Religion and Art Behavior—A Theory and an Example
The Biblical Prophets as Postcolonial Street Theater
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/jsrnc.v9i3.27054Keywords:
Cognition, evolution, art, prophecy, street theaterAbstract
Enough has been written on the cognitive and evolutionary bases of both art and religion to permit a theoretical understanding of these closely related behaviors. My argument is that religion and art are descendants of a common ancestral behavior that cannot be identified as either one or the other but has identifying features of both. It is my contention that such an understanding facilitates an improved comprehension of the history of religion as well as a coherent theoretical explanation of religious pluralism. As an example of the application and implication of this theory I will undertake a brief analysis of Biblical Prophecy as a complex of art forms bearing significant similarities to contemporary postcolonial literature and street theater. Both complexes communicate individual emotional responses to the environment in such that they are transmitted and retained in the local culture and contributeory to assured and persistent behavior.
References
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———. 2004. Literary Darwinism: Evolution, Human Nature, and Literature (New York: Routledge).
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———. 2008. ‘The Arts after Darwin: Does Art Have an Origin and Adaptive Function?’, in Kitty Zijlmans and Wilfried van Damme (eds.), World Art Studies: Exploring Concepts and Approaches (Amsterdam: Valiz): 241-63.
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———. 1998. Art and Agency: An Anthropological Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
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Mayr, Ernst. 1988. Toward a New Philosophy of Biology (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press).
McGilchrist, Iain. 2009. The Master and his Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press).
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Murray, Michael. 2008. ‘Four Arguments That the Cognitive Psychology of Religion Undermines the Justification of Religious Belief’, in Bulbulia et al. 2008: 365-70.
Ramachandran, Vilayanur S., and Sandra Blakeslee. 2005. Phantoms in the Brain: Human Nature and the Architecture of the Mind (London: Harper Collins).
Renan, Ernest. 1953. Oeuvres Completes, vol. 4 (ed. H. Psichari; Paris: Calman-Lévy).
Ruiz, Jean-Pierre. 2007. ‘An Exile’s Baggage: Toward a Postcolonial Reading of Ezekiel’, in Jon L. Berquist (ed.), Approaching Yehud (Atlanta, GA: Society of Biblical Literature): 117-35.
———. 2011. Readings from the Edges: The Bible and People on the Move. Studies in Latino/a Catholicism (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books).
Scalise Sugiyama, Michelle. 2001a. ‘Food, Foragers, and Folklore: The Role of Narrative in Human Subsistence’, Evolution and Human Behavior 22.4: 221-40. Doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S1090-5138(01)00063-0.
———. 2001b. ‘Narrative Theory and Function: Why Evolution Matters’, Philosophy and Literature 25.2: 233-50. Doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/phl.2001.0035.
———. 2004. ‘Predation, Narration and Adaptation: “Little Red Riding Hood” Revisited’, Interdisciplinary Literary Studies 5: 108-27.
———. 2005. ‘Reverse Engineering Narrative: Evidence of Special Design’, in Jonathan Gottschall and David Sloan Wilson (eds.), The Literary Animal: Evolution and the Nature of Narrative (Rethinking Theory) (Chicago, IL: Northwestern University Press): 177-96.
Scham, Sandra. 2008. ‘The World’s First Temple’, Archaeology 61.6: 22-27.
Schmidt, Klaus. 2006. Sie bauten die ersten Tempel (Munich: Beck).
Sjöblom, Tom. 2008. ‘Narrativity, Emotions, and the Origins of Religion’, in Bulbulia et al. 2008: 279-85.
Soden, Wolfram von. 1955. ‘Gibt es ein Zeugnis dafür, daß die Babylonier an die Wiederauferstehung Marduks geglaubt haben?’, Zeitschrift für Assyriologie 51: 130-66. Doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/zava.1955.51.1.130.
Sperber, Dan, and Deirdre Wilson. 1988. Relevance: Communication and Cognition (Oxford: Blackwell).
Staniloae, Dumitru. 2000. The Experience of God: Orthodox Dogmatic Theology, Vol. 2: The World: Creation and Deification (Brookline, MA: Holy Cross Orthodox Press).
———. 2002. Orthodox Spirituality: A Practical Guide for the Faithful and a Definitive Manual for the Scholar (trans. Archimandrite Jerome Newville and Otilia Kloos; South Canaan, PA: St. Tikhon’s Seminary Press).
Taves, Ann. 2009. Religious Experience Reconsidered: A Building-Block Approach to the Study of Religion and Other Special Things (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press).
Thomas, Nicholas. 1998. ‘Foreword’, in Gell 1998: vii-xiii.
