tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-276520236808791652.comments2023-05-25T03:48:30.575-04:00Iconic BooksJim Wattshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14068322644665292940noreply@blogger.comBlogger96125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-276520236808791652.post-53022897851403239302020-12-07T06:11:57.145-05:002020-12-07T06:11:57.145-05:00Ten years later, a similar approach to bible publi...Ten years later, a similar approach to bible publishing is being conducted by a California company, Alabaster Co (https://www.alabasterco.com/). They publish individual biblical books in glossy coffee-table formats filled with nature photography. <br /><br />The company's vision: "Beauty matters in our understanding of who God is. We live in a visual culture. Everyone makes images and we are shaped by what we see. We value bringing this visual reality to a faith-based context."Jim Wattshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14068322644665292940noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-276520236808791652.post-11399764958899786472020-10-09T08:30:26.205-04:002020-10-09T08:30:26.205-04:00The website selling bibles signed by Trump is here...The website selling bibles signed by Trump is here: https://momentsintime.com/bible-signed-by-trump/#.X4BXNO0pA2x.<br />Now that his tax returns have revealed that he is deeply in debt, the high price tag makes more sense. But there is no indication as to how well it is selling.Jim Wattshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14068322644665292940noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-276520236808791652.post-49689758196568531042020-09-08T13:07:43.350-04:002020-09-08T13:07:43.350-04:00Another layer to this one, Jim!
https://www.tmz.co...Another layer to this one, Jim!<br />https://www.tmz.com/2020/09/08/trump-bible-signed-autographed-for-sale-st-johns-church-photo-op/Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11659175966868728510noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-276520236808791652.post-91083762104966774542018-12-12T17:02:07.818-05:002018-12-12T17:02:07.818-05:00How interesting! I look forward to your update, Da...How interesting! I look forward to your update, David.<br />JimJim Wattshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14068322644665292940noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-276520236808791652.post-47588015773403743542015-06-26T16:04:25.430-04:002015-06-26T16:04:25.430-04:00Thank you! I've added the entry and link.Thank you! I've added the entry and link.Jim Wattshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14068322644665292940noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-276520236808791652.post-964325677288306872015-06-23T09:19:43.868-04:002015-06-23T09:19:43.868-04:00see also Linda J. Docherty, "Women as Reader...see also Linda J. Docherty, "Women as Readers: Visual Interpretations," Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society 107 (October 1997): 335-88. <br /><br />http://www.americanantiquarian.org/proceedings/44539496.pdfAnonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07042795696721413613noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-276520236808791652.post-26800163031570028412014-01-27T18:04:06.580-05:002014-01-27T18:04:06.580-05:00How about "bible-bodied"?...
http://www...How about "bible-bodied"?...<br /><br />http://www.religiondispatches.org/dispatches/guest_bloggers/7532/the_problem_with_ranking__bible_minded__cities/Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17733903555731222560noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-276520236808791652.post-73548917621556368792013-09-26T13:45:22.180-04:002013-09-26T13:45:22.180-04:00Thanks for highlighting this, Jim - looks very int...Thanks for highlighting this, Jim - looks very interesting.bradandgeohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08634488959991846132noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-276520236808791652.post-5650675653953139342012-09-23T21:26:28.315-04:002012-09-23T21:26:28.315-04:00That is good news indeed, and even more topical no...That is good news indeed, and even more topical now after the "Innocence of Muslims" riots and killings. Religious sensitivity has clearly gone overboard and is being manipulated for political or other purposes. The time to question it is now. I'll never understand why people think it's their job to defend the Almighty's honour anyway. Surely any god worth worshipping can take care of it without our assistance?<br /><br />P.S. Can you make commenting easier? It's a pain to jump through all these hoops.Classical Bookwormhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10670112483985017142noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-276520236808791652.post-27409934866099178932012-08-11T22:24:47.060-04:002012-08-11T22:24:47.060-04:00Yes, the British Library online exhibit is fantast...Yes, the British Library online exhibit is fantastic. But it also illustrates the difficulty of keeping up internet publications and e-books with rapidly changing technology. The BL's "Turning the Pages" software was stunning when it was introduced some years ago. It's still amazing to be able to see all the pages of these texts, but now the images appear rather low resolution and the Shockwave Flash application a bit clumsy. The high-res pictures of selected pages are much better, but do not cover entire manuscripts...Jim Wattshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14068322644665292940noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-276520236808791652.post-1104810909145943762012-04-27T23:37:04.242-04:002012-04-27T23:37:04.242-04:00A similar thing happened with the San Francisco