annual fall mcginley lecture
Law and Love
Jewish, Christian and Muslim Attitudes
The Reverend Patrick J. Ryan, S.J. Laurence J. McGinley Professor of Religion and Society Fordham University Fordham University’s McGinley Chair in Religion and Society was established in 1988 to attract distinguished scholars interested in the interaction of religion with the legal, political and cultural forces in our pluralistic American society.
The chair is a tribute to the Reverend Laurence J. McGinley, S.J., who first attained distinction as a professor of theology and served as president of Fordham University from 1949 to 1963. In 1979, he was appointed president emeritus, a position he held until his death on August 15, 1992. Father McGinley’s educational vision and dedication to New York City led to the creation of the Lincoln Center campus, and he was a founding director of Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. Law and Love
Jewish, Christian and Muslim Attitudes
The Reverend Patrick J. Ryan, S.J. Laurence J. McGinley Professor of Religion and Society Fordham University
Respondents Professor Claudia Setzer, Ph.D. Manhattan College, Riverdale, New York Professor Amir Hussain, Ph.D. Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles, California
9 november 2011 | Lincoln Center Campus
10 november 2011 | Rose Hill Campus
Law and Love Jewish, Christian and Muslim Attitudes
The Reverend Patrick J. Ryan, S.J. Laurence J. McGinley Professor of Religion and Society Fordham University
Forty-six years ago, in my first year of theological studies at Woodstock College, a famous Jesuit professor of canon law came into class to begin a course of ten introductory lectures on his subject. He paused at the beginning, stared out at us first-year students and announced, with curmudgeonly conviction: “Now, you’re all lovers, and I’m a lawyer.” He proved the latter point over those ten lectures; I am not sure how well we, his students, panned out as lovers.
1 We Christians tend to have a prejudice against law, especially in religious terms, unless, of course, we happen to be canon lawyers. Prejudice against law in religious terms tends to spill over into civil life as well. We tell more jokes about lawyers than we do, for instance, about butchers, bakers and candlestick makers. Participants in the Jewish and Muslim traditions, on the other hand, revere those trained in the law, religious and even civil, perhaps because the study of the Law in religious terms (Torah, Shari‘ah) plays a central role in the faith lives of Jews and Muslims. Is our Christian prejudice against religious law justified? Are we really that different from Jews and Muslims when it comes to law? These questions raise issues that would keep us at this lecture much longer than any of you would like to sit. Let me concentrate, this evening, on laws that have had an extensive history in the faith traditions of Jews, Christians and Muslims: laws concerning food. It might be suggested that Jews and Muslims have such laws but Christians do not, but there are notable exceptions to the latter generalization. I think we can learn a great deal about both law and love from an examination of how the participants in our respective faith traditions have partaken or not partaken of certain forms of food and drink.
FOOD PROHIBITIONS AND LAW IN THE JEWISH TRADITION Jews are not the only people in the world whose identity is underlined by food prohibitions, what is called in Hebrew kashrut. Many African populations have food prohibitions connecting them with one or another clan or community of devotees.1 But Jews arguably have the most elaborate dietary laws, at least among monotheistic peoples. Many have tried to rationalize Jewish food prohibitions, suggesting, for instance, that the prohibition on pork products may have arisen from a fear of trichinosis. Moses Maimonides, writing in the twelfth century CE, justifies the prohibition of eating pork based on the filth normally associated with pig sties. “If it were allowed to eat swine’s flesh,” he writes, “the streets
2 and houses would be more dirty than any cesspool, as may be seen at present in the country of the Franks.”2 Evidently Maimonides, who always lived in Muslim or Jewish neighborhoods, never lived near a cowshed or a hen house. But the fear of filth or disease does not explain why very observant Jews cannot eat a cheeseburger or a shrimp cocktail. Some have suggested that such food prohibitions are meant “to train the Israelite in self-control.”3 Gourmands might be tempted by roast suckling pig, but would they really want to savor vulture and bat? No self-control is needed for that. The Book of Genesis in its highly symbolic proto-history suggests that the primeval parents of humankind started their lives as vegetarians. The Priestly account of creation attributes to God the first human beings’ appointment to “rule the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, and all the living things that creep on earth” (Gen 1:28),4 whatever such rule may have entailed, but specifies immediately thereafter that “every seed- bearing plant that is upon all the earth, and every tree that has seed- bearing fruit . . . shall be yours for food” (Gen 1:29). Human beings seem to have kept peace with fish, birds and creeping things for ten generations, and perhaps also with land animals, although there must have been exceptions. God made Adam and Eve “garments of skins” (Gen 3:21) when he exiled them from the Garden. How were such skins obtained?5 Likewise, Abel offered the Lord “the choicest of the firstlings of his flock” (Gen 4:4), an offering that must have cost the firstling its life. By the time of Noah, in the tenth generation from Adam and Eve, without any indication as to why, a distinction seems to have arisen (Gen 7:2) between animals that can be characterized as clean (tahor) and those that can be characterized as unclean (lo-tahor). This distinction reflects later developments of sacrificial and dietary food prohibitions preserved in the Book of Leviticus. The subsiding of the flood spelled the end of the vegetarian truce between human beings and animals, if it had not already ended with Abel. “Noah built an altar to the Lord, and taking of every clean animal and of every clean bird, he offered burnt offerings on
3 the altar” (Gen 8:20). The covenant God struck with Noah takes note of this change: “The fear and dread of you shall be upon all the beasts of the earth and upon all the birds of the sky . . . and upon all the fish of the sea” (Gen 9:2). But still God forbids all of humankind to “eat flesh with its life- blood in it” (Gen 9:4), a prohibition that is intimately connected with the prohibition on taking human life: “I require a reckoning for human life, of every man for that of his fellow man!” (Gen 9:5). The Priestly Code in the Book of Leviticus details dietary laws, probably reflecting long-time sacrificial and culinary practice reduced to writing during and after the Babylonian Exile, when the priesthood came to dominate Jewish society. Distinctions between clean and unclean species among the land animals are made in some detail. Basically, the clean animals are those fit for sacrifice and therefore for human consumption.6 Among the land animals, the edible mainly consist of cattle, sheep and goats, the usual animals offered in sacrifice, characterized more generally as “any animal that has true hoofs, with clefts through the hoofs, and that chews the cud” (Lev 11:3). Land animals that do not clearly have both of these characteristics are considered unclean (tame’): the camel, the rock badger, the hare, and, most famously, the pig.7 The eating of certain potentially edible creatures apart from land animals is classified as an abomination (Lev 11:10-23, 41-43).8 Such creatures are divided into three categories: water creatures, flying creatures and winged insects. Apart from pigeons or turtledoves (Lev 12:8), virtually none of these creatures is offered in sacrifice, but some of them are eaten. Of water creatures, the only edible ones are those that have “fins and scales” (Lev 11:9). Every other water creature is “an abomination for you” (Lev 11:12), for instance, shell fish. The flying creatures that are abominated do not sound very inviting, many of them birds of prey (eagles, vultures, falcons, sea gulls, hawks, etc.) and one not a bird at all, “the bat” (Lev 11:19).9 That list seems to leave most poultry on the list of clean meats. Of the winged insects, eating most of them is an abomination, but it is permissible to eat locusts, crickets and grasshoppers (Lev 11:22), and at least the honey
4 of bees, if not the bees themselves.10 John the Baptist, a locust and wild honey eater (Mark 1:6), kept kosher. What is the purpose of such laws? The Holiness Code in the last chapters of the Book of Leviticus emphasizes that these dietary laws distinguish Israelites from their Gentile neighbors: “I the Lord am your God. You shall not copy the practices of the land of Egypt where you dwelt, or of the land of Canaan to which I am taking you” (Lev 18:2-3). The Holiness Code does not enter into as much gastronomic detail as the earlier Priestly Code, but it does locate those food prohibitions clearly in the context of Israel’s unique monotheism. “I the Lord am your God who has set you apart from other peoples. So you shall set apart the clean beast from the unclean, the unclean bird from the clean” (Lev 20:24-25). It was not only in the Temple but also at the dining table that Jews were reminded of their sacred status. The last food prohibition mentioned in the Book of Deuteronomy, repeating a regulation specified twice in the Book of Exodus (Ex 23:19, 34:26), insists that “You shall not boil a kid in its mother’s milk” (Deut 14:21). By analogy this prohibition has been generalized to forbid eating a cheeseburger or any other mixture of meat and dairy products. Some have argued that this law prohibits inhumane treatment of animals: pouring milk (or placing cheese) from a nanny goat or a cow on roast meat derived from its offspring.11 It is also forbidden to combine dairy products with chicken, a non-producer of milk. The thrice-repeated law is more likely a prohibition of some unknown Canaanite ritual involving the combination of life-sustaining animal milk and newly slaughtered animal flesh, as Maimonides suspected in the twelfth century CE.12 This prohibition distinguished the people of Israel from their neighbors and their religious rituals. The words just before this prohibition in Deuteronomy remind the Israelites of the general rule: “You are a people consecrated to the Lord your God” (Deut 14:21). The Book of Daniel, ranked among the Writings (Kethuvim) in the canon of the Hebrew Bible, narrates the story of Jews living outside Israel who distinguished themselves from their Gentile environment by observing
5 kashrut. Daniel and his Jewish companions, introduced as servants into the royal household in Babylon, refused meat and drink from the royal table, surviving on vegetables without ill effect (Dan 1:8-16). Much more dramatically, the Second Book of Maccabees narrates how the aggressively Hellenizing Seleucid ruler Antiochus IV Epiphanes (r. 175-164 BCE), tried in vain to force devout Jews to eat pork, such as the scribe Eleazar (2 Macc 6:21-31) and the seven brothers and their mother (2 Macc 7:1-41). Their refusal led to their martyrdom. Of the principal movements within Judaism in the United States today, Orthodox and Conservative Jews have generally reaffirmed the principles of kashrut. The Reform Movement within Judaism, at least in its nineteenth-century origins, came to be identified with the repudiation of kashrut, as can be seen in the fourth clause of the Reform Movement’s Pittsburgh Conference of 1885: “We hold that all such Mosaic and Rabbinical laws as regulate diet, priestly purity and dress originated in ages and under the influence of ideas entirely foreign to our present mental and spiritual state. They fail to impress the modern Jew with a spirit of priestly holiness; their observance in our days is apt rather to obstruct rather than to further modern spiritual elevation.”13 Reform Judaism has at least partly moved away from this radical repudiation of kashrut in modern times. Psalm 119, the longest in the Book of Psalms, consists of 176 verses arranged alphabetically in eight-verse stanzas corresponding to and beginning with each of the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet. Eight different names for the Law occur in this Psalm, and nearly every verse uses one or another of them. From the stanza with verses beginning with the letter mem, two verses capture how fidelity to the Torah is perceived in the tradition of Israel as an expression of love: “O, how I love Your Torah! All day it is my study . . . How pleasing to my mouth are your words, sweeter than honey” (Ps 119:97, 103).14 A custom first recorded in twelfth-century CE Germany by Rabbi Eleazar of Worms concretizes this sweetness of the Torah. A small child is brought to a Jewish house of study
6 for the first time at dawn on the feast of Shavuot, a day commemorating the giving of the Torah on Sinai. The rabbi takes the child on his lap and instructs the child to recite after him letters and then verses from the Torah written on a tablet: Then the teacher puts a little honey on the tablet, and with his tongue the child licks the honey that is on the letters. After this, they bring over cake kneaded with honey on which is written “The Lord God gave me a skilled tongue to know how to speak timely words to the weary. Morning by morning, he rouses, he rouses my ear to give heed like disciples. The Lord God opened my ears and I did not disobey, I did not run away” (Isa 50:4-5).15 Devout Jews express their love for God by keeping commandments that are “sweeter than honey.” The Law of God is not perceived as a burden but as a binding force, a bond of love between Jews and God and between Jews themselves, united by their covenant with God. In such a religious setting lawyers can also be lovers.
