Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
  1. Home
  2. Search

Refine search

Refine search

Access:
Content type:
Publication date:
Apply   From and To filters
Subject: Show more
Journals Show more
Publishers: Show more
Societies Show more
Series: Show more
Collections: Show more

Actions for selected content:

Select all | Deselect all
  • View selected items
  • Export citations
  • Download PDF (zip)
  • Save to Kindle
  • Save to Dropbox
  • Save to Google Drive

Save Search

You can save your searches here and later view and run them again in "My saved searches".

Please provide a title, maximum of 40 characters.
Cancel
×

5 results

  • 5 - The Rhetoric of Fear

  • Angela Roskop Erisman
  • Book:
    The Wilderness Narratives in the Hebrew Bible
    Published online:
    12 December 2024
    Print publication:
    19 December 2024, pp 118-166

  • Summary

    This chapter is a reading of the Korah episode (Numbers 16–17). An initial, hierocratic version is linked to a revision of the census in Numbers 1–4 that disenfranchises the Levites by framing their role as service to Aaron, as though he were a king. The Korah episode is designed to discourage dissent, as Korah and 250 laypeople object to the use of holiness to centralize power with Aaron, and complaint is framed as rebellion. Moses does not teach here but manipulates, using rhetorical techniques characteristic of the sophists in order to underwrite Aaron’s power play. Fear of death and disgust are used rhetorically to dissuade readers from even associating with the likes of Korah. This version is still political allegory, as Aaron is Joshua ben Jehozadak, who takes over Zerubbabel’s role in Zechariah with support from Transjordanian Tobiads. Aaron’s addition to the second rock-water episode is also treated here. The section of Numbers 16 that deals with the Reubenites is read as a revision to the Korah episode that rejects the inclusion of Transjordan in the promised land because it has a competing sanctuary. Moses’s character is also rehabilitated here.

The Wilderness Narratives in the Hebrew Bible
  • Religion, Politics, and Biblical Interpretation
  • Angela Roskop Erisman
  • Published online:
    12 December 2024
    Print publication:
    19 December 2024
  • In this volume, Angela Erisman offers a new way to think about the Pentateuch/Torah and its relationship to history. She returns to the seventeenth-century origins of modern biblical scholarship and charts a new course – not through Julius Wellhausen and the Documentary Hypothesis, but through Herrman Gunkel. Erisman reimagines his vision of a literary history grounded in communal experience as a history of responses to political threat before, during, and after the demise of Judah in 586 BCE. She explores creative transformations of genre and offers groundbreaking new readings of key episodes in the wilderness narratives. Offering new answers to old questions about the nature of the exodus, the identity of Moses, and his death in the wilderness, Erisman's study draws from literary and historical criticism. Her synthesis of approaches enables us to situate the wilderness narratives historically, and to understand how and why they continue to be meaningful for readers today.

  • The significance of the ḥadīth of the position of Aaron for the formulation of the Shīʿī doctrine of authority1

  • G. Miskinzoda
  • Journal:
    Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies / Volume 78 / Issue 1 / February 2015
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    17 March 2015, pp. 67-82
    Print publication:
    February 2015

  • From quite early on, the Shīʿa endeavoured to provide both historical and rational arguments for their central claim that ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib (d. 40/661), the cousin and son-in-law of the Prophet Muḥammad (d. 11/632), was not only his legitimate successor but also the person best qualified to lead the umma. In particular, there are several statements attributed to the Prophet Muḥammad which are used as evidence of the special position of ʿAlī and his family. One of these is a report known in the Muslim tradition as the ḥadīth manzilat Hārūn (ḥadīth of the position of Aaron). According to this report, cited by such eminent authorities on ḥadīth as Muslim ibn al-Ḥajjāj (d. 261/875), al-Tirmidhī (d. 279/892) and Ibn Ḥanbal (d. 241/855), Muḥammad said to ʿAlī: “Are you not content to be with respect to me as Aaron was to Moses, except that after me there shall be no other Prophet?” The ḥadīth alludes to the parallels and similarities between the status of Muḥammad and ʿAlī and their close relationship, and that of Moses and Aaron in the Jewish tradition. The article examines the significance of this report for the formulation of the doctrine of the special status of ʿAlī in Shīʿī Islam through its use and interpretation in the Muslim literary and historical tradition.