings in their immediate contexts, CSR is interested in recurrent patterns in religious thought and behavior and in cognitive structures that constrain religious phenomena across time and space. While CSR does not underestimate explanations that work at the level of social groups or cultural contexts, its primary focus is on the cognitive mechanisms that produce various mental representations and thus constitute the basis of social behavior and cultural patterns typical of modern humans (“modern” refers here to anatomically modern humans, who developed cognitive capacities similar to ours some 50,000–100,000 years ago; see Coolidge & Wynn 2009). Thus, for example, CSR argues that people do not behave socially in the first instance because they happen to be born into social groups, but because the human species has developed a special capacity for the basic types of social behavior that can be found in all human societies (Boyer 2002b; Atran 2002). It is in this fundamental sense that the mind plays a crucial role in the explanation of human practice and thought. This, however, does not mean that social and cultural institutions have in no way influenced human evolution (Richerson & Boyd 2005) or that social and cognitive theorizing cannot or should not be combined (see especially Chapters 14–15 in this volume). Some cognitive scholars have envisioned an approach based on “explanatory pluralism,” which would “enable scientists working at one analytical level to exploit the conceptual, theoretical, methodological and evidential resources available at another” (McCauley & Bechtel 2001). CSR is an ambitious project that attempts to synthesize our knowledge concerning human cognition, hugely grown in recent decades, bringing it to bear on the question of why religious thought and behavior is so common in humans and why religious life and thought take on the features they do (J. L. Barrett 2007). This knowledge can then be combined with findings in other fields, such as sociology and anthropology of religion.

The pioneering studies of the 1990s, which laid the basis for what later came to be called CSR, attempted to explain how religious rituals are mentally represented in the minds of the participants (Lawson & McCauley 1990; further developed in McCauley & Lawson 2002) and how religious (counterintuitive) concepts are culturally transmitted (Boyer 1994a). The model of “modes of religiosity” developed by Harvey Whitehouse introduced memory studies into the field and provided another perspective for the analysis of religious rituals (Whitehouse 1995, 2000, 2004a). Whitehouse argues that all religious traditions tend to develop either toward large-scale organizations, characterized by orthodoxy and dry ritual routine (the doctrinal mode), or toward small-scale communities, with an emphasis on emotionally arousing rituals (the imagistic mode). Cultural variation and transmission, which are central issues in the work of both Boyer and Whitehouse, have been studied by researchers in a number of cognate fields. Richard Dawkins’s theory of memes is probably the best-known example of this research area (Dawkins [1976] 2006, 2004). Many CSR scholars have been inspired by Dan Sperber’s theory of the “epidemiology of representations,” which offers a different model for the spread of cultural beliefs (Sperber 1996, 2006). Alternative theories of cultural transmission and selection have been proposed by Peter J. Richerson and Robert Boyd (2005), as well as by Eva Jablonka and Marion Lamb (2005, esp. 193–242 and 285–317). Explanations drawing on evolutionary psychology and evolutionary anthropology have also become part of the research field (Boyer 2002b; Atran 2002), although some cognitive scholars regard explanations derived from such research as a secondary project rather than as an intrinsic or necessary part of CSR (J. L. Barrett 2007). It should be noted, however, that the evolutionary perspective can be applied fruitfully in a number of different ways in the study of religion and in biblical studies (see especially Chapter 12 in this volume).

Why, then, should the biblical scholar pay attention to this recent branch of religious studies? Biblical scholars have after all been primarily interested in the particular historical and cultural contexts in which the biblical texts can be located. From such a perspective, the “sweeping” models offered by cognitive scientists may appear irrelevant or uninformative for the study of biblical and cognate texts. There is no reason, however, to postulate a sharp contrast between such generalizing models and explanations based on the detailed study of ancient sources and their cultural contexts. Social-scientific theory has been applied in biblical studies, with success, for several decades. While social-scientifically oriented biblical scholars strongly emphasize the salience of cultural contexts in the interpretation of biblical texts and sometimes even show a bias toward cultural relativism, one of the basic postulates of social-science criticism has been that cross-cultural and testable models are powerful tools for explaining and understanding biblical texts and societies (or persons; see Craffert 2008). Some theories or areas of study applied in social-scientific biblical criticism demonstrate this particularly well; these include studies dealing with social networks (Duling 1999, 2000, 2002), with altered states of consciousness (Pilch 2002; Craffert 2010), or with issues of purity and impurity (Neyrey 1986a, 1986b; R. H. Williams 2010), social identity (Esler 1998, 2003; Luomanen et al. 2007a) and memory (see below). All these approaches rely heavily on models that are cross-cultural and that assume regularities in the behavior of human beings across time and space. Thus, the history of biblical exegesis shows that culturally oriented interpretations and generic models can be mutually complementary rather than exclusive.

