Thinking with Your Gut

If cosmic geography is culturally descriptive rather than revealed truth, it takes its place among many other biblical examples of culturally relative notions. For example, in the ancient world, people believed that the seat of intelligence, emotion, and personhood was in the internal organs, particularly the heart, but also the liver, kidneys, and intestines.

Many Bible translations use the English word “mind” when the Hebrew text refers to the entrails, showing the ways in which language and culture are interrelated. In modern language, we still refer to the heart metaphorically as…