Loome Books

 

 

 

 

 

 

Categorized Bibliography
updated June 15, 2024

Note: E.g. "Postscripts (2012 [2010])" lists actual date of 
publication and copyright first, cover date second.

General Reference

  • Newton, Richard.Revisiting Scriptures: Unbinding a Critical Comparative Subfield.” Religion Compass 17/12 (2023): e12480.
  • Parmenter, Dorina Miller.Material Scripture.” In The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Bible and the Arts . Ed. Timothy Beal. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. In Oxford Biblical Studies Online.
  • Rakow, Katja. "Books in Religious Studies: From Relentless Textualism to Embodied Practices." In The Routledge Handbook of Material Religion. Ed. Pooyan Tamimi Arab, Jennifer Scheper Hughes and S. Brent Rodríguez-Plate. New York: Routledge, 2024. 113-27.
  • Watts, James W. “Materiality of Scripture—1 General.” In the Encyclopedia of the Bible and its Reception, Berlin: DeGruyter, 2020. 57-63.
  • Wilkens, Katharina. “Text Acts.” In The Bloomsbury Handbook of the Cultural and Cognitive Aesthetics of Religion. Ed. Anne Koch, Katharina Wilkens. London: Bloomsbury, 2019.

Theories

  • Bell, Catherine. "Scriptures--Text and Then Some." In Theorizing Scriptures: New Critical Orientations to a Cultural Phenomenon. Ed. V. L. Wimbush. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2008. 23-28.
  • Bennett, Gilbert. “Book Magic.” Lecture presented at the University of Virginia, July 26, 1993.
  • Chartier, Roger. Forms and Meanings: Texts, Performances, and Audiences from Codex to Computer. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995.
  • Dietrich, Nikolaus et al. "Layout, Gestaltung, Text-Bild." In Theorie und Systematik materialer Textkulturen. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2023. 69-114.
  • Ganz, David. "Clothing Sacred Scriptures: Materiality and Aesthetics in Medieval Book Religions." In Clothing Sacred Scriptures: Book Art and Book Religion in Christian, Islamic, and Jewish Cultures (ed. D. Ganz and B. Schellewald; Berlin: De Gruyter, 2019), 1-46.
  • Graham, William A. “'Winged Words': Scriptures and Classics as Iconic Texts,Postscripts 6 (2012 [2010]), 7-22 = Watts, Iconic Books and Texts (2013), 33-46.
  • Johannot, Yvonne. Tourner la page: livre, rites et symboles. Millon, 1988.
  • Keane, Webb. "On Spirit Writing: Materialities of Language and the Religious Work of Transduction." Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 19 (2013), 1-17.
  • McLaren, Scott. "The End of Religion and the Death of the Book," Mémoires du livre / Studies in Book Culture 6/2 (2015), online at DOI: 10.7202/1032705ar.
  • Melot, Michel. “Le livre comme forme symbolique,” Conférence tenue dans le cadre de l'Ecole de l'Institut d'histoire du livre, 2004; online.
  • Miller, David L. "The Question of the Book: Religion as Texture." Semeia 40 (1987) 53-64.
  • Morgan, David. Visual Piety: A History and Theory of Popular Religious Images. Berkeley: U. of California Press, 1998.
  • Newton, Richard.Revisiting Scriptures: Unbinding a Critical Comparative Subfield.” Religion Compass 17/12 (2023): e12480.
  • Parmenter, Dorina Miller. “Material Scripture.” In The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Bible and the Arts, ed. T. Beal, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015; and Biblical Studies Online.
  • Parmenter, Dorina Miller. “How the Bible Feels: The Christian Bible as Effective and Affective Object." Postscripts 8 (2017 [2012]), 27-37.
  • Plate, S. Brent. Looking at Words: The Iconicity of the Page, Postscripts 6 (2012 [2010]), 67-82.
  • Plate, S. Brent. "What the Book Arts Can Teach Us About Sacred Texts: The Aesthetic Dimension of Scripture." Postscripts 8 (2017 [2012]), 5-25.
  • Schleicher, Marianne. "Gender and Sacred Text(ure)s: Extending the Field of Sacred Text Studies." Postscripts 14.1 (2023), 1-10.
  • Smith, Jonathan Z. “Religion and the Bible.” Journal of Biblical Literature 128/1 (2009), 5-27.
  • Smith, Wilfred Cantwell. “Scripture as Form and Concept: Their Emergence for the Western World,” in Rethinking Scripture: Essays from a Comparative Perspective. Ed. M. Levering. Albany: SUNY Press, 1989. 29-57.
  • Solibakke, Karl Ivan. The Pride and Prejudice of the Western World: Canonic Memory, Great Books and Archive Fever, Postscripts 6 (2012 [2010]), 261-275 = Watts, Iconic Books and Texts (2013), 347-60.
  • Stam, Deirdre C. Talking about 'Iconic Books' in the Terminology of Book History,” Postscripts 6 (2012 [2010]), 23-38 = Watts, Iconic Books and Texts (2013), 47-60.
  • Stewart, Garrett. “Bookwork as Demediation.” Critical Inquiry 36/2 (2010), 410-57.
  • Watts, James W. “The Three Dimensions of Scriptures.” Postscripts 2 (2008 [2006]), 135-159 = Watts, Iconic Books and Texts (2013), 9-32 = revised in Watts, How and Why Books Matter (2019), 7-29.
  • Watts, James W. "Relic Texts." Iconic Books Blog, June 8, 2012 = Watts, How and Why Books Matter (2019), 55-70.
  • Watts, James W. "Iconic Scriptures from Decalogue to Bible." Mémoires du livre / Studies in Book Culture 6/2 (2015), online at DOI: 10.7202/1032712ar. 
  • Watts, James W. “Scripture' Indexical Touch." Postscripts 8 (2017 [2012]), 173-184 = Sensing Sacred Texts (ed. J. W. Watts; Sheffield: Equinox, 2018), 173-184.
  • Watts, James W. How and Why Books Matter: Essays on the Social Function of Iconic Texts. Sheffield: Equinox, 2019.
  • Watts, James W. "Books as Sacred Beings." Postscripts 10/1-2 (2019), 144-157 = Books as Bodies and as Sacred Beings (ed. J. W. Watts & Y. Yoo; Sheffield: Equinox, 2021), 137-49.
  • Wimbush, Vincent L. "TEXTures, Gestures, Power: Orientation to Radical Excavation." In Theorizing Scriptures: New Critical Orientations to a Cultural Phenomenon. Ed. V. L. Wimbush. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2008. 1-20.