FOOD PROHIBITIONS AND LAW IN THE CHRISTIAN TRADITION Christians, we think, eat just about anything. In the Gospel of Mark it is even said that Jesus “declared all foods clean” (Mk 7:19),16 but the story is more complex, both in New Testament times and later. It seems more likely that the first Christians, just about all of them Jews from birth, continued in the observance of kashrut. It was only when the early Christian community began to take in Gentile converts who did not have a previous relationship with the Jewish tradition that questions arose about the importance of food prohibitions for such people. I would like to distinguish two attitudes towards food prohibitions in the history of the early Church, both of them verifiable within the years when the message about Jesus was being preached and then written down for the first time: Christianity with food prohibitions and Christianity free of such prohibitions. I will dwell in particular on the earliest evidence on this
7 topic presented in the letters Paul wrote during the 50s of the first century CE, even though the Acts of the Apostles preserves materials on this topic of great antiquity. Acts, however, also reflects the period in which it was written, probably the 80s or 90s of the first century, by which time the tensions in the early church about food prohibitions had subsided. But in the era when Paul was writing, the above-mentioned two attitudes towards Jewish dietary laws, and indeed towards the Law as a theological theme, can be evidenced. How both of these Christian attitudes of that era affected Christian communities of subsequent centuries will be treated more succinctly, but it should not be presumed that Mark’s testimony that Jesus had “declared all foods clean” proved equally true in every Christian time and place. For the sake of clarity, I will suggest an approximate time line for early Christian developments on food prohibitions and other aspects of law in this era when Paul was preaching and writing. Paul himself converted to Christ in approximately 36 CE at Damascus. Paul insisted on his independent right to preach the Gospel based on that experience; it was not a commission derived from the Jerusalem mother church or from the church in Damascus. For Paul it was a duty imposed on him “through a revelation of Jesus Christ” (Gal 1:12). Paul’s own account of his conversion echoes motifs of mission to Gentiles found in the call narratives of Second Isaiah’s Servant of Yahweh (Isa 49:1-6) and the prophet Jeremiah (Jer 1:5): “God, who had set me apart before I was born and called me through his grace, was pleased to reveal his Son to [in] me, so that I might proclaim him among the Gentiles” (Gal 1:15-16).17 Although Acts suggests that Paul preached in Damascus and Jerusalem immediately after his conversion (Acts 9:19-30), Paul himself tells us that he did not “go up to Jerusalem to those who were already apostles before me” (Gal 1:17) but withdrew instead “into Arabia,” afterwards returning to Damascus (Gal 1:17), only going to Jerusalem three years later (probably around 39 CE) “to visit Cephas [Peter]” (Gal 1:18); at this time he also met “James, the Lord’s brother”(Gal 1:19).
8 After this visit to Jerusalem, Paul tells us that he began to preach in the region of Syrian Antioch, not only in the large Jewish community there but also among the Gentiles, a task Paul felt had been imposed on him by God at the very moment of his conversion. Paul continued to work from this base in Syrian Antioch for approximately a decade (39-49 CE). Towards the end of that period, Jewish Christians coming from Judea visited Syrian Antioch and challenged the non-observance of circumcision and kashrut by Gentile converts in that mixed Jewish and Gentile Christian community (Acts 15:1). Paul had apparently urged the Jews of Syrian Antioch and its environs to continue in their observance of circumcision and the food prohibitions, but had imposed no such obligation on the Gentile converts there. Paul characterizes these Judean Jewish-Christians who reported him to Jerusalem as “false believers” (Gal 2:3). Faced with the challenge they posed to his apostolic work, Paul went to Jerusalem once again, probably in 49-50 CE, not because of any summons from headquarters but “in response to a revelation” (Gal 2:2). He was accompanied on this visit by the Cypriot Jewish Christian, Barnabas, and a purely Gentile convert to Christianity, Titus, an uncircumcised Greek (Gal 2:1). Those companions symbolized Paul’s community at Syrian Antioch, Christians of Jewish origin and Christians of Gentile origin, living in harmony. Paul notes that the Jerusalem church leadership at that time—James, Cephas (Peter) and John—did not insist on the circumcision of Titus, “though he was a Greek” (Gal 2:3). Paul presented the leaders of the Jerusalem community with an account of “the gospel that I proclaim among the Gentiles” (Gal 2:2) and, Paul testifies, the Jerusalem church leadership, “saw that I had been entrusted with the gospel for the uncircumcised, just as Peter had been entrusted with the gospel for the circumcised” (Gal 2:7).18 This is Paul’s account of the so-called Council of Jerusalem. The Acts of the Apostles smoothes over these controversies a half century later, and even makes James the spokesperson for a compromise position on food prohibitions worked out at this Council in Jerusalem when Paul
9 and Barnabas went there for a judgment. Curiously, Acts never mentions the presence of the uncircumcised Greek, Titus, in that delegation, although it does admit that “some of the others” (Acts 15:2) in Syrian Antioch went up to Jerusalem with Paul and Barnabas. Gentile Christians of Syrian Antioch (and, presumably elsewhere in mixed Jewish-Christian and Gentile-Christian situations), according to the Acts of the Apostles, would have to “abstain only from things polluted by idols and from fornication and from whatever has been strangled and from blood” (Acts 15:20), aspects of the Law enunciated in Leviticus 17-18. Such laws apply not only to Israelites but also to “the aliens who reside among them” (Lev 17:8). But the Gentile Christians were exempt from male circumcision. Was the assimilation of Gentile Christians to resident aliens in ancient Israel a satisfactory solution for Paul and for his Gentile Christian converts? I doubt it; it sounds too much like second-class membership of the church. In any case, such a compromise solution—no circumcision but some food prohibitions—must have struck Paul as a rejection or at least a radical compromising of his Gentile mission in Syrian Antioch. Despite this modified approval in Jerusalem of Paul’s mission to the Gentiles, on a subsequent visit by Peter to Syrian Antioch, “certain people came from James” and prevailed on Peter, who “used to eat with the Gentiles” (Gal 2:12), to cease doing so. Not only did Peter withdraw from table fellowship with the Gentile Christians of Syrian Antioch, but Paul’s long-time apostolic companion, Barnabas, “was led astray” as well (Gal 2:13). As a result Paul confronted Peter on this matter, apparently in public: “If you, though a Jew, live like a Gentile and not like a Jew, how can you compel the Gentiles to live like Jews?” (Gal 2:14). Evidently Peter had eaten with Gentiles before, most notably with the household of Cornelius, but Jewish Christians at Jerusalem had criticized him for this (Acts 11:3). Paul continued his Gentile mission elsewhere, at first in Galatia, an area of Asia Minor where few or no Jews or Jewish Christians resided. Surely there would be no question of food prohibitions imposed on Gentiles there, or so Paul hoped. Paul’s letter to the Christian community at Galatia,19
10 probably written around 54 CE,20 after he had left Galatia, addressed Gentile converts there on whom Paul had imposed no obligation to take up Jewish practices in order to become full-fledged Christians. Paul had so evangelized the Galatians some time after his departure from the mixed Jewish and Gentile Christian community in Syrian Antioch. Jewish Christians, who had earlier challenged Paul’s policy in Syrian Antioch, now extended their campaign to impose Jewish observances on the totally Gentile Christian community of Galatia21 after Paul had departed from Galatia for other mission fields. Paul’s outrage at this development knew no bounds, especially because some of his Gentile converts in Galatia had apparently buckled under pressure from Jewish Christians. “I am astonished,” Paul writes, “that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel” (Gal 1:6).22 The memory of this confrontation at Syrian Antioch between Paul and Peter leads Paul to enunciate for the Galatian Gentile Christians a succinct summary of the gospel that he proclaimed among the Gentiles: “[A] person is justified not by the works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ” (Gal 2:16).23 The radical nature of Paul’s gospel needs underlining. What he is saying is that a person is reckoned upright, at rights with God, law-abiding, not by observance of the covenant law given to Israel (the ten commandments and all the rest of the laws found in the Torah, including the laws of circumcision and diet) but through total adherence to or complete reliance on Jesus the Messiah. This justification by faith in Jesus Christ applies both to Jews and to Gentiles, a topic that Paul developed in his Letter to the Romans written three or four years later than his Letter to the Galatians: “God is one; and he will justify the circumcised on the ground of faith and the uncircumcised through that same faith” (Rom 3:30). Paul had lost the debate on the freedom of Gentile Christians from dietary observances at Syrian Antioch to those Jewish Christians who wanted Gentile Christians, at the very least, to observe enough of kashrut to make
