The conceit in the title of this volume is that ritual, however expansively it may be defined, is ineluctably tethered to religion and worship. It has a primal connection to the idea that a transcendent order—numinous and mysterious, supranatural and elusive, divine and wholly other—gives meaning and purpose to life. The construction of rites and rituals enables humans to conceive and apprehend this transcendent order, to symbolize it and interact with it, to postulate its truths in the face of contradicting realities and to repair them when they have been breached or diminished. We may debate whether the idea provides the mental support for the ritual or the ritual the physical manifestation of the idea (e.g., Campbell 1972), whether in the evolution of human cognition the ritual is (only) mimetic or generative (e.g., Donald 1991), but in the ancient world, where divinity is presupposed, there would have been no grounds for such a debate. To turn to a modern poet for the words to describe that enchanted world is anachronistic, but perhaps instructive nonetheless.
But the first idea was not to shape the clouds
In imitation. The clouds preceded us
There was a muddy centre before we breathed.
There was a myth before the myth began,
Venerable and articulate and complete…
We are the mimics. Clouds are pedagogues…(Stevens 1990, 383)
The focus of this Handbook is on ritual and worship from the perspective of biblical studies, particularly on the Hebrew Bible and its ancient Near Eastern antecedents. Within this context, attention will be given to the development of ideas in Jewish, Christian, and Muslim thinking but only insofar as they connect with or extend the trajectory of biblical precedents. The volume reflects a wide range of analytical approaches to ancient texts, inscriptions, iconography, and ritual artifacts. It examines the social history and cultural knowledge encoded in rituals, and explores the way rituals shape and are shaped by politics, economics, ethical imperatives, and religion itself. Toward this end, the volume is organized into six major sections: Historical Contexts, Interpretive Approaches, Ritual Elements (participants, places, times, objects, practices), Cultural and Theological Perspectives, History of Interpretation, Social-Cultural Functions, and Theology and Theological Heritage.
Various aspects treated here have been examined at some length in previous scholarly works (e.g., sacrifice: Eberhardt 2002, 2011; Gilders 2004; Janzen 2004; Porter and Schwartz 2013; Ruane 2013). Sophisticated anthropological approaches have expanded our understanding of the cultural anatomy of ritual (e.g., Geertz 1977; Bourdieu 1977; Olyan 2004, 2012, 2019; Kämmerer 2007), and increasing attention to ritual theory has provided a foundation for theoretical analysis of the role and function of ritual in ancient societies (e.g., Bell 1997; Douglas 1966; Gorman 1990; Klingbeil 2007; Gruenwald 2003; Watts 2007). What has been lacking is an up-to-date compendium of the work that provides the information essential for constructing a comprehensive and integrated account of ritual and worship in the ancient world. This Handbook aspires to fill that need.