Guiding, Feasting, Fasting. Biblical Strategies of Leadership

Abstract

Festivals and fasting both create a social space in which questions of leadership and followership are negotiated. Based on the concept of leadership relations by Markus Pohlmann, this paper examines how festivals are used to establish, reinforce, or change leadership and explores how fasting can also be understood as both a locus and an instrument of leadership relations. In biblical texts, both activities depict the leadership relations in an elliptical manner: the leader and the led group likewise fulfill constitutive functions for effective leadership.