11 possible common table-fellowship.24 But Paul was determined not to lose that same debate in the purely Gentile Christian community to which the Letter to the Galatians is addressed. Paul’s gospel was very radical: “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus” (Gal 3:28). In addition to the problem of table-fellowship between Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians who did and who did not observe kashrut, other Christian communities to whom Paul brought his gospel found themselves confronted with a different dietary problem: “food sacrificed to idols” (1 Cor 8:1). At ancient Corinth, Paul’s Christian community, like that in Galatia, was largely Gentile (1 Cor 12:2), and faced many challenges from their religiously alien setting. One problem stemmed from the fact that much of the meat available for sale came from slaughter houses that were also temples of Corinthian cults.25 This problem was not restricted to Corinth but was common throughout the Gentile Mediterranean. Paul reached the conclusion that those Gentile Christians who were “strong” and possessed “knowledge” of the non-existence of the gods might eat any meat that was available (1 Cor 10:27), unless the meat is offered as a way of testing Christian identity (1 Cor 12:28). The “weak,” on the other hand, people closer to their polytheistic roots, should probably abstain: “Since some have become so accustomed to idols until now, they still think of the food they eat as food offered to an idol; and their conscience, being weak, is defiled” (1 Cor 8:7). Furthermore, the “strong” should also abstain from such meat if partaking thereof would scandalize the “weak” (1 Cor 8:9-13). The general rule is pertinent to a discussion of law and love: “‘All things are lawful,’ but not all things are beneficial. ‘All things are lawful,’ but not all things build up” (1 Cor 10:23). In his Letter to the Romans Paul more boldly proclaims that “nothing is unclean in itself; but it is unclean for anyone who thinks it is unclean” (Rom 14:14). He concludes, however, by insisting on the primacy of love in observance or non-observance of laws concerning food: “Do not, for the sake of food, destroy the work of God.
12 Everything is indeed clean, but it is wrong to make others fall by what you eat; it is good not to eat meat or drink wine or do anything that makes your brother or sister stumble” (Rom 14:20-21). Paul’s radical rejection of dietary laws, although compromised for a while in mixed Jewish- Gentile communities under the influence of James and Peter, eventually triumphed as the editorial words from Mark’s Gospel with which I began testify: “Thus he declared all foods clean” (Mark 7:18-19). The radical views on food prohibitions and the Law held by Paul led to various reactions in the early church. The First Letter to Timothy suggests that food prohibitions unrelated to kashrut emanate from teachers proposing a distinctly non-Jewish and non-Christian asceticism: “They forbid marriage and demand abstinence from foods” (1 Tim 4:3). The Ethiopian Orthodox Church continues in observances of kashrut to the present day. The Kebra Nagast (“The Book of the Glory of the Kings”), composed at least seven centuries ago in Ge‘ez, catalogues prohibited meats, asserting that observance of these laws will keep these new Israelites “blessed in this your country,” unlike the ancient Israelites “who have been rejected, because God took them from Zion.”26 Certain nineteenth-century American varieties of Christianity, most notably Seventh-Day Adventists, observe a strict version of kashrut, basically vegetarianism; one of their most prominent members, W. K. Kellogg, invented breakfast cereals as a substitute for meat. Pietism in seventeenth-century Continental Protestantism eventually gave birth in the eighteenth century to Methodism in England and America, famous for its campaigns against gin and other intoxicants, something not envisioned by the first Reformers. Other Protestant churches took up this Methodist theme in the nineteenth century. To a prominent Methodist of Vineland, New Jersey, Thomas Bramwell Welch, we owe the introduction of grape juice to the Protestant communion table; his son founded Welch’s Grape Juice Company in 1893.
13 Lovers and lawyers alike all grew to hate America’s experiment with Prohibition (1919-1933), but there is no doubt that Methodists and other Protestant Evangelicals bore most of the responsibility for its enactment. The fate of Prohibition proved that law cannot go too far beyond the parameters of public morality. It is only love—for that which transcends the individual, God and one’s community—that can motivate any variety of food prohibition, any type of total abstinence. Alcoholics Anonymous as a community has managed to motivate such total abstinence with great success. Love of that which ultimately transcends you, usually understood as God, and love of the community of your fellow abstainers, is the key to such freely embraced law.
FOOD PROHIBITIONS AND LAW IN THE ISLAMIC TRADITION The Qur’an, and the man, Muhammad, who first experienced the Qur’an as revelation over a twenty-two-year period in the seventh century (610-632 CE), gives evidence of a gradual evolution of food and drink prohibitions. It is usual to distinguish the earlier revelations Muhammad received in Mecca (610-622 CE) from the revelations he received in Medina (622-632 CE). The religious ambience in each of these locales was different and each setting had its own food regulations, prohibitory or permissive. (A) The Meccan Period. In the first period, while Muhammad remained in Mecca receiving revelations from God, he and his monotheistic followers were somewhat allied with their fellow monotheists who were the minority Jews and Christians living in Mecca, as well as with the Christians of Ethiopia, who took in some of Muhammad’s followers as refugees from Meccan persecution around 615 CE. It is not entirely clear that the Jews and Christians whom Muhammad knew in Mecca were recognized as separate religious communities or actually were separate religious communities.27 Like the Christians of Ethiopia, some
14 of the “Children of Israel” in Mecca may have practiced a form of Jewish Christianity. In the Meccan portions of the Qur’an mention is made not only of Jewish (and possibly Jewish-Christian) food avoidances, but also of food prohibitions observed among Arabs unaffiliated with either of these traditions, what the Qur’an characterizes as people still living in “the era of ignorance” (jahiliyyah).28 The Surah of the Livestock (Surat al-an‘am [Qur’an 6]) deplores pre-Islamic Arab customs of food avoidance that seem to reflect traditional taboos: “They also say, ‘The contents of these animals’ wombs will be reserved solely for our men and forbidden to our women, though if the offspring is stillborn they may have a share of it.’ [God] will punish them for what they attribute to Him; He is decisive, all-aware” (Qur’an 6:139). Ibn ‘Abbas, a seventh-century CE commentator on the Qur’an, attributes the origin of this food prohibition to a nearly mythical ancestor of one of the clans in Mecca, ‘Amr ibn Luhayy, a man traditionally blamed for diverting once monotheistic Mecca (at the time of Abraham and Ishmael) into polytheistic ways.29 Ibn ‘Abbas in his commentary on this verse, asserts that Muhammad saw ‘Amr ibn Luhayy in a vision punished in hell for introducing this curious meat prohibition to the Meccan Arabs.30 A twentieth-century Muslim commentator on the Qur’an, Mawlana Mawdudi (d. 1979), points out the inequality of men and women in this pre-Islamic food avoidance, a law he characterizes as part of a “self-contrived religious code of the Arabs.”31 Jewish food prohibitions that do not derive from traditional Arab sources were known to at least some of the non-Jewish Arabs before Muhammad’s experience of revelation. The earliest sequential life of Muhammad narrates how a certain Zayd ibn ‘Amr,32 without becoming either a Jew or a Christian, still embraced elements of Jewish food avoidances: “He abandoned the religion of his people and abstained from idols, animals that had died, blood, and things offered to idols.”33 Zayd ibn ‘Amr is usually counted among the leading hunafa’ (s., hanif) of Arabia, monotheists living before Muhammad’s time. These hunafa’ were affected
15 by the traditions of Jews and Christians, but did not adhere to those traditions as a whole. Note the closeness of the food avoidances embraced by Zayd ibn ‘Amr to those recommended to Gentile Christians in the account of the so-called Council of Jerusalem narrated in the Acts of the Apostles (Acts 15:29) and to the food prohibitions of Leviticus 17-18 urged on aliens in Israel. Late in the years when Muhammad still lived in Mecca, probably around 621 CE, he experienced a revelation about foods that were to be considered halal (permissible) and haram (forbidden). The Qur’an, instructing Muhammad as to what he is to proclaim, details a list of forbidden foods that is less extensive for Muslims than what had been prescribed for Jews in the Torah. The Qur’an also provides for exceptions in times of dire necessity. “Say, ‘In all that has been revealed to me, I find nothing forbidden for people to eat, except for carrion, flowing blood, pig’s meat—it is loathsome—or a sinful offering over which any name other than God’s has been invoked.’ But if someone is forced by hunger, rather than desire or excess, then your Lord is most forgiving and most merciful” (Qur’an 6:145). Ibn ‘Abbas, commenting on this latter exception, suggests that someone eating forbidden meats in such a situation of extreme hunger “ought not to eat to satiety.”34 This advice is easier for the sated commentator to give than for the starving Muslim to receive. This late Meccan surah of the Qur’an goes on to state that the more extensive food prohibitions of Jews were a punishment imposed on them for their sins: “We forbade for the Jews every animal with claws, and the fat of cattle and sheep, except what is on their backs and in their intestines, or that which sticks to their bones. This is how we penalized them for their disobedience: We are true to our word” (Qur’an 6:146). Observant Jews will not recognize in this last verse an entirely accurate portrayal of meat prohibitions in the Torah, but the text of the Qur’an may well have been aimed at certain excesses of food avoidance known among the monotheistic hunafa’ who emulated Jewish practice but did not necessarily know its exact parameters, thus falling into
