The Death of Sacred Texts

Ritual Disposal and Renovation of Texts in World Religions

Kristina Myrvold

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9780754669180
• eBook ISBN: 9781317036395
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

The Death of Sacred Texts draws attention to a much neglected topic in the study of sacred texts: the religious and ritual attitudes towards texts which have become old and damaged and can no longer be used for reading practices or in religious worship. This book approaches religious texts and scriptures by focusing on their physical properties and the dynamic interactions of devices and habits that lie beneath and within a given text. In the last decades a growing body of research studies has directed attention to the multiple uses and ways people encounter written texts and how they make them alive, even as social actors, in different times and cultures. Considering religious people seem to have all the motives for giving their sacred texts a respectful symbolic treatment, scholars have paid surprisingly little attention to the ritual procedures of disposing and renovating old texts. This book fills this gap, providing empirical data and theoretical analyses of historical and contemporary religious attitudes towards, and practices of text disposals within, seven world religions: Judaism, Islam, Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism. Exploring the cultural and historical variations of rituals for religious scriptures and texts (such as burials, cremations and immersion into rivers) and the underlying beliefs within the religious traditions, this book investigates how these religious practices and stances respond to modernization and globalization processes when new technologies have made it possible to mass-produce and publish religious texts on the Internet.

Chapter 1
Accounts of a Dying Scroll: On Jewish Handling of Sacred Texts in Need of Restoration or Disposal

Marianne Schleicher

In Judaism, holiness pertains to Torah to such a degree that numerous religious norms determine scriptural handling, not only during everyday rituals, but also when it concerns preparation, storage, renovation and disposal of this most central piece of Jewish scripture. By considering Torah as more than just a text, but as an artifact, that is, a manipulable object that attracts personal and cultural representations, this chapter will trace the practices of renovating and discarding sacred text fragments and scripture through history, from antiquity until today, to explain their function and significance in the Jewish religion. A limited amount of examples will be taken from normative religious works such as the Mishnah, the Babylonian Talmud (bTalmud), the Zohar, and Shulkhan Arukh, while sources of contemporary practices of restoration and disposal will stem from Internet sites as well as my interview with the Danish Chief Rabbi, who is head of the modern Orthodox community in Copenhagen.1

Conceptions of the Torah as a Text

Until recently, scholars of religion have grouped scripture under the category of text. Various interpretative methods, often drawing upon the achievements of literary criticism, have been coined to access the oral or written discourse of scripture,2 while still taking account of scripture’s intrinsic claim to holiness based on its revealed content; that is, transempirical knowledge (Smith 1989, 21, 36, 41–42; Levering 1989, 58; Holdrege 1989, 181–182). In this respect, the Torah is not different from any other piece of scripture within the world of religions. The Torah inherently claims to contain the words of God. From the first chapter of Genesis throughout the entire Pentateuch, God speaks as part of his formative and normative address to the universe and mankind: “And God said: ‘Let there be light.’ And there was light” (Gen. 1:3). A transempirical address like this, including its creative effect, transcends everything known and intelligible, which is one of the reasons why many religious people react to scripture with awe and fascination when, for example, analyzing it as a text. As the wholly other, the holy is fascinating because it induces the hope of possessing and appropriating the power which has caused one’s own awe of what lies beyond one’s human comprehension.3 The prospect of benefiting from the superhuman and numinous insight imbedded in scripture may explain why some religious people engage in textual use of scripture to consider whether its content is worth appropriating.

Within a Jewish context, God’s speech also explains the intratextual hierarchy of the Hebrew Bible where the Torah is believed to be superior to the Prophets, which rank above the Writings. The supremacy of the Torah is based on its stipulated divine discourse. The Prophets consist of human renderings of further divine address, while the Writings merely contain human reflection upon God’s acts and words. Altogether, the Torah, the Prophets, and the Writings are referred to as “TaNaKh,” an acronym of the Hebrew names for these three parts. God’s direct speech in the Torah provides one textual explanation for the supremacy of the Torah. Nevertheless, a thorough understanding of this hierarchy requires that one turns to the dominating ritual use of the Torah which is prescribed, sanctioned and encouraged by the Rabbinic tradition. It is through this ritual use that the holiness of the Torah is further established and maintained. In other words, an isolated focus on the textual content of scripture to explain its holy status is far from sufficient to elucidate its holy status and influence as a phenomenon within the world of religions. Accordingly, scholars of religion have recently taken steps to steer clear of the shortcomings of the textual conception of scripture. As this chapter will argue, religious specialists and some resourceful lay people may invest time and energy in interpreting the discourse of scripture and thus accessing the divine address imbedded in the text. However, most religious people acquaint themselves with scripture as a holy object, a holy artifact, in ritual or ritual-like settings where the textual discourse is drowned out by so many other aspects that interfere in the general reception of scripture.4

