Iconic Books and Texts has been published!

Iconic Books and Texts has been published! This volume contains nineteen essays from the Iconic Books Symposia of 2007, 2009 and 2010, and three from my Idea of Scripture seminar in 2005. They were previously published in Postscripts 2 (2006/2008) and 6 (2010/2012) and appear here together in one volume from Equinox. Click here for the flyer with full Table of Contents and an offer of a 25% discount on orders.

Bible Portraits website

Dori Parmenter launched Bible Portraits: What Real Bibles Look Like. It invites viewers to upload pictures of themselves with their Bibles along with stories about them.

Parmenter wrote "Iconic Books from Below: The Christian Bible and the Discourse of Duct Tape" (Postscripts 6 [2010], 185-200) where she documented the iconic status of marked-up and tattered Bibles as a counter-discourse to the marketing of specially-bound Bibles and Bible covers. Her goal here is to create a collection that illustrates "the physical appearance of Bibles and people’s relationships to this book."

Religious Book Destruction in Central Asia

Bradford Anderson calls my attention to legal actions to suppress religious literature in several countries of Central Asia. Russian authorities have ordered the destruction of modern books tauting the views of Muslims, Hare Krishnas, and Seventh Day Adventist. Protestants and their libraries have been targeted in Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. Christianity Today interprets this news in the context of Christian revivals in Central Asia in the last several years.

Much of our attention to book desecration and destruction on this blog has focused on highly symbolic actions at attacks on religious legitimacy. But book destruction has in past ages been an effective means used by states to suppress entire religious movements and their memory (e.g. the Manicheans). Governments and courts are still trying this tactic, despite the increasing difficulties posed by two information revolutions--print and digital.

Bibliocide

On the iconicity of the Encyclopedia Britannica 

and the deconsecration thereof

Ashes to Ashes. Arctic to Biosphere. Birds to Chess. 

There's an earlier post on this site on the digitization of the EB. Here writer Julian Baggini gives his own end to the bound bundle. His essay and the narrative accompanying the video point to the socio-economic dimensions involved in knowledge acquisition, and how books (here explicitly the EB sold by door-to-door salesman) become part of that. The way up in life is through reading and learning. Or so it was.

One of the best lines in here regards the "ossification of knowledge" in the encyclopedic medium. Knowledge is already dead in this form. He's just giving a proper burial.

What is particularly interesting are the comments at the end. So many wrote in to suggest how wrong was the action, that these books could still be used. That they should have been donated, or recycled. The irony here being most of the ones arguing that books should not be burned were the ones that clearly didn't actually read the essay to understand his finer points.

Religion and Visual Culture CFP

An international call for papers has gone up for a conference that focuses on "religious studies" and "visual culture."  It looks like the event will take place in Paris.  The CFP is open until September 1, 2013, and you can find more information here.

West vs. Obama @ MLK's Bible

Dori Parmenter pointed out Cornell West's complaint that President Barack Obama should not use Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Bible for his inaugural oath. Here's West's sermon:



Frankly, the issue of King's Bible simply provides West a launching pad in this video for reviving and translating King's issues into the politics and social reality of 2013, which he does very well. But if we pause to think about how he uses King's Bible rhetorically, it's clear that he objects to Obama claiming legitimacy from King's legacy. Ritualizing iconic books legitimizes those who own and manipulate them. By taking the presidential oath on both Lincoln's and King's Bibles today, Obama laid claim to the legacy of both with powerful imagery.



We could take time and space to interpret its significance, but the power of ritual and symbolic imagery lies in making such claims without using words. Obama identifies himself in this way with Lincoln and King. West contests the taming of King's legacy for good reason, but I doubt even his rhetoric has much chance against the legitimizing claim expressed by this photograph.

SCRIPT calls for papers

SCRIPT has issued two calls for papers for panels at concurrent meetings in May and in November:

 

May 10-11, 2013: SCRIPT panels at the EIR regional meeting of the AAR in Toronto:

We invite proposals for a panel of four papers that address the iconic and performative dimensions of specific texts or a range of texts. We particularly encourage comparative studies that cross traditional scholarly boundaries of time, culture, religion, media or genre.

Each proposal should contain the following in a single e-mail attachment in MS Word format: One-page abstract (300 words maximum) describing the nature of the paper or panel Current CV(s) for the participant(s) Cover page that includes the submitter’s full name, title, institution, phone number, fax number, e-mail, and mailing address. For panel proposals, identify the primary contact person.

Send proposals to scriptsecretary@gmail.com. Deadline: February 15.