Tooby, John, and Leda Cosmides. 1992. ‘The Psychological Foundations of Culture’, in Jerome Barkow, Leda Cosmides, and John Tooby (eds.), The Adapted Mind: Evolutionary Psychology and the Generation of Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press): 19-136.
Wilson, Edward O. 1975. Sociobiology: The New Synthesis (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University).
Bellah, Robert N. 2011. Religion in Human Evolution: From the Paleolithic to the Axial Age (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press). Doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.4159/harvard.9780674063099.
Berger, Peter. 1967. The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion (Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Co.).
Blenkinsopp, Joseph. 1983. A History of Prophecy in Israel (Philadelphia: Westminster Press).
Boyd, Brian. 2009. On the Origin of Stories: Evolution, Cognition, and Fiction (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press).
Boyer, Pascal. 1994. The Naturalness of Religious Ideas: A Cognitive Theory of Religion (Berkeley: University of California Press).
———. 2001. Religion Explained: The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought (New York: Basic Books).
Bulbulia, Joseph, Richard Sosis, Erica Harris, Russell Genet, Cheryl Genet, and Karen Wyman (eds.). 2008. The Evolution of Religion: Studies, Theories, and Critiques (Santa Margarita, CA: Collins Foundation Press).
Carroll, Joseph. 1995. Evolution and Literary Theory (Columbia: University of Missouri Press).
———. 2004. Literary Darwinism: Evolution, Human Nature, and Literature (New York: Routledge).
Chance, Michael, and Ray Larsen. 1976. The Social Structure of Attention (London: Wiley).
Crespi, Bernard, and Kyle Summers. 2014. ‘Inclusive Fitness Theory for the Evolution of Religion’, Animal Behaviour 92: 313-23. Doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.anbehav.2014.02.013.
Curry, Andrew. 2008. ‘Gobekli Tepe: The World’s First Temple?’, Smithsonian 39.8: 54-60.
DeConcini, Barbara. 1991. ‘The Crisis of Meaning in Religion and Art’, The Christian Century 108.10: 323-26.
Dissanayake, Ellen. 1988. What Is Art For? (Seattle: University of Washington Press).
———. 2008. ‘The Arts after Darwin: Does Art Have an Origin and Adaptive Function?’, in Kitty Zijlmans and Wilfried van Damme (eds.), World Art Studies: Exploring Concepts and Approaches (Amsterdam: Valiz): 241-63.
Dutton, Denis. 2009. The Art Instinct: Beauty, Pleasure, and Human Evolution (New York: Bloomsbury Press).
Eliade, Mircea. 2006 [1937]. ‘Folklore as an Instrument of Knowledge’, in Bryan Rennie (ed.), Mircea Eliade: A Critical Reader (‘Folklorul ca instrument de cunoa?tere’, Revista funda?iilor regale 4.4: 137-52) (London: Equinox Publishing): 25-40.
Fodor, Jerry. 1983. The Modularity of Mind: An Essay on Faculty Psychology (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press).
Geertz, Armin. 2008. ‘From Apes to Devils and Angels: Comparing Scenarios on the Evolution of Religion’, in Bulbulia et al. 2008: 43-49.
Gell, Alfred. 1992. ‘The Technology of Enchantment and the Enchantment of Technology’, in Jeremy Coote and Anthony Shelton (eds.), Anthropology, Art and Aesthetics (Oxford: Oxford University Press): 40-63.
———. 1998. Art and Agency: An Anthropological Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
Gellner, Ernest. 1988. Plough, Sword and Book: The Structure of Human History (London: Collins Harvill).
Gigerenzer, Gerd, and Peter M. Todd. 1999. ‘Fast and Frugal Heuristics: The Adaptive Toolbox’, in Gerd Gigerenzer, Peter M. Todd, and the ABC Research Group (eds.), Simple Heuristics that Make Us Smart (New York: Oxford University Press): 1-34.
Guthrie, Stewart E. 1993. Faces in the Clouds: A New Theory of Religion (New York: Oxford University Press).
Huizinga, Johann. 1955. Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play Element in Culture (Boston: Beacon Press).
Ingold, Tim. 1993. ‘Tool Use, Sociality and Intelligence’, in Kathleen R. Gibson and Tim Ingold (eds.), Tools, Language and Cognition in Human Evolution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press): 429-45.
James, William. 1961 [1902]. The Varieties of Religious Experience (New York: Collier).
Lang, Bernhard. 1986. ‘Street Theatre, Raising the Dead, and the Zoroastrian Connection in Ezekiel’s Prophecy’, in Johan Lust (ed.), Ezekiel and his Book: Textual and Literary Criticism and their Interrelation (Leuven: Leuven University Press): 297-316.
