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Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities
Drawing Lines: A Suggestion For Addressing The Moral Problem Of Reproducing Immoral Biblical Texts In Commentaries And Bibles, James Watts
Religion - All Scholarship
Some verses of Leviticus express norms that explicitly conflict with the legal and ethical teachings of contemporary Jewish and Christian denominations, and also with the laws of modern nations. Among them are texts mandating that readers treat some other people in ways now widely regarded as immoral, cruel, inhumane, and exploitative—texts that call for and / or have historically justified genocide, indiscriminate capital punishment, slavery, and the subjugation of women by men. National and international law today declares most of these behaviors illegal and subject to criminal prosecution. The moral problem for commentators and publishers is that, by publishing bibles …
Sensation And Metaphor In Ritual Performance: The Example Of Sacred Texts, James Watts
Sensation And Metaphor In Ritual Performance: The Example Of Sacred Texts, James Watts
Religion - All Scholarship
Rituals obviously utilize the human senses. Theological and mystical interpretations frequently comment on sensation as a source of metaphors for religious experience. However, the discourse used in religious rituals themselves usually avoids using the normal vocabulary appropriate to particular sensations, while focusing on ritual performance instead. This raises the question of whether it is generally the case that ritualizing sensation diverts attention from sensation to ritual behavior, and whether ritual interpretations usually divert attention from the sensation to its metaphorical meaning. This essay addresses these questions with the analytical tools of metaphor theory and ritual theory. To test and apply …
Ritualizing The Size Of Books, James Watts
Ritualizing The Size Of Books, James Watts
Religion - All Scholarship
Rhetoric about books usually emphasizes their semantic contents. Larger-than-average and smaller-than-average books, however, draw our attention to their material form. Size therefore provides one means for ritualizing the iconic dimension of books. While enlarging books quickly exceeds any practical purpose for the sake of public display, shrinking books tends to carry with it pragmatic rhetoric about portability, low expense, and mass production. Yet the popularity of textual amulets across history and cultures suggests that private ritualization drives much of the market for miniatures.
Scriptures' Indexical Touch, James Watts
Scriptures' Indexical Touch, James Watts
Religion - All Scholarship
Touching and holding books does not usually evoke the language of sensation. Touching a book indexes the reader in relationship to the book. Holding a book of scripture indexes a person as faithful to the beliefs and practices that are commonly associated with that scripture. In portraiture, the direction of a book’s indexical function is usually clear. Scribes, professors, lawyers and politicians pose in their libraries, often with book in hand, to depict themselves as scholars. The fact that scriptures are books makes a vocabulary of textual agency available for describing their symbolic function. The indexical link between book and …
Relic Texts, James W. Watts
Relic Texts, James W. Watts
Religion - All Scholarship
Religious traditions typically ritualize their scriptures in three dimensions. Other kinds of texts may be ritualized in one or two dimensions (e.g. the performative dimension of the scripts of plays or sheet music, the semantic dimension of national law codes), but the regular ritualization of a text in all three dimensions usually distinguishes it as a scripture or sacred text. There are, however, some texts or, more accurately, some specific copies of texts, that tend to be ritualized only in the iconic dimension, and scriptures feature prominently among them. I term such texts “relic books.” Relic books are writings that …
Ancient Iconic Texts And Scholarly Expertise, James W. Watts
Ancient Iconic Texts And Scholarly Expertise, James W. Watts
Religion - All Scholarship
This essay probes the origins of iconic textuality in the ancient Near East, informed by post-colonial perspectives on iconic texts. The surviving art and texts from ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia exhibit at least four forms of iconic textuality: monumental inscriptions, portraits of scribes, displays and manipulations of ritual texts, and beliefs in heavenly texts. The spread of literacy did not displace the social prestige of scribal expertise that was established in antiquity. The every-growing number and complexity of texts accounts for the continuing cultural authority of scholarly expertise. The tension between expert and non-specialist uses of texts, however, explains scholarship’s …
Using Ezra's Time As A Methodological Pivot For Understanding The Rhetoric And Functions Of The Pentateuch, James W. Watts
Using Ezra's Time As A Methodological Pivot For Understanding The Rhetoric And Functions Of The Pentateuch, James W. Watts
Religion - All Scholarship
The Persian period saw the transformation of pentateuchal materials into a scripture, the Torah. The story of Ezra exemplifies that transformation by its description of his manipulation of the physical scroll, his oral reading of it before the people of Jerusalem, and his arrangement for its professional translation/interpretation by Levites. These rituals have characterized the function of the Torah (and other scriptures) from that time forward. The Persian period, however, also marks a major change in the nature of our evidence for the form, contents and meaning of pentateuchal materials. The only historical evidence from before the time of Ezra …
Disposing Ofnon-Disposable Texts, James W. Watts
Disposing Ofnon-Disposable Texts, James W. Watts
Religion - All Scholarship
These concluding reflections on the essays in The Death of Sacred Texts consider evidence that the disposal of secular books also evokes serious concern. There is an inherent tension in most literate cultures between the idea of a book or enduring text on the one hand and the possibility of its disposal or destruction on the other. Disposing of books transgresses inhibitions reinforced by family, school, media, and government. The concern for book preservation involves respect for culture(s), veneration of traditions, and, at its root, the preservation of cultural values. Factors other than information preservation are at work here. The …