How to Read Miracle Stories with Cognitive Theory

How to Read Miracle Stories with Cognitive Theory On Harry Potter, Magic, and Miracle István Czachesz

1. Mental Candy As the first Harry Potter books appeared in the late nineties, I happened to visit a congregation in rural Hungary. On the shelf where hymnals, bibles, and devotional literature were displayed for sale I spotted a pamphlet, next to the weekly of the Reformed Church, entitled “Why Harry Potter is against Christian Faith.” I became curious and inquired the minister about his opinion on the books and the threat he thought they would pose for Christian readers. At some point of the conversation I asked him straightforward, “Do you really believe in people flying around on broomsticks?” “Of course not,” he answered with some indignation. “Then what really is the problem?” I countered. Indeed, when confining Harry Potter strictly to the realm of fiction, his harmful effects seemed less imminent. However, the problem is not so easy to dismiss. If people cannot fly on broomsticks, perhaps they cannot walk on water either. This way of thinking leads us to question the world-view of the first Christians. And if that world-view proves to be untenable, we will have to purge the Christian message from the outdated elements. But perhaps we should not move too rapidly in that direction. . As I will show in this chapter, Harry Potter’s dealings, together with biblical miracle stories, are here to stay for the reason that they are mental candies. Why are miracles so alluring? Why do people who do not confess religious faith nevertheless immerse themselves in narrative worlds of mystery and miracle? And why has the allure of miracles remained unbroken since antiquity – allowing us to be fascinated by the very same narratives that attracted ancient people? From the perspective of modern Western readers, miracle stories (often) go against modern scientific knowledge. According to modern common sense, illness can be healed by killing off pathogens with the help of antibiotics, removing damaged tissue and mending broken bones, not by pray-

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er and the laying on of hands, let alone by words uttered from a distance. This is, however, hardly the full story. Without knowing bacteria, Newtonian mechanics, and Copernican cosmology, ancient intellectuals expressed skepticism about miracles. The most famous among them is probably Lucian of Samosata, who especially reprimanded the use of miracle stories in historical narratives (Lover of Lies, True History 1–4). Long before Lucian, arguing probably against Herodotus, Thucydides required that no fables, however entertaining, should be included in a work of history (On the Peloponnesian War 1.22). Both Josephus and Philo, while zealously dedicated to Jewish religion, were reserved when it came to miracles.1 It is obvious that some ancient elite thinkers had a sense of skepticism or at least reservation about miracle stories, in spite of holding a world-view in which the supernatural played an important role. Again, attitudes toward the miraculous (this time skepticism) seem to depend on more than just modern or pre-modern world-views. I will suggest that the dynamics of intuitive and reflective thinking largely determine the reception of miracle stories. In order to understand what attracts us to miracles intuitively, we have to take a step back and think about learning and culture from a psychological perspective. Human culture is made possible by the accumulation of knowledge across generations. But our cumulative tradition comes at a price: we cannot test every piece of wisdom we learn from our parents and teachers. Even modern Western education, assumedly nurturing critical thinking, is based on believing things on authority in first instance. Although we do question tradition and occasionally revise beliefs we learned, there are more general and automatic strategies in place to optimize learning: we tend to follow individuals whom we perceive as successful and we do what the majority of people do around us.2 This does not mean that the content of ideas that we learn does not matter. It has been demonstrated that ideas mixing common sense and strangeness optimally are remembered better and therefore have an advantage in cultural transmission. When we use the expression “common sense” we are referring to what is more technically called maturationally natural ontological expectations.3 Maturationally natural ontology develops in children under a wide range of external circumstances and enables people to re1

G. DELLING, Josephus und das Wunderbare, Novum Testamentum 2 (1958), 291–309; H.R. MOEHRING, Rationalization of Miracles in the Writings of Flavius Josephus, Berlin (1973); D.C. DULING, The Eleazar Miracle and Solomon’s Magical Wisdom in Flavius Josephus’s ‘Antiquitates Judaicae’ 8.42–49, The Harvard Theological Review 78 (1985), 1–25 (9–12); E. EVE, The Jewish Context of Jesus’ Miracles, Sheffield (2002), 3–85. 2 P.J. RICHERSON and R. BOYD, Not by Genes Alone: How Culture Transformed Human Evolution. Chicago (2005), 162–164. 3 R.N. MCCAULEY, Why religion is natural and science is not. New York (2011), 31–82.

