de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture 0:00 This is Episode 31 of Ethics and Culture Cast from the de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture. Welcome to Episode 31 of Ethics and Culture Cast. I'm Ken Hallenius, the communications specialist at the de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture at the University of Notre Dame. In this episode, we chat with Professor Gabriel Reynolds, a professor in the world religions and world church program in Notre Dame's Department of Theology. He is an expert in Quranic studies and Muslim-Christian relations, and a member of the Center's Faculty Advisory Committee. Let's sit down with Professor Reynolds for this fascinating conversation. Gabriel Reynolds, thank you very much for coming to be with us. Gabriel Reynolds 1:09 Thank you. I'm delighted to be here. de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture 1:11 So tell us a bit about yourself. Where did you study? Where do you come from? How did you get to Notre Dame? These sorts of things. Gabriel Reynolds 1:18 Right. So my undergraduate studies were at Columbia University in New York City. And that's where I began studying Arabic and the Middle East. Generally, I began traveling over the summers to different countries in the Middle East. Before that, I was raised in Connecticut by a family that was of mixed heritage and part of that heritage was Middle Eastern. So my mother is from a Syrian family, she was actually raised in Boston. But if you go back far enough, you get to Damascus, Syria. So that's part of the story, of my sort of intellectual curiosity about the Middle East. But anyway, I studied I studied at Columbia, studied Middle Eastern Studies, went on to do graduate work at Yale University. And they were really focused on religion. So on Islam, in particular, and especially Islamic thought about Christianity. And I finished my PhD in 2003, and was lucky enough to be hired by Notre Dame, and I've been here ever since. de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture 2:15 So this is your, kind of first professional job? Gabriel Reynolds 2:18 First and only job. de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture 2:20 Yeah, what, what do you teach? Gabriel Reynolds 2:23 So my teaching stretches from the introduction to theology class here at Notre Dame, which is known as Foundations of Theology. So that's mostly with freshmen, and all the way up to PhD seminars. So that first course, Foundations of Theology is a challenge because it's within the core curriculum of Notre Dame, which, of course, is rooted in the Catholic mission of the university. So in that that course we focused principally on the Bible, also, early church thought, so the early councils and things like that. So that's a bit of a stretch for me, because I'm really trained as an Islamicist, although I am a Catholic. And then most of my other courses engage with Muslim-Christian relations or Islamic Studies in some way, I teach two different courses that have to do with dialogue between Muslims and Christians, one for undergraduates, one for Masters students. I teach a course on the Qur'an and the Bible, which I'm teaching this semester, which is really closely related to my research over the past several years, so I feel a little more comfortable there. And then I've done a couple of different courses on the PhD level, but the one that I teach most regularly is a really critical introduction to scholarly debates around the origin of Islam. So that's called Islamic Origins. And one further class that I've taught at Notre Dame center in Jerusalem, it's called Tantur, is on the Holy Land, and in particular, Muslim and Christian experiences, perspectives on the Holy Land through the century. de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture 3:52 Yeah. Well, and you kindly helped prepare our student pilgrims, you gave us a kind of a very crash course introduction to our pilgrims, who made the trip to the Holy Land over spring break. And I was happy to sit in on that as well. How many times have you been to the Holy Land, to Jerusalem? Gabriel Reynolds 4:11 Yeah, I've, I've lost count, not because I've been there dozens of times. But it's been seven, eight or nine times I went for the first time was very memorable. In 1993, I was studying in Jordan, studying Arabic for the summer. And I took a combination of buses and shared taxis and got from Amman, you know, over the Jordan River and crossed into into the Holy Land, and then went up to, to visit friends in Bethlehem and went to the Holy Sepulchre for the first time. So that was very memorable. And then, since coming to Notre Dame, I've been back to do I think I've taught three or four different intensive courses in the Holy Land. So it's been a place that's been really formative for my thinking about inter-religious