Islam and Christianity: Politics and Scriptures

The new Paulist Press catalogue landed here the other day and there I spied a new book that will be of interest to those who want to explore both the similarities and the differences in Islam and Christianity: Christopher Frechette, How the Qur'an Interprets the Bible (Paulist, 2020), 208pp.

About this book the publisher tells us this:

Non-Muslims are often surprised to learn that the Qur'an relates episodes and events from the lives of multiple characters who are also found in the biblical text. While the ways the two traditions present these stories often have much in common, they are never identical. Sometimes the Qur'an includes elements or themes that are not present in the biblical account. Such details point to ways in which the Qur an interprets prior traditions, and such interpretations are similar to how Jewish and Christian Scriptures also interpret prior traditions. Focusing on the lives and roles of a number of well-known characters, this introductory book explores and compares the interpretive dimensions of Islamic, Jewish, and Christians Scriptures.

The Quran and the Gospels

Emerging scholarship has been suggesting more and more that there are deep links between early Islamic literature and extant Christian literature, especially that of the gospels. Two new books deepen our understanding of this: Emran El-Badawi, The Qur'an and the Aramaic Gospel Traditions (Routledge, 2013). You can read an interview with the author here.

About this book we are told:

This book is a study of related passages found in the Arabic Qur’an and the Aramaic Gospels, i.e. the Gospels preserved in the Syriac and Christian Palestinian Aramaic dialects. It builds upon the work of traditional Muslim scholars, including al-Biqa‘i (d. ca. 808/1460) and al-Suyu?i (d. 911/1505), who wrote books examining connections between the Qur’an on the one hand, and Biblical passages and Aramaic terminology on the other, as well as modern western scholars, including Sidney Griffith who argue that pre-Islamic Arabs accessed the Bible in Aramaic.

The Qur’an and the Aramaic Gospel Traditions examines the history of religious movements in the Middle East from 180-632 CE, explaining Islam as a response to the disunity of the Aramaic speaking churches. It then compares the Arabic text of the Qur’an and the Aramaic text of the Gospels under four main themes: the prophets; the clergy; the divine; and the apocalypse. Among the findings of this book are that the articulator as well as audience of the Qur’an were monotheistic in origin, probably bilingual, culturally sophisticated and accustomed to the theological debates that raged between the Aramaic speaking churches. Arguing that the Qur’an’s teachings and ethics echo Jewish-Christian conservatism, this book will be of interest to students and scholars of Religion, History, and Literature.

The publisher also provides the table of contents:

1 Sources and Method 2 Prophetic Tradition in the Late Antique Near East 3 Prophets and their Righteous Entourage 4 The Evils of the Clergy 5 The Divine Realm 6 Divine Judgement and the Apocalypse 7 Data Analysis and Conclusion

Also published in December by Routledge is a second book along a similar though more personally focused theme: Hosn Abboud, Mary in the Qur'an: A Literary Reading (Routledge, 2013). 

About this book we are told:

Providing an analysis of the complete story of Mary in its liturgical, narrative and rhetorical contexts, this literary reading is a prerequisite to any textual reading of the Qur’an whether juristic, theological, or otherwise. The Qur’an is an oral event, linguistic phenomenon and great literature. So the application of modern literary theories is essential to have full comprehension of the history of the development of literary forms from pre-Islamic period such as poetry, story telling, speech-giving to the present. In addition, there is a need, from a feminist perspective, to understand in depth why a Christian mother figure such as Mary was important in early Islam and in the different stages of the development of the Qur’an as a communication process between Muhammad and the early Muslim community. Introducing modern literary theories, gender perspective and feminist criticism into Qur’anic scholarship for the first time, this book will be an invaluable resource for scholars and researchers of Islamic Studies, Qur’anic and New Testament Studies, Comparative Literature and Feminist Theology.

