Ritual cannot be studied in a vacuum. It is a process that differentiates and gains meaning in its role within its broader social system. This article addresses a major methodological issue in the archaeology of ritual, that there is no consensus on how to interpret ritual in past cultures. This study develops a methodology for identifying ritual in the archaeological record, one that is broadly applicable to archaeological contexts in different regions and combines theoretical approaches to ritualization with methods from household archaeology. To understand ritual’s function within a social system, it must be contextualized against the entire repertoire of a group’s activities. Thus, spatial analyses of all finds throughout different spaces must be conducted in order to reconstruct the range of past human behaviors in different types of spaces. This approach creates a well-founded platform for investigating use variability among ritual and nonritual spaces, and how ritual differentiates itself from other actions. As a case study, this methodology is applied to the Middle and Late Bronze Age southern Levant. The findings shed new light on our understanding of religion in the region, including the primacy of large-scale consumption in public ritual contexts. Contrasting contemporary houses and palaces, little on-site storage and food preparation is detected in ritual settings. The social, anthropological, and religious implications of the divergences identified between ritual and nonritual action and contexts are far-reaching, including the discovery of a hitherto undetected religious ethos and bringing into question whether southern Levantine temples were considered houses of gods.
{"title":"Toward a Methodology for Identifying Ritual in the Archaeological Record: A Case Study from the Southern Levant","authors":"Matthew Susnow","doi":"10.1086/719821","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/719821","url":null,"abstract":"Ritual cannot be studied in a vacuum. It is a process that differentiates and gains meaning in its role within its broader social system. This article addresses a major methodological issue in the archaeology of ritual, that there is no consensus on how to interpret ritual in past cultures. This study develops a methodology for identifying ritual in the archaeological record, one that is broadly applicable to archaeological contexts in different regions and combines theoretical approaches to ritualization with methods from household archaeology. To understand ritual’s function within a social system, it must be contextualized against the entire repertoire of a group’s activities. Thus, spatial analyses of all finds throughout different spaces must be conducted in order to reconstruct the range of past human behaviors in different types of spaces. This approach creates a well-founded platform for investigating use variability among ritual and nonritual spaces, and how ritual differentiates itself from other actions. As a case study, this methodology is applied to the Middle and Late Bronze Age southern Levant. The findings shed new light on our understanding of religion in the region, including the primacy of large-scale consumption in public ritual contexts. Contrasting contemporary houses and palaces, little on-site storage and food preparation is detected in ritual settings. The social, anthropological, and religious implications of the divergences identified between ritual and nonritual action and contexts are far-reaching, including the discovery of a hitherto undetected religious ethos and bringing into question whether southern Levantine temples were considered houses of gods.","PeriodicalId":45199,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF RELIGION","volume":"102 1","pages":"376 - 409"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49225782","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Gross, Rachel B. Beyond the Synagogue: Jewish Nostalgia as Religious Practice. New York: New York University Press, 2021. 257 pp. $39.00 (cloth).","authors":"H. Diner","doi":"10.1086/719826","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/719826","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45199,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF RELIGION","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45571350","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Winslow, Lisanne. A Great and Remarkable Analogy: The Onto-Typology of Jonathan Edwards. New Directions in Jonathan Edwards Studies. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2020. 171 pp. $125.00 (cloth).","authors":"W. Gilpin","doi":"10.1086/719816","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/719816","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45199,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF RELIGION","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48009906","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Yung Wen, Clement. An “Open-Ended Distinctiveness”: The Contemporary Relevance of Wolfhart Pannenberg’s Participatory Ecclesiology and Ecumenism for World Christianity. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2021. 282 pp. $150.00 (cloth).","authors":"C. Cornille","doi":"10.1086/718400","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/718400","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45199,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF RELIGION","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43117889","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Van Engen, Abram C. City on a Hill: A History of American Exceptionalism. