Revealing Rituals: Washings and Meals in Galatians and 1 Corinthians

This thesis attempts to understand the place of rituals in the formation of early Christianity as represented by Galatians and 1 Corinthians. By exploring Paul’s reference to ritual washings and meals with a heuristic use of ritual theory, we conclude that rituals in early Christianity were inherently revelatory, in that they revealed the dawning of a particular time (the messianic age) through the bodies of the ritual participants. This bodily revelation established both a distinctly Christian ethic and a distinctly Christian social space by which such an ethical identity might be identified and sustained.