Funerals and baptisms, ordinary and otherwise: ritual criticism and Corinthian rites.

Abstract

The emerging field of ritual studies gives Second Testament scholars innovative ways of approaching the rites of the Jesus movement and thus enables them better to re-create the community life reflected in the language of the Second Testament. In the case of Corinth, placing the rites of the Jesus movement there in the context of Mediterranean ritual activity alerts interpreters to an expulsion rite conducted as a funeral at 1 Corinthians 5:2 and directs them to rites with features analogous to baptism on behalf of the dead (1 Cor 15:29). This study sets the Corinthian extension of baptism to the dead alongside funerals conducted for the living and imaginary or honorary funerals, with the aim of characterizing the creative modification rites could undergo in the Greco-Roman world. As a result, a ritual critical approach provides a way of integrating baptism on behalf of the dead into the baptismal practices of the Corinthians, and it suggests how rites marking entry into and exit from their community were related.

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A man from Jen asked Wu-lu Tzu, "Which is more important, the rites or food?"

"The rites."

"Which is more important, the rites or sex?"

"The rites."

MENCIUS 6b:1

Ritual Studies and Second Testament Studies

In his magisterial study of Greek religion, Walter Burkert begins treatment of archaic and classical Greek religion, the heart of the work, with these words: "An insight which came to be generally acknowledged in the study of religion towards the end of the last century is that rituals are more important and more instructive for the understanding of the ancient religions than are changeable myths" (54). Burkert aligns his analysis with this insight, placing sacrifice at the center of Greek religion and starting his examination of it with a chapter entitled "Ritual and Sanctuary" (54-118).

What is taken for granted by many historians of ancient Mediterranean religion is alien to others, however. For various reasons enumerated by scholars both in and outside the field, Second Testament scholarship places ritual at the periphery, not the center, of its work (Smith 1990: 34, 43-46, 65-71, 95; Douglas: 19-28; Gorman). Only German religionsgeschichtlich scholarship from the early part of this century came close to paying adequate attention to ritual (e.g., Reitzenstein, Lietzmann). With the field's current interest in recovering the community life behind the writings of early Jesus groups this neglect may come to an end. At this point, however, study of the ritual life of the Jesus movement is in its infancy.

This observation does not belittle existing Second Testament scholarship on ritual as much as underscore how new and, consequently, how experimental the approach is. To date it is critics of the established interpretive paradigm or scholars charting the course of social-scientific interpretation who recognize the centrality of rites to communities and propose treating them. A 1996 issue of METHOD AND THEORY IN THE STUDY OF RELIGION is a good case in point. In an article immediately following Ron Cameron's critique of eschatology as an interpretive category for the Second Testament, Burton Mack calls for a sweeping redescription of the origins of the Jesus movement based in part--the fourth of five propositions or theses--on the central importance of ritual to all human communities (255-56). Baptism and the common meal or last supper appear four times among the thirty issues he lists as needing attention. For one of those issues, "The rationales and practices of baptism," he identifies someone outside the guild of Second Testament scholars, Jonathan Z. Smith, as the person best suited to the task (249, 262). This choice is symptomatic of Mack's unhappiness with his colleagues and the state of the field.

Mack's wish list embodies a polemic that is foreign to John Elliott's WHAT IS SOCIAL-SCIENTIFIC CRITICISM? Nevertheless, Elliott, too, makes it clear what Second Testament studies should be doing with regard to Jesus movement rites. In the book's appendices he draws attention both to ritual as a subject of study (Appendix 2) and to ritual studies as an interpretive approach that falls under social-scientific criticism (Appendix 4) (1993:110-21, 124-26).

By comparison, the work already done on Second Testament ritual falls far short of the programs Mack and Elliott call for. One need only look through the pages of the BIBLICAL THEOLOGY BULLETIN at articles by Mark McVann, Bruce Malina, and Elliott himself (McVann 1988, 1991; Elliott 1991). Recent issues of SEMEIA are also worth mentioning. SEMEIA 41, which treated performative and speech-act theory, and SEMEIA 65, which treated textuality and orality, that is, oral performance, contain articles that bear on ritual (Hancher; Grimes 1988; Ward).

SEMEIA 67 has ritual and the biblical text as its focus, but the title and content of the issue confirm how exploratory, even unformed, the approach is (Hanson; McVann 1994b). TRANSFORMATIONS, PASSAGES, AND PROCESSES: RITUAL APPROACHES TO BIBLICAL TEXTS not only betrays an indebtedness to Victor Turner but also shows a certain open-endedness. The editor, Mark McVann, is frank about this, likening that issue of SEMEIA to a fragile ship venturing into turbulent, murky, and still relatively uncharted waters. What unity there is, he notes, is limited: "There is, then, no unity of point of view, except the recognition that ritual is something important and that biblical scholarship will be well-served by an exploration of its meaning for biblical interpretation (1994a: 10)." SEMEIA 67, it can fairly be said, is experimental, but even more unified studies remain suggestive rather than definitive. The fourth chapter of Jerome Neyrey's PAUL, IN OTHER WORDS treats ritual in Paul under the functional rubrics of making and maintaining (group) boundaries (75-101). That said, it is more a sketch for a larger work than an exhaustive study.

