Ritual Innovation

Ritual Innovation PDF Author: Brian K. Pennington
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 1438469039
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 310

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Book Description
Challenges prevailing conceptions of what religious ritual does and how it achieves its ends. Religious rituals are often seen as unchanging and ahistorical bearers of long-standing traditions. But as this book demonstrates, ritual is a lively platform for social change and innovation in the religions of South Asia. Drawing from Hindu and Jain examples in India, Nepal, and North America,the essays in this volume, written by renowned scholars of religion, explore how the intentional, conscious, and public invention or alteration of ritual can effect dramatic social transformation, whether in dethroning a Nepali king or sanctioning same-sex marriage. Ritual Innovation shows how the very idea of ritual as a conservative force misreads the history of religion by overlooking ritual’s inherent creative potential and its adaptability to new contexts and circumstances. “The breadth of coverage in Ritual Innovation is extraordinary and refreshing in terms of the types of contemporary ritual practices and practitioners receiving attention, not to mention the geographic spread across South Asia. This book makes a significant contribution to the scholarly literature on South Asian religions and contemporary Hinduism.” — Karline McLain, author of The Afterlife of Sai Baba: Competing Visions of a Global Saint

Ritual Innovation

Ritual Innovation PDF Author: Brian K. Pennington
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 1438469039
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 310

Get Book Here

Book Description
Challenges prevailing conceptions of what religious ritual does and how it achieves its ends. Religious rituals are often seen as unchanging and ahistorical bearers of long-standing traditions. But as this book demonstrates, ritual is a lively platform for social change and innovation in the religions of South Asia. Drawing from Hindu and Jain examples in India, Nepal, and North America,the essays in this volume, written by renowned scholars of religion, explore how the intentional, conscious, and public invention or alteration of ritual can effect dramatic social transformation, whether in dethroning a Nepali king or sanctioning same-sex marriage. Ritual Innovation shows how the very idea of ritual as a conservative force misreads the history of religion by overlooking ritual’s inherent creative potential and its adaptability to new contexts and circumstances. “The breadth of coverage in Ritual Innovation is extraordinary and refreshing in terms of the types of contemporary ritual practices and practitioners receiving attention, not to mention the geographic spread across South Asia. This book makes a significant contribution to the scholarly literature on South Asian religions and contemporary Hinduism.” — Karline McLain, author of The Afterlife of Sai Baba: Competing Visions of a Global Saint

Ritual Innovation in the Hebrew Bible and Early Judaism

Ritual Innovation in the Hebrew Bible and Early Judaism PDF Author: Nathan MacDonald
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110392674
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 158

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Book Description
Are the rituals in the Hebrew Bible of great antiquity, practiced unchanged from earliest times, or are they the products of later innovators? The canonical text is clear: ritual innovation is repudiated as when Jeroboam I of Israel inaugurate a novel cult at Bethel and Dan. Most rituals are traced back to Moses. From Julius Wellhausen to Jacob Milgrom, this issue has divided critical scholarship. With the rich documentation from the late Second Temple period, such as the Dead Sea Scrolls, it is apparent that rituals were changed. Were such rituals practiced, or were they forms of textual imagination? How do rituals change and how are such changes authorized? Do textual innovation and ritual innovation relate? What light might ritual changes between the Hebrew Bible and late Second Temple texts shed on the history of ritual in the Hebrew Bible? The essays in this volume engage the various issues that arise when rituals are considered as practices that may be invented and subject to change. A number of essays examine how biblical texts show evidence of changing ritual practices, some use textual change to discuss related changes in ritual practice, while others discuss evidence for ritual change from material culture.

Ritual Innovation

Ritual Innovation PDF Author: Brian Kemble Pennington
Publisher: Suny Press
ISBN: 9781438469027
Category : Ritual
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Challenges prevailing conceptions of what religious ritual does and how it achieves its ends.

