rationally—irrespective of the absolute claims of some religious leaders on
their resources, such as reflected by the positive example of Barnabas and the
negative example of Ananias and Sapphira in Acts 4–5.
Taking into account such complexities of costs and benefits could be the key
to understanding some further aspects of the examples discussed in the
previous section. Paul’s interpretation of the communal meals is a good
example of how participants’beliefs change the perceived costs. If participants
accepted the Pauline interpretation, the perceived costs were increased because
of the potential danger of death by eating“judgment,”and so were the perceived
benefits because of the expected participation from Christ’s body. Doctrinally
correct belief and self-inspection before the meal could thus lower the costs and
increase the benefits for the believer. Whether non-belief meant higher costs,
however, remains hard to determine, since anyone only seeking nourishment
could ignore both negative and positive expectations. Yet one may surmise that
fear from potential magical harm was so strong in antiquity (see Chapter 6) that
nobody would lightheartedly ignore Paul’s warning.
Let us also consider the instructions about prayer in the Sermon of the
Mount from the perspective the costly signaling. The encouragement of
private prayer may come as a surprise in light of this theory. Sosis (2006,
pp. 66–7) describes the prayer practices of ultra-orthodox Jews of Eastern-
European descent whom he encountered during hisfieldwork in Israel.“In
their thick beards, long black coats, and black pants,”Sosis reports,“Haredi
men spend their days fervently swaying and sweating as they sing praises to
God in the desert sun.”While wearing their ancestral outfit (often including a
warm head cover) in the desert heat and performing ritual prayer, these ultra-
orthodox Jews give costly signals of their religious commitment to each other
as well as to all onlookers. The level of solidarity among the Haredi is indeed
spectacular, complete strangers helping and trusting each other on a regular
basis. Obeying Matthew’s precepts for solitary practices, in turn, would mean a
dramatic change in the cost–benefit calculation of prayer. While the costs of
prayer remain the same (or even increase due to the obligation to return home
or seek out a private place), the benefits (in terms of commitment signaling)
virtually disappear: praying and fasting out of the sight of others excludes the
sending (and receiving) of commitment signals.^7 Now there could be a twist to
this interpretation. Renouncing the benefits of praying in sight of others,
solitary prayer could be interpreted as an extremely costly form of ritual
prayer. The same goes for fasting, mutatis mutandis. Thus creating a very
costly ritual did not require actual extra investment of time and money (such
as needed for organizing elaborate initiations or building impressive cultic
places), which communities might not have had at their disposal. By relatively
(^7) Let us note that Sosis (2003) discusses the problem of private rituals but his tentative
explanations work only for privateandpublic rituals in tandem.
Ritual 103