Sacred Text in Context: Can Fundamentalism Be Understood?

PsycCRITIQUES ◽  
2005 ◽  
Vol 50 (52) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sandra Lee
Keyword(s):  
Sacred Text

How to Cite a Sacred Text

2013 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 844-861
Author(s):  
Ron E. Hassner
Keyword(s):  
Political Science ◽  
Religious Tradition ◽  
Sacred Text ◽  
Sacred Texts ◽  
Appropriate Treatment ◽  
Ancient Texts

AbstractAllusions to holy scriptures and quotes from sacred texts appear in hundreds of political science articles. Yet while we treat other ancient texts with reverence and diligence, we have not extended a similar care to the holy scriptures of the world's religions. Political scientists often refer to biblical events, statements, and turns of phrase but rarely cite them, chapter and verse. They are careless about referencing the precise translation of the holy texts used, tend to cite religious passages out of context, and disregard the role of religious tradition, interpretation, and practice in shaping and reshaping the meaning of holy texts. I offer examples for these trends, provide evidence for their harmful implications and offer guidelines for the appropriate treatment of sacred texts as formal scholarly sources.

Bilingual Heaven: Was There a Distinct Persianate Islam in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire?

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 214-241
Author(s):  
Aslıhan Gürbüzel
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
The Other ◽  
Reform Movement ◽  
Sacred Text ◽  
Native Languages ◽  
Islamic Tradition ◽  
Legal Discourses ◽  
Other World

Abstract What is the language of heaven? Is Arabic the only language allowed in the eternal world of the virtuous, or will Muslims continue to speak their native languages in the other world? While learned scholars debated the language of heaven since the early days of Islam, the question gained renewed vigor in seventeenth century Istanbul against the background of a puritan reform movement which criticized the usage of Persian and the Persianate canon as sacred text. In response, Mevlevī authors argued for the discursive authority of the Persianate mystical canon in Islamic tradition (sunna). Focusing on this debate, this article argues that early modern Ottoman authors recognized non-legal discourses as integral and constitutive parts of the Islamic tradition. By adopting the imagery of bilingual heaven, they conceptualized Islamic tradition as a diverse discursive tradition. Alongside diversity, another important feature of Persianate Islam was a positive propensity towards innovations.

Hans Sedlmayr (1896–1984): Structural Approach and Pre-Modern Values

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Angel Angelov ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Art History ◽  
Modern Art ◽  
Socialist Realism ◽  
Public Debate ◽  
Structural Approach ◽  
Sacred Text ◽  
Modern Conception ◽  
Art Historians ◽  
History Of

The prevailing part of art historians, critics and theoreticians from the mid-1950s even until today feels related to the means of expression of the modernist art trends from the last decade of 19th c. until the end of 1960-s. Modernism has become a sacred text, whose complexity should be interpreted, but not criticized. Sedlmayr’s conception of art is built on moral, religious, aesthetic and political grounds, which are the very reason for the actuality of his works – both in the specialized sphere of art history and in the wider public debate on values. That is why I will analyse his structural approach mainly in relation to his anti-modern conception of art. This is the task of this study. Sedlmayr’s effort to turn art history into a “strict science” is an independent part of his scientific pursuit; it is in relation, but is not subordinate to his conception of modern art. Those publications of his are discussed but only in the specialized literature on history of the methods in humanities, while his conception against modern art acquires an exceptional popularity. Because of that reason his theoretic contribution to the study of art remains in a penumbra. I argue that Sedlmayr’s conception has the following coinciding points with the official understanding of art in the time of socialism: – A denial to estimate art with aesthetic criteria, which the ideologists of socialist realism define as formalism, and Sedlmayr as aesthetism; – In socialism art should represent a positive ideal; Sedlmayr calls this ideal “human measure”; – Art should habituate to morals; – A conviction that the modern art from the end of 19th c. on is decadent; – A criticism against the “dehumanization” of art.

