PROGRAMME AND ABSTRACTS - Università degli Studi di Messina

PANEL 6
Tue 15 th , 9.00-12.20 / 15.00-17.00, Classroom 9
Fabio Mora, University of Messina, Italy
La ricezione del testo sacro
The Circulated Sacred Text
The study of sacred, canonical texts may not substitute the empirical observation of the
religious communities which are founded on them. But their reception and regular use of these
texts is very important in their religious identities. The circulated text, i.e. the sacred text not as
it was written, but as it is (collectively) read, rewritten, quoted should remain central in the
study of a “written” religion. This is true for every religion with sacred text(s), but develops
some special sense, in those religions who do not have only a single sacred text by a single
human author (as Islam does), but rather a collection of texts by differents authors over time, or
do share part of their sacred texts with other religious communities, as the Christians do with
the Jews, the Mormons with both Christians and Jews, the Bahais with the Moslems. Here
praxis and theory should carefully be compared – theory often simplifies and does not express
the real religious dynamics. All Christians do accept the Old Testament as sacred text and
postpone it to the New, but Christian confessions could be usefully be classified, and besser
understood, by analyzing how much they do istitutionally read and quote the two Testaments,
by their respective Anthologized Bibles – such an analysis would however show that not the
two corpora, but every single book, group of books or section of book polarizes the attention of
different confessions. Historically Christianity as a whole is as much defined by respect for
New Testament as by selective lack of interest for Torah and practical oblivion of its legal
parts, but every single confession show different attitudes to every single book of both
Testaments. Judaism acknowledges theoretically three levels of sacredness to its Bible: Torah
must be read completely in liturgical assemblies, Prophets are read only selectively, Writings
are not to be read liturgically, with the (late) exception of the five Megillot; but in the detail
how much is the Hebrew anthology of Bible (other than Torah) dominated by the Christian
interference? Outside the Christian-Jew schisma, which is the respective role of the Christian
Testaments and their own Scripture among the Latter Day Saints? Papers may be submitted in
any of the official languages of the Congress and should either deal with comparative issues in
the experience of sacred texts or with the empirical reshaping of the sacred text in any single
religious confession.
Cohen Naomi
16
The Haftarot (the lections froms Prophets) chosen to be read in the
Synagogue Service
Ibba Giovanni Gli scritti mosaici ed enochici nel giudaismo tra il II secolo a.C. ed il I d.C.
Morgenstern Matthias Anmerkungen zur talmudischen Bibelhermeneutik