University of Kansas, Public, State University (retired)
Spring 1999
Course level and type:
The following is the syllabus for an introductory course on Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, taught every semester at the University of Kansas as a "Principal Course." These courses are meant to introduce students to a general field of academic study as well as to a specific subject matter. Among the principal courses students in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences must take is one on "Philosophy and Religion." There are about eight courses that fulfill this requirement, the following course is one of those. It usually enrolls between 45-75 students who range from entering students to seniors.
Hours of Instruction:
3 hours a week over a 16 week period, 48 hours
Enrollment:
45 Students; Spring 1999
Pedagogical Reflections:
Although the course and textbook is oriented toward method as well as content, I alter the approach of the textbook by focusing on each tradition by itself. I hope students, by the end of the course, will have been able to notice the common themes in each section and the various methods that run through each part of the course. I am convinced that students learn best if they teach themselves. To attain that end I use several techniques. First, I expect them to memorize key terms (I am appending those to this syllabus); secondly, students are not only to attend classes but to participate by asking questions and responding to questions, either from other students or from the instructor. I provide them not only with a list of key terms but also with an outline of the main ideas in the reading assigned. One session a week divides students into smaller discussion groups. In these groups of 12-15 students ideas and arguments are evaluated and explored. In order to ensure that students come prepared to these classes there is an in-class assignment that begins each discussion session.
Audio-Visual aids are sometimes useful. I have used parts of several video series–The Christians, Heritage: Civilization and The Jews, and Islam. In each case the video needs to be discussed since I try to isolate the controversial and problematic aspects of each film. Sometimes I find it impossible to devote enough time to the videos and so I dispense with them.
The examinations are divided into two parts. The first part is simple recall based on the reading and the key term list. The second asks students to write an essay based on the subject under discussion. I work hard to enable students to visualize both a coherent argument and an essay form that develops that argument. I provide an outline for them to use and a discursive discussion of essay writing. I am also appending those to this syllabus. Students find it difficult to work within so structured a framework, but those who succeed tell me that they have found this course helpful in the rest of their educational career.
I simplify discussion and argument into several dichotomies:
Scripture as either: inclusive or exclusive, translated or in original language, interpreted or literal interpreted mystically or philosophically.
Monotheism as either: emphasizing transcendence or immanence, claiming unity as apparent or hidden, adapting to or challenging a historical context.
Ritual as either: transforming reality or celebrating it, focused on the individual or on society, distinguishing performers of it from others or integrating them into society at large.
Ethics as either: consisting of detailed rules or general principles, affirming the goodness of nature or considering nature a problem for ethics, as focused on the individual or on society as appropriate for all or only for members of the society.
This course does not provide a survey of the various religions in the West. Instead it focuses on themes and issues in religious studies and illustrates them on the basis of several Western religious traditions--specifically Islam, Christianity and Judaism. This course fulfills a principal course requirement in Philosophy and Religion. The course focuses on methods in the study of religion and background information about Islam, Christianity, and Judaism. This syllabus projects the general content, method, and grading approach of the course. Specific readings, examination times, and grading system may change in the course of the semester. Changes will be announced during class and students are responsible for obtaining information so announced. This syllabus and additional information are found in the listing for this course; be sure to also check my homepage: http://raven.cc.ukans.edu/~bresdan.
Required Books: Corrigan, Denny, Eire, and Jaffee, Jews, Christians, Muslims (JCM)
Course Procedure: The course examines several issues in religious studies looking at the way these issues take shape in the Jewish, Christian and Islamic traditions. You should read the chapter assigned before the first class session of the week on which it is assigned. While the professor will provide background the main purpose of class sessions is to afford an opportunity for you to explore the materials you have read. The sectional meetings provide you with preparation needed for examinations in this class.
The format of the course is lecture and discussion. Mondays and Wednesdays are usually lecture or audio-visual material. The final meeting of the week is with your discussion section. At that time you should ask any questions you have. Every week in which a discussion section meeting is scheduled you will submit in-class writing. These may often be generated in a group setting. Weeks in which examinations are scheduled, your sectional meeting will be for the writing of the essay part of the examination.
Assignments and Grading: Your final grade, given at the end of the semester, reflects your work throughout the course. There are four examinations (each worth 50 points) in the course as noted on the calendar of assignments. Your examination grades are averaged. The final examination is cumulative and covers the entire semester. It counts equally with the other three examinations. In-Term examinations are given on Wednesdays and during section meetings with a review on Monday. Wednesday will be a 40 point objective examination; the 10 point essay part of the examination will be taken during section meeting. The final examination will be in two parts at the time assigned in the Timetable of Classes.
Cheating on examinations, or other academic misconduct results in the grade of 0 for the assignment. Those who have not missed one sectional assignment (from the first week of classes through the end of classes) will raise ONE of their examination grades by one grade level; students who miss more than three such assignments will lower ONE examination grade by one grade level and every subsequent three failures to turn in a sectional assignment will result in a similar penalty.
No work will be accepted after the date it is assigned. No make-up tests will be given. Students who miss a test because of a verified illness or death in the family will make private arrangements with the instructor. Students who will miss class or an examination because of religious reasons must make arrangements with the professor at least a week in advance.
Calendar of Assignments by Week
Judaism
Jan 18 JCM 1; JCM, 7, pp. 157-168
Basic Terms: Abraham, Adam, Aggadah, Anan b. David, Babylonia, Covenant, Exodus, Halakhah, Hellenism, Jacob, Ketuvim, Midrash, Mishnah, Moses, Nevi'im,
Oral Torah, Pharisees, Philo of Alexandria, Rabbi, Second Temple, Sinai, Talmud, Written Torah
Jan 25 JCM 4; JMC 7, pp. 170-173
Basic Terms: Abu Isa, Ashkenazic Jews, David Al-Ruhi, En Sof, HaBaD, Hasidism, Hekhalot, Messiah, Monotheism, Moses de Leon, Orthodox Judaism,
Philo of Alexandria, Polytheism, Positive-Historical Judaism, Reconstructionist Judaism, Reform Judaism, Sefirot, Sephardic Jews, Shabbatai Zvi, YHWH
Feb 01 JCM 10; JCM 19, pp, 425-429
Basic Terms: Amidah, Avodah, Bet Haknesset, Commemorative Celebrations, Commemorative Fasts, Lekhah Dodi, Maariv, Mikdash, Minkhah, New Year Cycle, Pesah, Pilgrimage Festivals, Shavuot, Shakharit, Shma, Siddur, Sabbath, Sukkot, Synagogue, Tefillin
Feb 08 JCM 13; JCM 19, pp. 430-440
Basic Terms:613 commandments, Abraham Geiger, Bachya Ibn Pakuda, Bar Mitzvah, Bat Mitzvah, Circumcision, Hermann Cohen, Gaonim, Israel Salanter, Kavannah, Laws of Noah, Moses Mendelssohn, Musar, RAMA, RAMBAM, RASHI, Shulkhan Arukh, Teshuvah, Tzedakah, Yetzer
Feb 15: Question Session M; first exams W, sections
Christianity
Feb 22 JCM 2; JCM 8, pp. 174-188
Basic Terms: Alfred Loisy, Augustine of Hippo, Baruch Spinoza, Bishop, Christ, Emmanuel Swedenborg, Gnosticism, Synoptic Gospel, Gospel of Thomas, Hermeneutic, Higher Criticism, John Wycliffe, Laity, Marcion, Muratorian Canon, Origen, Sola Scriptura, The Book of Mormon, The Fundamentals, Vulgate
Mar 01 JCM 5 ; JCM 8, pp. 188-194
Basic Terms: Arianism, Athanasius of Alexandria, Bernard of Clairvaux, Camisards, Cathars, Charisma, Christology, Docetism, Enlightenment, Filoque, Giordano Bruno,
Holy Spirit, Methodism, Paradox, Pentecostalism, Spiritualism, Trinity, Unitarianism, Voltaire
Mar 08 JCM 11; JCM 17, pp. 370-386
Basic Terms: Advent, Baptism, Basilica, Communion, Confirmation, Corpus Christi, Easter, Eucharist, Extreme Unction, Francis of Assisi, Holy Orders, Hymns, Lent,
Lord's Prayer, Marriage, Mass, Passion, Pilgrimage, Relics, Revivalism, Syncretism, Transubstantiation
Mar 22 JCM 14; JCM 20, pp. 448-462
Basic Terms: Abbot, Baltimore Catechism, Confession, Didache, Indulgences,
John Calvin, Jonathan Edwards, Justification by Faith, Liberation Theology,
Martin Luther, Martyrdom, Monasticism, Mortal Sin, Natural Law, Oliver Cromwell, Purgatory, Rule of St. Benedict, Self-Renunciation, Social Gospel, Venal Sin
Mar 29: Question Session M, second exams, W, sections
Islam
Apr 05 JCM 3; JCM 9, pp. 195-200
Basic Terms: Abu Bakr, Allah, Battle of Badr, Fatiha, Gabriel, Hadith, Hijra, Jinni, Ka'aba, Khadija, Mecca, Medina, Muhammad, Mushaf, Qur'an, Quraysh, Sharia, Sunna, Sura, Tafsir, Umar, Umma, Uthman, Yathrib
Apr 12 JCM 6; JCM 9, pp. 200-207
Basic Terms: Al-Hallaj, Anthropomorphism, Caliph, Fiqh Akbar II, Iman, Kalam, Malak, Mu'tazilites, Nabi, Predestination, Rasul, Rabi'a, Rumi, Shahadah, Shi'ites, Shirk, Sufi, Sunnites, Tawhid, Yawm al-din
Apr 19 JCM 12; JCM 18, pp. 397-416
Basic Terms: Five Pillars (Shahadah, Salat, Sawm, Zakat, Hajj), Friday Salat, Hagar, Hanif, Ibadat, Ihram, Imam, Ishmael, Jihad, Khitan, Minbar, Mosque (Mesjid), Niyya, Qibla, Ramadan, Ritual Washing, Saint Veneration, Sura 36
Apr 26 JCM 15; JCM 21, pp. 466-479; Readings Chapter 15; Chapter 18:2, 3
Basic Terms: Adab, Adat, Ayatollah, Bida, Birr, Farid, Fiqh, Halal, Haram, Iblis, Ijma, Ijtihad, Makruh, Mandub, Mar'uf, Mubah, Muhammad Abduh, Muhammadiya, Munkar, Qiyas, Santri, Taghut, Taqwa, Taqlid, Ulama, Wahabism, Wali
May 03: Question Session M; third exams, W, sections
May 10: Question Session for Final exam
May 12, 7:30-10:30am: Final Examination
These terms and discussion questions are organized according to assigned readings. Check your Calendar of Assignments for the dates on which they are assigned. Each section includes an introduction, outline of the chapter, definitions of basic terms, and discussion questions which will be used for writing essays in section meetings.
Chapter 1: Scripture and Tradition in Judaism; JCM, 7, pp. 157-168
Introduction
The three traditions considered in this course each combine respect for a book, a scriptures, with a living process of interpretation, an oral component of their faith. There are several ways in which this tension between what is written and what is interpreted works itself out:
1. canonization selects certain texts but rejects others in determining what works are authoritative in a tradition,
2. the stories in the Hebrew Bible are regarded not as "historical" truth but as truthful ways of indicating the ideals of the Jewish people, and this ideal changes over time,
3. the idea of "covenant" suggests that Scriptures provide a basis for regulating life, but life demands changing responses to new situations, and
4. the interplay among rival groups--Sadducees and Pharisees, Karaites and Rabbis, Kabbalists and philosophers--suggests the variety within the Jewish approach to scriptures and tradition.
Outline of the Chapter
I. The Biblical Imagination
1. Stories about Abraham are vividly imagined interpretations of the Jewish past.
2. Stories about Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and the later kingdoms of Judah and Israel became holy and authoritative through a process of transmission, a tradition of interpretation.
3. The three-fold division of the Hebrew Bible conveys the history of a covenant as understood by Jews during the Babylonian exile.
4. The Septuagint reflects the Greek-speaking Hellenistic Jewish consciousness rather than the traditions of the Palestinian rabbis.
II. Covenant in Jewish Religion; read pp. 157-168
1. Covenant establishes expectations and obligations within a community; Jewish covenant authorizes those duties and promises by reference to a divine law.
2. Covenant in Judaism took several forms from royal covenants in which God made a contract with a kingly dynasty to communal covenants in Hasidic communities.
3. Covenant was considered the operative form of divine relationship with non-jews no less than with Jews.
III. The Dimensions of Rabbinic Jewish Tradition
1. Rabbinic Judaism understands study as the basic way to approach God so that the Written Torah requires an on-going Oral Torah as its religious complement.
