CV by Holger Zellentin
"a thoroughly scholarly contribution…[I]n an age in which the source of law continues to be deepl... more "a thoroughly scholarly contribution…[I]n an age in which the source of law continues to be deeply controversial…, its argument is timely and eirenic. [W]e must take note.
Books by Holger Zellentin
This series consists of scholarly monographs and other volumes at the cutting edge of the study o... more This series consists of scholarly monographs and other volumes at the cutting edge of the study of Abrahamic Religions. The increase in intellectual interest in the comparative approach to Judaism, Christianity, and Islam reflects the striking surge in the importance of religious traditions and patterns of thought and behaviour in the twenty-first century, at the global level. While this importance is easy to detect, it remains to be identified clearly and analysed from a comparative perspective. Our existing scholarly apparatus is not always adequate in attempting to understand precisely the nature of similarities and differences between the monotheistic religions, and the transformations of their "family resemblances" in different cultural and historical contexts. The works in the series are devoted to the study of how "Abrahamic" traditions mix, blend, disintegrate, rebuild, clash, and impact upon one another, usually in polemical contexts, but also, often, in odd, yet persistent ways of interaction, reflecting the symbiosis between them.
François Déroche has indicated to me in a personal communication that questions remain regarding ... more François Déroche has indicated to me in a personal communication that questions remain regarding the carbon dating as well as the palaeography of Ṣanʿāʾ 1, as he will detail in idem,
As influential catchwords, "heresy" and "identity" have recently acquired the sense of entitlemen... more As influential catchwords, "heresy" and "identity" have recently acquired the sense of entitlement and hazard that only a dominant academic paradigm would impart. In a famous manifesto of the 1970s, for instance, sociologist Peter Berger associates modernity with the "universalization of heresy." According to Berger, the freedom to choose among different versions of plausibility characterizes the post-Enlightenment person. Under these new circumstances, heresy surrenders itself to the imperative of multiple worldviews and becomes the very label of modern religious life: "For premodern man, heresy is a possibility-usually a rather remote one; for modern man, heresy typically becomes a necessity." 2 Academic success has not been easy on "identity" either. In the last three decades of shifting cultural geographies, identity has become an everpresent theoretical tool in the Humanities and Social Sciences to the point where Siniša Maleševiü has invoked the utopia of an identity-less world. 3
Journal Articles and Book Chapters by Holger Zellentin
The Qur'an considers the event of its own revelation to be constitutive of a new religious commun... more The Qur'an considers the event of its own revelation to be constitutive of a new religious community, clearly distinguishable from the Jewish and Christian ones. 1 At the same time, Islam's Scripture stands out in its attempt to construct a broader ecumenical tent that welcomes Jews and Christians, at least in theory. 2 The Qur'an sees the split among the Israelites, which created the Jewish and the Christian tradition, as misguided, yet both traditions can remain pathways to salvation, at least in principle. 3 Marriage to Jewish and Christian women is allowed for the male members of the new community, as is, apparently, commensality between all three communities. 4 More specifically, the Qur'an understands the divinely sanctioned Jewish tradition (henceforth simply "Judaism") in quasi-rabbinical terms. 5 It accepts the leadership of "the rabbis and the colleagues," using specific Arabic designations whose Hebrew and Aramaic cognates are well established within the rabbinic corpus. 6 The close proximity of the nascent Islamic community and rabbinically inflected Jews, in turn, can further be corroborated through broader philological, historiographical and epigraphical studies, which all converge in their evidentiary weight to support the acquaintance of the Qur'anic community with Jews and Judaism: • The Qur'an, already in its Meccan and especially in its Medinan surahs, displays close familiarity with many rabbinic traditions, and expects such familiarity from part of its intended audience. 7
Entangled Religions, 2023
License: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Entangled Religions 13.2 (2023) er.ceres.rub.de banū is... more License: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Entangled Religions 13.2 (2023) er.ceres.rub.de banū isrāʾīl, ahl al-kitāb, al-yahūd wa-l-naṣārā
This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license.
