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To Take Place: Toward Theory in Ritual
In this broad-ranging inquiry into ritual and its relation to place, Jonathan Z. Smith prepares the way for a new approach to the comparative study of religion.
Smith stresses the importance of place—in particular, constructed ritual environments—to a proper understanding of the ways in which "empty" actions become rituals. He structures his argument around the territories of the Tjilpa aborigines in Australia and two sites in Jerusalem—the temple envisioned by Ezekiel and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. The first of these locales—the focus of one of the more important contemporary theories of religious ritual—allows Smith to raise questions concerning the enterprise of comparison. His close examination of Eliade's influential interpretation of the Tjilpa tradition leads to a powerful critique of the approach to religion, myth, and ritual that begins with cosmology and the category of "The Sacred."
In substance and in method, To Take Place represents a significant advance toward a theory of ritual. It is of great value not only to historians of religion and students of ritual, but to all, whether social scientists or humanists, who are concerned with the nature of place.
"This book is extraordinarily stimulating in prompting one to think about the ways in which space, or place, is perceived, marked, and utilized religiously. . . . A provocative example of the application of humanistic geography to our understanding of what takes place in religion."—Dale Goldsmith, Interpretation
Smith stresses the importance of place—in particular, constructed ritual environments—to a proper understanding of the ways in which "empty" actions become rituals. He structures his argument around the territories of the Tjilpa aborigines in Australia and two sites in Jerusalem—the temple envisioned by Ezekiel and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. The first of these locales—the focus of one of the more important contemporary theories of religious ritual—allows Smith to raise questions concerning the enterprise of comparison. His close examination of Eliade's influential interpretation of the Tjilpa tradition leads to a powerful critique of the approach to religion, myth, and ritual that begins with cosmology and the category of "The Sacred."
In substance and in method, To Take Place represents a significant advance toward a theory of ritual. It is of great value not only to historians of religion and students of ritual, but to all, whether social scientists or humanists, who are concerned with the nature of place.
"This book is extraordinarily stimulating in prompting one to think about the ways in which space, or place, is perceived, marked, and utilized religiously. . . . A provocative example of the application of humanistic geography to our understanding of what takes place in religion."—Dale Goldsmith, Interpretation
202 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1987
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142 people want to read
About the author
Jonathan Z. Smith
19 books20 followersJonathan Z. Smith is the Robert O. Anderson Distinguished Service Professor of the Humanities at the University of Chicago where he is also a member of the Committee on the History of Culture.
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
October 13, 2019
Smith has a way of writing that convinces you that he knows something nobody else in the world does, and he's dying to tell you, but you have to work with him to understand it how he understands it himself. I absolutely loved that about this book and will definitely read more from JZ.
June 15, 2015
This book's subtitle is Toward a Theory of Ritual and that movement involves the connection between place and ritual. He examines the Tjilpa aborigines in Australia, dismissing Eliade's construction of the sacred around cosmology and the center. Instead the Tjilpa build sacred space by journeying through it. Smith compares that travel (and comparison is central to his argument here) with two Jerusalem "sites." The first is the temple described in Ezekiel (40-48), that mixes the divisions of sacred/profane (a marker of political power) and pure/impure (of religious status). These descriptions Smith argues do not require centralization, indeed do not even require the temple for their existence and indeed can be replicated without the particular place. This is also becomes true of the second sacred site, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. He begins with the church's location and its construction under Constantine, but works out from there to the arrival of pilgrims and the particular rituals associated with the Holy Land. "This is worship as pilgrimage. It reflects the movement of a secure Christianity from an essentially private mode of worship to an overwhelmingly public and civic one of parade and procession." And in doing so the spatial (place, the details of Scripture and especially the life of Jesus) was mapped on the temporal, to create the liturgical year. Outside of Jerusalem, time and its narrative displaced place, as with the Ezekiel temple.
His last chapter includes a reflection on the Protestant dismissal of ritual as empty. He does not agree: "Ritual is, first and foremost, a mode of paying attention. It is a process for marking interest.... place directs attention." Smith's conclusion is that the sacred is created by this attention, that ritual creates the sacred and is not a response to it. Instead the sacred is conditioned by "emplacement." Later he says that "ritual is a means of performing the way things ought to be in conscious tension to the way things are."
A provocative book that ranges widely over anthropology and sociology (heavily interacting with Durkheim), and Christian, Jewish, and Near Eastern texts with ease. Smith ends pointing to The Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius of Loyola where "All that remains of Jerusalem is an image, the narrative, and a temporal sequence." Not an easy book or a complete argument, but sure is a fun ride.
