Minding Scripture

Guest Professor Stephen Barr delves into particle physics, cosmology, and creation science in this new episode discussing the relationship between science and scripture.

While you might be aware of Islamic tradition regarding the revelation of the Qur’an to Muhammed by the angel Gabriel, have you ever wondered how it was recorded and transmitted? Did Muhammed write down this divine message, or did transmission take place via another method? In this episode, our hosts Gabriel Reynolds, Francesca Murphy, and Mun’im Sirry are joined by Professor Shady H. Nasser, an associate professor of Arabic Studies at Harvard who provides his understanding of the variant readings which have arisen within Islamic tradition. 

This week, our hosts discuss one of the most critical, and potentially divisive, figures in their religious traditions: Abraham. How do Jews, Muslims, and Christians view this influential figure? Is it right to emphasize his role as the progenitor of the three “Abrahamic” religions? Abraham's calling is the beginning of the story of election, and he is considered the first monotheist. Yet how did he arrive at belief in God? Was it by reason or by faith? And does God's command to Abraham to sacrifice his son represent an ethical dilemma?

Fr. Olivier-Thomas Venard, Dominican priest and professor at the École Biblique in Jerusalem, joins Francesca Murphy and Gabriel Reynolds for this episode of Minding Scripture. Fr. Venard bridges intellectual worlds—modern French literature, the philosophy and theology of Thomas Aquinas, biblical archaeology and historical-critical study of the Bible, literary theory and linguistics—and finds their convergence in the words of Scripture. Fr. Venard discusses his trilogy on Thomas Aquinas as well as a major, long-term project he directs at the École Biblique: “The Bible in its Traditions,” a presentation of the biblical text in its polyphony of different textual versions, translations, interpretations, and artistic receptions.

Under the conditions of globalization, more religious people than ever find themselves in close contact with members of other religious traditions. Our hosts convene in this episode for a scriptural conversation on religious pluralism. How is the religious “other” discussed in the scriptures of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam? How do each of these traditions interpret the fact of multiple religions? Is the multiplicity of religions positively willed by God—or just permitted by God as a result of human failings? They explore the question at the heart of our podcast: Can we disagree religiously and still be friends?

This episode we welcome a distinguished New Testament scholar, Amy Jill Levine, who is the world expert on the Jewishness of the New Testament. She engages questions like, Why are anti-Jewish readings of the New Testament just bad readings of the text? What are some of Jesus’ parables that are clarified by reading them as Jewish parables? What does it mean for Jews to study the New Testament, either academically or as part of their self-understanding as Jews? Was there such a thing as “normative” Judaism at Jesus’ time, over-against which Jesus comes across as an aberration? What’s the difference between saying “Bible,” instead of “Old and New Testaments”—or saying “Hebrew Bible” or  “Old Testament” instead of “Tanakh?” Is there any sense to term “Abrahamic religions” as an umbrella for Judaism, Christianity, and Islam? How can a deepened knowledge of Judaism nourish the theological imagination of Christians? 

What importance do developments in critical scholarship on the Qur’an have for the life of faith? How have Muslims traditionally understood the Qur’an? What were the nineteenth- and twentieth-century beginnings of Western critical scholarship on the Qur’an, and what are its motivating questions today? Where do Western critical scholarship and traditional reading of the Qur’an converge? Do the findings of Western critical scholarship fundamentally challenge traditional Muslim understandings of the Qur’an, and how, more generally, does critical study of the Qur’an affect Muslims’ lives of faith?

In light of the global Coronavirus pandemic, this month’s episode of Minding Scripture reflects on sickness, healing, and isolation in the Bible and in the Qur’an. What sources of hope do we find in the Abrahamic traditions for a time of sickness and quarantine? How might these three traditions interpret the pandemic and the quarantine religiously?

This month, Minding Scripture, which brings together the life of the mind and the life of faith, asks guest speaker Nathan Eubank and one of our hosts, Tzvi Novick, how historical-critical scholarship in both the Hebrew Bible and in the New Testament has developed over the last two centuries and what its current place in our understanding of the Bible should be.  What is historical criticism and how did it begin? What is the enduring value of historical criticism, both intellectually and for the life of faith? What are some of its enduring achievements? What does the Epic of Gilgamesh, the psychology (or not) of Jesus, and the Jewishness of Paul have to do with all this? Our hosts discuss the progress and regress, tensions and achievements of historical criticism from the eighteenth century to the present. 

Life after death is a central concept in all three Abrahamic religions. What happens to a person after death? How do Judaism, Christianity, and Islam envision heaven and hell? And what can the faithful expect at the resurrection?