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Articles 1 - 30 of 111
Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities
Leviticus 25’S History Of Inspiring Freedom As A Moral Challenge To Literary-Historical Interpretation, James Watts
Leviticus 25’S History Of Inspiring Freedom As A Moral Challenge To Literary-Historical Interpretation, James Watts
Religion - All Scholarship
Though Leviticus 25’s description of the Jubilee sounds unrealistically utopian to many biblical scholars, the Jubilee ideal has stimulated many movements for freedom and economic reform in the last 500 years. It most famously motivated enslaved people to resist and abolitionists to challenge the institution of slavery. Today it continues to inspire reform movements for land redistribution and fair housing, for sovereign debt relief, and for developing environmentally sustainable economies. The contrast between scholarly assessments of the chapter’s meaning in its literary and ancient historical contexts and its proven power to inspire movements for freedom that were unimaginable to its …
The Historical Role Of Leviticus 25 In Naturalizing Anti-Black Racism, James Watts
The Historical Role Of Leviticus 25 In Naturalizing Anti-Black Racism, James Watts
Religion - All Scholarship
Leviticus 25:39–46 describes a two-tier model of slavery that distinguishes Israelites from foreign slaves. It requires that Israelites be indentured only temporarily while foreigners can be enslaved as chattel (permanent property). This model resembles the distinction between White indentured slaves and Black chattel slaves in the American colonies. However, the biblical influence on these early modern practices has been obscured by the rarity of citations of Lev. 25:39–46 in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century sources about slavery. This article reviews the history of slavery from ancient Middle Eastern antiquity through the seventeenth century to show the unique degree to which early modern …
Sample Syllabus Using Understanding The Bible By Watts, James Watts
Sample Syllabus Using Understanding The Bible By Watts, James Watts
Religion - All Scholarship
Sample syllabus for course using Understanding the Bible as A Scripture in History, Culture and Religion by James W. Watts (Wiley Blackwell, 2021)
Text Are Not Rituals And Rituals Are Not Texts, With An Example From Leviticus 12, James Watts
Text Are Not Rituals And Rituals Are Not Texts, With An Example From Leviticus 12, James Watts
Religion - All Scholarship
Biblical scholars have increasingly realized that textual representations of rituals do not have the same function or meaning as the ritual performances that they describe. A survey of this theoretical distinction in biblical scholarship over the last 25 years shows the impact of this realization, and also several points of resistance. The significance of the distinction between ritual text and ritual performance can be illustrated clearly in Leviticus 12, which describes the rituals required of new mothers after giving birth. The chapter mandates practices that are unique in the Bible and, possibly, novel in ancient Israel’s religious culture. However, they …
Biblical Rhetoric Of Separatism And Universalism And Its Intolerant Consequences, James Watts
Biblical Rhetoric Of Separatism And Universalism And Its Intolerant Consequences, James Watts
Religion - All Scholarship
The long history of the Jewish and Christian use of separatist rhetoric and universal ideals reveals their negative consequences. The Hebrew Bible’s rhetoric about Israel as a people separated from the Egyptians and Canaanites is connected to Israel’s purity practices in Leviticus 18 and 20. Later communities wielding greater political power, however, employed this same anti-Canaanite pollution rhetoric in their efforts to colonize many different parts of the world. Separatist rhetoric was used to protect small Jewish communities in the early Second Temple period. The Christian New Testament rejected many of these purity practices in order to makes its mission …
Mobilizing The Social Power Of Iconic And Performative Texts For Justice And Reform, James Watts
Mobilizing The Social Power Of Iconic And Performative Texts For Justice And Reform, James Watts
Religion - All Scholarship
In the ten years of its existence, SCRIPT has succeeded in promoting and publishing an increasing variety of scholarship on iconic and performative texts. Culturally specific studies have provided the basis for comparative theorizing about the phenomena. This body of scholarship has put us in a better position to analyze current events involving iconic books and performative texts. It can also enable us to make creative suggestions for strengthening movements for justice and social reform by ritualizing iconic and performative texts. Here, I provide three examples of how to employ SCRIPT research to strengthen contemporary movements for social and environmental …
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 …
Unperformed Rituals In An Unread Book, James Watts
Unperformed Rituals In An Unread Book, James Watts
Religion - All Scholarship
What is the significance of an unperformed ritual? And what is the meaning of an unread text? The intuitive answer, that unperformed rituals and unread texts have no meaning, is clearly wrong in the case of Leviticus. The rituals depicted in its text mean a great deal, because Jews, Samaritans and Christians continue to ritualize Leviticus as part of their scriptures. Leviticus’s status as the third book of scripture has remained virtually uncontested throughout the histories of these three religions, despite the fact that people do not observe many of its offering instructions or, among Christians, even read much of …
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.
