The present contribution offers a neurosociological and socio-cognitive re-analysis of the two festivities dedicated to the ancient Roman goddess known as Bona Dea, both managed and attended by women only. Additionally, the main variants of Bona Dea’s mythography are assessed as a violent reminder of gendered behavioural norms and as a coercive mate-guarding strategy supported by religious storytelling. The two festivities are assessed as different expressions of class stratification and socio-political negotiation within the Roman agnatic patriarchy. The patrician December festival is identified as a special agent ritual with distinctly imagistic features. The poorly known May celebration is tentatively reconstructed as a predominantly doctrinal, non-patrician special patient ritual, mainly attended by freedwomen, and led by a priestess known as the damiatrix. The supposedly orgiastic Greek roots of the cult are questioned on linguistic, historiographical, and archaeological grounds. The conclusions highlight the need to establish a cross-disciplinary cognitive historiography of sex and gender in antiquity to overcome the limitations behind the study of ancient women’s religious experiences.

This brief concluding chapter recaps the main conclusions of the body chapters, affirms the importance of cognitive theorizing for the study of ancient religion, locates the different religious expressions studied in these chapters along a continuum of cognitively optimal and costly religion, and points to potential areas of future research at the intersection of biblical studies, Israelite religion, and cognitive science of religion (CSR).

This opening chapter introduces a key set of distinctions in cognitive science and the cognitive sciences of religion between intuitive and reflective types of cognition, implicit and explicit concepts, and cognitively optimal and costly religious traditions. The chapter argues for the importance, relevance, and applicability of cognitive theories and findings for the study of ancient Israelite religion. It is argued that an informed cognitive perspective can illuminate ancient texts, art, and religion, while also acknowledging that such historical materials can be used as valuable fact-checks to critically test and refine current cognitive theories. The chapter envisions a multi-disciplinary endeavor in which historians, biblical scholars, and cognitive researchers contribute to a richer understanding of religion in ancient Israel.