In most religions of the world, sacred books is treated with respect. I’m not talking about the book as a concept but as a physical object: the covers, papers, ink, etc. People often attach a superstitious reverence to it. Certain rules tend to surround them: do not place them on the floor, do not read them in the washroom, do not throw or disrespect the book. Superstitious people are wont to use passages or writings from the sacred volume for protection, healing, or fulfillment of a wish or desire. Such an attitude is found even among Jews, so this is not something that exists in only non-Biblical religions.
But this is absent in Christianity. Is this something new (meaning, did such an attitude once exist which was wiped out with modernism/secularism/Reformation/Enlightenment)? Is there a reason why Christians don’t attach the same amount of reverence to their sacred book?
I don’t know, WeRSauron; in fact the idea never occurred to me. I think most Christians who take their religion seriously do respect the physical Bible, passing it down to children, using it to include wills and family histories. I guess you could make an argument about it being treated as more a holy object than a guide for living. A “Graven Image”, in fact, with all the baggage that connotation holds.
Well Christianity is an evagengellical religion so they mass produce bibles to distribute to everyone they can. Hard to attach much significance to your bible when there are 200,000 more in the warehouse.
True, but Christians have leeway that other religions don’t seem to have. Christians can dispute what the Bible says, for others the text is fixed.
Could it be because not one standard text has been used throughout Christiandom? It’s not like every Christian uses the same texts in Greek that Christians have been using for centuries, back to the very Apostles themselves. Everyone, basically, uses a translation - could this dilute the sacredness of the physical object?
Sidenote: I remember, while in Pakistan, a question that was asked to a newspaper. This newspaper would every week print out a few questions asked to its religious scholar, who would attempt to answer the question according to the traditional authorities. This question detailed about one commonly-frequented restaurant that had a low swing in the corner upon which was a copy of the Qur’an. Flowers were festooned around the swing, decorated cloths covered the swing’s seat. Customers would come and push the swing gently for good luck or to reverence the Qur’an. Such an attitude was not surprising to me.
My mother would scold me if I was not sitting respectfully while reading the Qur’an. Slouching or lying down to read it was a no-no. And if I stacked books, the Qur’an must be on top. When I sleep, my feet cannot point towards a copy of the Qur’an.
Amongst folk superstition, it was very common to hear: “Read such-and-such verse so many times, blow upon water or bread, and give it to the affected person to be cured.” My maternal grandmother gave such a prescription to my mother when I was diagnosed with diabetes. (My mother doesn’t believe in such things, so her advice was not followed.)
The Christian Bible is not treated as an amulet, as some receptacle of God’s presence or His power. Christians I have encountered give the Bible more respect than other books, but still treat it like a book rather than some special object.
Some (all?) liturgical Christian churches treat the gospel with reverance during their services–one of the priests holds it above their head during the procession, holds it up as people cross themselves before reading from the gospels, etc.
I’m not sure there is a religion whose holy text is not disputed, however gently and respectfully. And there is at least one circumstance in which you will find the Christian Bible used as a holy object rather than as a mere container of sacred text: in the touching of it while swearing an official oath, in courts inaugurations, etc.
Orthodox Christians certainly reverence the Gospels – they are considered a written icon of Christ. A gospel book is always kept on the altar, usually with a gold cover inlaid with jewels, and is definitely used liturgically. It is kissed by the faithful after the Sunday gospel reading at matins, it is opened and laid on the head of a cleric during his ordination, and also over a sick person during the rite of unction, it is waved over the altar at the start of the Divine Liturgy, and is carried in procession at the little entrance during the Liturgy. See: a picture of a typical gospel book carried in procession. Epistle books are usually less ornate, but are still covered with a cover of noble material, and treated with reverence. Most Orthodox Christians I know treat ordinary Bibles with reverence; they don’t go to the extremes that many Muslims do, but they will certainly not leave a Bible laying on the ground or take it into a bathroom.
I think part of the reason for Christians not seeing the Bible in the same light as Jews see the Torah or Muslims see the Qur’an is that for Christians, Christ is God’s revelation to mankind, not the Bible. For Christians, Christ is the Word of God made flesh; for Jews and Muslims, the Torah and Qur’an, respectively, are the Word of God made text.
Btw, textual criticism of the Quran does exist in Muslim scholarly circles but they have to be VERY careful of incurring fatwas.
We Christians don’t put hits out on textual critics of the Bible…
anymore.
