Tanakh, New Testament, and Qurʾan As Literature and Culture Biblical Interpretation Series
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Sacred Tropes: Tanakh, New Testament, and Qurʾan as Literature and Culture Biblical Interpretation Series Editors R. Alan Culpepper Ellen van Wolde Associate Editors David E. Orton Rolf Rendtorff Editorial Advisory Board Janice Capel Anderson – Phyllis A. Bird Erhard Blum – Werner H. Kelber Ekkehard W. Stegemann – Vincent L. Wimbush Jean Zumstein VOLUME 98 Sacred Tropes: Tanakh, New Testament, and Qurʾan as Literature and Culture Edited by Roberta Sterman Sabbath LEIDEN • BOSTON 2009 This book is printed on acid-free paper. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Sacred tropes : Tanakh, New Testament, and Qurʾan as literature and culture / edited by Roberta Sterman Sabbath. p. cm. — (Biblical interpretation series, ISSN 0928-0731 ; v. 98) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-90-04-17752-9 (hardback : alk. paper) 1. Sacred books—History and criticism. 2. Judaism—Sacred books. 3. Christianity— Sacred books. 4. Islam—Sacred books. 5. Bible—Criticism, interpretation, etc. 6. Koran—Criticism, interpretation, etc. I. Sabbath, Roberta Sterman. BL71.S225 2009 208’.2—dc22 2009022350 ISSN 0928-0731 ISBN 978 90 04 17752 9 Copyright 2009 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Hotei Publishing, IDC Publishers, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers and VSP. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. printed in the netherlands For our children CONTENTS Notes on Contributors ...................................................................... xiii Preface ................................................................................................. xxiii General Introduction ........................................................................ 1 PART I POETICS Introduction to Part I ....................................................................... 15 Peter Heath Contemporary Readings of the Qurʾan: Cruel/Compassionate? .................................................................. 21 Mehnaz M. Afridi If the Words Be Well Understood: Canticles and the Problematic of Spiritual Metaphor ............................................. 33 Jessie Cheney Qurʾan, Canon, and Literature ........................................................ 41 Bruce Fudge Sign, Analogy, and the Via Negativa: Approaching the Transcendent God of the Qurʾan ............................................... 53 Rosalind Ward Gwynne Force Dynamics and the Qurʾân: An Essay in Cognitive Qurʾânic Poetics ............................................................................. 65 Thomas Hoffmann The Function of Tropic Structures in the Fourth Gospel .......... 77 William W. Kimbrel, Jr. Some Aspects of Narration in the Qurʾan ..................................... 93 Mustansir Mir viii contents Death and the Double: Gothic Aesthetics in Genesis 4.1–16 .... 107 Andrew Hock Soon Ng The Baroque Prophets: An Encounter between the Hebrew Prophets and John Donne ........................................................... 115 Yvonne Sherwood PART II NEGOTIATING BOUNDARIES: CROSSINGS AND DEFINING THE HUMAN AND THE DIVINE Introduction to Part II ...................................................................... 143 Andrew Rippin Jesus Simulacrum, or the Gospels vs. “The Gospel” .................... 147 George Aichele Human~Divine Communication as a Paradigm for Power: Al-Thaʿlabī’s Presentation of Q. 38:24 and Q. 38:34 ............... 159 Marianna Klar In Possession of the Night: Lilith as Goddess, Demon, Vampire .......................................................................................... 173 Beth E. McDonald Images of Abraham and G-D in a Jewish Reading of Genesis ............................................................................................ 183 Marvin A. Sweeney PART III TOPOGRAPHIES: LANDSCAPE AND BODY Introduction to Part III .................................................................... 195 Jonathan Bordo Timeless Texts and Modern Morals: Challenges in Islamic Sexual Ethics .................................................................................. 201 Kecia Ali contents ix Mary and the Marquise: Reading the Annunciation in the Romantic Rape Tradition ............................................................ 217 Betsy J. Bauman-Martin The Mesopotamian Flood Epic in the Earliest Texts, the Bible, and the Qurʾan ............................................................................... 