His last chapter includes a reflection on the Protestant dismissal of ritual as empty. He does not agree: "Ritual is, first and foremost, a mode of paying attention. It is a process for marking interest.... place directs attention." Smith's conclusion is that the sacred is created by this attention, that ritual creates the sacred and is not a response to it. Instead the sacred is conditioned by "emplacement." Later he says that "ritual is a means of performing the way things ought to be in conscious tension to the way things are."
A provocative book that ranges widely over anthropology and sociology (heavily interacting with Durkheim), and Christian, Jewish, and Near Eastern texts with ease. Smith ends pointing to The Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius of Loyola where "All that remains of Jerusalem is an image, the narrative, and a temporal sequence." Not an easy book or a complete argument, but sure is a fun ride.
March 9, 2020
This is a theoretical inquiry on how sacred places are made through human endeavors. Different dynamics of ritual and myth make it possible for certain sacred places to be replicated elsewhere, to be free from place. Smith draws comparisons between Tjilpa conceptions of sacred topographies deriving from ancestral myth, the Temple of Jerusalem as envisioned by Ezkiel, and the Christian Holy Church of Sepulchre in Jerusalem.
The Temple of Jerusalem as a system is self-referential, organized through hierarchical relations of power, and of status (a "sacerdotal" system of pure-impure, in terms of spatial organization and social groups). The graded hierarchy of relations in status makes the system replicable while discarding, or altering, the hierarchy of power. Ritual in this sense is an assertion of difference, of demarcation. In Smith's eloquent words, "ritual represents the creation of a controlled environment where the variables (the accidents) of ordinary life may be displaced precisely because they are felt to be so overwhelmingly present and powerful" (108). In the case of the Holy Church of Sepulchre, Christian myth was emplaced onto a unique location in Palestine and generated Christian liturgical time that could be exported. Tjilpa on the other hand discover sacred places in built-in landscapes by following movements of ancestors that are inscribed in a fixed time in the past, which is a dual temporal domain to the present. It is through memorialization and recollection (rather than rituals that demarcate difference) that sacred places are found.
This is a difficult but a thought-provoking, sophisticated book. Smith truly takes "circuitous" routes in each chapter, which can be frustrating at times. Also, there's almost no discussion of specific instances where the replication happens away from Jerusalem, and why Aranda Tjilpa myths/sacred geographies are drawn as points of comparison. But these probably weren't Smith's aims and maybe are addressed in his other works that I'm not familiar with. His discussion of humanistic geography (especially Yi-fu Tuan) made me want to read books in that field. Also made me appreciate theory. The book is so rich, I hope to reread it one point.
The Temple of Jerusalem as a system is self-referential, organized through hierarchical relations of power, and of status (a "sacerdotal" system of pure-impure, in terms of spatial organization and social groups). The graded hierarchy of relations in status makes the system replicable while discarding, or altering, the hierarchy of power. Ritual in this sense is an assertion of difference, of demarcation. In Smith's eloquent words, "ritual represents the creation of a controlled environment where the variables (the accidents) of ordinary life may be displaced precisely because they are felt to be so overwhelmingly present and powerful" (108). In the case of the Holy Church of Sepulchre, Christian myth was emplaced onto a unique location in Palestine and generated Christian liturgical time that could be exported. Tjilpa on the other hand discover sacred places in built-in landscapes by following movements of ancestors that are inscribed in a fixed time in the past, which is a dual temporal domain to the present. It is through memorialization and recollection (rather than rituals that demarcate difference) that sacred places are found.
This is a difficult but a thought-provoking, sophisticated book. Smith truly takes "circuitous" routes in each chapter, which can be frustrating at times. Also, there's almost no discussion of specific instances where the replication happens away from Jerusalem, and why Aranda Tjilpa myths/sacred geographies are drawn as points of comparison. But these probably weren't Smith's aims and maybe are addressed in his other works that I'm not familiar with. His discussion of humanistic geography (especially Yi-fu Tuan) made me want to read books in that field. Also made me appreciate theory. The book is so rich, I hope to reread it one point.
April 30, 2021
What an unexpected turn! JZS devoured the Polynesian materials used by Eliade as well as by symbolic anthropologists from Durkheim & Mauss to Levi-Strauss and Geertz. Then he thinks through PLACE-CREATION as a central ritual act of giving orientation by the historical & textual materials of Constantinople, Jerusalem, the Jewish Temple, and the Christian Liturgical year. Place as "monuments" are markers of attention, just as rituals as a marking of difference is. Indeed this book should not be read only by Religious Studies students.
October 19, 2018
A great book introducing religion and place. Smith has a unique style that is quite engaging to read albeit he struggles to make a clear thesis and uses highly technical language.