Lévi-Strauss, Claude. 1969. The Raw and the Cooked (trans. John and Doreen Weightman; New York: Harper Torchbooks).
Lossky, Vladimir. 1978. Orthodox Theology: An Introduction (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminar Press).
Luhmann, Niklas. 2000. Art as a Social System (Stanford: Stanford University Press).
Mann, Charles C. 2011. ‘The Birth of Religion’, National Geographic 219.6: 34-59.
Mayr, Ernst. 1988. Toward a New Philosophy of Biology (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press).
McGilchrist, Iain. 2009. The Master and his Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press).
Mithen, Steven J. 1996. The Prehistory of the Mind: A Search for the Origins of Art, Religion and Science (London: Thames & Hudson).
Murray, Michael. 2008. ‘Four Arguments That the Cognitive Psychology of Religion Undermines the Justification of Religious Belief’, in Bulbulia et al. 2008: 365-70.
Ramachandran, Vilayanur S., and Sandra Blakeslee. 2005. Phantoms in the Brain: Human Nature and the Architecture of the Mind (London: Harper Collins).
Renan, Ernest. 1953. Oeuvres Completes, vol. 4 (ed. H. Psichari; Paris: Calman-Lévy).
Ruiz, Jean-Pierre. 2007. ‘An Exile’s Baggage: Toward a Postcolonial Reading of Ezekiel’, in Jon L. Berquist (ed.), Approaching Yehud (Atlanta, GA: Society of Biblical Literature): 117-35.
———. 2011. Readings from the Edges: The Bible and People on the Move. Studies in Latino/a Catholicism (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books).
Scalise Sugiyama, Michelle. 2001a. ‘Food, Foragers, and Folklore: The Role of Narrative in Human Subsistence’, Evolution and Human Behavior 22.4: 221-40. Doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S1090-5138(01)00063-0.
———. 2001b. ‘Narrative Theory and Function: Why Evolution Matters’, Philosophy and Literature 25.2: 233-50. Doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/phl.2001.0035.
———. 2004. ‘Predation, Narration and Adaptation: “Little Red Riding Hood” Revisited’, Interdisciplinary Literary Studies 5: 108-27.
———. 2005. ‘Reverse Engineering Narrative: Evidence of Special Design’, in Jonathan Gottschall and David Sloan Wilson (eds.), The Literary Animal: Evolution and the Nature of Narrative (Rethinking Theory) (Chicago, IL: Northwestern University Press): 177-96.
Scham, Sandra. 2008. ‘The World’s First Temple’, Archaeology 61.6: 22-27.
Schmidt, Klaus. 2006. Sie bauten die ersten Tempel (Munich: Beck).
Sjöblom, Tom. 2008. ‘Narrativity, Emotions, and the Origins of Religion’, in Bulbulia et al. 2008: 279-85.
Soden, Wolfram von. 1955. ‘Gibt es ein Zeugnis dafür, daß die Babylonier an die Wiederauferstehung Marduks geglaubt haben?’, Zeitschrift für Assyriologie 51: 130-66. Doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/zava.1955.51.1.130.
Sperber, Dan, and Deirdre Wilson. 1988. Relevance: Communication and Cognition (Oxford: Blackwell).
Staniloae, Dumitru. 2000. The Experience of God: Orthodox Dogmatic Theology, Vol. 2: The World: Creation and Deification (Brookline, MA: Holy Cross Orthodox Press).
———. 2002. Orthodox Spirituality: A Practical Guide for the Faithful and a Definitive Manual for the Scholar (trans. Archimandrite Jerome Newville and Otilia Kloos; South Canaan, PA: St. Tikhon’s Seminary Press).
Taves, Ann. 2009. Religious Experience Reconsidered: A Building-Block Approach to the Study of Religion and Other Special Things (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press).
Thomas, Nicholas. 1998. ‘Foreword’, in Gell 1998: vii-xiii.
Tooby, John, and Leda Cosmides. 1992. ‘The Psychological Foundations of Culture’, in Jerome Barkow, Leda Cosmides, and John Tooby (eds.), The Adapted Mind: Evolutionary Psychology and the Generation of Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press): 19-136.
Wilson, Edward O. 1975. Sociobiology: The New Synthesis (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University).
Published
2015-10-12
Issue
Section
Articles
How to Cite
Rennie, B. (2015). Religion and Art Behavior—A Theory and an Example: The Biblical Prophets as Postcolonial Street Theater. Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture, 9(3), 312-334. https://doi.org/10.1558/jsrnc.v9i3.27054