The Quran in Christian-Muslim Dialogue

My students continue to struggle to make sense of passages in the Quran treating Christians and Jews, and to struggle with related issues of hermeneutics (what role for the hadiths? what about the so-called doctrine of naskh?) and authority (who gets to proffer an authoritative or normative interpretation of the texts today?). For it is plain that the Quran does not speak with one voice on relations to non-Muslims--nor on much else besides.A new book may help with these questions: Corrie Block, The Qur'an in Christian-Muslim Dialogue: Historical and Modern Interpretations (Routledge, 2013), 368pp.

About this book we are told:

Offering an analysis of Christian-Muslim dialogue across four centuries, this book highlights those voices of ecumenical tone which have more often used the Qur’an for drawing the two faiths together rather than pushing them apart, and amplifies the voice of the Qur’an itself. Finding that there is tremendous ecumenical ground between Christianity and Islam in the voices of their own scholars, this book ranges from a period of declining ecumenism during the first three centuries of Islam, to a period of resurging ecumenism during the most recent century until now. Among the ecumenical voices in the Christian-Muslim dialogue, this book points out that the Qur’an itself is possibly the strongest of those voices. These findings are cause for, and evidence of, hope for the Christian–Muslim relationship: that although agreement may never be reached, dialogue has led at times to very real mutual understanding and appreciation of the religious other.Providing a tool for those pursuing understanding and mutual appreciation between the Islamic and Christian faiths, this book will be of interest to scholars and students of Islam, the Qur’an and the history of Christian-Muslim relations. 

We are also given the contents of this volume: 

Introduction Part 1A: The First Christian Encounters with Islam 1 The History of Christianity in Arabia 2 Christian Doctrine in South Arabia in the Sixth and Early Seventh Centuries 3 Muhammad's Direct Encounters with Christians 4 The Qur'an: the Original Muslim-Christian Apology 5 The Treaty of Muhammad with the Narjan Christians Part 1B: Early History and Trends in Interfaith Dialogue 6 The Trinity 7 The Incarnation 8 The Crucifixion 9 Tahrif 10 Muhammad’s Prophethood 11 Islamic Expansion 12 Comments on Tone in the Phases of Dialogue Part 2: Modern Scholarship in Christian-Muslim Relations 13 The Trinity 14 The Incarnation 15 The Crucifixion 16 Tahrif 17 Muhammad’s Prophethood 18 Islamic Expansion 19 Comments on the Tone of Dialogue 20 Inter-Textual Trends Part 3: Expanding the Qur'anic Bridge 21 Ecumenism as Humble Orthodoxy 22 Orthopraxy 23 Perichoresis 24 Qur'anic Christianity 25 Concluding Thoughts

On the Eve of Islam's Conquests

Oxford's Averil Cameron, one of the world's foremost Byzantinists, published a volume of collected essays last month trying to shed light on places and a period still often misunderstood: Late Antiquity on the Eve of Islam (Ashgate, 2013), 452pp.

About this book the publisher tells us:

This volume reflects the huge upsurge of interest in the Near East and early Islam currently taking place among historians of late antiquity. At the same time, Islamicists and Qur'anic scholars are also increasingly seeking to place the life of Muhammad and the Qur'an in a late antique background. Averil Cameron, herself one of the leading scholars of late antiquity and Byzantium, has chosen eleven key articles that together give a rounded picture of the most important trends in late antique scholarship over the last decades, and provide a coherent context for the emergence of the new religion. A substantial introduction, with a detailed bibliography, surveys the present state of the field, as well as discussing some recent themes in Qur'anic and early Islamic scholarship from the point of view of a late antique historian. The volume also provides an invaluable introduction to recent scholarship, making clear the ferment of religious change that was taking place across the Near East before, during and after the lifetime of Muhammad. It will be essential reading for Islamicists and late antique students and scholars alike.

Dialogue with Islam

David Bertaina, whom I interviewed here, is the author of a recent book, Christian and Muslim Dialogues: The Religious Uses of a Literary Form in the Early Islamic Middle East (Gorgias, 2011) whose details you may read here.

