ABSTRACT
Exegesis is not a matter of echoing, after the fact, a signification already taken place; rather, it is an act of producing a certain fit, an adaptation of the unprecedented, not by means of subsuming the difference under the rule of "the same" but, instead, by establishing the equivalency of the different under the condition of "alike enough". Transposing this foodcuisine paradigm onto religion, the two-phase process of becoming-culture can be delineated this way: first, "the radical and arbitrary reduction represented by the notion of canon", and then, "the ingenuity represented by the rule-governed exegetical enterprise of applying the canon to every dimension of human life". Taking as a paradigm the great variety of alimentary habits observable among different human groups across the world, Jonathan Z. Smith indicates how the basic structure of any cultural production takes the twophased form of delimitation coupled with subsequent elaboration within the bounds thus imposed.
