Larangan Intermarriage dalam Nehemia 13: 23-27: Suatu Upaya Hermeneutis Post-Modern melalui Pendekatan Sosial-Antropologis

This article is a post-modern hermeneutic study of Nehemiah 13: 23-27 with a socio anthropologicalapproach. This text talks about the prohibition of intermarriage between the Jewish community and foreign nations in the post-exilic era. This prohibition still alive now, not only in the Jewish community but also in other Abrahamic religions. Liquidity of cultural and religious identities today does not mean denying those people who still keep their tradition, culture, and group identities. The latest socio-anthropological and archeologicalstudies of the Bible show the text as Nehemiah and text editor effort to bequeath cultural memories to build the purity of Jewish identity. With intertextual studies, I will show that Old Testament Books is not ‘one voice’ about intermarriages. This ambiguity challenges us to rethink the prohibition on intermarriage without discrimination and segregation to the Other. Abstrak Artikel ini adalah upaya hermeneu􀆟 s post-modern terhadap teks Nehemia 13:23-27 dengan pendekatan sosio-antropologis. Teks ini berbicara tentang larangan kawin campur (intermarriage) antara komunitas Yahudi pasca-pembuangan dengan bangsa-bangsa asing. Larangan ini nyatanya masih terjadi hingga saat ini, bukan hanya di tengah-tengah komunitas Yahudi masa kini, namun juga agama-agama Abrahamik lainnya. Cairnyaidentitas budaya dan agama saat ini tidak berarti menafikan mereka yang masih memegang teguh tradisi, budaya dan pelestarian identitas kelompoknya. Studi sosio-antropologis dan arkeologi Alkitab terbaru memperlihatkan teks sebagai upaya Nehemia maupun redaktur teks mewariskan ingatan budaya dalam rangka membangun kemurnian identitas bangsa Yahudi pasca-pembuangan. Penulis juga memanfaatkan studi intertekstual dalam rangka memperlihatkan bahwa kitab Perjanjian Pertama (PP) tidak unisono dalam memperlihatkan larangan intermarriage. Ambiguitas ini menjadi tantangan bagi kita untuk memikirkan ulanglarangan intermarriage tanpa diskriminasi dan segregasi terhadap mereka yang berbeda.

ГЕНДЕРНОЕ ИЗМЕРЕНИЕ ХАЛЯЛЯ: ЖЕНСКОЕ ТЕЛО И РОДОВСПОМОЖЕНИЕ В ПЛАТНЫХ МЕДИЦИНСКИХ УСЛУГАХ ДЛЯ МУСУЛЬМАН В РЕСПУБЛИКЕ ТАТАРСТАН

Using the example of the Republic of Tatarstan (Russia), this article discusses the emergence of the field of medical services for Muslims. It argues that genderisation of social interactions, in particular, of those between physicians and patients, has been one of the main principles of Muslim bioethics in the Republic. Among other measures, halal certification procedures are currently being developed by numerous religious experts in order to standardise and legitimise such genderisation. The analysis draws on data collected during multiple interviews with experts, medical professionals, Muslim patients, as well as on the qualitative study of regulatory documents. The article shows that the main feature of rules that govern certification procedures in Tatarstan today is the ongoing convergence between religious norms and biomedicine. As a particular example of medical services designed explicitly for Muslims in the Republic, the paper presents and analyses the service of “halal birth-giving”. This service combines commodification of religiosity and paid care for Muslim women, thereby heavily relying on their gender and religious identities, as well as their class status.

Religious and Spiritual Identities

The purpose of this chapter is to provide an in-depth examination of the first construct in the core theoretical model—religious and/or spiritual identities. People typically identify themselves as religious only, spiritual only, religious and spiritual, or neither religious nor spiritual. The identity they choose has profound implications for the way they relate to religious institutions and the health-related benefits they may enjoy from doing so. Four issues are examined in detail: (1) an overview of social identity theory is provided; (2) previous research on religious identities and health is reviewed; (3) a detailed overview of recent research by the author on religious and spiritual identities is discussed; and (4) next steps that are needed to take research on religious and/or spiritual identities to the next level are identified.

Exploring Communities of Faith

Many researchers focus primarily on the frequency of church attendance when they study the religion-and-health relationship. The many shortcomings of this strategy are discussed in this chapter. A plea is made for focusing on communities of faith instead. Four issues involving communities of faith are examined: (1) a preliminary working definition of communities of faith is provided; (2) because communities of faith constitute a vast conceptual domain, a good deal of this chapter is spent on identifying the key characteristics of communities of faith and explaining how they arise and are maintained; (3) in an effort to move the literature forward, a detailed research plan for devising measures of communities of faith is presented; and (4) a submodel is provided that further illuminates the relationship between religious identities and communities of faith.