 

 

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spond to information in the environment quickly and efficiently. For example, we know that animals move, humans speak, and tools are designed for some purpose and we can interact with them accordingly, without testing those features in every instance of them. It is important to note that such ontological divisions are not necessarily identical with categories that people use to describe the world when we ask them (or categories that philosophers use). Maturationally natural ontological categories include HUMAN, ANIMAL, PLANT, ARTIFACT, and (natural) OBJECT.4 A donkey that talks (e.g., Acts of Thomas 39–41 and 68–81) or a statue that hears what people speak violates expectations about animals and artifacts, respectively. Such ideas will be remembered longer than common-sense ideas. However, if the violations are multiplied, the advantage diminishes. As a consequence, minimally counterintuitive ideas are passed on across generations at higher rates than either ordinary or maximally counterintuitive items.5 Empirical evidence suggests that the advantage is most pronounced in the long-term retention of ideas.6 As I have shown elsewhere, the development of early Christian theological concepts was influenced by the selective transmission of ideas. For example, the formation of the mainstream idea of Jesus’ death and resurrection can be explained by the selection of a minimally counterintuitive version, whereas ebionite and docetic alternatives were too “ordinary” or excessively counterintuitive, respectively.7 Miracle stories are often minimally counterintuitive. Consider the following two hypothetical alternatives to the resuscitation of Eutychus in Acts 20.9–12. (a) “The boy fell out 4

F.C. KEIL, Semantic and Conceptual Development: An Ontological Perspective, Cambridge, Mass (1979), 48; S. ATRAN, Basic Conceptual Domains, Mind & Language 4 (1989), 7-16; P. BOYER, Cognitive Constraints on Cultural Representations: Natural Ontologies and Religious Ideas, In: L.A. HIRSCHFELD/S. A. GELMAN (Eds.), Mapping the Mind: Domain Specificity in Cognition and Culture, Cambridge (1994), 391-411. 5 P. BOYER, The Naturalness of Religious Ideas: A Cognitive Theory of Religion, Berkeley (1994); P. BOYER, Religion Explained: The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought, New York (2001). 6 P. BOYER/C. RAMBLE, Cognitive templates for religious concepts: Cross-cultural evidence for recall of counter-intuitive representations, Cognitive Science 25 (2001), 535–564; J.L. BARRETT/M.A. NYHOF, Spreading Non-Natural Concepts: The Role of Intuitive Conceptual Structures in Memory and Transmission of Cultural Materials, Journal of Cognition & Culture 1 (2001), 69–100; A. NORENZAYAN/S. ATRAN, Cognitive and Emotional Processes in the Cultural Transmission of Natural and Nonnatural Beliefs, In: M. SCHALLER/C. S. CRANDALL (Eds.), The Psychological Foundations of Culture, Mahwah, NJ (2004), 149–169. 7 I. CZACHESZ, Early Christian Views on Jesus’ Resurrection: Toward a Cognitive Psychological Interpretation, Nederlands theologisch tijdschrift 61 (2007), 47–59; I. CZACHESZ, Kontraintuitive Ideen im urchristlichen Denken, In: G. THEISSEN/P. von GEMÜNDEN (Eds.), Erkennen und Erleben: Beiträge zur psychologischen Erforschung des frühen Christentums, Gütersloh (2007), 197–208

