Читать книгу The Animal at Unease with Itself - Isaac M. Alderman - Страница 11

Perhaps the essential insight that gave rise to the cognitive turn in biblical studies is that while our ability to study the past is complicated by the differences between our current economic, social and political models and those of the ancient world,

what makes cognitive science special [is that] we can make the assumption that the basic mental architecture of ancient people was very close to ours. . . . Since we share the anatomy of our brains and bodies with ancients, we can understand their thoughts and feelings by studying how brain, body, thoughts, and feelings are related in general.^[80]

What connects these variegated studies is an interest in the human cognitive capacities that we share with people living in the ancient Near East, and an appreciation and utilization of the scientific tradition that studies the minds and brains hosting these cognitive structures.^[81] Two related points can be made, in that within biblical studies both the text itself and the religious phenomena described provide material to be examined. Because the texts and archaeological data we study are artifacts of human cognitive activities, understanding these cognitive processes can aid our study of these artifacts. Further, cognitive theories can also help explain the religious phenomena reflected in the Bible or in the archaeological data.^[82]

The following brief survey will provide an example of how an increasing number of scholars and research programs are endeavoring to study the Bible, Second Temple Judaism, and early Christian origins by focusing on the insights that have been brought to the study of rituals and the transmission of ideas.^[83] Here we will examine how these two scholars, Kimmo Ketola and Risto Uro, are utilizing the work on rituals by Lawson, McCauley, and Whitehouse to examine sectarian differences in both Second Temple Judaism and Early Christianity. Then we will see how Uro examines the transmission of ideas utilizing the work of Whitehouse and that of Boyer and Sperber on minimally counter-intuitive narratives.

Within the cognitive approach to rituals, as briefly discussed above, two related but distinct schemas have been developed to understand their form. It is necessary here to note the basic ways in which ritual systems can be either balanced or imbalanced. The first, by Lawson and McCauley organizes rituals according to the role of the superhuman agent. If the superhuman agent is the one doing the act (a special agent ritual), efficacy is greater than if the superhuman agent is the one receiving the act (a special patient ritual). Correspondingly, greater efficacy is generally accompanied by greater pageantry and lower frequency.^[84] The second schema, proposed by Whitehouse, relies on the types of human memory and distinguishes between doctrinal (low-arousal, high frequency) rituals that engage the semantic memory, and imagistic (high-arousal, low frequency) rituals which engage the episodic memory. Whitehouse, and Lawson and McCauley view religions as usually requiring both types of rituals to achieve long-lasting success. Religions which are clearly unbalanced risk fracturing or losing adherents. For example, religious systems that rely only on frequent low arousal rituals risk losing adherents through tedium.^[85] Conversely, systems that rely solely on infrequent high arousal rituals might lose adherents because those rituals are not sufficient to cement relationships or generate distorted memories. These are examples of balanced rituals within an unbalanced system. A different type of imbalance could occur when the rituals themselves are not appropriately balanced. For example, a ritual which is low-arousal and infrequent is unlikely to be memorable enough to endure. Conversely, a high-arousal and frequent ritual can be too costly in terms of resources or emotional energy to be tolerated. One last point to make before moving on to the work of Ketola and Uro is that balanced religious systems can change over time so as to become unbalanced. This can lead to schisms. Another danger is that balanced rituals can become inflated or deflated. In other words, the pageantry associated with a frequent ritual can become excessive or, conversely, the pageantry associated with an infrequent ritual can become insufficient. Unbalance of this sort can lead to ritual reform. Within balanced systems, splintering may be expected to be either conceptual or political.^[86] A balanced system can become deflated of its pageantry or meaning and then the splintering comes from an impetus toward ritual innovation.^[87]

In seeking to understand the splintering of Second Temple Judaism into sectarian divisions, such as the movements exemplified by the community at Qumran, the followers of John, and the Jesus Movement, Ketola adopts the schema set forth by Lawson and McCauley and asks if the evidence for these movements can help one better understand the ritual balance of first-century Judaism.^[88] Ketola notes that first-century Judaism had a ritual system comprised mainly of special patient rituals. The meals, the sacrifices, perhaps even circumcision, was not something done by God through the priest, but done by a human being for God. Ketola focuses here on meals, noting that whereas most meals were low pageantry, the Passover was the most significant festival and would have indeed been a high pageantry affair for those able to travel to Jerusalem. There, in the context of nationalistic fervor, many thousands of animals would be slaughtered to feed the feasting crowds.

