Georgia On My Mind: The Invisible Power of Typeface

(cross-posted with the Iconic Books blog)

My thanks to my colleagues who made sure I saw the article in The Week from a few days ago, "How Typeface Influences the Way We Read and Think."

The insight here is a helpful one for those interested in materialist questions in the study of Scriptures: namely, that the visual presentation of the words themselves create a psychological effect in the reader, leading to increased credulity (in the case, say, of Georgia) or outright derision (as in the case of Comic Sans).

The only book on the subject of which I am aware is Graphic Design and Bible Reading: Exploratory Studies in the Typographical Representation of the Text of Scripture in Translation, by E. R. Wendland and J. P. Louw. Sadly, it looks like it has gone out of print, though I do have a copy if anyone would like to do some more exploration.

Besides that one text, I have not done much formal study of typefaces in Scripture; but I am pretty sure S. Brent Rodriguez Plate has, and I would love to hear his response to this (and other responses, as well).

The Magisterium, delivered right to your door

In the May 7, 2010 issue of Commonweal, Kenneth Woodward offers an extended reflection, "Church of the 'Times': A Dissent," in which he examines the weltanschauung of the editors and staff of the New York Times. I will leave it to my readers to judge for themselves the legitimacy of his overall claims about the newspaper's purported allergy to religions (particularly the Roman Catholic Church). I think that is a worthy conversation to have, though I am not sure this is the forum in which to have it.

However, this one paragraph caught my attention and I wanted to take a few minutes here to make a comment or two about the issue he raises (since I think this is the proper forum for such an issue):

...like the Church of Rome, the Times exercises a powerful magisterium or teaching authority through its editorial board. There is no issue, local or global, on which these (usually anonymous) writers do not pronounce with a papal-like editorial “we.” Like the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the editorial board is there to defend received truth as well as advance the paper’s political, social, and cultural agendas. One can no more imagine a Times editorial opposing any form of abortion—to take just one of that magisterium’s articles of faith—than imagine a papal encyclical in favor.

In my doctoral dissertation, The Covert Magisterium: Theology, Textuality and the Question of Scripture, I make the suggestion that Bible publishers (and the larger corporations of which many of them are now a part) exercise a de facto magisterial authority over the shape and form of printed Bibles. That, in itself, is a relatively uncontroversial claim.

What interests me about Woodward's assertion above is the ideological power that is brought to bear when these magisterial effects are wedded with certain types of material objects. That editors and corporations control the content (and therefore, to an arguable extent, the possible readings) of books and newspapers is plain. But the Bible is not an ordinary book, just as the Times is no ordinary newspaper, in terms of the relative cultural power wielded by both.

By virtue (is this the proper word?) of their respective material presentations, the editorial decisions that go into the construction of an imprint of a Bible version or an issue of the Times are of an elevated ideological nature. Words in the New York Times are different, in their weight and influence, than similar words found in the Chattanooga Times, for example.

Similarly, though I bemoan the fact, I can cite numerous instances when my students (undergraduate and masters level, both) have pointed to a footnote, chapter heading, or editorial introduction in their various "study Bibles" and quoted it with the authority of Scripture itself. These aspects of printed Scripture that (arguably) are not Scripture perform as a sort of "blurred space" at the margins of scriptural authority. Gerard Genette calls these sorts of additionals the "paratext," and he (along with Phillipe Lejeune) argues that these paratextual elements shape and control how a given reader reads the text.

The "editorial shape" of a printed object is an artifact of larger ideological positionings within a set of cultural disputations. Ancillary to this claim, it is important to distinguish the claim that certain printed objects will have (within a given set of contexts) greater ideological forcefulness than others. This is why, while it might be appropriate to examine the ideologies involved in the editing and printing of an edition of The Joy of Cooking, I would be hesitant (at least in the current set of contexts) to interrogate that object as an example of a (covert) magisterial artifact.

Both the many (and multiplying) imprints of Holy Bibles and The New York Times, however, are currently situated within our culture such that the interrogation of their editorial and paratextual shaping can yield good critical fruit.

For example, Woodward later quotes Times editor Daniel Okrent, who says, “If you are among the groups the Times treats as strange objects to be examined on a laboratory slide (devout Catholics, gun owners, Orthodox Jews, Texans); if your value system wouldn’t wear well on a composite New York Times journalist, then a walk through this paper can make you feel you’re traveling in a strange and forbidding world.”

