Judaism, Christianity, and Islam: The Classical Texts and Their Interpretation, Volume I: From Convenant to CommunityPrinceton University Press, 2021 M03 9 - 440 pages Invoking a concept as simple as it is brilliant, F. E. Peters has taken the basic texts of the three related--and competitive--religious systems we call Judaism, Christianity, and Islam and has juxtaposed them in a topical and parallel arrangement according to the issues that most concerned all these "children of Abraham." Through these extensive passages, and the author's skillful connective commentary, the three traditions are shown with their similarities sometimes startlingly underlined and their well-known differences now more profoundly exposed. What emerges from this unique and ambitious work is a panorama of belief, practice, and sensibility that will broaden our understanding of our religious and political roots in a past that is, by these communities' definition, still the present. The hardcover edition of the work is bound in one volume, and in the paperback version the identical material is broken down into three smaller but self-contained books. The first, "From Covenant to Community," includes texts and comments on the covenant and early history of the Chosen People and their post-Exilic reconstruction; the career and message of the Messiah Jesus and the Prophet Muhammad; the concept of holiness and of a "kingdom of priests"; and, finally, the notions of church and state and the state as a church. Throughout the work we hear an amazing variety of voices, some familiar, some not, all of them central to the primary and secondary canons of their own tradition: alongside the Scriptural voice of God are the words of theologians, priests, visionaries, lawyers, rulers and the ruled. The work ends, as does the same author's now classic Children of Abraham, in what Peters calls the "classical period," that is, before the great movements of modernism and reform that were to transform Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. |
Contents
The Covenant and the History of | 3 |
John and Jesus 4 The Quranic Versions 5 The Question | 11 |
Christians Regard Eve 5 The Original Sin and Its Transmission 6 Paradise | 15 |
Support of the Priestly Class 4 The Purity of the Priesthood 5 The Priestly | 16 |
Instructions to His Disciples 14 The Demand for Signs 15 The Bread | 18 |
The Arabs as Ishmaelites 16 The Binding of Isaac 17 The Christian as | 22 |
of Functions and Gifts 19 The Christian Hierarchy 20 The Apostolic | 24 |
This Is My Commandment 23 The Victory Is Mine I Have Con | 26 |
Hidden Purpose 55 The Arrest of Paul 56 The Great War Begins | 57 |
The PostExilic Reconstruction | 62 |
Fugitives from the City | 180 |
Muhammad the Prophet of God | 182 |
A Kingdom of Priests and a Holy Nation | 249 |
Is Israel 17 The Old Priesthood and the New 18 The Remnant Shall | 289 |
Baptism in the Early Church 23 Faith Sin and Repentance 24 Confession | 295 |
The Church and the State | 341 |