2. Religious understanding for the rabbis occurs when teachers and pupils study together.
3. The halakhah derived from rabbinic study is considered Torah revealed from Sinai by Moses even if it is uncovered by later Jewish scholars.
IV. Alternatives to Rabbinic Tradition
1. Karaites claim that rabbinic interpretation is unnecessary since scripture alone is sufficient.
2. Kabbalists claim that rabbinic interpretation is too limiting and supplement it with mystical interpretations of the hidden meaning of the Torah.
Defining Basic Terms
Avot This Hebrew word literally means "fathers" and refers to a book in the Mishna recording the ideas of the founding leaders of rabbinic Judaism. These leaders emphasized the need to build an interpretive fence around the written Torah.
Abraham This biblical hero may never in fact have existed historically; the stories about him, however, illustrate the ideal of faithful obedience held by the Jews who canonized the tales.
Adam According to the Hebrew Bible this person was the first human being. The narrative in the Bible concerning creation of humanity shows a universalism of outlook that extends beyond the narrow focus of the Jewish people.
Aggadah This Hebrew word literally means "narration." It refers to the stories and lore of rabbinic Judaism, the non-legal teachings associated with an interpretation of the Bible.
Anan b. David This Jewish leader, said to be the founder of the Karaites, rejected rabbinic authority and claimed that the Written Torah was authoritative but the Oral Torah was not.
Babylonia This Mesopotamian city-state was a center for Jews in exile. The tradition that became "Judaism" developed not in the Land of Israel but in exilic Babylonia.
Covenant This term refers literally to a contract binding two parties in agreement with each other. As used in this section it refers to the relationship between God and human beings. In Jewish thought God's covenant is best exemplified by the Sinaitic revelation to Moses but is also expressed by the divine relation with non-Jews such as Adam or Noah.
Exodus This term refers to the liberation of the Hebrew slaves from Egypt. The three-fold experience of slavery, receiving God's word, and liberation became a model of covenantal experience as expressed in the literature of the Jewish Bible.
Ezra This Babylonian Jew is credited with having brought the "Torah of Moses" to the Land of Israel. His name is associated with the first stage of canonization of the Hebrew Bible, with the process of selecting oral and written traditions to be considered authoritative by Babylonian Judaism.
Halakhah This Hebrew word meaning "to walk" or "to go," refers to the Jewish legal system. Jewish law reflects the traditions and rituals that the Rabbis derived from or associated with the teachings of the Hebrew Bible.
Hellenism This term refers to the acceptance of Greek ways and philosophy by non-Greek peoples. Jews in ancient Egypt, for example, were extremely Hellenized, and their Greek version of the Bible, the Septuagint, reflects the thought and mores of Hellenism.
Jacob This name refers to a biblical hero with whom God was thought to have entered into a covenant. Because of that covenant Jacob's name was changed to "Israel," an indication that his story was thought of as representing the experience of the nation as a whole.
Kabbalah This Hebrew term literally means "tradition," and refers to the mystical teachings of Judaism. The Kabbalah does not reject rabbinic traditions about the Oral Torah but claims that they do not go far enough. Kabbalists supplement rabbinic teaching with their insights into the hidden meanings of the Torah.
Karaites These Jews are part of a movement that flourished in the middle ages but which has shrunk today. The Karaites rejected rabbinic tradition and substituted their own emphasis on scripture alone for it.
Ketuvim This Hebrew word literally means "the Writings" and refers to the last section of the Hebrew Bible. This section of the Jewish canon includes books like Esther, Daniel, and Lamentations found among either the historical or prophetic books of the Septuagint in order to emphasize God's restoration of the Jewish people after exile.
Midrash This Hebrew word meaning "to search out" refers to the process of discovering new significance to biblical passages. Sometimes the new meaning discovered is legalistic or halakhic, at other times it is concerned with lore or theology and thus aggadic.
Mishnah This Hebrew word meaning "to learn" or "to recite" refers to legal teachings of the rabbis organized by subject matter. "The" Mishnah refers to the compilation by Rabbi Judah the Prince which is organized into six categories and was meant to be the definitive collection of rabbinic law. The Talmuds grew up around it and thus rendered it a point of departure rather than a final word in Jewish legal matters.
Moses This biblical hero is associated with the revelation of Torah at Mount Sinai. The book of Deuteronomy emphasizes the covenantal aspect of Mosaic teaching, whereas the rabbis call Moses "our Rabbi" and see him primarily as a rabbinic teacher.
Nevi'im This Hebrew word means "prophets" and refers to the second section of the Hebrew Bible. In the Jewish Bible this section includes historical books like Joshua, Judges, and Kings as well as books assigned to named prophets like Isaiah, Jeremiah, or Amos.
Oral Torah According to rabbinic teachings God provided Moses with both a written Scriptures and an oral interpretation of those Scriptures. The term "Oral Torah" refers to all the teachings that authoritative Jewish leaders have created, are articulating, or will discover in the future.
Pharisees This term, literally meaning "separatists" is used ambiguously in Hellenistic writings and has many different meanings particularly in both rabbinic and Christian writings. It is often understood to refer to that Hellenistic Jewish group that decisively influenced rabbinic understandings of Judaism.
Philo of Alexandria This Hellenistic Jewish thinker identified the God of the Bible with Plato's idea of the Good and Torah with the Platonic idea of the "Logos." He thought of the Jews as teaching a universal lesson about the divine to all people.
Rabbi This Hebrew title, literally meaning "my master," is used in late Roman times to refer to authoritative Jewish leaders. It has come to be the title for any qualified master of the Oral Torah in general and halakhic tradition in particular.
Second Temple This refers to the Jerusalem Temple established by the Jews who returned to Israel from exile in Babylonia. Judaism as it is known today developed in Second Temple times. After the destruction of the Second Temple rabbinic Judaism became the authoritative standard for Jewish religion.
Septuagint This term, literally meaning the translation made by the 70 (although legend says 72 elders created it), is a Greek version of Jewish Scriptures. Both in its structure and content it differs from what, later, became the Jewish Bible, and it reflects the philosophical and social concerns of Jews in Hellenized Egypt.
Sinai This name refers above all to a mountain at which the Bible declares Moses received the Torah from God. In rabbinic teaching Sinai is not only the source of the written Bible but also for every authoritative tradition developed by later rabbis.
Talmud This Hebrew word means "study" and refers to a collection of writings also known as "Germora" or "conclusion." The writings involved create a loose commentary on the Mishnah and expand its meanings through various interpretations and diverse alternative decisions. There are two Talmuds-a Babylonian and a Jerusalem one, reflecting regional differences among Jewish communities.
Torah This Hebrew word, literally meaning "teaching" or "guidance," refers to authoritative religious teaching in Judaism. In a narrow sense "the Torah" often refers just to the first five books of the Hebrew Bible. In a broader sense, the term refers to the entire biblical corpus. In the widest sense "Torah" means all Jewish learning.
Written Torah This term describes the Hebrew Bible. According to rabbinic teachings the Written Torah, the text of the Hebrew Scriptures, is only part of the revelation that God provided Moses. It requires the supplement and completion of the Oral Torah, also associated with God's revelation at Sinai.
Discussion Questions:
A. Describe two methods by which a written tradition may be interpreted and illustrate one by the Septuagint version of the Hebrew Bible and one by the rabbinic practice of Midrash.
B. Describe two ways a group can use canonization and illustrate one by the canonization of the Septuagint and one by the canonization of the rabbinic Bible.
C. Describe two objections that could be raised to the interpretation of a scriptures and illustrate one by the Karaites and one by the Kabbalists.
Monotheism in Judaism: JCM 4; JMC 7, pp. 170-173
Introduction
The point of this section of the course is to understand how the idea "God" can mean different things. This chapter examines how the intellectual and historical context shapes the way a group looks at what it calls "divine." The same context may, however, provide the impetus to more than one image of divinity. There are three examples of this variation that we will look at:
1. How the idea of God is influenced by a philosophical context, using the examples of Philo of Alexandria and the Rabbis,
2. How historical events shape views of the divine, looking at messianic movements, the Kabbalah, and the rise of Hasidism, and
3. How the confrontation with modernity created new views of God in Reform, Orthodox, Positive-Historical Judaism, and HaBaD Hasidism.
Outline of the Chapter
I. Introduction: God in Judaism
1. The two most important concepts in Jewish theology are God as creator and God as redeemer who sends a messiah.
2. Rabbinic tradition, unlike the Bible, tries to avoid God's name and uses substitutes to ensure the secrecy of the divine identity.
3. The idea of the messiah is important in Judaism as proof that God keeps his covenant with the Jews even if they often disobey their part of the covenant.
II. Views of God in Hellenistic Judaism
1. Hellenistic forms of Greek culture influenced the way Jews thought about God.
2. Philo of Alexandria identified God as a postulate of thought and used Plato's philosophy to explain what the Bible really meant to say.
3. Hellenistic rabbis identified God as an authority figure and pictured the divine as a Hellenistic king, with palaces and servants just like such a king.
III. God in Medieval Judaism (read pp. 170-173 together with this section)
1. Both in Christian and Muslim lands (as Ashkenazic and Sephardic) Jews suffered privations during the medieval period and needed to understand God's role in that suffering.
2. One response was to say that God would remove the suffering through a miraculous messiah; messianic claimants like Abu Isa, David Al-Ruhi, and Shabbatai Zvi illustrate this.
3. Another response was to say that God wants Jews to bring the messiah through their pious actions; Kabbalists do this through their manipulation of the Sefirot--in this way the Zohar has a more passive messianism than the former illustrations.
4. Nevertheless, as the example of Hasidism shows, mystical ways of bringing the messiah often clashed with normative Jewish leadership which saw God not as the messianic hero but as the authority behind Jewish law.
IV. God and Modern Secularism
1. Belief in God has been challenged by nationalism which demands that Jews abandon their particular identities, by historicism which explains culture as a result of its historical context, and by scientific naturalism which rejects supernaturalism.
2. Some forms of modern Judaism--Reform, Orthodox, and Conservative (positive-historical)--claim that Jewish faith is compatible with modernity when correctly understood.
3. Other forms of modern Judaism--HaBaD Hasidism, for example--demand that modernism be rejected in favor of a return to traditionalism.
Basic Terms:
Abu Isa a Persian Jewish messianic claimant who revolted against Muslim rule and was finally crushed.
Ashkenazic Jews the name given Jews who lived under Christian rule and were considered a cursed community, persecuted and limited in their opportunities
David Al-Ruhi A twelfth century Jewish messianic claimant in Azerbaijan who, although killed by the Muslim leader, still inspired messianic expectations in places as far away as Baghdad
En Sof A Hebrew term meaning "Infinite" which refers to God as unknowable in the mystical system of the kabbalah and lies outside of the God of the emanations (sefirot) with which human beings have contact.
HaBaD This acronym applies to a modern Hasidic group that hopes to hasten the coming of the messiah by establishing centers in centeres of Jewish life to encourage Jews to follow Jewish law.
Hasidism This is an 18th century Jewish mystical movement that challenged official rabbinic leadership by emphasizing loyalty to a Rebbe and new forms of worship and piety.
Hekhalot This Hebrew word means "chambers" or "halls" and refers to the heavenly halls through which Hellenistic rabbis passed to meet their king who resembled a Hellenistic monarch.
Messiah This Hebrew word means "anointed leader," and refers to the hoped for leader who will restore Jewish prosperity and national independence. The promise of the messiah is an assurance that God will live up to the covenant made with the people of Israel.
Monotheism This terms refers to belief in a single deity. The implications of such a unique supernatural force are greater than a mere numerical reduction of divities.
Moses de Leon This medieval Spanish Jewish kabbalist is thought to have composed the Zohar, the key book by which Jewish mystics interpret the Torah.
Orthodox Judaism This modern form of Judaism, reacting to nationalism and historicism, emphasizes that strict loyalty to the laws of the Torah can coexist with full participation in modern secular society. Samson Raphael Hirsch, in Germany, advocated it.
Polytheism This form of traditional religion recognizes the diversity of human experience and identifies the various forces working on people as emanating from separate supernatural beings.
Positive- Historical Judaism This modern form of Judaism, reacting to nationalism and historicism, claims to find God in the evolving history of the Jewish people. In America it became known as Conservative Judaism.
Reconstructionist Judaism This American form of Judaism broke off from Conservative Judaism claiming that Judaism is a civilization, not a theology. It identifies God with all the possibilities that life holds for human self-fulfillment.
Reform Judaism This modern form of Judaism reacted to nationalism and historicism by seeing God as the principle of growth and evolution working in human life. It rejects the idea of an unchanging Jewish law as antithetical to the reality of God.