16 ascetical exaggerations, or at Jewish Christians who kept kashrut. With the exception of carrion, blood, pork and food offered to idols, Meccan Muslims are told that they may eat any other meat, provided one prays before eating it. “So you may eat the meat of any [animal] over which God’s name has been pronounced, if you believe in His revelations” (Qur’an 6:118). The simple Muslim basmalah—saying “In God’s name”—sanctifies not only the slaughtering of meat but also its consumption in a meal. (B) The Medinan Period. When Muhammad and his first companions migrated to Medina in 622 CE, they became more familiar with Jews and also with Christians, who are more clearly distinguished from Jews in Medinan portions of the Qur’an. These monotheists seemed at first to present themselves as natural allies for Muhammad and the burgeoning Muslim community. The Medinan portions of the Qur’an recognize a certain complexity in Jewish food avoidances. Jacob/Israel’s hip socket, injured while Jacob wrestled with a mysterious angelic or even divine opponent, led to a ban for Israelites on the eating of “the thigh muscle that is on the socket of the hip” (Gen 32:32). A Medinan surah sees this prohibition as one imposed by human legislation rather than divine: “Except for what Israel made unlawful for himself, all food was lawful to the Children of Israel before the Torah was revealed” (Qur’an 3:93). Another Medinan portion recognizes that Christians do not have the same food avoidances as Jews and attributes to Jesus words that relax the laws of kashrut for them: “I will tell you what you may eat and what you may store up in your houses . . . I have come to confirm the truth of the Torah which preceded me, and to make some things lawful for you which used to be forbidden” (Qur’an 3:49, 50). This relaxation of the laws of kashrut by Jesus does not go as far as the passage in Mark’s Gospel where it is claimed that Jesus “declared all foods clean” (Mk 7:19), but Ibn ‘Abbas in his seventh-century CE commentary on the Qur’an specifies some of the once forbidden things
17 that Jesus declared lawful, in the process making Jesus sound like an Arab fond of “the meat of camels [and] the fat of bovines and sheep.”35 One particular dietary prohibition found in the Qur’an, but not in either the Hebrew Bible36 or the New Testament, is the prohibition on drinking wine or other intoxicating beverages. A Meccan surah had extolled various natural products that serve as signs of God’s beneficence to humankind. After rain and milk and before honey, the Qur’an in this context mentions wine made either from dates or from grapes and specifies that this wine is a divine benefaction: “From the fruit of date palms and grapes you take sweet juice and wholesome provisions. There truly is a sign in this for those who use their reason” (Qur’an 16:67). Ibn ‘Abbas specifies that the first part of this verse was “abrogated,” a technical term in Qur’an criticism meaning that a later passage in the Qur’an overrides this earlier one, but he does allow that such nourishing things as “vinegar, treacle [and] raisin[s]”—all derived from grapes—are lawful nourishment.37 An early Medinan surah qualifies the earlier Meccan praise of wine (al-khamr), here used as a metonym for any intoxicant: “They ask you [Prophet] about intoxicants [al-khamr] and gambling: say, ‘There is great sin in both, and some benefit for people: the sin is greater than the benefit’” (Qur’an 2:219). Ibn ‘Abbas maintains that the only benefit ever involved in wine and other intoxicants was in the business realm, “by means of their trading.”38 Mawlana Mawdudi maintains that the revelation of this verse “was a preliminary step designed to prepare the minds of people for the acceptance of their prohibition.”39 The final divine law about the prohibition of wine in the Qur’an is nowhere more eloquently expressed than in a very late Medinan portion of the Qur’an, the Surah of the Feast, a surah much concerned with food prohibitions and other ways Muslims distinguish themselves from Jews, Christians and the practitioners of traditional Arab “ignorance” (jahiliyyah): You who believe, intoxicants (al-khamr) and gambling (al-maysir), idolatrous practices (al-ansab) and [divining with] arrows (al-azlam)
18 are repugnant acts—Satan’s doing—shun them so that you may prosper (tuflihuna). With intoxicants (al-khamr) and gambling (al-maysir), Satan seeks only to incite enmity and hatred among you, and to stop you remembering God (dhikri ’llahi) and prayer (al-salati). Will you not give them up?” (Qur’an 5:90-91) In each of the five daily repetitions of the call to worship adhan( ), two commands are issued: “Attend to the worship” (al-salat) and “Attend to prospering” (al-falah).40 Closely related to these commands is the theme later developed in Islamic mysticism, “remembrance of God” (dhikr Allah). Forms of these consecrated terms appear in these just-cited verses from the Qur’an vividly contrasted with the diversions of pre-Islamic Mecca now recognized as snares of Satan: intoxicants, gambling, idol- worship and divination with arrows. The orderly life characterized by regular worship and a social order that fosters human prospering—the sort of ideal community Muhammad tried to create in Medina —stands dramatically opposed to a life of disordered profligacy. The pilgrimage to pre-Islamic Mecca, including such features as the naked ritual circumambulation of the Ka‘bah,41 as well as all the four snares of Satan just mentioned, had about it much that we would identify with an expedition to Las Vegas today. Until the conquest of Mecca by Muhammad in 630 CE, what happened in pre-Islamic Mecca stayed in pre-Islamic Mecca. Ibn ‘Abbas rather tersely comments on these verses that the combination of intoxication and gambling leads to monetary loss and “it also prevents you from performing the five daily prayers.”42 Mawdudi proves more prolix in his commentary on the same verses, noting with approval that in the time of Muhammad “intoxicating liquors were poured into the streets of Medina”43 as a consequence of this revelation. (Mawdudi would have liked the Anti-Saloon League.) I would suggest that the gradual prohibition of wine in the Qur’an has less to do with food prohibitions than with the concern of God and his Messenger, Muhammad, for establishing an orderly life. While the
19 food prohibitions in Islam, like those in Judaism, define who Muslims and who Jews are, the forbidding of wine and other intoxicants in the Qur’an directs Muslims towards a lawful life where the faithful can live in peace and love. Pre-Islamic Mecca was characterized by a breakdown of what Montgomery Watt calls “tribal solidarity.”44 Even before he first experienced revelation, Muhammad had identified himself with a moral minority, the League of the Virtuous, who repudiated the dog-eat-dog economic realities of Mecca.45 With the advent of God’s Self-disclosure in the year 610 CE, the Messenger began to glimpse the possibility dawning of a civilization of love based on law, an ideal state he eventually began to construct in Medina after 622 CE. Jurisprudence (fiqh) has been at the center of Muslim intellectuality ever since. When the study of Islamic jurisprudence has lost touch with the love of God and the love of fellow human beings, the mystical tradition of Islam has come to its aid. Fuqaha’—practitioners of Islamic jurisprudence—can be lovers too, if they try.
CONCLUSION When the Catholic bishops of England and Wales (along with many other Bishops’ Conferences, including the American) decided to relax the discipline of abstinence from meat on Fridays outside the season of Lent, the late British anthropologist Mary Douglas (d. 2007) reacted negatively. She suggested that meatless Fridays had served, like everyday without pork for Jews and Muslims, as a way to define Catholics as a faith community. “It was the only ritual,” Douglas wrote, “which brought Christian symbols down into the kitchen and the larder and on to the dinner table in the manner of Jewish rules of impurity.”46 The Catholic Bishops of England and Wales changed their collective mind in 2011 on this relaxation of Church discipline. Fish and chips reign once again on Fridays in Catholic Britain.
20 Douglas’ notion of meatless Fridays as a food prohibition that marked out Catholic belonging flew in the face of some facts. Abstinence from meat on all Fridays, but especially the Fridays of Lent, was meant to be a form of penance, a bit of Lent throughout the year, especially commemorating the death of Jesus on a Friday. This practice produced an unintended effect: Catholics are the only people I know who don’t like fish. Spanish- speaking Catholics, however, not only in Spain and Latin America, but also until fairly recently in the Philippines, New Mexico and Texas, ate meat on Fridays outside Lent, rejoicing in papal indults, periodically renewed, exempting them from such abstinence. Those indults were originally intended to reward Catholic Spaniards for the Reconquista, the retrieval of Spain from Muslim rule.47 All too conscious of their Catholic belonging and the differences between them and the Jews and Muslims they had driven out of Spain or forced into conversion more than five centuries ago, Spanish Catholics eat meat on ordinary Fridays as a sign of their Spanish Catholic identity. With fish not stigmatized as penitential, the Spanish as a consequence love fishpaella . The pithy saying, “You are what you eat,” is attributed to many authors, from the French gourmand Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin to the German materialist, Ludwig Feuerbach. Laws regarding what we eat and what we don’t eat unite us as communities of faith, but also divide us from other communities of faith, simultaneously promoting love within our community and discouraging love with other communities, especially love expressed in table fellowship. In this connection, I was happy to see that during the recent Assisi 2011 meeting of religious leaders of every variety with Pope Benedict, even if there was no common prayer, a “frugal lunch” was provided, with the “menu varied to meet the dietary requirements of all the religions represented.”48 Law and love, lawyers and lovers, can sit down at table together if the buffet is sufficiently varied.
