Quote from Shared Stories, Rival Tellings

Shared Stories, Rival Tellings: Early Encounters of Jews, Christians, and Muslims 

by Robert C. Gregg

Oxford University Press, Oxford, United Kingdom       © 2015       721 pp.

"Judaism, Christianity, and Islam arose as book-centered religions, their holy writings consisting in revelations from and about the deity of their experience. However, a more integral and often overlooked connection exists. Narrated in the Hebrew Bible, the Christian Bible, and the Qur'an were over two dozen sacred stories featuring the same cast of characters (for instance Adam and Eve, Noah, Abraham, Lot, Moses, Samuel, kings David and Solomon, Job, and such prophets as Elijah, Elisha, and Jonah). The two scriptures of the Christians and Muslims shared additional holy narratives -- most notably the stories of the prophet John the Baptist, and of Jesus and Mary.

Conceiving this study as a comparison of the three religions' scriptural interpretations I chose five (for the available twenty-seven) narratives: Cain's murder of Abel, his brother; the clash between Abraham's two women, Sarah and Hagar; Joseph the young Hebrew slave in Egypt, tormented by the sexual advances of the wife of his master; the disobedient prophet Jonah and the whale; and the sage of Mary, Jesus's mother (though it appears only in the Christian New Testament and the Qur'an).  My intent was to observe carefully the overlap of traditions and to focus especially on how Jews, Christians, and Muslims differently heard, read, and used those stories. How did the interpreters retell them, using story expansions and noticeable twists in order to advance their own communal interests -- that is, their distinguishing doctrines, ethics, ritual practices, and modes of spirituality?"  (p. xiii)

-- submitted by Jennifer Knight

To visit the blog and see more reviews and quotes from books in the collection of Center for Sacred Sciences' Library, click here https://centerforsacredscienceslibrary.blogspot.com