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of the window and broke his leg. Paul hurried downstairs, lifted him up, and laid him on a bed. He took a piece of wood and cloths and secured the broken leg by splints.” (b) “The boy fell out of the window and died. Paul did not go down but prayed to God. The boy came back to life, turned into an owl and flew back to the third floor. From that day he could remember everything he heard.” In terms of the theory of minimal counterintuitiveness, the first narrative would not be especially memorable and would be forgotten. The second, in contrast, contains too many counterintuitive details (rising from the dead, turning into an animal, remembering everything) to be transmitted accurately. One counterintuitve detail, the boy coming back to life (which violates the ontological expectation that death puts an end to biological life),8 is necessary but also enough so that the episode would be memorable and transmitted. In some miracles, identifying the counterintuitive element is rather straightforward. For example, the multiplication of bread in Mark 6.39–44 and parallels violates maturationally natural expectations about artifacts. We do not expect natural objects or artifacts (such as bread) to multiply spontaneously, which we only attribute to living things. We mentioned the case of Eutychus above, to which we can add other resurrection miracles. Dead bodies and decomposing corpses (John 11.38–44) are not expected to resume biological function. Another food miracle, the changing of water into wine (John 2.2–11), implies a crossing of ontological boundaries. Whereas water is a natural substance, wine is an artifact. Arguably, we do not expect natural objects to transform into artifacts without human labor: artifacts are produced by investing time and energy. Many other miracles, however, lack a strictly counterintuitive element. For example, catching extraordinary amounts of fish (Luke 5.1–11) at an unusual time of the day is unexpected but does not violate innate ontological categories. Healing with saliva (e.g., Mark 7.33) is an intuitive technique that relies on demonstrable physiological effects: saliva contains healing substances. Many therapies in biblical literature change intuitive healing processes (which might or might not comply with modern scientific theory) into paradoxical (but not strictly counterintuitive) events by adding extraordinary difficulties. For example, the man healed in John 9 has been blind since birth and the one at the pool of Bethsaida (John 5.1– 20) had been crippled for thirty-eight years.

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Whereas the continuation of psychological functions after death is intuitively plausible, biological functions are believed to stop. Cf. J.M. BERING, Intuitive Conceptions of Dead Agents’ Minds: The Natural Foundations of Afterlife Beliefs as Phenomenological Boundary, Journal of Cognition & Culture 2 (2002), 263–308; Idem, The folk psychology of souls, Behavioral & Brain Sciences 29 (2006), 453–462.

 

 

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Healings and other miracles often receive a counterintuitive edge because they are attributed to divine intervention (as is the rule in biblical literature) or because the condition that necessitates them (such as illness) is explained by divine punishment or demonic influence. Gods and spirits are always counterintuitive because they combine human psychological and other features with elements that contradict expectations about humans: being invisible, being present at more than one physical location at a time, transforming themselves into different shapes, having infinite knowledge etc.9 The involvement of counterintuitive agency in miracles (as opposed to featuring objects that change shape or levitate, for example) makes a difference. Counterintuitive agents matter more than other counterintuitive concepts because they have minds, are capable of social interaction, and make moral judgments.10 Yet another factor that contributes to the salience of miracle stories in human tradition is their emotional content. Empirical research demonstrated that if such elements are added to a story, they increase the memorability of all details of the narrative.11 In miracle stories we can read about people who are seriously ill and desperately seek healing (e.g., Mark 2.1– 12), parents who seek help for their sick or already dead children (e.g., Mark 1.21–43), as well as extreme (e.g., lameness, blindness), repulsive (e.g., “leprosy”), or spectacular (e.g., “demoniacs”) symptoms and diseases. Many of the vivid details in the stories are likely to elicit empathy, fear, and disgust, which are archaic emotions (in terms of evolutionary history) and are triggered quickly and automatically. Further, after such a start, miracle stories are likely to evoke emotions of relief when difficulties are miraculously overcome in the end. In sum, miracles attract attention and remain in memory for psychological reasons. First, by violating maturationally natural expectations – just enough to make them salient and memorable but not too much so they can be remembered and transmitted accurately. Second, by engaging some ancient and vital mental functions that respond to relevant information rapidly and automatically: interaction with agents and basic emotions. That is 9

For the cognitive analysis of divine qualities see I. PYYSIÄINEN, Supernatural Agents: Why We Believe in Souls, Gods, and Buddhas, Oxford (2009); I. CZACHESZ, God in the Fractals: Recursiveness as a Key to Religious Behavior, Method & Theory in the Study of Religion 24 (2012), 3–28; I. CZACHESZ, The Grotesque Body in Early Christian Literature: Hell, Scatology, and Metamorphosis, Durham (2013), 141–180. 10 BOYER, Religion Explained (see note 5), 155-231; PYYSIÄINEN, Supernatural Agents (see note 9), 95–136. 11 L. CAHILL/J.L. MCGAUGH, A novel demonstration of enhanced memory associated with emotional arousal, Consciousness and cognition 4 (1995), 410–421; C. LANEY et al., Memory for thematically arousing events, Memory & Cognition 32 (2004), 1149–1159; NORENZAYAN/ATRAN (see note 6).

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why miracles are mental candies that excite our brains by their color, smell, and flavor so much that they cannot be expelled from human culture by either ancient skeptics or modern demythologizers.

