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Muhammad's Midrash: Elijah Muhammad's Biblical Interpretation in Light of Rabbinic Midrash
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 July 2009
Extract
The nation of islam is well known for its anti-Semitic rhetoric. What is little known, or at least little acknowledged, however, is that the Nation of Islam and Judaism possess a number of striking similarities. Although some of these parallels may be attributed to the influence of Christianity and traditional Islam on the Nation's development, or even to direct or indirect contact with Jewish traditions, themselves, others must be traced to the fertile religious imagination of the movement's prophet and former leader, Elijah Muhammad.
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1. Recent charges of anti-Semitism within the Nation of Islam have focused on the public declarations of Louis Farrakhan (the Nation's leader) and Khallid Abdul Muhammad (its former spokesman), as well as on publications associated with the group. For his part, Farrakhan has repeatedly denied charges of anti-Semitism. Thus, in a 1985 speech in Los Angeles, he declared, “I have a problem with Jews and it is not because I am hateful of Jewish people, not at all. But I have a problem because I am declaring to the world that they are not the chosen people of God. I am declaring to the world that you, the black people of America and the Western hemisphere [are the chosen people]” (as reported in Cummings, Judith, “Diverse Crowd Hears Farrakhan in Los Angeles,” New York Times, 09 16, 1985, 10).Google Scholar However, for a critical examination of Farrakhan's position vis-a-vis Jews and Judaism during the period of his Los Angeles speech, see Hitchens, Christopher, “The False Messiah Who Hates Jews,” Spectator, 01 25, 1986.Google Scholar
2. For example, parallels between the dietary laws of Judaism and of the Nation of Islam may be attributed to the influence of orthodox Islam on the Nation.
3. In discussing the contribution of Elijah Muhammad to the Nation of Islam's doctrine, it is important to note that Muhammad, himself, repeatedly emphasized his own debt to the founder of the Nation of Islam, the enigmatic W. D. Fard. On Fard, see Essien-Udom, E. U., Black Nationalism: A Search for an Identity in America (New York: Dell, 1962), 55ffGoogle Scholar; and Lincoln, C. Eric, The Black Muslims in America (Boston: Beacon, 1961), 1Off.Google Scholar
4. Although the emphasis of the present work is on Elijah Muhammad's exegesis of the Hebrew Bible, many of the same conclusions apply to Muhammad's exegesis of the New Testament and Quran.
5. The body of literature on midrash is enormous. Some of the most important works include Heinemann, Yitzhak, Darkhe Ha-Aggadah (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1974Google Scholar); Strack, H. and Stemberger, G., Introduction to the Talmud and Midrash (Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark, 1991)Google Scholar; Fishbane, Michael, The Garments of Torah: Essays in Biblical Hermeneutics (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989)Google Scholar; Kugel, James, In Potiphar's House: The Interpretive Life of Biblical Texts (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990)Google Scholar; and Boyarin, Daniel, Intertextuality and the Reading of Midrash (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990).Google Scholar
6. Kugel, , Potiphar's House, 6–7.Google Scholar
7. Here, I borrow the terminology of Boyarin, , Intertextuality, 41 ff.Google Scholar Boyarin defines such textual “gaps” as “those silences in the text which call for interpretation if the reader is to ‘make sense’ of what happened, to fill out the plot and the characters in a meaningful way.”
8. See, for example, Pearson, Birger, “Biblical Exegesis in Gnostic Literature”Google Scholar and “Jewish Haggadic Traditions in The Testimony of Truth from Nag Hammadi (CG 9:3),” in Gnosticism, Judaism, and Egyptian Christianity (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1990).Google Scholar
9. Harold Bloom has already noted a general resemblence between the Nation of Islam's doctrine and Gnosticism, or as he puts it in The American Religion: The Emergence of the Post-Christian Nation (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1992), 250Google Scholar, “the doctrine of Fard and Elijah, a violent Gnosticism still prevalent in the flamboyant Farrakhan …”.
