theological change (Czachesz, 2007b, 2007c; Theissen, 2007b, 2011a). Taken
together, these contributions set the stage for the cognitive turn in New
Testament Studies.
The emergence of the cognitive approach to the New Testament has been
facilitated by collaborative projects as well as an ongoing exchange of ideas
across disciplinary borders. Most importantly, a number of exploratory work-
shops experimented with the use of Cognitive Science of Religion in historical
studies (University of Vermont in 2002, Queen’s University of Belfast in 2007),
the application of cognitive and social scientific methods to explaining
Christian origins and early Judaism (University of Helsinki in 2005), the use
of cognitive science to study religious change and continuity (University of
Groningen in 2006), and the application of cognitive science to textual inter-
pretation (University of Groningen in 2010). The“Mind, Society and Tradition
in the Biblical World”program unit in the Society of Biblical Literature, which
started work in 2007, has been an important venue for developing the cognitive
approach. Several volumes of studies have been edited from the papers of
the above-mentioned meetings (Whitehouse & Martin, 2004; Luomanen et al.,
2007; Czachesz & Biró, 2011; Martin & Sørensen, 2011; Czachesz & Uro,
2013; Nikolsky et al., 2016), which included contributions on both general
topics of cognitive historiography as well as specific aspects of biblical litera-
ture. More recently, a series of workshops was organized at various Nordic
universities in the framework of the research project“Socio-Cognitive Per-
spectives on Early Judaism and Early Christianity”(2010–13). At the Univer-
sity of Heidelberg, Gerd Theissen initiated collaborative efforts, which resulted
in the publication of a special issue of the journalEvangelische Theologie
(Theissen & Feldtkeller, 2011), with contributions on the spread of early
Christianity (Czachesz, 2011b), on rituals (Uro, 2011b), morality (Kazen,
2011), and Christology (Theissen, 2011b). In the area of Hebrew Bible Studies,
Thomas Kazen (2012) applied cognitive and evolutionary models to under-
stand the moral emotions underlying biblical law. Gabriel Levy (2012)
examined the interface of writing and cognition in the history of Judaism.
Articles and book chapters also addressed cognitive aspects of Jewish rituals,
ranging from the Hebrew Bible (Gudme, 2013) to the Dead Sea Scrolls
(Jokiranta, 2013) and rabbinical sources (Biró, 2013). Other studies used
conceptual blending theory, which originated in thefield of cognitive linguis-
tics and has gained currency in cognitive approaches to religion (Slingerland,
2003; Sørensen, 2007) and biblical literature (Lundhaug, 2010; Tappenden,
2015).
Recent contributions to the cognitive study of the New Testament and early
Christianity include Rikard Roitto’s studies of pro-sociality in early Christian
groups (Roitto, 2012, 2014, 2015, 2016; see also Shantz, 2013), Uro’s mono-
graph on“Ritual and Christian Origins”(2016), and a co-authored book on
the theme of counterintuitiveness and paradoxicality in the New Testament
Introduction 3