“Ritual, like language, tool use, symbolism, and music, is one of the constituent elements in the mix of what it means to be human” (Stephenson 2015, 1). So begins Barry Stephenson’s recent introductory book on ritual. As commonplace and essential as ritual is, however, characterizing it is surprisingly difficult, as is grasping its importance to all human societies, including early Christian groups. There is very limited consensus about how to define it. Likewise, people underestimate the vital role it plays in human life. This has been especially true among scholars of early Christianity, at least until very recently. This book represents an attempt to counteract the undervaluing of ritual by placing it front and center as it considers early Christian life. More than that, it seeks to situate early Christian ritual in the rich ritual fabric of the larger Greco–Roman world and to do so by using ritual theory selectively, critically, and explicitly.
Endeavoring to define ritual
A selection of recent New York Times headlines:
•When a Precision Airport Security Ritual Works Too Well
•New York Today: Tax Day Ritual Recedes
•Ritual of Ever-Present Coverage May Not Pass Muster with Trump
•Losing a Comforting Ritual: Treatment
•A Ghastly Ritual Repeats Itself
•Political Rituals After Mass Shootings
•The Embarrassing Debt Ceiling Ritual
•Another Mass Grave Dug by ISIS in Iraq, and a Ghastly Ritual Renewed
To get at early Christian ritual and its significance, it might be best to begin with how ritual is understood nowadays. Starting there is especially important because contemporary usage of the term ritual is strikingly inconsistent, and the way it is commonly used differs decidedly from more considered, scholarly notions of ritual—certainly different from how contributors to this book understand it. The first four headlines above and the stories they introduce understand ritual as repetitive behavior or routine that has an immediate and obvious goal in view. In the story under the first headline, Laura Masse (as told to Joan Raymond) describes a set of actions she considers her airport security ritual. When she passes through security, she always sets her belongings on the conveyor belt in a set order: shoes, belt, carry-on, purse. “Keeping things in this order,” she says, “has become a ritual” (Raymond 2008). By that Masse evidently means a routine, and she admits that some would simply call it obsessive-compulsive behavior. Whether she is obsessive or not, Masse’s goal is explicit: to speed her way through security and not leave anything behind.
An explicit goal also lies behind what the second headline labels tax day ritual. Journalist Andy Newman looks back to a time before widespread electronic filing, when last-minute filers would swamp major urban post offices every year at closing time on or near April 15th. Their aim was clear: to meet the mailing deadline and thus avoid the late filing penalty. To Newman, this was ritual because it was predictable and recurrent human behavior. It was also intensely communal: Newman notes what he called the “frenzy,” “circus,” and “mad scene” that typified the sizable gatherings at post office doors (Newman 2014). This collective aspect makes Newman’s sense of ritual quite different from Masse’s, which is personal, though both agree about it being purposeful.
While the goal is less exact and the behavior less defined, the third headline points to a protocol or custom that has been in place for decades: a designated group of journalists, a so-called press pool, sticks close to the president of the United States at all times. The pool can contact the president at a moment’s notice and can convey information about the interaction to the media immediately. The aim is to keep the press and public informed, however that is understood, especially if an emergency or the unexpected occurs. Journalist Michael Grynbaum calls this the ritual of ever-present coverage, and notes that President Trump is less ready than presidents of the last few decades to tolerate this practice (Grynbaum 2016).
The fourth headline places medical treatment in the category of ritual. By treatment, journalist Dana Jennings refers to therapy for prostate cancer generally and the thirty-three sessions of radiation he underwent specifically. Yet in this case the immediate and obvious goal of such therapy, the elimination of cancer cells, is not the primary focus. Nor does Jennings concentrate on the tightly scripted and repetitive actions of the medical technicians in administering the radiation therapy. Rather, Jennings offers a personal take on the proceedings, finding in these protocols something that structured his day-to-day life and provided interaction with others. They also defined him as a patient and thus gave him a clear status, which he found reassuring. When his treatment ends, Jennings feels at a loss (Jennings 2009).
