Sacred Text

Postscripts: The Journal of Sacred Texts, Cultural Histories, and Contemporary Contexts

Interpreting Sacred Texts within Changing Contexts in Africa, 2023

This book contains papers first delivered at the maiden edition of the Sacred Texts International Conference hosted by the Department for the Study of Religions, University of Ghana Legon, in June 2022

The International Encyclopedia of Anthropology

For the anthropology of religion, the historical and ethnographic study of sacred scriptures is a robust field of inquiry. The approach emphasized here focuses on the social life of scriptures; that is, how communities of practice use scriptures strategically to accomplish important cultural work. This entry outlines a theoretical grounding for this approach, reviews a sampling of major research findings and promising research directions, and presents two significant themes: materiality and transmedial performance. The former explores how communities engage with the material and sensual properties of scriptures, and the latter explores how scriptures are performed across different human and technological media.

Sacred Texts: From Inspiration to Philosophy and Allegory Public Lecture: The University of Sydney, November 11, 2011 Gerard Naddaf, York University Abstract One of the main contentions I want make in this presentation is that self-conscious reflections on what it means for a poet, prophet, or seer to be “divinely” inspired were contingent on making a distinction between literal and figurative meanings (about the gods) and that this distinction only appears in ancient Greece with the advent of the alphabet and philosophy. I begin with an overview of the origin of writing systems to test the hypothesis that they necessarily change the way societies think about themselves. I show that while writing began in Mesopotamia around 3200 BCE and had a profound impact over the centuries on the civilizations there (and elsewhere too!), there is no evidence that it led to the kind of self-conscious critical analysis we associate with philosophy in ancient Greece. Indeed, these cultures make no clear distinction between the literal and the figurative as it concerns the relation between gods and men. But another point that interests me with the Mesopotamian tradition is that there is no reference to “divine” inspiration as we find it in ancient Greece or in the sacred texts of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. On the other hand, all of these cultures were profoundly influenced by the Mesopotamian creation myths and, of course, the written word. Thus after situating Mesopotamia in the context of the origin of divine inspiration, I give an overview of the three religious traditions which consider their respective canonical “scriptures” as divinely inspired. I’m referring to the “sacred” books of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. They are indeed religions of the Book! I use these as a primer to the ancient Greek notion of divine inspiration as it is evidenced in the poems of Homer and Hesiod and the subsequent Greek reaction. Essentially, I examine the complex interface between belief in inspiration, the origins of philosophy, and the practice of allegory. I begin with Homer and Hesiod, turn to the origin of philosophy, move on to the first quarrel between philosophy and poetry, and then review the birth of the practice of allegorical interpretation. I give an overview of the role allegory played in the philosophic, religious, and even scientific traditions from this period to at least the Enlightenment. I also endeavour to show how believers practiced allegorical interpretation in relation to the Torah, the Christian Bible, and later the Qur’an. In doing so, I show, that although there has always been a struggle between the literal and allegorical interpretations of sacred texts, the practitioners of allegory commonly viewed both religious and philosophical texts as emanating from the same divine source — that is, as inspired by God. I end with some reflections on the interpretative clashes between competitive “inspired” texts.

Authoritative Scriptures in Ancient Judaism

At this conference, which is held in honour of a great scholar, I would like to focus on the relationship between authoritative Scriptures and scribal culture in order to examine whether the role of scribes and scholars may shed light on the theme of our meeting and if so how. Before doing so, I will start by discussing a few notions to be found in the sources of the time, the Hellenistic era, which mark the authoritativeness of particular books. A most interesting passage can be found in the Prologue to the Wisdom of Jesus ben Sira. 1 It reads: My grandfather Jesus, who had devoted himself for a long time to the reading of the Law, the Prophets, and the other books of our ancestors, and developed a thorough familiarity with them, was prompted to write something himself in the nature of instruction and wisdom (8-12) This passage, referring to a given set of books, contains a significant feature which deserves attention. The expression "the other books of our ancestors" implies that all the books involved are considered "ancestral" (ƬɐưƭƥƫƮ). In antiquity, the notion of being "ancestral" or "ancient" meant that the object concerned was considered authoritative. 2 Thus, the collection designated here as "the Law, the Prophets and the other books," has a special position in the sense of worthy of 1 For another passage that is of interest, see Josephus, C. Ap. 1.42. 2 Cf. H.G. Kippenberg, "Die jüdischen Überlieferungen als patrioi nomoi," in

