Arab Prophets of the Qur'an and Bible

2006 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 24-57 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brannon Wheeler
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
Biblical Studies ◽  
Historical Narrative ◽  
Historical Study ◽  
Historical Materials ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Biblical Scholarship ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
Literary Sources ◽  
The Common

Recent scholarship on the Qur'an has noted the need for more attention to the historical content of the Qur'an, and in evaluating how the historical study of the Qur'an compares to the long tradition of Biblical studies in Europe and North America. This paper examines the question of the historicity of the Qur'an's contents with particular attention to how historical information in the Qur'an has traditionally been used and compared to the historical narrative drawn from Biblical scholarship by Muslim exegetes. In particular, this study focuses on the question of the ‘Arab’ prophets Hūd, Sālih, and Shucayb: of all the prophets mentioned by name in the Qur'an, only these three appear not to be mentioned in the Bible, and, as such, they provide a helpful example with which to examine the treatment of historical materials in the Qur'an. In addition to Islamic exegesis, this paper uses a number of non-Qur'anic literary sources, and archeological findings, to demonstrate that there is a fair amount of evidence external to the Qur'an for the historicity of the Arab prophets, suggesting the need for a much more varied and wider consideration of the phenomenon of prophecy in the ancient world as the common heritage of the religions of the Book.

Moral Injury and Biblical Studies: An Early Sampling of Research and Emerging Trends

2021 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 121-144
Author(s):  
Brad E. Kelle
Keyword(s):  
Biblical Studies ◽  
Moral Injury ◽  
Critical Study ◽  
Moral Beliefs ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Biblical Scholarship ◽  
Emerging Trends ◽  
New Meanings ◽  
The World ◽  
Biblical Texts

Moral injury emerged within clinical psychology and related fields to refer to a non-physical wound (psychological and emotional pain and its effects) that results from the violation (by oneself or others) of a person’s deepest moral beliefs (about oneself, others, or the world). Originally conceived in the context of warfare, the notion has now expanded to include the morally damaging impact of various non-war-related experiences and circumstances. Since its inception, moral injury has been an intersectional and cross-disciplinary term and significant work has appeared in psychology, philosophy, medicine, spiritual/pastoral care, chaplaincy, and theology. Since 2015, biblical scholarship has engaged moral injury along two primary trajectories: 1) creative re-readings of biblical stories and characters informed by insights from moral injury; and 2) explorations of the postwar rituals and symbolic practices found in biblical texts and how they might connect to the felt needs of morally injured persons. These trajectories suggest that the engagement between the Bible and moral injury generates a two-way conversation in which moral injury can serve as a heuristic that brings new meanings out of biblical texts, and the critical study of biblical texts can contribute to the attempts to understand, identify, and heal moral injury.

The Orthodox Christians and the Bible

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. G. Roeber
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Middle Eastern ◽  
Biblical Studies ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Biblical Scholarship ◽  
Biblical Study ◽  
English Translations ◽  
New Testament Studies ◽  
European Immigrants ◽  
History Of

Orthodox Christians (Eastern or Oriental) regard the Bible as an integral but not exclusive part of tradition. They have historically encountered the Bible primarily through their liturgical worship. No fixed “canon” describes the role of the Bible in Orthodoxy. The history of the Orthodox Bible in America moved in stages that reflected the mission to First Peoples, arrival of Middle Eastern and Eastern European immigrants, and the catastrophic impact of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia on Orthodox communities in America. Recovery from the fragmented, ethno-linguistic expressions of Orthodoxy occurred only after World War II. Orthodox biblical scholarship began in earnest in those years and today Orthodox biblical scholars participate in national and international biblical studies and incorporate scholarly approaches to biblical study with patristic commentary and perspectives. Parish-level studies and access to English translations have proliferated although New Testament studies continue to outpace attention given to the Hebrew Bible.

Hebrew Bible Quotations in Arabic Transcription in Safavid Iran of the 11th/17th Century: Sayyed Aḥmad ʿAlavī’s Persian Refutations of Christianity

2013 ◽  
Vol 1 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 235-252
Author(s):  
Dennis Halft
Keyword(s):  
Hebrew Bible ◽  
17Th Century ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Arabic Characters ◽  
Literary Sources ◽  
Jewish Scriptures ◽  
The Common

In Muslim polemical writings on the Bible written in Arabic, scriptural quotations frequently appear in Arabic transcription of the original Hebrew. This phenomenon also occurs in the Persian refutations of Christianity by the 11th/17th-century Shīʿī scholar Sayyed Aḥmad ʿAlavī. The adduced biblical materials, however, vary significantly depending on the particular manuscript or recension. Nevertheless, they reflect the common repertoire of scriptural verses invoked by Muslim authors. In contrast to Henry Corbin, who argued on the basis of the Hebrew verses transcribed in Arabic characters that ʿAlavī was a Hebraist and directly acquainted with the Jewish Scriptures, it is suggested here that the Shīʿī scholar relied instead on lists of biblical “testimonies” to Muḥammad. Although ʿAlavī’s literary sources are as yet unknown due to a lack of research, there is evidence from the manuscripts dating from ʿAlavī’s lifetime that he copied the transcribed Bible quotations from earlier Muslim writings.