I interpret this to mean that the editorial position of the Times does not exist in isolation, but rather as a part of a larger set of overlapping ideologies and communities within our cultural landscape. Certain "types" of readers identify with the editorial positions of the Times, and others will feel alienated by them. They are influenced by the Times. But these various groups are also influencing the Times through their economic power (whether or not they purchase the paper, for example, or whether or not they patronize the advertisers within), their reaction to the Times in the wider cultural discourse (articles like Woodward's, for example, as well as the blogosphere). Additionally (but not finally), the Times also exists as an abstracted totem, a crumb that is gnawed as a morsel or hurled as an insult within the over-simplified posturings that pass for political discourse currently (a totem of "Eastern elitism" or "informed journalism," alternately).

So the Times, so the Bible. Or, that is to say, so the many Bibles available as objects within the retail sphere (which, today, is the only sphere that matters). Just as certain readers will not feel at home reading the Times, we might easily be able to think of certain classes of readers made very uncomfortable the The Patriot's Bible, and other classes equally uncomfortable with The Green Bible. The editorial decisions that shape these objects are part of a much larger milieu of cultural and ideological disputes that are not one-way in their influences. The differentiation of Bibles creates hospitable (and inhospitable) ideological and theological space for differing classes of readers. These classes, moreover, are themselves complex and overlapping. In fact, it is the negotiation of publishers, wrestling with demographic data, with as many of these overlapping groups as possible that leads to the multiplicity of Bible imprints currently available.

All this is to say that I think Wooward's observation that the New York Times exists as a type of magisterial entity is right on the money (quite literally). Within the wider ideological landscape we are navigating with this analysis, it is an insight well worth exploring.

Jesus Built my Hot Rod

Gunsights made by Michigan arms manufacturer Trijicon have come under fire in the past few days for their inclusion of Bible verses and references on items sold to the American Military.

There's an article and audio commentary giving an overview of this story here.

Some news sources are describing the inscriptions as "secret Bible codes," which is a little misleading. These inscriptions were certainly not hidden or obscured. For example, anyone with scant biblical knowledge might look at the "JN8:12" marking on the side of the Trijicon ACOG gunsight and at least suspect it to be a New Testament reference.

This issue has added fuel to the ongoing debates surrounding religious freedoms in the military, as well as concerns about the overtones of "holy war" between Christianity and Islam that haunt our current overseas campaigns.

The use of religious inscriptions to mark or "bless" material objects, from gunsights to money, certainly raises some even deeper questions than these, of course.

Then again, where is the bright line between a weapon that sports, say, a reference to 2 Corinthians 4:6 ("For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ."), and something like the Mossy Oak Brand Camouflage Bible, which says in its introduction,

Life can be much like learning to hunt. God says in 2 Timothy 2:15, "Be diligent and present yourself approed to God..." Good hunters must become skillful, prepared and diligent. The greatest "hunt" in life is seeking a relationship with the greatest huntsmaster of all, Jesus Christ [p. iii].

Imprimaturs and prooftexts for all sorts of lifestyles of violence, here. Where's Stanley Hauerwas when we need him?

The King James Bible: If It Was Good Enough for Jesus, It's Good Enough for CBS

I was skimming the web for references to "black bonded Bibles" just now -- you know, those staid, traditional, non-flashy and quite sober behemoths of days gone by. Heirloom Bibles of stitched and fragrant Genuine Moroccan Leather. Gift Bibles given and given and given from year to everlasting year. What the President gets sworn in with. You know, those kind of Bibles

I had originally intended this to be a short post about the video I came across, which I have embedded below, where Denzel Washington is discussing his involvement in the 2007 audio Bible, The Bible Experience, which apparently has been a runaway bestseller.



After watching the video, however, I began to read the article, from CBS News Online, accompanying it. And, well. suddenly this post became a little more pointed.

The article is largely about the increasing trend of recent years to publish "designer Bibles," something that I certainly enjoy seeing reported. My trouble with the article, though, concerns several grossly misleading and inaccurate statements made by its author, Caitlin A. Johnson.

Let's take this one, for example, from right at the start of the piece:

In the beginning, there was the King James Bible: 66 books, 1,189 chapters, 31,173 verses — usually bound in sober black leather. The King James Bible was the English language standard for more than 400 years.