The last four headlines and the stories that follow, while they also understand ritual as repetitive behavior or a routine, find that the purported goal of such action, if there even is one, is never met. In contrast to the first four examples, ritual here seems to be a pattern of behavior that is invariably fruitless or pointless. The fifth headline refers to a mass shooting that prompted visceral reaction from the public but ultimately led to no legislative action to curb such shootings. The article quotes President Obama:
I do get concerned that this becomes a ritual that we go through every three, four months, where we have these horrific mass shootings, and yet, we’re not willing to take some basic actions that we know could make a difference.
(Blow 2013)
A headline from two years later, the sixth one, deals with the same issue, specifies the nature of the ritual, and agrees about its futility. Mass shootings prompt reaction from public figures and a predictable discussion of such tragedies, but the public expressions of heartache produce no results, which the editorial calls “lame public rituals in which politicians express grief and then retreat quickly into denial about this scourge” (Editors of the New York Times 2015).
Also addressing a political issue, the seventh headline refers to the periodic raising of the U.S. government’s debt ceiling so that the government can borrow money and meet its obligations. This does not happen automatically. Congress must authorize such action, but in recent years has dragged its feet in doing so. It is this standoff between legislators and administration, with its predictable threats and posturing, that the article decries as the debt ceiling ritual. Journalist David Firestone equates ritual with the unnecessary and senseless, for the recurring stalemate over raising the borrowing limit seems not to have any point. Rather, it is an embarrassing activity, producing only uncertainty in the economy and confirming that dysfunction is rife in Washington, D.C. (Firestone 2014).
Predictable futility seems synonymous with ritual in the story introduced by the eighth and last headline as well. The article reports that as Iraqi security forces reclaim ISIS-held territory they regularly encounter mass graves, a mark of ISIS’s reign of terror. Iraqis with missing family members—there are many—visit these graves, hoping to determine the whereabouts of their loved ones. As a soldier in the Iraqi army says, “So I came here. … I don’t know his [my brother’s] destiny, his fate. At the very least I need to find his body. … So we can have a funeral” (Arango 2016). But such recurring visits, journalist Tim Arango notes, are fruitless. They are a painful ritual that resolves nothing.
Considered together, what do these popular uses of the term ritual say about it? On the one hand, all eight articles agree that it is a set of actions or scripted activity that occurs repeatedly, either regularly or on specific occasions. On the other hand, they reach opposing positions regarding the point of such activity. Four journalists think the purpose of ritual action is obvious and clear, but the other four find ritual distinguished by its futility or pointlessness. Which is it?
Neither, according to many ritual theorists and social scientists. While they agree that ritual activity is scripted and repetitive, what it does is neither obvious nor pointless. They try to distinguish routine activity whose purpose is clear from ritual activity, in which “the relationship between the means and the end is not ‘intrinsic,’ i.e., is either irrational or non-rationale” (Goody 1961, 159). Or, as Victor Turner puts it, ritual is “prescribed formal behavior for occasions not given over to technological routine ” (Turner 1967, 19). Edmund Leach offers examples: ritual denotes a
predictable action or series of actions that cannot be justified by a “rational” means-to-ends type of explanation. In this sense the English custom of shaking hands is a ritual, but the act of planting potatoes with a view to a harvest is not.
