The corporeal dimensions of prayer before icons are often attributed to superstition, antiquated beliefs, or a “graced” function of metaphysical participation. In contrast to this, I develop a phenomenological analysis of corporeal substitution as a real possibility of ordinary experience, for an absent person we love strongly can come to presence in a thing before us and provoke a corporeal response. Guided by the story of the acheiropoieton, the “icon made without hands,” I show how the structure of this ordinary human practice is altered when elevated to prayerful substitution, and through its repetition over time, this allows the icon to serve as a means of communion for the believer across both visual and corporeal dimensions.

The Introduction outlines the primary theoretical approaches of the monograph and scrutinizes why the study of early Christianity and the New Testament tends to adopt idiosyncratic methodologies when compared with allied fields like classics. Chapter summaries are provided as well as a discussion of what I term the “paradigm of exceptionalism,” or the reasons why so-called religious literature – that is, writings associated with still-practiced religions – often faces a different set of evaluative criteria within the academy.

Chapter 3 presents and discusses the diverse prayer practices encountered in the zongos. Drawing on ethnographic descriptions and providing people’s varied interpretations of them, I discuss the diversity of Islamic prayer practices in relation to the anthropological literature on prayer. As I argue, Islamic prayer practices are fundamental to the formation of the Islamic community of the zongos, but they also provide the people of these wards with practical means to (re-)actualise their religious distinctions and dissent. The chapter first describes the separate ʿid prayers in Kokote Zongo and discusses the literature on prayer. I go on to describe the ṣalāt, the daily Islamic prayer, and discuss how the people of the zongo (re-)actualise their Islamic community and their religious differences through it. Then, I address the specific dhikr practices by which the Tijaniyya distinguish themselves from other Islamic groups and offer a panoramic view of the diverse personal prayer practices encountered in the zongos. I argue that the people of the zongo relate to the divine, the Islamic tradition, and each other as Muslims in their diverse religious practices. They are and become Muslims in diverse ways, as they (re)make, engage with, and embody the irreducible diversity of their religion.

This chapter examines some relations between religious experience and religious practice, with attention to Buddha, Confucius, Krishna, Moses, Paul, and Muhammad.