Abstract
The term “Abrahamic” is used widely in an effort to draw attention to the commonalities between Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Serving as a shorthand of sorts, Abrahamic can be misleading. While ecumenical concerns motivate its use in everyday parlance, the term obfuscates differences and fosters problematic assumptions about the relationship between Judaism, Christianity and Islam. In what follows, I will problematize the term and argue that employing the biblical family of Abraham as a paradigm for discussing contemporary Jewish-Christian and Muslim relations undermines attempts to bring about religious understanding. I will interrogate the different ways in which each religious tradition conceptualizes the family of Abraham. I will also turn to the figure of Ishmael whose multifarious characterization further illustrates the need to explore how the term Abrahamic is employed in common parlance.
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Notes
- 1.
This paper includes material already published in Ishmael on the Border: Rabbinic Portrayals of the First Arab (Albany: SUNY Press, 2006) and The Family of Abraham: Jewish, Christian and Muslim Interpretations (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2014).
- 2.
Jaffee (2001, p. 760). “Phenomenologically” is emphasized in the original.
- 3.
Op. cit., p. 774.
- 4.
See Massignon (1949, pp. 20–23), which has been translated into English as The Three Prayers of Abraham. See Massignon (1989, pp. 3–20). See also Robinson (1991, pp. 182–205) and Griffith (1997, pp. 193–210), and, more recently, see Hughes (2012, pp. 60–65), for a discussion of Massignon’s influence, as well as Levenson (2012, pp. 210–212).
- 5.
Available at www.abrahamsvision.org, accessed 11/11/13.
- 6.
Available at http://charterforcompassion.org/our-partners/partner/5, accessed 11/11/13.
- 7.
Available at www.abrahamfund.org, accessed 05/11/13 and www.jspace.com/org/the-abraham-fund/221, accessed 11/11/13.
- 8.
For references to the religion (milla, translated variably as religion, law, and community) of Abraham, see Qur’an 2:130, 2:135, 3:95, 4:125, 6:161, and 16:123. See Hawting (2010), who concludes that the religion of Abraham should be understood as a product of the religious and social conditions brought about by the Arab conquests of the Middle East. In other words, he calls into serious question the notion that Abraham introduced monotheism into Arabia. See also Sidney Griffith’s discussion in Griffith (2008, pp. 164–166). See Chapter 1 for a discussion of the term milla.
- 9.
- 10.
This was not always the case. See Levenson’s fourth chapter on ninth- and tenth-century Persian claims to ancestry from Isaac.
- 11.
As Alon Gershon-Gottstein (2002, pp. 165–183) avers: “the designation ‘Abrahamic’ emerges carrying in it the suggestion not only of a shared story, but also of an ideal harmonious relationship that should characterize adherents of the three faiths, emanating, as it were, from a common branch.”
- 12.
For Wittgenstein’s notion of family of resemblance, see his Philosophical Investigations: the German text, with a revised English, translation by G. E. M. Anscombe (Oxford; Malden, Mass: Blackwell, 2001). Its application to understanding the relationship between Judaism, Christianity and Islam may shed some insight, but it also comes with its own set of problems.
- 13.
Goshen-Gottstein’s Abraham and ‘Abrahamic Religions’ in Contemporary Interreligious Discourse (2002) probes hidden assumptions and problems attendant on the use of “Abrahamic.” By emphasizing aspects of a tradition’s understanding of the figure of Abraham, those interested in interreligious dialogue can choose to construct Abraham along parallel lines. The description of the religions as ‘Abrahamic,’ however, he argues, is vacuous and distorting. The term does not refer to any fact or set of beliefs that unites the three religions. If anything, it distorts fundamental differences among them.
- 14.
See Levenson (2010).
- 15.
See Levenson (2012, p. 207).
- 16.
(Ibid., p. 214).
- 17.
This excerpt was taken from the booklet The Faith of Abraham: Bond or Barrier? Jewish, Christian and Muslim Perspectives (New York: Fordham University Press, 2011), p. 19, which is based on the symposium at which Patrick J. Ryan, S. J., delivered the annual spring McGinley Lecture. Other articles include brief responses by Rabbi Daniel Polish and Professor Amir Hussain. Here he mentions the “polyvalence of Abraham.”
References
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Online References
Abraham’s Vision. Transforming the Present, Shaping the Future. www.abrahamsvision.org. Accessed Spring, 2009.
The Abraham Fund Initiatives. www.abrahamfund.org. Accessed May 2011.
The Charter For Compassion. http://charterforcompassion.org. Accessed 11 Nov 13.
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Bakhos, C. (2019). What’s in a name? The implications of ‘Abrahamic’ for Jewish, Christian and Muslim relations. In: Aslan, E., Rausch, M. (eds) Jewish-Muslim Relations. Wiener Beiträge zur Islamforschung. Springer VS, Wiesbaden. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-26275-4_1
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