December 4, 2014
In Jonathan Z. Smith’s To Take Place: Toward Theory in Ritual, the author puts forth a primary topic on a matter of theory: “the issue of ritual and its relation to place.” Smith traces the Christian liturgical year to its Judaic counterpart, the enterprise of Mishnah, and also examines the Tjilpa group of Australian aborigines in order to form his theory of ritual tied to the sacralization of spaces. He focuses primarily on two sites in Jerusalem: the Temple of Solomon (and its rebuilt counterparts) as well as the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. As Smith examines myths and other historic textual sources, he comes to the conclusion that the place selection for temple-building in the Near Eastern tradition is virtually arbitrary; it is adjacent to wherever the king happens to have decided to take up residence. It is thus the ritualization of the space—not the inherent sacredness of the space—that gives it its cosmic and spiritual significance.
Smith’s theory in ritual partially explains how both the Jewish diaspora and the spread of Christianity were able to occur so successfully. While sacred space played a role in both religious traditions, it was the ritual associated with sites in Jerusalem that were replicated and transported to other locations and performed in new, diverse spaces made sacred by the ritual. In Chapter 2 Smith reveals how royalty determined the original site of the Temple of Jerusalem. Chapter 3 involves the ideological mapping of Ezekiel’s writing on the temple. Smith identifies two dichotomies sacred/profane and pure/impure as well as two other recurrent thematic considerations—civic and territorial, and orientational—that helped the religious tradition sacralize the original temple and thus sets the stage for replication in subsequent holy places and �architecture in Jewish tradition. Chapter 4 extends the temple analysis and compares it with its parallels in the Christian tradition: first and foremost the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem. Smith argues that both of these holy structures in Jerusalem—the Jewish Temple and the Church of the Holy Sepulcher—“being structures and, hence, replicable—could become independent of place.” This argument and its construction are essential to explaining how these religions were able to move to other places and why religious architecture has been important in both traditions. By replicating the rituals and architecture that housed them, the religion could be replicated elsewhere and make formerly profane and impure places sacred and pure. Chapter 5 reiterates this point and emphasizes the importance of ritual over architecture by concluding: “If Jerusalem were to become accessible, it was to be gained through participation in a temporal arrangement of events, not a spatial one.” That is to say, even though place and architecture do serve these religions, they are wholly dependent upon and secondary to the rituals—or the arrangement of temporal events—that necessitate and create sacred places. Despite his extensive references to anthropologists and theoretical language, Smith’s philosophical argument is relatively clear and seemingly sustainable.
Smith’s theory in ritual partially explains how both the Jewish diaspora and the spread of Christianity were able to occur so successfully. While sacred space played a role in both religious traditions, it was the ritual associated with sites in Jerusalem that were replicated and transported to other locations and performed in new, diverse spaces made sacred by the ritual. In Chapter 2 Smith reveals how royalty determined the original site of the Temple of Jerusalem. Chapter 3 involves the ideological mapping of Ezekiel’s writing on the temple. Smith identifies two dichotomies sacred/profane and pure/impure as well as two other recurrent thematic considerations—civic and territorial, and orientational—that helped the religious tradition sacralize the original temple and thus sets the stage for replication in subsequent holy places and �architecture in Jewish tradition. Chapter 4 extends the temple analysis and compares it with its parallels in the Christian tradition: first and foremost the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem. Smith argues that both of these holy structures in Jerusalem—the Jewish Temple and the Church of the Holy Sepulcher—“being structures and, hence, replicable—could become independent of place.” This argument and its construction are essential to explaining how these religions were able to move to other places and why religious architecture has been important in both traditions. By replicating the rituals and architecture that housed them, the religion could be replicated elsewhere and make formerly profane and impure places sacred and pure. Chapter 5 reiterates this point and emphasizes the importance of ritual over architecture by concluding: “If Jerusalem were to become accessible, it was to be gained through participation in a temporal arrangement of events, not a spatial one.” That is to say, even though place and architecture do serve these religions, they are wholly dependent upon and secondary to the rituals—or the arrangement of temporal events—that necessitate and create sacred places. Despite his extensive references to anthropologists and theoretical language, Smith’s philosophical argument is relatively clear and seemingly sustainable.
November 4, 2013
Again, nobody does work like J Z Smith, but both of the books I read this week get 4 stars for only hinting (usefully!) at the edges of the theoretical brilliance he brings to bear in Drudgery Divine. You can, in this sense, trace the contours of Smith's thought as he zeroes in on the central importance of Protestant classification as anti-catholic polemic and the protestant creation of "religion" as a category.