21 NOTES 1 Yoruba people in Nigeria whose clan descent connects them with the orisha Obatala (or Orisanla) do not eat food made with palm oil, a common ingredient in Yoruba cuisine; Obatala, “the king in white garments,” abominates palm oil, because it is red and easily stains white garments, but that may be a rationalization. The taboo on consuming palm oil marks one as an Obatala-devotee, or a former or only part-time devotee if one is a Muslim or Christian Yoruba. See E. Bolaji Idowu, Oludumare: God in Yoruba Belief (New York: Praeger, 1963), 71-75. 2 Moses Maimonides, The Guide for the Perplexed, 2nd rev. ed., tr. M. Friedländer (1904; reprint: New York: Dover Publications, 1956), 371. 3 Isidore Epstein, Judaism: A Historical Presentation (London: Penguin, 1959), 24. 4 For quotations from the Hebrew Bible I rely on the JPS Hebrew-English Tanakh (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society, 1999/5759). The New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) of the Bible, as found in The HarperCollins Study Bible, rev. ed. Harold W. Attridge (San Francisco: HarperOne, 2006), translates Gen 1:28b somewhat differently: “[H]ave dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.” 5 Bereshit Rabbah, aggadic midrash or commentary on Genesis written by rabbis living in Palestine in the first centuries CE, suggests that Adam and Eve were clothed in “garments of light” or even “Circassian wool,” but finally concedes that the first clothing may have been made of the skins of goats, rabbits or camel hair, fabrics that are not surrendered voluntarily. See Jacob Neusner, The Components of the Rabbinic Documents: From the Whole to the Parts, IX: Genesis Rabbah (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1997), I:194-95. 6 Mary Douglas theorized in 1966 that such dietary laws “once inspired meditation on the oneness, purity and completeness of God.” See her Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Purity and Taboo (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1966), 57. A third of a century later she revised her opinions dramatically in a longer study of Leviticus. Douglas notes in the latter work that it is only the land animals that are divided into clean and unclean, suitable for sacrifice and consumption and unsuitable for either. The Book of Deuteronomy, as Douglas points out, is responsible for the “equation of unclean with abominable” but “in Leviticus the unclean animals are not abominable.” See her Leviticus as Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 137. 7 Note that the Hebrew term for these unclean animals is not simply a negation of clean (lo-tahor), as in the Yahwist’s characterization of some of the animals that entered the ark (Gen 7:2), but another term, tame’, that uniquely specifies their impurity. 8 douglas prefers to translate this term less passionately as “to be shunned,” concentrating not so much on the flesh abominated or shunned as on the actual act of consuming such creatures. See Leviticus as Literature, 166.
22 9 There is much conjecture involved in translating the names of the birds in the Hebrew text of Leviticus. On Lev 11:13-19 see Jacob Milgrom, Leviticus 1-16, Anchor Bible 3 (New York: Doubleday, 1991), 662: “The identifications [of birds] are, in many cases, educated guesses, as the many alternate suggestions readily indicate.” 10 See Harry Rabinowicz and Rela Mintz Geffen, “Dietary Laws,” Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2nd ed., ed. Fred Skolnik and Michael Berenbaum (Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA/Keter Publishing House, 2007), 5:650b. 11 See “The Civilized Diet: A Conversation with Rabbi Simeon Maslin,” in Reform Judaism Magazine (Summer 2007) available at www.reformjudaismmag.org. Rabbi Maslin agrees “with the twelfth-century biblical commentator Rashbam (Rabbi Samuel ben Meir) who believed the injunction was intended to teach tzaar baalei chayim, sensitivity to the pain of animals.” 12 but Maimonides started off on this subject by suggesting that “meat boiled in milk is undoubtedly gross food, and makes overfull.” The Guide for the Perplexed, 371. 13 As quoted in Sefton D. Temkin, Isaac Mayer Wise: Shaping American Judaism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 289-90. 14 This is my own translation, not that of the JPS Hebrew-English Tanakh. 15 “Introduction to Primary Jewish Education, Sefer ha-rokeah,” from the Center for Online Judaic Studies available online at www.cojs.org. See also Ivan G. Marcus, Rituals of Childhood: Jewish Acculturation in Medieval Europe (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1996), 1. 16 All quotations from the New Testament derive from the NRSV. 17 The Greek text uses the preposition en (“in”), but most translations prefer the translation of that preposition in this context as “to.” 18 In the Acts of the Apostles, Peter claims the title of Apostle of the Gentiles for himself, based perhaps on his work with the House of Cornelius (Acts 10:1-11:18): “God made a choice among you, that I should be the one through whom the Gentiles would hear the message of the good news and become believers” (Acts 15:7). 19 exactly where in Galatia (in modern Turkey) the Galatians addressed in this letter resided is much disputed among scholars but not important for my argument. 20 Scholars differ on the date of the Letter to the Galatians, but nearly all place it among the earlier examples of Pauline correspondence, probably after the First Letter to the Thessalonians and before the Letter to the Philippians. See Joseph A. Fitzmyer, S.J., “The Letter to the Galatians,” in The New Jerome Biblical Commentary [henceforth, NJBC], ed. Raymond E. Brown, S.S., Joseph A. Fitzmyer, S.J. and Roland E. Murphy, O. Carm. (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1990), 781a. 21 See J. Louis Martyn, Galatians, Anchor Bible 33A (New York: Doubleday, 1997), 18. “The Galatian churches, drawn wholly from Gentiles, were not founded, then, as daughter churches either of the Jerusalem church or of the church in Antioch. They
23 understood themselves to be the children of God himself, born by the power of the Pauline gospel.” 22 The “one who called you” in that statement is not a reference by Paul to himself but to God, who alone is said to “call” in Paul’s writing. Ibid., 108-9. 23 There is some ambiguity in the Greek phrase dia pisteos Iesou Christou, usually translated as an objective genitive, as in the NRSV and most other translations (“through faith in Jesus Christ”) but grammatically possible as a subjective genitive (“through the faith of Jesus Christ.”) 24 See John P. Meier, “The Antiochene Church of the First Christian Generation (A.D. 40- 70—Galatians 2; Acts 11-15),” in Raymond E. Brown, S.S. and John P. Meier, Antioch and Rome: New Testament Cradles of Catholic Christianity (New York/Ramsey: Paulist Press, 1982), 42-43. 25 “Generally speaking, meat was available in the ancient world only after great festivals, when the priests sold the surplus of the meat of the sacrificial victims that was their share.” See Jerome Murphy-O’Connor, O.P., “The First Letter to the Corinthians,” NJBC, 806a. This problem seems to have affected the account in the Acts of the Apostles of the Jerusalem leadership’s notice that Gentile Christians should “abstain . . . from things polluted by idols” (Acts 15:20). See also the more extensive treatment of this Pauline theme in Joseph A. Fitzmyer, S.J., First Corinthians: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, Anchor Yale Bible 32 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2008), 330-52. 26 See The Kebra Nagast, ed. E. A. Wallis Budge [1932], 91, available at www.sacred-texts. com. In modern times Rastafarians have also taken up the food prohibitions of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. 27 even in a Medinan surah, the term Banu Isra’il (“Children of Israel”) seems to include both Jews and Christians: “Some of the Children of Israel believed [in Jesus] and some disbelieved: We [God] supported the believers against their enemy and they were the ones who came out on top” (Qur’an 61:14). For quotations from the Qur’an I rely on the translation provided in The Qur’an: English Translation and Parallel Arabic Text, rev. ed., tr. M.A.S. Abdel Haleem (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010). 28 See Qur’an 3:154, 5:50, 33:33, 48:26. 29 See J. W. Fueck, ‘AMR b. LUHAYY, The Encyclopaedia of Islam: New Edition [henceforth, EI 2] (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1960), I:453a. 30 See Tafsir Ibn ‘Abbas, tr. Mokrane Guezzou on Qur’an 6:139 (Amman: Royal Aal- al-Bayt Institute for Islamic Thought, 2011), available online at www.altafsir.com. Henceforth, this commentary will be cited as Ibn ‘Abbas, with a reference to the verse on which Ibn ‘Abbas commented. 31 Sayyid Abu’l A‘la Mawdudi, Towards Understanding the Qur’an, tr. Zafar Ishaq Ansari (Leicester: The Islamic Foundation, 1989), II: 281. Henceforth cited as Mawdudi. 32 See M. Lecker, ZAYD b. ‘AMR. , EI 2 (2002) XI, 474b-475a.
