Myth or Ritual

The study of ritual began with a prolonged and influential debate on the origins of religion that gave rise to several important styles of interpretation—evolutionary, sociological, and psychological—from which new fields of scholarship emerged. The simple question at the heart of this productive controversy was whether religion and culture were originally rooted in myth or in ritual. While the theoretical positions people adopted were more diverse and nuanced than any simple answer to this question would imply, their general emphases were nonetheless clear and decisive. This section will present this debate insofar as it influenced thinking about religion. There are four main lines of thought: several early theorists who raised the issues; the myth and ritual schools, which tended to see ritual as the source of religion and culture; a loose set of phenomenologists of religion who tended to emphasize myth; and, finally, the psychoanalytic approach, which borrowed heavily from all these areas. At various times in the last century, representatives of most of these groups have of fered interpretations of the ancient Babylonian new year ritual known as the Akitu festival. Hence, a profile of these competing interpretations provides the opportunity to witness these theories at work.

Aesthetics · Epistemology · Interpretation (philosophy) · Mythology · Political science · Psychoanalysis · Psychoanalytic theory · Scholarship · Simple (philosophy) · Sociology · Witness · Ancient Near East History · Classics · Historical, Religious, and Philosophical Studies · History · Law · Linguistics and language evolution · Philosophy · Psychology

• The Theater of Deviance and the Normative Boundaries of Society

  Open Access•Shivi Greenfield•Journal of Law and Religion•2013

  Add to list