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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
- Sprache: Englisch
A fascinating comparative account of sacred languages and their role in and beyond religion --written for a broad, interdisciplinary audience Sacred languages have been used for foundational texts, liturgy, and ritual for millennia, and many have remained virtually unchanged through the centuries. While the vital relationship between language and religion has been long acknowledged, new research and thinking across an array of disciplines including religious studies, sociolinguistics, sociology, linguistics, and even neurolinguistics has resulted in a renewed interest in the area. This fascinating and informative book draws on Christian, Islamic, Hindu, Judaic, and Buddhist traditions to provide a concise and accessible introduction to the phenomenon of sacred languages. The book takes a strongly comparative, wide-ranging approach to exploring ways in which ancient religious languages, such as Latin, Pali, Church Slavonic, and Hebrew continue to shape the beliefs and practices of religious communities around the world. Informed by both comparative religion and sociolinguistics, it traces the histories of sacred languages, the myths and doctrines that explain their origin and value, the various ways they are used, the sectarian debates that shadow them, and the technological innovations that propel them forward in the twenty-first century. * A comprehensive but succinct account of the role and importance of language within religion * Takes an interdisciplinary approach which will appeal to students and scholars across an array of disciplines, including religious studies, sociology of religion, sociolinguistics, and linguistics * Provides a strongly comparative exploration, drawing on Christian, Islamic, Hindu, Judaic, and Buddhist traditions * Uses numerous examples and ties historic debates with contemporary situations * Satisfies the rapidly growing demand for books on the subject among both academics and general readers Sacred Languages of the World is a must-read for students of religion and language, scripture, religious literacy, education and language, the sociology of religion, sociolinguistics. It will also have strong appeal among general readers with an interest comparative religion, history, cultural criticism, communication studies, and more.
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Seitenzahl: 429
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017
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Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Preface
References
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1: What Exactly Is a Sacred Language?
Sacred Choices
Who Says It’s a Sacred Language?
Historical Relics?
References
Further Reading
Chapter 2: Sacred Languages, Past and Present
The Global Language System
A Very Short History of the World
Bits and Pieces
The Arabic Scriptworld
References
Further Reading
Chapter 3: Not Dead Yet: Latin as Test Case
Framing Sacred Languages
Dead or Alive?
References
Further Reading
Chapter 4: Beliefs about Sacred Languages
Powerful Beliefs
Good Vibrations
References
Further Reading
Chapter 5: Practices: Religious, Political, Artistic
How to Do Things with Sacred Languages
References
Further Reading
Chapter 6: Learning a Sacred Language
The ABCs of Faith
Restricted Literacy
What, Who, Why, and How
References
Further Reading
Chapter 7: Communities and Controversies
United We Stand
Divided We Fall
References
Further Reading
Chapter 8: Borderlines: Sacred Languages, Fundamentalism, and Globalization
The World of Sanskrit
My Sweet Lord
(Almost) Anything Goes
References
Further Reading
Chapter 9: Conclusion
Codices
Code‐Switching
Codifications
Secret Codes
Codes of Conduct
Decoding
Insider Codes
Legacy Codes?
Unicode
References
Index
End User License Agreement
List of Illustrations
Chapter 01
Figure 1.1 The Jesus Prayer in Church Slavonic (“Lord, Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy upon me, a sinner”). Prayer card, 1990s, Russia.
Chapter 02
Figure 2.1 Mosque with English, Chinese, and Arabic signage, Hong Kong.
Figure 2.2 Qur’an with interlinear Urdu translation.
Chapter 03
Figure 3.1 Vatican obelisk with Latin inscription, St. Peter’s Square, Vatican City.
Figure 3.2 Baptismal font with Latin inscription. St. Peter’s Catholic Church, New Iberia, Louisiana.
Figure 3.3 Priest’s vestment with design that incorporates the Latin word for peace (
pax
).
Chapter 04
Figure 4.1 Thai Buddhist tattoos and amulets.
Chapter 05
Figure 5.1 Conceptual design for the Israeli National Library (2012).
Chapter 06
Figure 6.1 Coptic Reader application.
Chapter 07
Figure 7.1 Faux Sanskrit writing.
Chapter 08
Figure 8.1 Members of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON) chanting with banners of the “Hare Krishna” mantra, Moscow.
Chapter 09
Figure 9.1 Ge’ez‐Amharic Orthodox Liturgy smartphone application.
Guide
Cover
Table of Contents
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Sacred Languages of the World
An Introduction
Brian P. Bennett
This edition first published 2018© 2018 John Wiley & Sons Ltd
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Library of Congress Cataloging‐in‐Publication Data
Names: Bennett, Brian P, author.Title: Sacred languages of the world : an introduction / Brian P. Bennett.Description: 1 | Hoboken, NJ : Wiley, 2017. | Includes index.Identifiers: LCCN 2017010480 (print) | LCCN 2017031228 (ebook) | ISBN 9781118970751 (pdf) | ISBN 9781118970768 (epub) | ISBN 9781118970782 (hardback) | ISBN 9781118970775 (paper)Subjects: LCSH: Language and languages–Religious aspects–History. | Language and languages–Social aspects–History. | Sociolinguistics. | Comparative linguistics. | BISAC: RELIGION / Comparative Religion.Classification: LCC P53.76 (ebook) | LCC P53.76 .B36 2017 (print) | DDC 401/.47–dc23LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017010480
Cover Image: (Hebrew Alphabet) Blue Circle by Tsilli PinesCover Design: Wiley
Preface
What are the most important languages in the world? The answer depends in part on one’s location:
The relative importance of … languages currently alternates during the course of each day. When the sun is over the western Pacific, the national language of China is the most in use, but when the sun is over the Atlantic and China sleeps, English takes the lead. The world’s second most spoken language also alternates daily, between Hindi + Urdu and Spanish respectively.