Returning To China: Biblical Interpretation in Postcolonial Hong Kong

1999 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 156-173 ◽  
Author(s):  
Archie C.C. Lee
Keyword(s):  
Hong Kong ◽  
Biblical Interpretation ◽  
Biblical Studies ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
Biblical Text ◽  
Hybrid Identity ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Biblical Scholarship ◽  
British Colonial ◽  
New Framework

AbstractThe paper aims to construct a new framework for biblical studies from the context of postcolonial Hong Kong. While present biblical scholarship has largely depended on historical-critical exegesis, biblical scholars of Asia have begun to conceive a different approach to the Bible, because of not only a new context of reading, but also a radically different cultural-political location of the reader. This location, as it is now being formulated, is a reading between East and West, between the dominant interpretation and scholarship of the formerly colonial and Western cultures and the newly arising consciousness of emerging postcolonial identities in the histories and cultures of Asia. After about some 150 years of British colonial rule, the identity of being a people of Hong Kong is highly hybridised. It is a hybrid identity of being cultural Chinese and yet pragmatically British, both a strong sense of identification with China and an unexplainable fear of being national Chinese. Such location of a reader transforms one's understanding of a biblical text such as Isaiah 56-66 and sheds a new light on the meaning of the return in some of its major passages.

Introduction

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-6
Author(s):  
Thomas H. McCall
Keyword(s):  
Biblical Studies ◽  
Appropriate Use ◽  
Theological Interpretation ◽  
Constructive Theology ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Biblical Scholarship ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Theological Discourse

Recent years have seen the flowering of something called the “theological interpretation of Scripture.” This is, very roughly, what happens when biblical scholars and theologians alike read the Bible to see what it tells us about God. For several centuries, the discipline of biblical studies has been not only distinguished but also separated from theological discourse. There have been many notable exceptions, of course, but the all-too-common results have been these: biblical scholars often interpret the texts with other aims in mind (sometimes reading with a theological lens has been discouraged as unscholarly and thus improper), and theologians often do their work of constructive theology without serious engagement with biblical scholarship or even with the Christian Scriptures. Recent years have also seen the rise (or perhaps re-birth) of something now called “analytic theology.” Analytic theology is, very roughly, what happens when philosophers who are interested in doctrine and theologians who think that there is (or might be) value in the appropriate use of philosophical tools get together. It is now a burgeoning movement, and analytic theologians are making contributions on a wide range of issues and topics, and from a variety of perspectives and approaches. We have not, however, witnessed a great deal of interaction between those who engage in the theological interpretation of Scripture and those who practice analytic theology....

Jeremiah 37-52

2004 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jack R. Lundbom
Keyword(s):  
Biblical Studies ◽  
Large Collection ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Biblical Scholarship ◽  
The Earth ◽  
The World ◽  
The Future ◽  
The One ◽  
Divine Wrath ◽  
The Temple

Stirring words of the most outspoken of the Hebrew prophets are reexamined in this concluding volume of the esteemed Anchor Bible Commentary on Jeremiah. This final book of the three-volume Anchor Bible Commentary gives us translation and commentary on the concluding sixteen chapters of Jeremiah. Here, during Judah’s darkest days, when nationhood came to an end, Jeremiah with his people confronted the consequences of the nation’s sin, while at the same time reconstituting a remnant community with hopes to give Israel a future. Jeremiah preached that Israel’s God, Yahweh, was calling to account every nation on the Earth, even the nation chosen as his own. For the latter, Jeremiah was cast into a pit and left to die, only to be rescued by an Ethiopian eunuch. But the large collection of Foreign Nation Oracles in the book shows that other nations too were made to drink the cup of divine wrath, swollen as they were by wickedness, arrogant pride, and trust in their own gods. Yet the prophet who thundered Yahweh’s judgment was also the one who gave Israel’s remnant a hope for the future, expressed climactically in a new and eternal covenant for future days. Here too is the only report in the Bible of an accredited scribe writing up a scroll of oracles for public reading at the Temple. This magisterial work of scholarship is sure to be essential to any biblical studies curriculum. Jeremiah 37-52 draws on the best biblical scholarship to further our understanding of this preeminent prophet and his message to the world.