relations. de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture 4:53 Yeah. Um, what is the importance of Jerusalem for Muslims? I mean, it's kind of obvious that that's where Christ died, you know, and obviously, it's the home of the temple for, for the Jewish people. It's where Jesus lived in that area and where he had his passion. What's the importance for Islam? Gabriel Reynolds 5:11 Right? That's a really good question. It's important to emphasize that Jerusalem is a sacred city for Muslims as well. Of course, observers might have noticed the conflict over places like the Temple Mount, which for Muslims is called the Haram esh-Sharif. It's where that building with the golden dome sits known as the Dome of the Rock. So it is indeed important and it's principally connected to a story which takes place during the lifetime of the Prophet Muhammad. So Muhammad lives, from 570 to 632. He's called to Prophethood in 610. And for his first about 12 years of his preaching of his prophetic career, he's in the city of Mecca. And Islamic tradition tells us that, at some point during his preaching in Mecca, a miraculous occurrence took place by which he was transported from the city of Mecca, all the way to Jerusalem, in a miraculous way. Some stories speak of a beast, some sort of horse like animal that had wings, it even gets a name, it's Buraq. And so he travels to Jerusalem on this animal, he sort of settles on what is now the Temple Mount, and from the spot where eventually Muslims would build the Dome of the Rock. And indeed, as one might guess, from the Rock, and that spot, he ascends into heaven, and he, he there meets all of the, many of the earlier prophets and even has a sort of beatific vision of sort of encounter with God. So that sort of rendered that spot sacred to Muslims. It's a sight of Muhammad's ascension to heaven. But it's also worth adding, just very briefly that Muslims also generally embrace the stories we know from the Bible about earlier prophets. And so they, they recognize, for that reason too that the Holy Land in Jerusalem, in particular, is sacred. de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture 7:05 Well, now you've made reference there to there's Islamic traditions, and then there's the sacred text itself, the Qur'an, your newest book, is "The Qur'an and the Bible: Text and Commentary." It's a master kind of reference work that brings together both the text of the Qur'an and parallel texts from outside Quranic tradition, like the Bible and extra-biblical texts. This sort of work shows a mastery of not just the sacred text itself, the Qur'an, but also so much other reading, that you can read through and draw these parallels, how do you assemble a work like this? How long did it take? Gabriel Reynolds 7:47 Yeah, so, with a lot of help from friends, first of all, and it took a long time. So this is a project I was working on for about five years. And right, I mean, in some ways, it's a very simple book, because it's simply presents an English translation of the Quran, it's not my translation, it's done by a Muslim scholar named Ali Quli Qarai. So I, with his permission, we used his translation. And then what I added basically is, I assembled together inter-texts, so texts from, as you mentioned, the Bible and para-biblical tradition, which are related to particular passages of the Qur'an. So I sort of selected those, put them in the right places, and then added the commentary, which shows how the Quran is connected to these, these biblical texts. But I would add, you know, I was able to advance with this project, principally because I've had fruitful relationships with scholars throughout the world who also work on the Quran, and the relationship between the Quran and the Bible. I've been very active with a group called the International Quranic Studies Association. And, you know, try to keep up with all the writings in the fields and sent the book out when it was in manuscript form to many, many colleagues. I mean, part of the problem, the reason why you need sort of a team to work on this sort of project is the Qur'an is is not in conversation with the canonical Bible. So it's not as though Muhammad or whoever the author of the Quran was, you know, sat down on a desk, opened the Bible, started reading through it and copying down important passages into the Quran. That's definitely not what happened. Instead, we have the whole world of late antiquity, again, Muhammad is living in in was working in the early seventh century. And this is a time where all sorts of biblical traditions are circulating. But in Arabia, the Bible itself had not yet been translated into Arabic. So if you're going to access the Bible through these oral traditions, and you may not distinguish between what is canonical, like what is actually in the Bible, and what is para-biblical, what are traditions that have sort of built up through the centuries to add to