ABSTRACT
After many years of dealing with the medical, social, and political implications of the pandemic around the world, many issues remain unresolved, and boundaries must be renegotiated again and again. The view of the New Testament texts in general and the Pauline letters in particular has also changed as the authors renegotiate social relationships based on crisis experience and redefine boundaries between isolation and community. In the New Testament, the tension between isolation and community is particularly evident in religious contexts. Lifestyles and communities are not only questioned by crisis experiences but also re-evaluated and experimentally implemented. Important experiences that serve to refocus are expressed in rituals. This paper is dedicated to the ritual aspects of the early Christian imprisonment letters to the Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, and Philemon that are all part of the Pauline discourse. They are religious texts conveying accounts of this world and the world to come, as well as death and resurrection, through ritual experiences. Personal and collective experiences of crisis are manifested in rituals and serve religious identification.
