The Golden Calf between Bible and Qur'an最新文献

The Golden Calf between Bible and Qur'an Pub Date : 2020-07-30 DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198852421.003.0008

Michael E. Pregill

{"title":"A Living Calf at Sinai?","authors":"Michael E. Pregill","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780198852421.003.0008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198852421.003.0008","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter re-evaluates major aspects of the Golden Calf story in the Qur’an, proposing a reading of the narrative that breaks with those of both traditional Muslim and Western scholarship and seeks to restore it to its proper historical, religious, and literary context in Late Antiquity. The qur’anic references to the image worshipped by the Israelites provided Muslim exegetes with a pretext for depicting the Calf as alive or at least possessing some semblance of life. However, the qur’anic Calf is better understood not as ? lowing image of a calf but rather an image of a lowing calf, a distinction of enormous significance for the exegesis of the story. In the absence of a conception of the Golden Calf as actually or seemingly animate, the Qur’an’s allusions to the creation of this entity must be reinterpreted as well. This chapter thus proposes alternative explanations of the major elements of the traditional portrayal of the narrative, especially the depiction of the “Samaritan” as an outside interloper who created and animated the Calf through supernatural means, with Moses subsequently imposing a sentence of exile on both him and his descendants, the Samaritan community, for all time. Instead, the major elements of the key passage in the Qur’an can be interpreted as allusions to various biblical subtexts; the qur’anic story originally posited, like its Jewish and Christian precursors, that it was Aaron—called by the unique epithet al-sāmirī here—who had made the Calf and led the Israelites into sin.","PeriodicalId":255162,"journal":{"name":"The Golden Calf between Bible and Qur'an","volume":"144 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-07-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116081453","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

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Conclusion 结论

The Golden Calf between Bible and Qur'an Pub Date : 2020-07-30 DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198852421.003.0010

Michael E. Pregill

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The Syrian–Palestinian Milieu in Late Antiquity 古代晚期的叙利亚-巴勒斯坦环境

The Golden Calf between Bible and Qur'an Pub Date : 2020-07-30 DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198852421.003.0006

Michael E. Pregill

{"title":"The Syrian–Palestinian Milieu in Late Antiquity","authors":"Michael E. Pregill","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780198852421.003.0006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198852421.003.0006","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter focuses on a unique corpus of early Christian literature in Syriac that reflects a synthesis of older patristic views of the Calf episode with specific themes that seem to have circulated widely in the Eastern Christian milieu, shared in common between communities of Jewish and Christian exegetes in this period. While continuing the tradition of anti-Jewish arguments predicated on the abiding impact of Israel’s sin with the Calf, authors such as Ephrem, Aphrahat, and Jacob of Serugh also developed a unique view of Aaron that dictated a more apologetic position regarding his culpability; this precisely paralleled the development of similar views of Aaron in Jewish tradition. This material provides us with a lens through which to examine the phenomenon of exegetical approaches that are held in common by different communities, yet deployed for opposite purposes. The chapter concludes by considering a possible historical context to Syrian Christian polemic against Jews based on the Calf narrative: the revival of priestly leadership, or at least interest in the priesthood and its role, among contemporary Jewish communities, especially in late antique Palestine.","PeriodicalId":255162,"journal":{"name":"The Golden Calf between Bible and Qur'an","volume":"2 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-07-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130589993","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

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Rescripting Sinai 如果西奈

The Golden Calf between Bible and Qur'an Pub Date : 2020-07-30 DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198852421.003.0009

Michael E. Pregill

{"title":"Rescripting Sinai","authors":"Michael E. Pregill","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780198852421.003.0009","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198852421.003.0009","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter interprets the Golden Calf narrative in the Qur’an as a profound, subtle, and intentional engagement with the version of the story known from the book of Exodus, reshaped according to exegetical predispositions anticipated by older late antique Jewish and Christian approaches to the story. It discusses the findings of the previous chapter in the context of both the Qur’an’s relationship to its literary precursors and the Calf narrative’s particular points of resonance with other themes and topoi in the qur’anic corpus. Though the term is a problematic one, the Qur’an’s novel treatment of the Calf story will be considered as an example of “rewritten Bible” here—a reshaping of an older scriptural story that is not only a reimagining but in some ways a re-revelation of a narrative with a considerably freighted history in previous scriptural tradition. This chapter also considers a possible context for the qur’anic presentation of the Calf narrative, particularly its subordination of Aaron as priest to Moses as prophet, in the conflict that traditional Muslim sources describe between Muḥammad and the Jews of Medina after the hijrah. At the same time, the chapter also takes into account the significance of central themes of the story such as transgression, repentance, and authority for the Qur’an’s original audience at a transformative moment in their history.","PeriodicalId":255162,"journal":{"name":"The Golden Calf between Bible and Qur'an","volume":"28 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-07-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134254983","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

