Boekenstijn-Dronkert, T.C.M.
“Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet,
Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God's great Judgment Seat;
But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth,
When two strong men stand face to face, tho’ they come from the ends of the earth!”
- Rudyard Kipling, Ballad of East and West
In many religions canonical texts, also often called ‘holy scriptures’,1 play an important role. These texts are in many cases accorded almost absolute authority. A few years ago a conference in Leiden, the Netherlands, was devoted to this theme of the relationship between canonical texts and religious authority. J.G. Platvoet contributed a paper on the task of the contemporary study of religion, especially in relation to the theme of canonisation, i.e. the attribution of authority to canonical texts.2 In this paper he developed a tool for the comparative study of canonization and de-canonisation in the history of religions.
Platvoet argues that in the historical process of Christian canonisation several aspects and phases of development can be distinguished. These aspects should be abstracted and transformed into an analytical tool that can be used to investigate other religions that do not make use of concepts such as canonisation in the same way as the Christian religion does but have gone through processes that are more or less similar.3 Such a comparative investigation could be useful, because general knowledge about the process in which people ascribe absolute authority to these texts could be abstracted and used to deepen our understanding of the process of canonisation and the dynamics during one specific phase in this process.
In his paper Platvoet states that the analysis of those religions in which canonical texts play a crucial role has at least areas of interest for the comparative study of religions. The first is the relation of adherents of different canonical religions to the texts or text corpora to which they ascribe absolute authority. The second is the comparison of several aspects of these canonical texts themselves – for example, the ways in which distribution of the texts took place.4
In a comparative investigation of the relation of adherents to texts which, to them, signify the standard for right faith, analytical questions can be used to trace the similarities and differences between religions with ‘canonical’ traditions. One of the most important questions within this framework is: How did people attribute authority to canonical texts?5
The answer to this question is the cornerstone of a description of the process of canonisation. Canonical texts are said to be and are regarded as authoritative. However, if this claim is not accepted and if adherents no longer regard these texts as authoritative and meaningful for their faith, the role of canonical texts in religious traditions will be restricted to a minimum.
The question itself of why people ascribe authority to canonical texts evokes a whole new field of investigation and many other questions. One such issue is how and on the basis of which arguments the authority of canonical texts is defended and the extent and limits of this authority.
In this context we can mention R. Fernhout’s Canonical Texts: Bearers of Absolute Authority.6 Fernhout compares several aspects of the process of canonisation in various traditions. He also investigates the development of the ascription of authority to canonical texts in order to track down analogies in the development of four canons. To demonstrate this, he introduces the concept ‘entelechy.’7 This concept, drawn from the metaphor of the development from a seed into plant and then into fruit, entails that an earlier phase contains the potential that is actualized in a later phase, which again contains a further potential that is actualized in the succeeding phase.
Notes
1 Cf. W.C. Smith, What is Scripture? A Comparative Approach, 3rd ed. (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993), IX. Although one could use the latter term instead of the former, we prefer the term ‘canonical texts,' since this includes oral traditions as well.
2 J.G. Platvoet, “Van vóór tot voorbij de ene maatstaf; over de canonische fase in de algemene godsdienstgeschiedenis,” in K.D. Jenner, and G.A. Wiegers, (eds), Heilig boek en religieus gezag: Ontstaan en functioneren van canonieke tradities (Kampen: Kok, 1998),
pp. 93-125.
3 Platvoet, 1998, 95.
4 Platvoet, 1998, 102.
5 Platvoet, 1998, 103.
6 R. Fernhout, Canonical Texts: Bearers of Absolute Authority. Bible, Koran, Veda, Tipit.aka (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1994).
7 Fernhout, 1994, 9.
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