Defining “Sacred” and “Text” Part 2: Some Help from My Favorite Book

This evening, I re-read the research proposal that I wrote back in April for this project. In the proposal, I included a short paragraph about the two novels that originally got me thinking about all of this stuff: The Chosen and The Promise, both by Chaim Potok. These two novels are my two favorite books for a myriad of reasons (for one, I think that the main character’s father, David Malter, is rivaled only by Atticus Finch in the category of most profound literary parent-figures). However, one moment from the second book, The Promise, is worth mentioning specifically here.

A major issue throughout both novels is how exactly one can treat and study the Talmud (the collection of rabbinic discussions of Jewish law, ethics, and customs). The main character, Reuven, and his father accept textual emendation: they believe that the text may be changed where there are grammar errors and other small mistakes supported by other sacred sources and still remain a sacred, authoritative work. Reuven’s best friend’s father (a Hasidic Rebbe) and many of the Talmud teachers at the college yeshiva believe that such scholarship defames the Talmud. The conflict comes to a head when Reuven takes his smicha (ordination) examinations and refers to a Talmud passage as a “text,” therefore questioning its ultimate authority and unchangeableness, and by extension questioning what, exactly, it is that makes a written work sacred. I am not sure what the opposite of “text” is – I don’t know how Reuven’s teachers would describe the written work, if calling it a “text” is defamation. I wish I knew.

Chaim Potok spoke at length about how Reuven’s character deals with the advent of scientific text criticism (what we might think of today as historical-critical method). Essentially, Reuven creates a hierarchy of texts: the Torah, which he accepts as literally revealed, he does not touch. However, the Talmud, which he accepts as sacred but, “containing almost a thousand years of ideas and traditions that were in flux; we saw the text as fluid, alive…with many tributaries” (Potok, The promise 329). Reuven states that he does not see the Talmud as sanctified exactly as the Torah is. The Talmud yeshiva teachers operate from a definition of “sacred” that is bifurcated: something is either sacred or it isn’t. Reuven operates from a definition that sees a continuum of sacred-ness.

Interestingly, Paul Ricoeur makes a statement similar to that of Reuven’s Talmud teachers. In “The ‘Sacred’ Text and the Community,” Ricoeur asserts that as soon as an academic gets a hold of a sacred text and produces a “critically edited” edition, the text is no longer the community’s sacred text, but is now a scholarly text (Ricoeur 68).

Here, texts can become not sacred by scholarly treatment – quite the opposite of Heather Walton’s situation (see the previous post), in which she saw scholars using literary texts in ways that made them “sacred.” Walton, and to an extent Ricoeur, come to a definition of “sacred” through looking at how texts are used, and Walton in particular has trouble seeing texts as both sacred and scholarly. For her, “sacred” = limited in use and interpretation (Walton 91). Potok’s character Reuven, however, has been able to maintain that a text can be both sacred and scholarly.

Further reading into the Ricoeur chapter reveals a more complex definition of sacred – one that resonates with Reuven’s. Like Reuven, Ricouer also gives specific attention to the relationship between the academic/critical scholar’s work and the religious community. The community could be renewed, it could use the scholarship to read the text in a different way, or it the scholarship could “kill” the community (exactly what Reuven’s yeshiva teachers are afraid of). Or, the community could tell the scholars to keep their mitts of the book (Ricœur 70).

It would be interesting to put Ricoeur and the fictional Reuven at the dinner table together: they have many of the same concerns. Both specifically refer to sacred texts as “not frozen” (Ricœur 72), (Potok, The promise 329), but as complex, live works. Reuven and Ricoeur recognize the potentially destructive power that historical-critical or “scientific” methods have for the faith communities, and yet neither one is prepared to simply disengage from such study. The conclusions that they draw in this area are quite different. Ricoeur states that he is frightened by the word “sacred.” He would rather not use it at all, but prefers to think of texts as “revealing.” Reuven instead adjusts his definition of “sacred” to allow for gradations. Then, he carefully applies scientific text criticism to those he does not accept as literally revealed.

In a college lecture on many of his most popular works, Potok stated, “To tamper with the sacred text is to do violence to the core of a tradition” (Potok, “On Being Proud of Uniqueness”). This statement, read alongside The Promise and Ricoeur’s “The Sacred Text and the Community,” aid in understanding how sacred texts function in their communities, and also aid in explaining why many communities feel threatened by scholarly work: it threatens the divine authority, and the very “sacredness” or the ‘set-apartness’ of the text, and therefore has the potential to threaten the community.

Potok, Chaim. “On Being Proud of Uniqueness.” 20 Mar 1986.

---. The promise. 1st ed. New York: Anchor Books, 1969. Print.

Ricœur, Paul. Figuring the sacred : religion, narrative, and imagination. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1995. Print.

Walton, Heather. “Our Sacred Texts: Literature, Theology, and Feminism.” Reading Spritutalities: Constructing and Representing the Sacred. Aldershot, Hampshire, UK: Ashgate Publishing House, 2008. 85-98. Print.

Defining “Sacred” and “Text:” Part I

EEK! There are too many definitions of “sacred text!” I’m confused!