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Method and Context in the Study of Bible and Qur’an 《圣经》与《古兰经》研究的方法与语境

The Golden Calf between Bible and Qur'an Pub Date : 2020-07-30 DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198852421.003.0002

Michael E. Pregill

{"title":"Method and Context in the Study of Bible and Qur’an","authors":"Michael E. Pregill","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780198852421.003.0002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198852421.003.0002","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter introduces the story of the Golden Calf, comparing the biblical version found in the book of Exodus and the presentation of the episode in the Qur’an. It argues for the importance of conceiving of qur’anic and Islamic retellings of ancient Israelite narratives as part of a broader biblical tradition, of equal value and legitimacy to the canonical and paracanonical biblical literature of Jews and Christians. In support of this argument, it examines the contribution complex processes of acculturation and scripturalization made to the formation of the Qur’an in Late Antiquity; calls for the abandonment of a one-dimensional concept of “influence” of Jewish traditions on the Qur’an in favor of a conception of the Qur’an as actively engaging a variety of traditions in circulation in its environment; and suggests that this engagement was part of a larger discourse of contestation, polemic, and dispute between communities. In Late Antiquity, Jews, Christians, and Muslims were all committed to their particular visions of the legacy of ancient Israel and its significance for their community’s claims of divine favor. Scriptural rewriting and exegesis thus provided a major arena for demarcating boundaries and defining self and other through reinterpretation of episodes from Israel’s history.","PeriodicalId":255162,"journal":{"name":"The Golden Calf between Bible and Qur'an","volume":"41 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-07-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121580475","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

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A Hard Yoke Upon Their Neck 他们脖子上的硬轭

The Golden Calf between Bible and Qur'an Pub Date : 2020-07-30 DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198852421.003.0005

Michael E. Pregill

{"title":"A Hard Yoke Upon Their Neck","authors":"Michael E. Pregill","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780198852421.003.0005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198852421.003.0005","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter compares the presentations of the Golden Calf narrative in the literary texts of early Christianity and early rabbinic Judaism. The promotion of anti-Jewish readings of the Golden Calf narrative by the early Christian movement, especially after Christianity’s establishment as an imperial religion, would compel Jewish exegetes to adopt new apologetic interpretations that were more imaginative, as well as more evasive, concerning the issue of the culpability of both Aaron and the Israelites for their deed at Sinai. Virtually from the outset, the early Christian movement made use of the Calf narrative as proof of the disconfirmation of the formerly chosen Israel in favor of the Christian Church, positioned as the true Israel and new chosen people. Early Christian exegetes strove to emphasize the illegitimacy of the Jews’ continuing claim to covenantal priority, but this effort was tempered by the necessity of validating Israel’s historical relationship with God and the authenticity of the Bible as true revelation. Notably, these exegetes’ understanding of the significance of Israel’s idolatry with the Calf often appears to reflect an awareness of older Jewish approaches to the story. In turn, the major revisions of the episode seen in later rabbinic tradition can be read as a response to the promotion of specific anti-Jewish themes in patristic literature. Thus, despite the mutual opposition and hostility expressed by spokesmen of both communities, a basic symmetry, even symbiosis, between Jewish and Christian traditions is characteristic of this phase of development of accounts of Israel’s making of the Calf.","PeriodicalId":255162,"journal":{"name":"The Golden Calf between Bible and Qur'an","volume":"129 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-07-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128895789","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

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Early Jewish Interpretation 早期犹太人的解释

The Golden Calf between Bible and Qur'an Pub Date : 2020-07-30 DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198852421.003.0004