The Unstated Premise Of The Prose Pentateuch: Yhwh Is King, James Watts
The Unstated Premise Of The Prose Pentateuch: Yhwh Is King, James Watts
Religion - All Scholarship
The Pentateuch portrays God acting like a king, but almost never applies the title, “king,” to God, in marked contrast to many other parts of the Hebrew Bible. This terminological discrepancy between, on the one hand, all the major pentateuchal sources and, on the other hand, much of the rest of the Hebrew Bible, calls for explanation. Attention to a common and ancient rhetorical strategy of argumentation, the enthymeme, provides an explanation in the form of an unstated premise. The premise that YHWH is Israel’s king strengthened the persuasive force of the prose Pentateuch by remaining unstated.
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 …
Priestly Lineages In History And Rhetoric, James W. Watts
Priestly Lineages In History And Rhetoric, James W. Watts
Religion - All Scholarship
A comparison of Cross’s reconstruction of the Oniad high priestly line with his Mushite theory lays the basis for re-evaluating historical scholarships’ interest in ancient Jewish priestly families. In the religious politics of the Second Temple period, the Aaronide priestly dynasties were the Mushite priesthood. Differentiating priestly families earlier in Israel’s history raises questions about methodology and purpose as well as evidence.
Narrative, Lists, Rhetoric, Ritual And The Pentateuch As A Scripture, James W. Watts
Narrative, Lists, Rhetoric, Ritual And The Pentateuch As A Scripture, James W. Watts
Religion - All Scholarship
The Pentateuchʼs juxtaposition of different genres within a narrative framework provides some of the evidence for building source- and redaction-critical theories of the Pentateuchʼs literary history. Rhetorical analysis suggests, however, that such genre juxtapositions are characteristic of an ancient Near Eastern strategy of persuasion. The Pentateuchʼs inset genres, especially its lists of instructions and laws, generated most of its normative force that, together with its ritualization, led to its scripturalization as Torah.
The Historical And Literary Contexts Of The Sin And Guilt Offerings, James W. Watts
The Historical And Literary Contexts Of The Sin And Guilt Offerings, James W. Watts
Religion - All Scholarship
Many interpreters have noted that the common nouns, hattat and asham, carry legal connotations in Akkadian and non-priestly parts of the Hebrew Bible. In P, they also serve as the names of the “sin” and “guilt” offerings. The fact that the offering names evoke legal documents and treaties suggests that they were introduced because priests were playing a larger role in legal matters, or at least wished to. The demise of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah provide plausible reasons for why the Temple would have been looking for additional sources of revenue in the form of the sin …
Writing Commentary As Ritual And As Discovery, James W. Watts
Writing Commentary As Ritual And As Discovery, James W. Watts
Religion - All Scholarship
This study combines rhetoric, ritual studies, and comparative scriptures studies to open new avenues for understanding both biblical texts and their cultural history as a scripture. Labelling commentary as ritual, specifically as a ritualized genre of text, leads to the observation that commentary not only contributes to the Bible’s status as a scripture, it depends on that status as well. Ritual theories provide explanations for the dynamic interaction of tradition and innovation in commentary writing. Analysis of commentary writing and reading as a form of ritualizing the semantic dimension of a scripture provides a step forward in understanding how religious …
From Ark Of The Covenant To Torah Scroll: Ritualizing Israel’S Iconic Texts, James W. Watts
From Ark Of The Covenant To Torah Scroll: Ritualizing Israel’S Iconic Texts, James W. Watts
Religion - All Scholarship
Torah scrolls are the central icon of Jewish worship. Interpreters usually regard such ritual uses of physical Torah scrolls as a consequence of the Pentateuch’s textual authority and canonization. However, the traditions about tablets of commandments carried in a reliquary ark show that ritualization of texts in the iconic dimension began early in Israel’s history. Was the Pentateuch itself developed with such iconic uses in mind? That is, was the Pentateuch shaped to replace the tablets and the ark? Evidence for such shaping appears in ambiguities surrounding Pentateuchal traditions about the tablets and scrolls of the law. These passages equate …
Scripturalization And The Aaronide Dynasties, James W. Watts
Scripturalization And The Aaronide Dynasties, James W. Watts
Religion - All Scholarship
Priests claiming descent from Aaron controlled the high priesthood of temples in Jerusalem and on Mount Gerizim in the Second Temple period. These Aaronides were in a position to influence religious developments in this period, especially the scripturalization of the Torah. The priests’ dynastic claims were probably a significant factor in the elevation of the Pentateuch to scriptural status. This claim can be tested by correlating what little we know about the Aaronide dynasties with what little we know about the scripturalization of two different portions of the Hebrew Bible, the Pentateuch and Ezra-Nehemiah.
