Scriptures' Indexical Touch
Issue: Vol 8 No. 1-2 (2012)
Journal: Postscripts: The Journal of Sacred Texts, Cultural Histories, and Contemporary Contexts
Subject Areas: Religious Studies Islamic Studies Biblical Studies
DOI: 10.1558/post.32671
Abstract:
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 person gains force from the fact that books and people share the quality of interiority. We think of both books and people as material containers of immaterial ideas. Therefore, images of people with books invite viewers to consider the relationship between their invisible ideas. However, art that portrays a god or goddess holding a scripture conveys a tighter indexical relationship, often to the point of collapsing any distinction between them.
Author: James W. Watts
References :
Augustine, Aurelius. 2001. The Confessions of St. Augustine, translated by Edward Pusey. Vol. VII, Part 1. The Harvard Classics. New York: P.F. Collier & Son, 1909–14; Bartleby.com, 2001. www.bartleby.com/7/1/.
Barton, John. 1997. Holy Writings, Sacred Texts. Louisville: Westminster John Knox.
Brown, Michelle P. 2010. “Images to be read and words to be seen: The iconic role of the early medieval book.” Postscripts 6: 39–66 (Reprinted in Iconic Books and Texts, edited by James W. Watts, 93–118. London: Equinox, 2013).
Fides. 1999. “Iraqi Catholic leader decries allied bombing.” June 01, 1999. Online at http://www.traditioninaction.org/RevolutionPhotos/Snap/A055rcKoran_1.html.
Kinnard, Jacob N. 2002. “On Buddhist ‘Bibliolaters’: Representing and worshiping the book in medieval Indian Buddhism.” The Eastern Buddhist 34(2): 94–116, and plates 1 and 2.
Myrvold, Kristina, ed. 2010a. The Death of Sacred Texts: Ritual Disposal and Renovation of Texts in World Religions. London: Ashgate.
———. 2010b. “Engaging with the Guru: Sikh beliefs and practices of Guru Granth Sahib.” Postscripts 6: 201–224 (Reprinted in Iconic Books and Texts, edited by James W. Watts, 261-282. London: Equinox, 2013).
Parmenter, Dorina Miller. 2006. “The Iconic Book: The Image of the Bible in Early Christian Rituals.” Postscripts 2: 160-189 (Reprinted in Iconic Books and Texts, edited by James W. Watts, 63–92. London: Equinox, 2013).
Pierce, C. S. 1867. “On A New List of Categories.” In The Writings of Charles S. Peirce: A Chronological Edition (6 vols.; Peirce Edition Project; Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1982), 49-58.
Rappaport, Roy A. 1999. Ritual and Religion in the Making of Humanity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511814686
Suit, Natalia K. 2010. “Muṣḥaf and the material boundaries of the Qurʾan.” Postscripts 6 (2010), 143-163 (Reprinted in Iconic Books and Texts, edited by James W. Watts, 189–206. London: Equinox, 2013).
Watts, James W. 2006. “The three dimensions of scriptures.” Postscripts 2(2): 135–159 (Reprinted in Iconic Books and Texts, 8–30. London: Equinox, 2013).
———. 2009. “Desecrating Scriptures.” A case study for the Luce Project in Religion, Media and International Relations at Syracuse University, online at http://surface.syr.edu/rel/3/.
———. 2015. “Iconic scriptures from decalogue to Bible.” Mémoires du livre / Studies in Book Culture 6/2.
———. 2016. “From ark of the covenant to Torah scroll: Ritualizing Israel’s iconic texts.” In Ritual Innovation in the Hebrew Bible and Early Judaism, edited by Nathan MacDonald, 21–34. Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 468. Berlin: De Gruyter. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110368710-004
Wolfson, Elliot R. 2004. “Iconicity of the text: Reification of Torah and the idolatrous impulse of Zoharic Kabbalah.” Jewish Studies Quarterly 11: 315–342. https://doi.org/10.1628/0944570043028437