Michael E. Pregill

{"title":"Early Jewish Interpretation","authors":"Michael E. Pregill","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780198852421.003.0004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198852421.003.0004","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter examines the earliest traditions of interpretation of the Golden Calf narrative, found in Jewish literature of the Greco-Roman period; these early retellings of the narrative are deeply colored by apologetic concerns. Major shifts in interpretation can be charted over the course of a few short centuries during this era due to rapid changes in the cultural and religious landscape. While the Septuagint, the ancient Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, is frank regarding the Israelites’ sin of idolatry, the versions of the Golden Calf episode found in Philo, Pseudo-Philo, and Josephus are concerned to minimize the impact of attacks on the Jewish community and its traditions from gentile outsiders, and so represent the story in ways intended to mitigate the impression of Israel’s idolatry. Early rabbinic exegetes, in contrast, are relatively candid about Israel’s sin with the Calf. However, the emergence of the Christian movement, which entailed the revision of numerous biblical stories, including new understandings of the Calf narrative, induced rabbinic exegetes to approach the Calf narrative with a new sense of circumspection and caution in order to counter rival interpretations that were potentially harmful to the reputation and self-conception of the Jewish community.","PeriodicalId":255162,"journal":{"name":"The Golden Calf between Bible and Qur'an","volume":"18 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-07-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127105504","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

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The Qur’anic Calf Episode Between Orientalism and Islamic Tradition 东方主义与伊斯兰传统之间的古兰经小插曲

The Golden Calf between Bible and Qur'an Pub Date : 2020-07-30 DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198852421.003.0007

Michael E. Pregill

{"title":"The Qur’anic Calf Episode Between Orientalism and Islamic Tradition","authors":"Michael E. Pregill","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780198852421.003.0007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198852421.003.0007","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter discusses the qur’anic Golden Calf episode as it is traditionally interpreted in both Muslim exegesis and Western scholarship. The qur’anic references to the image worshipped by the Israelites are usually understood as depicting the Calf as alive or at least possessing some semblance of life—as ? lowing image of a calf, as the Qur’an puts it. Further, the Qur’an seems to posit that the Calf was made and animated by a character called al-sāmirī—the “Samaritan”—and not Aaron as in the biblical story. Western scholars and traditional Muslim commentators have always agreed on this interpretation of the qur’anic version of the episode. However, this chapter shows that Western scholars have generally relied upon the explanation of the episode in Muslim exegesis or tafsīr, misunderstanding the role that early Muslim commentators played in introducing a radical revision of the story that was quite different in major details from the account found in the Qur’an itself. This can be demonstrated by examining historical translations of the Qur’an in the West, beginning with some of the earliest translations and commentaries of the medieval and early modern periods in Europe. In the specific case of the Calf narrative, Western scholars’ reliance on tafsīr has typically been motivated not by a desire to validate the claims of Muslim authorities, but rather by the assumption that Islam is at its root thoroughly dependent upon Judaism. This assumption has colored not only the overarching approach to the qur’anic narrative per se, but also the characterization of a number of rabbinic traditions that have been cited as the sources of that narrative.","PeriodicalId":255162,"journal":{"name":"The Golden Calf between Bible and Qur'an","volume":"21 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-07-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133381563","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

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Biblical Beginnings 圣经的起源

The Golden Calf between Bible and Qur'an Pub Date : 2020-07-30 DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198852421.003.0003

Michael E. Pregill

{"title":"Biblical Beginnings","authors":"Michael E. Pregill","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780198852421.003.0003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198852421.003.0003","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter examines the main narrative of the Golden Calf found in Exodus 32, as well as other allusions to this episode from Israel’s history from what became the canonical Hebrew Bible. The account of the Calf in Exodus appears to have been shaped by polemical imperatives in the earliest stages of its development, and reflects complex questions surrounding sanctioned forms of divine worship, the status of different priestly groups, and the relationship of those groups to the Israelite monarchies and the cult forms they sponsored. The conception of the Calf in Exodus appears to reflect ancient ideas about the sanctioned means of worshipping the God of Israel, with an older form of Israelite cult practice—the use of bulls or calves to suggest the invisible divine presence—being critiqued here. However, rather than corroborating the Exodus narrative’s presentation of the affair, the version of the episode preserved in Deuteronomy reflects the profoundly different imperatives of a later age. While the Exodus narrative ultimately hearkens back to a time in Israel’s history in which the making of the Calf was perceived primarily as a lamentable cultic infraction, the reframing of the narrative in Deuteronomy embeds it in a larger discourse in which the making of the Calf appears as the pre-eminent example of idolatry, a distinctive ideological construction of the exilic and post-exilic periods that marked all forms of religious practice not sanctioned as “orthodox” as betrayals of the covenant and regression to the worship of false gods.","PeriodicalId":255162,"journal":{"name":"The Golden Calf between Bible and Qur'an","volume":"62 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-07-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130200732","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

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