(Dalby 2001, 24)
Yet other languages, ancient consecrated codes, which can still be seen and heard across the globe, also merit consideration. Five times a day, millions of Muslims stop what they are doing, face Mecca, and recite their prayers in Classical Arabic, the language of the Qur’an. Buddhist monks in the Theravada tradition rise at the crack of dawn and begin a chanting session in Pali, said to be the language of Gautama Buddha himself, who lived 2500 years ago. Scriptores in Vatican City work on translating the pope’s words into Latin. Russian Orthodox priests from Moscow to Bellingshausen Station in Antarctica celebrate the liturgy in Church Slavonic. Ultra‐Orthodox Jews utter blessings in Hebrew throughout the day, while at the other end of the ideological spectrum so‐called Jubus (Jewish Buddhists) meditate using Hebraic mantras. Coptic Christians in Egypt and the diaspora sing hymns in a language that can be traced back some five millennia to the time of the pharaohs. In gyms and studios across America, practitioners try to master Sanskrit names for yoga poses at the same time as enthusiasts in India trumpet Sanskrit as a symbol of the nation’s spiritual and technological prowess. When the sun rises the next day, it happens all over again.
Around the world, in temples, monasteries, synagogues, and mosques – but also in tattoo studios and concert halls – people interact with these allegedly dead languages in a variety of ways and for a host of different reasons. These are not the major languages that confidently bestride the globe, though some of them did so in their heyday. Rather, these are conserved languages, precious symbolic resources, utilized for scriptures, rituals, chants, and amulets. Ancient? Yes. Dead? No. In fact, many devotees would insist that these are truly the most significant languages in the world.
This book offers a kind of guided tour of these sacred languages and locales. Drawing upon the academic disciplines of comparative religion and sociolinguistics, it is neither a narrow treatise in linguistics nor a comprehensive global history (see, for example, Ostler 2005). We are interested in the “outside,” not the “inside,” of sacred languages. That is to say, instead of focusing on the nuts and bolts of the language (grammar, morphology, phonology, etc.), we will be looking at languages as a social and religious phenomenon. Though sacred languages are typically used for worship and scripture, this is not the place to find a rundown of all the rituals and canons of Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, and so on, as there are plenty of handbooks and websites that provide such information. Instead, we are interested in the following questions:
Why do some religions conserve these ancient languages? What mythic conceptions exalt them above regular vernaculars?How are sacred languages used? And if adherents do not actually understand what they read or chant, what is the point?Since no one grows up speaking Latin or Pali or the rest, how do people actually go about learning a sacred language?Why is it that sacred languages seem uniquely qualified to foster a sense of collective identity – yet also be so divisive?Finally, what place do these hallowed languages have at a time of rapid cultural change, globalization, and fundamentalism?
Despite the fact that sacred languages are still vital to different branches of Judaism, Hinduism, Islam, Buddhism, Christianity, and Zoroastrianism, the phenomenon is not particularly well understood. Excellent histories penned by experts are available for individual languages – Arabic, Hebrew, Sanskrit, and especially Latin (e.g., Versteegh 2014; Spolsky 2014; Pollock 2006; Leonhardt 2013). But those admirable studies tend to focus on the ancient and medieval periods, giving the impression that the recent history of sacred languages is somehow less interesting or authentic. Moreover, they provide few details about the various and sundry ways that sacred languages figure in the lives of believers. By contrast, this book is comparative in scope and is intended for those unfamiliar with the global phenomenon of sacred languages. It concentrates on recent times, tracing the myths and mysteries that surround these ancient tongues, the diverse practices they are used for, the distinctive methods employed for teaching them, and the ways they can unite – and divide – international faith communities. This is a vast terrain. Our survey is far from complete. We will not be able to see everything and many important locations (e.g., Ecclesiastical Greek, Classical Tibetan) have been left off the itinerary altogether.
Instead of simply describing the sacred languages in serial fashion (Hebrew, Latin, Sanskrit, and so on), we take a more structural and thematic approach. With the exception of the first, each chapter starts with one sacred language to illustrate a particular aspect of the phenomenon, but is broadly comparative in approach, noting various points of similarity and difference between the specimens. This strategy makes it possible to learn something about the individual languages while at the same time to acquire a conceptual framework that can be applied to other examples and help guide further research and investigation. Chapter 1 discusses what makes a sacred language, and considers alternative classifications, such as dead or classical. Chapter 2 looks at Arabic – to many, the sacred language par excellence – as a way to sketch the emergence of sacred languages in world history and locate their current position in the “linguasphere,” the network of languages that encircles the planet. In Chapter 3 we lay out our conceptual framework for sacred languages and introduce Ecclesiastical Latin as a test case. This framework starts with four main factors or components: beliefs, practices, institutions, and communities. Based on the example of Latin, we also argue that sacred languages should be considered fixed or conserved, not dead or extinct. The next four chapters zoom in to explore in more detail the four components, while also adding further distinctions and sub‐types. The case of Pali, a Buddhist language, illustrates the myths and beliefs that accompany sacred languages. Following that, Hebrew showcases the surprising range of practices – not only religious, but political and artistic – that a single sacred language can be deployed for. Coptic leads off our discussion of why and how people learn these ancient idioms. Next the example of Church Slavonic demonstrates the fact that sacred languages can provide an essential fizz to social chemistry, but can also be combustible. Chapter 8 zooms back out to consider the role of sacred languages in relation to fundamentalism and globalization: Sanskrit provides a telling instance of these opposing trends. In the Conclusion we distill the key features of sacred languages in the contemporary world and ponder their fate in cyberspace.
