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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 June 2011
It is curious that, despite Paul's representation of baptism as a burial (Rom 6:3–4; cf. Col 2:12), his understanding of baptism has not been considered in terms of funerary rites. Rather, the symbolic and initiatory character of baptismal burial, together with its close association with the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ, has for about a century produced debate over alleged relationships between Pauline baptism and the initiatory rites of Hellenistic mystery cults. This essay, in honor of Krister Stendahl, is intended to demonstrate that, whatever the associations with mystery cults may be, Paul's understanding of the process of dying in which all believers participate from the moment of their baptismal burial is fundamentally informed by funerary practices and ideas. My thesis is that Pauline baptism is most comprehensively explained in terms of the widely attested, cross-cultural phenomenon of secondary or double burial. I will sketch first some of the distinctive features of Paul's views on the death of believers, then lay out some of the results of research on secondary burial, and then conclude with a few comments on Paul's perspective on the believer's experience.
1 For important contributions to the “magical” aspects of Pauline baptism, see Smith, Morton, “Pauline Worship as Seen by Pagans,” HTR 73 (1980) 241–49CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and idem, Clement of Alexandria and a Secret Gospel of Mark (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1973).Google Scholar Despite his focus on the undisputed letters in his essay (cf. also Clement of Alexandria), Smith still reads Paul in light of the two disputed letters and therefore misses the significance of the transitional period characteristic of the undisputed letters.
2 These and other related points are more fully discussed in chap. 3 of my Rediscovering Paul: Philemon and the Sociology of Paul's Narrative World (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1985).Google Scholar See also Tabor, James, “Firstborn of Many Brothers: A Pauline Notion of Apotheosis,” in Richards, Kent H., ed., Society of Biblical Literature 1984 Seminar Papers (Chico: Scholars Press, 1984) 295–303.Google Scholar
3 For other views of baptism informed by modern anthropology and sociology, see Meeks, Wayne A., The First Urban Christians: The Social World of the Apostle Paul (New Haven/London: Yale University Press, 1983)Google Scholar index, s.v. “Baptism.”
4 BibOr 24; Rome: Pontifical Biblical Institute, 1971. This is a revised form of Meyers' Ph.D. dissertation, “Jewish Ossuaries and Secondary Burials in their Ancient Near Eastern Setting” (Harvard University, 1969)Google Scholar. Neither of the major studies of Greek and Roman burial customs deals directly with the phenomenon of double burial: Kurtz, Donna C. and Boardman, John, Greek Burial Customs (London: Thames & Hudson, 1971)Google Scholar; Toynbee, J. C. M., Death and Burial in the Roman World (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1971).Google Scholar
5 Hertz, Robert, “Contribution à une étude sur la représentation collective de la mort,” Année Sociologique 10 (1907) 48–137Google Scholar; “A Contribution to the Study of the Collective Representation of Death,” in Hertz, Robert, Death and the Right Hand (trans. R. and C. Needham; Aberdeen: Cohen & West, 1960).Google Scholarvan Gennep, Arnold, Rites of Passage (1909; trans. M. B. Vizedom and G. L. Caffee; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960).Google Scholar
6 See, e.g., Turner, Victor, The Ritual Process (Chicago: Aldine, 1969).Google Scholar The two most important volumes, with good introductions and bibliography, are Huntington, Richard and Metcalf, Peter, Celebrations of Death: The Anthropology of Mortuary Ritual (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979)Google Scholar; and Bloch, Maurice and Parry, Jonathan, eds., Death and the Regeneration of Life (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982).CrossRefGoogle Scholar I am grateful to my colleague William Darrow for the references to these two volumes and for his valuable contributions to this paper.
7 Hertz, “Contribution,” 48.