Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- 1 The cognitive science of religion: a new alternative in biblical studies
- 2 Past minds: evolution, cognition, and biblical studies
- I Memory and the transmission of biblical traditions
- II Ritual and magic
- 8 Is Judaism boring? On the lack of counterintuitive agents in Jewish rituals
- 9 Ritual system in the Qumran movement: frequency, boredom, and balance
- 10 A cognitive perspective on magic in the New Testament
- 11 From corpse impurity to relic veneration: new light from cognitive and psychological studies
- III Altruism, morality, and cooperation
- Bibliography
- Index of modern authors
- Subject index
11 - From corpse impurity to relic veneration: new light from cognitive and psychological studies
from II - Ritual and magic
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- 1 The cognitive science of religion: a new alternative in biblical studies
- 2 Past minds: evolution, cognition, and biblical studies
- I Memory and the transmission of biblical traditions
- II Ritual and magic
- 8 Is Judaism boring? On the lack of counterintuitive agents in Jewish rituals
- 9 Ritual system in the Qumran movement: frequency, boredom, and balance
- 10 A cognitive perspective on magic in the New Testament
- 11 From corpse impurity to relic veneration: new light from cognitive and psychological studies
- III Altruism, morality, and cooperation
- Bibliography
- Index of modern authors
- Subject index
Summary
CULTURE, COGNITION, AND CORPSE IMPURITY
Do not load yourselves again with something which our Lord and Saviour has taken away from you. And do not observe these things, nor think that it is uncleanness; and do not restrain yourselves because of them, and do not seek sprinklings, or baptisms, or purifications for these things. Indeed, in the second legislation, if one touches a dead man or a tomb, he must be bathed. You, however, according to the Gospel and according to the power of the Holy Spirit, shall be assembled even in the cemeteries, and read the holy Scriptures, and without observance complete your services, and your intercessions to God, and offer an acceptable Eucharist, the likeness of the body of the kingdom of Christ, in your congregations and in your cemeteries and on the departures of them that sleep among you, pure bread that is prepared in fire and sanctified through an invocation. Indeed those who have believed in God, as it is written in the Gospel, even though they should sleep, they are not dead … On this account you are to approach without restraint those who rest and you shall not declare them unclean.
(The Didascalia Apostolorum ch. 26; trans. Vööbus 1979: 261)The above passage is from an early Christian church order usually called The Didascalia Apostolorum, the bulk of which was probably composed in the first half of the third century, and which has been best preserved as a fourth-century Syriac translation (Connolly 1929; Yarnold 1992; Bradshaw 2002).
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- Information
- Mind, Morality and MagicCognitive Science Approaches in Biblical Studies, pp. 180 - 196Publisher: Acumen PublishingPrint publication year: 2013