The field of contact linguistics has produced valuable insights into the ways languages behave in contact environments, and the present essay represents an attempt to adapt a number of these insights to the study of cultural contact more broadly. The historical phenomenon under discussion is a theological strand shared by rabbinic and late antique Platonist sources, namely, the attempt to formulate a theory of sacrifice that does not entail an anthropomorphic conception of (the highest) God. After adducing some of the key sources that represent this attempt in the respective traditions, the essay examines how best to conceptualize such similarity, absent shared terminology, explicit cross-tradition citations or references, or any other traditional markers of “influence.” Here I employ the contact-linguistic category of areal diffusion, that describes the tendency of languages in contact over time to gradually adopt common features, even though it is not possible to determine which language “borrowed” from the other. Taking the theological critique of sacrifice as the cultural analogue to a linguistic feature, it is possible to see how the feature is evident in certain streams within rabbinic Judaism, platonic Paganism, and early Christianity. The essay then turns to examine some of the ramifications of a contact-linguistic approach and, drawing on the work of Salikoko Mufwene, puts forth two arguments: that the distinction between internally- and externally-induced change is both theoretically and analytically inadequate; and the need to examine cultural continuity no less than cultural change as the result of contact dynamics.
Lingue in contatto: un caso di prestigio linguistico
