The Golden Calf Between Bible and Qur'an: Scripture, Polemic, and Exegesis From Late Antiquity to Islam by Michael Pregill;

Author:Michael Pregill; [Pregill, Michael E.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780192593634
Publisher: OUP Premium
Published: 2020-07-21T00:00:00+00:00

Part III

The Qur’anic Calf Episode

6

The Qur’anic Calf Episode Between Orientalism and Islamic Tradition

Late Antiquity, Islamic origins, and the Qur’an

As the preceding chapters have shown, the exegesis of the Golden Calf narrative in Jewish and Christian circles in the period preceding the rise of Islam reflects both an ongoing contest over the ultimate significance of the episode and a persistent state of proximity, even intimacy, between parallel communities of interpretation. The ongoing rivalry between Jewish and Christian exegetes at this time is symptomatic of broader conditions in the Near East and Mediterranean between the third and the eighth century ce, the period now commonly termed Late Antiquity.1 Numerous trends emerged during this era that would prove to be of tremendous significance for the history of the civilizations of western Eurasia: the decline and eventual disappearance of classical polytheisms and the spread of various forms of monotheism, most of which were rooted in the Israelite covenantal, prophetic, and scriptural legacy; the general hardening of distinctions between systems of belief and ritual, with the consequent ossification and polarization of formerly diffuse, fluid, and mutually permeable religious identities; and an ever-intensifying pattern of competition between communities, entailing implicit or explicit claims to an exclusive, or at least superior, path to truth, and even to the sole authentic means of individual and collective salvation.

Throughout the interconnected Mediterranean and Near Eastern worlds, a process of communal sclerosis set in, and both discursive expressions of hostility and actual violence between everyday believers increasingly became the order of the day.2 Moreover, in this period, imperial powers frequently came to legitimate themselves through affiliation with one or another religious hierarchy, contributing to the greater centralization and institutionalization of what would become the major religious traditions dominating the region in the medieval period. In turn, belief systems and communities lacking imperial patronage or recognition—whether actual “minorities” or not—struggled to justify themselves against the claims of rivals who could now command the coercive powers of the state.

Many Jewish communities came to be marginalized in this way after the onset of Christianization in the Roman Empire in the fourth century, but other examples in the Roman sphere come to mind, including that of “paganism” itself, to say nothing of alternative formations of Christianity deemed to be heretical—or at least less than perfectly orthodox—by imperial and ecclesiastical authorities. Though less well-documented, analogous processes seem to have affected communities across the eastern frontier in the Sasanian Empire, the other great power in the region that challenged the hegemony of Rome beginning in the third century. Here too religious communities increasingly tended to coalesce around hierarchized scripturalist formations such as institutional Zoroastrianism, Assyrian Christianity, or the Judaism of the Babylonian academies; the alternatives—again including traditional religious expressions deemed to be “paganism” as well as “heretical” forms of native Iranian religion, Judaism, and Christianity—were similarly eliminated or assimilated. In areas such as Iraq, the extreme diversity of forms of religiosity and communal affiliation led to a vibrant and persistent competition between groups; spokesmen of numerous communities

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