Sefirot This Hebrew word, literally "spheres of being," refers to the emanations that the kabbalists identify as God's presence in the world. While God in itself is unknowable, the kabbalists feel that they can influence these sefirot and by bringing them into balance hasten the coming of the messiah.
Sephardic Jews These Jews, living under Muslim rule in Spain, Iraq, and Persia, experienced life as a "protected population." While enjoying higher status than Ashkenazic Jews did, these Jews were still "second class" citizens and often experienced persecution.
Shabbatai Zvi This 17th century Turkish messianic claimant used the kabbalah to create an active messianic movement aimed at overthrowing the Ottoman empire. Shabbatai Zvi stimulated a disruptive movement that had profound influence on modern Jewish life.
YHWH These four Hebrew letters are the consonants of God's name. The name is considered so secret that it is never pronounced by Jews even today, and pious Jews try to avoid substitutes as well designating God as "The Name."
Discussion Questions:
Describe two reasons for the development of theology and illustrate one by the discussion about the name of God and one by Philo of Alexandria
Describe two ways theology interprets history and illustrate one by the Kabbalah and one by Reform Judaism.
Describe a way in which theology conceives of God as near and a way it conceives of the divine as distant and illustrate each way by the Kabbalah.
Worship and Ritual in Judaism: JCM 10; JMC 19, pp. 425-429
Introduction: This chapter focuses on Jewish worship and ritual. In the dynamics between individual and public celebration, the Jewish expressions tend to emphasize the latter. The chapter shows how ritual celebrates the identity of a particular Jew or of a Jewish group. This aspect of ritual worship appears in at least four different settings in the chapter:
1. Ritual in the Jerusalem Temple before its destruction,
2. Ritual in the Rabbinic (Mishnaic and Talmudic) cycle of celebrations,
3. Ritual in alternative celebrations of the Jewish mystics (kabbalists), and
4. Ritual in the modern period.
Outline of the Chapter:
I. Time and Place in Jewish Ritual
1. The term "synagogue" indicates both time and place
2. Synagogues in the modern, Hellenistic, and medieval times reflected the cultural experiences of Jews in their historical contexts.
A. Worship occurs both within and outside the synagogue
B. Worship seeks to balance "personal faith" and public life
II. The Elements of Jewish Ritual
1. The Jerusalem Temple as the prototype of Jewish ritual
2. The "Amidah" or petitions as one aspect of Jewish worship
3. The "Shma" or study as a second aspect of Jewish worship
4. Philosophical and Mystical understandings of Jewish worship
III. Worship as a Temple in Time
1. The Sabbath as an alternative to a physical holy place
2. Holidays of agricultural and historical significance
A. Passover and its Hellenistic expression
B. Shavuoth and its ritualization of study and home observances
C. Sukkot as a symbol of trust
3. Mystical variations on ritual performance
A. Messianic anticipations in Lekhah dodi
B. Supernal guests in the Sukkah
IV. Modern Variations in Jewish Ritual
1. Variations designed by Reform Judaism to modernize Jewish ritual
2. Variations designed to make ritual more responsive to modern spiritual needs
3. Variations designed to remedy a perceived authoritarianism and male domination in Jewish ritual.
4. Variations designed to make ritual more comprehensible
Basic Terms:
Amidah This Hebrew word, literally meaning "standing," bridges the gap between heaven and earth so that worshipers present themselves and their needs before God.
Avodah This Hebrew word, literally meaning "work" or "service," originally referred to the priestly work of offering sacrifices in the Jerusalem Temple. It came to refer all-embracing set of actions demanded by God from Jews. Many modern Jews find this ideal of Avodah no longer either possible or desirable.
Bet haknesset This Hebrew phrase, literally meaning "house of assembly," refers to the synagogue, the Jewish place of worship. The name reflects that fact that socialization and study as well as prayer occurs as part of worship.
Commemorative Celebrations This phrase refers to Jewish holidays that recall triumphant events from Jewish history. Purim and Chanukkah are two examples. These examples show how past events demonstrate the significance of time.
Commemorative Fasts This phrase refers to Jewish fast days that recall historical catastrophes in Jewish history, the most important of which was the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple. Their observance shows that time becomes holy not only through events of positive significance but also those of negative effect.
Lekhah Dodi This mystical poem, recited on the evening of the Sabbath, originally expressed the unique messianic expectations of the kabbalists. It is now used by peple today who do not share the same presuppositions of the kabbalists.
Maariv This Hebrew word refers to the evening prayer service which was added by rabbinic leaders and does not refer to the offering of a sacrifice but rather to its continued burning. Since this is not a clear precedent in Temple ritual for a special service, it is recited in silence.
Mikdash This Hebrew word refers to a "sanctuary" or Temple. In its original usage it was restricted to the Jerusalem Temple. After the destruction of that Temple, the synagogue became called "the Temple in miniature" reflecting the rabbinic idea that rayer could substitute for sacrifice.
Minkhah This Hebrew word refers to the afternoon prayer service and was instituted as a parallel to the afternoon offering of sacrifices in the Jerusalem Temple. Unlike the Morning or Evening services, this service does not include a recitation of the "Shma" prayer and so is usually joined to the Evening service which does.
New Year Cycle This phrase refers to a series of three holidays celebrating the beginning of the year in the Fall, Rosh Hashannah, Yom Kippur, and Sukkot through Shemini Atzeret.. Taken together they emphasize the need for repentance and self-examination in human life.
Pesah Translated as "Passover," this pilgrimage festival celebrates springtime agricultural renewal and the history of Jewish liberation from Egyptian bondage. Its present celebration is modeled on Hellenistic customs.
Pilgrimage Festivals These three biblically ordained holidays combine a celebration of agricultural cycles with historical significance. The Hebrew Bible imports a historical dimension into rituals known from other agricultural civilizations.
Sabbath Every seven days this holiday celebrates a special moment in time by constructing a "temporal sanctuary" in which every act has a symbolic purpose. Among the actions associated with the Sabbath are restrictions of most normal behavior, expectation of special prayers, rituals, and such activities as Torah study and sleep that give the day a feeling of timelessness.
Shavuot This holiday, translated as "Weeks" or "Pentecost," occurs fifty days after the first night of Passover. From the agricultural standpoint it celebrates the final wheat harvest. Historically, it is said to commemorate the giving of the Torah on Mount Sinai.
Shakharit This Hebrew word refers to the morning prayer service and was instituted as a parallel to the morning sacrifices offered in the Jerusalem Temple. It is characterized by the reciting of both the Amidah and the Shma.
Shma This Hebrew word meaning "hear," refers to the central study session during most Jewish worship services. Its content emphasizes the unity of God--an idea which philosophers discuss and mystics struggle to experience. The Shma is recited morning and evening, but not in the afternoon worship service.
Siddur This Hebrew word, usually translated as "prayer book," actually means "order" and refers to the way in which prayers are ordered to express certain ideas. Because the prayer book, as its name implies, is an ideological statement, modern Jews have reshaped the prayer book in many ways to reflect new Jewish ideologies.
Sukkot This holiday, usually translated as "booths," initiates an eight-day festival period culminating in Shemini Atzertet (the Eight Day of Assembly) and Simhat Torah (rejoicing in the Torah). It is both one of the pilgrimage festivals celebrating the Fall season and the historical experience of Israelite wandering, and the beginning of the final period of the "New Year Cycle--a period stimulating self-reflection.
Synagogue This Greek word means "assembly" and refers to the act of Jews congregating together but has come to designated the place where that assembly occurs as well. Its translation into Hebrew, Bet Haknesset," reflects the fact that Jewish worship involves socialization and study as well as prayer.
Tefillin This Hebrew word refers to what are often called "phylacteries," or protective amulets, worn by Jewish men during the morning prayers. They contain texts from the Bible and are strapped on the hand and head to fulfill the command that God's teaching should always be "a sign upon your hand and frontlets before your eyes." Although traditionally worn only by men, some women in Conservative, Reconstructionist, and Reform communities have begun to wear them.
Discussion Questions:
Describe two aspects of the public dimension of worship and illustrate one of these by a ritual from one of the pilgrimage festivals and one by a ritual of the Sabbath.
Describe two aspects of the private dimension of worship and illustrate one of these by a ritual from one of the pilgrimage festivals and one by a ritual of the Sabbath.
Describe two ways in which contact with other groups influences ritual practice and illustrate one with reference to Pesah and one by Reform Judaism's modernization of Jewish prayer.
Ethics in Judaism: JCM 13; JCM 19, pp. 430-440
Introduction: According to JCM, ethics in Judaism has been more a matter of legal mandates rather than philosophical reflection. Placing halakhah in perspective, however, is itself a philosophical concern. As you read note how different social and historical conditions shape the way Jews understand the ethical implications of the halakhah. In particular pay attention to:
1. the place of gender in Jewish law,
2. the coping with human passion and need for self-discipline,
3. the place given to non-Jews in Jewish legal reflections, and
4. the purposes ascribed to Torah in human self-development.
Outline of the Chapter
I. Ethical Reflection Contextually Understood (read pp. 430-440 with this section)
1. Biblical views of ethics vs the Mishnah
2. Philosophical views of ethics arose out of their specific contexts
3. Modern Jewish philosophical reflections arose out of the crisis of the Enlightenment
4. Halakhic norms are the predominant approach to Jewish ethics.
II. Male and Female Natures: Presupposition of Halakhic Ethics
1. Males need ethical discipline, women do not
2. Rituals such as circumcision and Bar Mitzvah reflect male responsibilities
3. Study is a peculiarly male activity
III. The Challenges that Halakhah Answers
1. Challenges of omission and commission: positive and negative commandments
2. The cosmic and personal meaning of performance or transgression of commandments
3. The inner struggle of every man
4. The sexual aspect of a man's inner struggle
5. Israel Salanter's approach to modern temptations
IV. Halakhic Ethics and Civil Society
1. Gender legislation and social equilibrium
2. Tzedakah and social stability
3. Jewish concern for non-Jewish society
V. Challenges of Modern Life
1. Reform Judaism's identification of Judaism and ethics
2. Ethics and universalism
3. Ethics after the Nazi Holocaust
Basic Terms:
613 commandments Jewish law construes the Torah as having 248 positive commandments, corresponding to the potential within each human limb, and 365 prohibitions corresponding to the temptations inherent in every day.
Abraham Geiger This 19th century Jewish reformer identified the "essence" of Judaism with universal humanistic ethics. In this way he understood the Jewish task to be that of bearing ethical monotheism to all human beings.
Bachya Ibn Pakuda This medieval Jewish moralist wrote an Arabic work, The Duties of the Heart which, in Hebrew translation, continued to influence Jewish thought even when Jewish philosophy had fallen into disrepute.
Bar Mitzvah This phrase, literally meaning "son of the commandment," refers to a ceremony carried out by Jewish boys on reaching religious maturity. The need for this ritual reinforces the belief that men are peculiarly susceptible to the temptations.
Bat Mitzvah This phrase, literally meaning "daughter of the commandment," is used in the Talmud to explicitly exclude women from the routines of study and Jewish practice. In recent times, this term describes a ritual used even for traditional Jewish women.
Circumcision This ritual initiation and name-giving ceremony for Jewish men suggests the sexual overtones associated with moral concerns in Jewish law. The ritual symbolizes the fact that males are "created" Jews while women are "natural" Jews.
Hermann Cohen This German Jewish theologian and philosopher produced a definitive study of The Religion of Reason Out of the Sources of Judaism which emphasized the primacy of ethical monotheism in every aspect of Jewish life and thought.
Gaonim This title, literally meaning, "Excellencies" refers to the leaders of academies of Jewish learning in Babylonia whose position of autonomy under the Islamic rulers gave them the opportunity to develop an ethics based on halakhah.
Israel Salanter This 19th century Jewish leader created a movement that emphasized moral education that could motivate self-examination and resistance modernity.
Kavanah This Hebrew word means "intention" and refers to the inner direction of thought that accompanies the performance of a commandment from the Torah. Some Jewish thinkers have declared that without such devotion mere obedience to the external actions commanded is invalidate.
Laws of Noah Rabbinic teachings interpret the biblical story of God's post-flood covenant with Noah as having established a common ethical system for all human beings. Seven so-called laws of Noah cover elementary ethical demands such as a rejection of idolatry, prohibitions on incest and murder, and the requirement to establish courts of law.
Moses Mendelssohn This 18th century German Jewish thinker began the tradition of emphasizing Judaism as a religion of ethical monotheism. He argued that Judaism consisted of a divinely revealed law rather than a divinely revealed faith.
Musar This Hebrew word which literally means "discipline" and is used generally to refer to ethics or morality was also the name Israel Salanter gave to his 19th century movement, created as an alternative to Hasidism. Musar stresses self-awareness, the cultivation of moral attributes, and a psychological defense against the onslaughts of modernity.
