I work on the overlap between rhetoric, ritual and scriptures. An assignment to write a large commentary on Leviticus has me focused on very detailed texts in their ancient Near Eastern and later Jewish and Christian contexts, while the Iconic Books Project provides a vehicle for considering the functions of scriptures from trans-cultural and trans-historical perspectives. Address: http://jameswwatts.net
http://religion.syr.edu
http://iconicbooks.net
http://script-site.net
From back cover:
The Bible is a popular subject of study and research, yet biblical studies give... more From back cover:
The Bible is a popular subject of study and research, yet biblical studies gives little attention to the reason for its popularity: its religious role as a scripture. Understanding the Bible as a Scripture in History, Culture, and Religion integrates the history of the religious interpretation and ritual uses of biblical books into a survey of their rhetoric, composition, and theology in their ancient contexts. Emphasizing insights from comparative studies of different religious scriptures, it combines discussion of the Bible’s origins with its cultural history into a coherent understanding of its past and present function as a scripture.
A prominent expert on biblical rhetoric and the ritualization of books, James W. Watts describes how Jews and Christians ritualize the Bible by interpreting it, by expressing it in recitations, music, art, and film, and by venerating the physical scroll and book. The first two sections of the book are organized around the Torah and the Gospels—which have been the focus of Jewish and Christian ritualization of scriptures from ancient to modern times—and treat the history of other biblical books in relation to these two central blocks of the Hebrew Bible and New Testament. In addition to analyzing the semantic contents of all the Bible’s books as persuasive rhetoric, Watts describes their ritualization in the iconic and expressive dimensions in the centuries since they began to function as a scripture, as well as in their origins in ancient Judaism and Christianity. The third section on the cultural history and scriptural function of modern bibles concludes by discussing their influence today and the controversies they have fueled about history, science, race, and gender.
Innovative and insightful, Understanding the Bible as a Scripture in History, Culture, and Religion is a groundbreaking introduction to the study of the Bible as a scripture, and an ideal textbook for courses in biblical studies and comparative scripture studies.
How and Why Books Matter: Essays on the Social Function of Iconic Texts, 2019
Religious and secular communities ritualize some books in one, two, or three dimensions. They rit... more Religious and secular communities ritualize some books in one, two, or three dimensions. They ritualize the dimension of semantic interpretation through teaching, preaching, and scholarly commentary. This dimension receives almost all the attention of academic scholars. Communities also ritualize a text’s expressive dimension through public reading, recitation, and song, and also by reproducing its contents in art, theatre and film. This dimension is receiving increasing scholarly attention, especially in religious studies and anthropology. A third textual dimension, the iconic dimension, gets ritualized by manipulating the physical text, decorating it, and displaying it. This dimension has received almost no academic attention, yet features prominently in the most common news stories about books, whether about e-books, academic libraries, rare manuscript discoveries, or scripture desecrations. By calling attention to the iconic dimension of books, James Watts argues that we can better understand how physical books mediate social value and power within and between religious communities, nations, academic disciplines, and societies both ancient and modern.
All the human senses become engaged in ritualizing sacred texts. These essays focus especially on... more All the human senses become engaged in ritualizing sacred texts. These essays focus especially on ritualizing the iconic dimension of texts through the senses of sight, touch, kiss, and taste, both directly and in the imagination.
Ritualized display of books engages the sense of sight very differently than does reading. Touching gets associated with reading scriptures, but touching also enables using the scripture as an amulet. Eating and consuming texts is a ubiquitous analogy for internalizing the contents of texts by reading and memorization.
The idea of textual consumption reflects a widespread tendency to equate humans and written texts by their interiority and exteriority: books and people both have material bodies, yet both seem to contain immaterial ideas. Books thus physically incarnate cultural and religious values, doctrines, beliefs, and ideas.
These essays bring theories of comparative scriptures and affect theory to bear on the topic as well as rich ethnographic descriptions of scriptural practices with Jewish, Sikh, Muslim, Christian, Buddhist and modern art and historical accounts of changing practices with sacred texts in ancient and medieval China and Korea, and in ancient Middle Eastern and Mediterranean cultures.
Sample from James W. Watts, Understanding the Pentateuch as a Scripture (Wiley Blackwell, 2017), ... more Sample from James W. Watts, Understanding the Pentateuch as a Scripture (Wiley Blackwell, 2017), consisting of the cover, table of contents, chapter 1 and the index.
James Watts uses rhetorical analysis for this detailed exposition of Leviticus 1-10. In dialogue ... more James Watts uses rhetorical analysis for this detailed exposition of Leviticus 1-10. In dialogue with a wide variety of contemporary scholarship on Leviticus, this commentary also engages the history of the book’s interpretation and the history of Jewish and Christian ritual practices. Leviticus’s rhetoric aimed to persuade ancient Israelites to make offerings to God. It legitimized the monopoly of Aaronide priests over Israel’s offerings and over determining correct ritual practice. The priests in turn established the Torah containing Leviticus as the authoritative text of Israel’s religion. Rhetorical analysis of Leviticus thus leads to new insights into the role of priests in raising the Pentateuch to the status of scripture and in shaping the biblical canon. It also calls attention to the role of ritual rhetoric in the polities of later Jewish and Christian groups, despite the fact that neither religion makes animal offerings as Leviticus 1-10 mandates.
Images of books appear in art, advertising and commercial logos to symbolize learning, knowledge ... more Images of books appear in art, advertising and commercial logos to symbolize learning, knowledge and wisdom. In religious and secular rituals around the globe, people carry, show, wave, touch and kiss books and other texts, as well as read them. Such images and rituals utilize the iconic dimension of texts. This volume is the first comprehensive survey of iconic books and texts. It traces their development and influence from ancient to modern times and compares their roles in multiple cultures and religious traditions. The essays presented here are original, cutting-edge contributions to this new academic field, and will appeal to students and scholars across the study of religions, literature, book history, archives and libraries.
"Watts builds his case from critiques of existing ritual interpretations to identification of rhe... more "Watts builds his case from critiques of existing ritual interpretations to identification of rhetoric supporting a priestly monopoly to the breathtaking conclusion that these ritual instructions at the heart of the Pentateuch legitimated the authority of this whole collection of writings and played the pivotal role in elevating it to the status of Scripture.” Roy Gane, Catholic Biblical Quarterly 70 (2008) 584-85:
"… a book whose importance extends far beyond the realms of traditional exegesis. For those of us still grappling with the Western cultural effects of a pervasive antiritual bias, and for those still struggling to understand what 'sacrifice' has meant and still means, this is a 'must-read'." Robert J. Daly, Theological Studies 70/1 (2009), 197-199.
“I recommend it strongly as a study of ritual texts in Leviticus, and more generally as a work demonstrating the value of rhetorical analysis of biblical ritual texts, and as a study of the ideology and literary activity of ancient Israel’s Aaronide priesthood.” William Gilders, AJS Review 33:2 (November 2009), 391-93.
(From the Introduction) The essays in this collection focus on the functions of scriptures. They ... more (From the Introduction) The essays in this collection focus on the functions of scriptures. They describe how scriptures are used in ritual, art, and performance, as well as in ecclesiastical doctrine and academic philosophy, to give shape to cultures and to mediate social stratification and religious conflict. They also argue that these functions, far from being side-effects of scriptures’ influence, are in fact the features that describe best their distinctive nature. Religious traditions designate certain texts as scriptures because they function in these ways.
The following essays as a group illustrate the most prominent ways in which scriptures promote identity formation among communities and individuals. They also show that other kinds of texts (such as laws, epics, and ritual books) can perform these functions in some of the same ways. The articles therefore suggest that “scripture” can be defined on functional grounds and they explore whether this functional definition can be applied meaningfully across different cultures and historical periods.
"Though brief and sometimes technical, this book is a very important, original contribution to Pe... more "Though brief and sometimes technical, this book is a very important, original contribution to Pentateuchal scholarship. Watts's focus on rhetoric provides the best account to date of the way highly divergent materials have been joined in the present Pentateuch." David M. Carr, Interpretation (2000) 318.
