Islam, Christianity and the Realms of the Miraculous: A Comparative Exploration PDF
Preview Islam, Christianity and the Realms of the Miraculous: A Comparative Exploration
IAN RICHARD NETTON ‘xxxxxxxxxxx’ I RS xxxxxxx L E A I S L A M A , xxxxxxxx M L , xxxxxxx M C S C H R I S T I A N I T Y Key Features H • xxxxxx OR • xxxxxx FI R E A L M S S IAN RICHARD NETTON xxxxxx T A N D T H E T H I EA O F T H E N M I I T M I R A C U L O U S R Y A CA UN LD A COMPARATIVE EXPLORATION O T U H S E I A N R I C H A R D N E T T O N ISBN 978-0-7486-9906-3 edinburghuniversitypress.com Cover image: The Dome of the Rock , Jerusalem, Israel © Martin Froyda/Shutterstock.com Cover design: www.paulsmithdesign.com EDINBURGH STUDIES IN CLASSICAL ISLAMIC HISTORY AND CULTURE Islam, Christianity and the Realms of the Miraculous Edinburgh Studies in Classical Islamic History and Culture Series Editor: Carole Hillenbrand A particular feature of medieval Islamic civilisation was its wide horizons. In this respect it differed profoundly from medieval Europe, which from the point of view of geography, ethnicity and population was much smaller and narrower in its scope and in its mindset. The Muslims fell heir not only to the Graeco-Roman world of the Mediterranean, but also to that of the ancient Near East, to the empires of Assyria, Babylon and the Persians – and beyond that, they were in frequent contact with India and China to the east and with black Africa to the south. This intellectual openness can be sensed in many interrelated fields of Muslim thought: philosophy and theology, medicine and pharmacology, algebra and geometry, astronomy and astrology, geography and the literature of marvels, ethnology and sociology. It also impacted powerfully on trade and on the networks that made it possible. Books in this series reflect this openness and cover a wide range of topics, periods and geographical areas. Titles in the series include: Arabian Drugs in Early Medieval Mediterranean Medicine Zohar Amar and Efraim Lev The Medieval Western Maghrib: Cities, Patronage and Power Amira K. Bennison Keeping the Peace in Premodern Islam: Diplomacy under the Mamluk Sultanate, 1250–1517 Malika Dekkiche Queens, Concubines and Eunuchs in Medieval Islam Taef El-Azhari The Kharijites in Early Islamic Historical Tradition: Heroes and Villains Hannah-Lena Hagemann Medieval Damascus: Plurality and Diversity in an Arabic Library – The Ashrafīya Library Catalogue Konrad Hirschler Book Culture in Late Medieval Syria: The Ibn ‘Abd al-Hadi Library of Damascus Konrad Hirschler The Popularisation of Sufism in Ayyubid and Mamluk Egypt, 1173–1325 Nathan Hofer Defining Anthropomorphism: The Challenge of Islamic Traditionalism Livnat Holtzman Making Mongol History Stefan Kamola Lyrics of Life: Sa‘di on Love, Cosmopolitanism and Care of the Self Fatemeh Keshavarz A History of the True Balsam of Matarea Marcus Milwright Ruling from a Red Canopy: Political Authority in the Medieval Islamic World, from Anatolia to South Asia Colin P. Mitchell Islam, Christianity and the Realms of the Miraculous: A Comparative Exploration Ian Richard Netton Conquered Populations in Early Islam: Non-Arabs, Slaves and the Sons of Slave Mothers Elizabeth Urban edinburghuniversitypress.com/series/escihc Islam, Christianity and the Realms of the Miraculous A Comparative Exploration Ian Richard Netton This volume is for Sue, Deborah, Jonathan, Alex and Thea with much love. Edinburgh University Press is one of the leading university presses in the UK. We publish academic books and journals in our selected subject areas across the humanities and social sciences, combining cutting-edge scholarship with high editorial and production values to produce academic works of lasting importance. For more information visit our website: edinburghuniversitypress.com © Ian Richard Netton, 2019 Edinburgh University Press Ltd The Tun – Holyrood Road 12 (2f) Jackson’s Entry Edinburgh EH8 8PJ Typeset in 11/15 Adobe Garamond by Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Stockport, Cheshire, and printed and bound in Great Britain A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978 0 7486 9906 3 (hardback) ISBN 978 0 7486 9907 0 (webready PDF) ISBN 978 1 4744 4630 3 (epub) The right of Ian Richard Netton to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 and the Copyright and Related Rights Regulations 2003 (SI No. 2498). Contents Foreword vii Abbreviations xi 1 Miracles and Religion 1 1.1 Definitions 1 1.2 The Medieval Mindset: Milieu, Continuity and Contrasts 6 1.3 Narratology 25 2 Food 27 2.1 A Proto-miracle: Manna from the Desert 27 2.2 The Feeding of the Five Thousand: Christianity 31 2.3 Jesus, the Test and the Table: Islam 41 2.4 The Narrative Arena 46 3 Water 50 3.1 A Proto-miracle: Water from the Rock 50 3.2 Lourdes, Shrines and Healing 54 3.3 Zamzam, Shrines and Healing 71 3.4 The Narrative Arena 82 4 Blood 86 4.1 Proto-miracles: Blood and its Contrastive Christian and Islamic Domains 86 4.2 Bolsena 1263: Host > Blood 91 4.3 The Writing in the Blood: Sufi Blood and Hallajian Passion 105 4.4 The Narrative Arena 114 vi | islam, christianity and the miraculous 5 Wood and Stone 120 5.1 A Proto-miracle: the Ark of Gilgamesh and Noah 120 5.2 Ark of the Covenant: the Virgin in the House 130 5.3 The Angels of the Ka‘ba 142 5.4 The Narrative Arena 153 Foreword 6 Cosmology 158 6.1 Proto-miracles: the Standing of the Sun and the Moon 158 6.2 The Miracle of the Sun at Fatima 160 6.3 The Splitting of the Moon in the Qur’an 171 The subject of miracles