Download PDF | Jacob Neusner, Tamara Sonn, Jonathan E. Brockopp - Judaism and Islam in Practice_ A Sourcebook-Routledge (1999).
219 Pages
Judaism and Islam compare because they concur that God cares deeply not only about attitudes but actions, not only about what one says to God but how one conducts affairs at home and in the village. In this sourcebook, the authors have selected key passages from the laws of Judaism and Islam which allow a close examination of their mode of expression and medium of thought as well as the substance of the laws themselves. The selected passages concentrate on areas critical to the life of piety and faith as actually practised within the two faith-communities—the relationship between the believer and God, between and among believers, at home in marriage, outside the home in the community and between the faithful and the infidels (for Islam) or idolaters (for Judaism). Judaism and Islam in Practice presents an invaluable collection of sources of Jewish and Islamic law and provides a unique analysis of the similarities and contrasts between the two faiths.
PREFACE
Judaism and Islam are comparable in that they concur that God cares deeply not only about attitudes but actions, not only about what one says to God but how one conducts affairs at home and in the village. God aims at sanctifying the social order, not only private life. Both religions agree that God aims at the reconstruction of society in accord with norms of holiness and that God has in so many words, through revealed writings to the prophets, specified precisely the character of those norms. So the two great traditions bear much in common.
That fact permits comparison—therefore also contrast. Why do so just now? Because this is an age in which, in the USA, Europe, and the Middle East, the monotheisms of law in the service of the All Merciful (as both call God) intersect once more, as they did a thousand years before. How the religions compare and contrast when, within the shared framework of convictions about the social, therefore legal, dimensions of theology, they speak in the same way about the same practical subjects defines the problem of this sourcebook. Our goal is to provide readers with a direct encounter not only with the substance of the laws but also their language.
That is why we set forth a sourcebook, in which lengthy abstracts allow close examination of Islamic and Judaic modes of expression and media of thought as much as the message of the religions concerning a subject they regard as critical to their respective accounts of the social order. We shall see that when we examine how Judaism and Islam portray the critical relationships that people maintain— between themselves and God, among themselves in the community of the faithful, and between that community and the outsider—we find a striking fact. It is that Judaism and Islam concur on a great many practical matters, using different language with the same result time and again.
That does not mean the two are really saying the same thing and form a single religious tradition, divided in detail and perhaps in distinctive idiom—that is far from the fact. It does mean that Judaism and Islam, by reason of their concentric character and their concurring judgments about what matters between God and humanity, may undertake a sustained dialogue on issues of common concern. Out of the classical sources of each, we mean to construct the wherewithal of one such dialogue, the one concerning the practicalities of the religious life lived with God, conducted at home, and sustained in the face of difference beyond the circle of faith, home and family. That aspiration to contribute to the common good explains the plan of the book.
The three authors have chosen four areas, all of them critical to the life of piety and faith as actually practiced within the two faith-communities. They fall into three categories, defined by relationship, one covered by Chapter 1, the second, by Chapters 2 and 3, and the third by Chapter 4: between the believer and God, between and among believers, at home in marriage, outside the home in the community; and finally, between the faithful and the infidels (for Islam) or idolaters (for Judaism). The first area of law addresses the life of the faithful with God and encompasses acts of piety in prayer, fasting, and ablutions. The second takes up the life of the faithful within their own community, both at home and in the fellowship of the faithful outside the walls of the household. The former involve relationships within the family— betrothal, marriage, inheritance and divorce—as these are topics deemed critical to the holy way of life under God’s law by both Islam and Judaism in their classical, formative writings.
The latter address the laws for the support of the poor, almsgiving and charity. The third category encompasses the laws regulating the relationship of the holy community to outsiders, in two aspects: first, defining who belongs to the community of the faithful; second, the matter of ‘the Other’ in Judaism and Islam. In this way we offer an encompassing portrait of the practicalities of the two religions of law and show their numerous points of concurrence, also underscoring where and how they differ. We deal only with the initial, and everywhere authoritative, statements of the two religions, their classical formulations. So we portray the religions within the ideal type set forth in their respective bodies of classical law, Scripture as set forth by the Mishnah and Talmud, c. 200–600 CE, for Judaism, and the Quran and Sunna of the Prophet as set forth by the classic handbooks of Islamic jurisprudence, c. 700–1000 CE for Islam. We propose to state matters in their initial, canonical presentations, with which all later authorities concur, and to which all subsequent theologians and lawyers turn for normative rules. Since we claim to state the generative norms of the two theological-legal traditions and compare and contrast them in their ideal formulation, we do not take up questions of variation over time or space and among diverse interpreters of the common tradition.
What we compare are the formulations of Judaism and Islam by their classical authorities: God’s revelation to Moses as portrayed in Scripture and recapitulated in Oral Tradition by the rabbis who produced the Mishnah and the Talmud, God’s revelation to Muhammad as portrayed in the Qur’an and the practice of his Prophet, and explained by the legal scholars who produced the classic handbooks of Islamic law. We intend to provide a picture that all subsequent generations of Judaism and Islam to the present day will find accurate and familiar, even while taking account of later developments. For Judaism, specifically, we portray the law and theology as set forth in the Hebrew scriptures of ancient Israel, with emphasis upon the Pentateuch, as those scriptures are interpreted and recapitulated by the Mishnah, a philosophical law code of c. 200 CE, the Tosefta, a compilation of supplementary laws of c. 300 CE, the Talmud of the Land of Israel, a commentary on thirty-nine of the Mishnah’s sixty-two topical tractates, of c. 400 CE, and the Talmud of Babylonia, a commentary on thirty-seven of the Mishnah’s tractates, of c. 600 CE. The abstracts take two forms.