"An excellent book that deserves to be widely read and absorbed into mainstream Pentateuchal research." J.P. Burnside, Vetus Testamentum 15 (2001) 427.
"A must for readers ranging from advanced students to career scholars." W. Lee Humphreys, Religious Studies Review 26/2 (2000) 184.
"The volume is an interesting and valuable work, if only for the scope of the study. The consider... more "The volume is an interesting and valuable work, if only for the scope of the study. The consideration of inset psalms and their narrative function is not a topic previously considered in depth. Watts provides many scholarly opinions and paradigms worthy of consideration and future debate. Perhaps the most provocative conclusion is the critique of the theory that epic prose emerged out of archaic poetry, a theory advanced by Frank Cross and others. This volume may become a valuable resource in that debate alone. Otherwise the book is an excellent source for the study of this particular genre of psalmody, and it shall remain such for years to come." Robert Gnuse in Journal of Biblical Literature 123 (1994) 126-28.
Persia and Torah provides the first thorough evaluation in English of the theory that the Persian... more Persia and Torah provides the first thorough evaluation in English of the theory that the Persian Empire authorized and influenced the formation of the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Jewish and Christian Bibles. The contributors to this volume address the role of written texts in ancient politics, religion, and law; the political and social contexts behind the literary formation of the Torah; the social forces that motivated the acceptance of the first Bible; and the experiences of Judeans in the Persian period in comparison with other Persian subjects, especially Egyptians and Greeks. Along with the translated work of Peter Frei, the leading proponent of this theory about imperial influence on local law in the Persian period, the volume presents evaluations of the theory and its application to the Bible by the leading experts on the period and its literature.
An “iconic book” is a text revered primarily as an object of power rather than just as words of i... more An “iconic book” is a text revered primarily as an object of power rather than just as words of instruction, information, or insight. The emerging study of iconic books and texts draws especially on comparative scriptures studies (e.g. Graham, Watts) and icon theory (e.g. Brown, Parmenter) to develop frameworks for understanding the ritual production, display, and manipulation of material texts. People usually assume that books and other kinds of texts gain iconic status secondarily, after their semantic contents gain influence and prestige. That assumption is called into question by the study of the form and functions of ancient Near Eastern texts, many of which were created for iconic use. Iconic ritualization was also a key factor in creating the first Western scripture, the Jewish Torah. It narrates the gift of divinely written tablets to Moses, tablets that are never read but rather enshrined in a book reliquary (the Ark of the Covenant) that represents God’s presence with Israel. Simultaneously, Moses writes scrolls of Torah (law or instruction) that accompany the Ark of the Covenant, report on the tablets’ origins and contents, among other things, and must be read aloud regularly to the entire people of Israel. Jewish tradition soon came to regard the Torah, too, as written in heaven. In this way, iconic display joined ritualized performance and semantic interpretation as engines for scripturalizing Torah in antiquity as well as the Bibles that incorporated it in later periods.
The Pentateuch portrays God acting like a king, but almost never applies the title, “king,” to Go... more The Pentateuch portrays God acting like a king, but almost never applies the title, “king,” to God, in marked contrast to many other parts of the Hebrew Bible. This terminological discrepancy between, on the one hand, all the major pentateuchal sources and, on the other hand, much of the rest of the Hebrew Bible, calls for explanation. Attention to a common and ancient rhetorical strategy of argumentation, the enthymeme, provides an explanation in the form of an unstated premise. The premise that YHWH is Israel’s king strengthened the persuasive force of the prose Pentateuch by remaining unstated.
Rituals obviously utilize the human senses. Theological and mystical interpretations frequently c... more Rituals obviously utilize the human senses. Theological and mystical interpretations frequently comment on sensation as a source of metaphors for religious experience. However, the discourse used in religious rituals themselves usually avoids using the normal vocabulary appropriate to particular sensations, while focusing on ritual performance instead. This raises the question of whether it is generally the case that ritualizing sensation diverts attention from sensation to ritual behavior, and whether ritual interpretations usually divert attention from the sensation to its metaphorical meaning. This essay addresses these questions with the analytical tools of metaphor theory and ritual theory. To test and apply these theories, it focuses on one kind of ritual practices, those that involve written texts, especially books of scripture, and how they use the senses of sight, hearing, and touch.
Touching and holding books does not usually evoke the language of sensation. Touching a book inde... more 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.
Writing a Commentary on LeviticusHermeneutics—Methodology—Themes (ed. Christian A. Eberhart and Thomas Hieke; Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht,, 2019
What is the significance of an unperformed ritual? And what is the meaning of an unread text? The... more What is the significance of an unperformed ritual? And what is the meaning of an unread text? The intuitive answer, that unperformed rituals and unread texts have no meaning, is clearly wrong in the case of Leviticus. The rituals depicted in its text mean a great deal, because Jews, Samaritans and Christians continue to ritualize Leviticus as part of their scriptures. Leviticus’s status as the third book of scripture has remained virtually uncontested throughout the histories of these three religions, despite the fact that people do not observe many of its offering instructions or, among Christians, even read much of its text. It retains its place among the sacred scrolls and books reproduced by each religion. Therefore if the job of commentary is to explain the meaning of Leviticus, it cannot stop with the book’s words, much less their original referents. The meanings of Leviticus have been broadcast by the sounds of its words and the sight of the books and scrolls that contain it as much as by semantic interpretations of its contents, which have themselves been manifested in ritual and legal performances as well as in sermons and commentaries. Out of all this emerges the phenomenon of scripture, of which Leviticus is an original and integral part.
Writing a Commentary on LeviticusHermeneutics—Methodology—Themes (ed. Christian A. Eberhart and Thomas Hieke; Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht,, 2019
Some verses of Leviticus express norms that explicitly conflict with the legal and ethical teachi... more Some verses of Leviticus express norms that explicitly conflict with the legal and ethical teachings of contemporary Jewish and Christian denominations, and also with the laws of modern nations. Among them are texts mandating that readers treat some other people in ways now widely regarded as immoral, cruel, inhumane, and exploitative—texts that call for and / or have historically justified genocide, indiscriminate capital punishment, slavery, and the subjugation of women by men. National and international law today declares most of these behaviors illegal and subject to criminal prosecution. The moral problem for commentators and publishers is that, by publishing bibles and commentaries that reproduce these texts, we continue to promulgate claims of divine approval for immoral and illegal behavior. Modern secular culture joins Jewish and Christian ethical reflection in rejecting indiscriminate capital punishment, slavery, genocide and, increasingly, patriarchy. The history of controversies over these practices, however, shows that biblical texts retain their power to justify actions and institutions despite considerable moral teaching and commentary to the contrary. It is not enough for commentaries simply to argue that particular verses of scripture have been superseded by changing cultural contexts or that, in their original contexts, these verses advocated improvements over existing norms. The iconic status of their continuing appearance in scriptures distributed widely around the world preserves their latent power to be invoked malevolently again and again. The visual text of these biblical verses should therefore be struck through, so that the moral judgment is immediately apparent to anyone who opens a bible to that page. The strikethrough preserves the position of these verses in biblical literature while clearly marking the interpretive traditions’ repudiation of their normative force.
The long history of the Jewish and Christian use of separatist rhetoric and universal ideals reve... more The long history of the Jewish and Christian use of separatist rhetoric and universal ideals reveals their negative consequences. The Hebrew Bible’s rhetoric about Israel as a people separated from the Egyptians and Canaanites is connected to Israel’s purity practices in Leviticus 18 and 20. Later communities wielding greater political power, however, employed this same anti-Canaanite pollution rhetoric in their eff orts to colonize many different parts of the world. Separatist rhetoric was used to protect small Jewish communities in the early Second Temple period. The Christian New Testament rejected many of these purity practices in order to makes its mission more inclusive and universal. However, its denigration of concerns for purification as typically “Jewish” fueled intolerance of Jews in the form of Christian anti-Semitism. The violent history of both separatist and universalist rhetoric provides a cautionary tale about the consequences of using cultural and religious comparisons for community formation.
