Opening the Sacred Text: Meaning, Materiality, Historiography

T ext as a cultural phenomenon is not limited to forming words and sentences into larger units. Many factors have a bearing on how a community both construes " text " as a concept and produces a text as a concrete physical object: the nature of a particular writing system, the perceived relationship between the spoken word and writing, the ways in which people use texts and are affected by them in their daily lives, and the technologies they employ to create, reproduce, and consume texts. In other words, attitudes toward text and understandings of textuality can vary greatly.

2021

Engagement with Christian manuscripts – Eastern and Western – and with ancient and rare printed books makes evident a growing interest in material and codicological aspects of our book heritage. In other words, it evinces an emerging curiosity about the non-textual realities of books – at least of ancient books. This shift is particularly true for manuscript studies. The question of materiality remains unavoidable, however, even today, when we decide to edit a book in hard copy along with electronic or digital versions. As has always been the case, there is a direct correlation between the quality of materials used, the production/confection techniques and the external appearance of a book. Normally, one would not expect to find the finest inks, paper or parchment in the hands of less-skilled scribes or illuminators. This article sets alongside immediate material aspects corresponding, and usually expensive, issues like sewing and binding techniques, layout (mise-en-page) and decora...

The present book had been in the making for over two decades 1 and even a quick glance at the preface and the table of contents shows the sheer amount of work put into its preparation. It constitutes the mutual endeavour of researchers representing various disciplines ranging from the history of art to Jewish folklore as well as museum curators and modern day illuminators. No less important is the contribution of the libraries and individual collectors from all over the world who have shared their resources. As a result, the dissertation covers almost a millennium-long period of time and takes into consideration a wide variety of specimens: from the Hebrew Bible, halakhic codices and mystical treatises, through fables, prayer books and wedding documents up till Hebraised versions of the medieval romances.

2006

This paper addresses comparative studies of the book and suggests that such studies require more than a comparison of book contents, production methods, and uses. Rather, the comparative question also addresses a theoretical concern: interrogating diverse models of what constitutes a book as a container of knowledge, authority, language, and memory. By way of example, Islamic traditions are examined for alternative models of the book. The Qur'an is presented as a "book" quite different from the model taken for granted in many studies of book history and print culture. In his examination of the semantic eld of the Qur'an, Daniel Madigan found that when the Qur'an refers to itself as a kitab (book), it is primarily making a statement of its origin and authority rather than its role as a storage media. The implications of this distinction are extended to the practices of calligraphy and oral recitation, showing how both arts reflect a shared notion of the book as a performance and interpretive script rather than a fixed, reproducible material object. What is the book that persists across these performances, and how might this model illuminate current difficulties in defining the book? Such questions do not seek to classify and define the Islamic book as a foreign model incompatible with other book histories. They seek, instead, to raise persistent issues of what constitutes a book, especially as material books continue being transformed by new media of performance, transmission, and display.

2015