2020

The idea for this special journal issue grew gradually from a need to bring together and present some of the fruits of theoretical and methodological discussions the contributors have been part of in the Centre of Excellence Changes in Sacred Texts and Traditions (CSTT). This large research community, funded by the Academy of Finland and based in the Faculty of Theology at the University of Helsinki, has brought together in the past six years (2014-2019) some fifty scholars working in the field of biblical studies. The scholars of CSTT represent a wide variety of sub-fields in biblical studies. Their specific research areas include, for example, the study of Ancient Near Eastern sources, the Hebrew Bible, the Septuagint, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the societies of the Ancient Near East and Second Temple Judaism reflected in these sources. This wide spectrum of research interests has

Epistemology of Sacred Texts, Exhortation, Language, Duty, Sacrifice and Hermeneutics according to Prābhākara Mīmāṃsā.

This paper asks what contribution anthropology can make to the study of religious literature and heritage. In particular I will discuss ways in which anthropologists engage with religious texts. The paper begins with an assessment of what is probably the dominant approach to religious texts in mainstream anthropology and sociology, namely avoiding them and focussing instead on the religious ‘practices’ of ‘ordinary believers’. Arguing that this tendency to neglect the study of texts is ill-advised, the paper looks at the reasons why anthropologists need to engage with contemporary religious texts, particularly in their studies of/in the modern Muslim world. Drawing on the insights of anthropologist of religion Joel Robbins into what he called the “awkward relationship” between anthropology and theology, the paper proposes three possible ways in which nthropology might engage with religious literature. Based on a reading of three rather different modern texts on or about Islam, the strengths and weaknesses of each of the three modes of anthropological engagement is assessed and a case is made for Robbins’s third approach on the grounds that it offers a way out of the impasse in which mainstream anthropology of religion finds itself, caught as it is between the ‘emic’ and the ‘etic’, i.e. between ontologically different worlds.

Postscripts: The Journal of Sacred Texts and Contemporary Worlds, 2012

We consider first some difficulties of facilely differentiating “religious” from “cultural” phenomena, and similarly “scriptures” from (“religious” or “cultural”) “classics.” Texts in the latter three categories can be identified by their “iconic” status within a given tradition or context, but only on the basis of their social function, not by their form or content. We then consider how it may be possible to study “scriptural” texts constructively in shared discourse with scholars of differing religious backgrounds. Such a common discourse would be facilitated by a heuristic model of scripture as a text extending functionally in two directions, towards the human through interpretation and towards an Absolute or Transcendent ontologically (allowing it to participate in or mediate something of the Absolute to contingent human beings). Finally, we consider whether this model is applicable to “classics” as well as “scriptures” and conclude that on balance it is not. The model thus conf...

The Journal of Asian Studies, 2000

C. K. Yang wrote in Religion in Chinese Society that, aside from Buddhism and Taoism, the third form of institutional religion in China "was that of the syncretic religious societies" (University of California Press, 1961, p. 301). Daniel Overmyer has studied some of these popular religious sects, which he calls "folk Buddhist religion," and compared them to religious reform movements such as "the Pure Land Buddhist in thirteenth century Japan, the Lutheran in sixteenth century Europe, and bhakti sects in medieval Hinduism" (Folk Buddhist Religion: Dissenting Sects in Late Traditional China [Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1976], p. 1). While they incorporated elements from Maitreyan, Pure Land, and Ch'an Buddhism, Inner Alchemy Taoism, and Confucian ethics, the religions should be regarded as new, for they possessed important characteristics that set them apart from traditional Chinese religions. These characteristics included the belief in a mother goddess who is the creator and savior of humankind, an eschatology marked by three stages, and universal salvation unmediated by religious professionals. Another striking characteristic is that they possessed their own scriptures known as pao-chiian (precious volumes). These texts, believed to have been divinely revealed to sect founders, are characterized by "simple classical language interspersed with vernacular constructions, the alternation of prose sections with seven-or ten-character lines of verse, usually in rhyme; and direct expositions of mythology, doctrinal teaching, and moral exhortation" (p. 3).