Of central importance in this book is his geographic and topographic emphasis, drawing on all sorts of insights from Mary Douglass' work, of the arbitrary notions of place and the content of ritual in the creation of the sacred. His central thesis is adumbrated in the title in a bit of word play--Ritual "takes place", i.e., seizes place, MAKES sacred. HEre the protestant move to define ritual as "empty" of content (as opposed to myth which is characterized by Protestant scholars as "wrong) must be re-examined. Smith thinks, yes, ritual is "empty" in that no substantive remains; there is no central religious experience which ritual enacts. But Smith argues instead that ritual takes, "seizes" place, creating the sacred, making sacred by the repetition.
It's a good, and short, study, but one gets the feeling there is more to be done when examining the theoretical construction of the cultic and sacerdotal elements of ancient Judaism (and early Christianity, and how does this fit in with Graeco-Roman evidence around temples?). Here, Smith spends most of his time on geography and cartography (which shows where his compilation of essays published a few years later in "map is not Territory" is going).
I think it might be best to start with Imagining Religion, skip to Drudgery divine, and then advance to Smith's latest work in Relating Religion. The rest of his essays and works seem able to be cherry-picked in terms of relevance to particular theoretical insights as needed, but his core thought can be summarized in these three works.
Of central importance in this book is his geographic and topographic emphasis, drawing on all sorts of insights from Mary Douglass' work, of the arbitrary notions of place and the content of ritual in the creation of the sacred. His central thesis is adumbrated in the title in a bit of word play--Ritual "takes place", i.e., seizes place, MAKES sacred. HEre the protestant move to define ritual as "empty" of content (as opposed to myth which is characterized by Protestant scholars as "wrong) must be re-examined. Smith thinks, yes, ritual is "empty" in that no substantive remains; there is no central religious experience which ritual enacts. But Smith argues instead that ritual takes, "seizes" place, creating the sacred, making sacred by the repetition.
It's a good, and short, study, but one gets the feeling there is more to be done when examining the theoretical construction of the cultic and sacerdotal elements of ancient Judaism (and early Christianity, and how does this fit in with Graeco-Roman evidence around temples?). Here, Smith spends most of his time on geography and cartography (which shows where his compilation of essays published a few years later in "map is not Territory" is going).
I think it might be best to start with Imagining Religion, skip to Drudgery divine, and then advance to Smith's latest work in Relating Religion. The rest of his essays and works seem able to be cherry-picked in terms of relevance to particular theoretical insights as needed, but his core thought can be summarized in these three works.
September 10, 2014
I read "To Take Place" for a graduate seminar called "Religion, Space, and Place." I certainly side with all the other reviewers in recognizing J.Z. Smith's theoretical brilliance and the significance of this work. Although this is definitely not a work of theology, I found Smith's theories to ritual to be understandable in terms of my personal theology as a Unitarian Universalist -- a primary reason why I study comparative religion.
That being said, the book's structure is confusing, even for highly theoretical work. I felt there was no "flow" and that certain lines of thought were too frequently reiterated while tangential references were dropped in with no explanation whatsoever. This is a complaint about editing, not content, but because of the difficulty of reading the book, it only rates three stars.
That being said, the book's structure is confusing, even for highly theoretical work. I felt there was no "flow" and that certain lines of thought were too frequently reiterated while tangential references were dropped in with no explanation whatsoever. This is a complaint about editing, not content, but because of the difficulty of reading the book, it only rates three stars.
January 3, 2008
This is a fabulous book! It is so significant as to be required reading for every student of religious studies. In it Smith brings the spatial dimension to analyzing ritual. That is, rituals take place somewhere, and it is the act of demarcating sacred space the makes things sacred. The other valuable contribution is that be blows up the 100 year old notion that rituals are myths acted out, and blows up the 50 year old notion that ritual must be analyzed as "text". Instead, ritual needs to be understood as its own category, not as another symbolic language that can be treated as a written text.
June 16, 2010
Can't be a good comparative scholar without knowing your Smith, and this one was AWESOME. He essentially removes the urgency for a sacred "space" by reminding us that it is ritual (such as the liturgical year) that transforms our conception of time. Ritual becomes the sacred, and therefore, sacred space should be viewed as any place where one can practice.
December 18, 2011
J.Z. Smith is wonderful at tweaking readers' perspectives. The most noticeable shift (in terms of change/time) I've made in my thinking in my life was from reading him. This was the 2nd of his books I read, not quite as awesome as the first, reviewed elsewhere.
January 5, 2013
Great fun. Smith remains the best theorist of religion currently writing. Fascinating to watch this protracted boxing match with Eliade and useful to think about the ways in which ritual represents the assertion of difference. Glad I finally got around to reading it.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews