(11:33),“examining oneself”(δοκιμαζεῖνἑαυτόν) before the meal in order to
avoid eating“judgment”(κρίμα), uttering the proper sequence of words before
the bread and again before the cup. None of these sub-goals helps people
nourish themselves in the traditional, biological sense. Adding and regulating
these elements certainly took the event out of its everyday context, made its
structure more rigid, introduced opacity to the connection between sub-goals
as well as to the relationship of sub-goals to the overall goal, increased
repetitiveness and symmetry (e.g., the words of bread parallel the words of
the cup with variation), and required the exact reiteration of the procedure
each time. Overall, however, the resulting ritual could be routinized fairly
quickly. The words prescribed by Paul are not lengthy, and even if the required
self-examination involved additional prayers or meditative texts (perhaps
something as simple as the tax-collector’s prayer in Luke 18:13), all this
could be learned after a few repetitions. Moreover, communal meals in
antiquity followed scripts anyway, thus participating in a meal with more or
different ritual elements was probably not something people found cognitively
overwhelming.
Yet it is entirely plausible that participation in the meal ritual described in
these verses alleviated anxiety. Which of the three above-mentioned theories
could account for such an effect? Paul’s requirement of self-examination
brings in the element of guilt, which was the key to compulsive rituals
according to Freud. Indeed, at least since the early third century, the Eucharist
was understood to communicate the forgiveness of sins, at least in some
Christian traditions (Acts of Thomas 50, 133; Peters, 1995, p. 61). One
may ask, however, if the theological ideas underlying such an understanding
of the Eucharist were already present in the celebration of the Corinthian
meal, even if Paul’s later letters articulate some of its basic components
(e.g., Rom. 8:10–11; Gal. 2:19–20). Further, one should reckon with the
possible influence of modern Christian practice on Freud’s theory, who
could pick up this element from his own cultural environment and project it
onto religious rituals in general. Another possible explanation of the allevi-
ation of anxiety could be the direct effect of introducing order, symmetry, and
repetition. This would follow from Fiske’s theory andfits in with a large body
of research on the anxiety-reducing effects of religious rituals by creating order
in mental, material or social sense (Hood et al., 2009, pp. 455–6). Such a
general explanation, however, adds little to our understanding of the particular
features of ritualization in 1 Corinthians 11.
Aside from the possible anxiety-reducing effect of (re-)ritualizing the Cor-
inthian meal, can we identify aspects of the ritual that could trigger the hazard-
precaution system? The text mentions at least two life-threatening dangers:
first, the return of Jesus (11:26); and second, eating and drinking“judgment”
(κρίμα, 11:29). We can assume that the Corinthians shared Paul’s early
expectations about Jesus’immanent return, when he would appear as an
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