The Old Testament scholar Oesterley asks why dancing was a religious rite almost everywhere in the ancient world. He examines theories of its origin, the Hebrew words for dancing, processional dances, dances around sacred objects, and rites of mourning, harvest and rain, comparing the Israelites with Canaanite, Egyptian and Greek practice and with ethnographic reports of his own day.
A learned comparative study for readers of biblical religion and the history of ritual. Download the free EPUB.