The Pentateuchʼs juxtaposition of different genres within a narrative framework provides some of ... more The Pentateuchʼs juxtaposition of different genres within a narrative framework provides some of the evidence for building source- and redaction-critical theories of the Pentateuchʼs literary history. Rhetorical analysis suggests, however, that such genre juxtapositions are characteristic of an ancient Near Eastern strategy of persuasion. The Pentateuchʼs inset genres, especially its lists of instructions and laws, generated most of its normative force that, together with its ritualization, led to its scripturalization as Torah. From The Formation of the Pentateuch: Bridging the Academic Cultures of Europe, Israel, and North America (ed. Jan Geertz et al, Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2016), pp. 1135-45. For full text, follow link to https://surface.syr.edu/rel/105/.
In the Second Temple period, the Torah gained scriptural authority through its association with t... more In the Second Temple period, the Torah gained scriptural authority through its association with the priesthoods of the Jerusalem and Samaritan temples. The Torah, in tum, legitimized these priests' control over both the temples and, for much of the period, over the territory of Judah as well. An original function of the Pentateuch then was to legitimize the religious and, by extension, the political claims of priestly dynasties. This point has rarely been discussed and never been emphasized by biblical scholars, however, which makes the subject of the Torah's relationship to the Second Temple Aaronide priesthood as much about the ideologies of academic culture as about ancient religious history.
Pages 319-331 from The Pentateuch as Torah: New Models for Understanding Its Promulgation and Acceptance, edited by Gary N. Knoppers and Bernard M. Levinson, Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2007.
For full text, follow link to http://surface.syr.edu/rel/103/.
From back cover:
The Bible is a popular subject of study and research, yet biblical studies give... more From back cover:
The Bible is a popular subject of study and research, yet biblical studies gives little attention to the reason for its popularity: its religious role as a scripture. Understanding the Bible as a Scripture in History, Culture, and Religion integrates the history of the religious interpretation and ritual uses of biblical books into a survey of their rhetoric, composition, and theology in their ancient contexts. Emphasizing insights from comparative studies of different religious scriptures, it combines discussion of the Bible’s origins with its cultural history into a coherent understanding of its past and present function as a scripture.
A prominent expert on biblical rhetoric and the ritualization of books, James W. Watts describes how Jews and Christians ritualize the Bible by interpreting it, by expressing it in recitations, music, art, and film, and by venerating the physical scroll and book. The first two sections of the book are organized around the Torah and the Gospels—which have been the focus of Jewish and Christian ritualization of scriptures from ancient to modern times—and treat the history of other biblical books in relation to these two central blocks of the Hebrew Bible and New Testament. In addition to analyzing the semantic contents of all the Bible’s books as persuasive rhetoric, Watts describes their ritualization in the iconic and expressive dimensions in the centuries since they began to function as a scripture, as well as in their origins in ancient Judaism and Christianity. The third section on the cultural history and scriptural function of modern bibles concludes by discussing their influence today and the controversies they have fueled about history, science, race, and gender.
Innovative and insightful, Understanding the Bible as a Scripture in History, Culture, and Religion is a groundbreaking introduction to the study of the Bible as a scripture, and an ideal textbook for courses in biblical studies and comparative scripture studies.
How and Why Books Matter: Essays on the Social Function of Iconic Texts, 2019
Religious and secular communities ritualize some books in one, two, or three dimensions. They rit... more Religious and secular communities ritualize some books in one, two, or three dimensions. They ritualize the dimension of semantic interpretation through teaching, preaching, and scholarly commentary. This dimension receives almost all the attention of academic scholars. Communities also ritualize a text’s expressive dimension through public reading, recitation, and song, and also by reproducing its contents in art, theatre and film. This dimension is receiving increasing scholarly attention, especially in religious studies and anthropology. A third textual dimension, the iconic dimension, gets ritualized by manipulating the physical text, decorating it, and displaying it. This dimension has received almost no academic attention, yet features prominently in the most common news stories about books, whether about e-books, academic libraries, rare manuscript discoveries, or scripture desecrations. By calling attention to the iconic dimension of books, James Watts argues that we can better understand how physical books mediate social value and power within and between religious communities, nations, academic disciplines, and societies both ancient and modern.
All the human senses become engaged in ritualizing sacred texts. These essays focus especially on... more All the human senses become engaged in ritualizing sacred texts. These essays focus especially on ritualizing the iconic dimension of texts through the senses of sight, touch, kiss, and taste, both directly and in the imagination.
Ritualized display of books engages the sense of sight very differently than does reading. Touching gets associated with reading scriptures, but touching also enables using the scripture as an amulet. Eating and consuming texts is a ubiquitous analogy for internalizing the contents of texts by reading and memorization.
The idea of textual consumption reflects a widespread tendency to equate humans and written texts by their interiority and exteriority: books and people both have material bodies, yet both seem to contain immaterial ideas. Books thus physically incarnate cultural and religious values, doctrines, beliefs, and ideas.
These essays bring theories of comparative scriptures and affect theory to bear on the topic as well as rich ethnographic descriptions of scriptural practices with Jewish, Sikh, Muslim, Christian, Buddhist and modern art and historical accounts of changing practices with sacred texts in ancient and medieval China and Korea, and in ancient Middle Eastern and Mediterranean cultures.
Sample from James W. Watts, Understanding the Pentateuch as a Scripture (Wiley Blackwell, 2017), ... more Sample from James W. Watts, Understanding the Pentateuch as a Scripture (Wiley Blackwell, 2017), consisting of the cover, table of contents, chapter 1 and the index.
James Watts uses rhetorical analysis for this detailed exposition of Leviticus 1-10. In dialogue ... more James Watts uses rhetorical analysis for this detailed exposition of Leviticus 1-10. In dialogue with a wide variety of contemporary scholarship on Leviticus, this commentary also engages the history of the book’s interpretation and the history of Jewish and Christian ritual practices. Leviticus’s rhetoric aimed to persuade ancient Israelites to make offerings to God. It legitimized the monopoly of Aaronide priests over Israel’s offerings and over determining correct ritual practice. The priests in turn established the Torah containing Leviticus as the authoritative text of Israel’s religion. Rhetorical analysis of Leviticus thus leads to new insights into the role of priests in raising the Pentateuch to the status of scripture and in shaping the biblical canon. It also calls attention to the role of ritual rhetoric in the polities of later Jewish and Christian groups, despite the fact that neither religion makes animal offerings as Leviticus 1-10 mandates.
Images of books appear in art, advertising and commercial logos to symbolize learning, knowledge ... more Images of books appear in art, advertising and commercial logos to symbolize learning, knowledge and wisdom. In religious and secular rituals around the globe, people carry, show, wave, touch and kiss books and other texts, as well as read them. Such images and rituals utilize the iconic dimension of texts. This volume is the first comprehensive survey of iconic books and texts. It traces their development and influence from ancient to modern times and compares their roles in multiple cultures and religious traditions. The essays presented here are original, cutting-edge contributions to this new academic field, and will appeal to students and scholars across the study of religions, literature, book history, archives and libraries.
"Watts builds his case from critiques of existing ritual interpretations to identification of rhe... more "Watts builds his case from critiques of existing ritual interpretations to identification of rhetoric supporting a priestly monopoly to the breathtaking conclusion that these ritual instructions at the heart of the Pentateuch legitimated the authority of this whole collection of writings and played the pivotal role in elevating it to the status of Scripture.” Roy Gane, Catholic Biblical Quarterly 70 (2008) 584-85:
"… a book whose importance extends far beyond the realms of traditional exegesis. For those of us still grappling with the Western cultural effects of a pervasive antiritual bias, and for those still struggling to understand what 'sacrifice' has meant and still means, this is a 'must-read'." Robert J. Daly, Theological Studies 70/1 (2009), 197-199.
