cross-culturally attested, ontological categories include HUMAN, ANIMAL,
PLANT, ARTIFACT, and (natural) OBJECT (see sections 1.3 and 2.2.4). It
appears that minimal violations of ontological schemata increase the likeli-
hood that an idea will be remembered, whereas excessive violations have the
opposite effect: all being equal,minimally counterintuitiveideas have a select-
ive advantage in memory (Boyer & Ramble, 2001).
Experimental work on minimal counterintuitiveness yielded some further
interesting insights. First, the advantage of such ideas was demonstrated in
both Western and non-Western contexts (Boyer & Ramble, 2001). Second,
simply bizarre (a table that is three meters high) or unconventional concepts
(a man who lives on top of a pillar) are less memorable then minimally
counterintuitive ones (Barrett & Nyhof, 2001). Third, although ordinary
ideas are better remembered after a few minutes, memory for minimally
counterintuitive items decays slower (Norenzayan & Atran, 2004). Fourth,
the narrative context of an idea seems to influence its memorability (Upal
et al., 2007). Specifically, narrative context that makes the appearance of an
idea less surprising also makes it less memorable, whereas a context that
justifies or explains the idea after its appearance makes it more memorable.^9
Although Boyer’s original theory was meant to explain religious ideas in
general, it can be used in the study of biblical transmission in a much broader
sense. In the successive chains of memorizations and performances, details of
the narratives keep changing constantly—which we explained above using
script theory and serial recall. If some of these details are minimally counter-
intuitive, they will be remembered better and favored in the transmission. For
example, I have shown how the mainstream version of Jesus’ death and
resurrection can be explained by its emergence as a cognitively optimal,
minimally counterintuitive version of the Jesus story (see section 2.5). Ebionite
and docetic alternatives, in contrast, prove to be either too“ordinary”or
excessively counterintuitive.
Minimally counterintuitive details occur in a range of New Testament texts,
including miracle stories, parables, and apocalyptic visions. Yet such details
are relatively scarce if we consider the text as a whole. Throughout the gospels,
for example, we read about ordinary people with features that are completely
in line with the ontological category of HUMAN, such asfishermen, mothers,
farmers, scribes, landowners, tax collectors, or soldiers. Why do these charac-
ters not have counterintuitive traits? Or, to ask an even more obvious ques-
tion, why are there no more miracles in the gospels? After all, listeners would
certainly have been interested in hearing more miracle stories. The general
answer to these questions is that the requirement that counterintuitive details
(^9) Since this experiment measured memory after a few minutes (Upal et al., 2007, p. 430), it
does not show us how narrative contexts influence the long-term advantage of minimally
counterintuitive ideas.
Memory and Transmission 81