Okay. Hold on. Never mind the versions in Latin, Greek and Hebrew, used by the Church for over a millennium. A statement like this also manages to erase the long (and thorny) history of Tyndale, Huss, Luther, the Bishop's Bible, the Geneva Bible, and a host of other lesser-known, but no less influential, predecessors to the King James Version in English.

Now yes, Johnson is partially correct in her characterization of the influence and importance of the King James. If this were the only such statement in the article, and if the article otherwise had carefully-researched claims, I might have let it slide. Not so. Johnson later makes the statement, "For more than 400 years, the King James version was the first — and for many, the only — Bible. "

The first alternative noted in the article does not occur until "September 1966, [when] an alternative was created with today's English version, known as 'Good News for Modern Man,' published by the non-profit American Bible society."

These statements reflect the popular misconceptions surrounding Bible "origins." The notion, as the article asserts, that the Bible has been available for sale "year after year...for 2,000 years" (as Sara Nelson, of Publishers Weekly, claims) is patently untrue. While you can say that commodities that begin to look like what we call a Bible have been part of commerce since before the invention of the movable type press, it is really not until the late 17th century that you can locate the beginnings of "book trade," in the manner that Nelson means.

The last bone of contention I have with the piece comes in response to this:

"It's the best seller of all times," Abyssinian Baptist pastor Dr. Calvin Butts said. "It has to be. It's got everything you would want in a book: sex, violence, intrigue, mystery, the supernatural — it's all here."

The "it has to be" that Dr. Butts asserts is a pretty common sentiment among laypeople in the West. We assume the hegemony of the Bible to be a worldwide phenomenon that simply cannot be touched by any other book.

However, while the Bible is definitely high up there on the list of bestsellers of all time (and the list is, admittedly, a hard one to tabulate - after all, are we talking sales, or copies in print, or...) there is a good chance that another book written in response to a charismatic individual, Chairman Mao's Little Red Book, actually holds the title.

Unfortunately, the historical, exegetical, and political complexities that arise in the wake of this tension between Jesus and Mao seem far beyond the ken of the writers and "newspeople" associated with CBS, who cannot even seem to get the facts about the King James right. Shame.

A printed rose, by any other name, still smells like ink

As I write this, I have open on the table next to me a copy of Gary Larson's The PreHistory of the Far Side, an anthology of both his cartoons as well as the creative process that went into their creation. I have the book open to a particular panel, a full page of penguins, a veritable sea of them, filling the frame of the cartoon like academics at a conference, thickly huddled, but each looking lost in thought and separate intention.

In the middle of the frame, one lone penguin, wings outstretched, rises above the herd (perhaps I should say "flock," but the Nietzschean connotations of "herd" are important here). Beak to the sky, this lone ueber-penguin sings out with joy, "I gotta be me, oh I just gotta be me..."

Beneath the cartoon, to give the cartoon some explanation and context, Larson has written,

"My publisher's gift and stationary division decided one day they wanted to make this and a few other Far Side cartoons into posters. The problem was this one particular cartoon featured nothing but penguins and ice, which didn't lend itself to color. When the finished posters showed up, I was interested to see they had indeed found a use for color in this cartoon--they made the one penguin (who's singing "I Gotta Be Me") yellow--the others remained black and white. In other words, the entire point of the cartoon had been reversed. In the original version, I was being cynical about the futility of trying to be unique in a sea of commonality. But by making just the singing penguin yellow, the publisher made him stand out, and the cartoon then made the same point the song originally intended."

I remember that poster from my college years. I saw classmates hang it on their dormitory room walls, and we sold it for a time in the bookstore in which I worked on campus. Even at the time (almost twenty years ago now), the yellow penguin struck me as odd. Then, a couple years back, I first read Larson's comments I quoted above. In the time since, I have come to find this strange story of cartoonist and publisher an increasingly lucid example of two interesting points about Bibles, their publication, and their interpretation.

The first point is glaringly obvious once we have heard Larson's version of the events surrounding his monochromatic penguins. Publishers, in the course of publishing, alter the "thing" they publish. Larson claims that the cartoon has one "meaning." Then the publisher has--through the act of turning the cartoon into a poster for distribution--given the image a different and opposite "meaning."