10. For the German term “Protestexegese,” see Rudolph, K., “Randerscheinungen des Judentums und das Problem der Entstehung des Gnostizismus,” Kairos 9 (1967): 117.Google Scholar For the expression, “Inverse Exegesis,” see Couliano, I., The Tree of Gnosis: Gnostic Mythology from Early Christianity to Modern Nihilsm (San Francisco: Harper Collins, 1992), 121.Google Scholar
11. Ibid.
12. Muhammad, Elijah, Message to the Blackman in America (Newport News, Virginia, 1992), 95.Google Scholar See also X, Malcolm's statement in The Autobiography of Malcolm X (New York: Grove, 1965), 343Google Scholar: “The Holy Bible of the white man's hands and his interpretations of it have been the greatest single ideological weapon for enslaving millions of non-white human beings.”
13. Muhammad, , Message to the Blackman, 87–88.Google Scholar
14. See Genesis Rabbah 8:3.Google Scholar
15. Ibid., 8:4.
16. For a discussion of this tradition, see Cook, Johann, “Anti-Heretical Traditions in Targum Pseudo-Jonathan,” Journal of Northwest Semitic Language 11 (1983): 51–52.Google Scholar It should be noted that Pseudo-Jonathan is the only one of the four Targums that inserts the tradition of the ministering angels. Moreover, it should be pointed out that in Pseudo-Jonathan the midrash actually becomes part of the biblical text, a phenomon that we will see again here in Elijah Muhammad's exegesis of Genesis.
17. Genesis Rabbah, 8:8.Google Scholar
18. De Trinitate i. 14Google Scholar, See also Augustine's remarks in De Genesi ad litteram libri duodecim (The Literal Meaning of Genesis: A Commentary in Twelve Books), book 3, ch. 19. For a discussion of Christian traditions on Gen. 1:26, see Bowker, John, The Targums and Rabbinic Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969), 106–8.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
19. The full text of Justin's remarks are as follows, “for I cannot think that to be true which is taught by what is considered by yourselves to be a heresy, or that its propagators are able to prove, that he spoke to angels, and that the human body is the work of angels.” Here, Justin conflates two potentially separate traditions. The first, which as we have seen, was common in rabbinic sources was that God spoke to the angels before creating Adam; the second, not necessarily related tradition, was that the angels actually created the human body. Although in his analysis of this tradition in The Targums and Rabbinic Literature (107)Google Scholar, John Bowker writes that “Justin probably had in mind the delegation of creation in Gnostic systems, where were as much opposed by Judaism as they were by Christianity,” it is also possible that Justin was referring to a group of Jewish “proto-Gnostics” such as the Magharians. On this issue, see Wolfson, Harry, “The Pre-Existent Angel of the Magharians and Al-Nahawandi,” Jewish Quarterly 51 (1960).Google Scholar See also the Gnostic source The Tripartite Tractate 112.29–113.1, which declares, “By interpreting them they established many heresies which exist to the present among the Jews … Still others say that it was by the angels that he created.” Mention should also be made of Philo's views on Gen. 1:26. For example, in De Fuga et inventions, Philo interprets the plural of Gen. 1:26 as referring to the “powers” who aid God in the creation of the “mixed” type of human being. For a discussion of Philo's views and their relationship with early Christian interpretations, see D'Angelo, Mary Rose, “The Garden: Once and Not Again: Traditional Interpretation of Genesis 1:26–17 [sic] in 1 Cor. 11:7–12,” in Genesis 1–3 in the History of Exegesis: Intrigue in the Garden ed. Robbins, Gregory Allen (Lewiston: E. Mellen, 1988), 17.Google Scholar I have intentionally avoided examining the interpretive tradition of Gen. 1:26 found in both 1 Cor. 11 and in rabbinic sources such as the Jerusalem Talmud Ber. 9.1 (12d–13a) and Genesis Rabbah 18Google Scholar, i.e., “not man without woman, not woman without, not both of them without the shekinah” (1 Cor. has an inverse formulation).
