Pollution–purification rituals, cultural memory and the evolution of religion: How collective trauma shaped ancient Israel

Can a cultural memory and identity constructed around traumatic events in the historical past, interpreted as the result of pollution of the sacred center, give a group an evolutionary advantage under the right conditions? This article assesses this question by examining three different waves of religious entrepreneurship that drove the evolution of the ancient Israelite religion between the late eighth and sixth centuries BCE. Bringing Alexander’s cultural sociology, specifically his theory of trauma and pollution–purification rituals, into dialog with evolutionary sociology, I offer a robust theory of religious evolution. Most work in this area focuses on the evolution of monotheism or the portability of texts, whereas I argue that (i) the specific historical and sociocultural conditions (ii) shaped the specific content of the texts and (iii) the criteria employed in selecting some traditions and not others. Of equal importance, (iv) normative innovations related to interpreting and editing the texts made the Word of God fixed and rigid, yet malleable across a wide swath of milieus. Moreover, (v) annual, weekly and daily rituals meant to inscribe the pollution–purification narrative contributed to the adaptive success of the Israelite cultural assemblage over the course of two millennia. American Journal of Cultural Sociology (2015) 3, 123–155. doi:10.1057/ajcs.2014.12