Ok. That might be an overstatement. However, defining just exactly what a “sacred text” is, and more importantly, what role a sacred text plays in communities and individual faith lives, is turning out to be quite complicated. Is a sacred text divinely inspired? Inerrant? Subject to historical-critical methods? Does it contain law, revelations, information about salvation? Some or all of the above? Is it taken literally, and if so, all or which parts? And just who decides what is sacred? God? Me? The Council of Trent? And once something is deemed sacred, just what can I do with it?

Of course, it is not so much that I am seeking a one-size-fits-all definition of what constitutes a sacred text, but rather than I want to understand the how religious communities define and use “sacred” and “texts.” A large part of my research project involves looking at how sacred texts and community life interact, and so I need to spend time understand how sacred texts are defined and created. I plan to examine sacred texts in terms of origin, function, and treatment, and I am curious to see what the results of this examination will be.

In “Our Sacred Texts: Literature, Theology, and Feminism,” Heather Walton writes that feminist theologians and scholars, in their quest to understand and represent women’s spiritual experience have studied and drawn from women’s literature, and in some senses, made this literature “sacred.” Thus, something can be made sacred or used as sacred by a certain community – in this case, feminist and womanist theologians. Scholarly or literary texts can be made sacred, depending on treatment.

Walton’s article, about using literature written by women as a theological resource, addresses text function and treatment. She note that certain texts of women’s literature are becoming “sacred” to some because they allow a window into women’s spiritual lives and women’s understanding of the divine. Walton writes that theologian Alicia Ostriker states this clearly: “She claimed that in the sacred narratives of our culture, as well as in the work of contemporary women artists and writers, is to be discovered the repressed traces of women’s awareness of the female divine” (Walton 88). Walton refers to scholars and theologians who find these texts sacred because they feel that there is access to a divine being through them. The texts function as a bridge between the divine and the human. (Somewhat ironically, Walton also notes that feminist theologians of the 1970s and 1980s had a serious distaste for mystical, symbolic, and spiritual texts, preferring realistic writing. Had Julian of Norwich lived then, she might have had a tough time with feminist theologians despite her emphasis on Jesus as Mother.)

However, Walton’s use of “sacred text” is not altogether positive: her overall complaint with feminist theologians is that in reading women’s literature as sacred text, they are denying the text’s literary value, and instead co-opting them to support certain theologies. In doing so, they also limit their engagement with other scholars who read the same literature (Walton 92). For Walton, using something as a “sacred text” is inherently limiting both the function of the text and the people who use it.

Throughout Walton’s article, a ‘sacred text’ is something that is at least somewhat fixed in function and interpretation. Sacred texts can be created when people use pieces of writing in particular ways. And, importantly, scholarly and sacred are not mutually exclusive. (Remember that when I start talking about Ricouer!)

I began this blog post trying to synthesize four different sources on sacred texts, but I’ve realized that it is already rather long, so this will be Part 1 of the series of posts on defining sacred texts. Stay tuned for more!

Works Cited: Walton, Heather. "Our Sacred Texts: Literature, Theology, and Feminism." Reading Spiritualities: Constructing and Representing the Sacred. Ed. . Dawn Llewellyn and Deborah Sawyer. Aldershot, Hampshire, UK: Ashgate Publishing House, 2008. Print.

Faith in God: Required for Religious Life?

In her research to write Tradition in a Rootless World: Women Turn to Orthodox Judaism, author Lynn Davidman found something quite curious: women who elected to join the modern Orthodox Jewish faith generally did not express a strong faith in God, or even a desire for such faith, as part of their religious experience (Davidman 103). Unlike their female counterparts in traditional or conservative Christian religions, who regularly cite personal spiritual experiences and their relationships with God as a major motivation to continue religious life, the women Davidman interviewed rarely spontaneously spoke about God, and most said that they had never had a spiritual experience, and didn’t really know what that entailed. Davidman writes that she thinks this absence of a relationship with God experienced by newly modern Orthodox women may be a result of the roles prescribed for women in this faith. She states, “Orthodox Judaism mandates that men have greater obligations in prayer and study, while women’s primary role is in the family. Therefore, women do not participate as much in those ongoing rituals that create a relationship with God” (Davidman 105).

In contrast, the newly Hasidic women that Davidman studied regularly cited belief in God and spiritual experiences. While they did not engage in lengthy theological talks, belief in God was either explicit or implicit (106). Hasidic Judaism is a charismatic, spiritual sect that emphasizes personal relationships with God and that the everything a person does has sacred value. One possible reason that these women were attracted to Hasidic rather than modern Orthodox life is that their spiritual experiences and encounters with God were validated and expected in that particular religious environment.

In the previous post, I wrote about Horton’s definition of how people come to know God – through rhetorical experiences including reading sacred texts, praying, viewing iconography, engaging in religious ritual, or through the mediation of other cultural artifacts. The modern Orthodox women Davidman studied may feel a lack of relationship with God because they do not engage in these rhetorical experiences as often as or in the way that Orthodox men do. Davidman notes that more research is needed to understand how differences in texts, beliefs, ritual, law, and practice within different religions shape the gendered nature of the religious and spiritual experiences of men and women members (106).

This question is one that I hope to address through my research. It is an appropriate question to think about when examining religious life, text, and experience through the lens of rhetoric and discourse theory.

Davidman, Lynn. Tradition in a rootless world : women turn to orthodox Judaism. Berkeley u.a.: Univ. of California Press, 1991. Print.