Introduction to the Workshop-Series

Prof. Roland Deines (Co-Director CBET)

The dead body is a hot topic. Not only in scholarship, as we will see, but also in the economy and in the media: TV crime dramas frequently provide graphic depicons of the dead, showing the naked body aer an autopsy with the incision marks clearly visible along the sternum;1 the “Bodyworlds” exhibions by the infamous “Dr Death,” the anatomist and “inventor of plasnaon” Gunther von Hagens,2 aract a large public audience; the BBC recently aired a series called “The Beauty of Anatomy;”3 the list could go on. The exposure to the dead body seems to be something characterisc of our me, comparable perhaps to the exponenal increase in depicons of the naked body and sexual acts in various media. There remains, however, a marked discrepancy between public exposure to dead bodies in film, television and exhibions and a general reluctance to discuss death and the appropriate treatment of the body with family

1 Tina Weber, Drop Dead Gorgeous: Representaons of Corpses in American TV Shows (Images of Death: Studies on the Social Transformaon of Death 6), Frankfurt: Campus, 2011; ead. and S. Moebius, “Die mediale Reprä- sentaon des Todes: Der Tod in den Kulturen der Moderne am Beispiel des Films,” in M. Schroer (ed.), Die Gesellscha des Films, Konstanz: UVK, 2007, 264-308; D. Gross and J. Grande (eds.), Objekt Leiche: Technisie- rung, Ökonomisierung und Inszenierung toter Körper. Todesbilder: Studien zum gesellschalichen Umgang mit dem Tod 1. Frankfurt: Campus, 2010. 2 hp://www.bodyworlds.com/en.html 3 hp://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04dq8j7 1 members and friends (the same can be said about sex: it is oen ‘looked at’ but hardly ever talked about). Many shy away from touching the deceased or preparing the body of a loved one for burial; family gatherings around, and funeral services involving, open caskets, once widespread, are increasingly rare. Many young people have never encountered a dead body in reality.

But whereas the disposal of the body is an oen painful necessity for the surviving relaves, it has become a business commodity for others.4 There is an increasingly compeve market relang to the business of death: A variety of designer coffins (hp:// colourfulcoffins.com; hp://www.creavecoffins.com) are offered in an aempt to overcome the convenonality of tradional coffins. Equally diverse is the current market for cremaon urns, with personalised urns and cremaon jewellery5 on the rise. The latest development in this market is urns in the shape of the deceased’s head, using facial recognion soware and 3D printers to produce a life-size bust.6 It looks a bit like a modern variant of anthropoid clay coffins or sarcophagi, aested at Late Bronze and Early Iron-age sites in Palesne,7 or one could see it as a less bloody form of mummificaon. The 21st century offers for the first me in human history an easy and relavely cheap effigy of the human body to preserve the ashes of the deceased. It is, if you want, the best of two worlds namely mummificaon and cremaon without the ‘bloody mess’ of the former. I assume the next step is not just a bust but a statue of the deceased. Funerals increasingly have the potenal to become events, and funeral directors are becoming event managers with the remit to fulfil every costly wish in celebraon of a life.8 In Germany, newspapers offer mourning portals on their web-pages, where one can read through death noces: Rankings are available for those death noces with the most visits, virtual candles can be lit, condolences can be expressed, and suitable quotes and formulaons are supplied (hp://trauer.sueddeutsche.de). Will there be a compeon in the end for who gets the most virtual candles? These new opons when it comes to the funeral and the disposal of the body means not only more variety, and related to it more business opportunies, but also further