Biblical data. And so, and all of that information circulates in a number of different languages. The principal language in the Middle East spoken by Christians and Jews is some form of Aramaic. They're actually different forms for Christians and Jews. And then there's Greek, which is thanks to Alexander the Great, had been around for centuries, and was sort of a layer on top sort of, for official purposes. Even Latin had a certain role, but then there are languages that we may not know so well, especially Ethiopic which enters into Arabia from the south, not from the north. So there's a complicated array of languages, and you really need help to get a handle on the whole situation. de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture 10:45 Sure, sure. And these are not languages that you're necessarily conversant in? Gabriel Reynolds 10:49 I can handle, I can handle a couple of them. Yeah, yeah, but not all of them. de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture 10:55 You make reference there to participating in kind of Muslim-Christian dialogue too, I'm kind of interested, what's the state of Muslim-Christian dialogue these days? Gabriel Reynolds 11:05 So, it's, it's sort of a, it's a mixed, it's a mixed picture. In some ways, we're living in a time where there's more connection, more conversation, more discussion, more dialogue between people of faith. And, you know, the Holy Father, Pope Francis has been particularly active. In recent months, he has been to Abu Dhabi, in the Gulf. And there, actually signed a document on so called the human fraternity document with the Grand Imam of the most important Sunni Muslim institution, which is known as al-Azhar, which is actually in Cairo. So they sort of met together and in Abu Dhabi. He's also been to Morocco. So there's lots that's going on, and the Catholic Church in particular is engaged in, in or at a level which has never been engaged, and before in dialogue with Muslims. You know, I don't know how far we want to go there. But some people feel that whereas, you know, for John Paul II and Benedict, there was a particular commitment to advancing the conversation with Jews, and rectifying some of the historical wrongs that have taken place there, that Pope Francis really saw, has a particular calling towards dialogue with Muslims. Anyways, all that is good. And there's lots, there's lots that's going on, although there's a little bit of controversy there, as well. But on the other hand, dialogue is is a big challenge. And in part because the two communities, the Christian community and the Muslim community have so many divisions within themselves that the question is who's actually speaking with whom? And what sort of effect does that finally have on relations sort of on the ground between Muslims and Christians? de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture 12:57 Interesting. Well, let's go back a bit to your book, because I want to actually maybe draw some examples. The Qur'an is not in dialogue with the Biblical text, in the way that for, for example, perhaps the Book of Mormon would have been, right where he, where Joseph Smith had the Bible with him. But many Biblical characters do appear in the Qur'an. What would be an example of somebody from the Bible who makes an appearance in the Qur'an? Gabriel Reynolds 13:27 Right? I mean, why don't we start with Jesus? de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture 13:31 I like it. Gabriel Reynolds 13:31 In some ways that the central the central figure for, for Muslims as of course he is for, for Christians. And I say central for Muslims, because he's the prophet who leads to Muhammad, he is for Islamic faith, right? He's the last prophet before Muhammad, he predicts the coming of Muhammad. He brings a scripture, as Muhammad does. So he's, he's very important to the Qur'an. He's only mentioned by name 25 times. But the way he's mentioned is really important. In part because we see Christian terminology, adopted by the Qur'an, and adapted to a new theological framework. So for example, in Qur'an chapter four, verse 171, the Qur'an which is generally articulated in the voice of God Himself, it declares about Jesus, that He is a word, which God has cast into Mary, and He is a spirit which comes from Him. So it was a word and a spirit. This is this is very intriguing language. But that that same verse also speaks to Christians and says, Do not say three, simply believe in God and His messengers. So it seems to be even while it's adopting Christian language, it's adapting it to this new theological framework, which is even polemical, is even meant to refute Christianity. So that's sort of on the theology, but we also have a lot of allusions to Christian stories, some of the miracles that Christians may know from the New Testament, such as Jesus healing lepers, or healing the blind or even raising the dead are