The second point is related to the first. Publishers, in the process of publishing, make these sorts of amendments and additions to the "things" they publish because--whether we are talking about the American corporate marketplace of big-box retailers or the often-praised "marketplace of ideas"--the governing idea of retail is that "different is good." The "new and improved" product or idea, differentiated from the herd, is the one that will catch the eye and move off the shelf faster. At least, so goes the common wisdom.

Why I like this strange little story, about this strange little cartoon and its ambiguously interpreted penguin, is because these questions of differentiation and sameness are, on one level, the very stuff of the cartoon itself. The undifferentiated penguin of the "original meaning," rising up from the sea of sameness, prompts the viewer to consider the ultimate success or futility of the gesture, for in this defiant act of differentiation, there is no observable difference. The discomfort of the juxtaposition is what makes it funny.

It is hard to imagine a way in which making the penguin yellow would make the joke funnier. In fact, it could be argued (as Larson does) that coloring the penguin removes the joke entirely. This fact raises its own series of slightly discomforting juxtapositions. The point of the cartoon, we imagine, is to provoke humor. Yet, with the addition of the coloring (if we trust Larson's assessment) the joke is muted, if not lost. Which might lead us to ask, if the point of reproducing the joke on a wide scale is not the joke itself, what is the point?

There is another interesting question that follows upon this, namely, is Larson the expert with regard to the humor (or lack thereof) of his cartoons? Does his assessment, his claim that his intended meaning was lost, carry weight in this matter? As the "author" of the cartoon, does his "intent" make a difference? If his intent has been abrogated in some manner, is the cartoon in some way invalidated?

I raise these questions because, when we are dealing with one cartoon, created by one cartoonist, these questions of "authorial intent" may seem more straightforward than a situation where we are considering a more ancient manuscript, with several potential (and potentially unknown) authors, let alone scores of redactors and storytellers repeating variations on the theme prior to its being "fixed" in written form. This apparent difference (that we are "closer" to the author's intention in the case of Larson) may not ultimately prove accurate, but we can use it, at least for a moment, as a fulcrum for our analysis.

Consider: Larson crafted a piece of artwork with a certain intended "meaning" (i.e., cynicism about clamoring for "uniqueness"). Larson then signed over to his publisher the rights to reproduce and distribute this artwork on a mass scale, in exchange for financial compensation (fairly standard practice between cartoonists and their distributors). The "original" cartoon artwork is then prepared for publication through a process of graphic design, layout, and prepress decisions. In order to make the sale of these reproduced objects more likely, steps were taken during this prepress process to make the image more eye-catching; to make the image unique and differentiated from other products a consumer might be enticed to buy. Hence the layout artists and prepress executives decide to make an alteration (but is it an alteration or an enhancement?) to the "original" artwork, and a resulting alteration (but is it an alteration or an interpretation?) is made to the "meaning" of the piece.

I am putting this term, "meaning," in quotation marks for the moment. I am doing so because, in my estimation, we often use this word too casually. We are often very comfortable--too comfortable--proclaiming authoritatively what things "mean," as if this were an unproblematic and undisputed fact that was available to everyone, everywhere (or at least every sane one, everywhere), plain for all to see and comprehend.

I would like to suggest that--even in the present case--"meaning" is more complex than that.

For instance, my Mother and I had an ongoing conversation for many years, from my youth and into adulthood, about my interest in comic books. Comic books, of course, are basically just long-form cartoons. My Mother, and, I am sure, many who share her opinion, might wonder why there would be an entire industry (actually, a multi-billion-dollar industry at present) devoted to what basically are nothing more than "squiggles on a page." This viewpoint (that comic art is frivolous, and thus by its very nature a waste of time) might preclude some readers, therefore, from seeing any "meaning" in Larson's cartoon. For readers convinced this is all frivolity anyway, to speak of the cartoon having a "meaning" (let alone to spend time debating what that "meaning" might be) would therefore be at best a waste of time, and at worst a rank absurdity.

Furthermore, we might also imagine whole groups of people in the world who, for a variety of reasons, would look at Larson's cartoon and also fail to find any "meaning" there. For example, certain autistics have difficulty discerning the "meaning" of pictorial representations and abstracted concepts. Line drawings of emotional situations, for example, are for such readers not connected to the emotional situations that occur between people. Hence, for such an audience, the "meaning" of Larson's cartoon might prove elusive.

