This
June, Jenny Raper was to give an introductory paper on Karen Armstrong and her
work on Scripture for the Spiritual Reading Group at the Carmelite Library. World
events have caused the cancellation, or at least the postponement, of our
monthly meeting, but Jenny has kindly provided us with her paper, which is reproduced
here.
I
have been reading Karen Armstrong's new book ‘The Lost Art of Scripture –
Rescuing the Sacred Texts’. Her premise
is that all the written texts (scriptures) of the world's religions were
actually founded as art – as “performative arts”. Ancient peoples could only express their
ideas, emotions and profound yearning for certainty in speech and in drawing,
engraving and sculpture. The way of
handing down these ideas and beliefs was through the spoken word – stories and
poetry and through song. The inheritors
of these oral traditions were trained to listen and recall in the substance of
the ideas, in the exact words passed down to them. Reading her book, I have
sought to uncover how and when writing down of the songs, poems and stories
began in five of the great traditions.
Civilisations
are estimated to have emerged around 5,000 years ago in what we call
Mesopotamia (even though evidence exists of earlier civilizations in the Ganges
Delta around 7,000 years ago). With the
increasing complications of people settling in large communities (cities) came
new ways of communicating, especially writing.
This skill became used, gradually, as a means of communicating social
rules, ideas and eventually the way religious rites should be performed and
why.
Karen
Armstrong writes, “Traditionally, the sacred was experienced as a presence that
permeates the whole of reality....”. Ritual
was the key to formalising these experiences and eventually rules were developed
as to how the ritual should be performed, as well as when and by whom. Rituals were thus 'carefully crafted' (page 7)
and increasingly became an activity of the Right Hemisphere of the brain. The beliefs and rules surrounding the rituals
were handed down orally through repetition and song, especially chanting –
activities which engaged the Left Hemisphere of the brain – creating an
emotional experience.
Likewise
the stories – the myths as we call them – were also passed down in what we call
poetry and ritual 'telling' of these visions of worlds we cannot experience,
but which had 'meaning' in some psychological way.
When
people started committing sacred words to written texts, (the Hebrew texts are
estimated to be 10th century BCE in the reign of King David) the
world was different. Certainly, the
elite or aristocrats could now read rather than learn the religious texts and
Karen Armstrong believes that the writing of them became an art form. These texts could then be sung or chanted
from the written text. “Scripture was, therefore, essentially a performative
art and until the modern period, it was nearly always acted out in the drama of
ritual and belonged to the world of myth.” (page 8)
The
writing down of the texts of the Hebrew Bible was started around the 7th
century BCE – evidence exists of the book of Deuteronomy instructing the people
to read and treasure the prayers and place them on the doorways of their homes. Until 594 BCE when the temple was destroyed
and the ruling elites exiled to Babylon, rituals lead by priests were the most
sacred symbol for the Hebrews. However,
in Babylon, the most sacred items were the scrolls of the temple. The priests
and scholars developed a method of study of the writings and ways of reciting
and learning the texts. These texts
became central to their sacred rituals and all boys and men were trained in the
oral transmission from one generation to the other. Great strictness developed in the meaning and
nuance of the words. Chanting and
singing were taught to the young men so the sacred would be the mainstay of
their daily life. Certain parts of the
texts were to be learnt in particular ways – the love poetry of The Song of
Songs, the undeserved suffering of Lot and the search for the meaning of life
by the prophets. Each of these parts
developed different cadences and cantillations for the students to learn –
based on the style of the text.
In
Jewish worship the Sacred Texts in the Torah are the sacred centre of
ritual. The text, written on one long
scroll, is rich in decoration and fabric and is carried into the synagogue with
great ceremony and chanting or singing.
Young men attend special schools where they learn to recite the texts
from memory and how to chant with exact emphasis on the vowels and consonants
as tradition requires for the ritual.
Buddha
(circa 563 BCE)– the Enlightened One – searched for meaning in his Hindu
culture in the forests of the mountains around his homeland. Gathering men around him, he taught them what
he had discovered about the elimination of suffering in this life and how to
practise that. He taught by speaking and
they learnt by recitation of the stories and lessons which they knew 'by
heart'. There were three parts to the
holy books – first the teachings, then the rules of living for the monks and
thirdly the teachings of the most learned monks. It was not until the 1st century
BCE that the texts were written down.
This happened in Sri Lanka during a terrible time of war and famine when
the monks decided to commit the oral texts to writing, which had only just been
developed there, and save them.
Today,
there are thousands upon thousands of Buddhist texts all of which are considered
sacred. The monks study them and learn
to recite, committing them to memory and use chanting which echoes the words
and which can be handed down to the next generation.
Referring
to Islam, the same story about the written Scripture emerges. Around 580 CE, in Mecca, the Prophet Mohammad
received teachings from Allah (God) through the Angel Gibriel (Gabriel) and
taught them to his followers aurally for them to learn and pass on to
others. For these sacred teachings it
was imperative that each word (even the difference between the consonants and
the vowels) was recited exactly. Indeed
the word Qu'ran means recitation. Arabic culture, at that time used poetry,
learned by rote, to preserve their ancient stories, rituals and beliefs. The
text itself is sacred to followers of Mohammad and not a syllable can be
altered or uttered in any other way. In
itself, the Qu'ran is more than texts, it has an esoteric meaning “like the
soul which gives life to the body.” (Henry Corbin. History of Islamic
Philosophy, 1993)
Men
and boys still spend much time in the Mosque learning the words and techniques
of reciting the texts from memory and only in Arabic. Like Hebrew, each vowel and consonant needs
to be emphasised in the same voice which needs to be chanted in precisely the
same way each time. That is, the pronunciation, pauses and melodic features – using
one rhyme for study and practice and another melodic modulation seeking to
involve the listener.