Cross-Cultural Comparisons

  • Bowley, James E. ed. Living Traditions of the Bible: Scripture in Jewish, Christian and Muslim Practice. St. Louis: Chalice Press, 1999.
  • Drogin, Marc. Biblioclasm: The Mythical Origins, Magic Powers, and Perishability of the Written Word. Savage, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1989.
  • Ganz, David and Barbara Schellewald, eds. Clothing Sacred Scriptures: Book Art and Book Religion in Christian, Islamic, and Jewish Cultures. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2019.
  • Graham, William A. “'Winged Words': Scriptures and Classics as Iconic Texts,Postscripts 6 (2012 [2010]), 7-22 = Watts, Iconic Books and Texts (2013), 33-46.
  • Høgel, Christian. “The Authority of Translators: Vendors, Manufacturers, and Materiality in the Transfer of Barlaam and Josaphat along the Silk Road.” In Reframing Authority: the Role of Media and Materiality (ed. Laura Feldt and Christian Høgel; Sheffield: Equinox, 2018), 45-64.
  • Keane, Webb. "On Spirit Writing: Materialities of Language and the Religious Work of Transduction." Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 19 (2013), 1-17.
  • Myrvold, Kristina, ed. The Death of Sacred Texts: Ritual Disposal and Renovation of Texts in World Religions.London: Ashgate, 2010.
  • Myrvold, Kristina and Dorina Miller Parmenter, eds. Miniature Books: The Format and Function of Tiny Religious Texts. Sheffield: Equinox, 2019.
  • Myrvold, Kristina and Dorina Miller Parmenter. "Religious Miniature Books: Introduction and Overview." Postscripts 9/2-3 (2019 [2013]), 93-103 = Myrvold and Parmenter, Miniature Books, 1-11.
  • Parmenter, Dorina Miller. “The Bible as Icon: Myths of the Divine Origins of Scripture,” in Jewish and Christian Scripture as Artifact and Canon (ed. Craig A. Evans and H. Daniel Zacharias; London: T. & T. Clark, 2009), 298-310.
  • Peters, F. E. The Voice, the Word, the Books: The Sacred Scripture of the Jews, Christians, and Muslims. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007.
  • Smith, Wilfred Cantwell. “Scripture as Form and Concept: Their Emergence for the Western World,” in Rethinking Scripture: Essays from a Comparative Perspective. Ed. M. Levering. Albany: SUNY Press, 1989. 29-57.
  • Stordalen, Terje. "What Is a Canon of Scriptures?" In  Mótun menningar = Shaping culture. (ed. Kristinn Ólason, Ólafur Egilsson and Stefán Einar Stefánsson; Reykjavík: Hið íslenska bókmenntafélag, 2012), 15 - 33.
  • Watts, James W. “Desecrating Scriptures,” a case study for the Luce Project in Religion, Media and International Relations at Syracuse University, 2009 = Watts, How and Why Books Matter (2019), 83-98.
  • Watts, James W. "Disposing of Non-Disposable Texts." In Myrvold, Death of Sacred Texts (2010), 147-60 = Watts, How and Why Books Matter (2019), 167-188.
  • Watts, James W., ed. Iconic Books and Texts. Sheffield: Equinox, 2013.
  • Watts, James W., ed. Sensing Sacred Texts. Sheffield: Equinox, 2018.
  • Watts, James W. "Ritualizing the Size of Books." Postscripts 9/2-3 (2019 [2013]), 104-113 = Myrvold and Parmenter, Miniature Books, 12-21.
  • Watts, James W. and Yohan Yoo, eds. Books as Bodies and as Sacred Beings. Sheffield: Equinox, 2021.
  • Yoo, Yohan. Korean Religious Texts in Iconic and Performative Rituals. CRIPT. Sheffield: Equinox, 2024.