20. See, the Apocryphon of John 15:1–4Google Scholar, in Robinson, James, ed., The Nag Hammadi Library in English (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1988), 113.Google Scholar
21. On the relationship between midrash and modern literary theory, see Handelman, Susan, The Slayers of Moses: The Emergence of Rabbinic Interpretation in Modern Literary Theory (Albany: SUNY Press, 1982).Google Scholar
22. Malcolm X, Autobiography, 304.Google Scholar
23. For a discussion of the typological exegesis frequently employed in African American religious movements, see Smith, Theophus, Conjuring Culture: Biblican Formations of Black America (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), 55 ff.Google Scholar Smith defines typology as “the hermeneutic (interpretive) tradition that links biblical types or figures to postbiblical persons, places, and events.”
24. See, for example, Muhammad, Elijah, Our Saviour Has Arrived (Chicago: Mohammad Mosque of Islam No. 2, 1974), 8–9.Google Scholar
25. W. D. Fard declared that he came from “the Holy City of Mecca,” and was “reputed to have been educated in England and at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles and to have been trained for a diplomatic career in the service of the Kingdom of Hehaz” (see Essien-Udom, , Black Nationalism, 55).Google Scholar
26. See, for example, Mishnah 'Abot i. 1 and parallels, which are ably discussed by Herr, M., “Continuum in the Chain of Transmission” [in Hebrew], Zion 44 (1979): 43–56.Google Scholar
27. Fishbane, Michael, Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), 4.Google Scholar
28. Ibid.
29. From an interview with Elijah Muhammad's son, Imam W. D. Muhammad, in Marsh, Clifton, From Black Muslims to Muslims: The Transition from Separatism to Islam, 1930–1980 (Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow, 1984), 116.Google Scholar
30. Both quotes are from Malcolm X, Autobiography, 304.Google Scholar
31. The Yakub myth has been reaffirmed by Louis Farrakhan, current leader of the Nation of Islam, but rejected by Elijah Muhammad's son, Imam Warith Deen Muhammad, leader of the American Muslim Mission. Yakub, it should be noted, is a highly complex figure, combining elements of the biblical God; the Gnostic Demiurge (Bloom, [American Religion, 252]Google Scholar, has already written that “Yakub has an irksome memorability as a crude but pungent Gnostic Demiurge”); the biblical patriarch Jacob (Heb. Ya'akov/Arab. Yakub, see Muhammad, , Message to the Blackman, 126Google Scholar, where Muhammad writes, “the father of the white race [Mr. Yakub or Jacob]”); the leader of the fallen angels; John of Patmos (who received the New Testament's Book of Revelation; see, for example, Muhammad, 's comments in Message to the Blackman, 124–26)Google Scholar; and a traditional trickster figure (Smith, [Conjuring Culture, 248Google Scholar n. 49] notes the tricksterlike quality of Yakub).
32. Bloom, , American Religion, 251.Google Scholar
33. Muhammad, , Message to the Blackman, 112–13.Google Scholar
34. Ibid., 115–16.
35. Ibid., 116.
36. Ibid., 117–18.
37. Perhaps Muhammad understands the term “cherubim” to be singular and, therefore, adds an “s” to make it plural. The ending “-im” is, however, already plural in Hebrew, from the singular “cherub” or keruv” (Hebrew).
38. Muhammad, , Message to the Blackman, 133.Google Scholar Henceforth, all parentheses are in the original.
39. See, for example, Babylonian Talmud Hagigah 12a.
40. I am indebted to Michael Fishbane for this understanding of the rabbinic phrase.
41. Boyarin, , Intertextuality, 40.Google Scholar Boyarin examines the use of intertexts in midrashic literature.
42. Ibid., 37.
43. Arendt, Hannah, introduction to Benjamin, Walter, Illuminations (New York: Schocken, 1970), 47.Google ScholarBoyarin, (Intertextuality, 139 n. 43)Google Scholar suggests that “Benjamin, probably more than Freud and Derrida, was influenced in his practice by a knowledge of Jewish textuality … He may also have very well had some knowledge of midrash.”
44. Muhammad, , Message to the Blackman, 118.Google Scholar
45. Muhammad, , Our Saviour, 75Google Scholar; see also 116.
46. Muhammad, , Message to the Blackman, 109.Google Scholar
47. Boyarin, , Intertextuality, 37.Google Scholar