The embryonic character of ritual studies of the Second Testament may not result entirely from the field's slowness or failure to realize the central importance of ritual. A contributing factor may be that the discipline of ritual studies itself has in many ways only recently come of age. In 1984 Ronald Grimes wrote a state-of-the-field essay for RELIGIOUS STUDIES REVIEW that reappeared one year later as the introductory essay in his book RESEARCH IN RITUAL STUDIES (1984: 134-45; 1985: 1-33). The opening sentence of the essay is revealing: "Because ritual studies comprise a newly consolidated field within religious studies, a high degree of methodological and bibliographical self-consciousness is necessary" (1985: 1). The field was scattered enough in Grimes's mind that he spoke of it in the plural, and its disciplinary home was not at all clear. Grimes classified it under religious studies, but others would place it quite legitimately under liturgical studies, performance theory, or one of the social sciences.

A decade later the field had undergone significant development. Grimes's book of 1990, RITUAL CRITICISM: CASE STUDIES IN ITS PRACTICE, ESSAYS ON ITS THEORY, refused to be definitive about the theory and definition of ritual, but in both cases he was resisting strong trends in the field (4, 9-14). In 1992 Catherine Bell's substantial book, RITUAL THEORY, RITUAL PRACTICE, appeared, offering a thorough critique of existing theories of ritual and a new proposal which understood ritual as a kind of practice, not as a special class of action. Just two years after that, a rival theory of ritual appeared. Caroline Humphrey and James Laidlaw's THE ARCHETYPAL ACTIONS OF RITUAL presented detailed criticism of Bell and other ritual theorists like Roy Rappaport while at the same time extending and applying the work of ritual theorist Frits Staal to a study of the Jain worship rite. Another indicator of ritual criticism's coming of age is the changing status of the JOURNAL OF RITUAL STUDIES, which was in its infancy in the late 1980s but is now a well-established, widely circulating publication.

This recent blossoming of the field coincides with currents in Second Testament studies that focus attention on the communities behind the text and thus prompt exploration of ritual. If developments within the discipline of Second Testament mean that community rites are beginning to move from the periphery to the center of scholarly attention, the field of ritual studies is now well prepared to supply models for interpreting them. In other words, there now exists a great deal more scholarship on ritual than the writings of van Gennep, Turner, and Douglas. The convergence of the two fields could enhance Second Testament studies at a foundational level: interpretation of Jesus movement rites would be sharpened and expanded; and, once those rites receive adequate attention, re-creation of the communities that made up the Jesus movement would become more accurate.

While every Second Testament text is a potential candidate for ritual analysis, some lend themselves to this type of analysis more than others. Since Paul mentioned community rites or addressed issues they raised with some frequency in 1 Corinthians, that document will serve as an excellent test case for the applicability and merit of ritual criticism. As I intend to show in a brief exploration of rites at Corinth, study of the Second Testament informed by recent scholarship in ritual studies will lead to a better, deeper understanding of the biblical text and the community life mirrored in it.

Investigation of the intersection between ritual and Second Testament studies, beyond the exploratory steps that have been taken, might best rely on Grimes as a guide. The book mentioned earlier, RESEARCH IN RITUAL STUDIES, sets forth goals for ritual studies that remain remarkably relevant fifteen years later, useful even for those borrowing from the field, like Second Testament scholars:

   Three major goals of ritual studies are (1) to mediate between normative
   and descriptive, as well as textual and field-observational, methods; (2)
   to lay the groundwork for a coherent taxonomy and theory that can account
   for the full range of symbolic acts ...; and (3) to cultivate the study of
   ritual in a manner that does not automatically assume it to be a dependent
   variable [1985: 1].

Consonant with those goals, Grimes describes in a later book how one practically does ritual analysis. Two short quotes from his book RITUAL CRITICISM suggest the best way:

   Ritual studies ... begins with the act of describing the performance events
   themselves....

and (in an analysis of drama as ritual):

   At the very least a ritological approach should describe the whole event,
   which extends ... to the cultural occasion and social circumstances in
   which they [the plays] were embedded [1990: 219, 90].

These quotations put in capsule form broad agreements that ritual theorists have reached. The first quote offers very simple advice, but behind it lies a corrective of approaches that move too quickly behind the palpable characteristics of a rite to a perceived deeper meaning. Critiques of functionalism (Penner) and symbolic analysis (Sperber) and Frits Staal's longstanding rejection of linguistic models for understanding rites (1979; 1989) have, along with other criticisms, raised questions about the common notion that ritual is essentially a form of communication. As a result, ritual theorist Roy Rappaport stresses what he calls the obvious aspects of ritual. Likewise, Jonathan Z. Smith, in a seminal article called The Bare Facts of Ritual, based his theorizing on the observable features of bear hunting and the rites surrounding it (1980:117-21).