Books in Art

  • Adler, Laure, Stefan Bollman and Jean Torrent, Les femmes qui lisent sont dangereuses ("Reading Women Are Dangerous"), Flammarion, 2006, new ed. 2015.
  • Adler, Laure, Stefan Bollman and Jean Torrent, Les femmes qui lisent sont de plus en plus dangereuses ("Reading Women are More & More Dangerous") Flammarion, 2012.
  • Allen, James Smith. In the Public Eye: a History of Reading in Modern France, 1800-1940. Princeton University Press, 1991.  Chapter Five: “Artistic Images.”
  • Bared, Robert. Le livre dans la peinture, préface de Pascal Quignard, Paris, Citadelles & Mazenod, 2015.
  • Brown, Kathryn. Women Readers in French Painting 1870-1890 . Ashgate, 2012. Introduction online
  • Dillon, Amanda. "Be Your Own Scribe: Bible Journalling and the New Illuminators of the Densely-Printed Page." In From Scrolls to Scrolling: Sacred Texts, Materiality, and Dynamic Media Cultures (ed. B. A. Anderson; De Gruyter, 2020),153-162.
  • Docherty, Linda J.Women as Readers: Visual Interpretations,” Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society 107 (October 1997): 335-88.
  • Ganz, David. "Touching Books, Touching Art: Tactile Dimensions of Sacred Books in the Medieval West." Postscripts 8 (2017 [2012]), 81-113.
  • Hanebutt-Benz, Eva-Maria. Die Kunst des Lesens. Lesemöbel und Leseverhalten vom Mittelalter bis zur Gegenwart, unter Mitarbeit von Monika Estermann, Beiträge von Bernhard E. Burdek, Dirk H. Verldhuis, Frankfurt am Main: Museum für Kunst-handwerk, 1985. .
  • Harvey, John. The Bible as Visual Culture: When Text Becomes Image. Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix, 2013.
  • Homrighausen, Jonathan. “Words Made Flesh: Incarnational, Multisensory Exegesis in Donald Jackson’s Biblical Art,” Religion and Art 23 (2019), 240-272. Doi:10.1163/15685292-02303003. 
  • Inmann, Christiane. Forbidden Fruit : a History of Women and Books in Art. Prestel, 2009.
  • Lerner, Loren. “William Notman’s Portrait Photographs of Girls Reading from the 1860s to 1880s: A Pictorial Analysis Based on Contemporary Writings.” Papers of The Bibliographical Society of Canada 47/1 (2009), online. 
  • Long, Elizabeth. Book Clubs: Women and the Uses of Reading in Everyday Life, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003. Chapter 1.
  • Nies, Fritz. Bahn und Bett und Blutenduft. Eine Reise durch die Welt der Leserbilder, Darmstadt, Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1991 (translated as Imagerie de la lecture. Exploration d’un patrimoine millénaire de l’Occident, Paris, Presses universitaires de France, 1995).
  • Ouvry-Vial, Brigitte. "Corps du livre et ruine du corps” in Le livre au corps (ed. Alain Milon et Marc Perelman; Paris: Presses de l’Université Paris-Ouest, 2012), online.
  •  Plate, S. Brent. "What the Book Arts Can Teach Us About Sacred Texts: The Aesthetic Dimension of Scripture." Postscripts 8 (2017 [2012]), 5-25 = Watts, Sensing Sacred Texts, 5-25.
  • Stewart, Garrett. The Look of Reading: Book, Painting, Text. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006.
  • Tinti, Paolo. "L’eloquente silenzio della comunicazione scritta nei trompe-l’oeil dell’età moderna," Paratesto (2017), 119-135.
  • Wall, Anthony. La place du lecteur. Livres et lectures dans la peinture française du XVIIIe siècle. Rennes, Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2014.
  • Warner, William. “Staging Readers Reading.” Online 
  • Zanker, Paul. The Mask of Socrates: the Image of the Intellectual in Antiquity. Tr. A. Shapiro. Berkeley: University of California, 1995.
  • Exhibition and sales catalogs:
    • Das Buch in der Kunst - die Kunst im Buch. Graphik-Salon Gerhart Söhn, 1984.
    • il libro come tema (exhibition catalogue) National Gallery of Modern Art in Rome (sept- nov 2006)
    • Leggere, leggere, leggere! Libri, giornali, lettere nella pittura dell’Ottocento, a cura di Matteo Bianchi, Milano, Silvana, 2015.
  •  Library and museum collections:
    • Antwerp City Library: Former Antwerp city librarian Ger Schmook (1898-1985) collected a huge set of photocopies of images of books in art.
    • Catalog of Bookbindings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art” by Mindell Dubansky of photographs and descriptions of bindings and images of books depicted in the art works of the Met: [v. 9.] European Paintings, Representations of the book in art. -- [v. 10.] The Lehman Collection, Representations of the book in art.
  •  Online collections:
  • Ancient Near Eastern & Israelite