Conceptions of the Torah as a Holy Artifact

To explain the various aspects that interfere in the general reception of the Torah, especially in ritual or ritual-like settings, it can be useful to employ the term “artifact” when referring to scripture, as introduced by anthropologist Brian Malley (2004). The term “artifact” paves the way for a psychological and sociological approach to the projections of personal and cultural representations onto scripture which arise out of individual and collective needs, experiences, and hopes. What allows for such representations to influence the reception of scripture seems to be that scripture is handled as a physical object, irrespective of the textual content, and treated as a manipulable symbol signifying whatever individuals, collectives and institutions project onto it. The projected meanings are subsequently associated with or subconsciously activated by scripture’s non-semantic and formal aspects, such as binding and embellishment, spelling, recitation and quotation, restoration, disposal and similar acts of ritual handling and regulations. Within Judaism, the easy recognition of the Torah is enabled by these formal aspects: When ritually used the Torah should always be bound, not in book form, but in scroll form. When the scroll is carried between the Torah cupboard and the elevated platform at which the Torah reading takes place, it is decorated with various symbolic silvery objects. Phonetically, the Torah can be recognized whenever it is recited due to the rules of cantillation, to which ritual reading of the Torah is required to conform. From an early age, children learn to distinguish and even quote passages from the Torah and express themselves by inclusion of its imagery in, for example, drawings, which indicates a belonging to Jewish culture. What is of even more importance to this chapter is that Torah scrolls and other Jewish sacred texts are restored according to meticulous rules and disposed of according to specific guidelines. These formal, artifactual aspects are not prescribed within the Torah text, but have come to characterize the handling of the Torah as a consequence of historical and cultural developments.

Trajectories of the Artifactual Status of the Torah

One significant factor in the holy status of the Torah as artifact appears to be the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in 70 CE. As a consequence, Jews no longer had access to a sacred place, that is, an axis mundi, through which contact with God could be mediated. The Torah replaced the temple as the center of cultic activity. Accordingly, it became important to the early Rabbinic authors of the Mishnaic and Talmudic literature to provide prescriptions of how the Torah text should be conceived and handled in ritual contexts (see also Stern 2003, 231). The saying in Mishnah, “Pirkey Avot” 1:1, is one among many illustrations of this replacement. It encourages Jews to “make a fence round the Torah.” Segregating sacred space is a fundamental religious activity in that it marks the boundary between the sacred and the profane. When the temple was still standing it was constantly purified, that is, segregated from impurity and guarded in order to keep it in a state of perfection and completion. People officiating within it were likewise purified and the mundane world was fenced off from the temple precincts. When the Mishnaic tractate “Pirkey Avot” formulates this encouragement in its opening lines, it is hard not to interpret it as an attempt to promote the Torah as a new center of holiness equal to that of the temple, now lying in ruins.

Detailed specifications for the artifactual aspects of the Torah scroll were formulated in what were to become the most normative corpora in early Rabbinic Judaism and onwards: the Mishnah and the Talmud. These prescriptions allowed for easy identification of the text and defined what was required in order for a Torah scroll to be considered holy, perfect and complete. According to Rabbinic literature, the holy status of the Torah had been achieved when the text was written in the Assyrian script, on parchment and in ink (Mishnah, “Yadayim” 4:5). The holy status furthermore depended on the parchment being made from the skin of a clean animal. The preparations of the hide had to be carried out with the conscious intent of turning it into parchment for the Torah (bTalmud, “Megillah” 19a). The parchment was prepared on both sides (bTalmud, “Shabbath” 79b) and cut into a square sheet, upon which lines were ruled in columns, leaving space for margins to surround and protect the holy letters to be written upon them. No vowels or accents were allowed if the scroll were to be fit for public reading. The sheets were then sewed together with threads of dried tendons from clean animals and “the Scroll of the Law closes at its middle, there being a cylinder at each end” (bTalmud, “Baba Bathra” 14a). Obviously, these prescriptions would lead to the production of a scroll – not a codex. Once written, inspected, accepted, and used for ritual purposes, the Torah had to be chanted aloud using a special melody (bTalmud, “Megillah” 32a). These artifactual prescriptions for the preparation and transmission of the physical text provided and continue to provide tools within the Rabbinic tradition for projecting a status of holy axis mundi onto the Torah scroll. In other words, the material culture and the ritual acts involving the Torah were and still are strategies for the Rabbinic elite to establish and maintain normative perceptions of the Torah. Holiness applies not only to the Torah as a text but also as an artifact. In line with this conception, the Torah is even referred to as God’s temple (mikdashyah) in medieval writings (Stern 2003, 233).