The second quote recalls the perspective of Clifford Geertz, who prizes and practices thick ethnographic description. Such microscopic studies are good, he says, because of their inherent circumstantiality (23). Part three of Catherine Bell's latest book on ritual, a section entitled "Context: The Fabric of Ritual Life," begins with these words:

   A ritual never exists alone. It is usually one ceremony among many in the
   larger ritual life of a person or community, one gesture among a multitude
   of gestures both sacred and profane, one embodiment among others of
   traditions of behavior down from one generation to another [1997:171].

Stanley Tambiah puts the matter similarly but more simply: "A rite is never conducted in a vacuum, but in the context of other activities" (48).

Second Testament scholars, like all interpreters of the ancient past, are hampered by how few their sources are and how little they reveal about ritual performance. The field study of rites that Grimes recommends is impossible (1995: 5-23). Yet Grimes sees value in bringing a ritual critical perspective to bear on historical subject matter because observation of a rite--the parties involved in it, its social and physical location, what occurs--however limited, is still possible and hence revealing (1990: 158-72).

Refining Ritual Criticism: Baptism at Corinth as a Test Case

What appears to be a tension between the two basic directives of ritual criticism--looking at the rite itself, looking at the rite's context--may actually be the best way to avoid false starts and missteps. In studying Second Testament ritual, we may need to de-center a rite like baptism by highlighting its context in order to pay it the proper attention, that is, to look at baptism in and of itself, as a rite. Such an approach robs baptism of the special status it has enjoyed as sacrament, but without such de-centering and re-centering, baptism remains isolated from other rites and a cog in a theological construct. The goals of ritual analysis drawn from Grimes are interdependent: a description and taxonomy and theory of baptism as rite require considering it an independent variable, that is, as having a life of its own.

Wayne Meeks moved toward such a treatment of baptism in his book, THE FIRST URBAN CHRISTIANS, one of many contributions he has made to Second Testament interpretation informed by the social sciences. The fifth chapter of the book, entitled "Ritual," sought to examine baptism as one of many rites among the communities addressed by Paul or associated with his name (140-63). At first glance, this approach is vastly different from earlier studies of Pauline baptism, such as Rudolf Schnackenburg's BAPTISM IN THE THOUGHT OF ST. PAUL, for Meeks intentionally avoided theological categories like eschatology and soteriology that anchored Schnackenburg's analysis. Schnackenburg's approach represents a host of studies that locate baptism and other rites under one or another theological rubric of Christian theology, such as worship (e.g., Cullmann, Delling, Hahn).

Yet for all the genuine differences in the two scholars' approaches, striking similarities remain. Despite his intention to do otherwise, Meeks treated baptism apart from other rites. Both it and the Lord's Supper got their own major section in his chapter on ritual. All other rites he consigned to the opening chapter section on minor rituals or to the closing section on unknown or controverted rituals. The wealth of information in the Second Testament about baptism and the Lord's Supper relative to other rites may have justified such compartmentalization and ranking, but it undermined Meeks's professed goal of understanding baptism as one among many rites practiced by Jesus groups (142). While Meeks wanted to avoid giving baptism a privileged status, as Schnackenburg had done in treating it as a sacrament, his presentation shows favoritism nonetheless.

What Meeks and Schnackenburg concluded about baptism on behalf of the dead (1 Cor 15:29) is also much the same, though again their approaches to it differ widely. Schnackenburg relegated 1 Corinthians 15:29 to a chapter called "Uncertain and Derived Baptismal Statements" (95-102). Meeks assigned it to unknown and controverted rituals instead of including it in his treatment of baptism (162). True, little is known about this form of baptism, but there may be another reason he excluded it from treatment. Meeks (153-57) relied on the rite of passage model originating with Arnold van Gennep (10-11 and passim) and developed by Victor Turner (1967:93-111; 1969: 94-130) when he analyzed baptism in the Pauline congregations as a rite of initiation or community entry. Yet once Meeks attached such significance to baptism, what sense could he make of baptism for the dead, that is, baptism for those who were departing or had departed from the living community?

Meeks neglected to note that the common thread van Gennep detected running through rites that mark birth, coming of age, marriage, and death meant that they can and do become apt and potent metaphors for one another. This cross-referencing or reciprocity between rites of passage was common in the ancient Mediterranean world, as evidenced by the juxtaposing and intertwining of funerary and wedding rites in classical Athenian society (Rehm). By the first century CE, marriage to death was a common way of describing the funeral of a young woman who died before her wedding (Bodel: 456). In the Jesus movement, too, rites of passage came together: baptism became associated with birth (John 3:3-6) and burial (Col 2:12). From the standpoint of rites of passage, therefore, connecting baptism with the dead, that is, the funerary, would be a logical extension of baptism, not an unknown application of it.