has seized both popular and scholarly imaginations 6.4 The Narrative Arena 181 from early times to the present. The year 2017 provided added interest with a major, and much-praised, exhibition and a major workshop. The exhibition, 7 Envoi 184 entitled Madonnas and Miracles, was held at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge from 7 March to 4 June 2017.1 In the words of the catalogue, the Notes 187 exhibition ‘reveal[ed] the significance of the home as a site of religious experi- Bibliography 247 ence in the period. From visionary “living saints”, who conversed with the Index 282 divine in their chambers, to ordinary laypeople who prayed the rosary before bed, to those who read heterodox books by the hearth, men, women and children practised religion in the home in a variety of ways.’2 As the exhibi- tion showed, the Italian Renaissance was in love with all things miraculous.3 On 23 May 2017 SOAS, University of London, held an excellent, thought-provoking, workshop entitled Seeing is Believing: Miracles in Islamic Thought. This well-attended workshop was sponsored by the British Association for Islamic Studies (BRAIS) and hosted by the Department of the Near and Middle East, SOAS. Its two conveners were Dr Ayman Shihadeh and Dr Harith Bin Ramli. The workshop’s subjects ranged far and wide from a consideration of what God can actually do through a discus- sion of the evidence for Prophetic miracles to an analysis of prophecy in Messianic times.4 This present volume of mine is the third in a comparative Islamic– Christian trilogy which seeks to present and explore various major aspects of these two world religions in dynamic contrast. The first volume focused on tradition; the second concerned itself with the mystical arena.5 This third volume completes the trilogy by an examination of the field of miracles in the Islamic and Christian traditions. foreword | vii Foreword The subject of miracles has seized both popular and scholarly imaginations from early times to the present. The year 2017 provided added interest with a major, and much-praised, exhibition and a major workshop. The exhibition, entitled Madonnas and Miracles, was held at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge from 7 March to 4 June 2017.1 In the words of the catalogue, the exhibition ‘reveal[ed] the significance of the home as a site of religious experi- ence in the period. From visionary “living saints”, who conversed with the divine in their chambers, to ordinary laypeople who prayed the rosary before bed, to those who read heterodox books by the hearth, men, women and children practised religion in the home in a variety of ways.’2 As the exhibi- tion showed, the Italian Renaissance was in love with all things miraculous.3 On 23 May 2017 SOAS, University of London, held an excellent, thought-provoking, workshop entitled Seeing is Believing: Miracles in Islamic Thought. This well-attended workshop was sponsored by the British Association for Islamic Studies (BRAIS) and hosted by the Department of the Near and Middle East, SOAS. Its two conveners were Dr Ayman Shihadeh and Dr Harith Bin Ramli. The workshop’s subjects ranged far and wide from a consideration of what God can actually do through a discus- sion of the evidence for Prophetic miracles to an analysis of prophecy in Messianic times.4 This present volume of mine is the third in a comparative Islamic– Christian trilogy which seeks to present and explore various major aspects of these two world religions in dynamic contrast. The first volume focused on tradition; the second concerned itself with the mystical arena.5 This third volume completes the trilogy by an examination of the field of miracles in the Islamic and Christian traditions. vii viii | islam, christianity and the miraculous Bernard Lonergan’s seminal work Method in Theology6 may today appear somewhat dated. Nonetheless, it was valuable, and remains valuable, in that it presented a new and coherent series of taxonomies whereby the diverse fields of Christian theology might be inspected and rigorously interrogated. It did, however, focus primarily on method as its title implies. Lonergan stressed this methodological orientation when, referring to miracles, he wrote: ‘The possibility and occurrence of miracles are topics, not for the methodologist, but for the theologian.’ He thereby excuses himself from a full theological investigation of miracles in this work.7 This present volume of mine, as will become apparent in a reading of the text, also deploys a structural method, a narratological sieve, through which to analyse and compare the miraculous phenomena and narratives of which it treats. Thus, each chapter has a particular, and carefully structured, analytical ‘shape’ as follows: • outline of the miracle event: Proto-miracle/Christian miracle/Islamic miracle • critiques and attitudes towards the miraculous events: 1. disbelief and scepticism 2. caution 3. belief 4. memory and memorialisation: a. the theme of a memory of a ‘divine presence’ in the world b. the theme of a memory of wholeness c. the motif of water or other rituals d. the metatheme of faith and doubt e. the metatheme of Church/Islamic authority • the narrative arena In terms of narrative theory, chosen aspects of which will shortly be elaborated in the main text, this volume will interrogate the miraculous phenomena and narratives with which it deals from the following perspectives: • universality • multifacetedness
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