    • Bahrani, Zainab. The Graven Image: Representation in Babylonia and Assyria. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003.
    • Berge, Kare. "Mystified Authority: Legitimating Leadership through 'Lost Books'." In Leadership, Social Memory and Judean Discourse in the 5-2 Centuries BCE. Ed. D. V. Edelman and E. Ben Zvi. Sheffield: Equinox, 2016. 41-56.
    • Carr, David M. Writing on the Tablet of the Heart: Origins of Scripture and Literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.
    • Casson, Lionel. Libraries in the Ancient World. New Haven: Yale, 2001.
    • Frevel, Christian. "On Instant Scripture and Proximal Texts: Some Insights into the Sensual Materiality of Texts and their Ritual Roles in the Hebrew Bible and Beyond." Postscripts 8 (2017 [2012]), 57-79 = Watts, Sensing Sacred Texts, 57-79.
    • Levtow, Nathaniel B. "Text Production and Destruction in Ancient Israel: Ritual and Political Dimensions." In Saul M. Olyan, ed. Social Theory and the Study of Israelite Religion. Atlanta: SBL, 2011. 111-39.
    • Levtow, Nathaniel B. “Text Destruction and Iconoclasm in the Hebrew Bible and the Ancient Near East.” In May, Iconoclasm and Text Destruction, 311-362.
    • Liebermann, Rosanne. "Drinkable Ink or Womb-Destroying Words? A Solution for Suspected Adultery in Numbers 5:11–31." Postscripts 14.1 (2023), 38-64.
    • Mandell, Alice and Jeremy Smoak. “Reading Beyond Literacy, Writing Beyond Epigraphy.” MAARAV 22.1–2 (2018): 79-112.
    • Mandell, Alice. “Writing as a Source of Ritual Authority: The High Priest’s Body as a Priestly Text in the Tabernacle-Building Story,” Journal of Biblical Literature 141/1 (2022), 43-64.
    • May, Natalie N., ed. Iconoclasm and Text Destruction in the Ancient Near East and Beyond. Chicago: Oriental Institute, 2012.
    • May, Natalie N. “Iconoclasm and Text Destruction in the Ancient Near East.” In May, Iconoclasm and Text Destruction, 11-32.
    • Ritner, Robert K. “Killing the Image, Killing the Essence: The Destruction of Text and Figures in Ancient Egyptian Thought, Ritual, and ‘Ritualized History’.” In May, Iconoclasm and Text Destruction, 395-406.
    • Rochberg, Francesca. Heavenly Writing: Divination, Horoscopy, and Astronomy in Mesopotamian culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.
    • Scurlock, JoAnn. “Getting Smashed at the Victory Celebration, or What Happened to Esarhaddon’s so-called Vassal Treaties and Why.” In May, Iconoclasm and Text Destruction, 175-186.
    • Stordalen, Terje. “'An Almost Canonical Entity': Text Artifacts and Aurality in Early Biblical Literature.” In Houses Full of All Good Things: Essays in Memory of Timo Veijola (ed. J. Pakkala and M. Nissinen; Helsinki: Finnish Exegetical Society, 2008), 666-83.
    • Uehlinger, Christoph. Images As Media: Sources for the cultural history of the Near East and Eastern Mediterranean (1st millennium BCE). OBO 175. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2000.
    • Watts, James W. Ancient Iconic Texts and Scholarly Expertise, Postscripts 6 (2012 [2010]), 331-334 = Watts, Iconic Books and Texts, 407-419.
    • Watts, James W. "Iconic Scriptures from Decalogue to Bible." Mémoires du livre / Studies in Book Culture 6/2 (2015), online at DOI: 10.7202/1032712ar. 
    • Watts, James W. "From Ark of the Covenant to Torah Scroll: Ritualizing Israel's Iconic Texts," in Ritual Innovation in the Hebrew Bible and Early Judaism (ed. Nathan MacDonald, BZAW 468, Berlin: De Gruyter, 2016), 21-34.
    • Watts, James W. Understanding the Pentateuch as a Scripture. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Blackwell, 2017.
    • Watts, James W. Understanding the Bible as a Scripture in History, Culture, and Religion. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Blackwell, 2021.
    • Widengren, Geo. The Ascension of the Apostle and the Heavenly Book (King and Saviour III). Uppsala: Lundequistska /Leipzig & Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1950.
    • Woods, Christopher. “Mutilation of Image and Text in Early Sumerian Sources.” In May, Iconoclasm and Text Destruction, 33-56.
    • Yamauchi, Edwin. “Scripture as Talisman, Specimen, and Dragoman.” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 50/3 (2007), 3-30.

