A Multiplicity of Washing Rites and a Multiplicity of Experiences
The Varied Discursive Framing of a Bodily Practice
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If experience can be defined as the affectively charged interaction with the world by means of the body as agency or medium, various sites of such affectively charged interaction mapped on to the body may be fruitfully analysed to explain the operations of religion as discourse. Baptism is one such site. In fact, baptism as the shorthand for of collective noun denoting a spectrum of ritual practices is a particularly apposite example. Baptism as ritual practice has had a varied history, both in terms of originary context as well as interpretive or discursive trajectories. This essay primarily tracks two such significant trajectories: the one being baptismal practices as purification rites operating in socially ‘heterodox’ early Jewish and early Christian groups within an apocalyptic, dissociative framework; the other being ‘orthodox’ baptismal discourse as expressed in, for instance, Cyril of Jerusalem’s Mystagogical Catheceses. In the former, the strong affect of dissociation is coupled with visionary experiences, hence its embeddedness in apocalyptic trajectories with their strongly dismissive stance to the surrounding world. In the case of the latter, the dramatic performances of the Easter liturgy, arguably, created the experience of salvation and resurrection. In both instances, the intersection of ritual, bodily experience, religious discourse, and social imaginaire provides the explanatory framework for baptism as foundational ritual practice in the making and maintenance of religious discourse and its attendant experiential effects. In this sense, such is the argument pursued in the essay, baptism is a core facet of early Jewish and early Christian religious experience.
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2
Fiona Bowie, “Building Bridges, Dissolving Boundaries: Toward a Methodology for the Ethnographic Study of the Afterlife, Mediumship, and Spiritual Beings,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 81, no. 3 (2013): 699. She draws here on the work of Gavin Flood, “Reflections on Tradition and Inquiry in the Study of Religions,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 74, no. 1 (2006): 47–58.
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3
Tim Murphy, “Speaking Different Languages: Religion and the Study of Religion,” in Secular Theories on Religion. Current Perspectives, ed. Tim Jensen and Mikael Rothstein (Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 2000), 183–192.
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6
Pierre Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power (ed. John B. Thompson, trans. Gino Raymond and Matthew Adamson; Cambridge; Malden, Mass.: Polity Press, 1991); Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice (trans. Richard Nice; Cambridge Studies in Social and Cultural Anthropology; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977).
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13
Veronica Vasterling, “Body and Language: Butler, Merleau-Ponty and Lyotard on the Speaking Embodied Subject,” International Journal of Philosophical Studies 11, no. 2 (January 2003): 205–223.
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19
See for instance Jonathan David Lawrence, Washing in Water. Trajectories of Ritual Bathing in the Hebrew Bible and Second Temple Literature (Academia Biblica 23; Atlanta, Ga.: Society of Biblical Literature, 2006); Jonathan Klawans, Purity, Sacrifice, and the Temple. Symbolism and Supersessionism in the Study of Ancient Judaism (New York, N.Y.: Oxford University Press, 2005).
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22
See Jonathan Z. Smith, “Garments of Shame,” in Map is not Territory. Studies in the History of Religions (Leiden: Brill, 1978), 1–32.
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25
Philip A. Harland, “Christ-Bearers and Fellow-Initiates: Local Cultural Life and Christian Identity in Ignatius’ Letters,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 11, no. 4 (2003): 481–499. Compare this also to the elaborate description of the Isiac procession described in Apuleius’s The Golden Ass, Bk. XI.
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26
Glen W. Bowersock, Hellenism in Late Antiquity (Thomas Spencer Jerome Lectures 18; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 41–54.
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34
Egeria, Itinerarium. Reisebericht, 24.1–25.6; Cyril of Jerusalem, Myst. Cat..
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A Multiplicity of Washing Rites and a Multiplicity of Experiences
The Varied Discursive Framing of a Bodily Practice
In: Religion and TheologySearch for other papers by Gerhard van den Heever in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
If experience can be defined as the affectively charged interaction with the world by means of the body as agency or medium, various sites of such affectively charged interaction mapped on to the body may be fruitfully analysed to explain the operations of religion as discourse. Baptism is one such site. In fact, baptism as the shorthand for of collective noun denoting a spectrum of ritual practices is a particularly apposite example. Baptism as ritual practice has had a varied history, both in terms of originary context as well as interpretive or discursive trajectories. This essay primarily tracks two such significant trajectories: the one being baptismal practices as purification rites operating in socially ‘heterodox’ early Jewish and early Christian groups within an apocalyptic, dissociative framework; the other being ‘orthodox’ baptismal discourse as expressed in, for instance, Cyril of Jerusalem’s Mystagogical Catheceses. In the former, the strong affect of dissociation is coupled with visionary experiences, hence its embeddedness in apocalyptic trajectories with their strongly dismissive stance to the surrounding world. In the case of the latter, the dramatic performances of the Easter liturgy, arguably, created the experience of salvation and resurrection. In both instances, the intersection of ritual, bodily experience, religious discourse, and social imaginaire provides the explanatory framework for baptism as foundational ritual practice in the making and maintenance of religious discourse and its attendant experiential effects. In this sense, such is the argument pursued in the essay, baptism is a core facet of early Jewish and early Christian religious experience.
| All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract Views | 315 | 41 | 6 |
| Full Text Views | 177 | 2 | 0 |
| PDF Views & Downloads | 39 | 5 | 0 |
