Trim Size: 170mm x 244mm Callan wbiea1592.tex V1 - 04/05/2017 7:19 P.M. Page 1 ❦ ❦ ❦ ❦ Sacred Scriptures JAMES S. BIELO Miami University, United States he category “scripture” conjures up a certain genre of cultural artifact. his genre includes historically inluential items such as the Jew- ish Bible, Christian Old and New Testaments, Islamic Quran, Book of Mormon, Hindu Vedas and Upanishads, Buddhist Tripitaka, and Sikh Adi Granth. In turn, the category of scripture shares a deep resonance with the category of “re- ligion.” hese two categories are not isomorphic, and anthropologists should be the irst to remind anyone that many religious traditions have no scripture as such. But, there is a long-standing promise that the study of scriptures can teach us a substantial amount about the religious lifeworlds that produce and use the cultural artifacts of this genre. he approach emphasized here has been called “the social life of scriptures” (Bowen 1992), and this entry highlights its pivotal premises, indings, and promising research directions. Much like scripture, the category of the “sa- cred” is closely linked to the scholarly study of religion. his genealogy begins with the French sociologist Émile Durkheim and his emphasis on the sacred—things marked as special vis-à-vis the profane—as the center of gravity that cements moral communities together. When we think about scriptures as being sacred, we are drawn to what marks them as set apart. Cross-culturally, there are many possibilities: divine origin, God’s words, the words of gods, the words of the ances- tors, or the power and eicacy demonstrated by the scripture in question. Ethnographically, a live question concerns how the sacredness of scriptures is recognized, reproduced, revalorized, and phenomenologically experienced through everyday and ritualized practice. Using “sacred” as a qualiier helps to emphasize the power and distinctness attributed to scrip- tures, but the question lingers as to how we can best categorize scriptures. Before highlighting a recent deinition, we should note some nagging he International Encyclopedia of Anthropology. Edited by Hilary Callan. © 2018 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Published 2018 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. ethnocentric baggage that haunts any proposal to make scripture an instrumental category for the comparative study of religion. First, we should not assume that the authori- tative ideologies attached to scripture in Jewish, Christian, and Islamic traditions hold for other scriptural communities. Scripture can be revered as sacred without being engaged as the ultimate foundation for building a religious lifeworld. Sec- ond, we should not assume that scripture is only, or even primarily, a written genre. In multiple religious traditions, scriptures work in oral, aural, and haptic ways. hird, we should not assume that scriptures are always already inished. he boundaries of scriptures are constantly negotiated across religious communities: either because it is integral for a tradition to understand their scrip- tural canon as open or because internal social dynamics of power and diference mean that new material is regularly put forward as worthy of inclusion as scriptural. Fourth, we should not assume that the semantic content of scriptural language is its most important or valued fea- ture. he referential function of scriptural words should not be automatically ranked above their performative function. hat is, we should not default to prioritizing the capacity of language to describe the world (referential) over its capacity to actually do things in the world (performative). Depending on the context of reading, writing, or recitation, the mere production of letter or sound can be more efective and afective, irrespective of any semantic content. Finally, we should not assume that the linguistic aspects of scripture always outstrip the importance of scripture’s material properties. Physicality, tactility, and other sensuous dynamics can take precedence over discursive processes. With those potential pitfalls named, a working comparative deinition for scripture can be put forward. One recent attempt comes from Jef Guhin, a sociologist and ethnographer who con- ducted ieldwork with four conservative religious schools (two evangelical Christian, two Sunni Muslim) in New York City. Guhin argues that scripture be conceived as “a written text that (1) codiies an overarching meaning system for an interpretive community and (2) establishes