RAMA These initials refer to Rabbi Moses Isserles who adapted the Sephardic Shulkhan Arukh for Ashkenazic Judaism. His work shows how both Sephardic and Ashkenazic Jews adapted halakhic ethics to meet the needs of different social and historical communities.
RAMBAM This acronym stands for Rabi Moses Maimonides, the great Sephardic Jewish philosopher, legalist, and moralist. Maimonides developed a philosophy of Jewish ethics that included a "ladder of tzedakah" that emphasizes helping individuals help themselves become contributing members of the social group.
RASHI This acronym stands for Rabbi Solomon Isaac, the great French legalist who organized and developed the Ashkenazic approach to Jewish ethics and law. His life and work shows how Jewish ethics reflects the countries in which it is developed.
Shulkhan Arukh This Hebrew term, literally meaning "the Set Table" refers to the work of halakhic ethics which Joseph Karo developed on the basis of earlier Jewish legal texts. As adapted by Moses Isserles this work became normative for Ashkenazic as well as Sephardic Jews and reflects certain pervasive ethical views such as the consideration of marriage as both an economic and a sexual action.
Teshuvah This Hebrew word literally means "repentance" and refers to self-examination and psychological self-reflection. It has particular significance in the system of Musar , or moral instruction, especially as taught by Rabbi Israel Salanter.
Tzedakah This Hebrew word literally means "justice" but has come to mean that charity which an individual gives to preserve social solidarity and in which the powerful protect the weaker. The highest ideal of charity, as established by RAMBAM and codified by later writers including the author of the Shulkhan Arukh, is that of helping a person become a productive member of society.
Yetzer This Hebrew term means "impulse" and refers to both the good and evil impulse within every person. Much of traditional Jewish ethical thinking centers on ways to tame the evil impulse and channel it for good purposes.
Discussion Questions:
Describe two ways ethics regulates human interaction with nature and illustrate one with the 248 positive commandments and one with the 365 negative commandments.
Describe two ways historical context shapes ethics and illustrate one way through Bachya Ibn Pakuda's Duties of the Heart and one way through RAMA's commentary on the Shulkhan Arukh.
Describe two ways ethics can understand the importance of gender and illustrate one way through Kabbalistic views of sexual intercourse and one way through the regulations of the Shulkhan Arukh on marriage.
Terms for ChristianityThese terms and discussion questions are organized according to assigned readings. Check your Calendar of Assignments for the dates on which they are assigned. Each section includes an introduction, outline of the chapter, definitions of basic terms, and discussion questions which will be used for writing essays in section meetings.
Scripture and Tradition In Christianity JCM 2; JCM 8 pp. 174-188
Introduction
Christianity has an ambivalent attitude toward the importance of Scriptures. It incorporates the Jewish canon but with a radically different understanding of its meaning. Tradition, then, justifies the very fabric of canon in Christianity. Christianity has, therefore, developed an intricate system of hermeneutics. Still, the Protestant Reformation rejected much of that tradition in favor of the immediacy of the holy spirit. That immediacy, in turn, also inspired new revelations which challenged accepted canonical texts. As you read the chapter look particularly at
1. How a scriptures may seek to include previous religious traditions,
2. How a scriptures may seek to exclude previous religious traditions,
3. How traditions authorize living leaders, and
4. How traditions legitimate change and development.
Outline of the Chapter
I. Universalism and Particularism in Christianity
1. Christians preached a universal message but claimed to honor a particularistic revelation.
2. Christian interpretation sought to show how Jewish Scriptures pointed beyond Judaism.
II. Methods of Interpretation
1. Christianity begins with an emphasis on oral meaning but under historical pressures creates a fixed canon.
2. The eventual canon reflects a response against alternative visions by Gnostics such as Marcion..
3. Allegorical interpretation offers a way of deriving multiple meanings from an ancient text.
III. Interpretation and Authority; read pp. 174-188
1. In earliest Christianity authority was vested in individuals invested with power.
2. Later Christianity authorized both clerical power and Scripture, making the interpretation of Scripture the privilege of the Bishops.
3. The Protestant Reformation challenged all authority other than that based on Scripture alone.
4. Gender was often an explicit element in authority struggles.
IV. Challenges to Scriptural Interpretations
1. Protestant affirmations of Sola Scriptura rejected the church traditions of Roman Catholicism.
2. Enlightenment rationalism and Higher Criticism evoked adaptation from Protestant liberals and a defense of tradition from Fundamentalists.
3. The desire to return to "primitive" Christianity and a free reception of the divine spirit often stimulates the creation of new Christian canons.
Basic Terms:
Alfred Loisy This French Roman Catholic priest in the nineteenth century accepted the approach of Higher Criticism. Although he claimed that since Roman Catholicism depended more on tradition than on scriptures, this approach was acceptable, he was excommunicated and criticized by the church leaders.
Augustine of Hippo This early church father was a defender of the allegorical interpretation of scriptures. In the Latin West his advocacy ensured the legitimacy of that approach.
Baruch Spinoza This Jewish philosopher was excommunicated for teaching that the Bible should be interpreted in the same way as any other book. His investigations of the Bible as literature laid the foundations for modern biblical studies.
Bishop This title, from the Greek word meaning "overseer," refers to the official within the church who has the power to ordain clergy. The emphasis on the authority of such teachers ensured that church interpretation would provide the key to biblical meaning for Christians under their power.
Christ This is a Greek word translating the Hebrew messiah which means "anointed leader." While Christians apply this title to Jesus of Nazareth, Jews do not identify him as their messiah. Christians also define the messiah as a divine embodiment of God, an idea that Jews do not associated with the idea of a christ.
Emmanuel Swedenborg This eighteenth century teacher claimed to have received the final revelations which completed God's five-fold communication to humanity. He is an example of how a modern emphasis on inspiration can expand a religious canon.
Gnosticism This was a religious movement taking its name from the Greek word for knowledge. It claimed that a secret knowledge given to certain leaders revealed a dualism between good and evil, a good god and an evil one.
Gospel This word comes from the Greek meaning "Good News." It refers to the Christian message about the story and teachings of Jesus. While the early church produced many written Gospels only four, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John became canonized in the New Testament.
Gospel of Thomas This Gospel, not included in the canonical Christian Bible, does not tell the story of Jesus' life but rather collects teachings attributed to him. These teachings are often gnostic ones which may be why the official church omitted this book from its canon.
Hermeneutics This term, derived from the Greek word meaning interpreter, refers to the process by which people try to make sense out of a written text. In the case of the Bible, the effort is to use familiar ideas to explain an ancient work.
Higher Criticism This academic approach to the Bible begun in the nineteenth century challenged biblical scriptures on the basis of their supernaturalism and the contradictions within them. This movement studied the Bible as just another historical book. Both liberal Christianity and Fundamentalism arose in response to Higher Criticism.
John Wycliffe This Englishman led a group known as Lollards who were declared heretics for promoting the translation of the Bible and for making such translations themselves. Catholic Christianity declared such translations unlawful and in the Council of Constance authorized only the Latin Vulgate translation.
Laity This term refers to non-clergy, or non-ordained, members of the Christian church. Even Protestant leaders who decried a sacramental view of ordination still sought to keep the laity or ordinary people from reading and understanding the Bible on their own.
Marcion This early church leader wanted to sever all ties of Christianity to Judaism. He rejected the Hebrew Bible and established his own Christian canon which spurred the orthodox to establish a canonized text of their own.
Martin Luther This leader of the Protestant Reformation insisted on a literal reading of Scriptures without being bound to church traditions. His call for "Sola Scriptura," or Scriptures Alone, however, led to conflict since he could not agree with other Protestants over the meaning of some basic biblical texts.
Muratorian Canon This early canon is the first compilation of an authoritative canon of a "New Testament" for Christians and included some books no longer considered canonical and omitted others that were later accepted as canonical. It listed the appropriate texts to be read liturgically during Christian worship.
Origen This Alexandrian Church leader gave rise to the allegorical interpretation of the Bible. He said that every Biblical verse had three different meanings: the literal, allegorical, and moral.
Paul of Tarsus This early Christian teacher began the process of putting oral tradition into writing through the letters he disseminated to various communities. The first uniquely Christian scriptures consisted not of the Gospel stories about Jesus but rather these Pauline teachings. He emphasized the universality of Christianity.
Second Vatican Council This Roman Catholic council accepted modern biblical criticism and affirmed that while revelation was contained in scripture it was interpreted by the church with the help of the Holy Spirit.
Sola Scriptura This Latin phrase means "Scripture Alone and was used by John Wycliffe and Martin Luther to reject Roman Catholic tradition as the basis of faith. This idea also suggests that the laity could interpret scripture on their own.
Synoptic Gospels This term refers to the three Gospels Matthew, Mark, and Luke which share several common features and which differ significantly from the Gospel of John. It is remarkable that these four different accounts each finds a place in the New Testament while several other alternative gospels did not.
The Book of Mormon This book, said to have been miraculously revealed to Joseph Smith by an angel, adds new material to extend the stories from both the Old and New Testaments. It is an example of how modern revelations reopen the issue of canon.
The Fundamentals This series of pamphlets were distributed at the turn of the century to aid in religious revivalism as a response to higher criticism. They rejected science as the only way to discover truth.
Vulgate The Vulgate is the translation of the Septuagint into Latin by Jerome. It was later used by Roman Catholics as the only official Bible so that it should be read by only a few, elite, and well educated men.
Discussion Questions:
A. Describe how a scriptures can be inclusive. How do the examples of a two-tiered scriptures and the Book of Moron illustrate that?
B Describe how a scriptures can be exclusive. How do the examples of Marcion, the Gospel of Thomas, and the Muratorian Canon illustrate this?
C. Describe how a tradition can provide a basis for authority. Show how such a tradition is either affirmed or rejected in the views of Roman Catholic bishops, in Luther's claim of Sola Scriptura, in the ideas of the pietists, and in the ideas of Alfred Loisy.
D. Describe how a tradition can enable a religious group to meet new challenges. Show how such a tradition is employed by St. Augustine of Hippo, Origen, Liberal Christianity, Unitarianism, and in the teachings of Emanuel Swedenborg.
Monotheism In Christianity: JCM 5 ; JMC 8, pp. 188-194; JCM 20, pp. 441-448
Introduction
The monotheistic view of God is, by its very nature, paradoxical. The divine creator who stands outside of and beyond the world is also conceived of as the near and present divine spirit animating human religious experience. The rational truths discovered by the human mind are thought to represent divine reason just as the experience of surpassing reason and logic is also considered a sign of the divine. The paradoxical nature of monotheism finds clear expression in the various forms of Christianity explored in this chapter. You should note in particular
1. How views of the divine reveal either an emphasis on divine immanence or transcendence,
2. How ideas of God separate and define religious groups,
3. How ideas of God sometimes reflect the cultural environment, and
4. How views of the divine sometimes challenge the cultural environment.
Outline of the Chapter
I. Christianity as Paradoxical Monotheism
1. Christian leaders like Augustine admit that human beings can never understand the true nature of the trinity.
2. Early Christian texts introduce ideas that defy Jewish monotheistic conventions.
3. Christianity attained consistency in its thought only by excluding various ideas as heretical.
II. Determining the Nature of Jesus
1. The different natures of God can be said to reflect different ways in which the human and the divine interact with each other.
2. Some Christians emphasize God's distance from humanity; others stress God's nearness to human beings, and some focus on God's on-going presence within human beings.
3. Creeds were developed to produce clearer definitions of Christian monotheistic belief.
4. Heresy represents different responses to the paradoxes of Christianity
III. God in the Middle Ages through the Reformation
1. Creeds were developed to provide a unified Christian identity.
2. Controversies developed over the meaning of sexuality and asceticism
3. New learning in the Renaissance and Reformation stimulated conflict.
5. Conflict led some Christians to reject the need for an official church.
IV. Rationalism and Charisma (read pp. 188-190 in conjunction with this section)
1. In response to the Enlightenment, Deism, and natural science, many Christians defended their faith as rational rather than paradoxical.
2. The Enlightenment diminished the difference between the divine and the human and emphasized the moral qualities of Jesus.
3. One effect of rational Christianity was to emphasize the moral and human qualities of Jesus.
4. Other Christians affirmed the Holy Spirit and sometimes used that affirmation to oppose official authority in the name of the dispossessed and persecuted.
Basic Terms:
Arianism A view propounded by an early church leader in Alexandria who claimed that the three parts of the trinity were not equally divine. He understood their relationship to each other using the model of neoplatonic emanation as a logical progression from the higher to the lower.
Athanasius of Alexandria This church father, also from Alexandria, rejected Arianism's logic in favor of a mystical unity of all elements of the trinity. His view prevailed at the Council of Nicea.
