middle”(Acts John94; trans. J. K. Elliott). Later the Lord sings,“Now if you
respond to my dancing, see yourself in me who speak”(ch. 96). If we consider
contemporary analogies from Philo (Contemplative Life 83 – 5) and Dio
Chrysostomos (Discourse12.33), it is quite possible that ritual dance was
established practice in some parts of early Christianity (cf. Backman, 1952;
Czachesz, 2009c).
Although we do not have evidence of such rituals in the New Testament,
the above-mentioned traditions certainly did not come out of nowhere. For
example, praying in groups the way modern-day ultra-orthodox Jews do
could be a case in point, which adds to the puzzle of the prohibition of
public prayer in the Sermon of the Mount. The next best thing we canfind
in the New Testament is the mention of joint singing (Matt. 26:30; Mk
14:26; Eph. 5:18-20, 3:16–17; cf. 1 Cor. 14:5, 26) as well as of joint
prophesizing and speaking in tongues in the Corinthian church (1 Cor.
14:23–31). In both cases, we can expect that synchronous singing or
speaking (probably accompanied by synchronized body movement)
increased the feeling of solidarity in the group and reinforced expectations
about other group members’ commitments. This seems a particularly
logical reference in the narrative world of Jesus’passion, when the group
has to face danger jointly, although the disciples’gradual defection in the
later parts of the narrative suggests that its effects were temporary at best.
We will come back to the possible synchrony of the Corinthian ritual in
Chapter 7, this volume.
Finally, let us note that synchrony is not the only way people perform
coordinated behavior in rituals. A key distinction could be made between
coordination that is directly orchestrated by a liturgist (priest, deacon, reader)
as opposed to behaviors in which large-scale coordination can emerge from
participants’ local adjustment to their neighbor’s behavior. Previously
(Czachesz, 2007e, pp. 74–6, 88–9) I suggested two models that could explain
the organization of some emergent ritual behavior in groups. Inflocking,
individuals adjust the direction and speed of their movement to those of
their closest neighbors. The result is the graceful movement of groups, possibly
applicable to processions, circumambulations, and other liturgical elements
involving massive crowds. Note that this does not require that people step or
move in perfect synchrony. The other model could be called thepropagation
modeland its classical example is the Mexican wave, where people repeat the
movement of their neighbor’s movement with a small delay, resulting in a
large wave that moves around, for example, in a soccer stadium. Passing on the
bread across the pews during the Lord’s Supper is widespread practice in
modern-day Protestant Churches and could be mentioned as an example.
For the lack of historical data, applying such models to early Christian
rituals remains difficult but using them as heuristic tools of analysis could
be beneficial.
106 Cognitive Science and the New Testament