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Overview"The notion that rituals, like natural languages, are governed by implicit, rigorous rules led scholars in the last century, harking back to the early Indian grammarian Patañjali, to speak of a ""grammar"", or ""syntax"", of ritual, particularly sacrificial ritual. Despite insightful examples of ritual complexes that follow hierarchical rules akin to syntactic structures in natural languages, and ambitious attempts to imagine a Universal Grammar of sacrificial ritual, no single, comprehensive ""grammar"" of any ritual system has yet been composed. This book offers the first such ""grammar."" Centering on *S--the idealized sacrificial system represented in the Priestly laws in the Pentateuch--it demonstrates that a ritual system is describable in terms of a set of concise, unconsciously internalized, generative rules, analogous to the grammar of a natural language. Despite far-reaching diachronic developments, reflected in Second Temple and rabbinic literature, the ancient Israelite sacrificial system retained a highly unchangeable ""grammar,"" which is abstracted and analysed in a formulaic manner.The limits of the analogy to linguistics are stressed: rather than categories borrowed from linguistics, such as syntax and morphology, the operative categories of *S are abstracted inductively from the ritual texts: zoemics--the study of the classes of animals used in ritual sacrifice; jugation-the rules governing the joining of animal and non-animal materials; hierarchics-the tiered structuring of sacrificial sequences; and praxemics--the analysis of the physical activity comprising sacrificial procedures. Finally, the problem of meaning in non-linguistic ritual systems is addressed." Full Product DetailsAuthor: Naphtali S. Meshel (Assistant Professor of Religion and Judaic Studies, Assistant Professor of Religion and Judaic Studies, Princeton University)Publisher: Oxford University Press Imprint: Oxford University Press Dimensions: Width: 16.50cm , Height: 2.60cm , Length: 23.60cm Weight: 0.606kg ISBN: 9780198705567ISBN 10: 0198705565 Pages: 298 Publication Date: 31 July 2014 Audience: College/higher education , Professional and scholarly , Tertiary & Higher Education , Professional & Vocational Format: Hardback Publisher's Status: Active Availability: To order  Stock availability from the supplier is unknown. We will order it for you and ship this item to you once it is received by us. Table of ContentsReviews"[A] meticulous preparation of a ""grammar"" of the sacrificial system represented in biblical and post-biblical priestly texts (P), which he calls S. ... Devising such a system not only allows Meshel to update and revise our previous understanding of representations of biblical ritual and lexicography. * Gabriel Levy, Numen *" [A] meticulous preparation of a grammar of the sacrificial system represented in biblical and post-biblical priestly texts (P), which he calls S. ... Devising such a system not only allows Meshel to update and revise our previous understanding of representations of biblical ritual and lexicography. * Gabriel Levy, Numen * Author InformationNaphtali S. Meshel is Assistant Professor of Religion and Judaic Studies at Princeton University. Tab Content 6Author Website:Countries AvailableAll regions |
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