The Last Uncomfortable "Religious" Question? Monotheistic Exclusivism and Textual Superiority in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam as Sources of Hate and Genocide

This paper is a preliminary examination of some of the texts of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam–Hebrew Bible, New Testament, Qur’an–that appear to affirm such exclusivism, and, at the same time, a reflection upon the meanings and implications of those texts coterminous with their historical realities.

[T]he persecution of Jews has occurred more often than not as a result of Jewish action or change. . .. The faith of Judaism in itself, with its dogmatically distinct views and beliefs, sparked religious persecution that spilled over into a multitude of varying degrees and forms throughout history. . .. The key dogmas of Judaism would lay the foundation for a chain reaction that would birth a multitude of beliefs which wholly (sic) define anti-Semitism. . .. It seems that, before and after the Holocaust, anti-Semitism is rooted in the same illogical roots-the myths and fear spread by Christianity, and, unfortunately, the beliefs of the Jews themselves. . .. Judaism has been the ultimate victim throughout history as its own faith and practices seem to work against the Jewish people. . ..it is not exactly fair to say that the Jewish people created the system of hate which has caused them turmoil for thousands of years; [but] Judaism, with its unique practices and frequent inter-faith conflicts, has led to the creation of many forms of persecution and prejudice that haunt its followers throughout time.
While it would, perhaps, be too easy to dismiss this writing as the work of a naïve undergraduate falling into the all-too-common contemporary manifestation of "blaming the victim," or, worse, someone with an anti-Jewish or antisemitic agenda, his use of and quotation from such solid sources as Joshua Trachtenberg's classic (1983) work The Devil and the Jews: Medieval Conceptions of Anti-Semitism;Peter Schaffer's important (1997)  Antiquity to the Present bespeak otherwise, and, therefore, raise, for me, the troubling question of whether there is something inherent in Judaism and the historical experiences of the Jewish people which has thus engendered this ongoing antisemitic response of the larger communities wherein Jews have lived and continue to live. 3 And because I have been trained in reading, analyzing, and interpreting classical Jewish texts (Torah, Midrash, Talmud, etc.), and work in the cross-disciplinary and inter-disciplinary field known as "Religious Studies," with a specialization in Holocaust and Genocide Studies and Post-Shoah Biblical (Hebrew Bible and New Testament) Re-interpretation, I wonder whether this question is equally applicable, however modified, to both Christianity and Islam as monotheistic religious traditions, both of which exist in tension rather than harmony with Judaism. I believe it is.

II. MONOTHEISTIC EXCLUSIVISM IN JUDAISM, CHRISTIANITY, AND ISLAM: REPRESENTATIVE PASSAGES
While continually disharmonious and divisive amongst and between themselves, the one thing that unites the religious traditions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam is their public expression of and commitment to One God, announced either as Adonai (Jews hesitant to speak the Ineffable Name of the Tetragrammaton), Father/Son [Christ]/Holy Ghost or Spirit, and Allah. We know this from the sacred or holy texts each tradition regards as central to its identity, also understood as the very revelation of that same Deity not only to its own community but to all humanity: the Torah or Hebrew Bible of the Jews, the Old and New Testaments of the Christians, and the Qur'an of the Muslims. While each community may raise and has raised serious questions regarding the full authenticity of the other's texts, collectively, none deny the Oneness of their God, while, at the very same time, dismissing (or worse) any other understanding of what I choose to call the "divine-human encounter," and, therefore, by extension, equally dismissing (or worse) any group presenting an alternative view.