(Leach 1968, 13.521–22)
If ritual is neither regimented instrumental activity like assembling an automobile nor pointless activity, how can one best characterize what it does? Instructive are the public activities that have occurred at the sites of terrorist incidents in the last few years, such as Boylston Street, site of the Boston marathon bombing, the Bataclan concert hall in Paris, the Maelbeek metro station in Brussels, and Manchester Arena–Victoria Station. Initially these sites draw individuals who mourn the loss of a loved one by placing flowers, lighting a candle, or saying a prayer at makeshift memorials. Soon thereafter, and later at the anniversaries of these events, hundreds or thousands assemble in a more organized fashion to observe a minute’s silence, conduct vigils, sing, march, release balloons or doves, dedicate commemorative plaques or sculptures, and so forth. In short, an elaborate ritual develops at these sites. Those attending and participating in the ritual are mourning the dead and honoring the victims of terrorism, but the ritual—the peaceful assembly open to all—also gives bodily expression to the public ethic of the modern, western world: respect for others, tolerance, unity, and peace in response to the violence, division, and hatred thought to be embodied in the terrorist acts. Days after the terrorist attack of 7 April 2017 in central Stockholm, Sweden’s prime minister put the matter this way in a ceremony honoring the dead: “Our unity will always be stronger than the forces that seek to tear us apart. … Our way of life will never be suppressed. Our democracy will triumph over fundamentalism” (Anderson 2017).
Analyzing such commemorations, theorists would say that rituals have a referential aspect in that they reflect and express the social values and arrangements and the realities, both experienced and ideal, that participants in the ritual regard as fundamental. Evan Zuesse claims that rituals engage the “paradigmatic forms and relationships of reality” (Zuesse 2005, 7834). Monica Wilson says they reveal a group’s “values at their deepest level” (Wilson 1954, 240). Other theorists claim that rituals also generate these values and structures and shape these realities in their performance rather than only reflecting them. Catherine Bell finds in ritual the ability to “reproduce or reconfigure a vision of the order of power in the world” (Bell 1992, 81). So, more than simply mirroring this order, “ritual practices are themselves the very production and negotiation of power relations” (Bell 1992, 196). (Ritva Williams explores this aspect of ritual more fully in Chapter 3.)
If Bell is right, how does ritual do this? As ritual theorists have noted, the connection between means and ends—ritual activity and its outcome—is subtle, not explicit. Bell observes that “the indexical features of ritual … present and validate the social hierarchy indirectly depicted by them” (Bell 1992, 42; italics added). She asserts that ritual is distinguished by a misrecognition of what it is in fact doing—that ritual participants do not fully realize the social order and reality that ritual creates. Dining with others, for instance, is much more than nourishing oneself and satisfying one’s hunger. The very action distinguishes those at table from those that are not, thereby making a social distinction and fostering relationships among those at table. One’s position at table, even in informal settings, is seldom accidental. Rather, it reflects and enacts the relationship among the diners, as do the other features of the meal: what is served; the quality and quantity of the food and drink; in what sequence diners are served; if diners serve themselves, who goes first, second, etc. At every step, an order or ranking is set up and on display around the dinner table, whether diners fully realize it or not (Douglas 1972, 61–70).
It is likely the physical character of ritual that accounts for how it negotiates power relations indirectly and subtly—bodily rather than mentally, subconsciously rather than consciously. As the dinner party example shows, relations are established bodily: the way people conduct themselves in relation to others during ritual activity betokens their social relationship (Bourdieu 1990, 71–72). Theorists are keen, therefore, to stress this aspect of ritual and would agree with Evan Zuesse when he says, “Ritual centers on the body, and to understand ritual one shall have to take the body seriously” (Zuesse 2005, 7834). This key feature of ritual prompts Jason Lamoreaux to highlight the “somatic medium” or “concrete somatic action” of eating—tasting, chewing, swallowing, and so forth—when he investigates the ritual negotiations reflected in 1 Corinthians 8–10 (Chapter 7). Likewise, Erin Vearncombe’s exploration of manners—what she calls training of the body—and dress in Chapter 5 takes this aspect of ritual as a point of departure. In the course of her chapter she also offers a careful examination of how instrumental rituals are in shaping human disposition.
Complicating the determination of what ritual does is the inherently situational nature of rituals, which Bell also stresses (Bell 1992, 81). The social context in which a ritual takes place controls to a great extent its effects, as rituals do not have fixed outcomes. More precisely put, there is a feedback loop between ritual and its social frame or environment, and it is the interaction between the two that determines ritual’s significance (Handelman 2004). Bell devotes a whole section of a second book, Ritual: Perspectives and Dimensions, to the issue of ritual context. Part III of the book, titled “Context: The Fabric of Ritual Life,” begins,
A ritual is never alone. It is usually one ceremony among many in the larger ritual life of a person or community, one gesture among a multitude of gestures both sacred and profane, one embodiment among others of traditions of behavior down from one generation to another.
