texts all. Thus it is reasonable to assume that texts constrain meaning and a
cognitive approach can help us understand how they do this.
First, the toolkit of cognitive approaches can be used in the synchronic
analysis of the text of the New Testament (Czachesz & Theissen, 2016a,
2016b). For example, the models of scripts, schemata, and counterintuitive-
ness that we discussed in Chapter 4 can be used to describe genres and forms
in the New Testament in a new way. In section 4.4 I suggested that narrative
forms can be described with the help of dynamical models, in which elem-
entary actions are constructed form the interactions of the characters.
Elementary actions can occur in different orders, yet the range of possible
story-lines is constrained by the requirements that have to be fulfilled for a
certain elementary action to happen as well as by its consequences. Varying
degrees of counterintuitiveness characterize different types of miracles, as
we have seen in section 6.4. Narrative plots can be analyzed in terms of
scripts that are derived from cultural learning, as well as being shaped
by maturationally natural cognitive constraints andfirst-hand experience.
Finally, the distribution of counterintuitive, bizarre, and intuitive details in a
larger narrative follow patterns that can be studied with the help of empirical
methods.
Cognitive approaches can be also applied to the analysis of apocalyptic
forms and moral discourse. In addition to the above-mentioned cognitive
models, insights from comparative ethnographic studies as well as from
neuroscience allow for a better understanding of the structure of visionary
experiences (see sections 7.5–7.8). At the analysis of ethical teachings and
other moral discourses we can rely on insights about pro-sociality and the
evolutionary foundations of morality. In sum, the use of a cognitive approach
helps us understand forms and genres beyond viewing them as mere cultural
conventions or the results of particular social and historical circumstances.
The cognitive approach provides a way out of the classical trap of historical-
critical exegesis, in which the text is used to establish a Sitz im Leben, which, in
turn, informs the exegesis of the text.
Studying the text as image has a further important implication that I will
address in the remaining part of this section. In a book chapter entitled“The
Selfish Text,”Hugh Pyper (1998) suggested that the Bible is a successful
cultural meme. After identifying mechanisms of variation, faithful replication,
and transmission in the history of the Bible, Pyper identified two major
strategies by which the Bible outcompeted other memes: on the one hand,
many biblical passages command active evangelism and the protection of the
biblical tradition from foreign influences; on the other hand, biblical texts
encouraged behaviors that helped the survival of both Jewish and Christian
communities through history. What can the cognitive approach suggested in
the present book add to Pyper’s idea? Can we understand biblical texts as
memes and if so, what are the consequences of such an analysis?
216 Cognitive Science and the New Testament