2. Do Cultural Conventions Matter? But can we ignore culture? Does it really not matter for our attraction to miracles whether we live in the ancient Mediterranean or in the modern West? Fortunately, empirical studies have been conducted that allow us a glimpse into the role of cultural differences in embracing the counterintuitive – even if we cannot run experiments with first century Christians. One of the first studies that tested Boyer’s hypothesis of the memory effects of counterintuitiveness has been carried out in three different cultural environments, that is, in France, Gabon, and Tibet.12 The experiments demonstrated the advantage of counterintuitive ideas consistently. The only real surprise was that for Tibetan monks, adding minimally counterintuitive features artifacts contributed a greater advantage in retention than adding such features to persons (agents). That is, artifacts with minimally counterintuitive features were much better remembered than those that did not have these features; whereas, persons with minimally counterintuitive features were only somewhat better remembered than persons without these features. The experimenters speculated that this could be due to the monks’ frequent exposure to ideas about counterintuitive agents, somewhat lowering the salience of such ideas for them.13 A recent study examined conceptions of personhood after death among novice Buddhist monks in Mongolia, comparing their intuitions with official Buddhist teachings (that they actually studied) as well as with intuitions of older monks and lay people.14 When tested about their intuitions (rather than asking them to report their explicit knowledge), participants in all three groups (although to different degrees) attributed mental states as well as some bodily functions to a person who reached Nirvana and died. This was consistent with folk-intuitions found across cultural boundaries but went against the teachings of Buddhism about Nirvana. The results of the study suggest that culture shapes how we deal with information when we manipulate it consciously and explicitly, but has less effect on how people deal with information intuitively and without conscious effort. It has been shown, for example, that experts do not mobilize their learned 12

BOYER/RAMBLE (see note 6). BOYER/RAMBLE (see note 6), 556–557. 14 R. BERNIŪNAS, Folk psychology of the self and afterlife beliefs: The case of Mongolian Buddhists, Dissertation, Queens University of Belfast (2012). 13

 

 

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skills when making judgments in everyday situations, making the same mistakes as lay people do.15 “Theological incorrectness” has also been observed in a Christian context: when people have to make judgments about situations that involve theological elements (without being tested on doctrines formally) their answers are based on intuitive, anthropomorphic notions of God.16 The lesson from these experiments is that complex ideas acquired by cultural learning (in this case, official theology or scientific theory) are useful only under certain conditions. Minimally counterintuitive ideas are “intuitive” in the sense of being better remembered and easily transmitted. Anthropomorphic ideas of dead persons and God will take over whenever the situation permits. Another approach to understanding the influence of culture on the success of minimally counterintuitive expectations is to manipulate culturally postulated categories and see how ideas involving such tweaks are remembered as compared to minimally counterintuitive items. In an experiment, ideas that stretched the limits of innate ontological categories without violating them (such as “a man who knows every fairytale”) were remembered just as well as technically counterintuitive items (see above).17 However, counterintuitiveness had a further advantage when the violation included agency (such as “a car that likes to watch movies”) – but no difference was detected between counterintuitiveness and mere strangeness when agency was not involved in the violation (“a man who has no shadow” or “a car that is weightless”). In other words, someone or something doing something counterintuitive was found to stick in the memory better than simply doing something strange, but there was no significant difference if the counterintuitive detail was not about doing something. In a somewhat different experimental design, “strangeness” could be manipulated to contradict clearly culture-specific expectations to find out about the difference between violating culturally postulated and maturationally natural expectations, respectively. It can be argued that a human being flying in the air is a strictly counterintuitive idea. Indeed, flying is the ultimate miracle that Simon Magus performs in the Acts of Peter (chs. 4 and 32). In Apuleius’s Metamorphoses, Lucius’ landlady uses witchcraft to turn herself into an owl and fly at night. A contemporary version of this tradition is the fictional sport called “quidditch” practiced by Harry Potter and his schoolmates – which in15

D. GROOME, An introduction to cognitive psychology: Processes and disorders, London (1999), 116. 16 J.L. BARRETT/F.C. KEIL, Conceptualizing a nonnatural entity: Anthropomorphism in God concepts, Cognitive Psychology 31 (1996), 219–247; D.J. SLONE, Theological incorrectness: Why religious people believe what they shouldn’t, Oxford (2004). 17 K. STEENSTRA, A cognitive approach to religion: The retention of counterintuitive concepts, Master’s Thesis, Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen (2005).

