Ritual and Cosmos: Heavenly Rituals and Their World-Making Power in the Second Temple Period and New Testament

This dissertation studies the phenomenon of ritual in the heavenly realm in Second Temple and New Testament texts utilizing methods derived from ritual theory. It takes Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice, the Letter to the Hebrews, and Revelation as specific case studies for this phenomenon and shows how the ritual landscape of the heavenly realm in these and other texts is more diverse than is commonly acknowledged. Specifically, Second Temple and New Testament authors depict ritualized behavior drawn from the political realm (e.g., enthronements, judicial procedure, war rituals) conjoined with ritual behavior drawn from the Jerusalem temple cult. In doing so, they depict God’s heavenly dwelling as both a temple and a palace simultaneously. It makes this argument by first tracing the roots of ritual behavior in the divine sphere in the ancient Near East and Hebrew Bible, showing how political rituals derived from the divine council model were increasingly fused with liturgical activity from the temple starting with the prophetic writings. This led to a diversity of heavenly ritualized behavior captured in various Second Temple Jewish texts. Ultimately, the study shows how heavenly rituals stood in a relationship of similarity and dissimilarity with earthly ritual, which is mostly seen in how these display cosmic effects. In other words, heavenly rituals function as a medium through which God orders and reshapes the universe and life within it.