An improved ritual analysis of baptism would look at all versions of it, including baptism for the dead, and set that array alongside other rites, both inside and outside Jesus groups. Not only would we avoid isolating baptism from other rites, as Meeks did, but we would also not rush to assign a function or meaning to baptism. Rather, the bare facts or obvious features of baptism remain the focus of investigation as it begins, and we keep our attention there by comparing them with the features of other rites of the day. In the case of baptism on behalf of the dead what is most distinctive about it is the object or beneficiaries of the baptism, the dead, though we do not know how the deceased were involved in the rite. Attention to funerary or burial rites is in order, then, as a way of providing a ritual context for this version of baptism.

A survey of Mediterranean funeral or burial rites lies beyond the scope of this study, and besides, ample scholarship already treats the subject (e.g., Garland, Kurtz & Boardman, Toynbee). Instead, we can focus our contextualizing of baptism on behalf of the dead by looking for types of funerals exhibiting a surrogate or substitutionary aspect, for most scholars take the Greek of 1 Cor 15:29 as a reference to a vicarious baptism undergone by the living for the benefit of the physically dead (Conzelmann: 363; Wedderburn 1987: 287-93; Barrett: 363; Hurd: 136; Beasley-Murray: 185-87).

One of the fullest descriptions of a funeral we have from the Roman world is Dio Cassius's record of the funeral that emperor Severus staged for an earlier emperor, Pertinax (75.4.2-3):

   His funeral, in spite of the time that had elapsed since his death, was
   carried out as follows. In the Roman Forum a wooden platform was
   constructed hard by the marble rostra, upon which was set a shrine, without
   walls, but surrounded by columns, cunningly wrought of both ivory and gold.
   In it there was placed a bier of the same materials, surrounded by heads of
   both land and sea animals and adorned with coverlets of purple and gold.
   Upon this rested an effigy of Pertinax in wax, laid out in triumphal garb;
   and a comely youth was keeping the flies away from it with a peacock
   feather, as though it were really a person sleeping.

Dio's account comes to an end when the bier is ignited (75.5.5):

   Then at last the consuls applied fire to the structure, and when this had
   been done, an eagle flew aloft from it. Thus was Pertinax made immortal
   [9.167-71].

(A similar though much shorter report comes from another chronicler of the principate, Aelius Spartianus [7.8]).

Dio's report describes the second funeral held for Pertinax, not the first. This second, honorary funeral was evidently meant to replace the original funeral held for Pertinax, for the latter had been carried out dishonorably by Julianus, emperor between Pertinax and Severus. Dio does not record the first funeral; at least the extant summary of Dio's history does not have it. But another historian, Julius Capitolinus, reports that while Julianus buried Pertinax with all honor, he never mentioned Pertinax's name in public (14.9). Dio verifies the disdain that Julianus had for Pertinax when he reports that the former made fun of the funerary banquet held for the latter (74.13.1-2). In this light, the second, imaginary funeral (funus imaginarium; Capitolinus 15.1) substitutes for the first and corrects the injustice done to Pertinax. Of the two funerals, the imaginary was the legitimate and real.

Capturing a similar development further down the social scale are the rules of a burial club from Lanuvium, a small town in Italy, dating from about 136 CE. Such clubs were popular and numerous in Roman imperial society, reflecting the concern people had to be properly mourned and decently buried (Hopkins: 212-15). Delivery of these services could be complicated in the case of slave club members, as this excerpt from the rules shows:

   It was voted that, when any slave who is a member of the club dies, if his
   master or mistress would unjustly refuse to hand over his body for burial,
   and if the slave has left no directions, a token funeral ceremony (funus
   imag[ina]rium) will be held. [Dessau: 2.738 [section] 7212, II, 3-4].

In this example we have moved from elite to mass society, yet application of the funerary rite is much the same. The exact funeral arrangements--whether an effigy replaced the corpse, a living club member took the place of the deceased, or some other substitution--go unrecorded. Whatever the case, club members have decided a vicarious rite may effectively discharge the duty of the club to deceased members under certain circumstances. An imaginary funeral, with the surrogacy or substitution implied by it, could take the place of an ordinary one.

As noted above, another salient feature of baptism for the dead is whom it benefits, the dead rather than the living. Yet, like its vicarious aspect, this feature does not appear so striking in the context of Roman funeral ritual, specifically in comparison with funerals held for the living, another modification Roman funerals underwent. Seneca provides examples of two such funerals, one in the ESSAY ON THE SHORTNESS OF LIFE, in which he argues against trying to circumvent one's lot in life:

   I cannot pass over an instance which occurs to me. Sextus Turannius was an
   old man of long tested diligence, who, after his ninetieth year, having
   received release from the duties of his office by Gaius Caesar's own act,
   ordered himself to be laid out on his bed and to be mourned by the
   assembled household as if he were dead. The whole house bemoaned the
   leisure of its old master, and did not end its sorrow until his accustomed
   work was restored to him. Is it really such pleasure for a man to die in
   harness? Yet very many have the same feeling; their desire for their labour
   lasts longer than their ability. [20.3-4; BREV. VIT.: 2.353].