A. Judaism
The Torah's rejection of other gods, or, better, the "gods of others," for the people of Israel, occupies a prominent position in the two places where the misnamed and mis-understood Aseret Ha-Dibrot (the so-called euphemistically named "Ten Commandments") occur: Exodus 20:3 and Deuteronomy 5:7-"You shall have no other gods in My Presence!" Earlier, in the "Song of Moses" or "Song at the Sea," Exodus 15:11, the very superiority of the God of Israel to all others gods is affirmed: "Who is like You, O Lord, among the gods?" [The late great Israeli biblical scholar Yehezkel Kaufmann (1889Kaufmann ( -1964 reminds us here that the movement in the thought of Ancient Israel, reflected in the texts themselves, was from monolatry (i.e. the acceptance of the reality of \\server05\productn\G\GHS\3-1\GHS104.txt other nations' gods but the superiority of Israel's own) to that of monotheism (i.e. the understanding that the One God of Israel is, in fact, the Only Existent God). 4 ] Thus, we find the idea that the One God affirmed in Psalms 50:1 ("The Mighty One, God the Lord, speaks and summons the earth from the rising of the sun to its setting"), and that God's unique and special relationship with Zion/Israel in verses 2 ("Out of Zion, the perfection of beauty, God shines forth") and 4 ("His people"), 5 ("My faithful ones, who made a covenant with Me"), 5 and 7 ("My people"). According to the prophet Malachi, that same One God is, indeed, God over all, according to 2:10: "Have we not all One Father? Has not One God created us?" That the God of Israel is, ultimately, the Only God, is also reflected in the text. For example, Psalm 86:10 affirms this same God of Israel as the Only True Divine Reality ("For You are Great and do wondrous things, You Alone are God"), though two verses prior a seeming recognition of other divine realities is expressed ("There is none like You, among the gods, O Lord, nor are there any works like Yours"). Might we not see in this apparent contradiction a not-so-subtle lip service to the false understanding of others?
According to the prophet Jeremiah, 18:15, for example, when the people of Israel deviate from their covenantal responsibilities and obligations, they do so in response to a delusion ("But My people have forgotten Me, they burnt offerings to a delusion")-in defiance of the Only True God who exists, 10:10: "But the Lord is the True God, He is the Living God and the Everlasting Ruler. At His wrath the earth quakes, and the nations cannot endure His indignation." Thus, summarily, these few representative examples, and there are many, many others, paint a portrait of the God of Israel-the God of the Jews-who is the Only Existent God, Alone and True, the One who will not tolerate any semblance of other divine realities, be they false or delusionary, on the part of His selected and elected and chosen covenantal community. How Jews (and others) have responded to this understanding will be addressed below. 6

B. Christianity
The controversies surrounding the current moment of Mel Gibson's movie epic The Passion of the Christ notwithstanding, the "translation" of the "Word" of the Parent God into the human person of the Son God, Jesus the Christ, textually displaces the Parent and makes the Son the central bridge and connection back to the Parent, and, in so doing, equally displaces the original covenantal relationship of the Jews with their God from its initially-perceived first position into a demeaned second position, and, for some, a now-abrogated if not nullified non-existent position as well (e.g. Gospel of John 14:6: "I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life. No one goes to the Father except through Me." Gospel of John 10:9: "I am the Gate. Whoever enters by Me will be saved.") \\server05\productn\G\GHS\3-1\GHS104.txt This same Gospel account affirms the Onlyness of God (5:44: "How can you believe when you accept glory from one another and do not seek glory that comes from the One who Alone is God?"), as does I Timothy 1:17 ("To the King of the Ages, Immortal, Invisible, the Only God. . ..") and Jude 1:25 ("to the Only God our Savior through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, power, and authority, before all time and now and forever").
Only this God though this Christ, then, possesses the power to grant eternality: John 17:3 ("And this is eternal life that they may know You, the Only True God, and Jesus Christ whom You sent"), and Romans 16:27 (". . .the Only Wise God, through Jesus Christ. . .").
This same God, according to I Thessalonians 1:9, is a "Living and True God," equally and importantly affirmed in I John 5:20-21: "And we know that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding so that we may know Him who is True; and we are in Him who is True, in His Son Jesus Christ. He is the True God and Eternal Life." As is the case with the Hebrew Bible, there are many, many texts throughout which could be cited in support of this understanding of the Onlyness of this Parent God and the path to "salvation" and eternality through His Only Son Jesus the Christ. The uses to which these texts have been put-how they have been read, understood, interpreted, and used-will also be discussed below.

