Ritual Text And Law

Reflecting the range of their honorand's interests, the essays in Ritual, Text and Law provide a stimulating and panoramic exploration of the interrelated fields of liturgy and canon law in the Middle Ages, chiefly through the scrutiny of texts and their transmission. Roger Reynolds' scholarly work has not only considered the relations between law and liturgy, but has also focused on liturgical practice and the evolution of rituals, paleography and the often complicated relationships between canonical collections, in particular the southern Italian Collection in Five Books. Due in large part to Reynolds' research, the fields of medieval canon law and liturgy are now recognized as fundamental elements of medieval religious and intellectual history that shed light on medieval Christian belief and practice. The studies are grouped thematically under the headings of 'Ritual' and 'Text and Law'. Each section has an introduction by the editors, in which they survey recent developments in the study of medieval canon law and liturgy with reference to Reynolds's own research, provide historical context for the individual studies, and draw attention to the ways in which the studies reflect current concerns. Individually, the contributors offer new viewpoints on key issues and questions relating to medieval religious, cultural and intellectual history, particularly of the period c.900-1200, and especially the Italian peninsula. Collectively they illuminate the interaction of medieval Christianity and its rituals, as well as the relationship of the secular and the sacred as transmitted in liturgico-canonical texts from the time of the early church to the 14th century.

"Reflecting the range of the honorand's interests, the essays in Ritual, Text and Law provide a stimulating exploration of the interrelated fields of medieval canon law and liturgy, chiefly through the scrutiny of texts and their transmission. The studies are grouped thematically under the headings of 'Ritual' and 'Text and Law', with each section having an introduction by the editors, surveying recent developments in the study of medieval canon law and liturgy. Individually, the contributors offer new viewpoints on key issues and questions relating to medieval religious, cultural and intellectual history, particularly of the period c. 900-1200, and especially the Italian peninsula. Collectively they illuminate the interaction of medieval Christianity and its rituals, as well as the relationship of the secular and the sacred as transmitted in liturgico-canonical texts from the time of the early church to the 14th century."--BOOK JACKET

The first five books of the Hebrew Bible contain a significant number of texts describing ritual practices. Yet it is often unclear how these sources would have been understood or used by ancient audiences in the actual performance of cult. This volume explores the processes of ritual textualization (the creation of a written version of a ritual) in ancient Israel by probing the main conceptual and methodological issues that inform the study of this topic in the Pentateuch. This systematic and comparative study of text and ritual in the first five books of the Hebrew Bible maps the main areas of consensus and disagreement among scholars engaged in articulating new models for understanding the relationship between text and ritual and explores the importance of comparative evidence for the study of pentateuchal rituals. Topics include ritual textualization in ancient Anatolia, Egypt, Greece, and Mesopotamia; the importance of archaeology and materiality for the study of text and ritual in ancient Israel; the relationship between ritual textualization and standardization in the Pentateuch; the reception of pentateuchal ritual texts in Second Temple writings and rabbinic literature; and the relationship between text and ritual in the Dead Sea Scrolls. In addition to the editors, the contributors to this volume include Dorothea Erbele-Küster, Daniel K. Falk, Yitzhaq Feder, Christian Frevel, William K. Gilders, Dominique Jaillard, Giuseppina Lenzo, Lionel Marti, Patrick Michel, Rüdiger Schmitt, Jeremy D. Smoak, and James W. Watts.

This book presents a reassessment of the governmental systems of the Late Babylonian period—specifically those of the Neo-Babylonian and early Persian empires—and provides evidence demonstrating that these are among the first to have developed an early form of administrative law. The present study revolves around a particular expression that, in its most common form, reads ḫīṭu ša šarri išaddad and can be translated as “he will be guilty (of an offense) against the king.” The authors analyze ninety-six documents, thirty-two of which have not been previously published, discussing each text in detail, including the syntax of this clause and its legal consequences, which involve the delegation of responsibility in an administrative context. Placing these documents in their historical and institutional contexts, and drawing from the theories of Max Weber and S. N. Eisenstadt, the authors aim to show that the administrative bureaucracy underlying these documents was a more complex, systematized, and rational system than has previously been recognized. Accompanied by extensive indexes, as well as transcriptions and translations of each text analyzed here, this book breaks new ground in the study of ancient legal systems.

This book follows a reader’s logic of association through a series of overlapping constructs in biblical prescription of things prized and lofty—holy hair, unblemished beasts, sacred edibles, wholesome wombs, pristine precincts, esteemed ethnicities and, as unlikely as it seems, dismembered members. Thoroughly intersectional in disposition, Bernon Lee uncovers not just the precariousness of the contrived dichotomies through the identity-building sacred texts, but also the complexities and contentions of a would-be decolonizing hermeneutic bristling with its own tensions and temptations. This volume is an intertextual odyssey through law and ritual from impassioned positions fraught with ambivalence, reticence, and anxiety.

Reconstructs the formative debates concerning ritual purity in Islamic law and practice.

Ritual 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. This Handbook provides a compendium of the information essential for constructing a comprehensive and integrated account of ritual and worship in the ancient world. Its focus on ritual and worship from the perspective of biblical studies, as opposed to religious studies, highlights that the world of ritual and worship was a topic of central concern for the people of the Ancient Near East, including the world of the Bible. Given the scarcity of the material in the Bible itself, the authors in this collection use materials from the ancient Near East to provide a larger context for the practices of the biblical world, giving due attention to historical, anthropological, and social scientific methods that inform the context of biblical worship. The specifics of ritual and worship life-the sacred spaces, times, and actors in worship-are examined in detail, with essays covering both the divine and human aspects of the sacred dimension. The Oxford Handbook of Ritual and Worship in the Hebrew Bible considers several underlying concepts of ritual practice and closes with a theological outlook on worship and ritual from a variety of perspectives, demonstrating a fruitful exchange between biblical studies, ritual theory, and social science research.

Liber AL vel Legis, commonly known as The Book of the Law, is the central sacred text of Thelema. The book contains three chapters, each of which was alleged to be written down in one hour, beginning at noon, on 8 April, 9 April, and 10 April in Cairo, Egypt, in the year 1904. Crowley says that the author was an entity named Aiwass, whom he later referred to as his personal Holy Guardian Angel.