Negotiating Identities: Conflict, Conversion, and Consolidation in Early Judaism and Christianity (200 BCE–600 CE), edited by Karin Hedner Zetterholm, Anders Runesson, Cecilia Wassén and Magnus Zetterholm (Coniectanea Biblica; Lanham: Lexington Books/Fortress Academic, 2022), 423-454
Despite their learnedness and undeniable importance, the "parting of the ways" debates have large... more Despite their learnedness and undeniable importance, the "parting of the ways" debates have largely overlooked a simple point of consensus among Jews and Christians: the vast majority of Late Antique witnesses understand the Bible as containing a law-code for non-Jews, and this law-code as binding. This chapter seeks to show the importance of the Clementine Homilies for our understanding of the development of this "gentile" law-code at the example of the food laws. It will contextualize these laws in light of broad hermeneutical and exegetical trends demonstrable throughout Late Antique Jewish and especially Christian culture. The chapter argues that the Clementine Homilies (henceforth simply "the Homilies"), while likely a marginal text, constitute a key witness to our understanding of food laws for gentiles also in more mainstream traditions. Because of their biblical basis, the actual laws which the Homilies impose on righteous gentiles resemble the practices called for in other Late Antique Jewish and especially Christian texts far closer than is commonly understood. The historical importance of the Homilies, as well as their relationship to tradition, must therefore be reassessed. The Clementine Homilies, whose preserved text was edited in the fourth or fifth century CE, were written in Greek, in the narrative form of a Late Antique romance. The narrative, complete with its shipwrecks and pirates, constitutes the framework of its extensive apostolic teachings, usually given in the form of theological-philosophical dialogues-the name "homilies" is thus as ill-fitting as the Homilies' secondary attribution to Clement of Rome and therefore their common moniker as pseudepigraphic. 1 I have previously sketched the triangular relationship-along with important differences-we find in the legal culture represented by Greek Homilies, the Latin and Syriac
Law in the Medinan Qur'an: The Case of Biblical Incest Law and its Qur'anic Reiteration * Sidney ... more Law in the Medinan Qur'an: The Case of Biblical Incest Law and its Qur'anic Reiteration * Sidney Griffith accurately remarked that "the Bible is at the same time everywhere and nowhere in the Arabic Qur'an". 1 The Qur'an's Bible, which can and cannot be found in nearly every sura, is the one that circulated throughout the diverse cultures that made up Arabia at the turn of the seventh century CE. 2 The present essay is a prolegomenon to the dual hypothesis that, first, late antique Biblical law, at the time of the Qur'anic Prophet, permeated many aspects of Jewish, Christian, and gentile Arabian legal culture, and, secondly, that Biblical law, in its late antique Arabian form, is at the same time everywhere and nowhere in the legal culture of the Medinan Qur'an. While it may take many years to prove or disprove these two partially co-dependent hypotheses, the present essay will seek to illustrate their plausibility through the example of the laws found in the Qur'an's legislation on prohibited marriages (in Q 4:22-23). I will argue that in the case of incest law, the nature and order of the Qur'anic prohibitions suggests * This essay was written and researched in the framework of the project Qur'anic Commentary: An Integrative Paradigm, funded by the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement no. 771047). The essay reflects only the author's views, and the ERC is not responsible for any of the claims expressed in it or for any use that may be made of the information it contains. I am grateful for the detailed critical feedback from Saqib Hussain, Nicolai Sinai, and the two anonymous reviewers of this volume. The transliteration of Biblical Hebrew follows SBL guidelines (yet includes the silent shewa), and rabbinic Hebrew as well as Syriac and Jewish Aramaic are transliterated in accordance with the early defective (i.e., non-vocalised) tradition, as follows: ʾ b g d h w z ḥ ṭ y k l m n s ʿ p ṣ q r š t. The vocalised text of the Qur'an is that of ʿĀṣim (transmitted by Ḥafṣ), i.e., the Cairo text. Translations of the Qur'an follow Sayyid 'Ali Quli Qara'i; translations of the Hebrew Bible are my own (with consultation especially of the Jewish Publication Society of America Tanakh and the New Revised Standard Version); rabbinic texts follow the Soncino translation. I have modified most translations to give a more literal sense of the text. 1 See Sidney Griffith, The Bible in Arabic: The Scriptures of the "People of the Book" in the Language of Islam (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013), 2 and also 66. 