Ritual Innovation in the Hebrew Bible and Early Judaism

Ritual Innovation in the Hebrew Bible and Early Judaism PDF Author: Nathan MacDonald
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110368714
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 180

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Book Description
Are the rituals in the Hebrew Bible of great antiquity, practiced unchanged from earliest times, or are they the products of later innovators? The canonical text is clear: ritual innovation is repudiated as when Jeroboam I of Israel inaugurate a novel cult at Bethel and Dan. Most rituals are traced back to Moses. From Julius Wellhausen to Jacob Milgrom, this issue has divided critical scholarship. With the rich documentation from the late Second Temple period, such as the Dead Sea Scrolls, it is apparent that rituals were changed. Were such rituals practiced, or were they forms of textual imagination? How do rituals change and how are such changes authorized? Do textual innovation and ritual innovation relate? What light might ritual changes between the Hebrew Bible and late Second Temple texts shed on the history of ritual in the Hebrew Bible? The essays in this volume engage the various issues that arise when rituals are considered as practices that may be invented and subject to change. A number of essays examine how biblical texts show evidence of changing ritual practices, some use textual change to discuss related changes in ritual practice, while others discuss evidence for ritual change from material culture.

Wild Rituals

Wild Rituals PDF Author: Caitlin O'Connell
Publisher: Chronicle Books
ISBN: 1797201611
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 234

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Book Description
Wild Rituals explores how embracing the rituals of the animal kingdom can make us more connected to ourselves, nature, and others. Behavioral ecologist and world-renowned elephant scientist Caitlin O'Connell dives into the rituals of elephants, apes, zebras, rhinos, lions, whales, flamingos, and many more. This fascinating read helps us better understand how we are similar to wild animals, and encourages us to find healing, self-awareness, community, and self-reinvention. • Filled with fascinating stories on 10 different animal rituals • Features original full-color photos, from the Caribbean to the African savannah • Demonstrates the profound way we are similar to the wild creatures who captivate us Wild Rituals journeys into the desert, tundra, and rainforest to reveal the importance of rituals and how they can help us find a simpler, more meaningful way of living. In a culture of technology where we find ourselves living at a greater distance from nature and each other, this remarkable book taps into the unspoken languages of creatures around the world. • Caitlin O'Connell is on the faculty at Harvard Medical School and an award-winning author who spent more than 30 years studying animals in the wild. • Makes a great gift for anyone curious about nature, animals, and how humans compare to and interact with both • Add it to the shelf with books like Beyond Words: What Animals Think and Feel by Carl Safina; Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? by Frans de Waal; The Inner Life of Animals: Love, Grief, and Compassion—Surprising Observations of a Hidden World by Peter Wohlleben; and The Soul of an Octopus: A Surprising Exploration into the Wonder of Consciousness by Sy Montgomery.

Ritual and Christian Beginnings

Ritual and Christian Beginnings PDF Author: Risto Uro
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0191637106
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 239

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Book Description
The rise of early Christianity has been examined from a myriad of perspectives, but until recently ritual has been a neglected topic. Ritual and Christian Beginnings: A Socio-Cognitive Analysis argues that ritual theory is indispensable for the study of Christian beginnings. It also makes a strong case for the application of theories and insights from the Cognitive Science of Religion, a field that has established itself as a vigorous movement in Religious Studies over the past two decades. Risto Uro develops a 'socio-cognitive' approach to the study of early Christian rituals, seeking to integrate a social-level analysis with findings from the cognitive and evolutionary sciences. Ritual and Christian Beginnings provides an overview of how ritual has been approached in previous scholarship, including reasons for its neglect, and introduces the reader to the emerging fields of Ritual Studies and the Cognitive Science of Religion. In particular, it explores the ways in which cognitive theories of ritual can shed new light on issues discussed by early Christian scholars, and opens up new questions and avenues for further research. The socio-cognitive approach to ritual is applied to a number of test cases, including John the Baptist, the ritual healing practiced by Jesus and the early Christians, the social life of Pauline Christianity, and the development of early Christian baptismal practices. The analysis creates building blocks for a new account of Christian beginnings, highlighting the role of ritual innovation, cooperative signalling, and the importance of bodily actions for the generation and transmission of religious knowledge.

