THE DEATH OF SACRED TEXTS: RITUAL DISPOSAL AND RENOVATION OF TEXTS IN WORLD RELIGIONS . Edited by Kristina Myrvold . Farnham, UK : Ashgate , 2010 . Pp . x + 151 . $89.95 .
摘要
Most religions revere the words of the tradition's scriptures as holy. If the words are holy, then by extension, the paper text that materializes those words partakes in the sacrality of the words. A sacred text, therefore, is not merely an object; it must be treated with great care and respect. Many religious traditions have evolved rules of purity and propriety for the handling, ritual presentation, and storage of texts. But what happens when the text becomes old and tattered from its extensive use? What happens if it is damaged and no longer usable? How does one dispose of the holy body? These are questions that the experts in any religious tradition must address. The questions are accentuated by the technological changes brought on by modernity and postmodernity. Texts easily travel throughout the globe physically as people migrate or ship them through the mail. The number of copies of texts exponentially increased with the advent of printing. Now in the digital age texts are found as collections of electrons and pixels on CD‐ROMs, on hard drives, and in the omnipresent nowhere of the Web. The essays in this excellent collection provide an introduction to strategies by which Jews, Christians, Buddhists, Hindus, Jains, and Sikhs address these vexing problems. All the authors recognize the pioneering nature of their studies, and so the essays raise as many questions for further research as they answer. This volume is an important contribution to an expanded understanding of “scripture” and to the ongoing material culture turn in religious studies.
