| Abstract
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If experience can be defined as the affectively charged interaction with the world by means of the body as agency or medium, various sites of such affectively charged interaction mapped on to the body may be fruitfully analysed to explain the operations of religion as discourse. Baptism is one such site. In fact, baptism as the shorthand for of collective noun denoting a spectrum of ritual practices is a particularly apposite example. Baptism as ritual practice has had a varied history, both in terms of originary context as well as interpretive or discursive trajectories. This essay primarily tracks two such significant trajectories: the one being baptismal practices as purification rites operating in socially ‘heterodox’ early Jewish and early Christian groups within an apocalyptic, dissociative framework; the other being ‘orthodox’ baptismal discourse as expressed in, for instance, Cyril of Jerusalem’s Mystagogical Catheceses. In the former, the strong affect of dissociation is coupled with visionary experiences, hence its embeddedness in apocalyptic trajectories with their strongly dismissive stance to the surrounding world. In the case of the latter, the dramatic performances of the Easter liturgy, arguably, created the experience of salvation and resurrection. In both instances, the intersection of ritual, bodily experience, religious discourse, and social imaginaire provides the explanatory framework for baptism as foundational ritual practice in the making and maintenance of religious discourse and its attendant experiential effects. In this sense, such is the argument pursued in the essay, baptism is a core facet of early Jewish and early Christian religious experience. If experience can be defined as the affectively charged interaction with the world by means of the body as agency or medium, various sites of such affectively charged interaction mapped on to the body may be fruitfully analysed to explain the operations of religion as discourse. Baptism is one such site. In fact, baptism as the shorthand for of collective noun denoting a spectrum of ritual practices is a particularly apposite example. Baptism as ritual practice has had a varied history, both in terms of originary context as well as interpretive or discursive trajectories. This essay primarily tracks two such significant trajectories: the one being baptismal practices as purification rites operating in socially ‘heterodox’ early Jewish and early Christian groups within an apocalyptic, dissociative framework; the other being ‘orthodox’ baptismal discourse as expressed in, for instance, Cyril of Jerusalem’s Mystagogical Catheceses. In the former, the strong affect of dissociation is coupled with visionary experiences, hence its embeddedness in apocalyptic trajectories with their strongly dismissive stance to the surrounding world. In the case of the latter, the dramatic performances of the Easter liturgy, arguably, created the experience of salvation and resurrection. In both instances, the intersection of ritual, bodily experience, religious discourse, and social imaginaire provides the explanatory framework for baptism as foundational ritual practice in the making and maintenance of religious discourse and its attendant experiential effects. In this sense, such is the argument pursued in the essay, baptism is a core facet of early Jewish and early Christian religious experience.
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