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cludes flying on a broomstick, a detail inspired by the popular image of the witch’s broomstick.18 In the post-war period, adherents of cargo cults in the Southern Pacific built replica aircrafts and airports, awaiting the return of the ancestors who would bring about material abundance.19 Has exposure to aircrafts, helicopters, space travel, and commercial flights changed this fascination? One can argue that for modern Westerners the concept of individual and reasonably free flying with the help of some innovative tool (think about hang-gliders today) is just a matter of incremental technological development, rather than a paradoxical idea. A controlled experiment could answer the question of whether cultural exposure has changed the effect of this counterintuitive concept on memory. Culture influences not only the transmission of counterintuitive ideas but also their reception. Counterintuitive ideas and miracle stories that include such ideas (possibly adding emotional and other details to them) will be contextualized and interpreted in some culturally available framework. In a religious tradition, a miracle story can come with an interpretation that already integrates counterintuitiveness into an elaborated theological system. For example, in the Gospel of John, Jesus’ miracles are seen as “signs” of his being the incarnate divine logos. Yet the very polyvalence and rich history of reception of New Testament miracles shows that counterintuitive ideas can be difficult to bind to one specific cognitive framework. Being both memorable and paradoxical, counterintuitive motifs can generate ongoing reflection and interpretation. Harry Potter’s riding a broomstick and his other counterintuitive dealings have no fixed frame of interpretation (other than that of “fantasy literature”) and as free-floating memes they can be contextualized in many different ways. In a dualistic world-view, characteristic of many conservative Christian groups, understanding them as manifestations of Satanic powers or as “occult teachings” is a possibility at hand. Above I have argued that counterintuitive traits have a fairly similar affect on ancient and modern minds. There are, in turn, obvious differences in the interpretative frameworks available then and now. The question is not so much whether people believe in the “factual” truth of counterintuitive ideas but what kind of contexts they mobilize to make sense of them. It has been shown that a context that makes the appearance of an idea less 18

Whereas witches had been thought to fly before, the broomstick is a medieval addition, with sexual allusions present from the earliest mentions. Cf. M. MURRAY, The Witch-Cult in Western Europe: A Study in Anthropology, Oxford (1962/1921), 104–106. 19 For a concise review, see P. LAWRENCE, Cargo Cults [First Edition], In: L. JONES/M. ELIADE/C.J. ADAMS (Eds.), Encyclopedia of religion, 2nd edition, Detroit (2005), Vol 3, 1414–1421. For a critical discussion of early studies of cargo cults (to the point of deconstructing them as Westerners’ wishful fantasies), see M. KAPLAN, Cargo Cults [Further Considerations], In: JONES/ELIADE/ADAMS, Encyclopedia of Religion, Vol. 3, 1421–1425.

 

 

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surprising also makes it less memorable, whereas a context that justifies or explains the idea after its appearance makes it more memorable.20 That is, providing an explanation or justification for a counterintuitive miracle will support its transmission: it does not really matter whether the context is theological, rationalizing, or psychological. Whereas such interpretative frameworks were both easily available and culturally consistent in antiquity, they are often sub-culturally defined or entirely idiosyncratic in the modern Western world. In spite of their decreasing membership, the theological understanding of miracles provided by mainstream Christian churches is still the most widely available framework of interpretation in this culture. It is important to bear in mind that such a framework is a mismatch when it comes to understanding miracle in antiquity and in other cultures across space and time.

3. Magic and miracle This is not the place to rehearse the more than a century-old scholarly debate about the term “magic.” It will suffice to note that in the latter part of the twentieth century scholars simply wanted to do away with the concept, arguing that it was an expression of ethnocentric bias and colonialism.21 More recently, however, there have been calls for a meaningful way of using the term as an analytical category, without implying a pejorative judgment.22 Already in antiquity, “magic” could carry negative connotations.23 Therefore, we have to be careful to separate the etic use of the concept to analyze a pattern of thought and behavior from the emic use of the word as a derogatory rhetorical tool in antiquity, applied by both Chris20