“I recommend it strongly as a study of ritual texts in Leviticus, and more generally as a work demonstrating the value of rhetorical analysis of biblical ritual texts, and as a study of the ideology and literary activity of ancient Israel’s Aaronide priesthood.” William Gilders, AJS Review 33:2 (November 2009), 391-93.
(From the Introduction) The essays in this collection focus on the functions of scriptures. They ... more (From the Introduction) The essays in this collection focus on the functions of scriptures. They describe how scriptures are used in ritual, art, and performance, as well as in ecclesiastical doctrine and academic philosophy, to give shape to cultures and to mediate social stratification and religious conflict. They also argue that these functions, far from being side-effects of scriptures’ influence, are in fact the features that describe best their distinctive nature. Religious traditions designate certain texts as scriptures because they function in these ways.
The following essays as a group illustrate the most prominent ways in which scriptures promote identity formation among communities and individuals. They also show that other kinds of texts (such as laws, epics, and ritual books) can perform these functions in some of the same ways. The articles therefore suggest that “scripture” can be defined on functional grounds and they explore whether this functional definition can be applied meaningfully across different cultures and historical periods.
"Though brief and sometimes technical, this book is a very important, original contribution to Pe... more "Though brief and sometimes technical, this book is a very important, original contribution to Pentateuchal scholarship. Watts's focus on rhetoric provides the best account to date of the way highly divergent materials have been joined in the present Pentateuch." David M. Carr, Interpretation (2000) 318.
"An excellent book that deserves to be widely read and absorbed into mainstream Pentateuchal research." J.P. Burnside, Vetus Testamentum 15 (2001) 427.
"A must for readers ranging from advanced students to career scholars." W. Lee Humphreys, Religious Studies Review 26/2 (2000) 184.
"The volume is an interesting and valuable work, if only for the scope of the study. The consider... more "The volume is an interesting and valuable work, if only for the scope of the study. The consideration of inset psalms and their narrative function is not a topic previously considered in depth. Watts provides many scholarly opinions and paradigms worthy of consideration and future debate. Perhaps the most provocative conclusion is the critique of the theory that epic prose emerged out of archaic poetry, a theory advanced by Frank Cross and others. This volume may become a valuable resource in that debate alone. Otherwise the book is an excellent source for the study of this particular genre of psalmody, and it shall remain such for years to come." Robert Gnuse in Journal of Biblical Literature 123 (1994) 126-28.
Persia and Torah provides the first thorough evaluation in English of the theory that the Persian... more Persia and Torah provides the first thorough evaluation in English of the theory that the Persian Empire authorized and influenced the formation of the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Jewish and Christian Bibles. The contributors to this volume address the role of written texts in ancient politics, religion, and law; the political and social contexts behind the literary formation of the Torah; the social forces that motivated the acceptance of the first Bible; and the experiences of Judeans in the Persian period in comparison with other Persian subjects, especially Egyptians and Greeks. Along with the translated work of Peter Frei, the leading proponent of this theory about imperial influence on local law in the Persian period, the volume presents evaluations of the theory and its application to the Bible by the leading experts on the period and its literature.
An “iconic book” is a text revered primarily as an object of power rather than just as words of i... more An “iconic book” is a text revered primarily as an object of power rather than just as words of instruction, information, or insight. The emerging study of iconic books and texts draws especially on comparative scriptures studies (e.g. Graham, Watts) and icon theory (e.g. Brown, Parmenter) to develop frameworks for understanding the ritual production, display, and manipulation of material texts. People usually assume that books and other kinds of texts gain iconic status secondarily, after their semantic contents gain influence and prestige. That assumption is called into question by the study of the form and functions of ancient Near Eastern texts, many of which were created for iconic use. Iconic ritualization was also a key factor in creating the first Western scripture, the Jewish Torah. It narrates the gift of divinely written tablets to Moses, tablets that are never read but rather enshrined in a book reliquary (the Ark of the Covenant) that represents God’s presence with Israel. Simultaneously, Moses writes scrolls of Torah (law or instruction) that accompany the Ark of the Covenant, report on the tablets’ origins and contents, among other things, and must be read aloud regularly to the entire people of Israel. Jewish tradition soon came to regard the Torah, too, as written in heaven. In this way, iconic display joined ritualized performance and semantic interpretation as engines for scripturalizing Torah in antiquity as well as the Bibles that incorporated it in later periods.
The Pentateuch portrays God acting like a king, but almost never applies the title, “king,” to Go... more The Pentateuch portrays God acting like a king, but almost never applies the title, “king,” to God, in marked contrast to many other parts of the Hebrew Bible. This terminological discrepancy between, on the one hand, all the major pentateuchal sources and, on the other hand, much of the rest of the Hebrew Bible, calls for explanation. Attention to a common and ancient rhetorical strategy of argumentation, the enthymeme, provides an explanation in the form of an unstated premise. The premise that YHWH is Israel’s king strengthened the persuasive force of the prose Pentateuch by remaining unstated.
Rituals obviously utilize the human senses. Theological and mystical interpretations frequently c... more Rituals obviously utilize the human senses. Theological and mystical interpretations frequently comment on sensation as a source of metaphors for religious experience. However, the discourse used in religious rituals themselves usually avoids using the normal vocabulary appropriate to particular sensations, while focusing on ritual performance instead. This raises the question of whether it is generally the case that ritualizing sensation diverts attention from sensation to ritual behavior, and whether ritual interpretations usually divert attention from the sensation to its metaphorical meaning. This essay addresses these questions with the analytical tools of metaphor theory and ritual theory. To test and apply these theories, it focuses on one kind of ritual practices, those that involve written texts, especially books of scripture, and how they use the senses of sight, hearing, and touch.
Touching and holding books does not usually evoke the language of sensation. Touching a book inde... more 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.
Writing a Commentary on LeviticusHermeneutics—Methodology—Themes (ed. Christian A. Eberhart and Thomas Hieke; Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht,, 2019
What is the significance of an unperformed ritual? And what is the meaning of an unread text? The... more What is the significance of an unperformed ritual? And what is the meaning of an unread text? The intuitive answer, that unperformed rituals and unread texts have no meaning, is clearly wrong in the case of Leviticus. The rituals depicted in its text mean a great deal, because Jews, Samaritans and Christians continue to ritualize Leviticus as part of their scriptures. Leviticus’s status as the third book of scripture has remained virtually uncontested throughout the histories of these three religions, despite the fact that people do not observe many of its offering instructions or, among Christians, even read much of its text. It retains its place among the sacred scrolls and books reproduced by each religion. Therefore if the job of commentary is to explain the meaning of Leviticus, it cannot stop with the book’s words, much less their original referents. The meanings of Leviticus have been broadcast by the sounds of its words and the sight of the books and scrolls that contain it as much as by semantic interpretations of its contents, which have themselves been manifested in ritual and legal performances as well as in sermons and commentaries. Out of all this emerges the phenomenon of scripture, of which Leviticus is an original and integral part.
Writing a Commentary on LeviticusHermeneutics—Methodology—Themes (ed. Christian A. Eberhart and Thomas Hieke; Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht,, 2019
Some verses of Leviticus express norms that explicitly conflict with the legal and ethical teachi... more Some verses of Leviticus express norms that explicitly conflict with the legal and ethical teachings of contemporary Jewish and Christian denominations, and also with the laws of modern nations. Among them are texts mandating that readers treat some other people in ways now widely regarded as immoral, cruel, inhumane, and exploitative—texts that call for and / or have historically justified genocide, indiscriminate capital punishment, slavery, and the subjugation of women by men. National and international law today declares most of these behaviors illegal and subject to criminal prosecution. The moral problem for commentators and publishers is that, by publishing bibles and commentaries that reproduce these texts, we continue to promulgate claims of divine approval for immoral and illegal behavior. Modern secular culture joins Jewish and Christian ethical reflection in rejecting indiscriminate capital punishment, slavery, genocide and, increasingly, patriarchy. The history of controversies over these practices, however, shows that biblical texts retain their power to justify actions and institutions despite considerable moral teaching and commentary to the contrary. It is not enough for commentaries simply to argue that particular verses of scripture have been superseded by changing cultural contexts or that, in their original contexts, these verses advocated improvements over existing norms. The iconic status of their continuing appearance in scriptures distributed widely around the world preserves their latent power to be invoked malevolently again and again. The visual text of these biblical verses should therefore be struck through, so that the moral judgment is immediately apparent to anyone who opens a bible to that page. The strikethrough preserves the position of these verses in biblical literature while clearly marking the interpretive traditions’ repudiation of their normative force.