The community that resided at Qumran had chosen to segregate itself. While Ketola works with the assumption that the Qumranites removed themselves to the wilderness because of political and religious disputes with the temple leadership, their actual reason for doing so is unimportant. What is essential to the argument is that they were thereby prevented from experiencing the high pageantry of the annual Passover pilgrimage. As a result, the ritual system of the Qumran community became deflated, which Lawson and McCauley predict should lead to ritual innovation. Ketola agrees, suggesting that it is this deflation which led to the emphasis on the Pure Meal. Attendance at this meal was highly restricted and was seen as the height of communal inclusion. It was used to manage behavior, as misdeeds could lead to exclusion from the meal. Its frequency is unclear, as it could have been daily or less often. It is unlikely though to have been as infrequent as the annual Passover.^[89] The levels of purity required for participation lead to the conclusion that the Qumranites saw their Pure Meal and its level of emphasis as helping to replace the pageantry and importance of festivals connected to the temple.^[90]

Similarly, the schism brought about by the Jesus movement also involved meals. In contrast to the Qumran community, which focused on mealtime exclusivity, Jesus and his followers seemed to practice scandalous inclusivity. Moreover, whereas the Qumran community saw their desert refuge and its related meal pageantry as representing a new temple or a substitute temple, Jesus’ view of the temple and ritual purity were focused on himself.^[91] Meals for both the Jesus movement and the Qumran community represent ritual intensification, more than innovation. This finding leads Ketola to the conclusion that Judaism was essentially a deflating, but balanced system: ^[92]

They both developed a form of special communal meal with potent ritual and political significance in the context of purity-conscious and temple-centered Judaism. In the context of a (deflated) balanced system, even minor issues could have become contentious and therefore capable of triggering mutual hostilities between the splinter group and the rest of society.^[93]

Ketola’s conclusion is that whether by self-segregation, lack of means, or geographical distance, “the high arousal rituals were, in practice, out of reach for many ordinary people, especially for those living in the diaspora,” and so first-century Judaism was “most likely in the process of becoming deflated.”^[94]

Rather than focusing on meals and temple, Uro attends to the purity concerns related to immersion. While Qumran and the Jesus Movement seem to have intensified ritual immersion as well, Uro looks at the baptism of John and asks why his practice seems to have been so significant that John even gained the title of the Baptist or the Immerser. In Second Temple Judaism, ritual washing was self-administered. Using the schema developed by Lawson and McCauley, Uro notes that Jewish ritual immersion might be considered a special instrument ritual. In other words, the ritual’s superhuman being is most closely associated with the material involved in the ritual, which in this case is naturally flowing and undrawn water. Because special patient and special instrument rituals are less efficacious than special agent rituals, this purification immersion was done frequently and accompanied by little to no pageantry. The baptism of John, however, seems to belong to the category of special agent ritual. This is demonstrated both by his title “Immerser” and by the fact that people understood themselves to be baptized by John, not simply as immersing themselves in his presence. As a special agent ritual, with the superhuman agent identified with the ritual agent, the perceived efficacy of the ritual increases. Although it is unclear if the baptism by John was a singular or repeatable ritual, it is clear that it was considered more significant than regular ritual washing.^[95]

Switching schemas from that of Lawson and McCauley to the work of Harvey Whitehouse, Uro shifts from the perceived efficacy of the baptism of John to focus on the way in which the associated teaching of John was transmitted and remembered. The gospels and Josephus understand John to be a teacher of religious and moral knowledge and not simply a practitioner of a religious rite.^[96] Because of the ritual’s increased efficacy, which resulted in a decrease in frequency, John’s associated teaching risked being forgotten. If he were working in doctrinal mode, re-baptizing people frequently, then his teaching could be remembered through repetition in the hearers’ semantic memory. But in this case, the infrequency of his ritual meant that his hearers might only experience his teaching once. This imagistic mode of transmission requires increased arousal. Imagistic rituals (infrequent, high arousal) can invigorate a movement, or “provide energy for an emerging movement, motivating its members and supporting its ideology.”^[97] Uro notes that despite the little information we have about John, we are still able to see that he was a striking figure. John’s diet, garments and lifestyle are remembered because they were a “credibility enhancing display”^[98] which added to their imagistic impact. The people who encountered him were struck by his appearance and charisma, which helped to create a lasting impression. “John’s immersion may be seen as a high-arousal ritual, creating long-term—though not necessarily uniform—memories for the participants.”^[99] His teaching could therefore be transmitted even via a low frequency experience.

While the teaching of John may have utilized the imagistic mode of transmission, Uro notes that the early Christian movement leaned heavily toward the doctrinal mode.^[100] Even baptism, although it was singular and included a night-long vigil and fasting that could create lasting memories, was the culmination of a three-year process that included regular sermons and readings intended to “encode religious knowledge in semantic memory.”^[101] Uro suggests that this was a ritually imbalanced system, which was later exploited by gnostic movements that incorporated more imagistic modes of ritual.^[102] Of more interest to biblical scholars, Uro notes that this struggle regarding the limits of doctrinal modalities is present even earlier in Christianity. Paul seems to be relying on doctrinal teaching, with low levels of arousal. For example, Paul opposed the charismatic practices of the Christians in Corinth and insisted that practices, such as glossolalia, “be regulated by instruction (oikodome, katechesis) and by reasoned interpretation (nous, diermenia)” (1 Cor 14:5, 13–15).^[103] Though Uro does not mention the incident, the author of Acts has immortalized the danger of the tedium effect with the incident of poor Eutychus who falls from the window as Paul’s teaching drones on (Acts 20:9)!