Proclaiming Holy Scriptures

A Study of Place and Ritual

David H. Pereyra

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000329889
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Rituals & Practice

This book provides a comprehensive study on the proclamation of Holy Scriptures as an enacted celebration, as well as its function as a performance within sacralized theatrical spaces. Scripture is integral to religious life within Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, and these traditions have venerated the reading of texts from an appointed place as a sacred act. Thus, the study of how these readings are conducted illuminates some vitally important aspects of this widespread act of worship.

Contributing to an underexplored area of scholarship, the book offers an overview of scripture reading in the three Abrahamic faiths and then focuses on where and how the "Word of God" is presented within the Christian tradition. It gathers and summarizes research on the origins of a defined place for the proclamation of holy writings, giving a thorough architectural analysis and interpretation of the various uses and symbols related to these spaces over time. Finally, the listener is considered with a phenomenological description of the place for reading and its hermeneutical interpretation.

The material in this book uncovers the contemporary impact of a rich history of publicly reading out scriptures. It will, therefore, be of great interest to scholars of liturgical theology, religious studies, and ritual studies.

1Ritual practices and places of proclamation

Throughout the history of sacred architecture in the Abrahamic religions, one can see the development of worship, tracing its changing patterns in their rituals. These Semitic-originated religious communities rely on bodies of scripture considered to be the word of God and are viewed as sacred. In Judaism, the holy scriptures are the Tanakh, comprising the Torah, Nevi’im, and Ketuvim; in Christianity, the Bible, divided into the Old Testament and the New Testament; and in Islam, the Qur’an. The changing locus of the proclamation of their scriptures has founded expression on rituals and places throughout history. Pope Pius XII made an enlightening observation about the creation of meaningful rituals and spaces for the proclamation of holy scriptures for contemporary worship: “It is a wise and most laudable thing to return in spirit and affection to the sources of the sacred ritual. For research in this field of study, by tracing it back to its origins, contributes valuable assistance towards a more thorough and careful investigation of the significance of feast-days, and of the meaning of the texts and sacred ceremonies employed on their occasion.”¹ The analysis of the earliest endeavours to worship God in Abrahamic faiths help to perceive the intended meaning of ritual proclamation and to recognize the full worth of the significance of its place.²

The three faith communities believe that the word of God, contained in their holy books, leads them to their salvation. The act of reading sacred text is a ritual, which also came to be considered sacred. By reading and listening to sacred text, members of the Abrahamic religions detach themselves from the present and return to the primordial time, thereby bringing themselves closer to the divine. Rituals of proclamation allow us to understand and recognize the level of importance that these communities have given to their place of reading in the assembly and the physical location of these sacred scriptures.

The roots of these rituals can be found in Jewish worship and its connections with the ritual forms of the Jerusalem Temple and the synagogue. Jewish liturgical traditions have left many marks on the earliest forms of Christian and Muslim worship.

Jewish origins

The public reading of scriptures in the cult of ancient Israel dates from pre-exilic to post-Babylonian times. Biblical sources demonstrate the first traces of divine announcement of an epochal event to the people of God, in which psalms and hymns were sung at mountaintop shrines, such as Shiloh, Bethel, Dan, Beersheba, Hebron, Gibeon, Ebal, and especially at the Temple of Jerusalem. The Torah widely attests to the tradition of public reading in sacred places as a religious ritual, and it is always connected to the location of the sacrificial altar. The first testimony can be found in the book of Deuteronomy (Devarim) when Moses and the elders of Israel give instructions to the people on how to raise a stone altar. They also asked the people to write “the Law” on the stones clearly: “You shall write on the stones all the words of this law very clearly” (Deut. 27:8). The command suggests that the place to write and read the word of God is at a holy ground surrounded by Israel’s assembly. In Chapter 31, Moses instructs the priests and elders of Israel to read the Law at the Feast of Booths: “Every seventh year, in the scheduled year of remission, during the festival of booths, when all Israel comes to appear before the Lord your God at the place that he will choose, you shall read this law before all Israel in their hearing” (Deut. 31:10–11).³

