Tag Archives: Ritual

My New Book – Perpetual Fire: Temple, Ritual, and Biblical Theology

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Mark Giszczak - Perpetual Fire: Temple, Ritual, and BIblical Theology book coverI am very happy to announce the release of my new book: Perpetual Fire: Temple, Ritual, and Biblical Theology.

Ten Years in the Making

Years ago, I found myself intrigued by the many mentions of fire in the Bible, but most of all by the strange law mandating the maintenance of a perpetual fire on the altar of sacrifice: “it shall no go out!” (Lev 6:12). But why not? This question led me on a winding journey through many corners of ritual theory, biblical theology, temple history and even eschatology to produce this book. Why does Levitical law mandate that altar-fire be kept always burning? What does the fire symbolize? How was it understood in biblical times?

A Ritual Question with Theological Consequences

The book addresses two main ideas: 1) What is the ritual meaning of the ever-burning fire on the altar of sacrifice? and 2) What is the enduring theological significance of this fire? The first half of the book explores the ritual question, while the second half works toward a constructive biblical theology of the sacred fire. It turns out that a long and complex development of ritual symbols undergirds the Transfiguration scene, Jesus’ words about fiery judgment and fiery assimilation to divine life, but also St. Paul’s theology of resurrection. The perpetual fire on the altar has a significant theological afterlife in the New Testament.

Table of Contents

I wanted to give you a sneak preview of what’s in the book, so here’s the Table of Contents as you will find it

  • Acknowledgements
  • Abbreviations
  • Introduction: A Fire Moving Through Time
  • Part I – Ritual Fire
    • 1 The Fire and the Second Temple: A Crisis of Legitimacy
    • 2 The Origin of the Fire on the Altar: Law and Tabernacle, Tradition and Influence
    • 3 The Cultic Fire: Function and Representation
    • 4 The Wood Offering: Maintaining the Unquenchable Fire
    • 5 The Sin of Kindling Fire: Violating the Boundaries of Cult
    • Kindling: Preliminary Conclusions
  • Part II – Theological Fire
    • 6 The Brightness of God’s Body of Fire: Darkness, Theophany, Radiance
    • 7 The Fiery Son of God: Jesus and the Restoration of Adam
    • 8 The Body of Glory: Paul and the Transformation of Believers
    • 9 The Fire of the Word: Torah and Revelation
    • 10 The Fire of Encounter: Purification, Punishment, Vision
    • Conflagration: Final Conclusions
  • Bibliography
  • Index

When Will the Book Be Released?

The book will come out on September 1, 2026 from Baylor University Press. I am grateful for BUP’s partnership in putting this together. Their editorial guidance and production process has improved the book and prepared it for this moment. You can pre-order the book now from these sites:

My Hopes for the Book

I hope that you will enjoy reading Perpetual Fire! Beyond that, I hope that it will give scholars and serious Bible students alike a new appreciation for the depth of ritual symbolism, the centrality of the altar fire in the cultic thinking of the Old Testament and the theological thought of the New. I hope that it will bring about a reappraisal of certain stock images from biblical vocabulary–whether fire, brightness, “unquenchableness,” radiance, darkness, and the meaning of biblical metaphors for punishment. It draws lines of connection from Levitical law all the way through to the final resurrection of the dead.

Ritual Indexing at SBL Meeting

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Goran Zivkovic (program chair), James Watts, Naphtali Meshel, Roy Gane, William Gilders, Mark Giszczak (left to right)

A couple weeks ago in Boston I had the pleasure of presiding at a session of the Ritual in the Biblical World program unit of the Society of Biblical Literature Annual Meeting for 2025. The topic under discussion by the presenters was the concept of “ritual indexing” in the thought of Charles Sanders Peirce (pronounced “purse”) and how it can be applied to understanding biblical rituals.

Here’s the official description of the event:

“This session will focus on the interpretation of ritual activities as indexes. Building on the theoretical framework of Charles Sanders Peirce and expanding upon it, this session will primarily explore how ritual actions function to index existential relationships between different ritual elements.”

Rappaport on Peirce

The idea of an “index” is not that complicated. It is “a sign which refers to the Object it denotes by being really affected by that Object” (Buchler quoted in Rappaport). It simply indicates or points to the meaning it is trying to convey. While a ritual action (e.g. eating) might look just like a regular action to an outsider, rituals are constructed to convey deeper meanings. Rappaport gives the following examples:

Thus, a rash indicates (is an index of ) measles, the rustling of the peacock’s spread tail fan indicates his sexual arousal, the weathervane indicates the wind’s direction, the Rolls Royce or sable coat indicates the wealth of its owner, May Day parades indicated the strength of Soviet armaments, or aspects of that strength, the March on Washington of November 15, 1970 indicated the size and social composition of opposition to the war in Viet Nam. (Roy Rappaport, Ritual and Religion [Cambridge, 1999] p. 55)

Presenters and Papers

We had presentations by a group of top-notch scholars working on this concept in the text of Leviticus and the ancient Israelite cult that it prescribes/describes. The papers presented began with “Interpreting Leviticus 1 with Nancy Jay, Charles S. Peirce, and Roy Rappaport” by William Gilders of Emory University. He launched much of this discussion with his important 2004 book, Blood Ritual in the Hebrew Bible, that seeks to interpret the meaning of the blood manipulation rituals of Leviticus. James Watts of Syracuse University presented on “How Indexing Cuts the Gordian Knot of Ritual Meaning,” also using Peirce as mediated through Rappaport to describe how Levitical ritual “indexes” relationships in the Israelite community. Roy E. Gane of Andrews University offered a paper on “Methodology for Analyzing Indexing in Ancient Israelite Cult” along with a very detailed PowerPoint presentation that expanded on how indexing helps us understand Israelite ritual. Lastly, Naphtali Meshel of Hebrew University analyzed the text of Leviticus to reveal ritual indices within the text in his paper, “Ritual Texts Pointing to Ritual Texts.”

It was such a joy to be able to participate in a conversation with these scholars and explore the depth of ritual meaning available in the Levitical system as presented in the biblical text. There is always more to learn and more to study! I look forward to next year’s presentations on Ritual in the Biblical World and I hope that the conversation will continue.