Moreover, the study of ancient religions (Judaism, Christianity, Ancient Near East and Greco-Roman religions) has always been an important part of the work of biblical scholars. Traditionally, ancient religions have been studied by means of textual and philological analysis; more recently, however, other approaches, derived for example from archaeology, psychology, anthropology, and the social sciences in general, have played an increasing role. These developments are in line with the approaches of the modern academic study of religion, which is significantly more than just the reading and interpretation of theological texts. According to Armin Geertz, “the study of religion is a theoretical project, exploring the academic construction called ‘religion,’ which is informed by empirical evidence perceived in terms of a whole range of ideas and assumptions” (Geertz 2008: 355). If a scholar is interested in explaining and understanding the religious phenomena reflected in the texts and other sources, recent theories of religion, including cognitive theories, become pertinent to biblical scholarship. The phenomena studied in the field of religious studies are of course manifold, and the topics and themes discussed in this volume are far from exhaustive. Many of these themes—such as the transmission of religious traditions, ritual behavior, magical practices, and ethics—have nevertheless been central issues in traditional biblical studies as well. In what follows, we elaborate upon the themes of the volume against the backdrop of recent developments in CSR, highlighting ways in which cognitive approaches can contribute to the issues discussed in biblical studies and give rise to new, potentially fruitful research questions. The volume relies on a broader understanding of CSR, including evolutionary considerations, and discusses the relevance of CSR research for biblical studies in a number of areas. The volume is divided into three parts: Memory and the Transmission of Biblical Traditions (Part I), Ritual and Magic (Part II), and Altruism, Morality, and Cooperation (Part III).

RITUAL, MEMORY, AND MAGIC

Recent years have witnessed a significant rise of interest in ritual among biblical scholars. This is not, of course, something entirely new in biblical studies. The German “history of religions” school in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century was deeply engaged in comparing early Jewish and Christian practices with those of the other religions of the biblical world. Yet the excitement over rituals soon gave way to other interests, and even the emergence of social-scientific approaches from the 1970s onwards did not at first give rise to studies focusing specifically on ritual aspects of biblical religions. More recently the tide has turned, at first in the study of the Hebrew Bible and the Ancient Near East (e.g., Milgrom 1991, 2000b; Olyan 2000; Gruenwald 2003; Gane 2004; Klingbeil 1998, 2007), and a little later in the study of the New Testament and early Christianity (Strecker 1999; DeMaris 2008; Taussig 2009; Uro 2010). The common thread of the recent discussion has been to ask how ritual theorizing can contribute to our understanding and explanation of ancient Judaism and the emergence of early Christianity. One driving force here is the fact that over the past decades ritual studies have developed into an independent academic field within religious and cultural studies (Grimes 1985, 1990; Bell 1992, 1997; Kreinath et al. 2008).

As noted above, cognitive scholars of religion were active from an early stage in advancing theories of ritual, theories which have been recognized by other ritual theorists as well (Bell 2005). Accordingly, ritual plays an important role in several chapters in this volume. We are not arguing that cognitive theories of ritual should replace other modes of theorizing in the analysis of early Judaism and early Christianity. However, we do believe that cognitive theorists have paid attention to important explanatory factors behind ritual behavior which have been ignored or not fully explored in traditional approaches (Czachesz 2010a; Uro 2007, 2010, 2011a, 2011b, 2011d).