2 The Arabian Bible most likely circulated in oral form as well as possibly in writing, partially or possibly in its entirety, and in a variety of languages possibly including Arabic. On the scarcity of any pre-Qur'anic literary documents in Arabic, see Griffith, The Bible in Arabic, 43, n. 103, and 109-111, and M. C. A. Macdonald (ed.), The Development of Arabic as a Written Language (Oxford: Archaeopress, 2010). antique law (itself often based on aspects of the Bible), but also does so in a way that is aligned with its own legal proclivities. The triangulation of the legal evidence found, first, in the Hebrew Bible, secondly, in the Bible's late antique Jewish and Christian reception history, and thirdly, in the Qur'an and in the early Islamic legal tradition thereby allows us to contextualise the Qur'an within the posited framework of a Biblicised Arabian legal culture. It is the Qur'an's reiteration of this legal culture that will in turn explain why and how such Biblical law is at the same time everywhere and nowhere in the Arabic Qur'an. Consanguinity, Affinity, and Exemptions: Major Trends in Christian Marriage Law Situating the terms "marriage" as well as "consanguinity" and "affinity" in a historical perspective, with a special focus on Christian law, will prove essential for our understanding of the Qur'an's respective operative legal principles. For this essay, I will first define "marriage" as any potentially permanent and societally sanctioned contract of mutual obligations between a free man and a free woman that authorises sexual intercourse. Along with late antique Jews and Christians, I will thus consider the Biblical prohibitions of intercourse as if they were prohibitions of marriage. In order to streamline my argument, I generally exclude all considerations of extra-matrimonial sexual relations along with other thorny issues such as financial aspects of marriage, divorce, same-sex marriage, marriage with or among slaves, temporary marriage, prostitution, or the analysis of marriage as slavery, worthwhile as these topics may be. Secondly, prohibitions of consanguineous sexual relations-that is, between blood relations, such as between parents and children or between siblings-are well-nigh universal, informing, for example, the civil law of Greece and of imperial Rome as much as the Code of Hammurabi and other Ancient Near Eastern laws, and likely also those of pre-Islamic Arabia. 3 The most obvious point of contact between Christian and Qur'anic law, to 3 On the prohibition of consanguineous relations in the Ancient Near East, e.g., in the Code of Hammurabi, in the Hittite Laws, and in the Middle Assyrian Laws, see Marten Stol, Women in the
This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the cc by-nc-nd 4.0 licen chapter 9... more This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the cc by-nc-nd 4.0 licen chapter 9 * This chapter is part of a project that has received funding from the European Research Council (erc) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (Grant agreement Grant agreement id: 866043). Many translations in this chapter have been slightly modified to give a more literal sense of the text; unattributed translations are my own. I transliterate Syriac as well as rabbinic Aramaic and Hebrew in accordance with the early defective (i.e. non-vocalized) tradition, as follows: ʾ b g d h w z ḥ ṭ y k l m n s ʿ p ṣ q r sh t; Biblical texts follow the sbl transliterations; Arabic follows ijmes. I am grateful for the perceptive and encouraging comments and corrections offered by the anonymous reviewer of this volume and by Volker Drecoll to an earlier draft of this article; as well as to Sergey Minov and Alison Salvesen for their helpful guidance. I am moreover indebted to the resources offered by the Digital Syriac Corpus (⟨syriaccorpus.org⟩) and of the Friedberg Project for Talmud Bavli Variants (⟨bavli.genizah.org⟩). matthew 