4 Cf. Dominik Gross (ed.), Die dienstbare Leiche: Der tote Körper als medizinische, soziokulturelle und ökonomische Ressource; Proceedings zum Kick-off Workshop des Aachener Kompetenzzentrums für Wissen- schasgeschichte der RWTH Aachen University (15.-16. Januar 2009; Studien des Aachener Kompetenzzentrums für Wissenschasgeschichte 5), Kassel: Kassel University Press, 2009; K. Gernig (ed.), Wer nicht wirbt, srbt! Werbung in der Bestaungsbranche, Düsseldorf: Fachverlag des deutschen Bestaungs- gewerbes, 2009. 5 See e.g. hp://www.cremaonjewellery.org. This family business menons on their webpage that studies by The Cremaon Society of Great Britain show that since 1960 the number of cremaons have more than doubled, rising from around 35% in 1960 to more than 74% in 2012. For part of the ashes turned into synthec diamonds see hp://www.cremaonsoluons.com/c4/Cremaon-Diamonds-Made-From-Ashes-c39.html. 6 Illustraons and descripons can be found here: hp://www.cremaonsoluons.com/c107/Personal- Cremaon-Urns-for-Ashes-c109.html. For a crical evaluaon see Thomas Klie, “Der tote Körper als Zeichen: Praksch-theologische Erkundungen in spätmoderner Bestaungspraxis,” BThZ 29/2 (2012): 246-261 (248-253). 7 Cf. Amihai Mazar, Archaeology of the Land of the Bible: 10.000-586 B.C.E. (ABRL), New York: Doubleday, 1992, 283-285 (Deir el-Balah, Beth-Shean, Lachish). 8 hp://www.funeralinspiraons.co.uk/informaon/Professional-Event-Planners.html 2 psychological pressure in a me of suffering and emoonal stress. Funerals are becoming the new weddings with their extensive preparaons and elaborate to do-lists.9 Nothing should be le to chance but equally nothing should be done solely in the tradional way. This means that for people in many modern western sociees, what is oen the most painful aspect of life, namely to get through funeral preparaons for a loved one, is no longer ameliorated by convenons, accepted tradions and a shared religious outlook on the aerlife. Half a century ago hardly anybody had the need to think about what to do when somebody dies. Funeral customs and rites were fairly stable and oen long established, with only minor variaons, for example across catholic or protestant lines within a country like Britain or Germany. Nowadays, in contrast, every death raises the queson of what to do: Interment (and if so, in which form: individual grave or anonymous burial 10), cremaon (and if so, what should be done with the ashes: burial; scaering in the open; cremaon jewellery; urns, their placement and form, etc.). Coffins have the potenal to become a status symbols (cf. as example hp://www.crazy coffins.co.uk) and funeral apps and live coverage of funerals in social media promise help and support.

The increasing commercialisaon of funerals combined with the social pressure they can induce is clearly a danger; the pressure on the bereaved will increase and appearance rather than substance will become more important. But there is not just a market for the disposal of the human remains, but also an increased expectaon, and associated pressure, to be useful beyond death. Moral and financial arguments are increasingly accumulated to encourage organ donaon or to allow the corpse to be used for medical research and the training of prospecve surgeons and other clinical personnel (that is, the body is turned into a cadaver). Human life from stem cells to the corpse becomes subdued to an enre exploitaon chain (“Verwertungskee”) and the willingness to take part in this is oen celebrated as altruisc sacrifice. Conversely, those who reject the ulitarian subjecon of the human body to the pretended higher good find themselves in the situaon of being seen as selfish naysayers to medical progress and neighbourly love for the sick.11 But despite all these described developments, whose possible benefits are not yet fully visible, there is a chance that the new interest in speaking about death and funerals can help