Islam and the Question of Confessional Religious Identity: The Islamic State, Apostasy, and the Making of a Theology of Violence

2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 327-348
Author(s):  
Sanjeev Kumar H. M.
Keyword(s):  
Religious Identity ◽  
Islamic State ◽  
Sacred Text ◽  
Political Ontology ◽  
Muslim Society ◽  
Public Religion

The Islamic State (ISIS) has sought to realign the role of public religion in the modern secular space by proclaiming to contest all forms of apostasy and re-interrogate the conceptual formulations of belief/unbelief in Islam. Through such quests for realignment, it has sought to revive the medieval debate on the question of confessional religious identity which involved definitional disputations concerning true Muslims. The debate surfaced during the formative phase of the Muslim society and led to the engendering of competing sectarian religiosities. For the Islamic State, its urge for reviving this medieval discourse on confessional religious identity of Muslims is embedded in a romantic vision of the abode of pure Islam, to be inhabited only by true Muslims. However, such a geopolitical imaginary is deeply grounded in a sectarian Sunni political ontology coupled with a prejudicial interpretation of jihad. To accomplish its objectives and for enunciating the attributes of the land of pure Islam, the organization has transformed the Qur’an, which is in the intransitive form, into a transitive form so as to theologize the sacred text into a radical instrument of violence. It has also attempted to transfigure the spiritual character of Islam, referred to as the deen (a pluralistic system), into a cult.

scholarly journals SEMANTIC NEGOTIATION AND RELIGIOUS TRANSLATION

2021 ◽  
Vol 03 (08) ◽  
pp. 59-71
Author(s):  
Hayat NAJI
Keyword(s):  
Research Work ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Normal Reader ◽  
Cultural Dimension ◽  
Original Text ◽  
Sacred Text ◽  
Personal Factors ◽  
Religious Texts ◽  
Target Culture

The translation of religious texts has always been a perilous undertaking, especially when it concerns a sacred text. Indeed, seeing translation as an act of communication requires a knowledge of the communicative parameters that constitute it. The translator-speaker, who plays the role of intermediary, must create an interaction at the level of meaning and its semantic components. From this emerges the role of the addressee as the main protagonist and the only interpretative force of the message. Thus, the process of negotiation manages the translating activity, since the transfer of a message is not only reduced to a process of reformulation of the source text in another language, but, largely exceeds this compartmentalization. We will first discuss the challenges and stakes of the translation of religious texts, which we have chosen to illustrate with examples that make this aspect clear. Then, we will insist on the question of the translation as a semantic negotiation, considering that there is a confrontation between transmitter and receiver from the point of view of knowledge, historical and linguistic references. Indeed, this facet of the pyramid where the cultural dimension of translation and interpretation is played out remains unknown and implicit. It is quite easy to reveal what is related to the cultural, social and historical reality of a particular receiver. But that is not enough to communicate, it is also necessary to question the cultural references of this one, the representations conveyed by the language. Indeed, we have chosen to present examples of the Holy Qur'an translated by translators of different religions, and given that some translations have deviated from the noble mission of translation, in this case, the faithful transmission of the meaning, without any objectivity whatsoever, especially when it is a sacred text whose inimitability is not to be proven or tested. Thus, the difficulty in our choice stems, on the one hand, from the sacred character of the chosen writing, and on the other hand, from the nature of research in this field which is condemned to remain always relative. Since several elements control the translation of the sacred text, namely, the language, the tradition and the personal factors of the translator. Finally, the field of religious translation requires a great deal of precision and neutrality, and a constant rethinking of the fact that the slightest subjective or cultural interpretation could call into question our research work. Thus, when it comes to cultural transfer, the translator's task is to take into consideration the knowledge that already exists in the target culture about the source culture. Indeed, it is necessary to know how to relate the knowledge concerning the target culture to the knowledge via the source culture. The translator is the first receiver who receives and interprets the message; he will therefore try to understand the source culture with his own knowledge and value judgments. The translator is indeed a mediator because he assumes two roles, that of receiver and reader of the source message, however, the translator having a task of reader which must be different from that of the normal reader, since he must undoubtedly appropriate the competence of mediator in communication which crosses with the function of transmitter of the translated message. Moreover, this same message undergoes a second transfer; the target reader receives it and interprets it in turn according to his own ideological and cultural schemes. Thus, the process of the translated text is not limited to a single phase, but, it enchains back and forth during which the text acquires the imprint of the translator who makes the transfer. Without forgetting to negotiate the meaning by respecting all the circumstances of the original text. So, to what extent can this semantic negotiation communicate the said and the unsaid of the text? .

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