Moreover, we can certainly assume that there are people in the world who, for a variety of socioeconomic or geographic reasons, have no idea whatsoever what a "penguin" is. Therefore a cartoon about a landscape full of penguins may strike them as odd for very different reasons than the reasons an "informed" reader might give. That is to say, many styles of readers may find the cartoon "funny," but the root of the humor will perhaps be quite different.

Each of these alterations of perspective--though admittedly somewhat fanciful--point to the difficulty of claiming, without complication, that there is some singular "meaning" to the cartoon, even given Larson's assertion that the cartoon was supposed to have a particular "meaning." There seem, instead, to be a series of interpretations, each with a varying attachment to something we might term "humor," which arise in response to the physical object (the cartoon printed on the poster or the page).

Added to all these complications is the complicated matter of Larson himself, and his intention in writing (is this the appropriate term?) this cartoon. As the author of the work, we might very well be tempted to give his intended meaning pride of place as the meaning of the cartoon. Such a simplified position, however, arises only in the suppression of certain salient material facts. Larson entered into a contractual relationship with his syndicated publisher, who, from a legal standpoint, is thereafter considered the "author" of the work. (This is commonplace. For example, I signed a similar agreement with my publisher regarding the book I am writing, and one sees this sort of transfer-of-authorship language often as well in the end credits of feature films.) In other words, the publisher, in compensating the artist in exchange for the rights of distribution, claims the right to be considered, in a limited or full extent, as the originator of the work.

Once the solitary, "original" work moves into the realm of reproducibility, all sorts of factors introduce themselves. When reproduction is undertaken by hand, the possibility of "scribal errors" is always present, by which the copying of a text or image allows for the introduction of a host of misrepresentations. In the history of Bible transmission prior to the introduction of mechanical printing, for example, we have innumerable instances of words being miscopied, transliterated, truncated, added-to, inserted or omitted. At times these emendations are unintentional, at other times intentional, and very often their appearance is simply inscrutable. Regardless of reason, they happen. Moreover, in order to consider these emendations as "errors," one must have access to--or imagine--the original. With regard to our ancient manuscripts, this process of recovering "the original" is always a mixture of both access and imagination. The matters of "authorial intent" and "meaning" are never pure in this process--whether we regard the "original" or the copies (which become oddly "co-authored" through interpolation)--and the claims of experts to know the contents of the original documents is as much a political claim as it is a scholarly one.

Mechanical reproduction (such as printing and lithography), in a similar, though not identical, fashion to by-hand reproduction, introduces an instability into the claims of authorial intent with regard to the fixture of "meaning." For example, films are edited, sometimes without the input or consent of the director (leading to the growing number of "director's cuts" available to the public); moreover, in the making of films (particularly big-budget ventures) the script itself will often be rewritten several times, by any number of writers who may or may not share, or even know, the "original" writer's "intent" and vision.

Consider the large-scale industry that flourished in the 1980's and '90's around taking classic black and white films and "colorizing" them. To what extent, in such cases, is the "black and white" aspect of the medium essential or optional? Books, whether fiction or nonfiction, pass through editors and marketing departments, committees of vetting readers, and (increasingly) focus groups of demographically-balanced "ideal" readers, each of whom leave their unseen but indelible mark on the "original intent" of the author. Lithographic, color-separated and offset reproductions of photographs and paintings are subject to mechanical factors affecting the size, contrast, tinting and coloration of the mass-representation of the "original" piece. The songs you hear on the radio have gone through not only a series of circuits and filters that "compress" the sound (allowing it to be broadcast more easily over the airwaves or through an MP3 file), but the voices of the singers themselves are increasingly manipulated to render correct pitch and timbre. Instruments are sampled and textures of sound are synthesized through ever-more sophisticated plug-ins for digital computer recording consoles.

It is difficult, in sum, to find any current expression of human creativity available through the mass market that is not, in varying ways, mediated and manipulated by dozens, if not hundreds, of unseen hands. As noted above, these unseen hands, in very real ways, serve as "co-authors" in the final object we purchase and consume.

To return to Gary Larson's cartoon, then, the matter becomes complex. We can romantically assert that his "intention" with the cartoon was to express a pure message of cynicism regarding assertions of individuality. But, if this were the simple fact of the matter, then why not simply draw the cartoon and (in a sort of Emily-Dickinsen-at-least-while-she-was-alive-and-before-anyone-knew-or-cared-about-the-posthumous-"Emily-Dickinsen-the-genius-poet" sort of move) lock it in a steamer trunk in the attic? Larson did not do this. Instead, Larson's "intention" was not only to make the cynical point, but to distribute the cartoon in which the cynical point was made in the hopes of making a profit. In other words, Larson's "intention" was not "pure," at least in the romantic sense considered above. It was always a complex intention, involving both "meaning" and "market" aspects.

