ABSTRACT
The aim of this paper is to explore possible connections between three theoretical positions relevant to our understanding of religion: (1) Durkheim’s classical theory of religion as presented in his Elementary Forms; (2) certain potentially fruitful perspectives in actual cognitive studies (meme-theory and Merlin Donald’s evolutionary model of the development of human cognition); and (3) a central point in the most “theological” part of the Hebrew Bible, the theology in the book of Deuteronomy. I maintain that Durkheim’s theory is fundamentally “cognitive” in so far as the concept of “society” in his use of the term basically means a reservoir of representations shared by a number of individual consciousnesses, the acquisition, maintenance, dissemination, and disappearance of which the theory of religion wishes to explain. I point out similarities between Durkheim’s basic religious scenario, basic scenarios in cognitive theories and central Deuteronomic themes in its normative reflection on its own religion.
