Clouds Speaking and Words Singing: Patterns of Revelation and Piety in the Lotus Sutra and in the Hebrew Bible

Abstract

This paper offers a cross-reading of the Lotus Sutra and the Hebrew Bible, two sacred narratives that have received very little joint attention in terms of comparative religious study. In the line of Buber’s “dialogical hermeneutics,” using a reflective approach, I identify and analyze similar patterns of revelation and piety in both bodies of texts: the colors, blue and gold, through which the sacred is seen; the stormy sounds of collective revelation, the dual verticality, both in space and in time, of transmission, and the prescribed ubiquitous forms of repetition and devotion of sacred texts in each tradition. Through content analysis, focusing on the terminologies used in the Lotus Sutra and in the Hebrew Bible, I first examine the way the two traditions depict their mystical visions-in other words, how God is being described; and second, I will examine how piety is being prescribed.