Mind, morality and magic : cognitive science approaches in biblical studies /
edited by István Czachesz and Risto Uro.
- 1 online resource (viii, 316 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).
- BibleWorld .
- Bible world (London, England) .
Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 02 Oct 2015).
The cognitive science of religion : a new alternative in biblical studies / Past minds : evolution, cognition, and biblical studies / How religions remember : memory theories in biblical studies and in the cognitive study of religion / Rethinking biblical transmission : insights from the cognitive neuroscience of memory / The interface of ritual and writing in the transmission of early Christian traditions / Computer modeling of cognitive processes in biblical studies : the primacy of urban Christianity as a test case / "I was El Shaddai, but now I'm Yahweh" : God names and the informational dynamics of biblical texts / Is Judaism boring? : on the lack of counterintuitive agents in Jewish rituals / Ritual system in the Qumran movement : frequency, boredom, and balance / A cognitive perspective on magic in the New Testament / From corpse impurity to relic veneration : new light from cognitive and psychological studies / Why do religious cultures evolve slowly? : the cultural evolution of cooperative calling and the historical study of religions / Empathy and ethics : bodily emotion as a basis for moral admonition / A socio-cognitive perspective on identity and behavioral norms in Ephesians / Emotion, cognition, and social change : a consideration of Galatians 3:28 / István Czachesz and Risto Uro -- Luther H. Martin -- Petri Luomanen -- István Czachesz -- Risto Uro -- István Czachesz and Anders Lisdorf -- Gabriel Levy -- Tamás Biró -- Jutta Jokiranta -- István Czachesz -- Risto Uro -- Joseph Bulbulia, Quentin Atkinson, Russell Gray, and Simon Greenhill -- Thomas Kazen -- Rikard Roitto -- Colleen Shantz.
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.