In the previous two posts, I examined how two scholars (Heather Walton and Paul Ricoeur) and one novelist (Chaim Potok) used “sacred text” within their writing. How these authors (or their characters) used “sacred text” revealed parts of how their communities used “sacred text,” and also showed that diverse communities have diverse connotations of sacred text. The term “sacred text” was used in Walton’s piece (Our Sacred Texts: Literature, Theology, and Feminism) as a sort of metaphor describing how certain pieces of literature are being used by a community of feminist theologians. In Potok’s novel, “text” was a scholarly and almost political statement – at least, using the word “text” revealed a great deal not only about Reuven’s approach to scripture, but about his position on the fundamentalist to atheist continuum.
In this post, I will touch on two scholars who have written specifically about defining what a sacred text is, in an attempt to come to a workable definition for my own use.
H.J. Bernard Combrink, a New Testament professor interested in rhetoric studies and scripture, notes that, anthropologically, all cultures which have developed signs to write down spoken language have the phenomenon of holy or sacred scripture (Combrink 106). This is a starting place: Combrink articulates that sacred texts are rooted, fundamentally in cultures and communities. Thus, much of the meaning of these texts is also dependent on culture and community, even though many religious communities claim that their texts transcend culture.
One complex definition of “sacred text” is clearly articulate in “What is a Sacred Text?” Author Robert Detweiler identifies seven traits of sacred texts:
1. Claiming divine inspiration
2. Revelatory of divinity
3. Somehow encoded or “hidden”
4. Requiring a privileged interpreter
5. Effecting the transformation of lives
6. The necessary foundation of religious ritual
7. Evocation of divine presence (Detweiler 223)
Detweiler’s list provides a way to identify characteristics of texts that indicate sacred nature, but it does not provide quite the definition I am looking for. Also, I question requirement four. Detweiler defines “privileged interpreter” as a clergyperson with some sort of theological training. While such figures generally hold more interpretive authority in religious communities – the degree to which they do depends heavily upon the community – populist religious movements are, at the beginnings, quite often founded upon the principle that anyone can read and interpret scriptures (consider early Lutheranism, early American Methodism, Biblical literalist movements, and early Hasidism).
Throughout most readings on sacred texts that I have encountered, while authors tend to emphasize different things about sacred texts depending on their situation or purpose, authority, timelessness and divinity are common to most, and these three characteristics seem to me to affect community most. By authority, I mean that holy or sacred scriptures exercise a certain power over groups of people, in prescribing ways to live, forming religious ritual, and informing belief systems. Timelessness has to do with audience and interpretation – the words in scripture as seen by believers to apply both to the original audiences and to themselves and their communities of faith. (There will be a separate post specifically addressing audience and sacred text soon!) And by divinity, I mean that sacred scripture makes some claim to divinity. It may be addressed to a deity (like the Psalms), it may be a revelation from the divine (for example, the Qu’ran), or it may be stories about a divine person (like the Gospels), or it may claim divine inspiration generally.
Communities self-identify their sacred texts, and so my search for a definition of sacred text is not a search for figuring out what is or is not a sacred text, but rather a way to define how these texts work in communities. I plan to move to thinking about how sacred texts function in communities rhetorically, and will specifically examine authority, timelessness, and divinity.
Combrink, H.J. Bernard. “The Rhetoric of Sacred Scripture.” Rhetoric, Scripture, and Theology: Essays from the 1994 Pretoria Conference. Ed. Stanley Poter & Thomas H. Olbricht. Sheffield, England: Sheffield Academic Press, 1996. Print.
Detweiler, Robert. “What is a Sacred Text?” Semina 31.1985 : 213-230. Print.