In Joshua’s book, the prophet reiterates the same action, building an altar to the God of Israel on Mount Ebal and writing a copy of the Law on the stones (Josh. 8:30–35). Writing the words on the altar is a means of validating it, connecting both sacredness of the altar and the words, to maintain the sense of their interconnectedness. Afterward, Joshua proclaimed all the words of the Law before the assembly of Israel. He does the same again after assembling all the tribes at Shechem, but this time, it is a covenant ceremony between the Lord and Israel (Josh. 24). The proclamation is always on holy ground and under the assembly, both important elements. Later, the mitzvah of gathering the people and reading them the Torah under Hakhel was performed by the king and in the Temple.

When Israel emerged as a kingdom by the tenth century BCE, the Ark of the Covenant containing the Table of the Law did not have a fixed location. After King David’s conquering of Jerusalem, the Ark was moved there, but it was King Solomon who erected the First Temple (completed in 957 BCE). Compared to other pagan temples, it was not the factual residence of the God of the Israelites and God’s presence was intangible for them. King Solomon built a platform in the inner courtyard between the altar and the porch. From that elevated temporary structure, where the king gave his first public address and his dedication prayer. The king pled for God to pay particular heed to their prayers: “Thus all the peoples of the earth will know Your name and revere You, as does Your people Israel; and they will recognize that Your name is attached to this House that I have built” (I Kings 8:43). This elevated structure became an antecedent for the future of proclamation.

The essential element of the daily First Temple service was the offerings: the sacrifice of two lambs, one in the morning, with which the service began, and one in the afternoon, with which the service concluded. From as far back as sources allow, reading of the Law and hymns were part of the Temple ritual. In the early hours of the day, the priests cast lots for who would be assigned to execute the rites of sacrifice. Then the lambs, which were screened for defects and blemishes, would be sacrificed as ninety-three priests stood around the altar blessing the devotees in the ineffable name of the Lord. One priest poured libations while another raised the banner and gave to Ben Arza, the head of the priestly band, the order to play the cymbals while yet other priests blew the silver trumpets. The Levites read the prescribed psalm for the day, as well as sections of the Law, to the accompaniment of these musical instruments. As each verse finished, the priests would sound their horns and those gathered would kneel in prayer.⁴

In the seventh century BCE, a scroll of the Torah was discovered during restoration work of the Jerusalem Temple that featured a new method of public proclamation, according to the narrative of 2 Kings 22:3–23:24 (ca. 621 BCE). This book of the Law, so fortuitously recovered by the reformer king Josiah, becomes the basis for a new liturgical covenant that establishes the public reading of the Torah:

Then the king directed that all the elders of Judah and Jerusalem should be gathered to him. The king went up to the house of the Lord, and with him went all the people of Judah, all the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the priests, the prophets, and all the people, both small and great; he read in their hearing all the words of the book of the covenant that had been found in the house of the Lord. The king stood by the pillar and made a covenant before the Lord, to follow the Lord, keeping his commandments, his decrees, and his statues, with all this heart and all his soul, to perform the words of this covenant that were written in this book. All the people joined in the covenant. (2 Kings 23:1–3)

This renewal of the cultic traditions of Israel is in turn understood as a renewal of its more general covenant with the Lord. Scripture reading, now endorsed by holy writ both in public and private, becomes a vehicle for the promotion of learning and a spur for religious reform.

The second temple of Jerusalem

There was more to the Second Temple than just ritual sacrifices, Torah reading, teaching, and the priests who upheld the Law. Lester Grabbe says, “The priests were the custodians of the law and were responsible for teaching it to the people. How they did this is not clear in our sources. There may have been public expositions.”^5...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Figures
• Foreword
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Ritual practices and places of proclamation
• 2 The formal and legal structure of proclamation
• 3 The theology of proclamation
• 4 The experiential spectrum of ritual proclamation
• Conclusions
• Index