(Bell 1997, 171)
Or, as Stanley Tambiah observes, “festivals, cosmic rituals, and rites of passage, however prescribed they may be, are always linked to status claims and interests of the participants, and therefore always open to contextual meanings” (Tambiah 1985, 125). Virtually all ritual theorists would agree that social context—where a ritual takes place, when it takes place, who participates in it, and so forth—is crucial for gauging a ritual’s significance.
A definition meant to capture the referential, relational, physical, and situational character of ritual is this:
Ritual is socially scripted and authorized verbal and nonverbal expression and bodily movement that situates individuals and groups in socially defining relationships and statuses and that enables them to address changing circumstances (often crises) by achieving group consensus, by confirming or altering social arrangements, and by engaging transpersonal values and ultimate realities. Because it is crucial to the social structuring of reality, it is always relational, situational, strategic, and identity-giving.1
The provisional nature of this and every other definition of ritual cannot be emphasized too much. (Nicola Hayward’s useful review of definitions in Chapter 6 reflects the difficulty of defining ritual.) Edmund Leach concluded an encyclopedia article on ritual in this way:
Finally, it has to be stressed that even among those who have specialized in this field there is the widest possible disagreement as to how the word ritual should be used and how the performance of ritual should be understood.
(Leach 1968, 13.526)
No consensus has emerged in the fifty years since Leach wrote.2 As important as it is, ritual is a highly contested concept, like art or religion. It defies easy definition.
Even if the definition given above fails to be entirely satisfactory, it is more accurate than popular understandings of ritual (and makes an important corrective of them), and it offers a sense of how ritual is understood and approached in the chapters that follow. Readers will notice that all the chapters pay close attention to the social setting of the ritual or rituals under discussion. Moreover, the relational or interactive character of ritual determined the orientation of this book and is the basis of its threefold structure: Part I: Interacting with the divine; Part II: Group interactions; Part III: Contesting and creating ritual protocols. The third part focuses on Christ followers’ interactions with the rituals of the Mediterranean world as they developed new rituals.
Classifying rituals
Short of defining ritual, which some theorists avoid altogether, an alternative way of characterizing ritual is to assemble activities most would consider ritual and organize them. This could be called the family resemblance or polythetic approach and acknowledges that there is no single trait or set of traits that every ritual possesses. Encyclopedic treatments of ritual collect a wide range of rituals, and group like or related rituals under discrete categories. The Encyclopedia of Religious Rites, Rituals, and Festivals, for instance, has 129 entries, and its groupings of ritual run from Academic Rituals and Agricultural Rituals to Satanic Rituals and Scatological Rituals (Salamone 2004, ix–x). More analytical and systematic is Ronald Grimes’ taxonomy of eighteen ritual types, which he has refined over the course of thirty years: (1) rites of passage; (2) seasonal rites; (3) status conferring rites; (4) status maintenance rites; (5) status reversal rites; (6) celebration rites; (7) rites of mobility; (8) purification rites; (9) rites of exchange; (10) sacrificial rites; (11) agonistic rites (contests); (12) consecration rites; (13) ceremony; (14) commemoration; (15) mystical rites (inducing altered states of consciousness); (16) magical rites (healing, exorcism); (17) ritual drama; and (18) “new” rites (Grimes 2014, appendix 3; see also Grimes 1985, 68–116). These classifications, because they are relatively comprehensive, vividly demonstrate the vast range of ritual. On the other hand, the categories are so diverse that determining the commonality among them is difficult.