Memory and transmission

One such factor, receiving relatively little attention from ritual theorists before the introduction of Whitehouse’s modes theory, is memory. In Whitehouse’s model memory is crucial, since he argues that the two modes of religiosity are based on the encoding of religious traditions into two distinct memory systems: episodic memory in the imagistic mode and semantic memory in the doctrinal. Psychologists have distinguished between these two memory systems since the 1970s: episodic memories record specific events of our life (e.g., “yesterday I flew from London to Helsinki”), whereas semantic memories are lexical items without reference to singular events in our lives (e.g., “Helsinki is the capital of Finland”). Whitehouse’s theory has inspired much discussion among scholars of religion and anthropologists (e.g., Whitehouse & Martin 2004; Whitehouse & Laidlaw 2004; Whitehouse & McCauley 2005; Uro 2007), and the memory factor has been integrated into other cognitive theories of ritual (especially in McCauley & Lawson 2002).

Memory was, of course, not an entirely new subject for biblical scholars. Understanding the transmission and development of early Christian teachings and texts is one of the traditional focal points of biblical scholarship. The importance of memory in oral transmission has been recognized by New Testament scholars, at least since the emergence of form criticism in the 1930s. Meanwhile, memory approaches gained currency in other fields of religious and cultural studies, and biblical scholars have been eager to apply perspectives from memory studies to their materials. Much of this research has focused on the theory of social or collective memory advanced by the French sociologist Maurice Halbwachs (1980, 1992; for an application to biblical materials, see, e.g., Kirk & Thatcher 2005a; Horsley et al. 2006; Thatcher 2008; Kelber & Byrskog 2009), but some biblical scholars have been interested in the cognitive aspects of memory as well (e.g., Kirk 2010).

Various cognitive models can be applied allowing new advances on this front, but two examples will suffice to demonstrate our point. First, cognitive models of the structure and transmission of oral traditions help us to better understand the development and textual features of biblical literature (e.g., Czachesz 2003, 2010b; Uro 2011c). Second, epidemiology and the theory of minimal counterintuitiveness shed light on selective processes in the transmission of ideas and the formation of successful theological concepts (Czachesz 2007c; 2007d). Both issues will be further discussed in Chapters 3–7.

Several of the contributors to this volume draw insights from memory research (Part I). Luomanen presents a detailed survey of the memory perspective in biblical studies (Chapter 3). Drawing on recent research on both cultural and cognitive memory, Luomanen critically evaluates one relatively popular model used by biblical scholars, which emphasizes the faithful transmission of the autobiographical memories of the first followers of Jesus. Similarly to the approach of “explanatory pluralism” (see above), Luomanen underscores the need to combine cognitive and cultural perspectives in the study of early Christian traditions. He suggests further that Alan Baddeley’s model of working memory can solve some of the problems raised by previous approaches. Chapter 4 by Czachesz continues the discussion of memory studies, focussing on the cognitive constraints of textual transmission, both in oral and literate forms. Following a brief introduction to the neurological and anatomical basis of memory, the chapter surveys schema theory and David Rubin’s model of serial recall, offering examples of their use in the analysis of biblical passages. The chapter concludes by a discussion of the selective processes in transmission related to counterintuitiveness and emotional arousal.

In Chapter 5, Uro raises the issue of the impact of writing, as a form of external memory storage, on the mode of religious transmission, and examines the interaction between ritual and writing in the transmission of early Christian traditions—an issue that has only rarely been discussed in Early Christian studies. Elaborating on models introduced in previous publications (Czachesz 2007a, 2007e), Czachesz and Lisdorf use agent-based computational modeling to study the transmission of religious ideas (Chapter 6). Following a brief introduction to computer modeling, they present examples of how social and cognitive aspects of biblical religions can be modeled. Finally, in their case study they present a model simulating the spread of cultural practices or ideas, based on three variables: population density, mobility, and the memorability of the cultural item. The model compares the dissemination of Christianity and Mithraism in urban and rural environments. Chapters 5–6 thus demonstrate that ecological factors (such as population density) or technologies of communication (ancient manuscripts) can be fruitfully combined with considerations of cognitive constraints.

Gabriel Levy (Chapter 7) addresses the question of interaction between language and cognition in the development of religious beliefs, proceeding from Andy Clark’s idea that both objects in the environment and spoken words are materia...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• 1. The cognitive science of religion: a new alternative in biblical studies
• 2. Past minds: evolution, cognition, and biblical studies
• I. Memory and the transmission of biblical traditions
• II. Ritual and magic
• III. Altruism, morality, and cooperation
• Bibliography
• Index of modern authors
• Subject index