In his article King Benjamin's Discourse: Context, Complexity and Fruitfulness, Kevin Christensen recalled an experience he had on his mission in Leeds, England:
While I was serving in on a mission in England in
1973-1975, one of my investigators made a comment regarding King Benjamin’s
speech. He pointed to the chapter 4,
verse 2, where it describes the multitude “crying aloud with one voice, saying,
“O have mercy and apply the atoning blood of Jesus Christ.” He had a problem with the text reporting
that everyone fell to the earth, and everyone made the covenant.
“People don’t behave that uniformly,” he
said. “Not everyone would have accepted
it. Some would have refused.”
At the time, the best I could do was to remark
that, “It was a good speech.” Not
surprisingly, this didn’t impress him.
Such
acclamations were known in antiquity (see the article linked above and other
resources referenced therein). Such took place during various Christian
councils, including Chalcedon (451). Commenting on this phenomenon, Charlotte
Roueché wrote:
One of the more startling aspects of the conciliar
acts is the regular recording of acclamations. To a modern reader, they appear
intrusive and inappropriate, not least because in modern writing-based societies,
cheering and shouting by groups has become increasingly marginalized; it is
associated with disorder and disruption, even if it has an established role in certain
situations, such as sporting events. . . . But in a pre-individual society,
such shouts have a very different significance.
Acclamations can be found throughout the ancient Near
East, and in both the Jewish and the Graeco-Roman tradition. Their primary
function must be one of communication in a non-literate form. In both cultures
they seem to be closely associated with religious practice. When the people of
Ephesus were being encouraged to oppose the Christian apostle Paul, the crowd
in the theatre was encouraged to shout the cult acclamation ‘Great is Artemis
of the Ephesians’. This will have been a familiar chant from their normal religious
ceremonies; it is therefore understandable that they proceeded to repeat the acclamation
over a period of two hours (Act. Ap. 19:32-41). The fullest account of this
aspect of acclamations is still the study, written in 1920 by Peterson, of the
acclamation ‘One God’, a pre-Christian acclamation which was enthusiastically
adopted by Christian assemblies, and can be found in conciliar acts, e.g. at
Chalcedon, εις θεος ο τουτο
ποιησας (‘It is the one God who has done this’, Chalcedon VI. 13) (Erik
Peterson, Heis theos: epigraphische, formgeschichtliche und
religionsgeschichtliche Untersuchungen [Göttingen, 1920]).
In all these situations the role of acclamations
is seen as positive and reinforcing: the verbs used in the ancient texts,
translated as shouting or crying out, have an inappropriately negative
connotation in English. But the liturgies of the churches have retained that
role for acclamations, although a modern description would perhaps use the term
‘chant’; even the simplest of rituals has retained the function of ‘amen’. This
reflects the most essential function of acclamation, as an expression of
assent. It also expresses that assent as shared and unanimous. In a recent
study, Angelos Chaniotis has pointed to the importance of such ritual vocalism
in confirming the bonds both among participants and between them and the divinity
in Greek religious ritual (Angelos Chaniotis, ‘Rituals between Norms and
Emotions: Rituals as Shared Experience and Memory’ [2006]: 226-30).
But acclamations also had a long history of
secular usage, firstly as an indication of assent. Documents record decrees as
being approved by acclamation—so the councillors ‘shouted in support’, epeboesan,
at Tyre in 174 A.D (OGIS 595). The formality of this process is
confirmed by an inscription from Mylasa, where the acclamations, in Greek, are
preceded by the Latin formula ‘succlamatum est’ (Die Inschriften von Mylasa
(Bonn) [Blümel, 1987-8], 241). The simplest acclamation was simply one
of assent—in Latin placet; this is found, for example, in the Acts of
the Council of Sardica in 343, where assent is invited by the phrase : Si
hoc omnibus placet, followed by Synodus respondit: Placet (Mansi
III, 23B, 23D, 24C, cf. 23A). But another way to express such assent was to
pick up a proposed phrase—for example αξιον, ‘worthy’, as in the
later church liturgies. This kind of acclamation, underpinned the awarding of
honorific epithets and titles, such as philopatris, patriotic, or ktistes,
founder of the east; John Chrysostom describes the acclamation of a benefactor
in the theatre, απαντες κηδεμονα καλουντες (De inan. glor.
4). Similarly in Rome Livy can conceive of Camillus being acclaimed as Romulus
ac pater patriae, conditorque (5.49.7). Under the empire, emperors came to
be acclaimed regularly by the Senate—so Pliny, Panegyricus 75.2. (Charlotte
Roueché, “Acclamations at the Council of Chalcedon,” in Richard Price and Mary
Whitby, eds., Chalcedon in Context: Church Councils 400-700 [Translated
Texts for Historians, Contexts 1; Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2009],
169-77, here, pp. 169-70)
