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This book, in many ways the first
of its kind, addresses the issue of rituals and their embedded ritual theory,
in the religion of ancient Israel. The leading idea of the book is
that rituals are an autonomous form of expression of the human mind. The
human mind expresses itself in rituals, as it does in language, the arts, and
mathematics. Rituals are not performative
translations of symbols and ideas, and in religion, not necessarily of any
kind of theology. Theology does not explain how rituals are done and how they
accomplish what they claim to do. The book begins with a general discussion
of what rituals are, and argues that the ritual theory of each ritual is not
in any general of ritual but embedded in the ritual act itself. Every ritual is structured in such a way
that its details create the behavioural logic that
makes ritual work. The difference is explored between the early and
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institutionalised phases of the
religion of ancient Israel. Here the role of the economic
ethos is the focus of the discussion. The book explores the links between
mythic and rituals, arguing that the connectedness with ritual endows a story
with a mythic essence. Detailed discussions of various rituals exemplify the
major theoretical discourse. The book is of interest to scholars in the areas
of religious studies, the anthropology of religion, and Halakhah
(law and ritual).
Ithamar Gruenwald, Ph.D., has been teaching at Tel Aviv University since 1967. He is chair of the
Program in Religious Studies, and acted as chair of the Department of Jewish
Philosophy for a total of ten years. He has lectured at universities in North America and Europe and organised
over twenty international conferences. His major publications are Apocalyptic
and Merkavah Mysticism (Leiden, 1980), and From Apocalypticism
to Gnosticism (Bern, 1988).
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