24 33 The Life of Muhammad: A Translation of [Ibn] Ishaq’s Sirat Rasul Allah, tr. Alfred Guillaume (Lahore-Karachi-Dacca: Oxford University Press, 1955), 99. This book makes available in English the Sirat Rasul Allah of the eighth-century CE scholar Ibn Ishaq, as edited and revised in the ninth century by Ibn Hisham. Henceforth, this work will be referred to as Sirat Rasul Allah. 34 Ibn ‘Abbas on Qur’an 6:145. 35 Ibn ‘Abbas on Qur’an 3:50. 36 Here I refer to a general prohibition on drinking wine, unknown in ancient Israel. But certain Israelites, especially those consecrated as Nazirites, were to abstain from “wine and strong drink” (Num 6:3), as was the case with Samson’s parents and Samson himself (Judg 13:4-5), Samuel (1 Sam 1:21) and John the Baptist (Lk 1:15). 37 Ibn ‘Abbas on Qur’an 16:67. 38 Ibn ‘Abbas on Qur’an 2:219. 39 Mawdudi, I:169. 40 on the notion of falah (variously translated as ‘prospering’ or ‘flourishing’), see the chapter entitled “The Islamic Order for Human Society” in Kenneth Cragg, The Call of the Minaret (New York: Oxford University Press, 1964), 140-71. 41 See Qur’an 7:28, usually held to be the Quranic condemnation of this practice, called euphemistically “something disgraceful” (fahishatan). In the Sirat Rasul Allah, Muhammad is quoted as saying, when Abu Bakr was leading the hajj a year before Muhammad’s death, that “no polytheist shall make pilgrimage after this year, and no naked person shall circumambulate the temple” (619). 42 Ibn ‘Abbas on Qur’an 5:91. 43 Mawdudi, II:192. 44 See W. Montgomery Watt, Muhammad at Mecca (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1953), 16-20. 45 Ibid., 13-16. 46 Mary Douglas, Natural Symbols: Explorations in Cosmology (London: Barrie & Rockliff: The Cresset Press, 1970), 42. 47 See Eduardo de Hinajosa y Naveros, “Bull of the Crusade,” The Catholic Encyclopedia, vol 4 (New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1908) available on line at www.newadvent/ cathen/04543b. Also see M. W. Baldwin, “Bulla Cruciata,” New Catholic Encyclopedia, 2nd ed. (Detroit: Gale, 2003), 2:688. 48 See Francis X. Rocca (Religion News Service), “At Assisi Interfaith Summit 2011, Prayer is Optional,” available at www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/28.
25 Law and Love
Response by Professor Claudia Setzer
My thanks to Professor Ryan for his gracious invitation, and for providing us with a veritable banquet of ideas. Three things occurred to me as I thought about his talk: food’s centrality in Judaism, its symbolism, and the significance of the body as a vehicle for religious devotion.
The Role of Food in Judaism First, why does food matter? It seems to matter a lot. One answer is that how we deal with it, talk about it, prepare it, restrict it, offer it or refuse it to others reveals our deepest values and sense of ourselves. So Professor Ryan is right to reject the simple “rationalist” explanations for Jewish food laws, say, that pork prohibitions are about trichinosis. The first value in Judaism is simple: food is not the enemy, it is something to be grateful for. In our diet-conscious society we can sometimes forget that. Many biblical and rabbinic passages use the metaphor of food in abundance to signal God’s generosity and love. In Psalm 23, “The Lord is my Shepherd,” one of the signs of God’s favor is “he prepares a table before me in the presence of my enemies…my cup overflows.” The messianic banquet is promised at the end of days as in the mouth-watering image of Isaiah 25:6: “On this mountain the Lord of Hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines, of rich food filled with marrow, of well-aged wines strained clear,” followed in the next verse
26 by the familiar “he will swallow up death forever, then the Lord God will wipe away the tears from all faces…” Both images are about God as the one who gives life. In one targum, a translation and commentary on the Bible in Aramaic, one of the things God created at the origin of the world was the ox that will be eaten at the messianic banquet at the end of days (Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Numbers 11:26). As Professor Ryan mentions, the Torah is spoken of as food—honey, milk, and wine. Psalm 119:103, “How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey in my mouth” appears in verses about instructions, ordinances, statutes, precepts, namely—Law. Torah is spoken of as milk, our most basic sustainer. “Honey and milk are under your tongue” in Song of Songs 4 is understood as Torah. The second Jewish value suggests that food has a purpose beyond itself. One argument is that food laws and behavior are continuous with one another. There is some relationship between what and how one eats and what one does. Observing food laws leads to being a more ethical person. Several sayings in rabbinic works suggest the purpose of the dietary laws is to ennoble human beings, for example, “Rab said, ‘the commandments were only given to purify humankind through them. Because what does the Holy One, Blessed be He, care, if one slaughters from the neck or from the nape?’” (Genesis Rabbah 44:1). In that vein, I would like to think about one of my two favorite sayings from a first-century rabbi, Jesus, “there is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile” (Mark 7:15). We readers understand it easily, but he has to explain it to his disciples—it is not what a person eats that defiles him or her, but what a person does, evil deeds, pride, slander, murder… As Professor Ryan notes, Mark interprets that as “thus he declared all foods clean,” usually put in parentheses to suggest it is Mark’s addition. So Mark seems to say food laws and behavior have no relationship. It does not matter what one eats, it matters what one does. But what did Jesus mean by the idea “It’s not what goes in that defiles, but what comes out?” Are food laws and behavior
27 continuous or unrelated? Could he have meant that, yes, of course one follows the food laws, but that is not the main point, the main point is ethical behavior? Even fasts are not for their own sake, but to awaken compassion for those suffering. On Yom Kippur they are often accompanied by synagogue food drives and are always accompanied by a reading from Isaiah 58, which reminds us that God really chooses the fast that results in freeing the captive, sharing one’s bread with the hungry, and taking in the homeless. Early Christians were attracted to fasting and food laws too. The Didache, a very early catechism (late first–early second century) commands them to fast on Wednesdays and Fridays. Tertullian, the North African father, recommends xerophagy, eating only dry foods (On Fasting 1, 9). The impulse towards discipline around food was still present. Professor Ryan and I see Paul somewhat differently. I would argue that it is not clear he rejected food laws for Jews, even Jews who believed in Jesus, though no doubt he did for Gentiles. He is angry at Peter for pulling away from eating with Gentiles, but never says what exactly they would be eating. As for Galatians 3:28, that compelling statement, “there is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus,” is probably a baptismal formula which he cites as a guiding principle. But in practice, Paul did seem to think there were distinctions, say, between male and female. Women were to cover their heads when they pray and prophesy, men were not. Women were to keep silent in the churches. Could he have continued to maintain distinctions between Jews and Gentiles? I hold with a cadre of scholars who now say that he may have retained the idea of the election of Israel, while seeing Gentiles as eligible for entrance into the people of God through Christ. Along those lines, I would not use the word “conversion,” for what happened to him, but rather “call.” Finally, we have secular versions of food laws that express values. Veganism, vegetarianism, eating foods grown locally, the regulations of snacks and lunches in public schools: all these practices have a moral or
28 philosophical underpinning about our relationship to the natural world and/or responsibility to our children and others. Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivores Dilemma,1 about the ethical issues around food production and consumption, has three commandments I like for their simplicity. “Eat food, not too much, mostly plants.”2 He even has his “dominical sayings,” like “the whiter the bread, the sooner you’ll be dead.”3
Food’s Symbolism The second issue Professor Ryan has pointed out is that food underscores identity and community. It points to who’s in and who’s out. Association at meals is a statement of friendship. One would never voluntarily eat with someone one dislikes. Meals also show boundaries. In high school everyone knew where the cool kids sat. The effect of following food laws can be separation, which can be interpreted as superiority. The biblical Joseph, when he is posing as an Egyptian official, eats separately from his brothers, because supposedly Egyptians did not eat with others, viewing it as an abomination. We saw Paul’s anger at Peter for pulling away from eating with Gentiles, probably because it would imply a lower evaluation of them. In Luke 14:15, the parable of the feast where the invited do not come, servants gather in people from the streets. This seems to be about the banquet at the end- times, and ends with the idea that not everyone will be invited to the party, “none of those who were invited will taste my dinner” (v. 24). The effect of food laws is to maintain holiness, kedusha, which can also be translated as “separation.” Food laws create tension within the later Jewish community as well. Abraham Geiger, a founder of Reform Judaism in the nineteenth century, said the food laws were “inane, and thereby so very damaging to social life...”4 One of the arguments against kashrut by early Reform Jews in Germany was that it prevented Jews from being fully integrated into the communities they lived in. As noted, there is more sympathy for them today in Reform circles.
