Was Jesus a shaman?

MAnvir Singh is not your typical academic anthropologist. He writes regularly for The New Yorker on subjects ranging from fictitious languages ​​of Dune to the history of fully meat diets why he wears a turban (to mark his sikh heritage). He seems to savor wisdom has received wisdom.

Singh cut his ethnographic teeth doing a job on the ground on an island remote in Indonesia, living in the villages of Mentawai and getting to know the local shamans, known as the name success. He looked at these traditional healers to transform, paint their faces and cover their body with all kinds of ornaments, then sing and dance when entering an altered state.

Singh says that a large part of what we believe about shamanism is wrong – both the romantic vision of what he calls “primitive wisdom” and the cynical perspective of “superstitious savagery”. His book Shamanism: Timeless religionBases on his own work in the field and an intercultural study of shamanism. He proves that shamanism, in one form or another, was the original human religion.

Was Jesus a shaman?

Jesus clearly presents the characteristics of a shaman. He joined invisible agents, exorcising demons and invoking the power of the Holy Spirit. He also heals. Very frequently, he divides, he prophesies. So, the question is: Jesus between the modified states? This is something that theologians argue. In the New Testament, Mark describes a scene where Jesus heals. And people flock to him to be healed. Depending on the translation, he is described as being out of his mind or amazed. People even say that he is possessed by demons. Stevan Davies, a theologian, argued that this described a plausible a modified state.

As long as we had a recognizable religion, we have probably had shamanism.

More generally, we know that the eastern Mediterranean during this period was very shamanic. We know that the Hebrew tradition was shamanic. And the Greeks were shamanic. Neo-Assyrians had shamanic practices. So here we have an individual who heals, divides and engages with other beings. And then it is followed by the first Christian church, which is very ecstatic. The day of Pentecost is people who speak in tongues. Paul the apostle speaks of the gifts of speaking in languages ​​and healing. It is a very ecstatic place, a context that looks very shamanic. I think we should easily entertain the hypothesis that Jesus was a shaman. We also know that after this ecstatic period, when the Christian Church was centralized, there was a great tour against ecstatic behavior. Thus, there may be the desire to move this type of behavior in the first Gospels.

Would you like to call shamanism first religion?

I think that shamanism has probably characterized the first religious practices of behavioral or cognitively modern humans. As long as we had a recognizable religion, we have probably had shamanism. I am an anthropologist, but also someone who thinks a lot about psychology. The approach I adopted is that religion and shamanism are incredibly convincing, that we live in an uncertain world. And we converge the means to explain it and intervene to manage this uncertainty. Our explanations and understanding of uncertainty are manifested as a religious belief. Then, the ways in which we try to manage uncertainty, control of uncertainty, tamed uncertainty, is the religious ritual, shamanism being a convincing version of this.

Imagine that we are in an environment where people fall sick. People die at random, it is difficult to predict rain. We know that very reliable, through cultures, to understand these uncertain events, people converge on explanations that invoke invisible agents, gods, minds, ghosts. So the question becomes, how can you engage with these invisible agents who are supposed to supervise uncertainty? If I come to you and say, “Hey Steve, I know that a family member is sick. I can speak to the goddess of the rain, or I can speak to the demon of the disease. I can fight them.” It may not be convincing for you. But if I seem to be a human fundamentally different from you, if I have lost my skeleton and I have crystals in my body, and I engage in a kind of practice that gives the impression of fundamentally transforming a different type of being, then I think that makes me much more convincing for you. I interact with these agents who supervise uncertainty. I think that is very centrally what is happening with shamanism: altered states and fundamental transformation make convincing cases for all those involved. You fight with the forces which are supposed to control intercolvability.

I think we should easily entertain the hypothesis that Jesus was a shaman.

Is religion fundamentally on experience or belief?

This is a fascinating question because sometimes there is this approach among cognitive anthropologists to think: “Oh, the spirit produces religious beliefs.” Something that Tanya Luhrmann’s research has really reinforced for me is that the mind, through experience, produces belief-that if I’m just seated here, in my room, will I start to believe in invisible minds, or is it really the experience of minds? This will nourish belief. Is religion an experience or a belief? I would rather reply that I think that the experience is more and more appreciated as a very powerful engine of belief.

My first summer in Mentawai in Indonesia, observing a shaman’s healing ceremony, there was a child who woke up paralyzed and there was a ceremony, and he left not to be paralyzed. I was very struck by that. There are different explanatory frameworks that you can have for this. Maybe it was conversion, maybe he implicitly has an illness. But I was very struck after that and I talked to friends of what it could have been. Placebo could potentially be a mechanism to make them feel better.

But what I found so striking about these healing ceremonies is how jubilant and festive and festive. I was a receptionist in high school in a hospital, and my big uncle contracted cancer and died. All around him was so dark. But then, I’m going to Mentawai, and someone’s foot seems to fall, and everyone dances, and they feast on each other, and you stay up all night, and after the shaman’s dance, other people dance. Social affirmation is a source of healing.

More than Nautilus on shamans, religion and rituals:

“”The ancient rites which gave birth to religion“Sacred beliefs were probably born from the prehistoric link and rituals

“”Guided by vegetable voices“Plants speak to this environmentalist. They tell him how to make better science.

“”The real magic of rituals“We could call them superstitions or spells, but they really house anxiety

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Image of lead: Shutterstock / Ruskackesser

• Steve Paulson

  Published on October 7, 2025

  Steve Paulson is the executive producer of the Wisconsin Radio Syndicated Syndicated Radio To the best of our knowledge. He is the author of Atoms and Eden: Conversations on religion and science. You can find his podcast on psychedelics, Brighthere.