Cognitive Science Approaches in Biblical Studies

Since the mid-2000s, cognitive science approaches have been used in biblical studies. Cognitive science came into existence in the 1950s as a reaction to the psychological behaviorism of the time, and it studies human thought processes, such as memory, learning, decision making, and social cognition, including the role of emotions. Cognitive science is multidisciplinary in nature, with contributions from linguistics, philosophy, neuroscience, experimental psychology, ethology, computer modeling, and other disciplines. It has influenced a variety of academic fields, ranging from anthropology and education to musicology and medicine. Its appearance and impact is often referred to as the “cognitive turn.” Cognitive approaches to religion examine cross-culturally recurrent religious thought and behavior from the perspective of cognitive science. Cognitive approaches to religion, in turn, offer important insights and theories for the cognitive scientific study of biblical texts and traditions. Three research areas can be identified that especially influenced the emergence of cognitive science approaches to biblical studies: (1) A considerable part of cognitive research on religion can be linked to the program called cognitive science of religion (CSR), which started in the 1990s. In the beginning, CSR focused mainly on god concepts and rituals, with a strong emphasis on the evolved cognitive structure of the human mind. New research areas of CSR include the role of religion in social cooperation, experimental studies in ethnography, discussions and applications of the theory of cultural evolution, quantitative studies of large-scale historical processes, and computational models of religious thought and behavior. While some scholars have argued that religion is a by-product of cognitive mechanisms (such as traits underlying social cooperation) that evolved previously for other purposes (the so-called by-product hypothesis), others see religion as an evolutionary adaptation. (2) The neuroscientific study of religious experience started in the 1980s and gained momentum with the rapid development of new neuroimaging technologies in the 1990s. Work on religious experience in biblical studies draws on insights from this area. (3) Finally, the field of cognitive linguistics also started in the 1980s and examines the role of the human body in shaping human thought and language. Biblical scholars have drawn especially on cognitive poetics and conceptual metaphor theory. In this article we will first discuss overviews of cognitive science approaches in biblical studies. Second, major contributions to the cognitive science of religion and conceptual metaphor theory will be presented, with an emphasis on publications that have exerted an influence on biblical scholars. This part will also include cognitive studies of ancient religions outside biblical studies. Third, cognitive science approaches to various research questions and topics in biblical studies will be discussed, including Jewish and early Christian history, memory and transmission, ritual, miracle and magic, ethics and morality, religious experience, theological and Christological concepts, applications of conceptual metaphor theory, the use of computational modeling, and other exegetical topics.