every age created its own portrait of the historical Jesus to its likeness. How
can the cognitive approach presented in this book contribute to understanding
the function of the text as mirror?
Reader-response criticism featured a strong cognitive component from the
outset. Let us take Wolfgang Iser’s theory of reading as an example. According
to Iser (1978, 1980), people communicate because they have no way of
experiencing directly what the other experiences. When two people talk to
each other, they often ask for additional information as well as infer missing
information from the situation and social clues. Reading is a process of
communication, as well. A text, however, offers only“structured blanks”
(Leerstellen) that have to befilled in by the reader. The process of reading
then consists of the continuousfilling in of the“blanks”or“vacancies”of the
text. As a result, the reader understands the message of the text by composing
it. The importance offilling in the blanks is obvious if we think of the gospel
narratives. When reading the gospels, the reader is forced tofill in details of
missing links between episodes, construct the characters barely mentioned or
just implied, compose Jesus’appearance, biography, inner thoughts, behavior,
and so on. Although reader-response criticism generated some interest among
biblical scholars (Detweiler, 1985; McKnight, 1985), the cognitive aspects of
reading received little attention.
The cognitive approach sheds new light on the reading of biblical texts. As
Gerd Theissen and myself recently argued in a joint article (Czachesz &
Theissen, 2016a), the texts of the New Testament have been shaped by
assimilative and dissimilative processes in their early transmission. Although
we tried to identify the cognitive factors that influenced the formation of the
biblical text, the same processes can be seen at work in any reading process—
with the important difference that the interpretation of the modern reader
does not become part of the written New Testament. Assimilative processes
include the tendency of seeking coherence and maintaining relevance. In these
processes, readersfill in the structured blanks of the text relying on their own
knowledge and mental schemata, imposing their narrative scripts and con-
cepts on their interpretation of the text. Dissimilative processes, in turn,
maintain or introduce elements that are foreign to the reader’s cognitive
schemata: strange and counterintuitive details can be introduced and con-
served. Two cognitive models discussed in this book explain the persistence of
such interpretations:first, elements that violate schemata in the right way are
memorable; second, ritual and magical uses of the text favor conservation,
including the retention of nonsensical elements.
This takes us to the next step, that is, theSitz im Lebenof the reader, or the
context of reading. One example I just mentioned is the use of texts in ritual
settings. The text of New Testament is typically read in some ritual context,
such as liturgical reading, daily Bible verse, or meditation; at times the text is
evoked in citations and references in (ecclesiastic) art, music, and literature. In
Hermeneutical Reflections 213