I begyndelsen var festen?

The article discusses the concept of feasts as a possible important religio-phenomenological category. Against archaeological-anthropological theorizing according to which feasts are essentially battlegrounds for status competition (Hayden, Dietler), I argue (with Weismantel, Etzioni, Nahum-Claudel) for a more basic understanding of feasts as joyful gatherings of persons not normally together or eating and drinking together. Feast in this understanding is practically identical with Durkheim’s vision of social gatherings and the emergence of religion (and thereby culture) in outbursts of collective effervescence. Underneath actual religious rituals and more or less non-religious feasts (called ‘Feast1’) is a more fundamental gathering of which both rituals and normal feasts (called ‘Feast2’) are transformations. The article includes two narrative examples from the Hebrew Bible: Hannah and the sacrifice in Shilo (1 Samuel 1) and Ezra’s reading of the law of Moses (Nehemiah 8) and some remarks on feasting in early Christianity.