I was about to answer that post – until I saw the last word! Did you ever see that great quote from one of the Church Fathers where he talks about going down to the agora and trying to buy a loaf of bread, and people keep trying to engage him in theological arguments? It’s some of the finest in early Christian stand-up comedy, and he was quite serious, and making a point about the difference between what we’re commanded to do and the sort of disputation we love to do instead.
Back to the OP: When I was a child, I was told never to place anything on top of a Bible, and to treat the Book with respect.
But there’s something important to Christians that may be key to what WeRSauron’s question is all about – our God is alive, real, walked the Earth as one of us, is very much insistent on not being identified with any part of His creation (except the human body in which He was incarnate).
There are some Christians to whom every word of the Bible was literally and word-for-word inspired by God, almost in the sense that Paul, Luke, and the rest were secretaries taking dictation. For obvious reasons, they hold the Bible in the highest of esteem.
But one of the worst insults you can make to them is to call them Bibliolaters. They maintain that they do not worship the Book but its Author.
For the rest of us, even more so, the Bible is like a road map, an orienteering manual pointing us towards Him. It may be holy (because it’s His doing) but it’s not sacred, not set apart and sacrosanct so that studying it critically becomes sacrilege, not a fitting object of worship (there isn’t one).
There is a major theological difference between Islam and Christianity about the origins of their respective books. My understanding is that the Qur’an is considered to be dictated directly by God to Mohammed - is that right? That’s not the origins of the Bible - it came from a wide variety of authors. Christians believe those authors were inspired, but it’s not the same as God speaking directly. They were humans trying to describe their encounters with God.
I would also guess that the Reformation would have had some influence here. One of the Protestant criticisms of the Roman Catholic church was the veneration of relics. Granted, the Bible isn’t a relic in the same way, but once you adopt the mind-set that physical objects are not to be venerated, I would think that would apply to Bibles as well.
While Christians on the whole like to treat the Bible with respect, I do think actual reverencing of the book seems like superstition or book-worship to a lot of us. Studying the words and absorbing them into the mind and spirit, allowing them to transform our lives–those are the important things about the Bible. The book is only the vessel of the Word, not the Word itself.
There are Christians who allow superstition and folk belief to creep into their treatment of the Bible. For example, some people used to open the book at random and stick a pin in a page, feeling that whatever verse got picked would be the answer to their problem. That’s just plain folk-magic, not faith. (There’s an old joke about the person who did that, and got the verse about Judas’ suicide–the second attempt resulted in “Go thou and do likewise.”)
This is correct only if you except the word illiterate from this description. There are some muslims who do not believe that Mohammed was illiterate in any sense of the word. Mohammmed’s grandfather and uncle were both extremely literate and eloquent men, in a very literate society. As Mohammed was bought up by these two gentleman, it would be extremely unlikely that he would be illiterate.
There are many famous arabic poems that are recognised from dates around and preceeding the begining of islam. The quran itself challenges people to draft any poetry to rival its own. Not a very meaningful challenge in an illiterate society. To muslims who think like this, calling the prophet illiterate is merely an attempt to slander him and ignores the more obvious historical facts.
In my personal experience, knowing many different flavors of Christians, I see it boil down to this:
Those in religions that put a lot of effort in ceremony, often view the book itself as almost being a worshipful object itself (of sorts), and those who are in the more evangelical religions view the physical book they use as a tool. Both are respectful of the physical book, but the guys heavy into ceremony are VERY respectful of the physical book.
As I said, this is in my own personal experience only and in no way is meant as a rule. For all I know, I may have viewed only the radical extremes of these different versions of Christianity.
Still, I do think that if you asked anyone who actually reads the Bible, they are respectful of the physical book itself, if for no other reason, to avoid stumbling anyone.
In my youth, I was taught repeatedly that the Qur’an had to be a miracle because Muhammad was illiterate and unlearned. I was taught that he could neither read nor write. This is used as an argument to “prove” that Muhammad could not have written or composed or come up with the Qur’an. And I do not recall learning anything about Muhammad’s father or grandfather.
Not to contradict you, just to show that at least in one area of the Muslim world, calling Muhammad illiterate or unlearned is not done as an insult.
Also, this argument creates another point: since no human could have written or composed or come up with such a glorious book like the Qur’an, it’s very words, the order of words and chapters, in short everything about the Qur’an, is from God and is divine and is, almost literally, His very words. (God speaks Arabic, I was taught.)
Now, most Christians are aware that Jesus spoke Aramaic and not Greek, right?
It is quite possible that Jesus spoke Aramaic, Greek, and Hebrew. If one believes in the historicity of Jesus the man, then one sees that he was in a very dynamic and active cultural area and time period. Being multilingual is not a far fetched idea.