Bernard of Clairvaux This medieval monk and mystic advocated a popular devotion to Mary the Mother of God, recognizing the need for graphic and physical connections between the human and the divine. This is imaged in the picture of the saint being breast-fed by an image of the virgin Mary.
Camisards These French Protestants claimed to be animated by the Holy Spirit and have visions of future events. They eventually influenced a group of English Quakers who settled in North America as the "Shakers."
Cathars This medieval Christian ascetic movement emphasized a dualism between body and spirit, denying that Christ had taken on a real "disgusting" human body. They were later condemned as heretical.
Charisma This phrase referring to "the gift of the spirit" characterizes those Christians who claimed that the Holy Spirit moves within them. While some Christian movements claim that the Holy Spirit provides new revelations to those who possess it, Orthodox teachers deny that the spirit can reveal any new truths.
Christology This term refers to views about the nature of Jesus as Christ. Some Christologies insist on the identity of Christ and God the Father. Others argue for a similarity among the elements of the trinity rather than complete identity.
Docetism This term, literally meaning "appearance," reflects a Christology which claims that Christ only appeared to become human. God, it was thought, could not really suffer and partake of this physical world.
Enlightenment This term refers to the thought and science of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and emphasizes rationality, physical laws, and moral laws. It claimed that Deism and natural religion was more useful than supernaturalistic church religion.
Filoque This Latin phrase adds the term "and the Son" to the description of how the Holy Spirit is derived. Its use was a rejection of Arianism by emphasizing the equal divinity of the Father, Son and the Spirit.
Giordano Bruno This Renaissance Christian scholar was put to death for advancing a view that could be called "pantheism." Other less famous Christians of the period were also executed for holding such beliefs that contradicted church dogma.
Holy Spirit This phrase, which occurs often in the New Testament, refers to the presence of God that infuses human beings with prophet insight, often manifested by "speaking in tongues." While considered an equal element in the trinity, the Holy Spirit has been regarded ambiguously by various church leaders and officials from the New Testament onwards.
Methodism This form of Christianity, begun by John Wesley and George Whitfield in England and spread to the United States, emphasizes the accessibility of the Holy Spirit to ordinary people and illustrates both the tendency toward "enthusiasm" among some Christians and an anti-clerical aspect of many Christian movements.
Paradox This concept of holding two contradictory views as equally true has become a mark of Christian belief. The nature of a single God sharing several "persons" represents such a paradox as do the ideas of a "suffering God," a "virgin mother," or a savior who is both eternal and mortal.
Pentecostalism This form of Christian expression is based on the experienced narrated in the Book of Acts as having occurred to the Apostles on Pentecost (seven weeks and a day = 50 days after Easter). It describes a religious life that can include conversion experiences, religious healing, millennialism, prophecy, and spiritual ecstasies.
Spiritualism This sixteenth century Christian movement reacted to Christian religious warfare by denying the need for a church or precise theology. Spiritualists argued that the divine was revealed inwardly to every person.
Trinity This term refers to the three elements making up the single God of Christian belief--the Father, the God of Creation, the Son, the incarnate God of revelation, and the Holy Spirit, the inner presence of the divine which takes possession of prophets. The relationship between the elements of the trinity was debated by various Christian groups during the early period.
Unitarianism This Christian movement began in Poland in the late sixteenth century but became most successful in England and the United States. It asserts the unity of a single God, denying the Trinity, and claims that Jesus was a human being who modeled ideal moral living.
Voltaire This eighteenth century French Free thinker attacked clerical leadership and advocated natural religion. He opposed Roman Catholic thought with what he considered the more rational Deism he had encountered in England.
Discussion Questions:
A. Describe how God may be understood as immanent. Illustrate this by the idea of incarnation, of the trinity, by Bernard of Clairvaux, and of rationalism.
B. Describe how God may be understood as transcendent. Illustrate this by the idea of paradox, by the Cathars and Bogomils, and by Bernard of Clairvaux.
C. Describe how an idea of God may reflect social and historical context. Illustrate this by the stoic idea of the Logos, the ideas of Enlightenment thinkers like Voltaire, and by Unitarianism.
D. Describe how an idea of God may challenge social and historical context. Illustrate this by the Christian view of the incarnation as a form of messianism, Giordono Bruno, the Spiritualists, and Pentecostalism.
Worship and Ritual In Christianity; JCM 11; JCM 17, pp. 370-385
Introduction:
This chapter focuses on ritual and worship in Christianity as an example of transformative words and deeds. Many of the names, terms, and facts you encounter in this chapter should be familiar from previous chapters. Keep in mind the ritual focus of this section of the course. In the various forms of Christian liturgy what is said and done has an impact on the life of the individual and the life of the church. As you read the chapter keep in mind the following points:
1. How ritual actions lead or are thought to lead to substantial change of reality,
2. How ritual actions celebrate past and present realities,
3. How rituals affect the individuals participating in them, and
4. How rituals affect the groups participating in them.
Outline of the Chapter:
I. The Rule of Faith is the Rule of Prayer
1. Revealed ritual fulfills a human need for transformation unsatisfied by created things.
2. Rules for prayer in Christianity included listing fixed times to pray (sometimes as many as six a day), the correct or necessary postures of prayer, fasting, and public worship.
3. The ritual requirements of Christianity combined with the nullification of Jewish ritual requirements identified Christianity as a separate religious tradition.
4. The development of the Eucharist (communion, Mass) occasioned both official and folkloric elaboration within Christianity.
II. The Christian Calendar
1. The development of a liturgical calendar reflects the view that certain days have special holiness.
2. Some of the celebrations reemphasized the distinction between Judaism and Christianity
3. Differences in the celebration of the Eucharist distinguish Orthodox from Roman Catholic worship.
4. Not only particular days but "seasons" became holy since sacred time requires special preparation and purification.
5. Continuity of celebrations offered Christians a sense of stability and universality.
III. Pilgrimages and Relics (read pp. 370-386 with this section)
1. Holiness was often associated with holy people and their possessions, burial places, and relics.
2. Places of holiness became places of access to sacred transformation
3. The several reasons for pilgrimage reflect the sorts of transformation human beings desire.
IV. Alternatives to Sacramental Routine
1. The Protestant Reformation substitutes the Bible or "God's Word" for the sacramental transformation offered by Roman Catholicism.
2. Protestant thinking often emphasizes a transformation of beliefs as the crucial text of Christian identity.
3. Revivalism uses emotional techniques to stimulate personal transformation.
4. Syncretism adapts the transformative rituals of Christianity to the presuppositions of the non-Christian converts.
Basic Terms:
Advent This "holy season" was developed as a season of fasting in the weeks preceding Christmas as a penitential preparation for the festival that by the fourth century had become a celebration of Jesus's birth.
Baptism This sacramental ritual of initiation into Christianity supplanted the Jewish ritual of circumcision as the way an individual entered into this new faith.
Basilica This term refers to a church built above the tomb of a holy person. And gives evidence of the reverence for saints which is also expressed in the honoring of relics.
Christmas This period in the Christian calendar developed late in the early church. Its date seems to be based on Roman celebrations of the Solar Solstice. While important in Roman Catholicism, the holiday was deemphasized in many Protestant denominations. The New England Puritans, for example, outlawed its celebration.
Communion This term for a central Christian ritual (other terms are Eucharist and Mass) refers to the belief that partaking of consecrated wine and bread unites the worshiper with the divine as incarnated in Jesus.
Confirmation As a sacrament this refers to the receiving of the gift of the Spirit. Among Orthodox it usually occurs at the same time as baptism; in Roman Catholicism it takes place when a child reaches what is considered "the age of reason."
Corpus Christi This Latin phrase literally means "the body of Christ," and refers to the consecrated bread of the Communion ceremony. By the Middle Ages in the West a holiday centered on this idea and called by this name had developed during which God was carried through the streets.
Easter Christians originally observed this yearly ritual as their form of the Jewish Passover. In the second century, however, the Christian calendar was changed so that it would not rely on the Jewish dates for the observance of Easter.
Eucharist This term (other terms are Communion and Mass) for the ritual of partaking of consecrated wine and bread as demanded by Jesus at his last supper, most probably a Passover meal, literally means "thanksgiving" and reflects the joy experienced at dying and being reborn with Christ.
Extreme Unction This ritual, sometimes called "anointing of the sick," is the seventh sacrament in Roman Catholic and Orthodox Christianity. Originally used for all who were ill it has become a ritual enabling a person to pass from this life into the next.
Francis of Assisi Founder of an order of mendicant friars, the Franciscans, that emphasized a simple way of life and reject a cult of relics and pilgrimage. Nature provided the model for worship according to him, but after his death his order reverted to earlier ritual styles.
Holy Orders This sacrament initiating a person into the clergy provides ordination into full sacramental powers (ordination means being received into an order) and serves as a clerical equivalent to the sacrament of marriage.
Hymns These liturgical songs emerged as a key aspect of Christianity and became a means of transmitting basic beliefs. The use of music in worship has often reflected both folk influences and inter-Christian concerns.
Lent From being a fast of two or three days, this observance, in preparation for Good Friday, became, in the fourth century, a forty-day season of fasting in imitation of Jesus' forty-day fast in the desert which, in itself, was based on precedents in the Hebrew Bible.
Lord's Prayer This short prayer, attributed to Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew, became the single most important prayer in Christian life, even though its function in the Gospel, that of limiting the amount of prayer a Christian would recite, was generally ignored.
Marriage As understood sacramentally in the Orthodox and Roman Catholic traditions, this ritual transforms a man and a woman into a single being (there are also recorded same-sex marriages from the Middle Ages). Because the substance of both individuals changes through this sacrament, divorce and remarriage or the taking of priestly orders by those already married is considered inappropriate.
Mass This term (other terms are Communion and Eucharist) reflects the sacralization of Latin as a liturgical language since the service consecrating the bread and wine ends with the declaration "Go, it is finished" : "ite, missa est".
Passion The central drama of Christianity is made up of Jesus' suffering (the word passion refers to undergoing something imposed on you) followed by his resurrection. The mystery of this submission to pain and death as a prelude to a victory over both is celebrated annually in the liturgy associated with Easter.
Pilgrimage This practice of journeying to places associated with holy leaders was of great significance in medieval Roman Catholicism. Some reasons for pilgrimage included a desire for forgiveness, the fulfillment of a vow, the obtaining of supernatural aid, or simply enjoyment.
Relics These material remains of saints and objects associated with their bodily existence came to be honored by Christians. Such relics provided access to the person whose life they symbolized and often became sites for pilgrimage.
Revivalism This public display of religious emotion represents an enthusiastic style of worship which dramatizes spiritual rebirth. It often combines a vivid description of reward and punishment with a call for repentance.
Syncretism This term refers to a religious practice that has absorbed several different cultural influences. Many forms of Christianity have blended native practices and beliefs with religious traditions spread by foreign missionaries.
Transubstantiation This term refers to the idea that the bread and wine in the communion service actually become the flesh and blood of the Christ. While some Protestants agreed with this idea in a modified way, Protestantism in general replaced the centrality of the communion with that of the preaching of God's Word, the Bible.
Discussion Questions:
A. Describe how ritual seeks to change reality. Illustrate such ritual with communion, the sacraments generally, the Corpus Christi ritual.
B. Describe how ritual celebrates past or present realities. Illustrate such ritual with the baptism, eucharist, pilgrimage, and revivalism.
C. Describe how ritual affects the individual. Illustrate such ritual with the Lord's Prayer, hymns, Protestant Bible lessons, and confirmation.
D. Describe how ritual affects the group. Illustrate such ritual with syncretism, the Mass, the Lord's Prayer, and relics.
Ethics In Christianity: JCM 14; JCM 20, pp. 448-62
Introduction:
Christianity offers an example of polarities in its approach to morality. On the one hand , salvation in Jesus brings a promise of redemption from sinfulness and immorality. On the other hand, the natural state of human existence is sinful, corrupting, and problematic. At times Christians have stressed the morality of the individual, leaving the society to reflect the virtues of each person. At other times Christians have stressed the immorality of society as the condition which creates sinful individuals. As you read the chapter look for these polarities in particular:
1. How ethics sometimes emphasizes the evils of nature,
2. How ethics sometimes emphasizes the value of nature,
3. How ethics sometimes stresses changing the individual, and
4. How ethics sometimes stresses changing society.
Structures of Christian Ethics:
1. An ethics based on reward and punishment
2. An ethics based on a teleology of knowing and loving God
3. An ethics based on an ideal of self-renunciation
Self-Denial and Worldly Activism:
1. Christian ethics as an ethics of the right and wrong will
2. Order and moral restraint as concerns of Christian morality
3. Christian enthusiasm for and ambivalence toward martyrdom
4. Sexual self-control as a central ethical demand
5. Monastic Hermits and Monastic Brothers
Private and Public Virtue:
1. Sins and Virtues and their personal Consequences
(Confession, Indulgences, Jonathan Edwards, Purgatory)
2. Protestant Ethical Concerns
(Justification by faith, John Calvin, Oliver Cromwell)
3. Christian Ethics and Social Change
(Social Gospel and Liberation Theology)
Basic Terms:
Abbot This title, derived from the Hebrew word Abba, or Father, was used to designate the elected leader of a community of monks. Membership in such a group entailed vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience to the abbot's commands.
