Authors: Petronela Polixenia NISTOR

According to the Abrahamic tradition – reflected in the writings of the Holy Scriptures and in the Qur’an, i.e. in the fundamental works of the three great monotheistic religions (Christianity, Judaism and Islam) – the tooth cannot be regarded only as a simple component of the human anatomy, as defined by dictionaries and dentistry manuals, but also it represents an important symbolic and legal element, when taking into account the right to physical integrity of the person. From a psychological symbolic point of view, the movement of teeth can be an expression of certain inner feelings, such as anger, frustration, enmity and others. Interpretation of the legal value attributed to dentition and the symbolism related to human dentition can be viewed from the perspective of the spiritual and religious meanings given to teeth that the three great religions have impressed on the culture of most states of the world which, for Europe, is the Judeo-Christian cultural tradition. For this reason, any discourse aimed at the religious perspective on the symbolism of dentition, with reference to the European culture as a whole, cannot exclude the interpretations of the Old Testament, especially the Pentateuch of Moses, which mirrors the common fundamental elements of the three great religions [1]. The purpose of this article is to theoretically analyze the legal perspective on dentistry, correlated with the symbolic meanings of the tooth in the Abrahamic and Christian tradition.

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