M.A. UPAL/L.O. GONCE/R.D. TWENEY/D.J. SLONE, Contextualizing counterintuitiveness: How context affects comprehension and memorability of counterintuitive concepts, Cognitive Science: A Multidisciplinary Journal 31 (2007), 415–439. Unfortunately, the long-term retention of ideas was not examined in the study. 21 For a short survey, see F. GRAF/R.L. FOWLER/Á.M. NAGY, Magische Rituale, In: V. LAMBRINOUDAKIS/J.C. BALTY (Eds.), Thesaurus cultus et rituum antiquorum, Vol. 3, Los Angeles (2005), 283–301 at 283–286. 22 E.g., J. Braarvig, Magic: Reconsidering the Grand Dichotomy, In: D. JORDAN/H. MONTGOMERY/E. THOMASSEN (Eds.), The world of ancient magic: Papers from the first International Samson Eitrem Seminar at the Norwegian Institute at Athens, 4-8 May 1997. Bergen (1999), 21-54; E. THOMASSEN, Is Magic a Subclass of Ritual? In JORDAN/MONTGOMERY/THOMASSEN, The world of ancient magic, 55–66; I. PYYSIÄINEN, Magic, miracles and religion: A scientist’s perspective, Walnut Creek/Lanham (2004), 21–54; J.N. BREMMER, Greek religion and culture, the Bible, and the ancient Near East, Leiden/Boston (2008), 347–352. 23 For ancient legislation against magic, see U. LUGLI, La magia a Roma, Genova (1989), 34–35; D. COLLINS, Magic in the ancient Greek world, Malden MA (2008), 132–164.

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tians and non-Christians. Below I will use the concept of magic in a broad, non-pejorative sense, including what is called performing a miracle in theological parlance. As I have argued elsewhere, the heroes of early Christian literature rely on the power of the Holy Spirit or Jesus’ name (after receiving baptism) much in the same way as magicians in general relied on a parhedros, a supernatural helper with which they were connected by an initiation process.24 This technique has been distinguished from the coercive approach to gaining control over a spirit or deity.25 However, the use of the term “coercive” (ἐπαναγκαστικός) in the magical papyri can be misleading. For example, the “coercive spell” in PGM IV.2520–2567 could be called a petitionary prayer to Selene. The claim of the papyrus about the efficiency of the spell can be compared to Jesus’ promise of “whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours” (Mark 11.24). It is beyond doubt that magic involved a number of techniques to influence supernatural powers, such as using secret knowledge or gaining control over spirits with the help of higher gods.26 But these aspects have to be examined on a case-by-case basis and do not allow us, in my opinion, to establish clear-cut boundaries either between magic and miracle or between Christian and pagan practice. I have also argued that magical practice across human cultures is rooted in behavioral learning and supported by a number of cognitive mechanisms.27 The ties between magical manipulations and certain forms of operant conditioning (in which associations are made between one’s behavior and a stimulus) have been recognized and demonstrated by B.F. Skinner, K. Ono, S.A. Vyse, and others.28 The basic form of magic is thus embod24

I. CZACHESZ, Magic and Mind: Toward a Cognitive Theory of Magic, With Special Attention to the Canonical and Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles, Annali di Storia dell’Esegesi, 24 (2007), 295–321; Idem, Explaining Magic: Earliest Christianity as a Test Case, In: L.H. MARTIN/J. SØRENSEN (Eds.), Past Minds: Studies in Cognitive Historiography, London (2011), 141–165. For the parhedros, see recently E. PACHOUMI, Divine Epiphanies of Paredroi in the Greek Magical Papyri, Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 51 (2011), 155– 165. 25 A. SCIBILIA, Supernatual Assistance in the Greek Magical Papyri: The Figure of the Parhedros, In: J. N. BREMMER/J. R. VEENSTRA (Eds.), The metamorphosis of magic from late antiquity to the early modern period, Leuven (2002), 71–86 at 72–75. 26 E.g., W. FAUTH, Götter- und Dämonenzwang in den griechischen Zauberpapyri, Zeitschrift für Religions- und Geistesgeschichte 50 (2008), 40–60. 27 For a more extended discussion, considering a broader range of cognitive components, see I. CZACHESZ, A Cognitive Perspective on Magic in the New Testament, In: I. CZACHESZ/R. URO (Eds.), Mind, Morality, and Magic: Cognitive Science Approaches in Biblical Studies. Durham (2013), in press. 28 B.F. SKINNER, “Superstition” in the pigeon, Journal of experimental psychology, 38 (1948), 168–172; K. ONO, Superstitious behavior in humans, Journal of the experimental

 

