ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the latter argument, without denying the relevance of cultural analysis. The chapter introduces two themes from the cognitive science of religion and explores their potential explanatory power for the analysis of early Christian taboos and the pollution of the dead in particular. The psychological research carried out by Nemeroff and Rozin does not reveal much with regard to the cognitive mechanisms underlying the principles of contagion magic they have advanced. Thus, there may be something to learn from psychological and cognitive research on contagion and the emotion of disgust, whatever stance take toward symbolist accounts of biblical and early Christian ideas about pollution. The distinction between intuition and reflective thinking clarifies the analyses of the social world and everyday life of early Christians and offers empirical support for the models used in socio-historical and history-of-religion studies. It explores the cognitive systems which operate in people's beliefs relating to contagion and the ritual disposal of bodies.