233 Christine Dykgraaf Call It Magic Surgery: Possessing Members, Possessing Texts/ Circumcision and Midrash .......................................................... 245 William Thomas McBride The Trajectory of Hunger: Appropriation and Prophecy in the Book of Ruth .................................................................................. 257 Ruth Tsoffar PART IV SUBJECTIVITY Introduction to Part IV .................................................................... 277 Ngwarsungu Chiwengo The Shaman Meets the Poet: María Sabina and the Curative Powers of Language ...................................................................... 283 Viviana Díaz Balsera From Haggadic Exegesis to Myth: Popular Stories of the Prophets in Islam .......................................................................... 301 Gottfried Hagen The Right to Write: Power, Irony, and Identity in the Book of Esther ............................................................................................... 317 J’annine Jobling and Alan Roughley The Book of Job and Shakespearean Subjectivity ........................ 335 Kathleen Lundeen Sacred Tropes: The Laugh of Abraham and the Birth of Subjectivity ..................................................................................... 349 Roberta Sterman Sabbath x contents Crossing Outlaws: The Life and Times of Jesse James and Jesus of Nazareth ........................................................................... 361 Robert Paul Seesengood and Jennifer L. Koosed PART V GIFT AND SACRIFICE Introduction to Part V ...................................................................... 375 Andrew Wernick Mary in the Qurʾan: Rereading Subversive Births ....................... 379 Aisha Geissinger Sarah’s Gift: Gender, Agency, and the Sacred .............................. 393 Magda Romanska What Happens When Achsah Gets Off Her Ass? Queer Reading and Judges 1:11–15 ........................................................ 409 Ken Stone Isaac as the Lamb of God: A Hermeneutic Crux in the Re-reading of Jewish Texts .......................................................... 421 John C. Ulreich PART VI IMPERIALISM, REVOLUTION, AND COMMUNITY Introduction to Part VI .................................................................... 437 Stephen D. Moore African Rewritings of the Jewish and Islamic Solomonic Tradition: The Triumph of the Queen of Sheba in the Ethiopian Fourteenth-Century Text Kәbrä Nägäst ................. 441 Wendy Laura Belcher Noah’s Nakedness: Islam, Race, and the Fantasy of the Christian West ............................................................................... 461 Roland Boer and Ibrahim Abraham contents xi Supplying the Missing Body of Onesimus: Readings of Paul’s Letter to Philemon ............................................................. 475 Colleen M. Conway Revelation and Revolution: Law, Justice, and Politics in the Hebrew Bible .................................................................................. 485 Regina M. Schwartz Antonin Scalia v. Jonathan Edwards: Romans 13 and the American Theology of State ........................................................ 493 Jay M. Twomey Index of Passages from Tanakh, New Testament, and Qurʾan .............................................................................................. 505 Subject Index ...................................................................................... 513 NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS Ibrahim Abraham is a Ph.D. student in the Sociology Department of the University of Bristol, UK. He has published articles in journals including the Australian Religion Studies Review, The Bible and Critical Theory and Topia: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies as well as chapters in books including The Politics of Representation. Mehnaz M. Afridi teaches Judaism and Islam. Her current work is on Modern Jewish Diaspora in Europe and Modern Islamic Identity. Her research is focused on literature and religion. She is currently serving on the steering committee for WISE, an initiative that seeks to create the first Muslim woman’s Shura council, Arava Institute that seeks to create peace through the environment amongst Israelis and Arabs, and the Muslims for Progressive Values that focus on human rights for all people. George Aichele recently retired from teaching at Adrian College. A member of the Bible and Culture Collective, the group author of The Postmodern Bible (Yale UP, 1995), he has written and edited numerous books and articles on the Bible, semiotics, and popular culture, including The Control of Biblical Meaning: