Godly pleasures: Major religions similar

Godly pleasures: Sacred texts at the British Library
By Adrian Hamilton
Published: 07 May 2007
Independent UK

A collection of sacred texts at the British Library reveals the similarities between the major religions - and the creativity of those who have practised them.

To the Islamic authorities, they were all "the people of the book" - the Jews and Christians who received, like Muslims, scriptural revelation from on high and who worshipped the same Abrahamic God. In its latest exhibition - Sacred, the Books of the Three Faiths: Judaism, Christianity, Islam - the British Library has decided to take the theme literally. The avowed aim of the exhibition - the first, apparently, of a series - is to show the diversity of faiths in Britain but also to illustrate how much the main faiths have in common.

All very politically correct, no doubt. And no doubt the public at large, true believers as much as secularists, need to be reminded how alike are these monotheist faiths that sprang from the same small area of the world and produced such similar customs and theology.

Whether an exhibition such as this is the right way to explain just how alike, and how different, they are is a different question. At worst, it results in overlong captions that distract from the objects on display and includes objects that are there to justify the captions rather than the other way round. At best, this is a quite stupendous display.

The British Library has one of the world's great collections of ancient manuscripts, ranging from the earliest known complete text of the New Testament, the Codex Sinaiticus, and one of the earliest Qur'ans in the world, from the eighth century, to one of the finest Hebrew Torahs to survive from the medieval period, the Portuguese Pentateuch - never mind the Lindisfarne Gospels and a host of Ethiopian Bibles. Some of these have been exhibited singly before but never, to my knowledge, have they been gathered together for display in this fashion.

The sacred is, of course, the key to understanding. The objects on display are more than just books and opportunities for the calligrapher or illustrator to show his prowess. Judaism, Christianity and Islam are all "revealed" religions. They are based on what the faithful believe was revealed to man by God through his prophets, the first of whom was Abraham and the last, according to Muslims, was Mohamed.

But that revelation was not made plain to all nor immediately written down. It was given to prophets and passed on to disciples who themselves attempted to preserve the word by writing it down in a form that was then codified and authorised by the church and the early patriarchs.

The holy book for Jews, Christians and Muslims became not just the central form of belief but the means by which the word could be spread. For the Jews and Muslims in particular, the book contained the literal word of God. Being vehemently opposed to any form of idolatory, both insisted that the key works of their faith, the Torah and the Qur'an, remain simple and free of graphic illustration. Even so, craft will out and so will the desire to make something so important into something precious. The Jewish scribes developed a technique, new to me, of writing in tiny letters so that the flow of words could be twisted and turned into patterns of their own.

The Muslim scribes, meanwhile, developed their own adornments in the form of gold lettering, cartouches for the chapter beginnings and bright colours for the vowels and sentence endings. And, of course, there was the script itself. Islamic calligraphy is one of the wonders of the artistic world and you can see why in this exhibition. From very early on, different regional styles developed as the great wave of Arab conquests in the seventh and eighth centuries sucked up a kaleidoscope of different cultures whose artisans the conquerors were quick to employ.

One could have done with an explanation, and even a map, elucidating the different scripts, the Eastern and Western forms of the geometric Kufic styles, the more feminine flow of the cursive scripts and the particular beauty of the hybrid Maghribi and Muhaqqaq forms.

Christianity, on the other hand, was confined by no such injunctions against representation. Being as much the story of Christ as a collection of his sayings, and faceted in four separate gospels and a series of letters, the New Testament lent itself more easily to illustration. An early Bible of the mid-10th century from Constantinople contains a brilliantly fresh portrait of Luke, caught in the act of writing, his mauve and white toga set against a gold background. The Lindisfarne Gospels are even earlier (698-721) and, if anything, more colourful, while the Holkham Bible Picture Book of the 14th century is bountifully illustrated with scenes on almost every page.

Not that the Jews and Muslims were far behind in artistic decoration once they left the confines of the Torah and Qur'an. In commentaries on the texts, and in the books of stories that grew up about the founders and saints, artists gave free play to their imagination.

Despite its reputation today for Shia puritanism, Iran, particularly in the Mongol period, became a global centre of figurative book illustration and fine calligraphy. Portugal proved a great source of Jewish manuscripts in the later medieval period, before the Jews were expelled. Christianity, meanwhile, took to the lives of the saints with a zest that was positively pagan in its relish for human detail.

And as these religions spread through conquest, expulsion and conversion, so the sacred books were copied in a wider and wider range of local styles. The exhibition has great fun in comparing Jewish and Christian representations of David and Moses, and in displaying bilingual scripts (there's a lovely Gospel from Egypt written in Coptic and Arabic).

There is, in the history of these religions "of the book", a constant tension between the sobriety of the message and the humanity of the world in which it is being received. It's a conflict that occurs constantly in their development. But it is also expressed in the books themselves, between the dignity of the words and the playfulness and luxury of the decoration around. It's not quite the grander lesson that the exhibition organisers were trying to educate us in, but it's a lot more pleasurable and, I think, illuminating.

Sacred, British Library, London NW1 (0870 444 1500), to 23 September