Baltimore Catechism This creedal statement begins with a declaration about human purpose, or teleology. Human beings are created so they might know and love God.
Confession This ritual developed in Roman Catholicism as a way of enabling Christians to gain forgiveness for their sins. Confession to a priest required knowledge of sins, repentance, and the confession of every individual sin as well as the acceptance of a penance designed to bring forgiveness for it.
Didache This early Christian handbook, purportedly written by the Twelve Apostles, not only abandons much of Jewish ceremonial law but retains its distinction between moral and immoral action, calling the first the "way of life" and the second the "way of death."
Gregory of Nazianzen This medieval Orthodox Christian emphasized an affirmation of the goodness of nature. He praised marriage as a "natural virtue."
Indulgences These documents, with proper Papal approval, guaranteed their holders to a relaxation in Purgatory of some of the punishments for sins that they had committed. The selling of indulgences was one action that Martin Luther opposed when taking his stand against the Pope.
John Calvin This leader of the Protestant Reformation fled France for Geneva, Switzerland. There he sought to create the ideal kingdom of God, a state run on the principles of biblical teaching.
Jonathan Edwards This American puritan preacher emphasized that morality depended upon piety and that only through recognition of the power of the divine could people be persuaded to ethical action.
Justification by Faith This phrase, characteristic of Luther's approach to Christianity, denies that human actions can earn a person divine favor. Only God's grace provides people with an opportunity to come into right relationship with the deity.
Liberation Theology This modern approach to Christian ethics, espoused both by Roman Catholic and Protestant thinkers, claims that Jesus' model demands a support for the oppressed and repressed in society, especially the poor, sexually ostracized, and racially segregated members of the lower classes.
Martin Luther This German Friar rejected Roman Catholicism's emphasis on confession and indulgences and began a Reformation that included a positive view of marriage and earthly life as well as the contention that justification could occur only by grace and could not be earned by human works.
Martyrdom This word refers to the act of sacrificing oneself in witness to God's truth. Many early Christians thought of martyrdom as the ultimate proclamation of faith and desired it for themselves. The church, however, restricted it to very limited cases.
Monasticism This word comes from a term referring to solitary living and is used of Christian groups who isolated themselves from the secular world. There are two types of monastic orders--the hermits who withdraw from all human contact and the communal monks who live according to an austere rule within a special community.
Mortal Sin This indicates those manner of sins which Roman Catholicism considers "deadly" and are thought to bar a person from attaining heaven in the afterlife. They are contrasted with venial sins which carry lesser penalties with them.
Natural Law By the medieval period, some Christian thinkers like Clement of Alexandria argued that Christian ethics was based on reasonableness. Nature provided the basic instruction on good and evil as discovered in its laws.
Oliver Cromwell This English Puritan sought to establish God's kingdom on earth through a British government based on biblical principles. In this way his Protestant concerns paralleled those of John Calvin in Geneva.
Purgatory Early in its development Christianity evolved the idea of purgation, or cleansing, in the afterlife. This idea grew into the conception of a specific place where those who required cleansing after death would receive a precise punishment appropriate for each precise sin. Indulgences were sought to mitigate the suffering in Purgatory.
Rule of St. Benedict This monastic text describes the extreme obedience expected of monks. The regimen it prescribes is meant to tame the human will to submit to God's.
Self-Renunciation This term refers to an ideal of Christian ethics, in which care for others and love of God replace self-concern. Various types of restrictions on material and sexual pleasures were considered important sacrifices to make.
Social Gospel This term, associated with the thinker Walter Rauschenbusch, was a movement arguing that Christianity must combine religion and social justice. It claimed the example and model of Jesus for this understanding of Christian duty.
Venial Sin This term, meaning "forgivable sin," refers to those actions considered less reprehensible in medieval Roman Catholicism. Unlike a mortal sin, these sins did not bar one from gaining heaven.
Walter Rauschenbusch This American Protestant thinker argued that Christianity must combine religion and social justice. He took the example and model of Jesus as the basis for his understanding of Christian duty.
Discussion Questions:
A. Describe how ethics emphasize the evil of nature? Illustrate this with the New Testament story of the rich young man, martyrdom, and monasticism.
B. Describe how ethics emphasize the value of nature? Illustrate this with the examples of Gregory of Nazianzen and Natural law.
C. Describe how ethics seeks to change the individual. Illustrate this with the examples of the Didache, Rule of St. Benedict, and mortal and venial sins.
D. Describe how ethics seeks to change society. Illustrate this with martyrdom, John Calvin, and the Social Gospel.
These terms and discussion questions are organized according to assigned readings. Check your Calendar of Assignments for the dates on which they are assigned. Each section includes an introduction, outline of the chapter, definitions of basic terms, and discussion questions which will be used for writing essays in section meetings.
Scripture and Tradition In Islam; JCM 3; JCM 9, pp. 195-200
Introduction
The Qur'an is understood first and foremost as the eternal revelation of the unchanging will of Allah, of God. Nevertheless, the revealing of the Qur'an cannot be understood except with reference to the life of Muhammad. The transition from the history of the revelation to Muhammad to the Qur'an as a symbol and expression of a universal revelation marks an important development in Islamic faith. Keep the duality of a universal message and a historically situated messenger in mind as you read the chapter. Keep the following concerns in mind as you read:
1. How the historical moment shapes the transmission of a religious message,
2. How understanding the meaning of a religious message may entail referring back to the historical setting in which it was given,
3. How canonization and standardization of a text makes it more universal and liberates it from its historical setting, and
4. How varieties of interpretative approaches reflect different evaluations of different types of religious experience.
Outline of the Chapter
I. The Qur'an and the Beginnings of Islam
1. Muhammad introduced basic changes into pre-Islamic Arabia through the poetic force of the revelations he recited.
2. The various recitations that finally became the Qur'an were delivered to address specific occasions associated with the life of Muhammad.
3. Perhaps the most dramatic change in the style and tone of the Qur'anic revelations came with the Hijra, Muhammad's migration from Mecca to Medina.
II. The Qur'an as the Unifying Proof of Islam
1. The Qur'an even more than the Battle of Badr was proof of Islam's truth and validity.
2. After Muhammad's death the Qur'an was organized so as to preserve teachings and truths that transcend any historical setting.
3. The arbitrary organization of the Qur'an symbolizes and illustrates the universal applicability of its message.
III. The Exegesis of the Qur'an
1. The definitive exegesis of the Qur'an refers to Muhammad's life and the tradition (sunna) about him for understanding it.
2. Muslims who emphasize rationalism as the chief religious value use a philosophical approach to the Qur'an.
3. Muslim mystics seek justification for their own approaches in an esoteric interpretation of the Qur'an.
IV. The Uses of the Qur'an
1. The Qur'an is a liturgical and devotional text no less than a book of beliefs and rules.
2. The experience of the Qur'an, whether it is understood or merely absorbed, has a power and significance in Muslim life.
3. Muslims distinguish between the text of the Qur'an, a bound copy of it, and an audible rendition of it.
Basic Terms
Abu Bakr This Caliph, or successor to Muhammad, was the first to hold office after the prophet's death. He reclaimed for Islam those groups who had deserted and began the process of gathering together the components of the Qur'an.
Allah This is an Arabic word meaning "The God" used by Muslims to refer to their monotheistic faith and the God to whom they surrender in obedience. In pre-Islamic times Allah was the greatest among polytheistic deities.
Battle of Badr This was a battle between the two cities of Mecca and Medina occurring when the Meccans attacked Muhammad's community in Medina. Even though the Medinan army was smaller and less well equipped, it won the battle. This was taken as proof that Allah supported Muhammad and his community.
Fatiha This opening sura of the Qur'an is one of the shortest chapters in that book, thus it does not follow the customary organization of the Qur'an from longest to shortest. It is often used as a prayer in Muslim worship.
Gabriel This English rendering of the Arabic name of the angel who revealed the Qur'an to Muhammad underscores the common heritage of the Jews, Christians, and Muslims. Muhammad did not claim to offer a new revelation but to complete that which Allah had previously give and to present it in the clearest and fullest form possible.
Hadith This is an Arabic word, literally meaning "news," applied to stories and anecdotes about the life of Muhammad, his teachings and his companions. It is often used as sunna, or tradition, to provide a historical background by which to understand God's revelation in the Qur'an.
Hijra This Arabic word refers to Muhammad's emigration from Mecca to Medina in 622, an act which marks the beginning of the Islamic calendar. This emigration changed the type of revelation that Muhammad received so that it guided the building of a new community.
Islam This Arabic word, literally meaning "surrender to Allah," is the description given to the religion Muhammad taught. That religion claims to provide the original covenant between God and humanity which is upheld only by submitting to the divine will as expressed in the Qur'an and expounded by Muhammad.
Jinni This term refers to supernatural beings who often take possession of a human body and force it to speak strange words. Muhammad was accused of being possessed by such a being, but he denied that the Qur'an could be the work of any sort of lower creature.
Ka'aba This cubical religious structure in the center of Mecca was a place of worship for many gods and also Allah in pre-Islamic times. Muhammad identified the Ka'aba as a place built by Abraham for Allah and an important center of Islamic worship.
Khadija, Muhammad's first wife provided faith in him, financial support, and confidence which enabled him to proclaim the revelation he had received. Muhammad received his first revelation from Gabriel only after having married Khadija.
Mecca A city in central Arabia in which Muhammad was born and which was a place of pilgrimage because of the Ka'aba even before the time of Islam. Muhammad made Mecca a central city in Islam so that all Muslims pray toward Mecca.
Mushaf This Arabic term refers to the bound copy of the Qur'an. Muslims often refer to a text as a Mushaf indicating that the "true" Qur'an is the heavenly, eternal prototype which reality these copies share.
Qur'an This Arabic term literally means "recitation" and refers to the revealed text honored by Muslims. The Qur'an was revealed piece by piece in response to historical events in the life of Muhammad and was only made into a book after his death.
Quraysh This tribe was a leading Meccan trading family during the time of Muhammad. While Muhammad was born into this highly placed family, as an orphan raised by his uncle he was of lower status than others in this group.
Sharia This Arabic word meaning road or path refers to the authoritative Muslim law. Through its prescriptions and proscriptions this legislation is meant to lead Muslims to a life of peace, success, and moral fulfillment.
Sunna This Arabic word refers to the traditions about Muhammad and his early followers which are used as models for Muslim behavior. The sunna provides a guide to the historical context and meaning of texts in the Qur'an.
Sura This Arabic word refers to a chapter in the Qur'an. The chapters were organized after Muhammad's death. Some were said to have been given in Mecca and some in Medina. The Qur'an organizes the suras by length with the longest first.
Tafsir This Arabic word means "to interpret" and is applied to interpretations of the Qur'an. There are three types of tafsir traditional, rational, and mystical.
Umar This second Caliph, or successor to Muhammad, continued the process of gathering the Qur'an together. During his time there were several variant collections or codices of the Qur'an.
Umma This Arabic word means community and refers to the way Muhammad unified his followers. Although they were diverse, they became part of the Umma by following the true faith in Allah.
Uthman This third Caliph, or successor to Muhammad, assigned the task of arranging a definitive text of the Qur'an to Zayd ibn Thabit. Uthman's version of the Qur'an became the standard text that is still in use today.
Yathrib Yathrib was an agricultural city in the Hijaz to which Muhammad and his followers migrated. When it became a model Muslim community the city's name was changed to Medina.
Discussion Questions
A. Describe two methods by which a written tradition may be interpreted and illustrate one by the traditional tafsir and one by sufi tafsir.
B Describe two ways a group can use its canon and illustrate one by the standardization of the Qur'an under Uthman and one by the experiential use of the Qur'an in worship.
C, Describe two effects revelation can have on a group and illustrate one by the revelations to Muhammad in Mecca and one by the revelations to him in Medina.