The long history of the Jewish and Christian use of separatist rhetoric and universal ideals reve... more The long history of the Jewish and Christian use of separatist rhetoric and universal ideals reveals their negative consequences. The Hebrew Bible’s rhetoric about Israel as a people separated from the Egyptians and Canaanites is connected to Israel’s purity practices in Leviticus 18 and 20. Later communities wielding greater political power, however, employed this same anti-Canaanite pollution rhetoric in their eff orts to colonize many different parts of the world. Separatist rhetoric was used to protect small Jewish communities in the early Second Temple period. The Christian New Testament rejected many of these purity practices in order to makes its mission more inclusive and universal. However, its denigration of concerns for purification as typically “Jewish” fueled intolerance of Jews in the form of Christian anti-Semitism. The violent history of both separatist and universalist rhetoric provides a cautionary tale about the consequences of using cultural and religious comparisons for community formation.
The Pentateuchʼs juxtaposition of different genres within a narrative framework provides some of ... more The Pentateuchʼs juxtaposition of different genres within a narrative framework provides some of the evidence for building source- and redaction-critical theories of the Pentateuchʼs literary history. Rhetorical analysis suggests, however, that such genre juxtapositions are characteristic of an ancient Near Eastern strategy of persuasion. The Pentateuchʼs inset genres, especially its lists of instructions and laws, generated most of its normative force that, together with its ritualization, led to its scripturalization as Torah. From The Formation of the Pentateuch: Bridging the Academic Cultures of Europe, Israel, and North America (ed. Jan Geertz et al, Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2016), pp. 1135-45. For full text, follow link to https://surface.syr.edu/rel/105/.
In the Second Temple period, the Torah gained scriptural authority through its association with t... more In the Second Temple period, the Torah gained scriptural authority through its association with the priesthoods of the Jerusalem and Samaritan temples. The Torah, in tum, legitimized these priests' control over both the temples and, for much of the period, over the territory of Judah as well. An original function of the Pentateuch then was to legitimize the religious and, by extension, the political claims of priestly dynasties. This point has rarely been discussed and never been emphasized by biblical scholars, however, which makes the subject of the Torah's relationship to the Second Temple Aaronide priesthood as much about the ideologies of academic culture as about ancient religious history.
Pages 319-331 from The Pentateuch as Torah: New Models for Understanding Its Promulgation and Acceptance, edited by Gary N. Knoppers and Bernard M. Levinson, Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2007.
For full text, follow link to http://surface.syr.edu/rel/103/.
This study combines rhetoric, ritual studies, and comparative scriptures studies to open new aven... more This study combines rhetoric, ritual studies, and comparative scriptures studies to open new avenues for understanding both biblical texts and their cultural history as a scripture. Labelling commentary as ritual, specifically as a ritualized genre of text, leads to the observation that commentary not only contributes to the Bible’s status as a scripture, it depends on that status as well. Ritual theories provide explanations for the dynamic interaction of tradition and innovation in commentary writing. Analysis of commentary writing and reading as a form of ritualizing the semantic dimension of a scripture provides a step forward in understanding how religious and academic communities use scriptures both to conserve a tradition and to adapt it to new circumstances.
An “iconic book” is a text revered primarily as an object of power rather than just as words of i... more An “iconic book” is a text revered primarily as an object of power rather than just as words of instruction, information, or insight. The emerging study of iconic books and texts draws especially on comparative scriptures studies (e.g. Graham, Watts) and icon theory (e.g. Brown, Parmenter) to develop frameworks for understanding the ritual production, display, and manipulation of material texts. People usually assume that books and other kinds of texts gain iconic status secondarily, after their semantic contents gain influence and prestige. That assumption is called into question by the study of the form and functions of ancient Near Eastern texts, many of which were created for iconic use. Iconic ritualization was also a key factor in creating the first Western scripture, the Jewish Torah. It narrates the gift of divinely written tablets to Moses, tablets that are never read but rather enshrined in a book reliquary (the Ark of the Covenant) that represents God’s presence with Israel. Simultaneously, Moses writes scrolls of Torah (law or instruction) that accompany the Ark of the Covenant, report on the tablets’ origins and contents, among other things, and must be read aloud regularly to the entire people of Israel. Jewish tradition soon came to regard the Torah, too, as written in heaven. In this way, iconic display joined ritualized performance and semantic interpretation as engines for scripturalizing Torah in antiquity as well as the Bibles that incorporated it in later periods.
Résumé Un « livre iconique » est un ouvrage qui est d’abord célébré en tant qu’objet de pouvoir plutôt que comme un simple texte véhiculant une marche à suivre, de l’information ou quelque réflexion. Le champ en émergence de l’étude des livres et des textes iconiques puise principalement aux études religieuses comparées (p. ex. Graham, Watts) et à la théorie des icônes (p. ex. Brown, Parmenter) dans l’élaboration de cadres qui permettent de comprendre la dimension rituelle de la production, de la présentation et de l’usage de textes matériels. On tient généralement pour acquis que les livres et autres textes se voient conférer un statut iconique dans un deuxième temps, après que leur contenu sémantique eut gagné en influence et en prestige. Cette perception mérite d’être réexaminée à la lumière de l’étude de la forme et des fonctions de textes anciens en provenance du Proche-Orient, plusieurs desquels furent créés précisément pour servir d’icônes. La ritualisation iconique fut aussi un élément central dans la création des premières Écritures occidentales, soit la Torah juive. Cette dernière relate le don divin, à Moïse, de tables qui ne sont jamais lues mais sont plutôt consignées à un reliquaire (l’Arche d’Alliance) représentant la présence de Dieu au milieu d’Israël. Moïse, cependant, écrit les rouleaux de la Torah (la loi), qui coexistent avec l’Arche d’Alliance, expliquent entre autres choses l’origine des tables et leur contenu, et doivent être lus à voix haute fréquemment à tout le peuple d’Israël. Bientôt, la tradition juive en vint à considérer que la Torah avait elle aussi une origine divine. C’est donc dire que la présentation iconique est associée à une performance ritualisée et à une interprétation sémantique qui participèrent à la scripturalisation de la Torah dans l’Antiquité, mais aussi à celle des Bibles qui l’incorporèrent ultérieurement.
(To download full text of pre-print archived version, click http://surface.syr.edu/rel/83/.) This... more (To download full text of pre-print archived version, click http://surface.syr.edu/rel/83/.) 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 Guantánamo 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 article 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.
To download preprint archived copy, click http://surface.syr.edu/rel/83/.
(To download full text, click http://surface.syr.edu/rel/82/.)
Abstract: This essay probes the o... more (To download full text, click http://surface.syr.edu/rel/82/.)
Abstract: This essay probes the origins of iconic textuality in the ancient Near East, informed by post-colonial perspectives on iconic texts. The surviving art and texts from ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia exhibit at least four forms of iconic textuality: monumental inscriptions, portraits of scribes, displays and manipulations of ritual texts, and beliefs in heavenly texts. The spread of literacy did not displace the social prestige of scribal expertise that was established in antiquity.
To download full text, click http://surface.syr.edu/rel/82/.
(To download full text, click http://surface.syr.edu/rel/81/.)
Torah scrolls are the central ic... more (To download full text, click http://surface.syr.edu/rel/81/.)
