The Three Dimensions of Scriptures

This article proposes a new model for understanding the ways that scriptures function. Several big media stories of recent years, such as those surrounding controversies over Ten Commandments monuments in U.S. courthouses and Qur’ans desecrated at Guantánomo Bay, involve the iconic function of scriptures. Yet contemporary scholarship on Jewish, Christian or Muslim scriptures is ill-prepared to interpret these events because it has focused almost all its efforts on textual interpretation. Even the increased attention to the performative function of scripture by Wilfred Cantwell Smith and his students does not provide resources for understanding the iconic roles of scriptures. This paper addresses the gap by theorizing the nature of scriptures as a function of their ritualization in three dimensions—semantic, performative, and iconic. The model provides a means for conceptualizing how traditions ritualize scriptures and how they claim and negotiate social power through this process. Watts, “Three Dimensions of Scriptures” 2 The Three Dimensions of Scriptures The use and abuse of scriptures figured prominently in news stories of recent years (2003―2005). Courts and politicians in the United States led intense public debates over whether to display monuments of the Ten Commandments in public buildings. Tens of thousands of Muslims marched in streets around the world to protest news that American interrogators desecrated Qur’ans at the prison in Guantanomo Bay, Cuba. These events and the media coverage that they generated demonstrate that Muslim, Christian and Jewish scriptures remain potent symbols in popular culture. These controversies do not involve the interpretation of the meaning of these scriptures, nor even how they are to be learned or obeyed. They focus rather on the physical display and manipulation of scriptures. It is therefore not scriptures as texts or even as verbal performances that are at issue, but rather scriptures as physical symbols of religions, cultures, and ideas, that is, scriptures as icons. Scholarship on religion and scriptures is ill prepared to discuss and evaluate these developments. Modern research has focused on other aspects of the phenomenon of scripture. Scholars have devoted the vast majority of their time and publications to explaining the origins and meaning of scriptural texts. Thus, to take biblical studies as an example, modern research has focused on describing the process by which the Bible was composed and the original meaning intended by its authors. Biblical scholars have also given considerable attention to the process by which the Bible became scripture. Such studies of canonization, however, still concentrate on the Bible’s semantic form and contents, that is, on questions of when particular books became part of the Jewish and Christian scriptures and under what circumstances. Some time ago, Wilfred Cantwell Smith, a historian of religion, criticized biblical scholars for their preoccupation with origins, which he described as studying the Bible before it was Bible. He called for more historical and comparative studies of how the Bible functions as scripture (W.C. Smith 1971). In recent decades, many biblical scholars have in fact given more attention to the history of the Bible’s interpretation. Some have even elevated subsequent meanings of biblical texts to the same level of importance as its original meaning to its authors. That begins to answer the challenge, but W. C. Smith envisioned an approach focused on more than just the history of interpretation. He advocated study of the Bible’s religious functions and effects in comparison with the scriptures of other religious traditions. It was left to some of Smith’s own students to develop that approach. William Graham (1987), most prominently, argued that traditional scholarship on scriptures has ignored their performative function. He pointed out that the most characteristic uses of scriptures in various religious traditions and cultures have to do with their reading, recitation, and memorization rather than with their interpretation. Graham argued that such textual performances are just as important as exegesis, often more important, for understanding the cultural significance of scriptures. Watts, “Three Dimensions of Scriptures” 3 Graham’s study of performance was not comprehensive enough, however, to describe all the cultural functions of scriptures, or even all of their performative functions. His survey of the ways that texts are performed through reading, recitation, and memorization omitted or downplayed practices of performing the contents of scriptures. These take many forms, ranging from artistic depictions of scenes from scriptural narratives to the enactment of scriptural stories in dramas and, more recently, movies. Artistic and dramatic performances of scriptural contents have played prominent roles in Hindu and Christian cultures, among many others. In fact, it is without doubt the dominant mode of scriptural performance in modern Christianity and has been reinforced by the media revolution of the twentieth century. The changes wrought by new technology, however, are not as innovative as might be imagined. Late nineteenth and early twentieth century culture, at