 

November 23-26, 2013: SCRIPT panel and annual meeting at the AAR/SBL in Baltimore:

For Baltimore, SCRIPT invites proposals for a panel of four papers that address the iconic and performative dimensions of specific texts or a range of texts. We particularly encourage comparative studies that cross traditional scholarly boundaries of time, culture, religion, media or genre.

Submit paper proposals here. Deadline: March 1.

 

Other Events involving SCRIPT topics and members:

 

March 15-17, 2013: Panel on "Publishing and Protection: The Material Reality of the Bible" in the Religion, Culture, and the Arts Section of the SECSOR in Greenville, SC:

• Dorina Miller Parmenter, "Dangers, Toils, and Snares: The Materialization of the Saving Grace of the Bible"
• David Dault, "’Battlezone’ Bibles and Bulletproof Covers: The Material Rhetoric of Armor Plating in Contemporary Bible Production”

June 23-25, 2013: "Sacred Texts and Human Contexts" at Nazareth College of Rochester

Congresswoman Sinema sworn in using Constitution, not Bible

When we discuss the iconic dimensions of texts, an important point made by Jim Watts and others is that it is not simply "holy books" like the Bible that exercise iconicity.  Indeed, we can point to many secular documents that also exercise iconic effects.

Hence this recent news item, pointing out that Congresswoman Kyrsten Sinema chose recently to be sworn in using a copy of the US Consitution, instead of a Bible.

Book as Object in current issue of Terrain

Elizabeth Castelli brings to my attention that the September 2012 issue of Terrain: revue d'ethnologie de l'Europe is devoted to the topic of l'objet libre (the book as object). Here's the table of contents:

• L’objet livre (Stephen Hugh-Jones et Hildegard Diemberger)
• Quand le livre devient relique: Les textes tibétains entre culture bouddhique et transformations technologiques (Hildegard Diemberger)
• Les Agamas: des livres saints canoniques: Le rituel hindou entre transmission orale et textes sacrés (Chris Fuller)
• Le livre comme trésor: Aura, prédation et secret des manuscrits savants du Sud marocain (Romain Simenel)
• Le Coran et ses multiples formes (Casablanca, Maroc) (Anouk Cohen)
• L’objet livre à l’aube de l’époque moderne (Warren Boutcher)
• Quand le texte se fait matière: Une exploration des versions du manuscrit arabe (Christine Jungen)
• Le synthétique sacré: Réflexions sur les aspects matériels des textes juifs orthodoxes (Jeremy Stolow)
  
  

Bodleian's Crossing Borders Exhibit

I finally went to NYC to see Crossing Borders: Manuscripts from the Bodleian Libraries at the Jewish Museum. Like several other displays of manuscripts since 9/11, Crossing Borders aims to show the cultural interplay and continuity between Jewish, and Christian and Muslim manuscript cultures in the middle Ages. It does this most successfully by setting side by side copies of Euclid's Geometry in Latin, Hebrew and Arabic, all from the 13th and 14th centuries. The exhibit's centerpiece, the illuminated Kennicott Hebrew bible (late 15th c.), also appears next to the carpet pages of an illuminated Qur'an and a 13th-century Arabic gospel.

The exhibition is less thorough than others have been in carrying through this theme. Its underlying goal shows through of exhibiting the Bodleian's hebraica collection, which has been growing steadily for 400 years. The exhibition hall with elaborate woodworking, dark red walls, and dark interior reinforced the Oxford effect.

The exhibit shows the maturation of using electronic technology to show more  of a book than just the two pages open in the exhibit case. Many of the exhibit cases included built-in tablets that allowed visitors to browse more pages and zoom in on details. The Kennicott Bible was accompanied by five tablets that allowed browsing every single page of this illuminated Bible. Now that people are increasingly familiar with using cell phones and tablets, this is a very user-friendly interface. It is the culmination of a trend that began with the British Library's "turning the pages" displays more than a decade ago.

Most striking to me were the set of folio-sized and illuminated commentaries from the 12th to 15th centuries. They included Herbert of Bosham's glosses on Lombard's commentary on the Psalms (12th c., at left), a Hebrew Bible with Rashi's glosses (13th c.), Nicholas of Lyra's two-volume biblical commentary (14th c.), and Jacob Ben Asher's Evev ha-Ezer (15th c.). They contrasted with the more utilitarian sized and produced works of Maimonides and Richard of St. Victor. The illuminations of the folio volumes (especially Herbert's glosses) rivaled the Bibles and prayer books displayed beside them. Obviously, they must have been produced for wealthy patrons or institutions. Still, it is surprising to see so much wealth invested in scholarly products.

The exhibit remains at the Jewish Museum until February 3rd.