A similar theme reappears in Seneca's twelfth epistle to Lucilius which is called ON OLD AGE. There, he maintains that both young and old should keep death in mind as the fate that everyone faces (12.6). Then he gives another example of a funeral for the living:

   Pacuvius, who by long occupancy made Syria his own, used to hold a regular
   burial sacrifice in his own honour, with wine and the usual funeral
   feasting, and then would have himself carried from the dining-room to his
   chamber, while eunuchs applauded and sang in Greek to a musical
   accompaniment: "He has lived his life, he has lived his life!" Thus
   Pacuvius had himself carried out to burial every day. Let us, however, do
   from a good motive what he used to do from a debased motive; let us go to
   our sleep with joy and gladness; let us say: "I have lived; the course
   which Fortune set for me is finished" [12.8-9; EP. 12: 1.71].

While not happy with the sense of self-importance and ostentation motivating Pacuvius to stage his own funeral, Seneca finds great value in the reminder that a daily funeral provides (12.9).

Staged or imaginary funerals must have had general currency among the elite of Roman society for the motif occurs in Petronius's SATYRICON, where all manner of funerary elements appear at the last stages of the banquet Trimalchio puts on for his guests ([subsection] 71-78). Such usage, like Pacuvius's, may simply be a theatrical and ostentatious way to bring an evening of excess to an end. But lest we think that funerals for the living were the game strictly of the Roman elite, we have evidence to the contrary from Tacitus, when he reports what befell a Roman senator visiting a colony in Italy (HIST. 4.45):

   A senator, Manlius Patruitus, complained that he had been beaten by a mob
   in the colony of Sena [modern Siena], and that too by order of the local
   magistrates; moreover, he said that the injury had not stopped there: the
   mob had surrounded him and before his face had wailed, lamented, and
   conducted a mock funeral, accompanying it with insults and outrageous
   expressions directed against the whole senate. [HIST.: 2.85-87)

Scholars date this event to 70 CE on the basis that the senator's name was actually M. Patruinus, which seems highly likely (Chilver & Townsend: 56; Groag, Stein, & Petersen: 5.161 [section] 156).

Further presentation of Mediterranean funeral rites lies beyond the scope of this study but the instances above are sufficient to document the malleability and wide applicability of Roman funerary rites. Beyond the linkage that they might have to other rites of passage, such as weddings, funerals found creative application to all sorts of separations, from departure for the evening to retirement to expulsion. They could also mark other transitional moments, as when Pertinax was deified. This is exactly what the use of funerary language and convention in non-funerary situations conveyed in the literature of the time. Seneca, for instance, wrote a letter of consolation to his mother over the loss of her son when he, Seneca, was sent into exile (HELV.). Similarly, Cicero resorted to funerary language to describe the consequences of a trial that ends in public disgrace for a defendant, a severe punishment reserved for breach of trust or guardianship. Those so defamed could have their property confiscated and sold at auction, a situation Cicero compares to a funeral, in this case of the bitterest kind. For the defamed are witness to brokers and buyers assembled not to honor them but to squabble over the remnants of their lives (QUINCT. 15 [section] 50).

In addition to what the examples above say about funerary ritual, they also provide an important context for baptism. At the very least, the adaptability of funerals to non-funerary situations opens the door to finding baptism other than where we might expect, at the entrance to the Christian community. Furthermore, two extraordinary types of funeral are noteworthy for how they correspond to baptism on behalf of the dead: (1) a replacement or substitute rite performed vicariously for the dead and (2) funerals for the living. These applications relocated a funeral from its typical setting, lacked features typical of the rite, or introduced novel elements. Such modifications required qualification of these funerals as token, mock, imaginary, honorary, and so forth. Even so, their effects were actual. Here, then, is language to describe baptism on behalf of the dead that is both contextually and ritually sensitive: it was a relocated rite enacted to honor the dead.

Isolating baptism for the dead, as Meeks did, rendered it mystifying to him (162), but placing it in context has the opposite effect. Set alongside funerals for the living--those of Turannius and Pacuvius--baptism for the dead does not appear mysterious, for in terms of who undergoes them, both rites invert ordinary practice. Likewise, in light of surrogate or replacement funerals in which a person or community carried out a rite for someone in absentia--for Pertinax and the burial club member whose body could not be recovered--baptism on behalf of the dead falls within the range of ritual variation in the Greco-Roman world.

Placing a rite in context ultimately draws attention to the rite itself, and this foray into Roman funerary rites gives us fresh eyes for looking at baptism in general. What do we see? If the malleability of rites in the Greco-Roman world as evidenced by Roman funeral rites readies us to expect flexibility in baptism, the examples also indicate that wide application does not mean haphazard or random use. Funerary rites appeared in situations not unrelated to their ordinary use; extraordinary funerals like their ordinary counterparts occurred at moments of separation or transition. If creative application of baptism followed a like development, then baptism for the dead continued to serve as an initiation rite but outside a typical setting. In this new circumstance, where the dead rather than the living benefited from the rite, the initiate moved not from outside a Jesus group into it but the reverse, from the inside out. As a rite of entry, baptism on behalf of the dead would probably have signaled movement of the deceased community member into the world of the dead (DeMaris: 675-77). If this analogy, based on observing variation in Roman funeral rites, holds, then the character of baptism among the Corinthians becomes clearer. Contextualizing a rite thus provides, in Grimes's language, "the groundwork for a coherent taxonomy and theory that can account for the full range of symbolic acts" (1985: 1; italics added).

