Istvan Czachesz

• PhD, Dr habil
• Professor at UiT The Arctic University of Norway

While the connection between baptism and creedal formulas has long been recognized, it was Hans Lietzmann who suggested that "the root of all creeds is the formula of belief pronounced by the baptizand, or pronounced in his hearing and assented to by him, before his baptism." More recently, Wolfram Kinzig argued that during the first three centurie...

This article introduces the special issue of ASE on network science and biblical studies. After a short presentation of network science and the concept of networks, the article discusses the application of network science in three domains: the natural and built environment of ancient Judaism and Christianity, the social networks of Jewish and Chris...

This article puts forward the theory that the Bible is a network of cultural items (memes) that developed through an evolutionary process and has been transmitted for many centuries in a relatively stable form. Biblical cross-references reveal how the verses and passages of the Bible are connected into a network that is analogous to genetic network...

This chapter serves as an introduction to a small collection of essays dedicated to the study of religious experience in the ancient Mediterranean world. First, the chapter addresses the challenges of a historical study of religious experiences. Second, a model of religious experience is outlined that connects neurological, textual, cognitive, and...

This chapter addresses the neuroscientific background of ancient tours of heaven. McNamara’s work on religious experience is used in the context of other philosophical, cognitive, and neuroscientific research. After discussing the definition and phenomenology of subjective experience, the chapter outlines three possible understandings of religious...

Ancient Mediterranean people shared their world with gods, spirits, and ancestors. Attempts to interact with superhuman agents in ways that were beneficial for the individual and the community permeated both private life and politics. While skepticism about beliefs in such entities and the ways of dealing with them existed, it was extremely limited...

The canonization of biblical literature can be understood as a selective process governed by four main principles. First, texts that increased the reproductive fitness of an individual or a group were transmitted and some texts among them were well suited for continued use under changing historical circumstances. Second, some texts became more popu...

The Cognitive Science of Religion is an interdisciplinary research field born in the 1990s. It combines different disciplines and methods, united by the common interest of explaining the cognitive processes underlying religious beliefs and practices, and situating them in the natural evolutionary history of the human species. In the current article...

Abstract The current article is a critical review of the neuropsychological study of religious experience. First, we analyse the philosophical and theological roots of the term and its characterization as a sui generis and unique phenomenon. We subsequently describe the adoption of the concept in psychology, as well as the emergence of alternative...

In this chapter, István Czachesz and Gerd Theißen revisit five areas of biblical exegesis from the perspective of cognitive science. First, the relation between text and cognition is considered, asking about the ways texts influence our cognition and the roles that texts play in religious practice. Second, cognitive factors in the diachronic analys...

This chapter examines the spread of Early Christianity from the perspective of cultural evolution. It identifies the structure of social networks as the most important factor, which, in turn, influenced the generation of memorable ideas and the use of religious elements as symbolic identity markers. In Early Christianity, weak social ties enabled l...

While cognitive science approaches to religion have, to date, focused largely on religious beliefs and rituals, they paid little attention to religious texts and the interpretive practices of religious communities. Within biblical studies, since the mid-2000s, there have been several monographs and edited volumes that have sought to examine biblica...

This article discusses the use of evolutionary theory in the cognitive science of religion (CSR), with special attention to critical issues and new developments. In the first part of the article, I will discuss the definition of evolution and describe the Modern Synthesis (or neo-Darwinian theory). In the next part, I will consider various evolutio...

This article explores the connection between sexual selection and religion, locating the origins of religious behavior in mate guarding after the transition to terrestrial life in Homo erectus 1.8 million years ago. An important consequence of the transition was the emergence of a polygynous, multiple-family social structure, which gave rise to mat...

The Cognitive Science of Religion is an interdisciplinary research field born in the 1990s. It combines different disciplines and methods, united by the common interest of explaining the cognitive processes underlying religious beliefs and practices, and situating them in the natural evolutionary history of the human species. In the current article...

This chapter asks the question of how rituals contribute to cultural transmission. Scholars of rituals have taken for granted that rituals somehow preserve traditions; however, how they achieve that has remained an understudied problem. The first section outlines the problem of transmission against the background of religious studies and more tradi...

This chapter outlines an analytical concept of magic and considers how it contributes to our understanding of early Christian rituals. The first section addresses the problematic history of the academic study of magic. The second section proposes a heuristic definition of magic in the context of a cognitive and behavioural approach to religion. The...

