Ritual, Emotion, and Materiality in the Early Christian World

This volume advances our understanding of early Christianity as a lived religion by approaching it through its rites, the emotions and affects surrounding those rites, and the material setting for the practice of them.

The connections between emotions and ritual, between rites and their materiality, and between emotions and their physical manifestation in ancient Mediterranean culture have been inadequately explored as yet, especially with regard to early Christianity and its water and dining rites. Readers will find all three areas―ritual, emotion, and materiality―engaged in this exemplary interdisciplinary study, which provides fresh insights into early Christianity and its world.

Ritual, Emotion, and Materiality in the Early Christian World will be of special interest to interdisciplinary-minded researchers, seminarians, and students who are attentive to theory and method, and those with an interest in the New Testament and earliest Christianity. It will also appeal to those working on ancient Jewish and Greco-Roman religion, emotion, and ritual from a comparative standpoint.

Soham Al-Suadi is Professor of New Testament Studies and Dean on the Faculty of Theology at the University of Rostock (Germany). She is a member of the steering committee of the Society of Biblical Literature’s Seminar on Meals in the Greco-Roman World.

Richard S. Ascough is Professor of Religious Studies at Queen’s University (Canada) and has published widely on the social dynamics of early Christ groups as well as Greek and Roman associations. His most recent book is 1 and 2 Thessalonians: Encountering the Christ Group at Thessalonike.

Richard E. DeMaris is a Senior Research Professor at Valparaiso University (U.S.A.). His recent publications include Early Christian Ritual Life, co-edited with J. T. Lamoreaux and S. C. Muir (Routledge, 2017) and The Oxford Handbook of Early Christian Ritual, co-edited with R. Uro, J. J. Day, and R. Roitto.