Logos: A Journal of Eastern Christian Studies sent the book out for expert review by Gabriel Said Reynolds, who is the Tisch Family Associate Professor of Islamic Studies and Theology at the University of Notre Dame. Reynolds, the editor of  The Quran in Its Historical Context (Routledge, 2007) and the author most recently of The Emergence of Islam: Classical Traditions in Contemporary Perspective (Fortress, 2012), has written other works in the field of Islamic studies. 

Reynolds says that Bertaina's treatment of Christian-Muslim dialogues offers us a "clear, organized, and insightful presentation" and is "the first systematic scholarly discussion in English of this literature." He concludes by noting that "Bertaina’s work is a valuable contribution in light of the ever-growing interest in Muslim-Christian dialogue today."

That Bloody Fig Tree and Those Damned Pharisees

Bernard Lonergan, whose turgid and rather Teutonic prose I had to plow through once in attempting to read his massively prolix Insight: A Study of Human Understanding, says in there somewhere that we are mistaken if we think that the process of understanding a difficult matter (I think he uses physics as an example) consists in simply "taking a good look" at what he calls the "already-out-there-now-real." Nowhere is that insight more important to remember than when it comes to reading Scripture. How often have we all had the experience of suffering through some hermeneutically ham-fisted dolt proof-texting an issue about which he knows less than nothing--an experience by no means confined to Christian scriptures, but also a problem, on an often larger and more lethal scale, when it comes to understanding the Quran. For Christians like that, I always prescribe a mandatory reading of Stanley Hauerwas, Unleashing the Scripture: Freeing the Bible from Captivity to America. There, with his characteristic swashbuckling style, Hauerwas demonstrates that he is the one for whom Kierkegaard called:

a reformation which did away with the Bible would now be just as valid as Luther’s doing away with the Pope.... [N]o one any longer reads the Bible humanly. As a result it does immeasurable harm.... The Bible Societies, those vapid caricatures...which like all companies only work with money and are just as mundanely interested in spreading the Bible as other companies in their enterprises: the Bible Societies have done immeasurable harm. Christendom has long been in need of a hero who, in fear and trembling before God, had the courage to forbid people to read the Bible (The Journals of Kierkegaard). 

Hauerwas does indeed call for the Bible to be forbidden to people:

Most North American Christians assume that they have a right, if not an obligation, to read the Bible. I challenge that assumption. No task is more important than for the Church to take the Bible out of the hands of individual Christians in North America. North American Christians are trained to believe that they are capable of reading the Bible without spiritual and moral transformation. They read the Bible not as Christians, not as a people set apart, but as democratic citizens who think their “common sense” is sufficient to “understanding” the Scripture. They feel no need to stand under a truthful community to be told how to read. Instead they assume that they have all the “religious experience” necessary to know what the Bible is about (Unleashing the Scripture). 

Hauerwas then goes on to insist that nobody can be trusted to read the Bible until they have undergone the hard askesis of being divested of the habits of mind of late modernity and learned instead to discipline themselves in and under the authority of the Church as a community of character made up of resident aliens.

All this is just a long-winded introduction to a new book that treats those passages in the New Testament rightly called the "difficult sayings" of Jesus Christ, which people often interpret at their peril: Daniel Fanous, Taught by God: Making Sense of the Difficult Sayings of Jesus (Orthodox Research Institute, 2010), 260pp.

About this book, the publisher tells us:

Few would dispute that the sayings of Jesus were and are important. But though important, these very same sayings are difficult at best and incomprehensible at worst. Sayings like, "The kingdom of heaven suffers violence," or, "I did not come to bring peace but a sword," have confused readers of the Gospels for thousands of years. Others such as, "My Father is greater than I," and, "My God why have You forsaken Me?" have sparked theological infernos that have plagued Christianity from its beginnings. From the greatest theologians to the smallest child, the same question is always asked: What did Jesus really mean? In considering only the most difficult of the sayings of Jesus, Taught by God brings together the academic rigour of modern biblical scholarship and the profound wisdom of the early Church Fathers in a unique, lively, and dramatic synthesis.

I hope to interview the author of this book in the new year.