On the opposite end of the classification spectrum are schema that opt for bare-bones simplicity. Victor Turner once distinguished rites that mark transition or change in social status from those that maintain or confirm it, labeling the former ritual and the latter ceremony (Turner 1967, 95). While most ritual theorists would nowadays regard all such rites as ritual, the notion that rites either transform a ritual participant’s social status, like rites of passage, or confirm it, like a commemoration of some sort, is a useful binary for sorting out what rituals do.
Slightly more elaborate is Lauri Honko’s threefold division: (1) rites of passage; (2) calendrical rites; and (3) crisis rites (Honko 1979, 372–80; cf. Turner 1969, 168–69). Rites of passage focus on individuals and mark their movement from one status in life to another, such as a wedding to signal transition from single to married status. Calendrical rites are more communal and mark changes of season and events in the social and economic calendar. Rites of passage and calendrical rites are cyclical in that they mark the stages of life or the stages of the year. Noncyclical are crisis rites, which occur occasionally and unexpectedly. Here Honko has in mind ritual responses to catastrophes like fires, droughts, and epidemics. A variation on this tripartite scheme is that of Jens Schjødt, who finds that all rituals involve some kind of passage, rendering the rites of passage category superfluous. He opts for initiation rituals (in place of rites of passage), calendrical rituals, and crisis rituals. Whereas calendrical rituals maintain the status quo, crisis rituals bring groups or the individual from a negative to a neutral or normal state, while initiation takes the individual to a higher state or status (Schjødt 1986).
Situated between the Grimes and the Honko–Schjødt taxonomies are Catherine Bell’s six categories or genres of ritual (1997, 93–137):
1.Rites of passage include rites of birth, coming of age, marriage, and death. They may include rites of initiation.
2.Calendrical rites mark seasonal changes, observe events in the social year, or commemorate important historical or mythical events.
3.Rites of exchange and communion include offerings to a deity, sacrifices, prayer, incantation, divination, consultation of oracles, and fertility rites and are undertaken in expectation of receiving something in return, such as fertility, long life, health, safe passage, or some more abstract benefit. These rites operate on a continuum between quid pro quo exchanges for defined benefits and nearly disinterested communion with, and devotion to, the divine.
4.Rites of affliction aim to mitigate the influence of negative forces or conditions such as demonic spirits, sins, and impurity. They include rituals of healing, exorcism, and purification, along with preparation for encounters with the divine (including entry into an alternate state of consciousness).
5.Feasting, fasting, and festivals express commitment and adherence to the defining values of a group, community, society, or culture. They include lamentations, processions, games and contests, pilgrimages, and carnivals and rituals of reversal.
6.Political rites are ceremonial practices that construct, display, and promote the power of political institutions (such as king, state, the village elders) or the political interests of distinct constituencies and subgroups.
The value of this and other classifications lies in their providing what Ritva Williams (Chapter 3) calls a model or “a cognitive map for observing, categorizing, comparing, synthesizing and analyzing ancient ritual practices.” Bell admits that there is overlap among the categories and that they are not exhaustive. Moreover, some rituals could be assigned to more than one category. Nevertheless, several scholars have fruitfully deployed Bell’s classification to examine the rites they find described in biblical literature, be it the Old Testament Apocrypha (Davila 2009), the Old Testament Pseudepigrapha (Davila 2004), Qumran literature or Dead Sea Scrolls (Kugler 2002; Arnold 2006), or the Gospel of Mark (DeMaris 2014, 116–19).
Bell’s categories not only provide the analytical tools for better understanding ritual; they also promote critical reflection on the way ritual is conventionally analyzed. In the case of ancient Christian baptism, for instance, most scholars label it a rite of passage (e.g., Thomassen 2003), often without making an argument for doing so (e.g., Spinks 2006, xii). But there are good reasons to question this classification (Lawrence 2009). Baptism did not mark transition between statuses within a life cycle, as a rite of passage does. Nor is there evidence from the first centuries of the elaborate and lengthy procedures that attend rites of passage in traditional societies (DeMaris 2008, 18–20). Agnes Choi presents the problems attending the widely accepted classification of baptism as a rite of passage and, inspired by Bell, offers an alternative view (Chapter 4). A more illuminating way to consider baptism, she contends, is as a political rite, Bell’s sixth category. While perhaps puzzling at first glance, this alternative interpretation of baptism would surprise no one who has reflected on the implications of the baptismal act when it occurred in the Roman Catholic churches of Soviet-era Poland.
