Jonathan Schwiebert
Lenoir-Rhyne University, Religion, Faculty Member
This study uses the puzzling meal prayers of a late first-century Christian text, the Didache, to grapple with the problem of ritual diversity in the early Jesus movement. It presses the questions: What part of the Jesus movement could... more
This study uses the puzzling meal prayers of a late first-century Christian text, the Didache, to grapple with the problem of ritual diversity in the early Jesus movement. It presses the questions: What part of the Jesus movement could have held such meals, giving thanks for a cup and bread but never alluding to Jesus’ sacrificial death for others? What became of them, so that their so-called “church manual” was entirely lost for several centuries? This study contends that historical clarity can be advanced when attention is focused on ritual aspects of ancient religion. It seeks to attain as sharp and incisive a view as possible on a particular set of ritual directions in this late first-century text, and to locate those who practiced this ritual within the diverse world of the Jesus movement.
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This is a book review.
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The changing role of biblical studies within universities and colleges is both a challenge to old seminary-driven notions and an opportunity to find new connections between biblical materials and those of other religions. One point of... more
The changing role of biblical studies within universities and colleges is both a challenge to old seminary-driven notions and an opportunity to find new connections between biblical materials and those of other religions. One point of connection currently gaining ground is ritual. Early efforts are here briefly explored.
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This note brings attention to one place where modern assumptions about eating have led to misconceptions about what Paul is asking of the Corinthians. It concludes that exclusion from table fellowship, so far from being an extreme measure... more
This note brings attention to one place where modern assumptions about eating have led to misconceptions about what Paul is asking of the Corinthians. It concludes that exclusion from table fellowship, so far from being an extreme measure that Paul commands for some “drastic” effect, is actually integral to exclusion from the group as such. An over-translation of μηδε, dictated by modern commonsense notions but grammatically unwarranted, makes the substance of the exclusion into an insulting metaphorical gesture.
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An essay exploring why and in what ways New Testament scholars have neglected the crucial role of ritual in ancient religions, Christianity among them.
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This unpublished master's thesis argued that the key problem behind 1 Corinthians 1-4 was "speaking well," a cultural ideal taught by the Greek rhetorical tradition but permeating many other aspects of Greco-Roman culture. Education in... more
This unpublished master's thesis argued that the key problem behind 1 Corinthians 1-4 was "speaking well," a cultural ideal taught by the Greek rhetorical tradition but permeating many other aspects of Greco-Roman culture. Education in eloquence helped establish cultural values and was oriented toward cultural success. The "wisdom" Paul opposes in 1 Corinthians 1-4, then, is ultimately education in Greco-Roman culture, most clearly seen in the ability to "speak well."
Excerpt: "There appears to be a growing interest among biblical scholars to reclaim a theological dimension to their work. This volume shows some of the fruit of that interest and, in the process, points up some of its challenges."
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Excerpt: "The virtue of these three volumes is, in retrospect, perhaps not so much the concrete results attained or even the main questions that were being asked in 2003 to 2005, as the friction created by the juxtaposition of its various... more
Excerpt: "The virtue of these three volumes is, in retrospect, perhaps not so much the concrete results attained or even the main questions that were being asked in 2003 to 2005, as the friction created by the juxtaposition of its various models and inquiries. In any case, while one might have hoped for more sustained reflection on a number of ancillary questions (e.g. the role of orality in the development of these prayer forms; the nature and dynamics of petition and prayer considered more generally; the impact of gesture and posture on penitential rhetoric), these volumes will no doubt prove fruitful for further work in a field that clearly deserves the attention given it by this notable ensemble of scholars."
Research Interests: Prayer and Jewish Prayer
Excerpt: "What makes this book noteworthy is Dennis Smith’s development of a “superordinate category,” to which both Christian and non-Christian materials can be compared (see J. Z. Smith, Drudgery Divine [University of Chicago Press,... more
Excerpt: "What makes this book noteworthy is Dennis Smith’s development of a “superordinate category,” to which both Christian and non-Christian materials can be compared (see J. Z. Smith, Drudgery Divine [University of Chicago Press, 1990]). Dennis Smith’s superordinate category is successful because it has both identifiable features and flexibility, allowing for the detection of similarity and difference requisite for any comparison."