Tracing the Ritual Body

Tracing the Ritual Body PDF Author: Ada Taggar Cohen
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 0567710564
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 225

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Book Description
This volume utilizes Catherine Bell's ritual theory to shed new light on the many rituals reflected in ancient Mediterranean texts. In recent decades scholars of religion have come to realize that ritual and bodily practices are just as important for religion as beliefs and doctrine. With the development of ritual studies in the 1990s there arose a critical framework for investigating ritual and practice. Only recently, however, has Bell's theorizing been employed to study the rituals portrayed in ancient texts. This cross-disciplinary examination assesses the utility of Bell's theorizing for studying the textual evidence for rituals of the ancient Near East, the Hebrew Bible, the Dead Sea Scrolls, the New Testament, and other early Christian literature. The contributors to this volume illustrate a path away from regarding rituals as inert and fixed and toward a more complex and vibrant interactive model of ritual behaviour. In this volume, as each scholar works to recover the traces of long-past rituals in a particular set of materials, these and other concepts are consciously employed to guide or challenge the investigation, pushing beyond previous conclusions about ancient rituals. The contributors' attention to theory, and especially the social context, practical function, and symbolic interpretation, set this collection apart from studies that consider the rituals in more traditional textual ways.

Early Christian Ritual Life

Early Christian Ritual Life PDF Author: Richard E. DeMaris
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317227190
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 218

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Book Description
Scholars across many fields have come to realize that ritual is an integral element of human life and a vital aspect of all human societies. Yet, this realization has been slow to develop among scholars of early Christianity. Early Christian Ritual Life attempts to counteract the undervaluing of ritual by placing it at the forefront of early Christian life. Rather than treating ritual in isolation or in a fragmentary way, this book examines early Christian ritual life as a whole. The authors explore an array of Christian ritual activity, employing theory critically and explicitly to make sense of various ritual behaviors and their interconnections. Written by leading experts in their fields, this collection is divided into three parts: • Interacting with the Divine • Group Interactions • Contesting and Creating Ritual Protocols. This book is ideal for religious studies students seeking an introduction to the dynamic research areas of ritual studies and early Christian practice.

Ritual in Deuteronomy

Ritual in Deuteronomy PDF Author: Melissa D. Ramos
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351335170
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 170

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Book Description
Ritual in Deuteronomy explores the symbolic world of Deuteronomy’s ritual covenant and curses through a lens of religious studies and anthropology, drawing on previously unexamined Mesopotamian material. This book focuses on the ritual material in Deuteronomy including commands regarding sacrifice, prayer objects, and especially the dramatic ritual enactment of the covenant including curses. The book’s most unique feature is an entirely new comparative study of Deut 27–30 with two ritual texts from Mesopotamia. No studies to date have undertaken a comparison of Deut 27–30 with ancient Near Eastern ritual texts outside of the treaty oath tradition. This fresh comparison illuminates how the ritual life of ancient Israel shaped the literary form of Deuteronomy and concludes that the performance of oaths was a social strategy, addressing contemporary anxieties and reinforcing systems of cultural power. This book offers a fascinating comparative study which will be of interest to undergraduate and graduate students in biblical studies, classical Hebrew, theology, and ancient Near Eastern studies. The book’s more technical aspects will also appeal to scholars of the Pentateuch, Deuteronomy, Biblical Law, Ancient Near Eastern History, Mesopotamian Studies, and Classics.

Rituals for Work

Rituals for Work PDF Author: Kursat Ozenc
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1119530784
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 279

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Book Description
Experience the transformative power of creative rituals in the workplace Rituals for Work shows us how creative rituals can make our personal and business lives more meaningful and rewarding. Rituals are powerful tools: they reinforce good habits, motivate personal and professional achievement, create a common bond between co-workers and build shared values; they can transform an organization’s culture and provide a foundation to achieve common goals. Focusing on real-world examples, this book takes a practical approach to the power and benefits of workplace rituals. This insightful guide presents 50 creative rituals, from business and management to design and personal development. Specific case studies highlight the use of rituals and their positive impact to real-world organizations, while vivid visuals allow us to feel their energy and emotion. A ritual is only effective when its purpose is clearly defined. This book goes beyond simple analysis to provide actual recipes for individual rituals designed to promote specific habits, change negative behaviors, and instill values. Each ritual can be adapted to achieve a multitude of goals and tailored to fit your organization or team’s specific needs. ● Change behaviors, form positive habits, and assign meaning to shared goals ● Build shared values, foster innovation, and encourage strong teamwork ● Deal with conflicts effectively and engage others to work on resolutions ● Learn the fundamental concepts of ritual-building and share your knowledge with your team An informative and inspirational resource for executives, managers, team leaders, and employees of every level, Rituals for Work provides a blueprint for building a culture of engagement, innovation, and shared purpose for organizations of all sizes, across industries.