In addition to Bell’s sixfold taxonomy, contributors to this book make use of other classification schemes to make sense of the ritual or rituals they consider. In his chapter on honoring the divine (Chapter 1), Jonathan Schwiebert introduces the work of Erving Goffman on the notion of deference expressed in interaction ritual to help the reader understand the various ways inhabitants of the ancient Mediterranean world—Christ-followers, Judeans, or polytheists—approached and sought the favor of their god or gods. Goffman’s concept of deference falls into two kinds of interactions: presentational or approach rites and avoidance rites. This binary enables Schwiebert to organize ancient ritual action: Salutations, praise, dedications, prayers, offerings, sacrifices, and festivals—the positive aspect of honoring the divine—comprise presentational rituals. Preventing sacrilege and desecration, remedying pollution and impurity, and showing care in how one approaches the divine constitute avoidance rites. Equally useful classifications appear elsewhere in this book, such as in Chapter 9. There Richard Ascough considers ritual change or alteration on a scale running from minor (ritual modification) to major (innovation). Likewise, Richard DeMaris examines ritual transgression in Chapter 8 from the standpoint of whether a new and socially offensive ritual is coercively imposed or voluntarily embraced and practiced. The chapter also employs an active-versus-passive binary: whether ritual transgression lies in noncompliance—failure to carry out a culturally mandated ritual—or in active violation—calculated taboo breaking.
Context is (almost) everything
As many theorists have noted, the social or cultural context of a ritual is crucial for determining its significance. Especially important is ritual context, that is, the ritual world in which the ritual under consideration emerged and with which it interacted. Often a new ritual is a modification of an existing ritual. Studies of early Christian rituals have generally isolated Christian rituals from their cultural context and considered them primarily or exclusively in relation to a theological framework. Baptism, for instance, is typically interpreted in terms of eschatology, Christology, or soteriology rather than as a ritual in and of itself and as one ritual in a network of rituals. A case in point is Everett Ferguson’s nearly thousand-page treatment of baptism. It considers Greco–Roman ritual water use in a mere twelve pages and Jewish ritual water use in a scant twenty-two (Ferguson 2009).
Contributors to this book agree that considering cultural context is crucial for coming to a full understanding of ritual and that comparison of Christian rituals with their ritual counterparts in the ancient Mediterranean world is essential for illuminating them. Examples of such contextualization, a primary task of the book, are many:
•In Chapter 1 Jonathan Schwiebert locates the ancient Judean and Christian means of honoring God in the wide spectrum of ways the ancients honored the divine by identifying the common elements among them. Introducing the social–scientific notions of general reciprocity and deference allows him to find the common ground between rituals as varied as temple building, animal sacrifice, prayer, and house church meals. At the same time, Schwiebert notes that what he calls the “ceremonial idiom” for showing deference to the divine varied considerably across the Mediterranean world. In the case of Judeans, whose central temple in Jerusalem was destroyed in 70 ce, and Christians, who resisted participating in animal sacrifice, alternative ways of honoring the divine had to be developed.
•In Chapter 2 Steven Muir introduces scholarship about breathing practices across several cultures as a basis for assessing the deeply emotional expression of intimacy with the divine captured in the phrase “Abba, Father,” which the apostle Paul reports and deals with at two points in his letters. Likewise, in treating Paul’s mention of spiritual adoption (by God the Father) at several points in his letters, Muir turns to Roman adoption practices as the best context for making sense of Paul’s language.