Since it can be difficult for non‐specialists to observe or get information about how sacred languages are actually used by contemporary religious practitioners, each chapter includes a vignette of a particular language “in action,” from well‐known locales like London, Rome, Moscow, Jerusalem, and Hong Kong, to less familiar ones such as Fort Ross, California, and North Tonawanda, New York. These tableaux provide entry points for discussing different facets of the phenomenon, as well as helping to convey something of the ongoing global significance of sacred languages.
Michael Pye reminds us that, “any attempts to view religions in their plurality, in a conspectual frame of reference, involve the intellectual act of comparison” (2013, 350). Each sacred language discussed in this book has its own complex backstory and is embedded in specific places, people, practices, polemics, and paraphernalia. While remaining cognizant of history and cultural context, a comparative approach involves isolating and foregrounding certain aspects for consideration, while leaving everything else in the background. Such an artificial procedure necessarily involves a difference of perspective – even a certain tension – between the “committed insider and the observing comparativist” (Paden 2009, 236). It is important for all parties to remember that comparison is never a matter of identity: Sanskrit, Hebrew, Latin, and the others are not the “same” – nor are they totally dissimilar. The very format of a book seems to compel a black‐or‐white linearity that can be harmful to the comparative enterprise. It would be preferable if we could somehow present the information by means of a volvelle or kaleidoscope, each click of which would bring into focus a pattern of chromatic similarities and differences. Comparison is fraught with difficulties, yet there is no way to achieve a conspectual view of things – no way to understand the world – without it (Smith 2004).
***
This book is an excursion into the world of sacred languages. However, before embarking, we must recognize that certain widely accepted ideas may hinder our journey. A 2009 article in Newsweek magazine entitled “We Are All Hindus Now” claimed that many Americans have quietly, without really knowing it, absorbed a number of tenets of Hinduism, including belief in reincarnation and a tolerant all‐are‐equal religious universalism. When it comes to sacred languages, though, the headline would be: “We Are All Protestants Now.” The Protestant critique of sacred languages, which was originally aimed at the use of Latin by the Catholic Church, has been absorbed widely as if by osmosis. We now live in a vernacular age. To many, the notion of praying or reading scriptures in an archaic, unintelligible language seems utterly baffling. The Protestant ethos has been felt even in doctrinal controversies outside the orbit of Protestantism, including debates within Judaism with respect to Hebrew, within Russian Orthodoxy about Church Slavonic, within Zoroastrianism regarding Avestan, and within Catholicism during the contestation over Latin that culminated at Vatican II (some four centuries after the Protestant Reformation).
This originally theological position has been reinforced by the stirring motto of the Internet age: “information wants to be free.” By now the notion that information should be free‐flowing, readily intelligible, and available to all seems incontrovertible. Yet sacred languages would appear to represent the opposite: fixed, formal, and difficult of access, often taking years of diligent study as the price of entry. As a result, the dominant Protestant/Internet ideology can make it hard to understand a phenomenon that directly and indirectly touches the lives of hundreds of millions of people around the globe.
Similes may help us get around this mental roadblock. Throughout the book we will compare sacred languages to precious metals, vehicles, clothes, divas, and computer codes. Latin, Sanskrit, Hebrew, and the other languages discussed in this book, may also be likened to wine. Water is essential for most things: quenching thirst, washing clothes, watering gardens. No one can deny that. Yet water is not so great for offering a toast or celebrating a victory. Many would say that wine or champagne is far preferable for such occasions, while it makes little sense to bathe with Dom Pérignon. For some religious adherents, a vernacular language is water – functional, transparent – whereas a sacred language is wine: less practical, but it gladdens the heart (Karelin 2008). (Critics would counter that it merely confuses the brain.) The religious communities discussed in this book in effect say: one language is not suitable for every occasion. Water and wine both have a place and purpose. Sancta sancte – “sacred matters should be treated in a sacred manner.” It is this elemental religious impulse that helps explain why communities around the world continue to value these centuries‐old consecrated languages.
References
Dalby, David. 2001. “The Linguasphere: Kaleidoscope of the World’s Languages.”
English Today 65
, vol. 17 (1): 22–26.
Karelin, Rafail Archimandrate. 2008. Appendix to
Samye pervye shagi v khrame: Sovety nachinaiushchemu khristiianinu
. Moscow: n.p.
Leonhardt, Jürgen. 2013.
Latin: Story of a World Language
. Translated by Kenneth Kronenberg. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
Ostler, Nicholas. 2005.
Empires of the Word: A Language History of the World
. New York: HarperCollins.