ma...A similar thing happened with the San Francisco main library. I don't remember all the details, but there was a big to do about the card catalog being purged. Poepe who run libraries should be very careful about moving things around, and especially about purging them. Their patrons get used to things being in a certain place and grow annoyed by needless changes.Matthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16293781636265029035noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-276520236808791652.post-8843629642594229652012-04-20T18:45:51.072-04:002012-04-20T18:45:51.072-04:00Mark Bauerlein's essay about this in the Chro...Mark Bauerlein's essay about this in the <a href="http://chronicle.com/article/Authority-Figures/131250/?sid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en" rel="nofollow"> Chronicle of Higher Education </a> concludes by wondering: "one wonders if the loss of the print volume has an impact that cannot be remedied. Does any Web site at all carry the authority of the book? Does the experience of searching a Web page ever match the action of pulling a hefty Britannica volume off the shelf and reading real pages? Will a revisable, evolving entry ever attain the status of an independent expression, or will it remain just another "informational text"? To believe that the medium doesn't have a message is naïve."Jim Wattshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14068322644665292940noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-276520236808791652.post-50901225514990060502012-02-26T09:16:17.611-05:002012-02-26T09:16:17.611-05:00Note Brian Palmer's Slate article on this topi...Note Brian Palmer's Slate article on this topic, using the research and comments from Myrvold's book: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2012/02/afghan_quran_burning_protests_what_s_the_right_way_to_dispose_of_a_quran_.htmlDori Miller Parmenterhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16169482177198021186noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-276520236808791652.post-59818835394721387492012-02-23T18:24:06.234-05:002012-02-23T18:24:06.234-05:00I heard a news report in the past few weeks that a...I heard a news report in the past few weeks that a military base also disposed of human remains in trash pits. I'm thinking of Mirvold's _The Death of Sacred Texts_ and the argument that the disposal of holy books in a tradition is closely related to burial practices. Unfortunately, in this case, there seem to be parallel desecration, instead of parallel sacralization.daulthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16922091549713253119noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-276520236808791652.post-89481195499305257792012-01-12T23:59:54.417-05:002012-01-12T23:59:54.417-05:00My 9 year old son has a copy book. Its nothing fa...My 9 year old son has a copy book. Its nothing facy, just a spiral bound notebook. He copies one Psalm per day into it. He's taking about copying one of the Gospels after he finishes the Psalms.Matthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16293781636265029035noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-276520236808791652.post-34436371441690386022011-12-29T17:14:41.742-05:002011-12-29T17:14:41.742-05:00Well said, Jim, and thank you for your response. ...Well said, Jim, and thank you for your response. I certainly am with you on the wish to continue to provoke thought and debate. To that end, there is definitely a place and a use for ambiguity (and the ambiguity of our terms).<br><br> With that said, though, I do want to keep a careful distinction between ambiguity and confusion. <br><br> What I think is very exciting about the questions Iconic Books is raising has precisely to do with these matters of use you mention. In that regard, I find your own tri-valenced vocabulary of icnonicity to be an invaluable resource (for readers: see Watts's "The Three Dimensions of Scriptures" in Postscripts vol. 2/2006. There's a link to it under the Iconic Books bibliography page). <br><br> What I'd like to see happen, eventually, is a clarification of what could be useful ambiguities in our collective research in SCRIPT, over-against "re-inventing the wheel." The former will give inspiration, certainly. The latter, however, risk pulling discussions into surface minutiae (I envision a twenty-minute discussion after some future paper about whether the central term X the author used might not be supplanted more profitably by term Y). <br><br>It's for these kind of digressions that something like a "controlled vocabulary" - settled in advance and available as part of a sort of loose "SCRIPT style guide" might prove useful - in helping to drive us deeper, from confusion to ambiguity (where, as you rightly point out, Jim, the really good questions linger). <br><br>I hope I don't sound like I'm arguing against you here - that is not my intention at all. I think there's a point worth pondering in all of this (or a couple): how to have a controlled vocabulary without rigidity and limitation, and how to arrive at one through an open conversation of bottom-up "best practices" as opposed to some arbitrary imposition? <br><br>All to say, I think I've discovered the topic I'm going to write my proposal about for the SCRIPT-EIR call for papers!<br><br>Thank you again for the thoughtful (and thought-provoking) response.daulthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16922091549713253119noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-276520236808791652.post-61264712082750977282011-12-27T08:20:06.160-05:002011-12-27T08:20:06.160-05:00Deidre Stam's article, "Talking about ...Deidre Stam's article, "Talking about 'Iconic Books' in the Terminology of Book History", will appear very soon in <i>Postscripts</i> and shortly thereafter in the volume I'm editing from Equinox, <i>Iconic Books and Texts</i> (2012). I agree that it provides a very useful orientation to vocabulary necessary for bibliography and book history.