Monotheism In Islam: JMC 6; JMC 9, pp. 200-207
Introduction:
This chapter examines Muslim views of monotheism. These views reflect an evaluation of the nature of the human being, and faith in God becomes an expression of faith in certain aspects of human nature. Differing views of the divinity, then, should be studied in coordination with different conceptions of humanity. In particular you should focus on:
1. How ideas about the divine unity interpret a reality marked by the presence of many angels and jinn, the day of judgment, and predestination,
2. How ideas about the divine interaction with humanity shape the identity of different Muslim groups such as the Shi'ites and the Sunnites, and
3. How the nature of humanity's place in the divine scheme indicates Orthoprax or Sufi viewpoints.
Outline of the Chapter
I. Belief and Muslim Religion
1. Both belief (iman) and practice (islam) are essential in Muslim religion.
2. While the "confirmed" idolater cannot be forgiven, a lapsed believer may be.
3. The Qur'an symbolizes the personal quality of God by referring to the Face of Allah.
II. God and the Nature of the World
1. The diversity in the world does not impair divine unity because it can be traced to angels and jinn.
2. The diversity of religions arises from the variety of messengers (rasul) sent to particular communities.
3. God's love is shown even in the creation of the Day of Judgment since it warns people of the consequences of their actions.
4. Despite God's omnipotent knowledge of and control of all things, human beings should act as if they had free will.
III. Creeds and Muslim Identities (Read pp. 200-207 with this section)
1. The Shahadah provides only a minimal creed that needs elaboration to be understood.
2. Orthodox Muslim theologians used ideas about anthropomorphism, the eternality of the Qur'an, and predestination to distinguish Orthodoxy from both rationalism and Shi'ite thought.
3. Shi'ite belief that God inspires a spiritually superior leader, descended from Ali, as an imam in every generation separates Shi'ism from Sunnite Islam.
IV. God and Evaluations of the Human task
1. Sufis like Al Hallaj, Rumi, and Rabi'a believe that human beings can transcend their physical limitations and become absorbed in the single identity that is Allah.
2. Sunnite Muslims understand the human task to be a vicegerent (caliph) of God and to emulate the divine through the commanded actions of Islam.
3. The ultimate purpose of human life is that of attaining a tawhid similar to the tawhid of Allah; for human beings that means behaving in ways conducive to the worship and service of God and by striving toward unity in the Muslim community.
Basic Terms:
Al-Hallaj This martyr-mystic traveled through the Fertile Crescent and the Indian subcontinent. He claimed to have reached such a state of intimate union with God that his own sense of self was lost so that only God's presence remained. He was crucified for declaring that he was God.
Anthropomorphism This term refers to descriptions of the deity using human traits. Such expressions in the Qur'an scandalized the Mu'tazilites who explained them metaphorically rather than literally.
Caliph This arabic word literally means "successor," and while often used of the successors to Muhammad's leadership in Islam, it is also used of every human being. For Muslims the basic human task is to realize God's intention of human caliphood.
Fiqh Akbar II This Islamic creed emphasizes the nature of God and the nature of the Qur'an . It separates "true" Muslims from Shi'ites, Mutazilites, and others with "wrong" belief.
Iman This Arabic word means "belief" and indicates those ideas that Muslims must support. It is distinguished from religious practice which is called "Islam."
Kalam This Arabic word meaning "Word" or "discussion" refers to the formal discourse on theological matters in Islam. The Mutakallimun explained the doctrines of Islamic thought so they applied to the historical contexts of daily life.
Malak This Arabic word means "angel." The existence of angels and their place in Islamic theology reflects the reality of Muslims living in world of conflicting powers and forces.
Mu'tazilites These Muslim rationalists flourished in ninth century Baghdad and sought to protect Muslims against dualism on the one hand and anthropomorphism on the other. Their extreme rationalism, however, was ultimately rejected by orthodox Muslim thought.
Nabi This Arabic word means "prophet" and refers to a chosen messenger who warns people of Allah's will. A special type of prophet, a "rasul" introduces a new revelation to a particular people.
Predestination Because Islam emphasizes God's ultimate authority over everything, God must logically control all that happens. This would mean that all events have been determined before hand and that human beings have no free will, but Islam insists that despite this fact, a Muslim must live and act as if predestination did not exist.
Rasul This Arabic word means "messenger" and represents a particular type of prophet or "nabi," one who has a special message for a particular community. Muhammad is known as the last of the prophets, and therefore, *the* ultimate rasul.
Rabi'a According to tradition this influential female Sufi saint who died in 801 was a slave girl who later saw herself as "slave to Allah." She insisted that Allah be served for God's own sake, not for fear of punishment or out of desire for reward.
Rumi This Persian poet and mystic (Rumi, means Persian) emphasized the humility of declaring that one has become annihilated in the essence of God. He supported the mysticism of Al-Hallaj.
Shahadah This Arabic word meaning "witness," refers to the Muslim declaration of faith in Allah and in his rasul, Muhammad. The statement is a formula by which a person accepts being a Muslim.
Shi'ites These Muslims consider Ali the true successor to Muhammad and emphasize Allah's desire to designate a supernatural leader for the Umma in every generation. They consider this leader, the Imam, to bear a special holy light derived from God.
Shirk This Arabic word meaning "associate" refers to associating another power with the divine. It indicates false belief and idolatry in Muslim thinking.
Sufi This Arabic word, literally referring to the hair shirt worn by Muslim ascetics, describes Muslim mystics who desire an inward contemplation and absorption into God. They consider the admission of any existence outside of God to be shirk.
Sunnites These so-called "Orthodox" Muslims, in contrast to the Shi'ites, claim that Allah works through the consensus of the community. They argue that the closest human beings can come to the divine unity, or tawhid, is through submission to the laws of Islam.
Tawhid This Arabic word means "unity" and refers to the absolute power of Allah. Reliance on anything other than Allah constitutes a crime that at least some Muslim thinkers consider unforgiveable.
Yawm al-din Literally "the day of judgment," this concept reflects the moral structure of Islam in which human beings are accountable for the outcome of their acts and lives. Islam provides many vivid descriptions of the final judgment and a vast tradition of commentary has been created around this idea.
Discussion Questions
A. Describe two reasons for the development of theology and illustrate one from the Fiqh Akbar II and one from the idea of Tawhid.
B. Describe two ways theology interprets history and illustrate one by Sunnite Islam and one by Shi'ite Islam.
C. Describe a way in which theology conceives of God as near and a way it conceives of the divine as distant and illustrate each way from Sufi Islam.
Ritual and Worship In Islam; JCM 12; JMC 18, pp. 400-406
Introduction
Much of the ritual practice in Islam looks as if it is highly stratified and official. This should not distract you from recognizing the personal and emotional elements within Muslim ritual life. Detailed organization of external actions has a profound influence on internal feelings. As you read the chapter pay attention to how:
1. The external environment shapes one's inner responses
2. Historical references and personal meaning can intertwine in ritual practice
3. Purity comes to symbolize more than one human virtue
4. Unity of consciousness is preserved despite disparity of cultures
Outline of the Chapter:
I. The Development of Islamic Ritual
1. Qur'anic observances are expanded by reference to the Hadiths
2. The essential concept is that of 'ibadat--services, worships--performed for Allah
3. Ritual in Islam functions as purification and religious discipline
4. Such discipline is distinguished from extremism or asceticism
II. The Many Dimensions of the Five Pillars of Islam
1. Note that the Shahadah, the witness to Allah and Muhammad, pervades the various activities of a Muslim described throughout this chapter
2. Salat engenders personal self-discipline and a sense of communal solidarity
3. Zakat sustains the community and reminds individuals of the necessity for honesty and awareness of others
4. Sawm during Ramadan recalls Muhammad's revelational experience and provides opportunities both for personal reflection and communal gathering
5. The Hajj evokes memories of the ancient past--Abraham, Hagar, Ishmael--and of the more recent past--Muhammad's final performance of Hajj--but also provides an experience of death and rebirth for the individual Muslim.
6. Jihad refers to the struggle against enemies within and without that prevent true performance of Islamic obligations.
III. Life-Cycle Affirmations in Islam
1. Birth and naming affirm a Muslim's religious identity
2. Circumcision although not sanctioned in the Qur'an services a traditional and symbolic function with which Qur'anic texts are associated
3. Marriage, while regulated by the Muslim law, is traditional rather than sacramental
4. Death and burial are occasions for prayer and religious reflection, regulated by Muslim law, these are not sacramental events.
IV. Popular Religion and Islam
1. The five 'ibadat provide unity of experience for all Muslims
2. Syncretistic practices exist but are discouraged
3. Some non-islamic practices are allowed if they do not conflict with normative Islam
4. Some Muslim leaders oppose Veneration of Saints and many Muslims practice it
Basic Terms:
Five Pillars This term refers to the five basic services or worships that a Muslim must fulfill toward Allah. They are
(Shahadah This Arabic word meaning "witness" refers to the declaration that there is no God but Allah and that Muhammad is the divine messenger. This declaration occurs often in prayer, in association with life-cycle events, and in a person's conversion to Islam
Salat This Arabic term meaning prayer most often refers to the five statutory prayers required daily. These prayers, recited in the direction of Mecca, include cucles of postures called "rak'a" which vary depending on which prayer service is recited.
Sawm This Arabic term refers to the fast during the month of Ramadan. Since the Muslims follow a lunar calendar the fasting occurs in every season of the year. It has historical references to Muhammad as well as personal and social implications.
Zakat refers to the statutory tax required of every Muslim adult, although in non-Muslim countries zakat has become a matter of personal choice. Several Muslim observances are invalidated unless they are paid for by assets on which Zakat has been paid.
Hajj This term refers to the obligatory pilgrimage to Mecca which every Muslim must perform at least once in a life-time. It consists of several actions that recall the life of Abraham, his wife Hagar, and his son Ishmael while also providing a life transforming experience for participants.)
Friday Salat Friday afternoon prayer requires a male congregation for its authentic service. The prayer leader, or Imam, delivers a sermon from on top of a pulpit. The minimum size of a congregation ranges from three adult males besides the imam to forty including the imam.
Hagar According to traditions found also in the Hebrew Bible this woman is said to have been Abraham's wife and mother of his eldest son Ishmael. The story of her search for water and its miraculous appearance is ritually renacted during the Hajj.
Ibadat This Arabic word, in the plural, means "services" or "worships" and refers to those actions that a Muslim fulfills to show devotion and submission to Allah.
Ihram This Arabic word literally means a state of consecration and refers to the several restrictions a pilgrim going on Hajj must follow. It also is used to refer to the plain garment which all male pilgrims wear which creates a sense of unity and equality among those on pilgrimage.,
Imam This Arabic term refers, when applied to the carrying out of salat, to the leader of the praying congregation. The Imam need only be an adult who possesses the right moral and religious qualifications, although a mixed gathering is led only by a male whereas a female Imam serves an all female congregation.
Ishmael According to the Hebrew Bible this was Abraham's eldest son, through his wife Hagar. The Qur'an claims that Ishmael was the son God told Abraham to sacrifice, an event celebrated in the Eid al-Adha, the Feast of the Sacrifice.
Jihad This Arabic word means "struggle" and refers to the struggle waged against both external and internal enemies seeking to dissuade one from Muslim duties. The "lesser Jihad" is that of a holy war against the infidel outside; the "greater Jihad" is that waged against inner obstacles.
Khitan This Arabic term refers to male circumcision and is universally practiced by Muslims although the ceremonial forms and ages associated with it differ. Female circumcision is sometimes practiced as well, but this is less well accepted.
Minbar This Arabic term refers to the raised pulpit from which the Imam gives a sermon before the Friday afternoon Salat. These sermons may be exegetical and focused on the Qur'an or focused on current events.
Mosque (Mesjid) The term usually employed to describe the building where Muslims worship actually refers to the act of prostration. Any place that a Muslim defines as a prayer area--by stones or a prayer mat, for example, becomes a mosque.
Niyya This Arabic word translates as "intention" and refers to the inner direction of thought achieved while praying. An act of such intention must precede actual prayer and without it the rite performed is considered invalid.
Qibla This Arabic term meaning "direction" refers to the "orientation" of a Muslim worshiper toward Mecca. Muslims perform the five daily prayers by orienting themselves toward the Ka'aba and Muslims cities, buildings, and mosques usually have a Mihrab indicating the direction in which to pray.
Ramadan This is the month of fasting in Islamic practice and is distinguished as the month during which Muhammad received his first revelation. Since the Muslim calendar is a lunar one, the month can fall during any season of the year.
Ritual Washing This act of purification must occur before every prayer session and on other occasions during which a Muslim might become ritually impure. There is both a major and minor purification, the minor ablution often substituting a dry process for a liquid one is usually all that is needed before Salat.
Saint Veneration This popular form of Muslim devotion is opposed by several Muslim leaders as a type of shirk or idolatry. Muslim saints are said to be able to provide blessing and prosperity to people both during their lives and after their death.