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ied, based on associations encoded in implicit memory and possibly not accessible to conscious reflection. The explicit belief that magical acts influence the state of affairs is supported by a number of cognitive mechanisms. In an experiment, participants were instructed to perform a “voodoo ritual” with a doll.29 They were introduced to a confederate who behaved either offensively or neutrally, and who later played the role of the “victim” of magic. Then participants were asked to generate “vivid and concentrate thoughts” about the victim (who was in the neighboring room) and prick the doll in particular ways. Finally, the victim came back and reported having a slight headache. It turned out that participants who had ill thoughts about their victims (because of the victims’ offensive behavior) were likely to think that they caused the victims’ headache, whereas participants meeting neutral victims were less likely to think so. Students’ interpretations of the events probably relied on agentive reasoning, that is, the use of concepts of agents to make sense of various kinds of information. Although we do not call them “demons” any longer, we find it easy to accept that there are different agencies acting in us, such as illnesses, emotions, desires, will, Jungian agents populating our psyche etc. Without thinking about it, the participants seem to have believed that a similar agency (possibly connected to their strong emotions) acted invisibly and caused damage in other people. Another important underlying mechanism of magic is reasoning about contagion. In a series of experiments conducted by C. Nemeroff, P. Rozin, and their collaborators, participants avoided contact with objects that were previously in contact with disgusting insects or substances, even after the objects were carefully sterilized.30 An even more surprising finding was that objects that were in contact with morally condemned people elicited the same response.31 Theories about the origins of “contagion avoidance” assume that originally it had some evolutionary benefit, although the preanalysis of behavior 47 (1987), 261–271; S.A. VYSE, Believing in magic: The psychology of superstition, New York (1997). 29 E. PRONIN/D.M. WEGNER/K. MCCARTHY/S. Rodriguez, Everyday magical powers: The role of apparent mental causation in the overestimation of personal influence, Journal of personality and social psychology 91 (2006), 218–231. 30 P. ROZIN/L. MILLMAN/C. NEMEROFF, Operation of the Laws of Sympathetic Magic in Disgust and Other Domains. Journal of personality and social psychology, 50 (1986), 703– 712; C. NEMEROFF/P. ROZIN, The Making of the Magical Mind: The Nature and Function of Sympathetic Magical Thinking, In: K.S. ROSENGREN/C. N. JOHNSON/P.L. HARRIS (Eds.), Imagining the impossible: Magical, scientific, and religious thinking in children, Cambridge (2000), 1–34. 31 See note 28. C. NEMEROFF/P. ROZIN, The Contagion Concept in Adult Thinking in the United States: Transmission of Germs and of Interpersonal Influence, Ethos 22 (1994), 158– 186; H.L. LENFESTY, Adults’ Implicit Reasoning about “Moral Contagion”, Dissertation, Queen’s University Belfast (2011).

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cise explanation remains unclear.32 There is also a tendency to prefer touching objects that belonged to morally valued people, which seems to be one of the underlying motivations to collect memorabilia or venerate relics.33 In sum, there is a cross-culturally attested human intuition that positive and negative qualities (including abstract, moral features) can be transmitted by contact. It is to be expected that whereas low-level, intuitive thoughts about magic are universal (or cross-culturally recurrent), elaborate theological concepts are more time-bound. In a different cultural context, theories of magic can assume radically different forms, while the intuitive cognitive mechanisms underlying first-hand reactions remain the same. For example, a fanatic UFO believer can explain changes in his or her mental or physical condition by abduction by aliens, while the same changes would be attributed to a favorable response to a sacrifice, demonic attack, or the influence of evil eye (depending on the positive or negative nature of the experience) in an ancient context. Already from a very early period there is evidence of magical activity among Jesus followers. In 1 Corinthians 12.7–10, Paul writes about magical specialists: healers, miracle workers, and possibly exorcists, who are in the company of teachers, prophets, and other Church officials.34 This passage is interesting also because the epistle predates extant texts about the miracles of Jesus and the apostles. What was the relation between magical practice and miracle stories in earliest Christianity? One can argue that traditions about Jesus and the apostles could have circulated in oral transmission before Paul’s time – but such a hypothesis is difficult to test. It is also possible that it was magical practice that inspired the miracle stories about Jesus and the apostles. Christianity could have incorporated already existing magical lore. Magical specialists who converted to Christianity could be among the healers and miracle workers mentioned in 1 Corinthians. The relation of magic and miracle was dialectical, in which miracle stories generated belief in magic, and magical practice created an interest in miracle stories. The interaction of magic and miracle can occur in the context of both individual and communal practice. At the personal level, miracle stories (and superstitious traditions) can confirm spontaneously 32