I do not note this as a criticism, but rather to highlight the often-overlooked fact that it is very difficult (certainly in our present age, and perhaps in all ages) to locate these "pure" and non-complex "meanings" and "intentions." Authors, in the hopes of being distributed and read, make compromises on the "pure meaning" of whatever they create through handing the "original" over to these myriad unseen co-authors. Not only is this ubiquitous, it is, I assert, an unchangeable fact. Like the songs we hear on the radio, our artwork, our literature, and our Scriptures have been filtered and altered by the very processes through which they become available to us, removed as we are from the "original" authors and their "intentions."

Do not, in other words, blame that one yellow penguin. That one yellow penguin is all of us.

Ghost hunting

From the FAQ on J. Mark Bertrand's Bible Design and Binding blog:

Q. Isn't it frivolous to talk about the design of Bibles instead of the content?

You'll get no argument from me. It's much better to read a Bible that falls apart after a year of use than to own a finely-made edition that sits on the shelf, nothing more than an objet d'art. To be honest, though, when people make snide remarks about the superficial focus of the blog, as they occasionally do, I'm inclined to point out that a discussion like this isn't any more frivolous than just about every discussion taking place online. With so many English translations of the Bible in print, and so much substantial agreement between them, is it frivolous to discuss the instances where they differ? Not if translation is your passion. The same is true for design. It's not the most urgent issue in the world, but that's just fine. I wouldn't enjoy conversation very much if we were only permitted to shout.

And consider this: while design might seem invisible, it has a major impact on the way readers experience the text. I discovered this firsthand by reformatting the text of the KJV for college-age students. When the words looked right, they were much easier to understand than before. Good design can enhance a good translation, and improve a poor one.

Though we might not often think about it this way, a book is a technology for reading. When we spend time with our eyes focused on little ink squiggles ranged across a sea of white paper, the ink and the paper transform; a whole is created that is more than the sum of these elements. In this transformation, information is communicated.

In order to be read, the physical corpus of a book must, of course, be visible. However, in the process of reading, the book also becomes strangely invisible. What we seem to see, what we focus on, are the meanings and information that arise from the transformation of the ink squiggles and paper, not the squiggles and paper itself. And yet, we would not have any information conveyed at all if we did not focus entirely on the ink squiggles and paper itself.

In other words, if we want to talk precisely about the "there" of reading, we might find that this "there" is somewhat hard to pin down. Our mind's eye gets invovled, and these strange creatures we call "author's voice" and "intention" demand negotiation, the past and elsewhere bargaining with the here and the now. It can get confusing.

If you haven't spent time yet exploring Mark Bertrand's excellent blog posts about Bible construction, let me suggest this as a good starting point. I haven't been in contact with Mark yet, and I am not sure he shares my deep (and theory-laden) cynicism about mass-market Bible production. However, I have nothing but praise for what I have seen so far in my explorations of his site. I especially like his commitment to thinking of the end-user of a Bible (whatever the style or denominational commitment) as a reader, and not (as is too-often the case) as a consumer.

Which brings us back to the point made in his FAQ above. When a reader is at work, she does not consume - she creates. A reader is an active participant in the establishment of meanings from interaction with ink squiggles and paper. The book is not consumed in this process - though we can definitely point to books published with cheap materials and bindings that are damaged by this process. But, as Mark points out, this needn't always be the case.

What I am most fascinated by, however, is this matter of invisible design, hinted at above. The book is a technology, part of media technology. This means that the Bible, as a book, is a medium. As a medium, it can be seen both as a conveyance and as a conjurer of spirits - Holy and otherwise.

When we look at the Bible, when we look at this book, we see the book itself - but we also see invisible things. Meanings, intentions, designs, fonts, heft, interactivity, quality, smells, paper thickness - each of these tangibly and intangibly shapes our experience of the Bible as a book, and this is true for whatever Bible we happen to be holding.

In looking at the materiality of Scripture, we are chasing ghosts by focusing on the concrete object in front of us.