By Naphtali S. Meshel
The idea that rituals, like normal languages, are ruled by means of implicit, rigorous principles led students within the final century, paying homage to the early Indian grammarian Patanjali, to talk of a "grammar", or "syntax", of formality, really sacrificial ritual. regardless of insightful examples of formality complexes that stick with hierarchical principles reminiscent of syntactic constructions in typical languages, and bold makes an attempt to visualize a common Grammar of sacrificial ritual, no unmarried, complete "grammar" of any ritual approach has but been composed.
This booklet deals the 1st such "grammar." Centering on *S-the idealized sacrificial procedure represented within the Priestly legislation within the Pentateuch--it demonstrates ritual procedure is describable when it comes to a suite of concise, unconsciously internalized, generative ideas, analogous to the grammar of a usual language. regardless of far-reaching diachronic advancements, mirrored in moment Temple and rabbinic literature, the traditional Israelite sacrificial approach retained a hugely unchangeable "grammar," that's abstracted and analysed in a formulaic manner.
The limits of the analogy to linguistics are under pressure: instead of different types borrowed from linguistics, equivalent to syntax and morphology, the operative different types of *S are abstracted inductively from the ritual texts: zoemics--the examine of the sessions of animals utilized in ritual sacrifice; jugation-the principles governing the becoming a member of of animal and non-animal fabrics; hierarchics-the tiered structuring of sacrificial sequences; and praxemics--the research of the actual task comprising sacrificial tactics. eventually, the matter of meaning in non-linguistic ritual structures is addressed.
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Extra info for The "Grammar" of Sacrifice: A Generativist Study of the Israelite Sacrificial System in the Priestly Writings with The "Grammar" of *S
Sample text
In Staal’s view, such similarities between linguistic and ritual structures are striking enough to suggest an evolutionary relationship between them. Since Staal believes that ritual is meaningless, it appears that ritual is located on a more primitive evolutional rung than language, which has both syntactic and semantic properties. Thus, Staal believes that the capacity for syntactic arrangements evolved in humans first in the realm of ritual (probably in the recitation of mantras), only later to be employed in meaningful verbal utterances.
In fact, as we shall see, the grammatical analysis proves to be relevant for several texts composed by the early readers of the Pentateuch in the first few centuries and , who were unaware of the Pentateuch’s complex textual history. 82 See Meshel 2010. On the identification of various strata within P, see in general Rendtorff 1993; Nihan 2007; and Koch 1959. Elliger 1966 is particularly attentive to the text-history of smaller units within P. 83 See, for example, Nihan 2007: 148–50 on Lev 10; Achenbach 2003:604–6 on Numbers 28–9.
In fact, upon their own admission, their thesis presented in chapter 5 is “quite commonplace” (p. 6). 60 See, for instance, Staal 1989:451 and the criticism of Penner 1985:1–2. Staal admits that some practitioners and theologians may attach significance to ritual acts, but this does not imply that meaning inheres in the rituals themselves. Moreover, these superordinary attached meanings are, in Staal’s view, in constant flux, in contrast to the ritual acts themselves, which remain relatively stable over comparatively long periods of time (p.