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Holy Grammars: The Linguistic Factor in the Transmission of Sacred...
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Holy Grammars: The Linguistic Factor in the Transmission of Sacred Texts

A special issue of Religions (ISSN 2077-1444). This special issue belongs to the section "Religions and Humanities/Philosophies".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 May 2022) | Viewed by 8054

Special Issue Editor

Prof. Dr. Cyril S. Aslanov

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
1. Département de Lettres Modernes, Aix-Marseille Université, 13100 Aix-en-Provence, France
2. Institut Universitaire de France, 75005 Paris, France
Interests: languages in contact (especially in the Mediterranean space); historical linguistics; comparative linguistics; history of translation; poetics
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

This Special Issue of Religions aims to compare the correlation that the religious traditions of Hinduism, Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Christianity and Islam established between their respective sacred languages and the corresponding grammatical metalanguages that are supposed to preserve their purity, or at least to protect the integrity of the texts conveyed in those languages. The expected contributions will delve into the influence of the described languages (the languages of the sacred corpora) exerted on the grammatical metalanguages in which they are supposed to be described, transmitted and secured against erosion, corruption and oblivion.

Prof. Dr. Cyril S. Aslanov
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

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Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • sacred texts
  • peoples of the Book
  • ancient and medieval grammars
  • linguistic purism
  • orthoepy

Published Papers (4 papers)