Torah scrolls are the central icon of Jewish worship. Interpreters usually regard such ritual uses of physical Torah scrolls as a consequence of the Pentateuch’s textual authority and canonization. However, the traditions about tablets of commandments carried in a reliquary ark show that ritualization of texts in the iconic dimension began early in Israel’s history. Was the Pentateuch itself developed with such iconic uses in mind? That is, was the Pentateuch shaped to replace the tablets and the ark? Evidence for such shaping appears in ambiguities surrounding Pentateuchal traditions about the tablets and scrolls of the law. These passages equate the tablets’ contents with Torah scrolls to the point that several texts fail to distinguish clearly between the two textual forms. These ambiguities attest to a desire in the composition of the Pentateuch itself to identify not just commandments with torah, but also tablets with scrolls. As a result, scrolls replaced the ark as the icon that contains and reveals the covenant.
To download full text, click http://surface.syr.edu/rel/81/.
(To download full-text, click http://surface.syr.edu/rel/84/.)
Abstract: Many interpreters have n... more (To download full-text, click http://surface.syr.edu/rel/84/.) Abstract: Many interpreters have noted that the common nouns, hattat and asham, carry legal connotations in Akkadian and non-priestly parts of the Hebrew Bible. In P, they also serve as the names of the “sin” and “guilt” offerings. The fact that the offering names evoke legal documents and treaties suggests that they were introduced because priests were playing a larger role in legal matters, or at least wished to. The demise of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah provide plausible reasons for why the Temple would have been looking for additional sources of revenue in the form of the sin and guilt offerings. But the interpretation of the kingdoms’ history in Deuteronomistic and other texts may have raised doubts about priestly claims to be able to offer atonement for sins through the cult. This paper analyzes how the rhetoric of Leviticus has been shaped to advance those claims in the context of hostile historical and literary circumstances. (To download full-text, click http://surface.syr.edu/rel/84/.)
The Persian period saw the transformation of pentateuchal materials into a scripture, the Torah. ... more The Persian period saw the transformation of pentateuchal materials into a scripture, the Torah. The story of Ezra exemplifies that transformation by its description of his manipulation of the physical scroll, his oral reading of it before the people of Jerusalem, and his arrangement for its professional translation/interpretation by Levites. These rituals have characterized the function of the Torah (and other scriptures) from that time forward. The Persian period, however, also marks a major change in the nature of our evidence for the form, contents and meaning of pentateuchal materials. The only historical evidence from before the time of Ezra for the Pentateuch’s composition, meaning and use must be derived inductively from literary analyses of biblical texts. From the time of the Ezra story on, our data comes increasingly from explicit references to Torah scrolls in other literature (including the books of Ezra and Nehemiah), translations of the Pentateuch’s text (e.g. the Septuagint) and material evidence such as manuscripts (e.g. Qumran) and ancient synagogue architecture. The transformation of the Pentateuch into scripture around the time of Ezra thus marks a watershed not only in Jewish religious history but also in the methods and data available to modern historians. Pentateuchal studies should develop the capacity to correlate the divergent methods used to study the Pentateuch on both sides of this scriptural divide in order to give a comprehensive account of the Torah’s history and significance. I suggest that rhetorical analysis can provide an overarching methodological umbrella under which to arrange the results of other methods of interpretation coherently.
(FOR COMPLETE ARTICLE, CLICK LINK TO JHS, or cut and paste: http://www.jhsonline.org/Articles/art... more (FOR COMPLETE ARTICLE, CLICK LINK TO JHS, or cut and paste: http://www.jhsonline.org/Articles/article_186.pdf.)
Priests claiming descent from Aaron controlled the high priesthood of temples in Jerusalem and on Mount Gerizim in the Second Temple period. These Aaronides were in a position to influence religious developments in this period, especially the scripturalization of the Torah. The priests’ dynastic claims were probably a significant factor in the elevation of the Pentateuch to scriptural status. This claim can be tested by correlating what little we know about the Aaronide dynasties with what little we know about the scripturalization of two different portions of the Hebrew Bible, the Pentateuch and Ezra-Nehemiah.
FOR COMPLETE ARTICLE, CLICK LINK TO JHS, or cut and paste: http://www.jhsonline.org/Articles/article_186.pdf
Ritual and Metaphor: Sacrifice in the Bible. Ed. Christian A. Eberhart. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2011. 3-16. Available at: http://works.bepress.com/james_watts/24
The New Cambridge History of the Bible, Volume 1: From the Beginnings to 600. Ed. James Carleton Paget and Joachim Schaper. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013. 345-364., 2013
... VA, USA Ellen F. Davis, Duke Divinity School, Alexandria, VA, USA Douglas J. Green, Westminst... more ... VA, USA Ellen F. Davis, Duke Divinity School, Alexandria, VA, USA Douglas J. Green, Westminster ... address the theological mystery that suffering can reveal God and direct us toward God. ... Overall, this type of hermeneutic does some justice to the theological and multi-layered ...
This essay observes that Jewish, Samaritan, and Christian readers engage the same pentateuchal te... more This essay observes that Jewish, Samaritan, and Christian readers engage the same pentateuchal texts, but they name them differently, publish them in different material forms, perform particular liturgical and devotional readings of them, and interpret them distinctively. These differences can be traced historically to four key figures in four pivotal moments: Ezra, Judah Maccabee, Judah haNasi, and Irenaeus. The developments associated with these figures help to account for the distinctive identities of Jews, Samaritans, and Christians.
In the ten years of its existence, SCRIPT has succeeded in promoting and publishing an increasing... more In the ten years of its existence, SCRIPT has succeeded in promoting and publishing an increasing variety of scholarship on iconic and performative texts. Culturally specific studies have provided the basis for comparative theorizing about the phenomena. This body of scholarship has put us in a better position to analyze current events involving iconic books and performative texts. It can also enable us to make creative suggestions for strengthening movements for justice and social reform by ritualizing iconic and performative texts. Here, I provide three examples of how to employ SCRIPT research to strengthen contemporary movements for social and environmental justice: a short-term episodic intervention, a medium-term structural rectification, and a long-term cultural innovation.
1. Introduction: ritual text and ritual interpretation 2. The rhetoric of ritual instruction 3. T... more 1. Introduction: ritual text and ritual interpretation 2. The rhetoric of ritual instruction 3. The rhetoric of burnt offerings 4. The rhetoric of sin, guilt and ritual offerings 5. The rhetoric of ritual narrative 6. The rhetoric of atonement 7. The rhetoric of priesthood 8. The rhetoric of sacrifice 9. The rhetoric of scripture Bibliography Index of biblical citations Index of other ancient literature Index of authors Index of subjects.
Leviticus 25:39–46 describes a two-tier model of slavery that distinguishes Israelites from forei... more Leviticus 25:39–46 describes a two-tier model of slavery that distinguishes Israelites from foreign slaves. It requires that Israelites be indentured only temporarily while foreigners can be enslaved as chattel (permanent property). This model resembles the distinction between White indentured slaves and Black chattel slaves in the American colonies. However, the biblical influence on these early modern practices has been obscured by the rarity of citations of Lev. 25:39–46 in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century sources about slavery. This article reviews the history of slavery from ancient Middle Eastern antiquity through the seventeenth century to show the unique degree to which early modern institutions resembled the biblical model. It then exposes widespread knowledge of Leviticus 25 in early modern political and economic debates. Demonstrating this awareness shows with high probability that colonial cultures presupposed the two-tier model of slavery in Leviticus 25:39–46 to natu...
This contribution offers a review of:Stuart S. Miller: At the Intersection of Texts and Material ... more This contribution offers a review of:Stuart S. Miller: At the Intersection of Texts and Material Finds. Stepped Pools, Stone Vessels, and Ritual Purity Among the Jews of Roman Galilee. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2015. 423 pages with 22 fig., € 140, ISBN 9783525550694
Religious traditions typically ritualize their scriptures in three dimensions. Other kinds of tex... more Religious traditions typically ritualize their scriptures in three dimensions. Other kinds of texts may be ritualized in one or two dimensions (eg the performative dimension of the scripts of plays or sheet music, the semantic dimension of national law codes), but the regular ritualization of a text in all three dimensions usually distinguishes it as a scripture or sacred text. There are, however, some texts or, more accurately, some specific copies of texts, that tend to be ritualized only in the iconic dimension, and scriptures feature ...
