ABSTRACT
This chapter proposes a new cognitive explanation of magic and applies it to early Christian evidence from the first and second centuries AD. It argues that magic emerges and survives due to factors. Christianity attempted to coordinate mythology, rituals, social life, philosophical thought, and ethics. Whereas in Srensen's theory of magic theories of ritual and magical agency need to be established before one can start to explain magic, in my explanation these levels will be added to an underlying, elementary pattern of magical behavior. Skinner's insights as well as subsequent experimental work on his concept of superstitious conditioning, and show how this line of research can be combined with other evidence to provide a new explanation of magic. It also argues that tradition about Jesus and the apostles could have circulated in oral transmission before Paul's time but such a hypothesis is impossible to test because of the lack of evidence.
