Shaping Holiness brings together four complementary research perspectives to investigate how writing becomes holy across different cultural and religious traditions.
explores how holiness becomes embodied through materials and acts of making. It investigates manuscripts, books, inscriptions, and other textual artefacts as products of human labour, technical expertise, and material substances. By focusing on scribes, calligraphers, and artisans, as well as on writing technologies alongside parchment, paper, ink, pigments, and bindings, this perspective asks how sacredness emerges through material transformation.
investigates how holy writings acquire efficacy through their use. Sacred texts become meaningful not only by being read, but also by being recited, handled, displayed, processed, sworn upon, venerated, and incorporated into devotional practice. Here, holiness is understood as something continually enacted through ritual performance.
addresses the visual and sensory dimensions through which holiness becomes perceptible. Calligraphy, illumination, ornament, layout, manuscript design, and book art are examined not as secondary embellishments, but as essential elements of religious communication and experience.
examines the conceptual and cultural frameworks through which the holiness of writing is explained, legitimised, transmitted, and transformed. It brings together theological reflection with the narratives, myths, and traditions that shape the reception of holy writings across generations and across religious and cultural boundaries.