5:17 to bavli shabbat 116a-b 205 1 Matthew 5:17-18 in the Greek, Latin and Syriac Gospels Numerous scholars, myself included, have suggested that Matthew's gospel was originally written from within an ethnically Jewish framework, which includes gentiles, if at all, only as a secondary audience-with some exceptions such as the gospel's plausibly secondary ending.1 Matthew, in this view, presupposes that Jews must remain obedient to "the Law," i.e., to the entirety of the legal obligations which the Hebrew Bible imposes upon the Israelites-even if Jesus is portrayed as questioning Pharisaic additions to this law, especially when it comes to Kashrut and Shabbat observance.2 While the consensus on the matter seems to be moving towards the view that Matthew wrote within a Jewish lawaffirming context, Matthew's Christian readers, by contrast, long understood his polemics against Pharisaic law as directed against all of Jewish law, and some continue to do so.3 We will see that most hermeneutical positions occupied by contemporary academics have at least a close parallel already among Matthew's late antique readers. In the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew presents Jesus as summing up his legal philosophy. The passage Matt 5:17-20 is densely structured through a series of repetitions, here rendered in italics: 17 Think not that I have come to abolish the Law and the prophets, mē nomisēte oti ēlthon katalusai ton nomon ē tous prophētas, I have come not to abolish but to fulfil. ouk ēlthon katalusai alla plērōsai. 1 Central studies that have contributed to a better understanding of the clear distinction between Jewish and gentile ethnicity in the early church include John R.
This volume showcases a wide range of contemporary approaches to the identification of literary s... more This volume showcases a wide range of contemporary approaches to the identification of literary structures within Qur'anic surahs. Recent academic studies of the Qur'an have taken an increasing interest in the concept of the surah as a unity and, with it, the division of complete surahs into consecutive sections or parts. Part I presents a series of case studies focusing on individual Qur'anic surahs. Nevin Reda analyzes the structure of Sūrat Āl ʿImrān (Q 3), Holger Zellentin looks at competing structures within Sūrat al-ʿAlaq (Q 96), and A.H. Mathias Zahniser provides an exploration of the ring structures that open Sūrat Maryam (Q 19). Part II then focuses on three discrete aspects of the text. Nora K. Schmid assesses the changing structural function of oaths, Marianna Klar evaluates how rhythm, rhyme, and morphological parallelisms combine in order to produce texture and cohesion, while Salwa El-Awa considers the structural impact of First published 2021 by Routledge
Laugh where we must, be candid where we can; But vindicate the ways of God to Man. alexander pope... more Laugh where we must, be candid where we can; But vindicate the ways of God to Man. alexander pope, An Essay on Man … The tax-collectors and the whores are going into the kingdom of God ahead of you matthew 21:28 ⸪ Visits to the underworld have captivated the human imagination since antiquity.1 Individuals descend physically or through visions, only to re-emerge and tell the living what they have seen. Gilgamesh, in search of Enkidu, visits * My gratitude for the helpful comments offered by the participants of the 2012 Oxford Seminar on Jewish History and Literature in the Graeco-Roman Period, organized by Martin Goodman, and by the PhD students who made my Advanced Talmud seminar in 2010 the most enjoyable teaching and learning experience: Noah Greenfield, Marina Zilbergerts-Bitzan, Mira Wasserman, and Yoseph Rosen. All translations in this paper, unless otherwise noted, are my own. Hebrew, Aramaic, and Syriac are transliterated ' b g d h w z ḥ ṭ y k l m n s ' p ṣ q r š s t; Arabic ' b t ṯ ğ ḥ ḵ d ḏ r z s š ṣ ḍ ṭ ẓ ' ḡ f q k l m n h w y, proper names follow the traditional renderings.
This volume derives from a seminar entitled Fragmentation and Compilation: The Making of Religiou... more This volume derives from a seminar entitled Fragmentation and Compilation: The Making of Religious Texts in Islam-A Comparative Perspective, an interdisciplinary
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CV by Holger Zellentin
Books by Holger Zellentin
Journal Articles and Book Chapters by Holger Zellentin