29 Food underscores identity. Pork seems particularly symbolic. Some Jews who do not keep kosher nevertheless abstain from pork, because of all the historical baggage around it. Forcing Jews to eat pork was a way to ferret out secret Jews in the Spanish Inquisition. Conversos or New Christians who refused pork were suspected of secretly practicing Judaism. In 2 Maccabees 7, the mother and her seven sons are tortured when they refuse the king’s order to eat pork, and become martyrs for the nation. Meals were the site of learning in the ancient world, as with the Greek symposium, the Passover meal, or Jesus’ teaching at table. Whom Jesus ate with was very significant to others; at times they were tax-collectors and sinners, at other times Pharisees. Could his eating with the Twelve have been reminiscent of the messianic banquet, when the twelve tribes of Israel would be restored? He seems to eat regularly with his friends, Mary and Martha of Bethany, and their brother Lazarus. An interesting passage appears in Luke 10:38-42. The women are doing different things. One, Martha, is caught up in activity (which most assume to be meal preparation), and the other is sitting at Jesus’ feet in the attitude of a disciple, listening to his preaching. The latter, Mary, is privileged as having “chosen the good part” in choosing to be taught by Jesus, but both things are necessary. And the word for what Martha is doing, serving, is diakonia (from which our English word “deacon” comes), which can mean serving food, but can also mean ministry. It made me wonder, if in an early itinerant movement, serving food and ministry were not so far apart. Mary Magdalene and other women are mentioned at the end of Mark as having “followed Jesus and ministered to him when he was in Galilee (15:40-41).” In a group of itinerant preachers like Jesus and the Twelve who make up his inner circle, who fed them on their travels? This brings me to another point in the issue of community, namely the unspoken role of women embedded in the references to preparation and serving of food. I have already brought up the women ministers to Jesus. Ancient hospitality was a fundamental obligation, and could mean life or death. One of the primary roles of the ancient synagogue was to feed and
30 house travelers. In any case, it seems probable that women played a role in keeping Jesus’ movement afloat. Notable is the case of Peter’s mother-in- law, who is healed from a fever by Jesus, then immediately gets up to start serving them (Mark 1:29-39). We all know women like that. Judith Hauptman discusses women in the rabbinic literature and sees evidence of women as expert and trusted in matters of food and preparation.5 The haverim, a group within rabbinism who were extra- scrupulous about matters of ritual purity in food, show no evidence of supervising their wives or doing it themselves, or having ritual experts hovering around the community. A mishnah describes the duties of a man coming into his house right before Sabbath falls, “There are three things a man is required to say in his home on Sabbath eve as darkness falls, ‘Have you taken care of the tithe?’ ‘Have you taken care of the eruv,’ and ‘Light the candle’ (Mishnah Sanhedrin 2:7).” The assumption in the mishnah is that the wife is capable and knowledgeable in performing these activities. The eruv is a legal conceit, in this case probably a marker of some kind, that turns a public space into a private space. One makes use of it by carrying food to a central house and putting the food in the communal oven. By everyone doing this, it becomes a private space and one is allowed to carry food back and forth on the Sabbath. Everyone is keeping their food in one central place to keep it warm or cool. Note the element of trust undergirding that law. One assumes the women know what they are doing in these very particular matters of food preparations, but also that everyone trusts their neighbors that they will not bring food to the communal oven that is ritually impure, or even worse, unkosher. Food and its handling reveal borders and the assumptions that make up a community.
31 The Body as Vehicle of Religious Devotion My last point is brief. Professor Ryan made me think about the significance of the body as the site of devotion. Contemporary critical study, thanks to Foucault and others, has promoted a strong sense of “my body, my self,” considering the relation of the body and its control to politics, economics and religion. Much contemporary theology focuses on a theology of the body. Discussions of disability, childbirth and breast- feeding as religious metaphors, dress as religious practice, and the like, all fall into this category. In the Hebrew Bible at least, there is no Cartesian split between mind and body. Nefesh is often translated “soul,” but means “self” or “person.” Psalm 35:10 says “all my limbs shall say, ‘Who is like you, O Lord?” meaning the whole self is involved in worship. Paul, when he counsels against sexual misconduct in 1 Corinthians 10, says “all things are lawful, but not all things are beneficial,” then follows with the analogy of the body, the Body of Christ. Food is essential to the body. It makes it what it is. Like its donor, God, it gives life. (In Jewish law, one of the things one cannot do in the presence of a met, corpse, is eat, because that is somehow disrespectful or shaming to the dead person, who can no longer enjoy this part of life.) Kashrut simply forces one to pay attention for a minute, investing the daily, mundane acts of food preparation and eating with brief reference to God. I would like to end with a quote from Deuteronomy 30:11-14, which applies especially well to the food laws, and shows the fusion of law and love, rooted in the everyday— Surely this commandment that I am commanding you today is not too hard for you, nor is it too far away. It is not in heaven, that you should say, “Who will go up to heaven for us so that we may hear and observe it?” Neither is it beyond the sea, that you should say, “Who will cross to the other side of the sea for us, and get it for us so that we may hear it and observe it?” No, the word is very near to you; it is in your mouth and in your heart for you to observe.
32 NOTES 1 Michael Pollan, The Omnivores Dilemma. A Natural History of Four Meals (New York: Penguin Books, 2006). 2 Michael Pollan, In Defense of Food. An Eater’s Manifesto (New York: Penguin Books, 2008), 1. 3 Michael Pollan, Food Rules. An Eater’s Manual (New York: Penguin Books, 2011), chap. 37. 4 Letter to Leopold Zunz, 19 March, 1845, cited in Susannah Heschel, Abraham Geiger and the Jewish Jesus (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 38. 5 Judith Hauptman, “Women in the Rabbinic Kitchen,” presented to the Columbia University Seminar on the New Testament, February 4, 2008.
33 Law and Love
Response by Professor Amir Hussain
Al-salaamu alaikum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatahu, peace be upon you and the Mercy and Blessings of God. I am honored and delighted to be invited back to Fordham to offer a brief response to the wonderful Fall McGinley Lecture that we heard from Father Ryan. A very simple and a very sincere “thank you” to all of you who are reading these words. I need to single out, as always, Father President Joseph McShane for his hospitality, Provost Stephen Freedman for his support, Sister Anne-Marie Kirmse for her help with the arrangements, Matthew Windell and Joshua Bishop for their help with the PowerPoint and the music when these lectures were originally delivered, Professor Setzer for her wise words, and of course Father Ryan for inviting me to respond to his lecture.
34 “Eid Mubarak”to the members of the Muslim community who celebrated Eid al-Adha on Sunday, November 6, a holiday which commemorates Abraham offering up his son for sacrifice. This is celebrated on the tenth day of the month of pilgrimage. Traditionally, the head of the household slaughters an animal, and the meat is eaten by the family as well as distributed to the poor. These days, when many live in cities and have no access to animals—nor the skill to slaughter an animal—Muslims often rely on commercial butchers to do the slaughtering for them. The week previous, those of you in the Christian tradition celebrated All Souls Day, or as it is known in the Catholic Church, the Commemoration of all the Faithful Departed. Where I live, in the town of Our Lady, the Queen of the Angels, this is celebrated as Día de los Muertos, with the building of ofrendas and the visitation of graveyards to connect with the deceased. Am I right here in remembering something from St. Augustine, perhaps in the Confessions, where he takes his mother Monica to task for banqueting with the deceased in the cemetery? I will return to both of these rituals, Eid and All Souls Day, where there are connections to the food issues that Father Ryan mentioned in his talk. With the theme of the faithful departed in mind, I offer my response tonight in memory of one of my teachers and my friends, Alan Segal of Barnard College. Alan died of leukaemia on February 13 of this year.1 He is best known for his book, Rebecca’s Children: Judaism and Christianity in the Roman World, which celebrated its twenty-fifth anniversary this year. It was a follow-up to his first book,Two Powers in Heaven, which turns thirty-five in 2012 and will be reissued in an anniversary edition by Baylor University Press. On the very first page ofRebecca’s Children, Alan wrote: “So great is the contrast between previous Jewish religious systems and rabbinism that Judaism and Christianity can essentially claim a twin birth. It is a startling truth that the religions we know today as Judaism and Christianity were born at the same time and nurtured in the same environment.”2 I know that I am here to talk about Islam and Muslims, but I cannot resist the opportunity to talk about Alan’s work on the connections between Judaism and Christianity.
35 Father Ryan has alluded to the vision of Peter, recounted in Acts, where dietary laws were changed (Acts 10:9-15): The next day, as they went on their journey and drew near the city, Peter went up on the housetop to pray, about the sixth hour. Then he became very hungry and wanted to eat; but while they made ready, he fell into a trance and saw heaven opened and an object like a great sheet bound at the four corners, descending to him and let down to the earth. In it were all kinds of four-footed animals of the earth, wild beasts, creeping things, and birds of the air. And a voice came to him, “Rise, Peter; kill and eat.” But Peter said, “Not so, Lord! For I have never eaten anything common or unclean.” And a voice spoke to him again the second time, “What God has cleansed you must not call common.” This was done three times. And the object was taken up into heaven again. In Rebecca’s Children, Alan reminds us that: “Peter is so amazed by the command to stop observing the food laws that the vision needs to be repeated to him three times. The three-fold repetition may also have the literary function of persuading some Jewish-Christian readers of Acts of the desirability of giving up the food laws.”3 The passage that follows this in Acts is the conversion of Cornelius, a Gentile. Of these two passages, Alan wrote, The issue of the kosher laws is directly related to the issue of the admission of Gentiles. By placing the two issues together in this way, Luke is saying that the old symbolic distinctions separating Jew from Gentile cannot continue to disunite the Christian community. Luke is applying the Pauline principle of conversion to the Christian community in a way that Paul had probably not entirely anticipated, since Paul was not fully aware of any difference between Judaism and Christianity, living at a time when Gentile Christianity was a struggling new community. No use of the purity laws can be allowed to create distinctions within Christianity.4 It is the breaking down of the distinctions between the living and the dead that are central to Día de los Muertos. While these feasts may
36 be disapproved of by some, there are important connections here between the living and the departed. There are connections here of course with Islam, as the Qur’anic verse 15:23 reminds us: “Indeed it is We (that is, God), We who give life and We who give death and unto Us is the returning.” The Hajj rites serve to reinforce the connections between believers. There are connections to the deceased, of course, as those who have made the Hajj keep their pilgrimage clothes, pieces of simple, unsown cloth, for their next use, the burial shroud. But there are connections with the living community as well, with the meat from the sacrifice being distributed both to the immediate family and to the needy in one’s community. Turning to Islam, let me draw your attention to one of your very own here at Fordham, Professor Kathryn Kueny, who directs the Religious Studies program. A decade ago, Kathy published a beautiful little book, The Rhetoric of Sobriety, where she discussed the verses Father Ryan mentioned about the ambiguous role of wine in the Qur’an.5 It will surprise most non-Muslims (and, unfortunately, some Muslims) that Islam is a religion with a strong emphasis on love. Here, I draw your attention to the work of William C. Chittick, who teaches down the road in Long Island at the State University of New York, Stony Brook. One of my first serious scholarly presentations was in 1995, at a conference that featured Bill Chittick and his spouse, Sachiko Murata. My talk was entitled: “Hubb, Wadda and Rahmah in North American Islam” and used three of the words for love used in the Qur’an. In his magisterial 2004 book, Me and Rumi: The Autobiography of Shams-i Tabrizi, Bill described the relationship between Shams and Jalal al-din Rumi (the 13th century Sufi poet), and the resulting effect that this relationship had on Rumi. According to Shams, the Qur’an is like an ‘Ishq-nama, a “book of love.”6 How many of us, Muslim or not, think of “love” as the first word that comes to mind when the Qur’an is mentioned?