Paden, William E. 2009. “Comparative Religion.” In
The Routledge Companion to the Study of Religion
, second edition, edited by John R. Hinnells, 225–242. New York: Routledge.
Pollock, Sheldon. 2006.
The Language of the Gods in the World of Men: Sanskrit, Culture, and Power in Premodern India
. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Pye, Michael. 2013.
Strategies in the Study of Religions
. Vol. 2:
Exploring Religions in Motion
. Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter.
Smith, Jonathan Z. 2004.
Relating Religion: Essays in the Study of Religion
. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Spolsky, Bernard. 2014.
The Languages of the Jews: A Sociolinguistic History
. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Versteegh, Kees. 2014.
The Arabic Language
. Second edition. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Acknowledgments
This book is intended as a conspectus for students and the general reader. It synthesizes my own research on Church Slavonic with that of experts on other sacred languages, and attempts to fit together ideas drawn from comparative religion and from sociolinguistics. I hope that scholars in these different disciplines will find something of value here and will forgive me for believing that the end (providing an accessible introduction to an important but daunting topic) justifies the means (traversing areas of specialization where I really do not belong).
A number of individuals helped me at various points of what turned out to be a circuitous intellectual journey. Many years ago I had the privilege of studying several of the languages discussed in this book with a series of brilliant teachers: Latin with George Dunkel (then at Princeton University); Pali with Lance Cousins and Arabic with Rex Smith (both then at Manchester University); Old Church Slavonic with Victor Friedman (University of Chicago) and Church Slavonic with Fr. Paul Lazor (St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary). More recently, a number of scholars and clerics answered my email queries or allowed me to observe them in action: Aleksandr Andreev, Sharon Avni, Fr. Jason Barone (and the instructors at the Veterum Sapientia program), Steven Collins, Kate Crosby, Ven. K. Dhammasami, Fr. Mark Iskander, Grigory Kazakov, Pyi Kyaw, Alexei Krindatch, Justin McDaniel, Christian Muench, Elena Nelson, Ven. S. Nyanasamilankara, Tope Omoniyi, Rabbi Gary Pokras, Imam Syed Khalilullah Qadri, the late Martin Riesebrodt, Andrey Rosowsky, and Fisseha Tadesse. I could not have written this book without their assistance. To Msgr. Daniel Gallagher, who took time out of his busy schedule to meet with me during a whirlwind visit to the Vatican: gratias. I feel fortunate to have crossed paths with Joshua Fishman (d. 2015) when this project was in a formative stage. None of these individuals can be blamed if I was too obtuse to follow their directions and went astray.
As this book was going to press, I learned of the death of Tope Omoniyi – a tragic loss for the field of sociolinguistics. As I think back to some of the stopovers along my journey (conferences in Berlin, New York, Hong Kong, London, and Murcia where I first tried out some of the ideas developed in this book), I will always remember with gratitude Tope’s scholarly guidance and generous welcoming spirit.
I would like to express my sincere thanks to Tsilli Pines for generously allowing me to use her beautiful artwork for the cover, and to René Drouyer, Peter Gottschalk, and Ori Ronen, as well as Ethiopianapps, the Saratoga Hindu Temple and Community Center, and the Coptic Orthodox Diocese of the Southern United States, for kindly granting me permission to reproduce their images.
I am truly indebted to Rebecca Harkin of Wiley Blackwell. She saw something of value in the original prospectus and then waited patiently through several major delays for the final product to appear. Niagara University afforded me the time, travel funds, and teaching conditions needed for work on the project. A special word of appreciation goes to the staff at the NU library for handling my requests for materials in a Babel of tongues.
Finally, I wish to thank my children Camille and Jacob for their love and encouragement; and my wife Donna Delahoussaye, who, with patience and personal sacrifice, has accompanied me on the long and winding road that led to this book – it is dedicated to her.
Chapter 1What Exactly Is a Sacred Language?
The Buddha spoke Pali. Tattooed on the body, the truth inherent in the Pali script can shield one from knives and bullets.
Listening to the Arabic‐language Qur’an, one hears the very words of Allah.
The Devil loathes the Church Slavonic language.
The cosmos was created through the Hebrew alphabet. The twenty‐two letters continue to pulsate with divine light and energy.
Divine Providence chose the Roman Empire – and with it, the Latin language – to spread the Gospel.
Coptic dates back to the time of the pharaohs. Jesus himself learned the language during his childhood sojourn in Egypt.
Sanskrit is the most logical language. The “language of the gods” is the perfect instrument for computer programming.
Sacred languages are like, but also unlike, everyday vernacular languages. Although both types of language have nouns, verbs, adjectives, and all the other ingredients needed to express thought, they differ in a number of crucial ways.
First, sacred languages are mythologized, being connected to divine personages and events. According to the Theravada Buddhist tradition, the Buddha spoke Pali. Russian Orthodox devotees say that the Church Slavonic language was inspired by the Holy Spirit – hence the Devil fears it. In Hindu discourse Sanskrit is often called the language of the gods, while the image of Yahweh creating the universe through the Hebrew alphabet is a familiar one in Jewish mysticism. A number of sacred languages are associated with divine revelation as embodied in canonical texts: the Torah, the Qur’an, the Vedas, the Tipitika. The supreme value of the message rubs off on the medium, such that the language becomes endowed with its own sanctity. In some traditions, the very alphabet in which the language is written is credited with miraculous powers. Thus, unlike their more earthly counterparts, sacred languages are those that appear to be endowed with a kind of halo, a supernatural aura, a higher calling. They are said to play a role in the drama of salvation history.