Like
the Hebrew texts, the origins are said to be the words of the Prophets (19 of
them, including Jesus) “These are the ones to whom we have given the Scripture,
wisdom and prophethood, writes Karen Armstrong.
When
the first Jewish followers of Jesus moved out from Jerusalem to teach this
revised version of Judaism, few were literate.
The first writing about this new form of Judaism was Paul. He was a Roman citizen and a Pharisee. He wrote the first letters to the Jesus
communities in Koine Greek – a 'common' version of Greek. Scholars agree that
the other 'testaments' were also written in Greek – the lingua franca of
Palestine. These testaments – Matthew, Mark, Luke and John were written after
the destruction of the second Temple in CE 70 – as well as were others which
were not included in the canon. The
entire canon of the Christian “Bible”, a collection of written sacred texts
from the Hebrew Torah and other books and the selection of Testaments, letters
and other writing from the new Christian Church, was not finalized until 382
CE. In many respects the teachings of
the New Testament were passed on orally, just as the teachings of the
so-called, 'Old' Testament were still handed down orally. The early Christian Church continued the
Jewish Temple traditions in the new 'Churches' where the ritual was conducted
by the priest for the people, who were largely illiterate. The priests and
deacons and bishops were literate and they gave the readings from a lectern; prayers
were recited by the priest and followed by the people who learnt the prayers
and responses orally. Psalms from the Old Testament were chanted by leaders and
the people learned to sing them. The ritual movements were followed by the
people who learned them by practising them throughout the seasons of the church
year.
It was not really until the sacred texts could be
read by the mass of the people that attitudes towards the words of the texts
began to change. I have read that once
the people could read the Bible in their own language it was as though the
words were set in concrete! Until then,
the words themselves were of a sacred nature – they brought the world of the
sacred into the daily lives of people.
They could recite and sing, bringing joy, solace and meaning.
The words in the sacred texts of all the world’s
religions have come down to us from millennia ago – they are not the words of
everyday things, they are poetic, they are imaginative, using metaphor and
symbols which are core to ritual. The
use of rhythm, cadence and cantillation helps the people remember the words of
incantations and songs. Actually, singing predates poetry and poetry predates
literacy – so singing the poetry actually helps us to reconstruct the words
from memory, according to a Montenegrin reciter, Milman Parry. This is art – a
creative process which is flexible as we well know when we listen to a bard
rather than read the words of the poetry.
This understanding is in stark contrast to the
use of sacred scriptures in modern times, especially since the 18th
century and the rise and rise of science and technology. As 'moderns' we are people of the
Logos/Reason, no longer people of the Myth.
Karen Armstrong writes that a medical scientist can perhaps cure an
illness not previously curable, but can he cure his own depression which comes
upon him unexpectedly? Our sacred texts are sacred because they are not
“Reasonable”, they cannot be approached with a rational expectation. Many people today dismiss them as being incredible
and patently “untrue” - yet they do not apply the same criteria to a poem or a
novel which also yield profound insights by means of fiction. Our imagination does not live in the
rational, it lives in the part of our brain that feels emotions, is amazed by
beauty, soars with music, inspired by poetry and brought down by tragedy and
grief.
“Like most art forms – painting, sculpture,
poetry, we must read according to the laws of its genre, and like any artwork,
scripture requires the disciplined cultivation of an appropriate mode of
consciousness. This mode has been hard won and can provide a means of living in
harmony with the transcendent. Another part of the process of approaching these
texts is to let go of our ego - emptying ourselves (a Greek idea) and
developing lives of benevolence, empathy and compassion. Most religions have a tradition whereby the
newcomer is in need of a teacher. An
ancient Chinese scholar said that without that person scripture is impenetrable.
Karen Armstrong points out that scripture was
always a 'work in progress' – a very short scrutiny of their history will
assure us of that! She points out that
modern fundamentalists in the Christian tradition seem to believe they can revive
the Bronze Age version of the Bible, some Muslims are trying to revive the mores
of 7th century Arabia. This
is not possible and in the New Testament stories we read over and over again
that we must walk on into the future or become like Lot's wife – pillars of
salt, locked in the past.
She quotes a bunch of scientists attending a
Global Form Conference in 1990 at which they challenged religious leaders to
reconsider the relationship of humanity to the earth:
As
scientists, many of us have had profound experiences of awe and reverence
before the Universe. We understand that
what is regarded as sacred is more likely to be treated with care and respect. Our planetary home should be so
regarded. Efforts to safeguard and
cherish the environment need to be infused with a vision of the sacred.
She concludes that we all have to find a way to
re-sacralise each human and re-sacralise our world. One way would be to explore the sacred texts
for meaning rather than ‘truth' or 'facts' – then we may learn to live together
– doing only to others what we would have done to ourselves. This is the ancient commandment found in all
the great sacred texts from the ancient places before humans learnt to write
them down and read them.