In some cases, the law is set forth in an English translation of the original Hebrew (or Aramaic, as the text dictates). In others, the law is presented in a different way. Here the Mishnah’s statement is given, followed by the Tosefta’s complement (or its independent ruling, amplifying the same topic but nothing that the Mishnah says about that topic), then by the discussion of the Talmud of the Land of Israel, and finally, by that of the Talmud of Babylonia. What we have is a reprise, in the sources’ own language, but not a verbatim abstract of everything the classical sources say in their way of presenting matters. The former presentation brings readers into direct contact with the language as well as the substance of the sources. The latter provides a reprise of the sources, covering more ground in an efficient manner. Each type of presentation has its advantages. For Islam we draw upon the classical sources, the authority of which all Muslims affirm. The absolute foundation of Islam is the Qur’an (which used to be spelled phonetically as Koran), Islam’s sacred scripture.
The Qur’an is believed to be the literal word of God, revealed through Prophet Muhammad, in the early seventh century CE in Arabia. (The Arabic word qur’an means ‘recitation’.) But the Qur’an is not a law book. Of its 114 chapters (known as suras), only a few deal with specific legislation, such as those prohibiting female infanticide, usury, and gambling; those imposing dietary restrictions (the prohibition of alcohol and pork); and those specifying family law on issues such as inheritance, dower, and arbitration in divorce.
The majority of the Qur’an’s verses deal with theological teachings, such as the oneness of God, and moral themes, establishing general standards for virtue and justice. What is more, they were revealed gradually, over some twenty-two years. Over that period, many of the themes developed, some made more specific, some exemplified by the Prophet’s words and example. Those words and examples, though not part of the Qur’an itself, are considered essential to a full understanding of Scripture, since the Qur’an itself repeatedly says that the Prophet Muhammad set the best example of how to follow its teachings. Collectively known as the Sunna (‘way’ or normative practice; also spelled ‘Sunnah’) of the Prophet, reports (ahadith, singular: hadith) of these examples were originally transmitted orally from one generation to another. But within a century after the Prophet’s death in 632 CE, scholars began to recognize the need to record them. They collected as many individual reports as possible, then carefully screened them for authenticity, organized, and codified them.
By the third century after the Prophet (late ninth/early tenth century CE), there were six major collections of hadith reports for Sunni Muslims. (Sh‘i or Shi‘ite Muslims, a minority who differ from the Sunni on issues of community leadership, compiled older collections of hadith reports, and by the eleventh century CE had identified three major books of Sunna.) Two of the Sunni collections (those of ninth century scholars Muhammad al-Bukhari and Muslim ibn al-Hajjaj al-Naysaburi) were designated by the majority of scholars at the time as most authoritative.
The hadith collections, and especially those of al-Bukhari and Muslim, are the basis of commentaries purporting to amplify the meaning of Qur’anic verses (tafsir), and provide essential precedents in Islamic legislation (fiqh). Islamic law (collectively known as Shari‘a; also spelled Shari‘ah) is the basis of Islamic life—personal and public. There are four major schools of Islamic law for Sunni Muslims, and another for Shi‘i Muslims. Other, smaller groups of Muslims rely on other formulations of normative behavior. But all Muslims agree that the sources for knowledge of normative behavior are the Qur’an and the Sunna of the Prophet.
They are, therefore, the sources used in the treatment of issues presented in this volume. While this sourcebook stands on its own and can be read in its own terms and framework, it also serves as a supplement to another book produced by the first two of the three authors of this one (Neusner and Sonn). In the companion, Comparing Religions Through Law: Judaism and Islam (London: Routledge, 1999), the authors spell out their theory of how to compare Islam and Judaism as religions of law. There they introduce the authoritative documents of the faiths, the intellectual sources that animate the exploration of the law and its logic in particular, the institutions that (in theory) administer the law, and the kinds of religious authority that bear primary responsibility for administration. In the process of contrast, they identify areas of the law treated by both religions but emphasized, in proportion, by one more than by the other, and they point to categories unique to the one and ignored by the other. But in their exposition, they deal only lightly with areas of law treated in common and in roughly comparable proportions by Judaism and Islam; in the present sourcebook, the contrast between the systems of law and theology having been highlighted, and joined by the third author (to whom the original idea of the entire project belongs), they turn to the areas of comparability and commensurate importance.
One point requires clarification. Our intent is to deal solely with Judaism and Islam as religions, with special reference to the classical writings of each, representing Judaism through to the seventh, and Islam through the tenth century. We do not enter into contemporary problems of politics. At the same time, the language of Judaism and Islam includes words bearing meanings today that did not exist in the formative ages of the two faiths. A principal one of these is ‘Israel,’ which, in the liturgy of Judaism and in the laws refers to the holy people called into being by God to receive the Torah at Sinai. That represents a supernatural entity. Members of that holy people, in line with the usage of Scripture, are called ‘Israelites.’ The territory they received from God is called ‘the Land of Israel.’
These represent formulations that have no bearing upon present-day politics dealing with the State of Israel, Israelis as citizens of the State of Israel, and other contemporary subjects of contention. So ‘Israel’ in the liturgy of Judaism, cited at some length, speaks of the holy people of God, not the State of Israel of our own times. Professor Brockopp expresses his thanks to Bard College for the opportunity to pursue his scholarly career under splendid conditions, and Professor Neusner, holding professorships at Bard College and the University of South Florida, expresses thanks to both centers of higher learning and scholarship. Jacob Neusner University of South Florida and Bard College Tamara Sonn College of William and Mary Jonathan Brockopp Bard College
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