least in America, was already infused with imaginary recreations of biblical landscapes and the extravagant staging of biblical epics (Long 2003). Graham’s omission of this aspect of scriptural performance led him to misrepresent the last five centuries of Christian history. He argued that whereas previously most people’s knowledge of scripture would have come through aural reception and oral recitation and memorization, such modes of oral performance have more recently been displaced by textual interpretation. That may have been true in some Protestant sub-cultures in some periods, but Graham’s exclusive focus on performances of the words of texts obscured the fact that contemporary Christian culture remains infused and informed by scriptural performances. Anecdotal evidence suggests that most Christians’ knowledge of the Bible is mediated by movies, music and art as much as by reading the text for themselves. Dramatic and artistic performances of scriptural contents as well as public readings and musical performances of scriptural texts remain primary modes by which scripture influences people. If one included these more creative forms of scriptural performance alongside textual recitation, comparative and historical accounts of the use of scriptural performances would present a more balanced assessment of contemporary culture. Even with such an augmentation of the kinds of performances included in the study of scriptures as advocated by Smith and Graham, however, we are still in no better position to explain news about protests over desecrations of the Qur’an or court battles over Ten Commandments monuments. These conflicts concern neither scriptural interpretation nor performance. Something is still missing in the scholarship on scriptures, namely research on its iconicity. Scriptures are icons. They are not just texts to be interpreted and performed. They are material objects that convey religious significance by their production, display and ritual manipulation. 1 Barbara A. Holdredge (2003, 144-46) presented an account of scripture in the W.C. Smith/William Graham tradition that recognizes the cultural importance for African Americans of performances of scriptural contents, as well as scripture’s iconic role. Nevertheless, like almost all other interpreters, she found the most legitimate and legitimizing uses of scripture to involve the interpretation of their words: “It was the content of the Bible – not simply its status as a sacred object – that captivated the imagination of the slaves, catalyzing their devotion, nurturing their hopes, inspiring their visions, and fueling their rhetoric” (p. 147). Watts, “Three Dimensions of Scriptures” 4 Martin Marty (1982) called attention twenty-five years ago to the Bible’s role as “America’s Iconic Book.” He argued that, more than its contents, the book itself has become a dominant symbol in the nation’s mental “carapace”. Other scholars have noted the iconic function of scriptures in various periods and cultures. Karel van der Toorn (1997) pointed out that, in ancient Judaism, Torah scrolls functioned ritually in the same manner as divine images did in Babylonian religions. Rather than being the aniconic religion of modern scholars’ imaginations, he argued that Judaism simply focused iconic attention on the scrolls themselves. Jacob Kinnard (1999, 2002) has documented book veneration in medieval Indian Buddhism. Its practice by the Buddhist Nichiren sect, Soka Gakkai, in contemporary Japan is well known. Michelle Brown (2003) described the devotional function of Christian manuscript illustration in medieval England. A survey of African-Americans’ use of the Bible documented the book’s widespread iconic use in addition to its contents being a source for interpretation (Shopshire, Mukenge, Erickson, and Baer 2003). Until now, however, there has been no comparative historical research that gathers these diverse studies into a more comprehensive analysis of the nature and function of iconic books. Dorina Miller Parmenter is now engaged in research to construct a broader theoretical understanding of iconic books (see ... below). Starting with scripture’s ritual manipulation and display in Christian traditions, she describes the parallel to Eastern Orthodox Christians’ use of images of saints (icons) and scriptures. Both icons and scriptures are handled in rituals and displayed prominently, both receive veneration, both are believed to mediate divine presence. She is also studying the history of myths of heavenly books—divine documents in heaven that determine human destinies and prescribe religious practices. Such myths have their origins as early as the Babylonian and Egyptian cultures of the second millennium B.C.E. and remain pervasive in the modern era. Parmenter argues therefore that, like Orthodox icons, iconic scriptures are not only potent religious symbols. They are also believed to participate in a heavenly exemplar of which they are the earthly manifestations. This research lays the basis for a better understanding of the scriptures in our news headlines. Clearly, iconic scriptures remain powerful motivators in contemporary cultures. New research into iconic books as a trans-cultural, trans-historical phenomenon should shed interesting light on current