Rituals obviously utilize the human senses. Theological and mystical interpretations frequently c... more Rituals obviously utilize the human senses. Theological and mystical interpretations frequently comment on sensation as a source of metaphors for religious experience. However, the discourse used in religious rituals themselves usually avoids using the normal vocabulary appropriate to particular sensations, while focusing on ritual performance instead. This raises the question of whether it is generally the case that ritualizing sensation diverts attention from sensation to ritual behavior, and whether ritual interpretations usually divert attention from the sensation to its metaphorical meaning. This essay addresses these questions with the analytical tools of metaphor theory and ritual theory. To test and apply these theories, it focuses on one kind of ritual practices, those that involve written texts, especially books of scripture, and how they use the senses of sight, hearing, and touch.
Uploads
Books by James Watts
The Bible is a popular subject of study and research, yet biblical studies gives little attention to the reason for its popularity: its religious role as a scripture. Understanding the Bible as a Scripture in History, Culture, and Religion integrates the history of the religious interpretation and ritual uses of biblical books into a survey of their rhetoric, composition, and theology in their ancient contexts. Emphasizing insights from comparative studies of different religious scriptures, it combines discussion of the Bible’s origins with its cultural history into a coherent understanding of its past and present function as a scripture.
A prominent expert on biblical rhetoric and the ritualization of books, James W. Watts describes how Jews and Christians ritualize the Bible by interpreting it, by expressing it in recitations, music, art, and film, and by venerating the physical scroll and book. The first two sections of the book are organized around the Torah and the Gospels—which have been the focus of Jewish and Christian ritualization of scriptures from ancient to modern times—and treat the history of other biblical books in relation to these two central blocks of the Hebrew Bible and New Testament. In addition to analyzing the semantic contents of all the Bible’s books as persuasive rhetoric, Watts describes their ritualization in the iconic and expressive dimensions in the centuries since they began to function as a scripture, as well as in their origins in ancient Judaism and Christianity. The third section on the cultural history and scriptural function of modern bibles concludes by discussing their influence today and the controversies they have fueled about history, science, race, and gender.
Innovative and insightful, Understanding the Bible as a Scripture in History, Culture, and Religion is a groundbreaking introduction to the study of the Bible as a scripture, and an ideal textbook for courses in biblical studies and comparative scripture studies.
Ritualized display of books engages the sense of sight very differently than does reading. Touching gets associated with reading scriptures, but touching also enables using the scripture as an amulet. Eating and consuming texts is a ubiquitous analogy for internalizing the contents of texts by reading and memorization.
The idea of textual consumption reflects a widespread tendency to equate humans and written texts by their interiority and exteriority: books and people both have material bodies, yet both seem to contain immaterial ideas. Books thus physically incarnate cultural and religious values, doctrines, beliefs, and ideas.
These essays bring theories of comparative scriptures and affect theory to bear on the topic as well as rich ethnographic descriptions of scriptural practices with Jewish, Sikh, Muslim, Christian, Buddhist and modern art and historical accounts of changing practices with sacred texts in ancient and medieval China and Korea, and in ancient Middle Eastern and Mediterranean cultures.
"… a book whose importance extends far beyond the realms of traditional exegesis. For those of us still grappling with the Western cultural effects of a pervasive antiritual bias, and for those still struggling to understand what 'sacrifice' has meant and still means, this is a 'must-read'." Robert J. Daly, Theological Studies 70/1 (2009), 197-199.
“I recommend it strongly as a study of ritual texts in Leviticus, and more generally as a work demonstrating the value of rhetorical analysis of biblical ritual texts, and as a study of the ideology and literary activity of ancient Israel’s Aaronide priesthood.” William Gilders, AJS Review 33:2 (November 2009), 391-93.
The following essays as a group illustrate the most prominent ways in which scriptures promote identity formation among communities and individuals. They also show that other kinds of texts (such as laws, epics, and ritual books) can perform these functions in some of the same ways. The articles therefore suggest that “scripture” can be defined on functional grounds and they explore whether this functional definition can be applied meaningfully across different cultures and historical periods.
"An excellent book that deserves to be widely read and absorbed into mainstream Pentateuchal research." J.P. Burnside, Vetus Testamentum 15 (2001) 427.
"A must for readers ranging from advanced students to career scholars." W. Lee Humphreys, Religious Studies Review 26/2 (2000) 184.
Articles & Chapters by James Watts
Simultaneously, Moses writes scrolls of Torah (law or instruction) that accompany the Ark of the Covenant, report on the tablets’ origins and contents, among other things, and must be read aloud regularly to the entire people of Israel. Jewish tradition soon came to regard the Torah, too, as written in heaven. In this way, iconic display joined ritualized performance and semantic interpretation as engines for scripturalizing Torah in antiquity as well as the Bibles that incorporated it in later periods.
Modern secular culture joins Jewish and Christian ethical reflection in rejecting indiscriminate capital punishment, slavery, genocide and, increasingly, patriarchy. The history of controversies over these practices, however, shows that biblical texts retain their power to justify actions and institutions despite considerable moral teaching and commentary to the contrary. It is not enough for commentaries simply to argue that particular verses of scripture have been superseded by changing cultural contexts or that, in their original contexts, these verses advocated improvements over existing norms. The iconic status of their continuing appearance in scriptures distributed widely around the world preserves their latent power to be invoked malevolently again and again.
The visual text of these biblical verses should therefore be struck through, so that the moral judgment is immediately apparent to anyone who opens a bible to that page. The strikethrough preserves the position of these verses in biblical literature while clearly marking the interpretive traditions’ repudiation of their normative force.
From The Formation of the Pentateuch: Bridging the Academic Cultures of Europe, Israel, and North America (ed. Jan Geertz et al, Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2016), pp. 1135-45.
For full text, follow link to https://surface.syr.edu/rel/105/.
Pages 319-331 from The Pentateuch as Torah: New Models for Understanding Its Promulgation and Acceptance, edited by Gary N. Knoppers and Bernard M. Levinson, Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2007.
For full text, follow link to http://surface.syr.edu/rel/103/.
The Bible is a popular subject of study and research, yet biblical studies gives little attention to the reason for its popularity: its religious role as a scripture. Understanding the Bible as a Scripture in History, Culture, and Religion integrates the history of the religious interpretation and ritual uses of biblical books into a survey of their rhetoric, composition, and theology in their ancient contexts. Emphasizing insights from comparative studies of different religious scriptures, it combines discussion of the Bible’s origins with its cultural history into a coherent understanding of its past and present function as a scripture.
A prominent expert on biblical rhetoric and the ritualization of books, James W. Watts describes how Jews and Christians ritualize the Bible by interpreting it, by expressing it in recitations, music, art, and film, and by venerating the physical scroll and book. The first two sections of the book are organized around the Torah and the Gospels—which have been the focus of Jewish and Christian ritualization of scriptures from ancient to modern times—and treat the history of other biblical books in relation to these two central blocks of the Hebrew Bible and New Testament. In addition to analyzing the semantic contents of all the Bible’s books as persuasive rhetoric, Watts describes their ritualization in the iconic and expressive dimensions in the centuries since they began to function as a scripture, as well as in their origins in ancient Judaism and Christianity. The third section on the cultural history and scriptural function of modern bibles concludes by discussing their influence today and the controversies they have fueled about history, science, race, and gender.
Innovative and insightful, Understanding the Bible as a Scripture in History, Culture, and Religion is a groundbreaking introduction to the study of the Bible as a scripture, and an ideal textbook for courses in biblical studies and comparative scripture studies.
Ritualized display of books engages the sense of sight very differently than does reading. Touching gets associated with reading scriptures, but touching also enables using the scripture as an amulet. Eating and consuming texts is a ubiquitous analogy for internalizing the contents of texts by reading and memorization.
The idea of textual consumption reflects a widespread tendency to equate humans and written texts by their interiority and exteriority: books and people both have material bodies, yet both seem to contain immaterial ideas. Books thus physically incarnate cultural and religious values, doctrines, beliefs, and ideas.