    Second Temple and Rabbinic Judaism

    • Camp, Claudia V. Possessing the Iconic Book: Ben Sira as Case Study, Postscripts 6 (2012 [2010]), 309-329 = Watts, Iconic Books and Texts, 389-406.
    • Cohn, Yehudah B. Tangled Up In Text: Tefillin and the Ancient World. Providence: Brown Judaic Studies, 2008.
    • Elitzur, Zeev. Between the Textual and the Visual: Borderlines of Late Antique Book Iconicity, Postscripts 6 (2012 [2010]), 83-99 = Watts, Iconic Books and Texts, 135-150.
    • Elitzur, Zeev. "Between Oral and Written Revelation from Jubilees to the Amoraim" (Hebrew), Sinai 79/3 (2014), 291–325.
    • Goodman, Martin. “Sacred Scripture and ‘Defiling the Hands’,” Journal of Theological Studies 41 (1990), 99-107.
    • Green, William Scott. “Scripture in Classical Judaism.” In The Encyclopedia of Judaism. Ed. J. Neusner, S. Peck and W. S. Green. New York: Continuum/Leiden: Brill, 1999. 1302-1309.
    • Tigay, Jeffrey H. "The Torah Scroll and God’s Presence." In From Built by Wisdom, Established by Understanding. Essays on Biblical and Near Eastern Literature in Honor of Adele Berlin. Ed. M.L. Grossman. Bethesda, MD: University Press of Maryland, 2013. 323-40.
    • Toorn, Karel van der. “The Iconic Book: Analogies Between the Babylonian Cult of Images and the Veneration of the Torah,” in The Image and the Book: Iconic Cults, Aniconism and the Rise of Book Religion in Israel and the Ancient Near East, ed. K. van der Toorn. Louven: Peeters, 1997, 229-248.
    • Watts, James W.Ritual Legitimacy and Scriptural Authority.” Journal of Biblical Literature 124/3 (2005), 401-417.

    Greco-Roman 

    • Immerwahr, H. R. “Book Rolls on Attic Vases,” in Classical, Mediaeval and Renaissance Studies in Honour of B. L. Ullman. Ed. C. Henderson, Jr. Rome: Edizioni di storia e letteratura, 1964. 18-19.
    • Immerwahr, H. R. “More Book Rolls on Attic Vases,” Antike Kunst 16 (1973) 145.
    • Meyer, Elizabeth A. Legitimacy and Law in the Roman World: Tabulae in Roman Belief and Practice. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004.
    • Thomas, Rosalind. “Beyond the rationalist view of writing: between ‘literate’ and ‘oral’,” in Literacy and Orality in Ancient Greece. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992, 74-100.
    • Yunis, Harvey, ed. Written Texts and the Rise of Literate Culture in Ancient Greece. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003.