9 hp://www.dyingmaers.org/page/my-funeral-wishes 10 On postmodern plurality in funerary culture see Norbert Fischer, “Miniaturlandschaen der Erinnerung: Über neue Sepulkralästhek und den Friedhof des 21. Jahrhunderts,” BThZ 29/2 (2012 [Bestaungskultur in der Gegenwart]): 196-207; Reiner Sörries, “Urnenkirche und Kirchenwald: Die Kirche und die alternaven Bestat- tungsformen,” BThZ 29/2 (2012): 229-245. 11 Jones, D. Gareth, Speaking for the Dead: Cadavers in Biology and Medicine, Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000; Norman L. Cantor, Aer We Die: The Life and Times of the Human Cadaver, Washington, D.C: Georgetown University Press, 2010. For an interdisciplinary approach including philosophical, theological, legal and cultural aspects in relaon to autopsies in medical contexts see Hubert Knoblauch, Andrea Esser, Dominik Groß, Brigie Tag, and Antje Kahl (eds.), Der Tod, der tote Körper und die klinische Sekon. (Sozialwissenschaliche Abhandlungen der Görres-Gesellscha 28). Berlin: Duncker&Humblot, 2010; Brigie Tag and Dominik Groß (eds.), Der Umgang mit der Leiche: Sekon und toter Körper in internaonaler und interdisziplinärer Perspekve (Todesbilder: Studien zum gesellschalichen Umgang mit dem Tod 4), Frankfurt: Campus, 2010. 3 to overcome the deadly silence that is sll widely experienced when it comes to death.12 The NHS-launched project “Dying maers” (hp://www.dyingmaers.org) is one way to overcome this, and the Church of England also offers resources on their homepage to help people to come to term with funerals and related quesons.13 The unwillingness to address death and to be confronted with a body can be seen, for example, in the way that nursing homes cover up the fact that people are dying in their care. Undertakers are secretly channelled into the homes and no official remembrance of the late person takes place or is even desired, and once accepted forms and rituals of mourning are no longer provided. With the loss of these convenons comes the loss of their psychological benefits and spiritual blessings. At the heart of the silence about death and the body is a certain reluctance of those who survive to speak about death, which is in some way strange. The only thing certain in everyone’s life is the one thing hardly anybody wants to talk about. In this way death holds its sway even on those who are sll alive. It is an interesng queson to ask whether the new ways to deal with death, mourning and commemoraon on social media are helping to break the silence or whether they are another way to escape the corporality of death and the direct confrontaon with it. Do they adequately and helpfully replace previous more personal forms of mourning, or are they a further indicaon that death is avoided in personal terms by shiing mourning and remembrance towards ‘social’ plaorms and their disembodied sense of community? They allow the expression of sympathy without being emoonally challenged through bodily contact, they allow a pretension of nearness but one that is virtual and not embodied. Aer all, it is not only the body that can be a psychological embarrassment but also a crying person in need of a hand to hold or a shoulder to lean on while aending a funeral. How much easier it is, perhaps, to express condolences electronically than to take a hand in front of an open grave.

The Nongham Centre for Bible, Ethics and Theology, supported by the Brish Bible Society and the Department of Theology and Religious Studies at the University of Nongham wants to parcipate in the necessary process to tackle the deadly silence of a society that is more willing to stare at plasnated bodies in an exhibion than to talk about the preparaons for a funeral within the family. We want to facilitate an exchange between those who study death, burials, concepts of aerlife and related quesons within the Humanies and those who treat the dead: in hospitals, during funerals, and in other capacies. In the widest sense we hope to contribute not only to the lively scholarly debate, but to impact on the necessary

12 Johanne Stubbe Teglbjærg Kristensen, Body and Hope: A Construcve Interpretaon of Recent Eschatology by Means of the Phenomenology of the Body (Dogmak in der Moderne 5), Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013, 279, applies her “in-between eschatology” as a crique to the either/or approach, i.e. “either making death a private taboo, … or the opposite, namely an event which must be exhibited and shared fully by the community.” She connues: “Death does not completely elude language, but also does not disappear by being expressed and treated therapeucally. In a me where the taboo surrounding death has been said to be replaced by an increasing demand to share and mourn in public, intermediary eschatology suggests that this also has its limits. Death is – in spite of the obvious aracon of claiming so – neither private nor public.” 13 hps://www.churchofengland.org/weddings-bapsms-funerals/funerals.aspx; hp://funeralmap.co.uk 4 regaining of forms of an ars moriendi, that is a wise, meaningful, ethical and encouraging approach to the human body in its death. This is a concerning and pressing issue in our society and this conference programme is, if not directed towards this end, then at least movated by it. We will explore the nature and funcon of religious hope, spiritual wisdom, and human experience in the confrontaon with mortality as expressed in the treatment of the body. In a recent study on praccal-theological aspects of the body the German praccal theologian Thomas Klie observed that the keyword ‘body’ in the sense of corpse is missing in most theological diconaries and textbooks on ethics.14 It would be interesng to see if there are differences between different languages, but I assume the general impression is valid: Ministerial training for funerals prepares for many things and considers various aspects, but rarely the body of the deceased.

