Christian Scripture

JBK posted very interesting questions. Even though we talked about Christian scripture in class yesterday, I still have some issues with it. Christians seem to rely on the New Testament scripture more than the Old Testament one. I think Christian scripture is both New Testament and Old Testament. But I noticed that many Christians think that the New Testament is the most important scripture of the two. Also, I noticed that some Christians do not see the Old Testament as the same as the Hebrew Bible because they perhaps do not want to rely on the interpretations of the Jewish scripture. As a Christian I personally enjoy reading the Old Testament (Hebrew Bible) because its stories are more interesting than those of the New Testament.

New Testament: Primary or Secondary Scripture?

Is the New Testament a "primary" or "secondary" Scripture, according to William Graham's distinction in his article on Scripture in the Encyclopedia of Religion? I ask because the Gospels and Epistles of the New Testament seem nearly always to be interpreting something else. Sometimes it's interpreting passages from the Hebrew Bible, like the verses from Isaiah in Mk 4:12ff, or the Exodus story of the manna, the "bread from heaven" in John 6. Or more often than not, it's interpreting the sayings and biography of Jesus. In that sense, it seems that the sayings of Jesus (and his actions) are an "oral scripture" which the NT painstakingly preserves, interprets, and otherwise "relates to" as Scripture. And it treats the "Old Testament" verses as scripture by quoting them as prooftexts, or prophetic promises that are fulfilled in the life of Jesus. Jesus' sayings and actions become a sort of interpretative key for understanding the "true meaning" of the Old Testament - namely, that it's always referring to Jesus' life, death, and resurrection. So what exactly is Christian Scripture: the Old Testament, the New Testament, or in a sense, the dynamic personality of Jesus Christ himself? Or is it better to say that these are Christian Scriptures only when they're taken together, sort of like the Written and Oral Torahs of rabbinic Judaism? It that's the case, is it correct or even helpful to describe them as primary and secondary scriptures with respect to one other, and if so which is which to which? Finally, if Jesus' dynamic personality can be considered a sort of "Scripture" in terms of the way it functions in a Christian religious worldview, what advantage might that be over scripture as a written text?

Revelation of the Qur'an on an Experiential Level

Nearly all of the scholars we've read on the Qur'an refer to its emotional effect on Muslim believers when they recite or hear it being recited. Its sacred qualities as revelation have been described by Muslims as wahy "a sort of idea-word inspiration that came upon Muhammad's 'heart,' as the Qur'an itself declares (26:192-195) [Corrigan et al., p. 60], or ijaz "inimitability," or the Quranic "voice" nazm (its distinctive style of sound and composition) [Sells (2005), p.184]- qualities that apparently are accessible more on an experiential level than a purely analytical or intellectual one. And also, accessible only in its original Arabic.

That being said, Michael Sells in Approaching the Qur'an (and many others), still tries to point to specific features in the form and sounds of the text of the Qur'an, and the ways it is recited and heard, that convey these rather intangible qualities of what Andrew in class called the Qur'an's "sacrality." What are the specific, precise features we can point to in the Qur'an itself, and/or the way Muslims relate to it, that both Muslims and non-Muslims could equally recognize as features of a sacred scripture? How would you as a critical interpreter of religions explain to a non-Muslim what in the text itself makes the Qur'an sacred? Is the experience of the Qur'an as a sacred scripture something only Muslims can know or feel?

Sells suggests that the Qur'an's understanding of "spirit" - ruh in Arabic - is a particularly good example of the distinctively sacred way the Qur'an conveys its message:

One key aspect of Qur'anic articulation is the sound figure. The sound figure is particularly subtle. It is developed within particular Suras (intratextually) and across Suras that are widely separated in the written version of the Qur'an (intertextually)...The Qur'anic sound figures occur in connection with three moments: prophecy, creation, and the day of reckoning. These are boundary moments, points of contact between eternal and temporal realms, in which the structures of language (with temporality built into them) are transformed through contact with a realm beyond temporality. In each moment, the Qur'an invokes the spirit (ruh). [p. 185, my emphasis].

What is he talking about? What are examples of these "sound figures?" (E.g., in Sura 97, the Sura of Destiny "al-Qadr" [go to pages 31 and 32]) And are the "sound figures" structures of language that are universally accessible, i.e., for which one need not be a Muslim to see, hear, and experience? Is the expression of ideas through sound figures the Qur'an's distinctively sacred mode of expression? Is this similar or different to the main ways Jews have classically related to the Torah as a sacred scripture?

Jewish Women and Judaism

I always think of my tradition (Southern Sudanese) as a discriminatory tradition because women are prevented to do certain things (because they are not basically as smart as men). Even though I watched the first movie wandering why there were no Jewish women studying the Torah, I did not expect that Jewish women would almost not be allowed to study the laws that played the important roles in the history of their tradition. But today in class I wandered more by seeing women in one of the great tradition (Judaism) challenging the way they were not encouraged to learning the Torah.

It was a fascinating movie because the women tried hard to find their common ground between religious and historical tradition. I thought the women played an important role not only by praying at the Holly Wall in Jerusalem (to show the men they are part of this tradition), but also addressing the issues of their religious civil rights, and the struggle for self-definition in a man dominant tradition and religion. I do not know why Judaism does not allow women to study and learn the Torah, Is it because God created man and woman differently or was this created by men who wrote or interpreted the Torah? Did God prohibit Jewish women from studying the Torah, or did this develop over the years of Jewish traditional change?

Does Jewish Scripture have a distinctive style?

Does the Hebrew Bible have a distinctive narrative style that makes it different from ordinary books? In Back to the Sources, Joel Rosenberg seems to suggest it does. What are some examples, and how do they make reading the Bible different from reading ordinary stories?

What is Scripture?

About the Reading:

Friday (Jan 25, 2008)’s reading assignment, “Scripture” was useful for me to identify the meaning of scripture. This reading assignment helped me understand some general concepts about scripture, and it also assisted me to broaden my previous knowledge about scripture.

As a Christian, I had believed that scripture or sacred scripture was one of the several names that denote the Old and New Testament. However, through this reading assignment, I learned that a word, scripture not only indicates the Old and New Testament, but also can be used to describe other religious texts from many religions and spiritual movements.

It was fascinating to see how certain qualifications can differentiate scripture from ordinary books; it was very interesting to realize that one of the qualifications that scripture should have was a community. While I was reading “As a Relational Concept” part, I agreed that no text, written, oral, or both can possibly become scripture in living, subjective relationship to persons and to historical tradition in isolation from a community; I felt that this part clearly explained why scripture, even a ‘perversely false text for another’ should be considered respectable.

About the class discussion on Friday:
I agree that scripture is, and should be, distinguished from ordinary books as I strongly believe in the power of the spoken word of scripture (in a way most religious people around the world do). However, I do not necessarily believe that the book that contains the spoken word of scripture also has the inherent power. I do not use my bible in the same way I use my text books, because I know that it contains the words of God; I use my bible differently, not because I believe that it is holy, but because I believe that the words in it are holy.

Questions on the Reading:
1. What other qualifications, do you believe, scripture should have?
2. Do you believe that it is right to equally accept any scripture (from other religions)
authentically holy?