Second, sacred languages are not used for ordinary communication – to chat around the dinner table, tease in the schoolyard, give orders in the factory, or bicker in the market. Some people, especially clerics, are in fact able to converse in languages like Latin, Sanskrit, or Ge’ez (e.g., Endangered Language Alliance Toronto 2013). In general, though, sacred languages are reserved for special religious practices involving a predetermined content: chanting a mantra, performing a ritual, reciting a passage from scripture, wearing a protective amulet. These practices and paraphernalia are usually found in specially consecrated places, including mosques, churches, synagogues, and temples – these are the “natural habitats” of sacred languages.
This fact that sacred languages are not typically used for everyday conversation leads to another key difference between them and vernacular tongues: namely, the matter of comprehension. We assume that language is about interpersonal communication and conveying ideas to one another. However, religious practitioners may have memorized entire books in their sacred language, yet be unable to explain a single sentence. Indeed, it sometimes seems that, for believers, the lack of understandability heightens the mystery and allure of these ancient tongues. A different mode of literacy is at work here. Instead of intelligibility, sacred languages are often prized for other values which they are said to embody, such as antiquity, beauty, purity, solemnity, or magical efficacy. Indeed, it is often the idea of the sacred language, the symbolism as opposed to some specific content, that is determinative. Referring to the Catholic Mass, the scholar of comparative religion Wendy Doniger writes:
if Latin is no longer a useful form of communication for most congregations, it still has the function of communion. That is, the Mass, in contrast with the sermon (which communicates, or at least tries to communicate, to convey new thoughts or information), has the function of communion; people participate in it not to learn something new but to relive, together, the words that they already know, words about themselves as a community (communion). Where communication is effective, communion is evocative. Where communication seeks to influence the future, communion draws upon the past. (2007)
Relying on a sacred medium like Latin or Hebrew often means valuing the symbolic and the spiritually evocative – the “look and feel” of the language – over the more directly informational side of things.
Third, sacred languages are not mother tongues. Although there are occasional reports of a child being raised to speak a sacred language (e.g., Kiraz 2007, xxvii), these are rare cases indeed. As a general rule, children do not grow up speaking Pali or Coptic around the house with their relatives. (The monumental exception of Hebrew will be discussed in Chapter 5.) These are secondary, bookish languages added on to one’s linguistic toolkit later in life. (In the nomenclature of sociolinguistics, they are categorized as L2 as opposed to L1.) If anything, they might be considered “father tongues,” since they are often (though not always or necessarily) associated with male clerics such as Christian priests and Buddhist monks. Sacred languages are usually not transmitted organically within the family, but through a kind of artificial dissemination involving monasteries, seminaries, yeshivas, pathshalas, and similar institutions. Spanish, Korean, Evenki, and other mother tongues could survive from generation to generation without schools if they had to; that is not the case with sacred languages.
Fourth, sacred languages seem to have the remarkable ability to connect believers scattered to the four corners of the earth. For centuries Latin linked Roman Catholics across oceans and continents. Many Jews would say that it is Hebrew that unites “an English speaking teacher in New York, a Russian speaking scientist in Moscow, an Amharic speaking farmer in Ethiopia, and a Yiddish speaking Hasidic rabbi in Israel” (Avni 2011, 55). The rich sonorities of the Church Slavonic language can be experienced in onion‐domed sanctuaries from Russia to California. Sacred languages wield an impressive symbolic power. Indeed, the identification between the language and the religious community may be so close and intense that the script comes to function as a kind of logo that “brands” the faith for both insiders and outsiders.
Yet, although sacred languages contribute in powerful ways to religious solidarity, at the same time, they also have their detractors. The tension between communion and communication can become a flashpoint, sometimes leading to bitter polemics that divide a community, as has happened in Judaism over the question of Hebrew, Zoroastrianism over Avestan, and – perhaps most famously – Catholicism over Latin. Of course, passionate debates have from time to time engulfed French and Irish and Tamil and many other vernaculars. But because the stakes are so high with sacred languages, being connected not only to communal identity but soteriology (a program of salvation), such disputes can become quite polarizing, with charges of heresy and sacrilege hurled about. In sum, though they can contribute to social chemistry, sacred languages can also be combustible, sparking conflicts or even schisms among believers.
Sacred languages, then, do not differ in formal ways from other languages: they consist of words, sentences, and so on. Instead, they differ in their overall social meaning and location, being fixed, mythicized, textual languages, used for a range of projects and practices, transmitted institutionally, and cherished – but also at times contested – by certain religious communities.