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For various reasons, ritual has traditionally taken a back seat in the quest for Christian origins. In this paper, I offer the Didache as strong counter-testimony to such a perspective. In this text, we encounter a community that is... more
For various reasons, ritual has traditionally taken a back seat in the quest for Christian origins. In this paper, I offer the Didache as strong counter-testimony to such a perspective. In this text, we encounter a community that is defined by its rituals. The text contains no theology; it tells no story; it offers only two things: ethics and ritual. Both the ethics and the rituals define appropriate behavior and community boundaries. Given this obvious overlap, the question of which is primary raises the distinct, though perhaps counter-intuitive, possibility that ritual, in the final analysis, lies closer to the community's raison d'etre. That is, ritual does not exist for the sake of defining those who must keep the ethical code, but rather the ethical code has been put in place for the sake of the ritual’s purity and efficaciousness. The point, I argue, can be clearly demonstrated within the Didache, which in turn raises significant questions about the relationship between these two spheres within the Hebrew Bible and various forms of second-Temple Judaism.
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Querying Frits Staal’s theory that rituals are essentially “meaningless,” this paper explores early Christian baptism as deriving its ritual purpose from the “meaningless” act of water lustration rather than the cognitive content or... more
Querying Frits Staal’s theory that rituals are essentially “meaningless,” this paper explores early Christian baptism as deriving its ritual purpose from the “meaningless” act of water lustration rather than the cognitive content or symbolic import of that ritual activity. Water lustrations, from this perspective, do not have an essential or pan-Mediterranean “meaning,” which is then adopted and adjusted to various purposes by different religious communities. Nor is their meaning the result of “symbolism” that attaches to water within Mediterranean religions. Instead, water lustrations derive their ritual purpose from their culturally recognized ability to “mark” persons and things for uses within the ritual universe of which they are a part. This “marking” in some circles then invites reflection on “status,” which comes to be interpreted within early Christianity idiosyncratically and with great variety.
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In Wayne Meeks’s groundbreaking study The First Urban Christians, Pauline baptism was treated as analogous to rites of passage. With the aid of Victor Turner’s theoretical reflections, Meeks proposed that in Pauline baptism... more
In Wayne Meeks’s groundbreaking study The First Urban Christians, Pauline baptism was treated as analogous to rites of passage. With the aid of Victor Turner’s theoretical reflections, Meeks proposed that in Pauline baptism “reaggregation” retains many of the liminal characteristics of communitas, which properly belong to the “transition” phase of the ritual. Almost twenty-five years later, and almost forty years after Turner’s theory was first published, it is worthwhile to reconsider the theoretical basis for examining Pauline baptism as a ritual process. This paper contends that newer theoretical models better help us to grapple with the eschatological dimension of the Pauline process as well as its intimate relationship to communal meals in Pauline circles. This paper also argues that there is some instructive slippage between any ritual theory and what is occurring in Pauline baptism, which can function as an interpretive key to this somewhat idiosyncratic ritual.
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Scholars of early Christian tradition have access to two independent ‘recitations’ of an important oral tradition: the “Lord’s Supper” narrative, found in 1 Cor 11 and Mark 14. But the classic studies of this narrative tradition analyze... more
Scholars of early Christian tradition have access to two independent ‘recitations’ of an important oral tradition: the “Lord’s Supper” narrative, found in 1 Cor 11 and Mark 14. But the classic studies of this narrative tradition analyze it in exclusively textual terms and with exclusively textual assumptions.
This study seeks to redress this relative neglect by offering a structural comparison of Paul’s and Mark’s recitations, in dialogue with oral-traditional approaches to comparable materials. On the strength of its orality, the differences between Paul’s and Mark’s recitations (their so-called redaction) can be given a fresh interpretation, and the historical value of the common oral tradition they recite can be reevaluated.
This study seeks to redress this relative neglect by offering a structural comparison of Paul’s and Mark’s recitations, in dialogue with oral-traditional approaches to comparable materials. On the strength of its orality, the differences between Paul’s and Mark’s recitations (their so-called redaction) can be given a fresh interpretation, and the historical value of the common oral tradition they recite can be reevaluated.
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Prior studies of the Didache’s Eucharistic prayers drew attention to their clear compositional structure, and this insight invites consideration of its performative, oral qualities. Especially noteworthy is the presence of fixed,... more
Prior studies of the Didache’s Eucharistic prayers drew attention to their clear compositional structure, and this insight invites consideration of its performative, oral qualities. Especially noteworthy is the presence of fixed, structural elements. Insight from the study of “oral literature” (especially that used within rituals) can illuminate distinct purposes of these components.
I here argue that these fixed elements send specific, non-literal signals to listeners participating in the meal ritual (e.g. “this is a eucharistic prayer”); and that they create a ritual dialogue, familiar from Jewish and Christian liturgies, running through the text of Didache 9-10, which perform some neglected, non-verbal functions in the Eucharist preserved here.
I here argue that these fixed elements send specific, non-literal signals to listeners participating in the meal ritual (e.g. “this is a eucharistic prayer”); and that they create a ritual dialogue, familiar from Jewish and Christian liturgies, running through the text of Didache 9-10, which perform some neglected, non-verbal functions in the Eucharist preserved here.