C. Islam
Whatever else the tragedy of September 11, 2001, and this country's questionably labeled ongoing "war on terrorism" has done, it has focused our ignorance on the third great monotheistic religious tradition, Islam, its history and its texts. More courses are presently being taught, more experts and nonexperts are benefiting from the various media spotlights, and a plethora of publications, creditable and suspect, are being issued and/or republished on a regular basis. My focus here, however, is on the texts of the Qur'an rather than, at the outset, socio-political or religio-theological realities. (Parenthetically, I would urge, however, on all those in attendance, a serious study not only of relevant and related history and politics, but of the Qur'an as well. An excellent place to start would be 'Abdullah Yûsuf ' Alî's (1991)  Like its predecessors the Hebrew Bible/Torah and New Testament, the Qur'an, too, equally affirms both the Onlyness and the Oneness of the God/ Allah in its various suras. 3:62 (The Family of Imran): "Most surely this is the true explanation, and there is no god but Allah; and most surely Allah-He is the Mighty, the Wise." 37:35 (The Rangers): "Surely they used to behave proudly when it was said to them: There is no god but Allah." 38:65 (Suad): "Say: I am only a warrior, and there is no god but Allah, the One, the Subduer (of all)." 47:19 (Muhammad): "So know that there is no god but Allah, and ask protection for your fault and the believing men and the believing women; and Allah knows the place of your returning and your abiding." God's Oneness is explicitly stated in 2:133 and 2:163 (The Cow): ". . ..One God Only, and to Him do we submit"; and "And your God is One God! There is no god but He; He is the Beneficent, the Merciful." 4:171 (The Women): "Allah is the Only One God; far be it from His glory that He should have a son, whatsoever is in the heavens and whatever is in the earth is His, and Allah is Sufficient for a Protector." 5:73 (The Dinner Table): "Certainly they disbelieve who say: Surely Allah is the third person of the three; but there is no god but the One God, and if they desist not from what they say, a painful chastisement shall befall those among them who disbelieve." 16:51 (The Bee): "And Allah has said: Take not two gods. He is [the] Only One God; so of Me Alone should you be afraid." So, too, other relevant suras could be cited. Also central and fundamental to our understanding are two of the "Five Pillars of Islam": Faith and Prayer (the other three being Zakat or charity, fasting during Ramadan, and Hajj or Pilgrimage to Makkah). 8 The Shahada or "Declaration of Faith" of the pious Muslim is the simple formula "There is no god worthy of worship except God [Allah], and Muhammad is His messenger." The Salat or "Call to Prayer" (dawn, noon, mid-afternoon, sunset, and nightfall) offered by the muezzin is: God is most great. God is most great. God is most great. God is most great. I testify that there is no god except God. I testify that there is no god except God. I testify that Muhammad is the messenger of God. I testify that Muhammad is the messenger of God. Come to prayer! Come to prayer! Come to success (in this life and the Hereafter)! Come to success! God is most great! God is most great! There is no god except God. 9

III. THE UNFORTUNATE AND TRAGIC USES OF SACRED TEXTS
Depending on whose ox is doing the goring-an allusion to Exodus 21:28-32 10 -the fundamental question, at least initially, is not that of the religio-theological and socio-political (and militarily violent) uses to which a text is put secondarily, but, rather, how one, either individual or group, reads or understands or analyzes a text, and then and only then, the behaviors or actions which flow from those readings and affirmations.
Judaism tions, regardless of whether their own communities are themselves everywhere and at all times themselves literate. By this I both mean and understand that each attributes to its sacred texts power superior to that which might be ascribed to other writings even by adherents and leaders of their respective traditions. And because these sacred texts, both oral and written, at least initially, are perceived and affirmed as coming directly from God/Allah-what all three regard as the act of "revelation" (the Divine revealing [making known] Himself to His specially-related human communities)-their initial reception, however these texts are presented to us (original language or translation), are accepted literally, that is, the texts are read, comprehended, analyzed, and accepted based upon a supposedly accurate reception of the words themselves and their grammatical constructions. That is to understand, a text says what it says and means what it means and not what we would wish it to say or mean. And, coupled with the turn from oral to written transmission (scribal, printing, computer-generated), and our psychological too-easy acceptance of that which is written down and presented to us (i.e. the all-too-common "fallacy of the printed word"-that which is written is obviously true, for were it not true it would not be written), sacred texts, perhaps more than any other literary genre, leave other texts far, far in the distance. 11 Thus, Judaism and Christianity and Islam continue to do harm to themselves and to others stemming from their literal views of their understandings of God based upon their relationships to their sacred texts. Some Jews have taken a hard-line and, at times, violent position with regard to settlements throughout the Land of Israel and against those who would oppose them and settle in the same spaces or present alternative understandings, out of their literalist readings of the Hebrew Bible. Some Western Christians have, at times, violently evolved a theology of triumphalist supercessionism with regard to Jews over the last two thousand years, tragically successful because of the collusion of Christianity with the various governmental structures that have made their appearances throughout Europe and elsewhere, out of their literalist readings of the Old and New Testaments. Some Muslims have justified violence against non-Muslims-suicide bombers in Israel, September 11th attacks in the United States-based upon a literalist understanding of jihadism external to the personal struggles within oneself to become worthy of Allah, out of their literalist readings of the Qur'an. Thus, the very sacred texts of all three monotheistic religious traditions continue to be used to justify hateful and pre-genocidal acts and behaviors based upon those readings and consequent understandings. 12 Indeed, one could cite many other examples within each of these three monotheistic religious traditions.