    Early, medieval and early modern Christian

    • Boureau, Anne. “Franciscan Piety and Voracity.” In R. Chartier, ed. The Culture of Print. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989.
    • Brown, Michelle P. The Lindisfarne Gospels: Society, Spirituality and the Scribe. London: British Library, 2003.
    • Brown, Michelle P. Images to be Read and Words to be Seen: The Iconic Role of the Early Medieval Book, Postscripts 6 (2012 [2010]), 39-66 = Watts, Iconic Books and Texts, 93-118.
    • Bruyn, Theodore de. Making Amulets Christian: Artefacts, Scribes, and Contexts. Oxford: Oxford University Pres, 2017.
    • Bücheler, Anna. Ornament As Argument: Textile Pages and Textile Metaphors in Medieval German Manuscripts. Berlin: DeGruyter, 2019.
    • Burton-Christie, Douglas. The Word in the Desert: Scripture and the Quest for Holiness in Early Christian Monasticism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993.
    • Cressey, D. “Books as Totems in Seventeenth-Century England and New England.” Journal of Library History 21/1 (1986) 92-106.
    • Frese, Tobias, Lisa Horstmann, and Franziska Wenig, eds. Sakrale Schriftbilder: Zur Ikonischen Präsenz des Geschriebenen Im Mittelalterlichen Kirchenraum. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2024 (open access).
    • Ganz, David. "Touching Books, Touching Art: Tactile Dimensions of Sacred Books in the Medieval West." Postscripts 8 (2017 [2012]), 81-113
      = Watts, Sensing Sacred Texts, 81-113.
    • Ganz, David. "Clothing Sacred Scriptures: Materiality and Aesthetics in Medieval Book Religions." In Clothing Sacred Scriptures: Book Art and Book Religion in Christian, Islamic, and Jewish Cultures (ed. D. Ganz and B. Schellewald; Berlin: De Gruyter, 2019), 1-46.
    • Graham, M. Patrick. The Tell-Tale Iconic Book, Postscripts 6 (2012 [2010]), 117-141 = Watts, Iconic Books and Texts, 165-186.
    • Gutjahr, Paul C. An American Bible: A History of the Good Book in the United States, 1777-1880. 2nd ed. Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 2002.
    • Hamel, Christopher de. The Book: A History of the Bible. New York: Phaidon, 2001.
    • Hatch, Nathan O. and Mark A. Noll, eds. The Bible in America: Essays in Cultural History. New York: Oxford University Press, 1982.
    • Humfress, Caroline. “Judging by the Book: Christian Codices and Late Antique Legal Culture.” In William E. Klingshirn and Linda Safran, eds. The Early Christian Book. Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 2007.
    • Johnson, Eric J. "Breaking and Remaking Scripture:The Life, Death, and Afterlife of the Hornby-Cockerell Bible." Manuscript Studies 4/2 (2019), 270-333.
    • Kessler, Herbert L. "The Book as Icon." In In the Beginning: Bibles Before the Year 1000. Ed. Michelle P. Brown. Washington, DC: Smithsonian, 2006. 77-103, 222-244.
    • Knight, Jeffrey Todd. “Furnished' for Action: Renaissance Books as Furniture,” Book History 12 (2009), 37-73.
    • Koerner, Joseph Leo. The Reformation of the Image. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2003.
    • Larson, Jason T.The Gospels as Imperialized Sites of Memory in Late Ancient Christianity, Postscripts 6 (2012 [2010]), 291-307 = Watts, Iconic Books and Texts, 373-88.
    • Lowden, John. “The Word Made Visible: The Exterior of the Early Christian Book as Visual Argument.” In William E. Klingshirn and Linda Safran, eds. The Early Christian Book. Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 2007. 13-47.
    • Malley, Brian. “The Bible in British Folklore.” Postscripts 2 (2008 [2006]), 241-272 = Watts, Iconic Books and Texts, 315-44.
    • Malley, Brian. "The Bible in North American Folklore." In Vincent Wimbush, ed. Scripturalizing the Human: the Written as the Political. New York: Routledge, 2015.
    • Mortensen, Lars Boje. “The Material and the Implied Library: Book Collections, Media History, and Authority in Twelfth Century Papal Europe.” In Reframing Authority: the Role of Media and Materiality (ed. Laura Feldt and Christian Høgel; Sheffield: Equinox, 2018), 65-84.
    • O’Sullivan, Orlaith, ed. The Bible as Book: The Reformation. New Castle, DE.: Oak Knoll Press; London: The British Library, 2000.
    • Parmenter, Dorina Miller. “The Iconic Book: The Image of the Bible in Early Christian Rituals.” Postscripts 2 (2008 [2006]), 160-189 = Watts, Iconic Books and Texts, 63-92.
    • Parmenter, Dorina Miller. “The Bible as Icon: Myths of the Divine Origins of Scripture,” in Jewish and Christian Scripture as Artifact and Canon (ed. Craig A. Evans and H. Daniel Zacharias; London: T. & T. Clark, 2009), 298-310.
    • Parmenter, Dorina Miller."A Fitting Ceremony: Christian Concerns for Bible Disposal." In Myrvold, Death of Sacred Texts (2010), 55-70.
    • Parmenter, Dorina Miller.Ritualizing Christian Iconic Texts,” in The Oxford Handbook of Ritual and Worship in the Bible (ed. Sam Balentine; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020), in Oxford Handbooks Online.
    • Poleg, Eyal. "Memory, Performance, and Change: The Psalms’ Layout in Late Medieval and Early Modern Bibles." In From Scrolls to Scrolling: Sacred Texts, Materiality, and Dynamic Media Cultures (ed. B. A. Anderson; De Gruyter, 2020), 119-151.
    • Rainer, Thomas. "The Gender of Purple Manuscripts and the Makeup of Sacred Scriptures." Postscripts 14.1 (2023), 95-128.
    • Rainer, Thomas. “Der symbolische Buchgebrauch oder »How to Hold a Bible«,” in Das Buch als Handlungsangebot (ed. Ursula Rautenberg und Ute Schneider; Stuttgart: Anton Hiersemann Verlag, 2023), 422-445.
    • Rapp, Claudia. “Holy Texts, Holy Men and Holy Scribes: Aspects of Scriptural Holiness in Late Antiquity.” In William E. Klingshirn and Linda Safran, eds. The Early Christian Book. Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 2007. 194-222..
    • Shamir, Avner. English Bibles on Trial: Bible Burning and the Desecration of Bibles, 1640-1800. New York: Routledge, 2017.
    • Sharpe, John, and Kimberly Van Kampen, eds. The Bible as Book: The Manuscript Tradition. New Castle, DE: Oak Knoll Press; London: The British Library, 1998.
    • Siekierski, Konrad. "Gospel Books as Sacred Objects: The Veneration of Religious Manuscripts in Armenian Christianity." In Inspiration of God: the One-and-One-Half Millenia of the Armenian Bible and Religious Practice (ed. B. Kovacs and V. Tachjian; tr. B. Fejervari; Budapest: L'Harmattan, 2020), 69-75.
    • Siekierski, Konrad. "Scripts, Saints, and Scientists: The Social Life of Gospel Books in an Armenian Museum." Journal of Orthodox Christian Studies 4/1 (2021), 93-114.
    • Watts, James W. Understanding the Bible as a Scripture in History, Culture, and Religion. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Blackwell, 2021.