These essays bring theories of comparative scriptures and affect theory to bear on the topic as well as rich ethnographic descriptions of scriptural practices with Jewish, Sikh, Muslim, Christian, Buddhist and modern art and historical accounts of changing practices with sacred texts in ancient and medieval China and Korea, and in ancient Middle Eastern and Mediterranean cultures.
"… a book whose importance extends far beyond the realms of traditional exegesis. For those of us still grappling with the Western cultural effects of a pervasive antiritual bias, and for those still struggling to understand what 'sacrifice' has meant and still means, this is a 'must-read'." Robert J. Daly, Theological Studies 70/1 (2009), 197-199.
“I recommend it strongly as a study of ritual texts in Leviticus, and more generally as a work demonstrating the value of rhetorical analysis of biblical ritual texts, and as a study of the ideology and literary activity of ancient Israel’s Aaronide priesthood.” William Gilders, AJS Review 33:2 (November 2009), 391-93.
The following essays as a group illustrate the most prominent ways in which scriptures promote identity formation among communities and individuals. They also show that other kinds of texts (such as laws, epics, and ritual books) can perform these functions in some of the same ways. The articles therefore suggest that “scripture” can be defined on functional grounds and they explore whether this functional definition can be applied meaningfully across different cultures and historical periods.
"An excellent book that deserves to be widely read and absorbed into mainstream Pentateuchal research." J.P. Burnside, Vetus Testamentum 15 (2001) 427.
"A must for readers ranging from advanced students to career scholars." W. Lee Humphreys, Religious Studies Review 26/2 (2000) 184.
Simultaneously, Moses writes scrolls of Torah (law or instruction) that accompany the Ark of the Covenant, report on the tablets’ origins and contents, among other things, and must be read aloud regularly to the entire people of Israel. Jewish tradition soon came to regard the Torah, too, as written in heaven. In this way, iconic display joined ritualized performance and semantic interpretation as engines for scripturalizing Torah in antiquity as well as the Bibles that incorporated it in later periods.
Modern secular culture joins Jewish and Christian ethical reflection in rejecting indiscriminate capital punishment, slavery, genocide and, increasingly, patriarchy. The history of controversies over these practices, however, shows that biblical texts retain their power to justify actions and institutions despite considerable moral teaching and commentary to the contrary. It is not enough for commentaries simply to argue that particular verses of scripture have been superseded by changing cultural contexts or that, in their original contexts, these verses advocated improvements over existing norms. The iconic status of their continuing appearance in scriptures distributed widely around the world preserves their latent power to be invoked malevolently again and again.
The visual text of these biblical verses should therefore be struck through, so that the moral judgment is immediately apparent to anyone who opens a bible to that page. The strikethrough preserves the position of these verses in biblical literature while clearly marking the interpretive traditions’ repudiation of their normative force.
From The Formation of the Pentateuch: Bridging the Academic Cultures of Europe, Israel, and North America (ed. Jan Geertz et al, Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2016), pp. 1135-45.
For full text, follow link to https://surface.syr.edu/rel/105/.
Pages 319-331 from The Pentateuch as Torah: New Models for Understanding Its Promulgation and Acceptance, edited by Gary N. Knoppers and Bernard M. Levinson, Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2007.
For full text, follow link to http://surface.syr.edu/rel/103/.
Résumé
Un « livre iconique » est un ouvrage qui est d’abord célébré en tant qu’objet de pouvoir plutôt que comme un simple texte véhiculant une marche à suivre, de l’information ou quelque réflexion. Le champ en émergence de l’étude des livres et des textes iconiques puise principalement aux études religieuses comparées (p. ex. Graham, Watts) et à la théorie des icônes (p. ex. Brown, Parmenter) dans l’élaboration de cadres qui permettent de comprendre la dimension rituelle de la production, de la présentation et de l’usage de textes matériels. On tient généralement pour acquis que les livres et autres textes se voient conférer un statut iconique dans un deuxième temps, après que leur contenu sémantique eut gagné en influence et en prestige. Cette perception mérite d’être réexaminée à la lumière de l’étude de la forme et des fonctions de textes anciens en provenance du Proche-Orient, plusieurs desquels furent créés précisément pour servir d’icônes. La ritualisation iconique fut aussi un élément central dans la création des premières Écritures occidentales, soit la Torah juive. Cette dernière relate le don divin, à Moïse, de tables qui ne sont jamais lues mais sont plutôt consignées à un reliquaire (l’Arche d’Alliance) représentant la présence de Dieu au milieu d’Israël. Moïse, cependant, écrit les rouleaux de la Torah (la loi), qui coexistent avec l’Arche d’Alliance, expliquent entre autres choses l’origine des tables et leur contenu, et doivent être lus à voix haute fréquemment à tout le peuple d’Israël. Bientôt, la tradition juive en vint à considérer que la Torah avait elle aussi une origine divine. C’est donc dire que la présentation iconique est associée à une performance ritualisée et à une interprétation sémantique qui participèrent à la scripturalisation de la Torah dans l’Antiquité, mais aussi à celle des Bibles qui l’incorporèrent ultérieurement.
To download preprint archived copy, click http://surface.syr.edu/rel/83/.
Abstract: This essay probes the origins of iconic textuality in the ancient Near East, informed by post-colonial perspectives on iconic texts. The surviving art and texts from ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia exhibit at least four forms of iconic textuality: monumental inscriptions, portraits of scribes, displays and manipulations of ritual texts, and beliefs in heavenly texts. The spread of literacy did not displace the social prestige of scribal expertise that was established in antiquity.
To download full text, click http://surface.syr.edu/rel/82/.
Torah scrolls are the central icon of Jewish worship. Interpreters usually regard such ritual uses of physical Torah scrolls as a consequence of the Pentateuch’s textual authority and canonization. However, the traditions about tablets of commandments carried in a reliquary ark show that ritualization of texts in the iconic dimension began early in Israel’s history. Was the Pentateuch itself developed with such iconic uses in mind? That is, was the Pentateuch shaped to replace the tablets and the ark? Evidence for such shaping appears in ambiguities surrounding Pentateuchal traditions about the tablets and scrolls of the law. These passages equate the tablets’ contents with Torah scrolls to the point that several texts fail to distinguish clearly between the two textual forms. These ambiguities attest to a desire in the composition of the Pentateuch itself to identify not just commandments with torah, but also tablets with scrolls. As a result, scrolls replaced the ark as the icon that contains and reveals the covenant.
To download full text, click http://surface.syr.edu/rel/81/.
Abstract: Many interpreters have noted that the common nouns, hattat and asham, carry legal connotations in Akkadian and non-priestly parts of the Hebrew Bible. In P, they also serve as the names of the “sin” and “guilt” offerings. The fact that the offering names evoke legal documents and treaties suggests that they were introduced because priests were playing a larger role in legal matters, or at least wished to. The demise of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah provide plausible reasons for why the Temple would have been looking for additional sources of revenue in the form of the sin and guilt offerings. But the interpretation of the kingdoms’ history in Deuteronomistic and other texts may have raised doubts about priestly claims to be able to offer atonement for sins through the cult. This paper analyzes how the rhetoric of Leviticus has been shaped to advance those claims in the context of hostile historical and literary circumstances. (To download full-text, click http://surface.syr.edu/rel/84/.)
Priests claiming descent from Aaron controlled the high priesthood of temples in Jerusalem and on Mount Gerizim in the Second Temple period. These Aaronides were in a position to influence religious developments in this period, especially the scripturalization of the Torah. The priests’ dynastic claims were probably a significant factor in the elevation of the Pentateuch to scriptural status. This claim can be tested by correlating what little we know about the Aaronide dynasties with what little we know about the scripturalization of two different portions of the Hebrew Bible, the Pentateuch and Ezra-Nehemiah.
FOR COMPLETE ARTICLE, CLICK LINK TO JHS, or cut and paste: http://www.jhsonline.org/Articles/article_186.pdf