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Research

11 pages, 448 KiB  
Article
Palamism, Humboldtianism, and Magicism in Pavel Florensky’s Philosophy of Language
by Dmitry Biriukov and Artyom Gravin
Religions 2023, 14(2), 197; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/rel14020197 - 02 Feb 2023
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 1314
Abstract
This article analyzes the evolution of Pavel Florensky’s teachings about language from the end of the 1910s to the early 1920s in the context of the two lines of influence (Humboldtian–Potebnian and Palamite) on the basis of which this teaching developed. In his [...] Read more.
This article analyzes the evolution of Pavel Florensky’s teachings about language from the end of the 1910s to the early 1920s in the context of the two lines of influence (Humboldtian–Potebnian and Palamite) on the basis of which this teaching developed. In his reasoning about language, Florensky, proceeding from intuition, declares that there is a rigid connection between the word’s sound/phoneme; its morpheme, etymon, and sememe (the given here and now meaning); and its denotate. According to Florensky, this points to the magicism of the word as such. At the beginning of the 1910s, Florensky, having become a participant in the name-glorifying debates, also adhered to the line presupposing a rigid connection between the word’s sound (the name, which is applied to God), its meaning, and its denotate. All these lines converged in Florensky’s thoughts on the nature of language in the late 1910s and the early 1920s. He turned again to the Humboldtian–Potebnian language scheme but rethought it, speaking of the intentionally charged sememe as the word’s inner form. In texts written in the late 1910s and the early 1920s, we single out two aspects of the understanding of the magicism of the word which were key for Florensky, namely the aspect revealed in the discourse of the independent and autonomous existence of words and names and the aspect presupposing the intentionally willed moment in the phenomenon of the magicism of the word. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Holy Grammars: The Linguistic Factor in the Transmission of Sacred Texts)
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34 pages, 1024 KiB  
Article
Mass or Count Noun: Latin Considerations of the Use of sanguis in the Plural
by Anne Grondeux
Religions 2022, 13(9), 855; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/rel13090855 - 14 Sep 2022
Viewed by 1923
Abstract
Educated by generations of grammarians who state that the term sanguis (blood) is used only in the singular, Fathers of the Church, exegetes, and commentators were confronted with about twenty scriptural, essentially veterotestimentary tokens where sanguis is used in the plural. Justifications for [...] Read more.
Educated by generations of grammarians who state that the term sanguis (blood) is used only in the singular, Fathers of the Church, exegetes, and commentators were confronted with about twenty scriptural, essentially veterotestimentary tokens where sanguis is used in the plural. Justifications for this particular use appear throughout the commentaries. My study will attempt to answer a series of questions. Which passages interested the commentators the most and why? Which grammarians were involved and in what respect? What kind of justifications were provided? Was their interest purely hermeneutic or did the exegetes aim to preserve a state inherited from scrupulous translations? Were the passages treated in isolation or set in resonance? Does this assessment of the commentaries allow us to identity filiations? It will also be seen that this matter is another piece of the puzzle in the relationship between grammar and faith. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Holy Grammars: The Linguistic Factor in the Transmission of Sacred Texts)
16 pages, 4128 KiB  
Article
Translation or Divination? Sacred Languages and Bilingualism in Judaism and Lucumí Traditions
by Michael Nosonovsky
Religions 2022, 13(1), 57; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/rel13010057 - 07 Jan 2022
Viewed by 2311
Abstract
I compare the status of a sacred language in two very different religious traditions. In Judaism, the Hebrew language is the language of liturgy, prayer, and the Written Law. The traditional way of reading Torah passages involved translating them into Aramaic, the everyday [...] Read more.
I compare the status of a sacred language in two very different religious traditions. In Judaism, the Hebrew language is the language of liturgy, prayer, and the Written Law. The traditional way of reading Torah passages involved translating them into Aramaic, the everyday language of communication in the Middle East in the first half of the first millennium CE. Later, other Jewish languages, such as Yiddish, played a role similar to that of Aramaic in the Talmudic period, constituting a system referred to as the “Traditional Jewish Bilingualism”. Hebrew lexemes had denotations related to the realm of Biblical texts, while Aramaic/Yiddish lexemes had everyday references. Therefore, the act of translation connected the two realms or domains. The Lucumí (Santería) Afro-Cuban religion is a syncretic tradition combining Roman Catholicism with the Ifá tradition, which does not have a corpus of written sacred texts, however, it has its sacred language, the Lucumí (Anagó) language related to the Yoruba language of West Africa. While the Spanish-Lucumí bilingualism plays an important role in Santería rituals, the mechanisms of reference are very different from those of the Hebrew-Yiddish bilingualism in Judaism. In Santería, divinations about the meaning of Lucumí words play a role similar to the translations from Hebrew in Judaism. I further discuss the role of ritual dances in Santería for the transition from the sacred to the secular domain and a function of Hebrew epitaphs to connect the ideal world of Hebrew sacred texts to the everyday life of a Jewish community. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Holy Grammars: The Linguistic Factor in the Transmission of Sacred Texts)
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13 pages, 359 KiB  
Article
The Concept of Grammatical Organon in the Star of Redemption by Rosenzweig
by Ilya Dvorkin
Religions 2021, 12(11), 945; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/rel12110945 - 29 Oct 2021
Cited by 3 | Viewed by 1737
Abstract
In his book The Star of Redemption, F. Rosenzweig formulated a new philosophical system, which is based not on thinking, or being, but on language. At the same time, Rosenzweig not only postulates language but deduces it as a procedural reality that [...] Read more.
In his book The Star of Redemption, F. Rosenzweig formulated a new philosophical system, which is based not on thinking, or being, but on language. At the same time, Rosenzweig not only postulates language but deduces it as a procedural reality that is currently unfolding in relation to perfect and closed elements—the world, God and man. Language fundamentally changes our attitude not only toward the world, God and man but in general toward all objects of knowledge and action. The world ceases to be perceived as an equal given, a person ceases to be a generic definition for subjectivity and acquires singularity and uniqueness. God is not defined as the Absolute Reality but becomes a live interlocutor. One of the central points of Rosenzweig’s system is its grammatical organon—a method that allows one to consider linguistic processes. Rosenzweig unfolds his organon in three books of the second part of The Star of Redemption. This article discusses the philosophical foundations of Rosenzweig’s grammatical organon and the features of its application to various linguistic and speech phenomena. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Holy Grammars: The Linguistic Factor in the Transmission of Sacred Texts)
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