Cf. W. MCCORKLE, Ritualizing the disposal of the deceased: From corpse to concept, New York (2010), 107–131. 33 H.L. LENFESTY, Adults’ Implicit Reasoning (see note 29); R. Uro, From Corpse Impurity to Relic Veneration: New Light from Cognitive and Psychological Studies, In: I. CZACHESZ/R. URO (Eds.), Mind, Morality and Magic: Cognitive Science Approaches in Biblical Studies, Durham (2013), in press. 34 For the possibility of 1 Corinthians 12.10 referring to exorcists, see E. SORENSEN, Possession and exorcism in the New Testament and early Christianity, Tübingen (2002) 156– 157.

 

 

 How to Read Miracle Stories with Cognitive Theory  

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developed superstitious behaviors. At the communal level, magic can be institutionalized, giving rise to the use of miracle stories as a justification for existing practices: believers imitate Jesus and the apostles. The long ending of the Gospel of Mark, likely dated to the first half of the second century, suggests that not only specialists, but all believers could perform magic:35 “these signs will accompany those who believe: by using my name they will cast out demons; they will speak in new tongues; they will pick up snakes in their hands, and if they drink any deadly thing, it will not hurt them; they will lay their hands on the sick, and they will recover” (Mark 16.17–18). It would have been meaningless to add such a sentence to the Gospel unless there was an actual interest in at least some of the practices on the list. Starting with the second century, magical papyri provide invaluable resources to study the variety of Christian magic.36 We can conclude that miracle stories spread for reasons that are independent from both the actual practice of magic and people’s explanations of magic and miracle. This does not mean, however, that magic is independent from miracle. Repeated exposure to miracle stories familiarizes listeners with ideas and provides them with narrative schemata and other means to make sense of them. Such stories may be embedded into social and institutional contexts (ancestral tradition, mythology) that enhance their credibility and significance. In this way, miracle stories can provide cultural interpretation and positive feedback to the behavioral patterns that develop from a different background. Thus the miracle stories recorded in the New Testament and other early Christian writings could play an important role in the magical practice of the Christians. Miracles stories about the apostles proved that one could legitimately (from a theological point of view) and efficiently invoke God’s power (for example, by calling Jesus’ name) to perform magical acts. They offered an explanatory framework, according to which the Holy Spirit was a more powerful parhedros than others in the cultural environment of Christians. Finally, they suggested a repertoire of magical manipulations, such as Paul’s gestures when he resuscitated Eutychus in Troas or the use of his aprons that healed people in Ephesus.

Conclusion 35

For dating the text, see B.M. METZGER, A textual commentary on the Greek New Testament, 2nd edition, Stuttgart (1994), 125; J. KELHOFFER, Miracle and mission: The authentication of missionaries and their message in the longer ending of Mark, Tübingen (2000), 234–244. 36 E.g., M. MEYER/R. SMITH, Ancient Christian magic: Coptic texts of ritual power, Princeton NJ (1999); P. MIRECKI/M. MEYER, Magic and ritual in the ancient world, Leiden/Boston (2002).

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I. Czachesz  

This chapter showed how scientific knowledge from evolutionary theory, cognitive science, and experimental psychology helps us read early Christian miracle stories. In addition to highlighting and analyzing crosscultural patterns of thought and behavior that support the popularity of miracle stories, making them “mental candies” for people with different cultural backgrounds and convictions, we also paid attention to the cultural factors that provide different contexts for the reception of miracle stories in ancient times and Western modernity, respectively. Most importantly, we have seen that it is not the belief in the “factual” truth of miracles (or the lack of such faith) that determines their success. The question is rather what a certain culture or subculture makes of the attractive power of miracle stories. Already in antiquity, a miracle story could be thought of as a poetic device or entertaining fiction, or the miracle performed in it could be interpreted as harmful magic. Miracle stories and magical practice formed a symbiotic bond. For the modern reader, the options of contextualizing miracle are even more diverse, ranging from pre-modern literalism to ideological deconstruction and psychoanalytical symbolism. In the end, however, each of those interpretative frameworks adds to the success of miracles.