37 Bill reminds us that: In talking about love, the Qur’an uses derivatives of two words, wudd and hubb, which are typically understood in God’s case as synonyms. In the usual lists of divine names, a derivative of wudd is given, that is, al-wadud, and usually it is interpreted to mean “loving.” The specific pattern of the word, however, can be used for both active and passive participles, so some scholars explain that wadud means both “lover” and “beloved.” If we then insert the name into the formula of tawhid, it means that there is no lover but God and no beloved but God. In other words, God alone truly loves, and God alone is the true object of love.7 It is also worth remembering that the Qur’anic verse, which is quoted more than any other in the literature on love is 5:54: “God loves them, and they love God.” There are four statements in this short verse: God is lover, human beings are the objects of God’s love, human beings are lovers, and God is the object of their love. It is also important here to remember that God’s love is directed specifically at human beings, or to put it another way, the only objects of God’s love mentioned in the Qur’an are humans. In the Qur’an, God’s love for creation is often called rahma, mercy or compassion. Etymologically, rahma comes from rahim, or “womb.” The word’s basic sense is a mother’s sheltering love for her children. A number of sayings of the Prophet make the connection between God’s mercy and a mother’s love. For example, “Surely God is more merciful toward God’s servant than any mother toward her child.”8 It was Bill who introduced me to the work of Rashid al-Din Maybudi, author of Kashf al-asrar, “The Unveiling of the Mysteries,” one of the longest pre-modern commentaries on the Qur’an in the Persian language (completed in 1126 CE). In a passage explaining the meaning of the Qur’anic verse (2:89), “When there came to them a book from God” (2:89), Maybudi said this about the Qur’an: A book came to them—and what a book! For it was the Lord’s reminder to His lovers. It was a book whose title was “The Eternal Love,” a book whose purport is the story of love and lovers. It was a book that provides
38 security from being cut off, the remedy for unsettled breasts, health for ailing hearts, and ease for grieving spirits—a mercy from God to the folk of the world.9 If we know of love in Islam, chances are that our knowledge comes from the Sufis, whom Father Ryan mentioned. The nameSufism comes from the Arabic word tasawwuf, or “the process of becoming a Sufi.” Sufism is experiential in nature, involving a commitment to personal transformation. The root meaning of Sufi is “wool,” which is consistent with the ascetic character of the beginnings of Sufism. Early followers would wear woollen garments in conscious opposition to the wearing of more expensive fabrics such as silk and satin. They were reacting to the worldliness that came with the expansion of Islamic civilization in the eighth century. In time, however, the asceticism gave way to a tradition that included the appreciation of the arts, including exquisite, sensual poetry. I saw some wonderful examples yesterday, when I went to the new Islamic exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (entitled “Art of the Arab Lands, Turkey, Iran, Central Asia, and Later South Asia”). Sufism cuts across divisions within Islam, just as Christian mysticism often cuts through denominational barriers. Sufis are male and female, and they include Sunni and Shi’a Muslims. They are organized in many communities or orders throughout the world. Just as there are a great many ways to be Muslim, so there are a great many ways to be a Sufi Muslim. Some Sufis show what may appear to be an anti-intellectualism in their pursuit of direct experiences of the divine. Some speak of their mystical understandings in the language of complex philosophy. Others emphasize ritual practices such as turning in circles or singing devotional songs. In recent years, one of the most famous singers of these devotional songs was my Punjabi homeboy, the late Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, who left us too soon in 1997. A year before his death, he recorded a song with American Rock musician Eddie Vedder (from Pearl Jam fame) for the soundtrack to the filmDead Man Walking. That of course was based on the life of Sister
39 Helen Prejean, and her work to bring an end to the abomination that is the death penalty in this county. It is with their song, “The Face of Love,” that I end. And if you don’t understand the Urdu/Punjabi that Nusrat is singing (or for that matter, the mumbled English that Eddie often uses), that doesn’t matter. This is the ecstatic form of singing known as qawalli, where the words and syllables aren’t important, but where the sounds speak directly to the heart. In this way, there is a direct connection with the bodily experience that Professor Setzer described in her response.
The Face of Love (Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan with Eddie Vedder)
Jeena kaisa pyar bina [what is life without love?] Is duniya mein aaye ho to [now that you have come into this world] Ek duje se pyar karo [love each other, one another] Jeena kaisa pyar bina [what is life without love?] Is duniya mein aaye ho to [now that you have come into this world] Ek duje se pyar karo [love each other, one another] Look in the eyes Of the face of love Look in her eyes Oh, there is peace No, nothing dies Within pure light Only one hour Of this pure love To last a life Of thirty years Only one hour So come and go
40 NOTES 1 My remembrance of Alan is available from the Journal of the American Academy of Religion at
41 Patrick J. Ryan, S.J. Father Patrick Ryan, a Jesuit and native of New York City, became the Laurence J. McGinley Professor of Religion and Society at Fordham University in New York in 2009. Previously he served as Fordham’s vice president for University mission and ministry for four years, from 2005 to 2009. He entered the Society of Jesus in 1957 and earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees at Fordham in English Language and Literature. In 1964, he began a long career as a teacher and academic administrator in West Africa, where he has spent 26 years. After his ordination to the priesthood in 1968, he earned his doctoral degree in the comparative history of religion at Harvard University, specializing in Arabic and Islamic studies. For 15 years he taught in this area in Ghanaian universities. He also taught for briefer periods at Fordham and at the Gregorian University in Rome. From 1999 to 2005, he served as the first president of Loyola Jesuit College, a high school in Nigeria’s federal capital, Abuja. The author of numerous articles, scholarly and popular, Father Ryan has published three books: Imale: Yoruba Participation in the Muslim Tradition: A Study of Clerical Piety (Scholars Press, 1978), The Coming of Our God: Scriptural Reflections for Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany (Paulist, 1999) and When I Survey the Wondrous Cross: Scriptural Reflections for Lent (Paulist, 2004).
42 Professor Claudia Setzer Claudia Setzer is professor of religious studies at Manhattan College, in Riverdale, N.Y. She earned her doctoral degree in biblical studies at Columbia University/Union Theological Seminary in 1990, specializing in the New Testament. She also earned her master’s degree in rabbinics at the Jewish Theological Seminary. Her book Jewish Responses to Early Christians (Fortress, 1994) discusses the reactions of Jews to the earliest generations of believers in Jesus. She has also published articles on the historical Jesus, Mary Magdalene and the witness of women in proclamation of the resurrection, and Jews and Christians in North Africa. She has published several articles and a book on early ideas of bodily resurrection, Resurrection of the Body in Early Judaism and Early Christianity: Doctrine, Community and Self-Definition (Brill, 2004). Her most-recent book, The Bible and American Culture (Routledge, 2011), brings together primary documents that illustrate the role of biblical ideas in American movements, history and the arts. She is also a contributor to A Jewish Annotated New Testament (Oxford: 2011), which has just been published. She has served for several years as chair of the Early/Jewish Christian Relations group at the Society of Biblical Literature, as an associate editor of The Journal of Biblical Literature and as a contributor to the PBS website From Jesus to Christ. In 2006 she helped re-establish the Columbia University Seminar on the New Testament, which she also co-chairs.
43 PROFESSOR Amir Hussain Amir Hussain, Ph.D., is a professor in the Department of Theological Studies at Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles, where he teaches courses on world religions. His specialty is the study of Islam, with a focus on contemporary Muslim societies. A native of Pakistan, Professor Hussain immigrated to Canada when he was 4 years old. Later, he earned his bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees at the University of Toronto, where he received a number of awards, including the university’s highest honor for alumni service. His doctoral dissertation was on Muslim communities in Toronto. Since September 11, 2001, he has appeared on the History Channel numerous times and provided insights into Islam for many newspapers and magazines in both the United States and Canada. Professor Hussain is editor of the Journal of the American Academy of Religion and serves on the editorial board of many journals including Comparative Islamic Studies; The Journal of Religion, Conflict, and Peace and Contemporary Islam: Dynamics of Muslim Life. He is also part of the research network for the Islam and human rights fellowship program at Emory University. Professor Hussain’s latest publication is the textbook World Religions: Western Traditions, third edition, for Oxford University Press (Oxford, 2010).
44 © Fordham University 2011 Produced by Development and University Relations. 12-0920 eeo/aa