Books by Brett Maiden
Cambridge University Press, 2020
In this book, Brett Maiden employs the tools, research, and theories from the cognitive science o... more In this book, Brett Maiden employs the tools, research, and theories from the cognitive science of religion to explore religious thought and behavior in ancient Israel. His study focuses on a key set of distinctions between intuitive and reflective types of cognitive processing, implicit and explicit concepts, and cognitively optimal and costly religious traditions. Through a series of case studies, Maiden examines a range of topics including popular and official religion, Deuteronomic theology, hybrid monsters in ancient iconography, divine cult statues in ancient Mesopotamia and the biblical idol polemics, and the Day of Atonement ritual in Leviticus 16. The range of media, including ancient texts, art, and archaeological data from ancient Israel, as well theoretical perspectives demonstrates how a dialogue between biblical scholars and cognitive researchers can be fostered.
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Papers by Brett Maiden
Dead Sea Discoveries, 2018
This paper investigates the psychological mechanisms that underpin Qumran sectarian dualism and i... more This paper investigates the psychological mechanisms that underpin Qumran sectarian dualism and its construction of in-group/out-group boundaries. Specifically, evidence from experimental and developmental psychology and cognitive anthropology is used to argue that Serek ha-Yaḥad and the Two Spirits Treatise (1QS 3:13-4:26) reflect a deeply-engrained psychological essentialism wherein non-group members are conceptualized as having inherently different biological essences. This essentialist tendency is easily extended to the social domain in what scholars call the "naturalization" of social groups. After reviewing this literature, the paper examines the Serek and Treatise's use of kinship terms, the word "spirit," and language denoting human nature and living species, in order to demonstrate that essentialist intuitions about outsiders provide a foundation for the sect's dualistic worldview. Importantly, the essentialist thinking in these texts is also firmly grounded in and channeled through the intertextual interpretation of scripture, drawing heavily on the rich creation vocabulary in Genesis 1-3.
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Journal of Ancient Near Eastern Religions, 2018
This paper examines the demons Pazuzu and Lamaštu from a cognitive science perspective. As hybrid... more This paper examines the demons Pazuzu and Lamaštu from a cognitive science perspective. As hybrid creatures, the iconography of these demons combines an array of anthropomorphic and zoomorphic properties, and is therefore marked by a high degree of conceptual complexity. In a technical sense, they are what cognitive researchers refer to as radically "counterintuitive " representations. However, highly complex religious concepts are difficult in terms of cognitive processing, memory, and transmission , and, as a result, are prone to being spontaneously simplified in structure. Accordingly, there is reason to expect that the material images of Pazuzu and Lamaštu differed from the corresponding mental images of these demons. Specifically, it is argued here that in ancient cognition and memory, the demons would have been represented in a more cognitively optimal manner. This hypothesis is further supported by a detailed consideration of the full repertoire of iconographic and textual sources.
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New Vistas on Early Judaism and Christianity (ed. Lorenzo DiTommaso and Gerbern S. Oegema; London: T&T Clark, 2016), 172-92.
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Conference Presentations by Brett Maiden
Archaeological and textual evidence indicate that domestic religious cults flourished in Iron Age... more Archaeological and textual evidence indicate that domestic religious cults flourished in Iron Age Israel and Judah. While traditionally this type of religious expression was problematically understood as popular religion (Berlinerblau 1993), in recent years scholarship has shifted to discussing it under the rubric of family or household religion (Bodel and Olyan 2008; Albertz and Schmitt 2012; Albertz et al. 2014). However, despite its strengths as an analytical term, the current conceptualization of family religion faces some of the same problems that vitiated the earlier popular religion paradigm. In particular, it has yet to adequately clarify the nature of the relationship between family/household religion on the one hand, and the official cult on the other. This paper explores that relationship from a cognitive perspective by theorizing the underlying mental processes that shaped representations of the divine in both official and domestic settings. Rather than viewing household religiosity as a sui generis cognitive category, I argue that both official and domestic worship practices were informed by intuitive mental processes that involve cognitively optimal representations of supernatural agency. By analyzing cultic assemblages found in ancient Israelite domestic sites—including anthropomorphic and zoomorphic figurines, model shrines, and cult stands—and then juxtaposing them with their full-scale state-sponsored counterparts, the paper demonstrates a high degree of continuity across these religious spheres with regard to (1) the material forms of the objects themselves, (2) the ritual practices associated with them, and (3) the role of superhuman beings within those rituals. From the standpoint of human cognition, ritual offerings performed in households share deep structural features in common with those performed in temples. And crucially, both involve similar social interactions with invisible human-like agents with minds. The paper therefore proposes that the cognitive categories “optimal religion” and “costly religion” offer a fruitful alternative framework for reevaluating traditional comparisons of family and official Israelite religions, and for highlighting the underappreciated continuity in beliefs and practices across these domains. Overall, a cognitive perspective suggests that the difference between home and temple, ancestors and the national deity, may not have been as great as it is sometimes imagined.