The Mind of Victorian Orthodoxy: Anglican Responses to ‘Essays and Reviews,’ 1860–1864

1982 ◽  
Vol 51 (2) ◽  
pp. 186-197 ◽  
Author(s):  
Josef L. Altholz
Keyword(s):  
Old Testament ◽  
Church And State ◽  
Historical Study ◽  
Victorian England ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Biblical Scholarship ◽  
Crisis Of Faith ◽  
Religious Mind ◽  
The Mind

The composite volume entitled Essays and Reviews, published in 1860, became the center of one of the major religious controversies of Victorian England—a crisis of faith contemporary with that provoked by Darwin's Origin of Species but more central to the religious mind. Essays and Reviews was at once the culmination and the final act of the Broad Church movement. The volume itself was modest in its pretensions and varied in the character and quality of its seven essays. The first, by Frederick Temple, was a warmed-over sermon urging the free study of the Bible. Rowland Williams wrote a provocative essay on Bunsen, denying the predictive character of Old Testament prophecies. Baden Powell flatly denied the possibility of miracles. H. B. Wilson gave the widest possible latitude to subscription to the Thirty-nine Articles and questioned the eternity of damnation. C. W. Goodwin (the only layman among the Essayists) wrote a critique of the attempted “harmonies” between Genesis and geology. Mark Pattison wrote a learned and cold historical study of the evidential theologians of the eighteenth century (perhaps the only essay of lasting value). The volume was capped by Benjamin Jowett's tremendous though wayward essay “On the Interpretation of Scripture,” in which he urged that the Bible be read “like any other book” and made an impassioned plea for freedom of scholarship. Little of all this was original, though it was new to most Englishmen. It was not the cutting edge of biblical scholarship; rather, it was the last gasp of an outmoded Coleridgianism, contributing little except a demand that somebody—somebody else—engage in serious biblical criticism. But this work touched off a controversy which lasted four years and mobilized the resources of both church and state.

Disability Studies and Biblical Studies: Retrospectives and Prospects

2019 ◽  
Vol 73 (4) ◽  
pp. 343-354
Author(s):  
Hector Avalos
Keyword(s):  
Health Care ◽  
Disability Studies ◽  
Biblical Studies ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Biblical Scholarship ◽  
The Future

The integration of the field of disability studies with biblical scholarship has grown rapidly since the 1990s. This essay provides an overview of some of the main developments and explores some directions for the future. The essay suggests that the primary challenge is integrating disability studies and health care into standard college introductions to the Bible.

The Role of “Common Sense” In the Hermeneutics of Moses Stuart

1990 ◽  
Vol 83 (3) ◽  
pp. 305-319 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Granquist
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Unique Feature ◽  
The United States ◽  
Biblical Studies ◽  
Holy Land ◽  
Religious Leaders ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Biblical Scholarship ◽  
Far Eastern

The first decades of the nineteenth century saw a resurgence of interest in critical biblical studies in the United States. Though many colonial religious leaders were well trained in the area of biblical studies because of their European educations, this field of study declined to a very low state in America in the eighteenth century. The nineteenth-century revival of biblical studies in America, led by scholars such as Edward Robinson, William E. Channing, Andrews Norton, and Moses Stuart, was a homegrown, broad-based movement that ran the gamut of theological positions from conservative Calvinist to Unitarian. One unique feature of this movement was its interest in the biblical criticism of German writers; indeed, many works of German scholarship were translated into English by these American writers long before they achieved circulation in England. The resulting American biblical scholarship flourished not only at seminaries and divinity schools, but also on more practical levels. Edward Robinson, for example, led an expedition to the Middle East to study the geography and antiquities of the Holy Land. This scholarship was also tied to the prevalent missionary impulse, resulting in the translation of the Bible into many additional languages, especially those of the Middle and Far Eastern missionary fields.

Apostles of Revolution? Marxism and Biblical Studies

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-80
Author(s):  
Christina Petterson
Keyword(s):  
Biblical Studies ◽  
Major Focus ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Biblical Scholarship ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Liberal Ideology ◽  
Marxist Analysis

Abstract Marxist analysis of the bible is spreading, but clarity about what constitutes Marxist readings and Marxist categories of analysis is lacking. This lack of clarity is compounded by the different strands and factions within Marxist politics, which have subtle resonances in biblical scholarship. These issues are canvassed in the first part of the article. The major focus of the article, however, is the collaboration between biblical studies and liberal ideology, which is examined in two ways. First, by presenting and discussing some of the central Marxist categories of analysis, namely history, ideology and class, and how these categories have been co-opted into biblical studies and in the process lost their radical edge. Second, by discussing the emergence of the discipline of biblical studies during the Enlightenment, and to what extent the containment strategies of biblical studies overlap with those of liberalism and capitalism.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document