Imaginary Funerals among the Corinthians

Whatever an exploration of the Mediterranean ritual world might suggest about the flexibility of baptism or how it developed as a rite, such exploration also provides the basis for observing interaction or influence between rites. The broad application of funerary rites in the Greco-Roman world indicates how prominent funerary and burial rites were in Mediterranean life generally. In the case of Corinth, if the practice of baptism for the dead signals how important ritual action for the dead was, other rites of the Corinthian Jesus movement confirm the influence and attraction of the funerary.

Given the ubiquity of the funerary for enacting separation and transition and given baptism's use to signal separation from one's past and a transformation of those who underwent it, it is not surprising to find funerary elements in baptismal discourse (Rom 6:3-4):

   Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus
   were baptized into his death? Therefore we have been buried with him by
   baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the
   glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life [New Revised
   Standard Version].

Baptism in Romans 6 is a burial (v 4) because--in line with the application of funerary rites elsewhere--it marks departure or separation from a prior situation or condition, or in Paul's language, the death of the old self (v 6). From the standpoint of the Mediterranean ritual world, therefore, baptism according to Romans 6 was an imaginary funeral.

Did baptism thus understood reflect the actual ritual practice of a Jesus group, or was this Paul's innovation? Paul introduced baptism at this point in Romans only to support a point he was making on another issue. That is, he was describing a baptism he assumed the reader knew, not prescribing the way it should be understood (Meeks: 154). The specific language that begins his introduction of baptism--"Do you not know ...?" (Rom 6:3)--is a rhetorical question asking readers or listeners to confirm that they do know, not signaling something new (Wuellner: 56-57). Consequently, scholars debate what tradition Paul is relying on, not whether he depends on it here (Wedderburn 1983; 1987: 37-69). Since Paul most likely composed his letter to the Romans in Corinth after long residence there, it is possible that the funerary baptism tradition in Romans 6 came from the Corinthians (DeMaris: 681-82). Unfortunately, our sources only hint; they do not reveal exactly how the Corinthian Jesus movement carried out baptism.

A ritual critical approach alerts us to the funerary element in a another Corinthian rite where separation took place: the expulsion of a member from the community. Paul writes the Corinthians as follows (1 Cor 5:1-5):

   [1] It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and
   of a kind that is not found even among pagans; for a man is living with his
   father's wife. [2] And you are arrogant! Should you not rather have
   mourned, so that he who has done this would have been removed from among
   you? [3] For though absent in body, I am present in spirit; and as if
   present I have already pronounced judgment [4] in the name of the Lord
   Jesus on the man who has done such a thing. When you are assembled, and my
   spirit is present with the power of our Lord Jesus, [5] you are to hand
   this man over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that his spirit
   may be saved in the day of the Lord [New Revised Standard Version].

In these verses Paul makes it clear that the Corinthians must remove a deviant member from their midst. What is not so clear, and what scholars debate, is the nature and means of that removal.

Attention to the expulsion has fallen on the last three verses of this passage and on Paul's part in it. Some have understood the expulsion along the lines of an excommunication or ban from the community, enforced until the offender repents. Paul determines the mechanism of removal, handing the man over to Satan, which means casting him out of the community into the world. The exclusion acts as a remedial punishment meant to produce repentance--"so that his spirit may be saved"--and return of the offender to fellowship, a result some find narrated in 2 Corinthians 2:5-11 (see also 2 Cor 7:9-12) (Lampe: 342-55; Joy).

Other interpreters regard what Paul calls for as a ceremonial execution. Ernst Kasemann describes what happens as a court proceeding in which Paul assembles the congregation to bear witness to his pronouncement of judgment against the deviate. The judgment, made by God's representative in name of the Lord Jesus, will result in the deviate's death--"the destruction of the flesh" (70-71). Hans Conzelmann also uses juridical imagery in his description of what goes on: "Paul is resolved upon a judicial act of a sacral and pneumatic kind against the culprit." Then he turns to the world of Greco-Roman magic to explain exactly how the ceremony would have been understood to invoke divine punishment (97). He is joined in this by several other scholars who document the language of delivering a person to supernatural wrath--"hand this man over to Satan"--in execrations or curses recorded in ancient magical papyri (Deissmann: 302-03; Aune: 1551-53; Collins: 255-56).