Dieser Aufsatz will mit Hilfe eines mehrdimensionalen evolutionären Ansatzes die Entstehung und den Erfolg einer neuen Religion deuten. Evolutionär ist an ihm die Annahme selektiver Prozesse, durch die sich weltweit nur wenige Religionen durchgesetzt haben. Konkret werden wir untersuchen, wie theologische Innovationen und soziale Strukturen im Urch...

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 scienc...

This chapter provides an introduction to the field of cognitive science and outlines the program of a cognitive turn in New Testament Studies. The chapter explains the background and significance of the cognitive turn in psychology and other disciplines and also discusses basic research questions concerning the human mind. The question is raised ho...

Religion is present in virtually all known human societies. In spite of obvious cultural variation, many traits of religious thought and behavior are remarkably consistent across time and space. People around the world interact with superhuman agents—that is, gods, spirits, and ancestors—that are similar to humans in many respects but also display...

This article presents examples of using Network Theory to analyse the text of the New Testament. We provide an introduction to the basic concepts of Network Theory and centrality measures in networks and suggest a simple method of creating word co-occurrence networks from passages. Special consideration is given to the psychological realism of the...

This article addresses the neuroscientific background of ancient tours of heaven. McNamara's work on religious experience is used in the context of other philosophical, cognitive, and neuroscientific research. After discussing the definition and phenomenology of subjective experience, the article outlines three possible understandings of religious...

This Special Issue of the Journal of Cognitive Historiography presents studies of religious experience in the ancient world, with an emphasis on textual interpretation and biblical literature. The papers were originally presented in a thematic session co organized by the “Religious Experience in Early Judaism and Early Christianity” and “Mind, Soci...

Review of Maurice Bloch, Anthropology and the Cognitive Challenge. Cambridge University Press, 2012. New Departures in Anthropology. 234pp., hb., $89.99. ISBN-13: 9780521803557; pb., $34.99. ISBN-13: 9780521006156.

Review of Geertz, Armin W., and Jeppe Sinding Jensen (eds.): Religious Narrative, Cognition, and Culture. Image and Word in the Mind of Narrative. Sheffield: Equinox, 2011. 336

Eerdere onderzoeken van opdrachtverhalen (commission stories) in vroegchristelijke literatuur waren beperkt tot de vier canonieke evangeliën en Lucas’ Handelingen. Deze studies werden door vormanalyse van joodse geschriften en de literatuur van het Nabije Oosten ingegeven. In ons onderzoek is het terrein in vier richtingen uitgebreid: (1) de studie...

This chapter aims at laying the foundations for the study of religions as systems, which would enable scholars to produce formalized and quantitative explanations and predictions about the inner causal structure and possible developmental tracks of religions. Whereas the notion of a “system” has been formerly used in connection with culture and its...

Review of Colleen Shantz, Paul in Ecstasy: The Neurobiology of the Apostle’s Life and Thought. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2009.

Many religious traditions embrace ideas that include boundless elements (i.e., beings that are omnipresent, omniscient, etc.). The origin of ideas with such boundless qualities has not yet been successfully accounted for in the cognitive science of religion. In this study I suggest that the domain-general use of recursion underlies the mental repre...

Der Aufsatz untersucht mit Hilfe eines kognitiven Ansatzes Entstehung und Verbreitung religiöser Traditionen. Er erklärt den auß ergewöhnlichen Erfolg des Urchristentums durch eine Verbindung von theologischen und sozialen Faktoren. »Schwache Beziehungen« in sozialen Netz-werken ermöglichten den Christen eine umfassende Zusammenarbeit von geographi...

I will first mention three major approaches to the phenomenon of religious conversion; second, I will indicate some relevant aspects that have received little or no attention in the psychology of religion; third, I will outline a model of religious conversion.

This article reconsiders the problem of memorization in rituals in light of recent empirical work in memory research. Four hypotheses are put forward in particular: (1) Emotionally laden details will enhance the formation of memories about any detail of the ritual; (2) harsh sensory stimuli will function as attention-magnets, resulting in increased...

Reviews the book, "The believing primate: Scientific, philosophical and theological reflections on the origin of religion" edited by J. Schloss & M. Murray (2009). This book is the first collection of essays on the cognitive and evolutionary study of religion to encourage a dialogue between scientists and theologians. With some knowledge of the fie...

The article reviews the book "Magic and Divination in the Old Testament," by Solomon Nigosian.