Sura 36 This Sura is often recited by or for the dying as it makes reference to the promises Allah gives concerning the afterlife. The sura is often called the "heart" of the Qur'an.
Discussion Questions
A. Describe two aspects of the private dimension of worship and illustrate one with the ritual of Salat and one with the ritual of Sawm.
B. Describe two aspects of the public dimension of worship and illustrate one with the ritual of the Shahadah and one with the ritual of the Hajj.
C. Describe two ways in which contact with other groups influences ritual practice and illustrate one way from Muslim life-cycle rituals and the other from practices in the Salat. .
Ethics In Islam: JCM 15; JCM 21, pp. 466-479
Introduction: (Read JCM 21, pp. 466-479)
Islamic ethics grows out of a two sources--Islamic law and the Islamic communal system. JCM 15 focuses on the presuppositions of Islamic law and their theological underpinning. The metaphysical and intellectual considerations of that chapter should be placed in perspective by looking at the ways Muslim communities cope with change and challenges. Chapter 21 details Islamic ethics in relationship to modern Western culture. As you read these assignments and think in terms of Islam today as well as Islam as a religious system, consider the following questions:
1. How does the system of generating Islamic law through Qu'ran, Sunna, Ijma, and Ijtihad create a basis for response to modern challenges?
2. How does the role of teachers and judges--the Ulama or the Ayatollahs--shape the form of Muslim response to modern life?
3. How do Muslim reform movements like Wahabism and the Muhammadiya express the views of morality found in classical Islam?
4. How do the distinctions between types of duties and prohibitions in Islam help explain Muslim responses to contemporary Western culture?
Outline of Chapter 15:
I. Theories of Islamic Morality
1. Maruf and Munkar: approved and disowned actions
2. Mutazilites: God chooses what is good
3. Populist Islam: What God chooses is the good
II. A spectrum of Moral Actions
1. Five categories of action: Fard, Mandub, Mubah, Makruh, Haram
2. The desire for Halal
3. Infusing law with goodness -- Birr
III. Moral Attitudes (Read pp. 466-479 with this section)
1. The complements of fear (taqwa) and love (wali)
2. Wariness toward evil--the devil (Iblis), taghut
3. Adat polite custom in Islam
4. Coping with modernity and religious tolerance
5. Gender issues in Islam
Basic Terms
Adab This Arabic word means manners and refers to the etiquette that Muslims follow. The injunctions for such genteel living are not law but help the social exchange among Muslims.
Adat An Arabic word referring the the regional customs practiced by Muslims in non-Arab countries that are accepted as complementary and not contradictory to the Sharia.
Ayatollah An Arabic word meaning "Sign of God," this title is used by Shi'ites in Iran for their most authoritative religious teachers. The term suggests the power of Islamic legislators in structuring the ethics of Muslim society.
Bida This Arabic word means "innovation." It is usually considered synonymous with heresy, that is with introducing something extraneous into Islam. Some modern Muslims, however, speak of "bida hasana," or valuable bida that enables Islam to survive in the modern world.
Birr This Arabic word refers to private piety, to the inner devotion that every person feels when performing a correct action. Islam motivates ethics not only by reference to its legal system but also as a way of cultivating internal faith.
Farid This Arabic word means "duties" and refers to those actions which Islamic law considers obligatory or "Fard." This represents the first of the five categories given to actions according to divine authority. Obedience to the five pillars of Islam is an example of this.
Fiqh This Arabic word means "understanding" but has come to be used to refer to a legal decision reached by a Muslim scholar or school of law.
Fundamentalism A term most appropriately used of an American Protestant movement, applied to Muslim movements attempting to restore a faithful adherence to the Quran, originally responding to internal Muslim innovations but later referring to reforms aimed at eliminating the influence of Western culture.
Halal This concept refers to the entire range of permissible things in Islam. The Muslim seeks to determine what is or is not halal. The acts within the three categories of fard, mandub, and mubah are all clearly halal; those falling in the category haram are clearly forbidden, but those within the fourth category of makruh are ambiguous.
Haram This Arabic word means "forbidden" and is associated with various terms for the "sacred" which is set aside and kept apart. Not only does the word refer to things too holy to be used but also those things so impure and abominable as to be utterly proscribed such as the eating of pork.
Iblis This name is given to Satan as the personification of evil. In Islam evil arises from confusion and distraction. Iblis represents those forces working to distract human beings from their true tasks in life.
Ijma This Arabic word meaning consensus is used by Sunnite Muslims to refer to the agreement of the community concerning the meaning of Muslim law. It is one of the four basic sources of Islamic law.
Ijtihad An Arabic word meaning exertion applied to searching for new ways of understanding traditional texts such as the Quran and the Sunna. Although the "gates of Ijtihad" were declared closed in earlier times, modern movements such as Muhammadiya have declared them reopended.
Makruh This term means "reprehensible" and refers to a category of ambiguous actions some of which are permissible but undesirable and others of which are certainly to be avoided even if not exactly forbidden. Divorce is an example.
Mandub This term, "recommended" refers to a category of actions which are highly desirable but are not absolutely required of every Muslim. Performance of such actions are rewarded but nonperformance of them is not punished. An example of this would be augmenting the mandated times of prayer.
Mar'uf This word is usually translated as "the good" in an ideal ethical sense. Its real meaning is "the known" and refers to those acts which are clearly understood as moral.
Mubah This term, meaning "permissible" refers to the wide category of actions which are permitted but not considered either required or even recommended. Such actions receive neither reward for their performance nor punishment for their neglect. Preferences in permitted foods are one example, but the authorization to eat forbidden foods in an extreme situation is another.
Muhammad 'Abduh (1849-1905) This Egyptian follower of Al-Afghani was exiled by the British and spent time in various countries before returning to hold high religious positions in Egypt. He attempted to reform Islam and return it to its original purity. He advocated a modernism that would adapt science for Islamic purposes.
Muhammadiya An early 20th century movement that focuses not on political goal but educational and social ones. It advances a reformist attitude toward Islam and is particularly effective in Indonesia.
Munkhar This term, usually translated as "evil," actually refers to denial of the self-evident, performance of that which is shocking or abominable. Evil is not a "substance" but the performance of clearly unacceptable behavior.
Qiyas Analogy from one case to another represents one of the basic sources of Muslim Law. Its use suggests that reason provides guidance to right behavior.
Santri This term is said to refer to "puritanical Islam" in Indonesia. It describes those Muslims, often from the Muhammadiya movement, who demand strict adherence to basic Islamic practice without admixture of folk culture.
Taghut This term refers to "evil" as an ever present temptation in the world. It stands for all the things in the world that lead away from Allah or the straight path of Islam.
Taqlid This Arabic term refers to acceptance of the authority of past precedent. It represents one of the several ways of generating Muslim law. Islamic practice sometimes contends that only by an absolute reliance on what has been done before can religious life be preserved.
Taqwa This Arabic term often translated as "reverence" refers to the fear which fills a person in the presence of the divine. This fear becomes a primary motivation for living a good and moral life.
Ulama This term refers to the teachers of Islamic law. Because law and ethics are intertwined, the Ulama have social and political power in structuring the social mores of a Muslim society.
Wahabism This movement begun by Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahab in the eighteenth century began as an attempt to reform Islam from its acceptance of certain folk practices such as the veneration of saints which Ibn Wahab considered idolatrous. The movement became even more popular in recent years as a rejection of Western influence on Muslim life. It is now the official Islam of the kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
Wali This Arabic word which translates as "friend" or "patron" suggests that emotion of love and intimacy which accompanies the fear with which a Muslim approaches Allah. In usage it often refers to a saint or holy person venerated by popular Muslim culture.
Discussion Questions
A. Describe two attitudes religious ethics can take toward nature and illustrate one by the ideas of Munkhar and Mar'uf and one by the ideas of Iblis and Taghut.
B. Describe two ways historical context shapes ethics and illustrate one way through the Wahabi movement and one through the Muhammadiya movement.
C. Describe two ways ethics can understand the importance of gender and illustrate one way by the division of the sexes between the public and private spheres and one by the elimination of polygamy by Muslims in the United States.
Analyzing a Text
Students often find analyzing a text difficult. Three common pitfalls are:
1. Taking examples too literally. Students look at a statement about God, about revelation, or about the world and focus only on the specific claims being made. In this class we look at those statements to reveal a general attitude, a basic way of approaching life and ideas. We try to understand the literal meaning of the words, but we look underneath them to the general message they are communicating.
2. Importing information from other sources. Students often fill in blanks in the data with their own experience, with information they have from other sources, or from different types of previous knowledge. This is dangerous. Religious traditions often use such techniques to solves problems arising in their belief system. It is more important in this class to recognize the problem than to determine if one or another solution is "true" or correct. Use only the data given in the text book, lectures, readings, and audio-visual aids as you analyze a text.
3. Overpersonalization. Students often seek to defend a belief that they personally hold. The point of the course is not to determine any particular "truth." Instead, we try to generate general ideas and principles. Do not ask whether or not you can believe a particular idea. Try, rather, to ask what this idea might mean at its most simple and basic meaning.
Jean Piaget, in his study The Language and Thought of the Child (New York: World Publishing, 1955), p. 150, describes a misunderstanding that illustrates these pitfalls. A pre-teenage child was asked to compare the proverb "The more often a jug goes to the well, the sooner will it crack and break" with the proverb "As we grow older, we grow better." The child concluded that the two proverbs are saying the same thing. She explained that children get better as they grow older because they become more obedient; their spirit of disobedience has been broken and weakened just as the jug became weaker and more likely to break. Piaget suggests that rather than pay attention to the details of each of the proverbs by itself, the child had provided a schema into which both proverbs could fit. Once rationalized this schema makes sense. Anyone not initiated into the child's thinking, however, would wonder at the equation of these two proverbs. In this class, students should avoid providing such an idiosyncratic interpretation of texts. They should always ask themselves whether someone can understand their views without elaborate explanations.
The child misinterpreted the two proverbs for three reasons. First, the child read them literally. She thought the first proverb was applicable only to jugs and the second applicable only to people. In fact, as proverbs both point beyond their literal meaning to general ideas. The first proverb suggests that doing the same thing again and again leads to problems and the second proverb claims that experience is valuable rather than a liability. As general statements, both refer to repetitive human activity with the first regarding such activity negatively and the second regarding it favorably. Students in this class should always read texts symbolically. The literal meaning points to some general statement about the nature of humanity, the world, or the supernatural. These more general implications of a statement provide the basic meaning that students should use as the basis for their analysis.
Secondly, the child imported a context to the proverbs that they did not possess. The second proverb does not mention children or the need to overcome disobedience. The child assumed that the word "better" had to refer to improved behavior. This assumption led the child to interpret the saying about the jug as indicating that a jug is "improved" if it is broken. Read on its own the proverb about a pitcher becoming cracked has the opposite implication. Such a pitcher is defective. The child's schema worked only because the child associated the proverb about getting older with children's discipline and then brought that association over into the understanding of the proverb about the jug. Students in this class must avoid reading more into a text than is there. They should look only at each text by itself without bringing in information or assumptions not in the data they have been given.
Finally, the child felt impelled to create this schema build on this extraneous data out of a belief that the proverbs applied to her life experience. The impetus for misunderstanding the proverbs came from the child's personalization of them so that they could fit into her predetermined view of things. This motivation often misleads students, particularly in the study of religion. Academic studies aim toward objective, analytic methods which bracket the student's own beliefs and views. The academic study of religion does not intend to change your ideas or beliefs. In the same way your beliefs and ideas should not influence how you analyze the data. The data may appear to you to be "wrong" and the obvious conclusions may conflict with what you know to be "true." The purpose of these exercises in analysis, however, is neither to attain "truth" or to be "right," but rather to increase your ability to look at data from an external, non-subjective perspective. With a clearer motivation students in this class can avoid the errors that misled Piaget's young subject.
Instructions for Essays for REL 107
Each essay you write for this class must have the following components:
Introduction
This five sentence paragraph should introduce the basic concepts you will discuss. If you are focusing on ritual, ethics, theology, or history begin your essay by defining these and indicating the important examples you will use and identifying their relevance to your essay. Try to have at least two major points with two sentences about each point.
Main Body
This will typically have three five sentence paragraphs. In the main body you will discuss several (at least three) examples that prove the points you raise in the introduction. You will define each example and show its relevance to the ideas you introduced earlier.
Conclusion
This short paragraph does not introduce new information, but may make comparisons (for example, it may state that the analysis of a ritual in the main body also applies to one or two other rituals from that same tradition). The main purpose here is to show the relevance of the main body to further study of the issue you raised in the introduction. This paragraph should have at least five sentences in it.