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The Qumran sectarian texts display a thoroughgoing cosmic dualism that carves humanity into rival... more The Qumran sectarian texts display a thoroughgoing cosmic dualism that carves humanity into rival camps of good and evil. Building upon recent socio-historical approaches to the Qumran movement (e.g., Newsom, Regev, Jokiranta), this paper investigates the psychological mechanisms that underpin the sect’s dualism and its construction of in-group/out-group boundaries. Specifically, evidence from experimental and developmental psychology and cognitive anthropology is used to argue that the Serek ha-Yahad and Two Spirits Treatise (1QS 3:15-4:26) reflect a deeply-engrained psychological essentialism wherein non-group members are conceptualized as having inherently different biological essences. Numerous studies show that young children and adults intuitively posit the existence of hidden internal properties that are permanent and define living species in the natural world. This essentialist tendency appears to be universal and is often extended to the social domain, as people readily impute a common unifying essence to entire social groups. This is an example of what the anthropologist Lawrence Hirschfeld calls the “naturalization” of social categories. Further cross-cultural ethnographic work reveals that people essentialize different ethnic groups as belonging to different species. After reviewing this literature, I closely examine the Serek and Treatise’s use of kinship terms (e.g., bne-hoshek, dorot), the word “spirit” (ruah), and language denoting human nature and living species (e.g., toledot, min), in order to demonstrate that essentialist intuitions about outsiders provide a foundation for the sect’s dualistic and deterministic worldview. Importantly, the essentialist thinking in these literary works is also firmly grounded in and channeled through the intertextual interpretation of scripture. The Treatise, in particular, draws on the rich creation vocabulary in Genesis 1-3 to formulate its dualistic stance. This textual production, I argue, is therefore best understood in terms of dual-processing models of human cognition. That is, the exposition of human nature in the Treatise illustrates the interaction of what cognitive scientists refer to as reflective and intuitive mental processes, in this case representing an example of reflective textual elaboration on prior essentialist intuitions.
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This paper explores the hermeneutical strategies and compositional techniques used in book of Jub... more This paper explores the hermeneutical strategies and compositional techniques used in book of Jubilees to harmonize narrative discrepancies in Genesis. Although scholars have recognized that the rewriting in Jubilees is motivated by a multifaceted tendenz, one area that has received little critical attention is the book’s systematic attempt to harmonize contradictions in its base text. The starting point for analysis is the conventional observation that the canonical form of the Pentateuch displays a host of textual difficulties owing to its composite nature. These “fractures” render the narrative confusing at best and unreadable at worst. By way of several case studies, this paper illuminates the strategies by which Jubilees addressed these fractures. Moreover, the paper argues that such textual harmonization serves a distinctly theological objective, namely to render the text of Genesis more internally coherent and consistent. Overall, the findings of this study contribute to our growing understanding of the broader phenomenon of textual harmonization during the Second Temple Period. The paper concludes by highlighting some potential implications for contemporary pentateuchal research.
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In The Savage Mind, the anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss famously suggested that animals are “g... more In The Savage Mind, the anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss famously suggested that animals are “good to think with.” This paper argues that hybrid animals, or Mischwesen, are equally good, if not better, to think with—especially when it comes to the domain of religion. The material evidence from the ancient world is replete with visual images of hybrid monsters, composite demons, and mixed divine beings. In recent years, biblical and ancient Near Eastern scholars have increasingly turned to the rich iconographical record to trace the diachronic development of religious concepts, as well as the cultural mechanisms that facilitate the spread of visual motifs (discussed extensively by Othmar Keel and Christoph Uehlinger). One area that has not yet been explored, however, is the role that cognitive mechanisms play in the process of cultural transmission. This paper fills this gap by considering the iconography of hybrid creatures in Egyptian and Mesopotamian art from the perspective of two current cognitive frameworks: Dan Sperber’s epidemiological approach to cultural representations and Pascal Boyer’s theory of minimally counterintuitive concepts. Utilizing these theories, I suggest that culturally-specific depictions of hybrid animals—no matter how fantastic—exhibit a core set of properties, which helps to account for their widespread distribution across geographical and temporal distances. Overall, this paper demonstrates that an informed view of human cognition offers a fresh interdisciplinary lens on the Mischwesen iconography in the ancient Near East.
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Books by Brett Maiden
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Conference Presentations by Brett Maiden