A religious ritual is a ritual that involves belief in a deity. The ancient Israelite sanctuary rituals investigated in the present volume obviously belong to this type. In biblical religion, the deity YHWH is ordinarily inaccessible, beyond reach of the earthly material domain (cf. Job 11:7), unless he chooses to make himself accessible (e.g., Gen 18). Therefore, scientific investigation of phenomena such as rituals should take into account what M. Douglas refers to as the “non-Newtonian physics”