I mentioned in section 1.4, the methods and theories developed and under
development in the Cognitive Science of Religion can be useful in studying
biblical texts; yet the research foci and questions of existing cognitive studies of
religion demand that biblical scholars adapt these methods to their needs and
possibly invent new ones. Whereas cognitive theories addressing the origins
and variation of religion offer new insights for the study of the New Testa-
ment, their broad, cross-cultural focus does not always allow for a straight-
forward application of them to the specific research problems that biblical
scholars have about particular persons, events, and ideas located at a given
point of history. As the examples offered throughout this book demonstrate,
however, such initial difficulties are not prohibitive; quite to the contrary, the
cognitive approach invites biblical scholars to test and improve, if necessary,
the existing tools and contribute to the study of religious cognition.
An implication of the cognitive turn is the increased attention to the con-
nection of texts to emotions, subjective experiences, and rituals. A cognitive
approach urges us to move beyond the perception of biblical texts as collec-
tions of statements about the divine and understand them as parts of religious
systems. This does not mean, however, that scholars of the New Testament
should give up their traditional focus on the text. In the remaining part of this
chapter, I will address some aspects of the cognitive turn concerning its
implications for the study of the text. It can be argued that the“textual”
character of New Testament Studies in fact implies more than one possible
perspective. I will use the metaphors of the text as window, mirror, and image,
respectively, to address these alternative perspectives.^1
10.1 THE TEXT AS WINDOWIn the modern historical-critical paradigm, the text of the New Testament is
considered a window that provides us with a look into the world of early
Christianity. In other words, the text as window helps us reconstruct facts in
the past, including the deeds of the people about whom and by whom the
texts were written, social realities, beliefs that people held, and the genesis
and history of the text itself. Although the use of the text to reconstruct the
past has been criticized in many ways, there is no reason biblical texts could
not serve as sources of historical knowledge, together with other types of
evidence.
(^1) The metaphors of the text as“mirror”or“window”have been used in literary theory before
(for example, by Søren Kierkegård, Jacques Lacan, Georg Lukács, Northrop Frye), but not
consistently (see Frye, 1982, pp. 87, 105; Forgacs, 1983, pp. 171–7; Eagleton, 2008, pp. 142–50;
Gregor, 2011). I do not assume those previous uses in this chapter.
Hermeneutical Reflections 207