Sacred Choices
Religion involves the culturally patterned interaction between a social group and its postulated superhuman powers (cf. Spiro 1966). A religious topography therefore involves actual places, such as churches, shrines, mosques, and synagogues with street addresses, but also encompasses imagined realms – heaven, hell, paradise, nirvana, the etheric plane, and so forth. This unseen spiritual dimension may be imagined as above and beyond our earthly concerns and conceptions, or considered to be within the material world, inspiriting people, places, plants, and animals. It may be visualized as populated by superhuman agents: deities, spirits, ghosts, angels, demons, jinn, bodhisattvas, ascended masters. Alternatively, it may be conceived in terms of impersonal forces: karma, universal consciousness, the Source. Whether transcendent, immanent, personal, or impersonal (or some combination thereof), the superhuman order is thought to frame human life. Religious believers talk and act as if it really exists: “a religious world is one where gods function as environmental realities” (Paden 2013, 94). The religious premise is that it is both possible and desirable for people to interact with the superhuman dimension in order to overcome human limitations. Religious systems offer “big” rewards (paradise, heaven, nirvana) as well as “small” ones (freedom from harm, personal wellbeing, success in romance or commerce). Since the spiritual realm is invisible, it must be represented by stories, symbols, icons, dances, fragrances, and other tangible means. Practitioners relate to the supposed divine realm through such practices as praying, chanting the name of a god, offering sacrifices, performing a ritual dance, following an ethical code, fasting, or going on pilgrimage. In those religious traditions that have them – not all do – sacred languages are considered a prestigious linguistic resource for both revealing and reaching the superhuman realm.
All religions teach that certain times, places, actions, and objects (and not others) constitute the ways and means of interacting with the imagined spiritual zone:
Almost the first thing which the student – or indeed the casual observer – of religious affairs notices, is that “believers” subject the times and places, the objects and personalities of the waking world to a definite scale of values. A house may be full of books; but one book is somehow different from all the others, being both handled and read in a special way. A village is full of buildings; but before entering one of them people make special preparations, while once inside, their normal behavior changes…. The days of the week are differently treated; on Fridays for some, Saturdays for others and Sundays for a third group….
(Sharpe 1983, 49)
While every religious system necessarily requires the use of language, some religions honor one language as the premier (perhaps the only) vehicle for communicating with and about the divine, a language that supersedes all others on the linguistic scale of values. As it turns out, sacred languages usually go with sacred books, buildings, and days of the week; they are parallel and intersecting religious phenomena. Thus, Muslims pray in Classical Arabic, which is linked to the Qur’an, to mosques, and to the fivefold daily prayer, especially the Friday noontime gathering. Similarly, the nexus of synagogue, Sabbath, Torah, and Hebrew is central to the religious experience of many Jews.
Of course, needless to say, if a religion has a sacred language, that does not mean its practitioners only use or speak the sacred language – far from it. Just as gold is too soft on its own and has to be hardened by the addition of alloying elements like copper, nickel, or palladium, sacred languages are always mixed with everyday spoken vernaculars, such as Burmese, Tigre, Serbian, French, or Urdu. If we could somehow calculate a word‐count for all the books and speeches and utterances produced within a religion, the results would be overwhelmingly in the vernacular. The importance of sacred language tends to be more qualitative than quantitative. For example, if one attends a Latin Mass in an Anglophone country, the foyer will be full of English‐language materials (bulletins, periodicals, etc.); people will greet each other and catch up on the week’s events in English; there will be bilingual Latin–English missals available to help churchgoers follow along (though some bring their own); during the ritual itself, people will whisper to each other, or hush their children, in English; and afterwards, the priest will chat with parishioners in English. Similar scenarios take place mutatis mutandis with Pali, Hebrew, Coptic, and Avestan. Vernaculars always set the stage for sacred languages, which come on like divas after all the work has been done.
The category of sacred language should be distinguished from the much broader category of religious language, which would include a whole range of genres and occurrences, including hymns, oracles, euphemisms, incantations, sermons, channeling, and speaking in tongues (Sawyer and Simpson 2001). It should also be differentiated from the narrower category of liturgical language. It is true that sacred languages like Latin and Coptic are used for liturgies, but in some cases mother tongues are as well. Since the reforms of Vatican II, for example, English, Polish, Vietnamese, and many other languages have been authorized for use in the Catholic Mass. Various Christian communities rooted in the Middle East (Orthodox, Coptic, Melchite, Maronite, etc.) use Arabic in their worship services, but do not treat the language as divine, the way that Muslims do. Sacred languages thus overlap with, but are a distinct phenomenon compared to, religious language on one side and liturgical language on the other.
Sociolinguists often speak of varieties because it helps sidestep the intractable problem of differentiating a language from a dialect. Sacred languages are “named varieties”: Latin, Sanskrit, Hebrew, and so on. Now, some sociolinguists assert that the whole notion of languages as discrete, bounded entities (“Russian,” “French,” etc.) is illusory (Jørgensen et al. 2011). Languages, they contend, are less like self‐contained canisters than hazy clouds, nebulously blending into one another: it is hard to tell where one stops and another starts. Be that as it may, sacred languages are perceived and treated by religious adherents as separate, self‐standing languages and not just a fancier or more archaic version of their everyday spoken dialect. For example, some Anglophone Christians recite this version of the so‐called Our Father or Lord’s Prayer:
Our Father which art in heaven,Hallowed be thy name.Thy kingdom come.Thy will be done in earth,as it is in heaven.Give us this day our daily bread.And forgive us our trespasses,as we forgive thosewho trespass against us.And lead us not into temptation,but deliver us from evil:For thine is the kingdom,and the power, and the glory,forever and ever.Amen.