The trouble with both lines of interpretation, though they differ greatly, is their neglect of the community's role in dealing with the deviate. Adela Yarbro Collins admits as much when she notes that the background in Greco-Roman magic explains the procedural aspect of the expulsion-execution but not the communal aspect (256). That a communal aspect is central to the whole passage is underscored by interpreters who note that the end of verse five refers not to the man's flesh and spirit but literally to the flesh and the spirit. The Greek thus provides a basis for saying that verse five focuses not so much on the fate of the offender as on the consequences of the expulsion for the group: their action will rid the community of pollution--"destruction of the flesh"--and thus keep the spirit of the community pure--"so that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord." This reading of verse five appeals because it resonates with several points in the remainder of chapter five, where Paul's concern is not individual but corporate purity or holiness (1 Cor 5:7, 9, 11) (Donfried: 150-51; Campbell; Martin: 168-74; cf. Campenhausen: 134 n 50). Given the passage's focus on the community, what the deviate did and what Paul intends to do are secondary to the action of the Corinthians (Wire: 27; Forkman: 139-41).

Along with their inattention to the community's role, scholars have also ignored verse two as a source of information about how Corinthians should act against the deviate in their midst. This is doubly unfortunate because in terms of rites actually practiced by the Corinthians rather than what Paul insists that they do, this verse offers more insight than those that follow. Whether the Corinthians ever responded to what Paul commanded in verses three through five is an open question. But those commands followed on what Paul saw as the Corinthians' failure to act on their own (Forkman: 203 n 145). What had they failed to do? They had not mourned and, as a consequence, the deviate had not been removed from among them (cf. 1 Cor 5:2). Was community mourning ordinarily how the Corinthians dealt with deviance? Paul's tone in this verse makes us wary: he may not be offering a neutral description of Corinthians practice here. On the other hand, what Paul prescribes in the following verses is a call to extraordinary action, evidently a response to the Corinthians' failure to do what they might ordinarily have done.

What is striking about verse two is the linkage it makes between mourning and removal. Scholars consistently take the language of mourning figuratively to refer to showing sorrow or grief. Hence, they understand Paul taking the Corinthians to task for their failure to express regret over the actions of the deviate among them. If they had, they would have acted by expelling the deviate. So read, the finite verbs of the verse have the force of commands. Thus, the New International Version renders the last part of the verse as follows: "Shouldn't you rather have been filled with grief and have put out of your fellowship the man who did this?" What increases the attractiveness of this translation is the language of Paul in 5:13. There he repeats the verb for driving out or removing and this time he uses the imperative form (Campbell: 335 n 19; Rosner; Moulton, Howard, & Turner: 3.94-95).

A closer look at the language of verse two, however, makes this translation of the Greek very unlikely. First, there is no reason to take the Greek verb for mourning (pentheo) as a generic reference to sorrow or regret in this verse. While the verb can have this sense, as is the case in the letter of James (4:9), it normally means the mourning connected with a funeral. It clearly has this standard meaning in the Gospels (Matt 5:4; 9:15; Mark 16:10; Luke 6:25) and in Revelation (18:11, 15, 19). Second Testament writers could distinguish between the two senses of the verb grammatically: when pentheo meant literal mourning it took no object, but adding one signaled the figurative use. Accordingly, Paul used an object and thus was not referring to literal mourning when he wrote of the grief he would have for sinners in 2 Corinthians 12:21. In 1 Corinthians 5:2, on the other hand, pentheo has no object and therefore denotes actual mourning (Blass & Debrunner: [section] 148 n 3).

Equally unlikely is the New International Version's rendering of the final clause of verse two: "and have put out of your fellowship the man who did this?" While such a clause can express a command, it normally functions otherwise. Reading it as a command, moreover, is especially difficult in this case because it departs so much from the Greek, which has "the man" as the subject, not object, of the verb, a verb that is in passive, not active, voice. Normally, a clause that begins with the Greek conjunction hina expresses the purpose, goal, or aim of the verbal action in the main clause of the sentence. Hence, hina is typically translated "in order that" or "so that." Read in this way, verse two says the expulsion of the deviate is the goal of the Corinthians' mourning. The hina clause could even suggest that the expulsion would be the result of their mourning (Bauer: 376-78; Smyth: [section] 2193). Accordingly, the New Revised Standard Version translates the latter part of 1 Corinthians 5:2, "Should you not rather have mourned, so that he who has done this would have been removed from among you?"

The unusual cause and effect indicated by the likeliest syntax of verse two may be what has encouraged scholars to pursue other readings, but it makes perfect sense in the context of the funerary rites presented above. The application funerary rites could have outside their ordinary use makes it possible to find a funerary rite called for in these circumstances. The particulars of the situation make the possibility a likelihood, for as noted above, situations of separation, including expulsion, attracted funerary rites. The report cited above from Tacitus about a Roman senator expelled from the colony of Sena bears review, for the expulsion there included a funeral performed by colony members in his face. Funerary expulsion was evidently also part of the Corinthians' repertoire of rites. Consequently, their failure to carry it out triggered Paul's outrage and intervention.

As was the case with entry into a Jesus group, exit from it involved an imaginary funeral, if the Corinthian situation is any indication. Set in an environment where funerary rites appeared outside the context of death and burial, such ritual development in the Jesus movement is no surprise. But the main point here has not been to prove the dependence of Jesus movement rites on Greco-Roman funerals. Rather, the task has been to do justice to rites in and of themselves--looking at how they develop and seeing how they interact with other rites--and thereby avoid reducing them to correlates of this or that theological or ideological construct.