The Political And Legal Uses Of Scripture, James W. Watts
The Political And Legal Uses Of Scripture, James W. Watts
Religion - All Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Nude, Glorious, Living, William Robert
Nude, Glorious, Living, William Robert
Religion - All Scholarship
No abstract provided.
To Live, By Grace, William Robert
The Continuing Exodus: The Synagogue And Jewish Urban Migration, Samuel D. Gruber
The Continuing Exodus: The Synagogue And Jewish Urban Migration, Samuel D. Gruber
Religion - All Scholarship
Catalog essay in Silent Witnesses: Migration Stories Through Synagogues Transformed, Rebuilt or Abandoned (Farmington Hills, MI, 2012) that deals with Jewish settlement and migration in American cities (especially New York, Boston and Cleveland) and the religious and community buildings erected and left behind in the process.
Yiddish In Abramovitsh's Literary Revival Of Hebrew, Ken Frieden
Yiddish In Abramovitsh's Literary Revival Of Hebrew, Ken Frieden
Religion - All Scholarship
No abstract provided.
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 …
A Mystic Impulse: From Apophatics To Decreation In Pseudo-Dionysius, Meister Eckhart, And Simone Weil, William Robert
A Mystic Impulse: From Apophatics To Decreation In Pseudo-Dionysius, Meister Eckhart, And Simone Weil, William Robert
Religion - All Scholarship
This article articulates a mystically motivated apophatic subjectivity that emerges from Simone Weil's life and thought. It does so genealogically, via excursions into Pseudo- Dionysius's and Meister Eckhart's negative theologies. These genealogical excursions expose Weil’s resonances with and differences from these earlier thinkers of Christian apophasis. To highlight these differences, this article pays particular attention to two spiritual exercises, attention and decreation. Taken together, they point out a tragic sense pulsing through and informing Weil's remarkable religious thought and praxis.
Performing Religiously Between Passion And Resistance, William Robert
Performing Religiously Between Passion And Resistance, William Robert
Religion - All Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Aaron And The Golden Calf In The Rhetoric Of The Pentateuch, James W. Watts
Aaron And The Golden Calf In The Rhetoric Of The Pentateuch, James W. Watts
Religion - All Scholarship
In the Pentateuch, the contrast between law and narrative, or more precisely, ritual instructions and ritual narrative, is nowhere more stark than in the relationship between the Golden Calf story (Exod 32-34) and the instructions for building the Tabernacle (Exod 25-31, 35-40). The former vilifies Aaron by placing him at the center of the idolatrous event while the latter celebrates Aaron and his sons as divinely consecrated priests. Though source criticism has long since distinguished the authors of these accounts, it does not explain the intentions behind a literary juxtaposition that is too stark to be anything but intentional. Nor …
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 …
Jewish Heritage Sites Of Bosnia-Herzegovina, Samuel D. Gruber
Jewish Heritage Sites Of Bosnia-Herzegovina, Samuel D. Gruber
Religion - All Scholarship
2011 report from the United States Commission for the Preservation of America's Heritage Abroad on historic Jewish sites in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Includes information on the history and current conditions of synagogues, cemeteries, and holocaust memorials.