The focus of our Centre’s series of one-day seminars and lecture-workshops is approaching this wider topic of death and dying from one parcular aspect, namely the dead body. The body can serve as a gateway into wider anthropological quesons about concepts of humanity, self-identy and personhood by looking at how the body was and is treated aer it stops showing the acvies normally aributed to the status we call “alive.” History, archaeology, religious tradions from the past to the present, philosophy, art, psychology, medicine and law – there is hardly a discipline in Humanies and Social Sciences that does not contribute to this queson, which alone jusfies the approach we have chosen. Animals do not care about the body aer it is dead. Some eat their own kin, others leave them to rot or as prey for scavenger. Humans care, albeit in very different and somemes perplexing ways for those not accustomed to certain tradions. But they care. And this care is directed in such a way that the post-mortem treatment of the body allows inferences to be made about concepts of the living body within a society.

It is the body through which we communicate, not only by using our senses but through our movements, the way we dress and manipulate our bodies, but above all through the sheer presence of the body. Human self-experience is characterised by the observaon that a person can differenate him- or herself from their body, but only while within the body and as a funcon in, with, through or in collaboraon with the body. The selecon of the right preposion depends here on the underlying anthropological model. We say “I have a body” rather than “I am a body” but we are what we are only in, with and through our body. Many aerlife concepons contain a bodily element, from shadowy nearly non-existence, to the resurrecon of the body which connects the new post- mortem existence in a recognisable way to the features of the life lived before death. The clearest examples of such an approach in the Chrisan tradion are the Gospel narraves about Jesus’ appearances to his disciples aer his resurrecon. The most prominent ones, including the story of the Emmaus disciples 15, who recognised the

14 Klie, “Der tote Körper als Zeichen, 246. 15 Picture: Emmaus by Janet Brooks-Gerloff, 1992 (Benedicne Kornelimünster, Aachen): hp://www.sj.org.za/ prayer/emmaus-road/#.VElwKc21KK4 5 resurrected Jesus only at the end of a long journey, or Mary Magdalene, who first took Jesus for the gardener16, or Thomas 17, who refused to believe the news about the resurrecon unless he could literally sck his fingers in the marks of the nails in Jesus’ hands (John 20:25), all display a paradoxical tension between familiarity and unknownness. We are all here embodied, we experience each other because we have a body, and even if someone dies those around feel the need to relate to the body. In this way death does not mean the end of an embodied existence and therefore not the end of human sociality. No one can bury him- or herself. Even the dead body contributes to the life, identy and beliefs of those who are not yet dead. Every death reminds those sll alive that this is how they will end. The body forces us to reflect on who we are and to whom we relate. As a body, one is dependent on the treatment of others, and relaves of the deceased have to endure whatever specialists deem necessary as treatment of the body, which could mean the morgue cooler and morgue slab instead of a lying in state in a funeral chapel. The post-mortem treatment of the body does not only involve family members and friends though, but also a large number of professionals (and increasingly volunteers), beginning with the medical personnel, employees of funeral services, crematories and cemeteries, members of the rescue units, police, armed forces, and so on. In a less personal way museum staff of archaeological and historical museums spend their days walking between mummies and skeletons from excavaons on exhibion. All these professionals are confronted with these bodies, and to greater or lesser extents, with emoons of loss, which can be combined with feelings of guilt or failure because they could not do more for the late individual.