Water Symbolism in Yorùbá Folklore and Culture1

Water is not only a physical substance; it is also an intrinsic part of peoples’ identity, cultural perception, religious beliefs and worldviews. Water is a relevant and a significant variable that is also germane to the understanding of Yorùbá peoples’ identity, culture and religion. Hence, this ethnographical and literary study examines the image of water in Yorùbá cosmology using folklore (oral texts) of the people as paradigms. It uses a field investigative method of research to elicit primary data from the people on the uses of water in diverse spheres of life. It supplements oral data with secondary data in the form of books, journal articles and archival materials. The data collected was analysed from the lenses of a hermeneutical-anthropological approach. The study found that water constitutes and creates cultural, social and religious identities among the Yorùbá people of southwestern Nigeria. In addition, it concludes that water represents one of the several ways through which the Yorùbá society can be best understood.

Identity, Religion and Difference in the Borderland District of Poonch, Jammu and Kashmir

This article (part of a special section on South Asian border studies) is an exploration of a multi-religious ethnic group in the borderland district of Poonch in Jammu and Kashmir, India. The work focuses on the Pahari ethnicity and looks at how prominent religious identities within this group have been continuously aligning themselves along religious lines in the post-partition era. Partition of the Indian subcontinent in 1947 acted as a major disruption in the construction of identities. The evolution of national and ethnic identities went hand in hand with the evolution of religious identities, with the latter being more pronounced than the former. Such a fixation along religious lines in the socio-cultural and political sphere led to changes in everyday inter-community relations. Through oral histories and other accounts, this ethnography understands the new set of interactions that emerged in Poonch which have been shaping identities, while also analysing identity construction and its impact on the social organisation of space and neighbourhoods in general in the post-partition era. Key Words: Borderland, Border, Boundaries, Community, Communalism, Difference, Ethnicity, Identity, Inter-community interaction, Nation, Nation-State, Othering, Religion

Southeast Europe

This chapter charts the religious landscape of Southeast Europe and considers its religious specificities in their historical and geographical context. To this purpose, it discusses the significance of the Orthodox Christian heritage of Byzantium; the cleavage between Eastern and Western Christianity (both Roman Catholicism and Protestantism) and inter-confessional dynamics; the presence of Islam and the long period of Ottoman rule; the existence of other religions in the region; the role of Russia in Southeast European affairs; ethno-religious identities and the rise of nationalism; the communist and the post-communist periods; and finally, the negative discourse about the Balkans in the context of Southeast European distinctiveness, the modernization process, and the potential for religion in this.

Lusophony Pentecostal Churches in Berlin: Religious Identities Between Integration and Transatlantic Boundaries

Although migration is a constant in human history, current trajectories have new quantitative and qualitative features with religious implications, which are addressed in this article. What is new and paradoxical about what is commonly referred to as globalization is the diffuse nature of worldwide migration and the mobility of people, ideas, and goods. This article therefore explores how members of Brazilian Pentecostal congregations in Berlin use specific functions and patterns of interpretation communicated or generated by discourses of the churches to cope with the lack of social capital in a new social and cultural environment and how their interpretations and orientations shape everyday actions. This article is an attempt to capture the ambiguous role of religious resources in the process of migration and social integration as well as the actions of community members. Although a growing body of literature explores the influence of migrant organizations on its members, new church actors of Christian migrants in Germany are rarely considered as drivers of religious pluralization. Therefore, this article reflects on the different functions of Brazilian Pentecostal congregations for the integration of Lusophone Pentecostal migrants in Berlin. In order to identify the functions of Pentecostal organizations, a theoretical framework is determined and related to the statements of the interview partners and to findings from observations. To answer the research question, this article draws on field research conducted between November 2019 and June 2020. The empirical analysis uses data from four narrative interviews and over 40 participant observations in four different transnational congregations belonging to a Brazilian Pentecostal network of churches. The results show that individual religiosity and belonging to a particular religious group not only provide social relationships and a network of solidarity for individuals, but also reinterpret the social exclusion and marginalization of migrants.

Quran as Scripture in Classical Muslim Scholarship

Recent scholarship focuses on the plasticity of the concept of “scripture” as it is defined by different religious traditions. Based on its contents, the Quran is most commonly compared to the Bible, yet such an approach misses the distinct way that the Quran is understood as an authoritative text by classical Muslim scholarship. Even “basic” information—knowing the number of words, the names of surahs, the structure of the text—is essential to understanding how Muslims see the Quran as scripture and the foundations upon which it is built. Muslims regard the Quran as the word of God, revealed to the prophet Muhammad, the primary source for determining the beliefs and practices of Islam. The text of the Quran is used in the teaching of Arabic and is the focus of Islamic learning. It is regarded as interceding on behalf of those who revere it, is recited as a part of regular rituals, and is treated as a sacred object in ritual and everyday settings. The exegetical and ritual use of the Quran is a fundamental means for Muslims to both relate and distinguish themselves from other religious identities, especially those such as Jews and Christians, with whom they share a common scriptural tradition.