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2020. x+379 pp. $30.00 (cloth).","authors":"R. Smolinski","doi":"10.1086/718401","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/718401","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45199,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF RELIGION","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42209498","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In this essay, I seek to highlight the continuities between Mordecai Kaplan’s and Hermann Cohen’s theological projects in order to better facilitate the incorporation of Kaplan’s theology—and that of his successors—into the broader field of modern Jewish thought, as well as to better position Jewish thought to respond to currents in academic theology beyond Jewish Studies. I begin by examining Kaplan’s reading of Cohen’s Religion der Vernunft aus den Quellen des Judentums in his The Purpose and Meaning of Jewish Existence. Claiming that Cohen’s posthumous work anticipates Kaplan’s own functionalist rationalism, Kaplan recasts Cohen’s project in immanent theological terms. Next, I argue that despite Kaplan’s attention to Cohen’s posthumous opus, the affinities between his thought and Cohen’s are more readily apparent with regard to Cohen’s Ethik des reinen Willens, where God functions to secure the compatibility of morality and nature. I then turn to Kaplan’s The Meaning of God in Modern Jewish Religion in order draw attention to significant affinities between Kaplan’s and Cohen’s respective theologies. Both Kaplan and Cohen turn to a notion of God to secure the integrity of morality in the face of the ascendance of naturalism. However, where Cohen fears that configuring God in immanent terms threatens the integrity of morality by subsuming it into nature, Kaplan hopes that it will provide the basis for a more expansive sense of naturalism, one capacious enough to accommodate morality and spirituality.
{"title":"Beyond Transcendence and Immanence: The Moral Theology of Mordecai Kaplan and Hermann Cohen","authors":"Robert Erlewine","doi":"10.1086/718403","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/718403","url":null,"abstract":"In this essay, I seek to highlight the continuities between Mordecai Kaplan’s and Hermann Cohen’s theological projects in order to better facilitate the incorporation of Kaplan’s theology—and that of his successors—into the broader field of modern Jewish thought, as well as to better position Jewish thought to respond to currents in academic theology beyond Jewish Studies. I begin by examining Kaplan’s reading of Cohen’s Religion der Vernunft aus den Quellen des Judentums in his The Purpose and Meaning of Jewish Existence. Claiming that Cohen’s posthumous work anticipates Kaplan’s own functionalist rationalism, Kaplan recasts Cohen’s project in immanent theological terms. Next, I argue that despite Kaplan’s attention to Cohen’s posthumous opus, the affinities between his thought and Cohen’s are more readily apparent with regard to Cohen’s Ethik des reinen Willens, where God functions to secure the compatibility of morality and nature. I then turn to Kaplan’s The Meaning of God in Modern Jewish Religion in order draw attention to significant affinities between Kaplan’s and Cohen’s respective theologies. Both Kaplan and Cohen turn to a notion of God to secure the integrity of morality in the face of the ascendance of naturalism. However, where Cohen fears that configuring God in immanent terms threatens the integrity of morality by subsuming it into nature, Kaplan hopes that it will provide the basis for a more expansive sense of naturalism, one capacious enough to accommodate morality and spirituality.","PeriodicalId":45199,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF RELIGION","volume":"102 1","pages":"159 - 183"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43116281","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Jemison, Elizabeth L. Christian Citizens: Reading the Bible in Black and White in the Postemancipation South. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2020. 242 pp. $95.00 (cloth); $29.95 (paper).","authors":"S. Perry","doi":"10.1086/718391","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/718391","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45199,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF RELIGION","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47713218","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Thatamanil, John. Circling the Elephant: A Comparative Theology of Religious Diversity. New York: Fordham University Press, 2020. xx+296 pp. $30.00 (paper).","authors":"J. Torres","doi":"10.1086/718390","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/718390","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45199,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF RELIGION","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41788582","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Djurdjevic, Gordan, and Shukdev Singh, translators; Gordan Djurdjevic, introduction and notes. Sayings of Gorakhnāth: Annotated Translations of the Gorakh Bānī. New York: Oxford University Press, 2019. i+228 pp. $105.00 (cloth).","authors":"Christine Marrewa-Karwoski","doi":"10.1086/718398","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/718398","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45199,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF RELIGION","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44664149","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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