IV. WHAT, THEN, IS TO BE DONE?
At this moment on the world scene, the voices of the literalists appear to be shouting the loudest, to the disadvantage of us all. In addition, calls for \\server05\productn\G\GHS\3-1\GHS104.txt calmness, civil and reasoned discourse, tolerance and respect for diverse and divergent points of view and perspectives result in hateful and violent, if not pre-genocidal, acts across and within these three religious communities.
Israel has yet to come to grips with the religious significance of the tragedies of Orthodox Jew Baruch Goldstein's murder of Muslims at prayer at the mosque in Hebron, and of the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin by Orthodox Jew Yigal Amir. While the Roman Catholic Church has made significant and important strides and admissions in its relationship with Jews, and the Lutheran Church also has begun the always-painful task of self-examination, too many, both officially and otherwise within the various Protestant Christianities, have yet to truly begin the task of discerning whether both historical and contemporary teachings continue a pattern of denigrating the other who is not like themselves. Within the different strains of Islam, the urgent need to reexamine both teachings and texts as to whether those who do violence can and do derive their justifications for their behaviors from their readings/comprehensions/analyses appears to be too-slowly forthcoming. Indeed, Jonathan Kirsch writes in his newly-released book God Against the Gods: The History of the War Between Monotheism and Polytheism: When Arab suicide bombers carried out "martyr operations" in Haifa, Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, and when a Jewish physician opened fire on Muslims at prayer at the Tomb of the Patriarchs, each one was acting out a kind of zealotry that was inspired by a tragic misreading and misapplication of ancient texts. 13 When, then, is to be done? Specifically, for all three great monotheistic religious communities, is there another way (other than literally) to read, comprehend, and analyze these sacred and holy texts of each tradition and still accord them the power and authority historically ascribed to them, as well as to acknowledge their primary position as the inter-connection between the human and the Divine? At the very same time, can such a different reading espoused by others within these communities empower those who wish to both remain within and reach out beyond, religio-theologically as well as socio-politically, to begin the arduous journey toward curbing the hate and the violence? Intellectually, I do believe that can be the case, drawing upon the long-honored though too-often ignored Judaic reading tradition of what I now call "The Midrashic Way," 14 that is, a 2,000-year-old non-literal interpretive commentary tradition and conversation of and by the rabbis with the Hebrew Scriptures and now encompassing both New Testament and Qur'an. 15 The idea is not initially mine, but rather that of Orthodox Jewish feminist and author Blu Greenberg, though her specific frames of reference were the Shoah or Holocaust and only the Gospels.
In her (1989) article "The Holocaust and the Gospel Truth: Christian Con- In as much as I believe, like many others, that the Shoah is not a freak event vis-à-vis Christian Gospels but, rather, the expressed culmination of a suppressed rage against the Jews embedded within its words, I shall proceed to take the liberties that ecumenism vests in us. The conclusion I draw from the Holocaust and from the four decades following it, is that Christianity needs a Talmud and a Midrash that deal with the foundation documents of its faith; that Christians of the next two thousand years ought not to be able to read or teach or understand first century Christianity without these hermeneutical texts of quasi-canonical status; that in the year 2500 a Christian child standing at any point along the religious denominational spectrum will not and need not know where the Scripture leaves off and quasi-Scripture begins. Why do I use terms such as Talmud and Midrash, so particular to the Jewish tradition? In order to precisely convey the notions of power, authority, and sacredness, as Talmud and Midrash have done for Jewish for so many centuries unto this very day. Or, to present this in a more ironic fashion-it is not too late, eighteen hundred years later, for Christianity to do what Judaism of the other Jews did in the first century: to become a religion of the "two Torahs." Such is the conclusion drawn by a twentieth-century post-Holocaust Jew who has been informed by more than two decades of the Jewish-Christian encounter. In fact, I have arrived as this conclusion as much through a series of encounters and experiences as through academic study (pp. 273-274). 16 Ms. Greenberg's radically innovative idea for the Christianities, and my expansion of it to include the Islams, has not yet been given the attention it now needs in our increasingly violent world. Nor have the calls for more "midrashic readings" of the Hebrew biblical text been heard or affirmed in Israel by her non-Orthodox political leadership, or here in the United States (or elsewhere) by those who are among Israel's most vocal supporters and willing defenders. I would also add that, for this process to succeed, and here I am indebted to German Catholic thinker Johannes Baptist Metz and the late French Jewish philosopher Emanuel Levinas, the time has now come for all three great religious traditions to begin to read their own sacred scriptures in the presence of the other. How fitting, then, in conclusion, to paraphrase the words of the Second Century Talmudic sage Rabbi Tarphon in the Jewish ethical tractate known as Pirkei Avot/Sayings of the Fathers: The day is short and the task is great and the workers are sluggish, and the reward is much, and the Master of the house is urgent. It is not incumbent upon you to finish the task, but neither are you free to desist from it.