developments. The iconic aspect of scriptures, however, also needs to be understood in relation to scriptures’ other religious and cultural functions. It is therefore time to develop an explanatory model of scriptures with the capacity to include all of their aspects and effects. The history of comparative studies of scriptures cautions us that this enterprise can easily become a tool for inter-religious polemic and supercessionism, rather than for inter-cultural understanding. For example, the traditional Muslim recognition of the three “religions of the books” (Judaism and Christianity, in addition to Islam) creates a polemical hierarchy of religions that is a typical strategy in all three Western traditions. The idea of scripture has been used from antiquity as a religious yard-stick to measure the distance of other cultures from the epitome of divine “truth” in the Torah, the New Testament, or the Qur’an (Graham 1987, 47). Early attempts to provide more balanced comparisons between religious traditions nevertheless tended to export the Western Watts, “Three Dimensions of Scriptures” 5 model. Thus Max Müller’s massive series of books introducing nineteenth-century Europeans to “eastern” traditions presented them under the title, The Sacred Books of the East, to raise their status by analogy with Christian scriptures. Even W. C. Smith’s comparative efforts to explore the functions of scriptures produced an evolutionary hierarchy of cultural development, with the Qur’an at the pinnacle: “The Islamic instance represents the notion par excellence of Scripture as a religious phenomenon,” he argued, and though the processes of scriptural development continue a thousand years later in the Adi Granth of the Sikhs and in the nineteenth-century Book of Morman, Smith maintained that “none of these instances carry our development any further” (1989, 31, 32). Graham repeated these sentiments (1987, 52-53) and also reflected a distaste for popular iconic uses of scriptures: “Certain forms of Jewish and Christian treatment of their scriptures involve not only reverence for the physical text but even magical or quasimagical uses of it that can only be termed bibliolatry”, and he went on to cite examples in many religious traditions (1987, 61, 196 footnotes 17-18). Historical judgments thus easily reinforce the traditional self-congratulations of Western “scriptural” traditions. Theorizing about the nature of scriptures frequently falls prey to self-serving value judgments and colonial exploitation. It is therefore understandable that many scholars suspect not only the methods but also the motives behind any comparative model of scriptures. Why compare the use of scriptures in different traditions at all when doing so runs such dangers? Why not study separately each community’s use of scriptures in the context of only its own religious and cultural practices? The importance of cultural context for understanding the functions of scriptures certainly cannot be overstated. As Graham has emphasized, “scripture” is a relational concept that can only be understood in its relationship to a specific group: “The significant ‘scriptural’ characteristics of a text belong not only to the text itself but also to its role in a community and in individual lives” (1987, 5-6). The long history of textual studies within the Western religious traditions also shows, however, the limitations of a single-culture approach, as W. C. Smith pointed out. A major value of comparative study is that it can bring to attention aspects of a religion that have been ignored, or consciously suppressed, by traditional scholarship. It is the fact that our deep traditions of scholarship on scriptures are nonplussed, not by newly discovered cultures or practices, but rather by scriptural practices in the heart of contemporary Western religious traditions such as those mentioned at the beginning of this essay, that illustrates the need for a broader, comparative study of the nature and functions of scriptures. I believe that functional models of scriptures can be developed that address this need in a responsible and even-handed manner. The purpose of any such model should be to understand better those religious traditions that are self-consciously “scriptural” and to evaluate their claims about the role of scripture within their own tradition against historical and comparative evidence both within that tradition and outside it. In order to minimize the very real dangers that attend this enterprise, a successful model of scriptures should meet three criteria. First, it should provide several non-disparaging bases or scales for comparison within and between traditions to avoid the reduction of scriptural phenomenon to a single dichotomous scale easily susceptible to polemical manipulation. Watts, “Three Dimensions of Scriptures” 6 Second, it should also be capable of accommodating the full range of religious expressions and uses of scriptures and resist the temptation to focus on textual interpretation just because that is easier for scholarship to understand. Third, it should be able to explain in a non-hierarchical manner the relationship and distinction between scriptures and other, non-scriptural, writings and between scriptures and other, unwritten, religious traditions.