    Jewish

    • Barco, Javier del. "From Scroll to Codex: Dynamics of Text Layout Transformation in the Hebrew Bible." In From Scrolls to Scrolling: Sacred Texts, Materiality, and Dynamic Media Cultures (ed. B. A. Anderson; De Gruyter, 2020), 91-118.
    • Cohn, Yehudah B. Tangled Up In Text: Tefillin and the Ancient World. Providence: Brown Judaic Studies, 2008.
    • Elitzur, Zeev. Between the Textual and the Visual: Borderlines of Late Antique Book Iconicity, Postscripts 6 (2012 [2010]), 83-99 = Watts, Iconic Books and Texts, 135-150.
    • Gold, Penny Shine. Making the Bible Modern: Children’s Bibles and Jewish Education in Twentieth-Century America. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2004.
    • Green, William Scott. “Scripture in Classical Judaism.” In The Encyclopedia of Judaism. Ed. J. Neusner, S. Peck and W. S. Green. New York: Continuum/Leiden: Brill, 1999. 1302-1309.
    • Goldstein, G. M. “Torah Ornaments.” In The Oxford Dictionary of the Jewish Religion. Ed. Werblowsky and Wigoden. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997. 698.
    • Homrighausen, Jonathan. “'Then Queen Esther Daughter of Abihail Wrote': Gendered Agency and Ritualized Writing in Jewish Scriptural Practice." Postscripts 14.1 (2023), 129-61.
    • Langer, Ruth. "From Study of Scripture to a Reenactment of Sinai: The Emergence of the Synagogue Torah Service," Worship 72:1 (1998): 43-67.
    • Outhwaite, Ben. "The Sefer Torah and Jewish Orthodoxy in the Islamic Middle Ages." In From Scrolls to Scrolling: Sacred Texts, Materiality, and Dynamic Media Cultures (ed. B. A. Anderson; De Gruyter, 2020), 63-90.
    • Picus, Daniel. “Reading Material: Textual Objects as Ritual Artifacts in Tannaitic Literature.” AJS Review 48/1 (2024), 146-172.
    • Rainer, Thomas. "Adoring God’s Name: Images of the Torah Case (Tik) and its Erasure in Medieval Jewish and Christian Manuscripts."
      In Clothing Sacred Scriptures: Book Art and Book Religion in Christian, Islamic, and Jewish Cultures (ed. D. Ganz and B. Schellewald; Berlin: De Gruyter, 2019),81-102.
    • Sabar, Shalom. “Torah and Magic: The Torah Scroll and its Appurtenances as Magical Objects in Traditional Jewish Culture.” European Journal of Jewish Studies 3 (2009), 135-70.
    • Schleicher, Marianne. “Artifactual and Hermeneutical Use of Scripture in Jewish Tradition,” in Jewish and Christian Scripture as Artifact and Canon (ed. Craig A. Evans and H. Daniel Zacharias; London: T. & T. Clark, 2009), 48-65.
    • Schleicher, Marianne. "Accounts of a Dying Scroll: On Jewish Handling of Sacred Texts in Need of Restoration or Disposal." In Myrvold, Death of Sacred Texts (2010), 11-30.
    • Schleicher, Marianne."Engaging All the Senses: On Multi-sensory Stimulation in the Process of Making and Inaugurating a Torah Scroll." Postscripts 8 (2017 [2012]), 39-56 = Watts, Sensing Sacred Texts, 39-56.
    • Schleicher, Marianne. On the Functions of Miniaturizing Books in Jewish Religion. Postscripts 9/2-3 (2019 [2013), 114-38 = Myrvold and Parmenter, Miniature Books, 22-44.
    • Schleicher, Marianne. "Jewish Women and Sacred Text(ure)s: Making Women’s Religious Agency in Jewish Book Culture Intelligible." Postscripts 14.1 (2023), 65-94.
    • Stern, David. The Jewish Bible: A Material History. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2017.
    • Stolow, Jeremy. Orthodox by Design: Judaism, Print Politics, and the ArtScroll Revolution. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010.
    • Watts, James W. Understanding the Pentateuch as a Scripture. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Blackwell, 2017.
    • Watts, James W.Ritualizing Iconic Jewish Texts,” in The Oxford Handbook of Ritual and Worship in the Bible (ed. Sam Balentine; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020), in Oxford Handbooks Online.
    • Wolfson, Elliot R. "Iconicity of the Text: Reification of Torah
      and the Idolatrous Impulse of Zoharic Kabbalah." Jewish Studies Quarterly 11 (2004), 215-242.