Several archaic features impart an elevated ambiance to this text, but we would not say that it represents a sacred language per se, since it is still recognizably English. The words which art, thy, and thine do not constitute a separate, nameable language. Now, it is not always easy to know where to draw the line between religious language and a sacred language. After all, many forms of religious language display a desire for mystery and transcendence – elevating above ordinary speech by means of stylized diction or esoteric terms. But a good rule of thumb is this: to count as a sacred language, it must (among other things) be named, perceived, and taught as such. Believers usually recognize that Latin is related to Italian, Sanskrit to Hindi, and Church Slavonic to Russian, but they nonetheless discuss and teach Latin, Sanskrit, and Church Slavonic as independent fully fledged languages. There are no seminary or Sunday school courses devoted to “English with a Few Archaic Features.” Thus, this version of the Lord’s Prayer is a specimen of religious language, not a sacred language.
Although sacred languages are sometimes said to be dead, it is more accurate and helpful to think of them as fixed or conserved. According to the sociolinguist Joshua Fishman, “Languages of direct sanctity live on in their holy texts and, as such, are not subject to the winds of change and of influence (or interference) from other languages in the way that spoken languages are” (2006, 257–258). Their overall grammatical structure was codified hundreds or even thousands of years ago and has changed very little since then, though new words and even entire texts continue to be produced (Leonhardt 2013). James Sawyer’s summary of how this fixing/conserving comes about is worth quoting:
Respect for the original sources, especially when these are believed to have been composed by a much revered prophet or teacher, if not by the actual deity himself or herself, is a major factor in many cases…. Religious conservatism is another important factor related to this concern for getting back to the original. A fierce reluctance to accept innovation is common to many religious groups, despite pressures from many directions to evolve or move with the times. It is partly due to a desire to maintain continuity with the past, or even, somehow, an attempt to bring the past into the present during the experience of worship…. There is also the fact that language often has a dynamic of its own: words, phrases, even sounds hallowed by centuries of use in the highly charged context of religious ritual, can have a hold on worshippers which makes it difficult for them even to contemplate changes in language.
(Sawyer 1999, 25–26)
(By the way, we should not necessarily think of sacred languages as spoken vernaculars that became frozen or fossilized over time as a result of piety. This notion does not fit all cases. For example, though its originators drew upon different Slavic varieties spoken in the ninth century, Church Slavonic was from the start a kind of virtual language found only in sacred books.)
Thus, the languages discussed in this book are best considered fixed, not dead. There is a real difference between the cases of (for example) Sanskrit and Sumerian, or Ecclesiastical Latin and Etruscan. No community uses Sumerian or Etruscan any more; those languages are museum artifacts, housed under glass and studied by a small circle of linguists, archaeologists, and numismatists (cf. Hagège 2009). But some Hindus still read, write, compose, and even converse or broadcast the news in Sanskrit. Every year the Catholic Church mints new Latin words and publishes original Latin texts. Coptic Orthodox Christians continue to offer hymns in Coptic, a language that can be traced back some five millennia, while Zoroastrians maintain Avestan, another language of great antiquity. Unlike Etruscan or Sumerian, the sacred languages treated here still occupy niches in the world’s religious and cultural landscape (Haarmann 2002, 9).
Sacred languages are sometimes referred to as classical languages, which is reasonable, insofar as they are old and venerable and recognized as culturally influential. However, a classical language often provides a literary model to be emulated, which is only really the case now with Classical Arabic. American Catholics do not strive to speak in an obviously Latinate way; Thai Buddhists do not usually labor to compose an email in Pali‐esque prose. Moreover, the designation “classical” evokes images of leather‐bound tomes perused in ivy‐clad towers; it fails to capture the mythical, magical, mystical properties usually ascribed to sacred languages. The term religious classical seems like a good compromise, though it has not caught on beyond the field of sociolinguistics (e.g., Fishman 2006). The best label, though not perfect, is sacred.
Who Says It’s a Sacred Language?
The term sacred language is open to misunderstanding. Believers and scholars, committed insiders and observing comparativists, may refer to this or that language as sacred, but they usually mean different things by it. Religious adherents typically claim that their language – Avestan or Classical Arabic or Church Slavonic – is sacred in an ontological sense: it truly emanates from or connects with the unseen spiritual order in a way that is unlike other languages. For their part, scholarly outsiders would say that there is no inherently sacred language; it is believers who construe this or that language as sacred. In other words, sacred language is a social as opposed to a metaphysical fact (Williams 2008, 126). Whatever one makes of different theological claims about Hebrew, Sanskrit, and so on, what can be said, and empirically verified, is that certain religious communities have in the past and still do treat certain languages as sacrosanct, just as they mark off and solemnize certain books, places, or days of the week as special, inviolate, and holy. A conspectual frame of reference reinforces this point. As Paden says, “One person’s ‘holiest day of the year’ is just another working day for someone else.… Who among the Irish think that the Ganges River is holy?” (1994, x). Our starting point in this journey, then, is that sacredness is in the eye of the believer.
Sacred is the past participle of the Middle English verb sacren (from the Latin sacrare), meaning to consecrate. The word has a transitive, behavioral sense to it: something has been consecrated (Paden 1999, 95n6). Sacred languages, then, are those that have been designated by religious communities for sacred purposes. They have been elevated above ordinary vernaculars through myths, ritual practices, and dedicated institutions. We could say – and perhaps should say, for the sake of correctness and clarity – that these are sacralized or sanctified or consecrated languages. (For stylistic variety we will use all of these terms in addition to sacred.) Approaching things in this way, utilizing verbal forms, enables us to grasp the fact that sacredness is in part an observable social process, a process, moreover, that can be disrupted or reversed.
