One Text in Two Bodies

Reading scriptural texts aloud to congregations is a common practice in many religious traditions, yet receives little scholarly attention. This article encourages more scholarship on this phenomenon by focusing on the ritual manipulation of books of scriptures while reading. It analyses the social force of this religious practice by combining a theory of ritualizing scriptures in three dimensions with studies of oral readings by literacy scholars. Reading visible scriptures aloud to congregations mixes expressive and iconic ritualization, which makes it both inspiring and legitimizing. It also combines the divine voice of scripture and the community’s voice in the reader, whose voice speaks for both. Religious communities use scriptural expression as a means to include more people into congregational leadership. Literacy studies document how group reading experiences cast oral readers as representing the audience as much as the author. In reading aloud to a group, the reader expresses the group’s voice. Oral readings of visible scriptures can therefore inspire people and foster a sense of congregational unity through the ritual acceptance of scriptural authority.