    Indian

    Buddhist

    Chinese

    Korean

    Muslim


    Sikh


    Modern Print Culture


    Indigenous, Colonial & Post-Colonial

    • Arnold, Philip P. “Black Elk and Book Culture.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 67 (1999) 85-111.
    • Arnold, Philip P. “Paper Rituals and the Mexican landscape.” In Representing Aztec Ritual: Performance, Text, and Image in the Work of Sahagún. Edited by Eloise Quiñones Keber. Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 2002. 227-250.
    • Arnold, Philip P.Indigenous 'Texts' of Inhabiting the Land: George Washington’s Wampum Belt and the Canandaigua Treaty, Postscripts 6 (2012 [2010]), 277-289 = Watts, Iconic Books and Texts, 361-372.
    • Bacigalupo, Ana Mariella. Thunder Shaman: Making History with Mapuche Spirits in Chile and Patagonia. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2016.
    • Chireau, Yvonne P. "Conjuring Scriptures and Engendering Healing Traditions." In Theorizing Scriptures: New Critical Orientations to a Cultural Phenomenon. Ed. V. L. Wimbush. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2008. 119-27.
    • Engelke, Matthew. A Problem of Presence: Beyond Scripture in an African Church. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007.
    • Jørgensen, Emma C. Sørlie. "Old Norse Women’s Use of Sacred Textures in Crisis Situations." Postscripts 14.1 (2023), 11-37.
    • Newton, Richard. "Reading Alex Haley’s Roots: Toward An Anthropology Of Scriptures." Postscripts 9 (2018 [2013]), 1-26.
    • Watts, James W. Ancient Iconic Texts and Scholarly Expertise, Postscripts 6 (2012 [2010]), 331-334.
    • Wimbusch, Vincent. White Men's Magic: Scripturalization as Slavery. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012.


    American Christianity & Law 

    • Arnold, Philip P.Indigenous 'Texts' of Inhabiting the Land: George Washington’s Wampum Belt and the Canandaigua Treaty, Postscripts 6 (2012 [2010]), 277-289 = Watts, Iconic Books and Texts, 361-372.
    • Beckley, Rachel E. C. “'I Left My Bible At Home…': Evangelical Women’s Bodies as Biblical Text in the Workplace during the 1980s." Postscripts 14.1 (2023), 162-76.
    • Dalton, Russell W. Children's Bibles in America: A Reception History of the Story of Noah's Ark in US Chidlren's Bibles. London: Bloomsburgy T&T Clark, 2016.
    • Goff, Philip, Arthur E. Farnsley III, and Peter J. Thuesen, eds. The Bible in American Life. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017
    • Gold, Penny Shine. Making the Bible Modern: Children’s Bibles and Jewish Education in Twentieth-Century America. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2004.
    • Kammen, Michael. A Machine that Would Go of Itself: The Constitution in American Culture. New York: Knopf, 1986.
    • Malley, Brian. "The Bible in North American Folklore." In Vincent Wimbush, ed. Scripturalizing the Human: the Written as the Political. New York: Routledge, 2015.
    • Marty, Martin. “America's Iconic Book,” in Humanizing America's Iconic Book. Ed. Gene M. Tucker and Douglas A. Knight. Chico: Scholars Press, 1982. 1-23.
    • Marty, Martin. “Scripturality: The Bible as Icon in the Republic,” chapter 7 in Religion and Republic: The American Circumstance (Boston: Beacon Press, 1987), 140-65.
    • McDannell, Colleen. Material Christianity: Religion and Popular Culture in America. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995, chapter 3.
    • Morgan, David, ed. Icons of American Protestantism: the Art of Warner Sallman. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996.
    • Parmenter, Dorina Miller. "Small Things of Greatest Consequence: Miniature Bibles in America." Postscripts 9/2-3 (2019 [2013]), 150-168. = Myrvold and Parmenter, Miniature Books, 55-71.
    • Parmenter, Dorina Miller. "Being the Bible: Sacred Bodies and Iconic Books in Bring Your Bible to School Day." Postscripts 10/1-2 (2019), 53-69 = Books as Bodies and as Sacred Beings (ed. J. W. Watts & Y. Yoo; Sheffield: Equinox, 2021), 51-66.
    • Perry, Seth.Bible formats and Bindings,” in The Oxford Handbook of the Bible in America (ed. Paul Gutjahr; Oxford, 2017). In Oxford Handbooks Online.
    • Watts, James W. “Ten Commandments Monuments and the Rivalry of Iconic Texts.” Journal of Religion & Society 6 (2004), online = Watts, How and Why Books Matter, 117-134.
    • Watts, James W. Ancient Iconic Texts and Scholarly Expertise, Postscripts 6 (2012 [2010]), 331-334= Watts, Iconic Books and Texts, 407-419 = Watts, How and Why Books Matter, 99-116, 161-166.


    Modern & Postmodern 


    Digital

    Calligraphy & Typography


    Textual Performance and Expression
    Iconic Books Pedagogy


     

     

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