Samuel E. Balentine is Professor of Old Testament and Director of Graduate Studies, Union Presbyterian Seminary, Richmond, VA.

Ritual has a primal connection to the idea that a transcendent order - numinous and mysterious, supranatural and elusive, divine and wholly other - gives meaning and purpose to life. The construction of rites and rituals enables humans to conceive and apprehend this transcendent order, to symbolize it and interact with it, to postulate its truths in the face of contradicting realities and to repair them when they have been breached or diminished. This Handbook provides a compendium of the information essential for constructing a comprehensive and integrated account of ritual and worship in the ancient world. Its focus on ritual and worship from the perspective of biblical studies, as opposed to religious studies, highlights that the world of ritual and worship was a topic of central concern for the people of the Ancient Near East, including the world of the Bible.
Given the scarcity of the material in the Bible itself, the authors in this collection use materials from the ancient Near East to provide a larger context for the practices of the biblical world, giving due attention to historical, anthropological, and social scientific methods that inform the context of biblical worship. The specifics of ritual and worship life-the sacred spaces, times, and actors in worship-are examined in detail, with essays covering both the divine and human aspects of the sacred dimension. The Oxford Handbook of Ritual and Worship in the Hebrew Bible considers several underlying concepts of ritual practice and closes with a theological outlook on worship and ritual from a variety of perspectives, demonstrating a fruitful exchange between biblical studies, ritual theory, and social science research.

Contents
Preface
List of Contributors
1. Introduction, Samuel E. Balentine
Part I. Historical Contexts
2. Mesopotamian Religion, Tzvi Abusch
3. Ritual and Worship in Ancient Egypt, Emily Teeter
4. The Hittites Serve their Gods, Gary Beckman
5. Syria-Palestine: Worship and Rituals, Adrian Curtis
6. The Greeks and their Rituals, Barbara Kowalzig
Part II. Interpretive Approaches
7. History of Religion, Lester Grabbe
8. Rituals and Ritual Theory: A Methodological Essay, Ithamar Gruenwald
9. Social and Cultural Anthropology, William Gilders
Part III. Ritual Elements: Participants, Places, Times, Objects, Practices
10. God, Gods, and Humankkind (Worldview), Friedhelm Hartenstein
11. Sacred Space and Common Space, Michael Hundley
12. Ritual Experts and Participants in the Ancient Near East and the Hebrew Bible, Thomas Hieke
13. Sacred Times and Ritual Times, Andrew Davis
14. Ritual Objects and Artifacts, Ryan Bonfiglio
15. Ritual and Religious Practices, Roy Gane
16. Ritualizing Iconic Jewish Texts, James W. Watts
17. Ritualizing Christian Iconic Texts, Dori Parmenter
18. Ritualizing Muslim Texts, Jonas Svensson
Part IV. Cultural and Theological Perspectives
19. Sin and Expiation, David Janzen
20. Clean/Unclean, Pure/Impure, Holy/Profane, Jonathan Lawrence
21. Sickness and Healing, Deborah Rooke
22. Death and Afterlife, Brian Schmidt
23. Divine Presence and Absence, Angelika Berlejung
Part V. History of Interpretation
24. Ritual and Worship at Qumran, Eileen Schuller
25. Influence on Early Christian Worship, Paul Bradshaw
26. Ritual and Worship in Early Judaism, Judith Newman
27. Rabbinic Judaism, Stefan Reif
Part VI. Socio-Cultural Functions
28. The Politics of Worship, William S. Morrow
29. The Ethics of Worship, Eryl Davies
30. Socio-Religious Functions of Worship, Stephen L. Cook
31. The Economics of Worship in Ancient Israel and Judah, Joachim Schaper
Part VII. Theology and Theological Heritage
32. Ritual Theology in/and Biblical Theology, Gerald Klingbeil
33. Welcoming the Sabbath on the Kibbutzim: Secular Religiosity, Dalia Marx
34. One God, Multiple Rituals and Theologies: Christianity, Rodney A. Werline
35. Islamic Ritual, Richard Gauvain
Scriptural and Ancient Texts
Subject Index