Sacrality works in circular fashion. Consider gold. The gleaming yellow metal has long inspired fascination and mythmaking. Humans have extolled it above other, lowlier metals, like nickel and chrome. It is reserved for extraordinary objects or occasions. As it turns out, gold is widely used in religious cultus, as in the strips of gold leaf applied to Buddha statues in Thailand or the gilded cupolas of an Orthodox church. Such ritualistic uses further enhance the prestige of gold … which in turn makes gold suitable for ritualistic use. And so on, in iterative fashion. However, this recurring loop can be short‐circuited. When an 18‐karat toilet was installed in the Guggenheim Museum in Manhattan, this was clearly a provocative artistic statement, meant to upend the feelings, ideas, and behaviors customarily associated with the precious metal (see, e.g., New York Times, April 19, 2016). Of course, it will probably take much more than that to disabuse people of their emotional attachment to gold, but the stunt reveals that there is in fact a spell (a kind of social spell) to be broken.
Sacred languages may be thought of as semiotic gold. Within their communities, they are endowed with a mystical allure and are drawn upon for a wide range of religious practices, places, and paraphernalia. They are studied with reverence and care and are defended from threats of blasphemy or sacrilege. For example, some Church Slavonic teaching manuals refuse to use the grammatical charts, tables, and diagrams one normally finds in a Western language textbook – the idea being that such things desacralize the holy living word (e.g., Goriacheva et al. 2013). One index of this special treatment is the fact that sacred languages are often expressed through cantillation (chanting or solemn reading) and calligraphy (beautiful writing), two forms of symbolic heightening that ordinary vernaculars may not be deemed worthy of. Using sacred languages for rituals, scriptures, chants, and inscriptions further emphasizes their sacredness. This is the hidden circuitry of religion: sacred languages are sacred, in part at least, because they are handled sacredly (sancta sancte). But this seemingly closed system can also be short‐circuited, either from within the community (as happened to Latin at Vatican II) or from without (as happened to Church Slavonic during the Soviet era). In these cases, the supposed sacredness of the language was questioned or violently debunked.
One wrinkle is the fact that adherents themselves, especially Christians, are not always of one mind about the sacred nature of a particular language. Christianity is not really a “religion of the book” in the same sense as Judaism or Islam. It does not have one sacred language comparable to Hebrew or Arabic. Indeed, some Christians believe that the notion of a sacred language is inimical to pure Christianity, insisting that Jesus addressed his followers in colloquial terms, that the experience of Pentecost (described in the Acts of the Apostles) validated the world’s Babel of tongues, that the Church has always engaged in translation projects, and so on. Indeed, many would agree with the following distinction:
Islam rests on a text, which is God’s very own Word, and emphasizes the importance of one idiom, Arabic, which is both divine and human. It is the language of the Qur’an, considered uncreated, inimitable, and the seal of prophecy.… On the other hand, Christianity, based on the person of Christ and not so much on a text, has scriptures in two idioms Hebrew and Greek, none of them that of Christ. It should not privilege any language and thereby emphasizes its universal appeal for speakers of any and every idiom.
(Druart 2007, 2)
The key word in the above quotation is “should”: the author may wish that Christianity should not privilege any language, but the fact of the matter is, over the course of its history, different Christian communities have indeed exalted – in varying ways and to varying degrees – certain languages closely affiliated with their own ecclesiastical traditions, including Latin, Church Slavonic, Coptic, and Ge’ez (Tornow 2009, 69–70), though all have also been challenged at times. What this exaltation entails, we will see in the course of this book. But, again, these are observable social and historical facts, and so, for a study such as this, which is concerned with observables (as opposed to metaphysics), it suffices.
Historical Relics?
Sacred languages are important filaments in world history. Hundreds or even thousands of years old, they link generations of believers across time and provide a vital connection to the religion’s origins. Missionaries and migrants have disseminated sacred languages like Arabic, Pali, and Church Slavonic across oceans and continents, profoundly shaping the linguasphere, the network of languages that encircles the earth. Vast repositories of human wisdom are safeguarded in ancient tongues like Pali and Ge’ez. These rich and intricate languages have helped thinkers plumb the depths of the human condition. In the premodern era, sacred languages such as Sanskrit and Latin were used not only in the religious sphere, but became influential vehicles of literature and learning, used for poetry, philosophy, law, medicine, astronomy, and mathematics. They continue to provide intellectual infrastructure for different world religions. The vocabulary of Jewish life, for example – Adonai, Elohim, Torah, Kaddish, Kosher, Mitsvah, Shalom, Tallit, Minyan – remains indebted to the “holy tongue” of Hebrew (Green 1999). Sacred languages have long functioned as lexifiers, furnishing the lexical building blocks for modern‐day vernaculars. The national languages of South and Southeast Asia are studded with Sanskrit and Pali words, while elements of Church Slavonic enhance Russian, Bulgarian, and Serbian, and Ge’ez is a resource for scientific terminology in contemporary Amharic. (It should be noted that the opposite can also be observed: that is, regional languages can influence sacred ones.) Some governments and political parties have supported sacred languages, hoping to benefit from their symbolic cachet, while poets, composers, and typographers have drawn upon the visual and sonic properties of sacred languages for their respective creations.