According to Rabbinic tradition, every man must write a Torah scroll for himself (bTalmud, “Sanhedrin” 21b), but if unable to do so he can commission a scribe to write it for him (bTalmud, “Megillah” 27a). This commandment brought most Jewish males into contact with what they considered holy. Accordingly, they were required to obtain the ritual purity necessary for the handling of what was to become a holy artifact. Many of these requirements are formulated in the legal code Shulkhan Arukh devised by Joseph Caro in 1564. Following this code, a scribe – whether professional or lay – had to prepare himself mentally before writing a Torah scroll. Because of the numinous power of God’s names in the Torah text he had to say aloud: “I have the intent to write the holy name” before doing so. The writing was not to be interrupted and it had to remain within the protective margins of the sheet (Shulkhan Arukh, “Yoreh Deah” 22). Thus, every Jew writing a scroll had to remind himself of its numinosity and thereby contribute to the maintenance of the status of the Torah as a holy artifact.

To further venerate and therefore maintain the holiness of the Torah, the scroll had to be handled according to special rules. It must not be held uncovered unless opened to be read. In the tradition of Ashkenazi Jewry the scroll is covered with a Torah mantle, while Sephardic Jews store it in a wooden box.5 People should not touch it with dirty hands or take it into impure places, and all should stand up when it is carried and must not sit wherever it is resting (Shulkhan Arukh, “Yoreh Deah” 22).

The Torah scroll has different accessories which are known as keley qodesh, holy vessels. They are typically made in silver except for the two rollers which are made of wood (ets hayyim). The accessories include a breastplate (ephod) which connotes the breastplate of the high priest of the Jerusalem Temple. The Torah breastplate is decorated on each side with the temple’s two pillars ‘Boaz and Jachin’. Another accessory is the Torah pointer (yad torah) which prevents the reader of the Torah from touching the holy letters with his impure hands. The Torah crown(s) (keter/-im) which is placed on top of the rollers when it is either kept in the Torah cupboard or carried in a procession, evokes messianic hope and God’s kingdom. The bells (rimmonim), which are also placed on top of the rollers or attached to the crown(s), are similar to those carried by the high priest in antiquity to warn ritually impure people that he was coming and that they would have to keep their distance. The tradition of making the Torah accessories probably arose as an opportunity for community members to remember and honor family members by donating such equipment to the local synagogue (Elbogen 1993, 359–363). Not only have the accessories transmitted an aura of holiness associated with the Jerusalem Temple onto the Torah scroll but they have also served and still serve as a means to create transitivity between its holiness and individuals within the community. Here, the concept of transitivity is important as it signifies the numerous meanings which are transferred from one sphere to another. ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Figures
• Notes on Contributors
• Introduction
• 1 Accounts of a Dying Scroll: On Jewish Handling of Sacred Texts in Need of Restoration or Disposal
• 2 Relating, Revering, and Removing: Muslim Views on the Use, Power, and Disposal of Divine Words
• 3 A Fitting Ceremony: Christian Concerns for Bible Disposal
• 4 The Death of the Dharma: Buddhist Sutra Burials in Early Medieval Japan
• 5 Rites of Burial and Immersion: Hindu Ritual Practices on Disposing of Sacred Texts in Vrindavan
• 6 Is a Manuscript an Object or a Living Being?: Jain Views on the Life and Use of Sacred Texts
• 7 Making the Scripture a Person: Reinventing Death Rituals of Guru Granth Sahib in Sikhism
• 8 Disposing of Non-Disposable Texts: Conclusions and Prospects for Further Study
• Index