Strategic truth: the Didache and the ritualization of confession

• Author / Creator

  Olfert, Ryan

• The Didache’s imperatives to confess faults are located in an array of ritual practices similar to that of other Greco-Roman associations. Yet, there are distinctive ways in which each group strategically uses confessional practice within these arrays. In this thesis, I will argue that examining confession in the Didache as practice, in particular through the lens of Catherine Bell’s “ritualization,” exposes how certain activities are being privileged with respect to other activities and how these distinctions are ordered together into wholes that allow for their strategic use, manipulation, and adaptation. Specifically, the Didache utilizes confession in order to link “teaching,” as both oral tradition and written text, with a “way of life.” As a part of this argument, it will be necessary to suggest an extension to Bell’s understanding of the operation of misrecognition within ritualization in order to show how the Didache misrecognizes its own discourse of sacrifice.

• Subjects / Keywords

  • Christianity
  • Liturgy
  • Symposia
  • Sacrifice
  • Didache
  • Confession
  • Ritualization
  • Associations

• Graduation date

  Fall 2011

• Type of Item

  Thesis

• Degree

  Master of Arts

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/R38M42

• License

  This thesis is made available by the University of Alberta Libraries with permission of the copyright owner solely for non-commercial purposes. This thesis, or any portion thereof, may not otherwise be copied or reproduced without the written consent of the copyright owner, except to the extent permitted by Canadian copyright law.