mentioned in the Qur'an. However, when they're mentioned, most often, the Quran usually adds, he did this by the permission of God. So not by his own power, God's power. So, and then we have other other stories that we know from what Christians might consider apocryphal gospels, for example, there's a story in the Quran that Jesus creates a bird from clay. He breathes into it, and it comes to life. And this is in the original Christian context that we know it from, which is from the infancy gospels of Christ. It's meant to show the creative power of Christ, right. As God Himself created Adam from clay and breathed into him the breath of life. So Jesus with God incarnate does the same thing with this little bird. Right? But in the Islamic context, or in the Quranic context, that little phrase is added by the permission of God. Okay, so so that it's no longer meant to read down to his divinity, but simply as a miracle, it's just a it's a really cool miracle. Yeah. de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture 16:17 Yeah. You mentioned Mary is named as well. Gabriel Reynolds 16:22 Yes. de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture 16:23 And so what's her role in the Qur'an as well? Gabriel Reynolds 16:28 Right, so Mary is, is very important to the Qur'an. Some people have noted that there's more material on Mary in the Qur'an than there is in the New Testament. That's true. And in fact, there's also a lot of convergence between Christian doctrine and Mary, and what the Qur'an says about Mary. For example, the Qur'an accepts the virgin birth of Christ. It may even accept the Immaculate Conception of Mary. Because there's a verse in chapter three of the Qur'an, which actually has the mother of Mary, mother of Jesus, whom Christians know by tradition as Saint Anne she dedicates that which is in her womb, to God, from, and as protection from Satan, which to some observers is an allusion to Mary being conceived without sin, somehow having a sort of protection around her, and in any case the virgin birth of Christ is emphatically accepted and taught by the Qur'an. And so we have the story of the angel visiting her, Qur'an chapter three, verse 45. But again, in Qur'an Chapter 19, which, incidentally, is a chapter which is named simply "Mary" speak of the Annunciation and the power of God to create Jesus in her womb, in a miraculous way. And so in that way, Mary is sort of a figure that can bring Muslims and Christians together. de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture 17:56 Wow. What are some of the things that your students find most interesting when they take your course on the Qur'an and the Bible? Gabriel Reynolds 18:05 I think part of the the fascination for for students in getting to know the Qur'an is how Biblical the text is. You know, some people might think of the Qur'an as this scripture coming from the desert of Arabia, maybe from a pagan context, maybe only distantly related to Judaism and Christianity. But when you begin to read the text, it's just, it's filled not only with biblical characters, but also with biblical language and even, for example, biblical cosmology, its fundamental vision of the world. So, I mean just to return for a moment to the biblical characters. It's not only Mary and Jesus, but from, from Adam. So we have the story of the creation of Adam and his fall, although Muslims wouldn't really accept the theological notion of a fall or original sin, but you still have a story of a fall. Actually, in the Qur'an, it's literally a fall, because the garden is imagined to be in some celestial realm, above the inhabited world. So Adam, after being tempted by Satan, he and Eve, although she's not named, and Satan, they all fall down from this celestial garden to the earth. So I mean, but characters from from Adam and Noah, we have the flood story, Abraham, Moses is very important. And he's named more than any other character in the Qur'an. On to not only Jesus and Mary, but also Zachariah and John the Baptist. They're all in the Qur'an. And I just add to that, that the very notion that is at the heart of the Qur'an, which is His Prophetology, the idea that God chooses one man, and in the Qur'an, it always seems to be men, not women. So it's not just gender specific, in order to be gender specific, right? The idea that God would choose one man, give him a scripture, which he would deliver to the people, and that would be the medium of divine communication and ultimately of salvation. Salvation in Islam is your fidelity to the prophetic revelation. So that whole vision, that's a biblical idea, it's it doesn't reflect other religious systems, it reflects notions of the great prophets of the Hebrew Scriptures, and even Christian ideas of prophecy in the New Testament. de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture 20:29 Kind of building on that, is there an idea of progressive