<br /><br />I think, though, that many of the phenomena that most interest me about iconic books have much more to do with <i>use</i> than with history of publication, and the latter only because it responds to trends in usage. That's why I employ categories like "iconic text" and "relic text" to describe how people ritualize texts. Such ritualization sometimes draws their attention to one or another detail of publication and bibliographic history, but in other cases it proceeds with remarkable lack of concern for such issues (as Brian Malley documents in detail in <i>How the Bible Works</i>). As a result, we may have to deploy our vocabulary as much for its power to provoke thought and debate (so Vincent Wimbush in the first IB Symposium) as for its ability to control ambiguity.Jim Wattshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14068322644665292940noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-276520236808791652.post-5071247809624487792011-12-20T12:08:37.882-05:002011-12-20T12:08:37.882-05:00Al'Ahram's report emphasizes that some of ...Al'Ahram's report emphasizes that some of the protestors tried to save the collection: "Young revolutionaries rushed into the institute – which is located next to the Cabinet building, the site of ongoing clashes between security personnel and anti-government protesters – as soon as the fire erupted in hopes of rescuing the thousands original manuscripts housed there. Nearly 30,000 books were rescued out of a total of around 196,000 in the institute’s collection, estimated Abdel-Hadi, who went on to commend the young activists’ courage."Jim Wattshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14068322644665292940noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-276520236808791652.post-39739890743609602011-09-13T11:44:20.068-04:002011-09-13T11:44:20.068-04:00Jim - thank you very much for noting my article. ...Jim - thank you very much for noting my article. I appreciate it! The direct link, for folks who want to go read the whole thing, is here: <br /><br />http://materialscripture.blogspot.com/2010/05/magisterium-delivered-right-to-your.html<br /><br />Thanks again!daulthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16922091549713253119noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-276520236808791652.post-73581295180021423302010-12-24T09:03:19.537-05:002010-12-24T09:03:19.537-05:00There is a story about this at NPR as well: http:/...There is a story about this at NPR as well: http://n.pr/hr5r3Pdaulthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16922091549713253119noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-276520236808791652.post-76147790745374336142010-12-03T23:05:26.906-05:002010-12-03T23:05:26.906-05:00Love it! I think I'll probably go due to suffo...Love it! I think I'll probably go due to suffocation after falling asleep with a 1000-page tome on my chest. :DClassical Bookwormhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10670112483985017142noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-276520236808791652.post-14206454280822607092010-04-25T00:34:35.193-04:002010-04-25T00:34:35.193-04:00Thanks for linking my article!
-Menachem WeckerThanks for linking my article!<br /><br />-Menachem WeckerMwhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06817716729093308159noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-276520236808791652.post-75779513919752613732010-03-27T02:58:34.973-04:002010-03-27T02:58:34.973-04:00I thought it was the most beautifully animated mov...I thought it was the most beautifully animated movie I'd ever seen. I was also suprized that despite the art style it had a pretty dark theme. I give it a 9_1/2 out of 10.Unknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05829684880102751344noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-276520236808791652.post-57039791413350189062010-02-18T23:55:52.312-05:002010-02-18T23:55:52.312-05:00Well put. I guess this is the crux of the debate: ...Well put. I guess this is the crux of the debate: Is a library an information kiosk for today's researcher or a deposit of culture capable of outlasting that culture? It sounds that at least at your institution, librarians are ready to abandon books rather than take on the role of curating the flood of publications coming at them. To choose which books are worth reading must conflict disturbingly with their ethic of impartiality, but switching to ebooks is like choosing none of the books, as far as the future is concerned, since they will simply not be there.<br /><br />How ironic that institutions whose purpose is to widen human knowledge are so loath to properly house that knowledge on their campuses. Shouldn't the library be every university's most important trophy?Classical Bookwormhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10670112483985017142noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-276520236808791652.post-26282028797952628432010-02-15T08:51:36.987-05:002010-02-15T08:51:36.987-05:00Hi Jim,
Thanks so much for posting my work. Your b...Hi Jim,<br />Thanks so much for posting my work. Your blog is very interesting to me and I intend to spend more time reading your wide-ranging posts.<br /><br />I am continuing to make artworks which treat books as icons. The pieces I am making now use deconstructed found books. I'll be posting images on my blog soon.<br /><br />Best,<br />NancyNancy Natalehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03325421420384484035noreply@blogger.com