Not just theologians fall into this trap. The historian of religion Mircea Eliade did too, even though he viewed baptism as an initiation rite comparable to other initiations. He detected the funerary element in Pauline baptism and concluded that

   the initiatory elements in primitive Christianity simply demonstrate once
   again that initiation is an inseparable element in any revaluation of the
   religious life. It is impossible to attain to a higher mode of being, it is
   impossible to participate in a new irruption of sanctity into the world or
   into history, except by dying to profane, unenlightened existence and being
   reborn to a new, regenerated life [118].

This perspective allowed Eliade to argue that baptism in its early stages was not influenced by other initiation rites of the time, such as those of the pagan mystery religions. Rather, features of death and rebirth sprang from within embryonic Christianity, as an inevitable part of all initiation rites:

   The majority of initiatory ordeals more or less clearly imply a ritual
   death followed by resurrection or new birth. The central moment of every
   initiation is represented by the ceremony symbolizing the death of the
   novice and his return to the fellowship of the living [xii; cf. xiv, 19-20,
   115-19, 130-32].

(Examples of death and rebirth in initiation abound [Turner 1967: 96].) As valuable as this observation is, however, Eliade's position makes analysis of baptism as a ritual difficult, for it maintains baptism's isolation from its specific ritual context, indeed from almost any context. In addition and perhaps as a consequence, Eliade missed the wider presence of the funerary in Jesus movement rites and the creative development suck rites could undergo. As we have seen among the Corinthians, whether one underwent initiation into a Jesus group or expulsion from it, an imaginary funeral marked the passage.

Conclusion

This experiment in ritual criticism, though it explored only a few Corinthian Christian rites, should provide some idea of the promise and potential of an approach that focuses on the ritual life of a community. In the case of Corinthian baptism, a ritual critical approach allowed us to integrate baptism on behalf of the dead into the baptismal practices of the Corinthians instead of isolating it or treating it as an anomaly. Moreover, the relationship between rites, those marking entry into and exit from the community, began to emerge, such that we caught a glimpse of the how Corinthian rites cohere and how that configuration of rites fitted in the broader picture of Mediterranean ritual life.

The development of this approach comes at a crucial time in the history of Second Testament interpretation, given current trends in that field. Richard Horsley's state-of-the-field essay on Second Testament studies in a 1994 special issue of the JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY OF RELIGION puts the matter thus: the field's goal of reading texts in more complete and complex contexts requires increased attention to sociology and anthropology (1146). (This pursuit of context, especially cultural context, mirrors trends in religious studies generally [Hart: 771-73].) If this is where the field is headed, adequate attention to ritual is essential, for it is basic to any social fabric and all human cultures.

Yet ritual criticism and social-scientific criticism as a whole may not be so readily embraced as Horsley anticipates. For what lies behind his language of development in the field of Second Testament may in fact be a major shift in orientation. Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza, in her groundbreaking study IN MEMORY OF HER, saw a dramatic change overtaking the field. She describes the demise of a once dominant interpretive model that posited doctrinal disputes behind community conflicts and hypothesized the existence of theological opponents whom this or that gospel or letter writer combated. The new interpretive paradigm, i.e., the study of the social world of early Christianity, "seeks to replace this dualistic model of opposing belief systems by reconstructing the social-sociological setting of early Christian sources and traditions." Interpretive focus, she says, now falls on the life and behavior of the early Christians rather than theologies, doctrines, or belief systems (71).

If this is an accurate assessment, changes in the field run deeper than Horsley's estimation. Accordingly, the title of his article, "Innovation in Search of Reorientation," would have to be reversed in order to express where the field really is. In this parlance, one of the innovations that would guide a reoriented Second Testament studies is the use of methods and models from ritual studies to reconstruct the life and behavior of followers in the Jesus movement.

But has the field undergone significant reorientation? If Schussler Fiorenza is right in claiming that Second Testament studies faces a shift in interpretive paradigms, her estimate of how much that shift has seized the field is not. The theological disputes model is hardly in decline; it remains the primary way Second Testament interpreters comprehend conflicts within the Jesus movement. In this circumstance, ritual criticism faces more uncertain prospects. It will suffice, then, if this new approach can push interpreters far enough along that they regard rites as generative rather than derivative.

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Richard E. DeMaris, Ph.D. (Columbia University-Union Theological Seminary), author of THE COLOSSIAN CONTROVERSY: WISDOM IN DISPUTE AT COLOSSAE (Sheffield, UK: JSOT Press, 1994), is Associate Professor of Biblical Studies at Valparaiso University, Valparaiso IN 46383; e-mail: Richard.DeMaris@valpo. edu. He is book note editor for RELIGIOUS STUDIES REVIEW and participates regularly in the Ohio State University Excavations at Isthmia, Greece. His publications based on archaeological research include Corinthian Religion and Baptism for the Dead (1 Corinthians 15:29): Insights from Archaeology and Anthropology, JOURNAL OF BIBLICAL LITERATURE 114 (1995), 661-82.