revelation? And the Qur'an is the then the pinnacle, and there is no more? Gabriel Reynolds 20:40 So definitely to the latter part of that. Yeah, that's, that's really important to emphasize. For Muslims, the Qur'an is a final revelation, there can be no prophet after Muhammad. And every once in a while, throughout the history of Islam, there have been figures who have appeared and claimed to be prophets, and it's caused big trouble. So there is actually a movement some of your listeners may be familiar with, known as Baha'ism. So the Baha'i faith that emerges in the 19th century in Iran, from a figure Baha'u'llah, who claimed to be a prophet, and Baha'is are, they've thrived in the West, but not in the Islamic world where they've been harshly persecuted. So but in terms of progressive revelation, that that's an interesting question, which scholars really debate because in some ways, a contrast between the Bible at least as it's read by the Church, and the Qur'an, is the stories of the prophets in the Qur'an seem to be more cyclical. That is, we seem to have type and prototype. So the story that we have, for example, about Noah, or about Lot, even about Moses, and maybe about Jesus, although there's a little more texture to the Jesus material in the Qur'an, that they all seem to anticipate the story of Muhammad himself. Some scholars would go so far as to say the Qur'an is, as Islam is monotheistic, the Qur'an is "mono-prophetic." You have all these different names of prophets, but they're really prototypes of Muhammad, we really only have one prophetic figure in the Qur'an. I'm not sure if that really makes sense. de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture 22:16 No it does in the same sense that we say, you know, the rock was Christ that we read, like, for example, in the letter to the Hebrews, drawing on this idea of the types of the Old Testament, pointing to Christ, the same kind of a parallel idea. Gabriel Reynolds 22:31 Yeah. de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture 22:33 Well, this is absolutely fascinating. Where could a general reader get an introduction to Islam? Gabriel Reynolds 22:41 So at the risk of self-promotion, I would start with, with a book that, that I wrote called "The Emergence of Islam," which is published with Fortress Press, which is a good place to start, I think. And then if people are particularly interested in the Qur'an and the Bible the book by Yale University Press "Qur'an and the Bible," would be good as well. I think there are other important resources out there, Andrew Rippin has written a good introductory book. For a Muslim perspective, there are a couple of different places one could go, I would probably start with the writing of Mustafa Akyol, who appeared at Notre Dame in the in the fall, this past fall, he was at Notre Dame, but he wrote a very interesting book called "Islam Without Extremes," which offers the perspective of a Muslim committed to notions of religious liberty. And along with a general introduction to Islam. de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture 23:38 Well, one thing I didn't ask you, and maybe we'll end with this is what's your relationship to the Center for Ethics and Culture? Well, I should say, the de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture. Gabriel Reynolds 23:48 Indeed, yeah, first of all, I'm a big fan. So I'm really grateful for all the activities and the presence of the Center. And it's not simply its presence, but it has sort of an effect that spreads throughout throughout the campus, among undergraduate students who are affiliated with the university, the great conference that takes place in the fall, which is an annual event on everyone's calendar. So but in fact, I'm a faculty affiliate, and have been involved in different pro-life activities that the Center sponsors and do my best to get to the March for Life in January each year, and yeah, I'm very grateful for the work of the Center and delighted to be able to speak with you as well. de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture 24:37 Awesome. Well, Gabriel Reynolds, Thank you kindly for coming to be with us. Gabriel Reynolds Thank you. de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture Thank you to Professor Gabriel Reynolds for the excellent conversation. Find links to his book and his other recommended texts for interested readers in the show notes. Subscribe to Ethics and Culture Cast so that you can always get the latest episodes by visiting ethicscenter.nd.edu/podcast. We would love your feedback. Please give us a review wherever you get your podcasts, and email your suggestions to cecpodcast@nd.edu. Our theme music is "I Dunno" by grapes, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution license. We'll see you next time on ethics and culture cast. Until then, make good decisions. Transcribed by https://otter.ai