RT Article
T1 Social and Cultural Anthropology
JF The Oxford handbook of ritual and worship in the Hebrew Bible
SP 124
OP 141
A1 Gilders, William K. 1967-
LA English
PB Oxford University Press
YR 2020
UL https://www.ixtheo.de/Record/1740315146
AB This chapter looks at the interpretation of ritual in the Hebrew Bible from the perspective of anthropology, which has had a close symbiotic relationship with biblical studies since the emergence of the comparative study of human culture in the 19th century. Beginning in the 1960s, a new wave of anthropological interest in biblical ritual was catalyzed especially by the work of Mary Douglas. Biblical scholars have drawn on anthropologists’ theories of ritual. The dominant approach to ritual in both anthropology and biblical studies identifies it as symbolic, representational activity. This perspective has been challenged by interpreters who highlight the absence of indigenous symbolic interpretation of ritual in a number of societies and urge caution in constructing elaborate symbolic systems for biblical ritual. Study of biblical ritual involves the ethnography of ancient Israelite texts about ritual activity.
SN 9780190944933
SN 9780190222130
DO 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190222116.013.8