The examples given, and they were just that, examples, illustrate sufficiently that our project does not deal with a minor and negligible topic. Last but not least, within the more narrowly defined academic world, the body has recently become a focus of aenon in anthropological, cultural and religious studies as a gateway into wider anthropological quesons.18 The following list is a mere p of the iceberg to which we would like to add our own contribuon.

16 Christ and St Mary Magdalen at the Tomb by Rembrandt van Rijn, 1638 (Collecon of the Brish Royal family), captures the moment when Mary turns her head and sees the newly risen Jesus. hp:// commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Rembrandt_van_Rijn_-_Christ_and_St_Mary_Magdalen_at_the_Tomb_- _Google_Art_Project.jpg 17 The Incredulity of Saint Thomas by Caravaggio, 1601-2 (Sanssouci, Potsdam), hp://commons.wikimedia.org/ wiki/File:The_Incredulity_of_Saint_Thomas-Caravaggio_(1601-2).jpg 18 Cf. Anne Koch, “Reasons for the Boom of Body Discourses in the Humanies and the Social Sciences since the 1980s: A Chapter in European History of Religion,” in Berlejung, Angelika, Jan Dietrich, and Joachim Friedrich Quack (eds.), Menschenbilder und Körperkonzepte im Alten Israel, in Ägypten und im Alten Orient (Oriental Religions in Anquity 9), Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2012, 3-42. 6 Major publicaon projects include:

Taylor, Richard P. Death and the Aerlife: A Cultural Encyclopedia. Santa Barbara, Calif.: ABC- CLIO, 2000. [450 pages]

Howarth, Glennys, and Oliver Leaman, eds. Encyclopedia of Death and Dying. London; New York: Routledge, 2002. [1052 pages]

Bryant, Clion D., and Dennis L. Peck, eds. Encyclopedia of Death and the Human Experience. Los Angeles: SAGE, 2009. [1160 pages]

Recent conference and edited volumes related to Biblical Studies include:

Berlejung, Angelika, Jan Dietrich, and Joachim Friedrich Quack, eds. Menschenbilder und Körperkonzepte im Alten Israel, in Ägypten und im Alten Orient (Oriental Religions in Anquity 9). Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2012

Feichnger, Barbara, and Helmut Seng, eds. Die Christen und der Körper. Aspekte der Körperlichkeit in der christlichen Literatur der Spätanke. München: K. G. Saur, 2004.

Fögen, Thorsten, and Mireille M. Lee, eds. Bodies and Boundaries in Graeco-Roman Anquity. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2009

Taylor, Joan E., ed. The Body in Biblical, Chrisan and Jewish Texts. London, New York: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2014

Major research projects include:

Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences (Germany) “Death and Dead Bodies: On the Change in Exposure to Death in Contemporary Society” (2009-2013), with four subcategories: Philosophy, Sociology, Medicine, and Law hp://www.deathanddeadbodies.eu/introducon.php

The amount of books resulng from this project is impressive: hp://www.deathanddeadbodies.eu/publicaon.php

University of Regensburg (Germany) “Metamorphosen des Todes: Forschungen zur Transformaon der Grabkultur und der Jenseitsbilder in der Spätanke” hp://www.uni-regensburg.de/theologie/alte-kirchengeschichte-patrologie/forschung/ metamorphosen-des-todes/index.html This research project has also launched its own book series, called Handbuch zur Geschichte des Todes im frühen Christentum und seiner Umwelt, with so far 3 volumes

University of Jena (Germany) “Metamorphosen des Todes” hp://www.altertum.uni-jena.de/Lehrstühle/Klassische+Philologie+Lanisk-p-75/ DFG_Projekt+_Metamorphosen+des+Todes_.html

7