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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.

Finally, Pope Releases Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation on the Bible; SBL blogging

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Ok, so the Pope finally released his document on the Bible,Verbum Domini. It was posted on the Vatican website on Thursday, November 11. So…you may have thought I was asleep at the wheel since I have been watching for this. But…I’ve been doing a lot like eating turkey and going to the SBL conference. More on that in a bit.

Anyway, I plan to go through the document here on the blog and comment on different sections. For now, here are my initial thoughts:  The document is very long–much longer than is typical for this kind of document. There is nothing in the document that is surprising or ground-breaking. It is pretty much a faithful elaboration on the Synod’s earlier documents, especially the Propositions. It is a restatement of many important  Catholic positions on the Bible and all things biblical. It also deals with how the Bible ought to function in the life of the Church in all its aspects. I think it will be a valuable touchstone in the years to come, but not a sea-change document. I’ll post more thoughts as they come to me.

Ah…and about that Society of Biblical Literature conference.  I went to the Annual Meeting in Atlanta. At the meeting, I attended a session on “biblioblogging,” with presentations by some of the major academic Bible bloggers. It was very interesting and inspiring. It made me feel that I am not alone in the world of blogging about the Bible and re-invigorated me for this blog. Most of the presenters posted their papers on their blogs before delivering them at the meeting. I felt a little weird–yet kind of cool–sitting there reading Jim Davila’s paper on my Android while he spoke. It was also nice to be able to put a face with a name for a lot of Bible bloggers out there.

Here’s what the session looked like:

Theme: The Past, Present, and Future of Blogging and Online Publication

The room was packed–far beyond what I anticipated. Unfortunately, there were very few women. It was a great collection of Bible scholars and computers nerds all together in one place. I would encourage you to read some of the papers that were presented, which I have linked to above. Or perhaps you’ll find some other interesting posts at their authors’ blogs.