•In Chapter 3 Ritva Williams offers readers a survey of the many ways the denizens of the ancient Mediterranean world, be they Greeks, Etruscans, Israelites, Romans, or Christ-followers, sought divine knowledge. These means included knowledge gained by agents—prophets, seers, et al.—in an alternate state of consciousness (ASC) or from non-ASC techniques of divination, such as observing astral phenomena—comets, eclipses, etc.—or casting lots. “Jesus and his earliest followers,” she notes, “were thoroughly enculturated in this world, using common means of accessing divine knowledge to construct an alternative set of power relations.” Williams’ contextualizing of early Christians’ divination shows that it was distinctive not so much in ritual technique as in application and result: rather than confirming, and conforming themselves to, existing power relations, that is, the Roman imperial structure, Christians utilized rituals to create alternative communities to that dominant structure.
•In Chapter 4 Agnes Choi’s focus on baptism as a water ritual allows her to consider it alongside other water rituals of the day: Roman bathing practices and Judean purificatory washings. Such comparison allows Choi to see “more clearly the boundaries separating these groups.” To the extent that baptism differed from these other ritual uses of water, it contributed to Christian self-definition.
•In Chapter 5 Erin Vearncombe argues that scholars of the ancient Roman world would do well to look at the regulation both of circles of Jesus followers and Greco–Roman associations with a view to understanding how the simple rituals around dining and dressing were effective at fostering community bonds and a common disposition.
•In Chapter 6 Nicola Hayward considers Christian funerary iconography in the context of Roman commemorative artifacts and practices: ancestral masks and busts, funerary portraiture, and funerary rituals such as festivals.
•In Chapter 7 Jason Lamoreaux pushes scholars of the apostle Paul and the Christian community at Corinth to broaden their approach to the debate about eating idol meat reflected in 1 Corinthians. The debate over dining practices there was not simply between Paul and rival Christian parties in Corinth; it included authorities who oversaw dining taking place in Corinth’s many temples, meals in which some Corinthian Christians were participating.
•In Chapter 8 Richard DeMaris contends that a ritual’s social context is crucial for determining when a ritual triggers conflict. Accordingly, placing early Christian rituals in their social and historical contexts is essential for deciding when and how they were socially transgressive. His chapter also explores occurrences of ritual transgression across several cultures and in various historical settings as a way of determining what motivated it.
•In Chapter 9 Richard Ascough begins with existing Jewish/Judean practices as his point of departure for examining three rituals: purification by water, prayer, and meals. A case in point is the so-called last supper, which the Gospel of Luke identifies as a Passover meal. Yet, in the course of relating the events at table, Luke presents the reader with a significantly modified Passover, one at which the focus is the Kingdom of God and the new covenant connected with it. Likewise with the temple in Jerusalem as it is depicted in Luke: While it remains central in the narrative, its ritual function shifts. It is no longer a place of sacrifice but one of prayer.
These examples, which also serve as short chapter summaries, reflect a consensus among the contributors that the more a Christian ritual is treated in context—whether set alongside other Christian rituals, the vast array of Greco–Roman rituals, or rituals across cultures—the more light is shed on that particular ritual and early Christian ritual life in general.
Closing comments on terminological variety
Some concluding words about scholarly common ground and vocabulary—and especially the lack thereof—will further orient readers to the chapters that follow. Common ground includes the use of the same English translation of the Bible, namely the New Revised Standard Version, whenever contributors quote the New Testament. Contributors also agree that there is no dispute over what one calls the Roman Empire or the Hellenistic empires that ruled in the eastern Mediterranean after Alexander, until Rome eventually absorbed them: the Seleucids in the Middle East, the Ptolemies in Egypt.
After that, however, consensus breaks down. Contributors vary in how they refer to key subject matter in the field of New Testament studies (reproduced in italics below). Five constellations of terms deserve attention:
•god, God, gods, the One God, the Jewish God, YHWH, god of Israel, God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The English language has customarily distinguished the “Judeo–Christian” god from other gods by capitalizing god, hence, God. Many scholars consider this to be Christian or Jewish or monotheistic bias, and have moved to more neutral language or chosen to adopt vocabulary closer to what one finds in the biblical text when it refers to God. (YHWH is the consonantal form of God’s name in Hebrew.) Along these same lines, many scholars have replaced the term pagan with polytheist or polytheistic, which refers to a devotee of, or devotion to, several gods.
•Jews, Judaism, Jewish, Judean, Judaean, Septuagint, Diaspora. Many scholars would say that Judaism, as a religion institutionally defined by the rabbinate and synagogue, did not emerge until the third century ce at the earliest. It is therefore historically inaccurate to use the terms Jews, Judaism, and Jewish to refer to an earlier time. On the other hand, Judaism had historical roots in ancient Palestine running back hundreds of years. Accordingly, Jews and Jewish are used in almost all translations of New Testament documents, even though the latest documents are earlier than 150 ce. Many scholars follow these translations, as do some contributors to this book. Others opt for Judean (or Judaean), which refers to the region of Judea in Palestine, a term that emphasizes geography and ethnicity. The whole matter is complicated by the migration of Judeans outside of Judea—called the Diaspora—and the translation of their Hebrew- and Aramaic-language scriptures into Greek: the Septuagint. Is it appropriate to call Greek-speaking Judeans living outside Judea Judeans? Or is Jews the better term? These and other, related questions are fully addressed in Cohen 1999, Berquist 2006, Harland 2009, and elsewhere. The answers vary.
•the Temple, The Temple, Jewish Temple, Second Temple, Jerusalem temple, Second Temple Judaism. Central to the ancient Israelite people was the temple in Jerusalem, also referred to as Solomon’s temple or the first temple, to distinguish it from the second temple. Many decades after the conquest of Israel and the destruction of that temple (586 or 587 bce), a second one was built. It, too, was destroyed, in this case by the Romans in 70 ce. The period between the building of the second temple and its destruction is standardly referred to as second temple Judaism, even by scholars who opt for Judean and Judeans instead of Jewish and Jews.
•Jesus adherents, Jesus followers, Jesus movement(s), Christ cult, Christ groups, Christ-adherents, Christ-followers, Christ movement(s), Christians, Christian, Christianity, Christianities. Much like Judaism, Christianity was in embryonic form until the third century. There were also various, competing forms of it from the very beginning. Some scholars like to acknowledge that variety by using the term Christianities instead of Christianity. A good number of New Testament scholars, perhaps the majority, now refer to early believers and their religious identity in the early centuries (first and second centuries ce) with one of many terms above, not as Christian and Christianity. A consensus about the most appropriate terms is unlikely to develop soon.
•assembly, Jesus-assembly, church, house church(es), congregation, circle, group, Christian community. Very different from the hierarchical institution of the fourth century ce and later, early groups of Christ-followers took many forms, all relatively simple, which they adopted from existing Greco–Roman institutions. Scholars are keen to emphasize the local and rudimentary nature of these groups, and try to capture their character in a variety of terms. In the early centuries it is anachronistic to talk about The Church as though it were a monolithic institution.
Rather than standardizing vocabulary across the chapters, it seemed best to leave the variety in place and alert readers to it and the reasons for it. Doing so gives a sense of the ongoing, healthy debate among scholars who study the New Testament, Christian origins, and ancient Mediterranean religions. Moreover, this terminological variety resonates with the wide array of ritual theories deployed in this book.
Notes
1This definition reflects the consensus reached in the classroom by students I have worked with on ritual in the last two decades.
2Jan Platvoet has assembled scholarly definitions of ritual from 1909 to 1991 (Platvoet 1995, 42–45). Wary of trying to define ritual, Ronald Grimes offers a list titled “Family Characteristics of Ritual” and considers the features of ritual under an extensive table titled “Elements of Ritual, Expanded” (Grimes 2014, 194 and 237–41). He provides an extensive list of definitions formulated by scholars in appendix 1 of The Craft of Ritual Studies (014).
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